May 24, 2024 • 60 mins
From a PE teacher to a social media maven, Alex Tsironis, a.k.a. Mr. MoCo 301, joins us to chart his meteoric rise from the humble beginnings of #MoCoSnow to steering the MoCo Show platform towards millions of views. As Montgomery County's very own Community Engagement Manager, Derrick Kenny, reveals the multifaceted nature of his role, which spans far beyond communications into the realm of cable TV stations and content production. Our live audience at the Universities of Shady Grove buzzes with excitement as we unravel the tapestry of content creation and delve into the hearts behind the voices that resonate through podcasting's growing influence.
This episode is steeped in the transformative power of local expertise and personal passion as it shapes the digital landscape. We dissect the strategy behind going viral, the responsibility of factual reporting, and the dance of monetization for small news outlets in the age of user-generated content. It's an open book into the highs and lows that come with the territory, from the story of local entrepreneurs who flipped the fast-casual food scene on its head with Cava, to the precision and care needed to handle the psychological toll of online negativity.
As we wrap up, we address the critical art of managing an online presence, understanding your audience demographics, and the pure joy found in producing content that's true to who you are. Whether we're discussing the global marketplace's impact on local creators or the personal strategies for handling social media stress, this episode is packed with insights, inspiration, and the real stories of content creators shaping their own paths in Montgomery County and beyond. Guest Alex Tsironis exemplifies this journey, showing us the power of evolving a brand while staying grounded in community values. Join us for a heartfelt exploration of what it means to craft stories and build connections in today's buzzing content creation landscape.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good day and welcome to what's Happening, MoCo, a
podcast from your award-winninggovernment television station,
County Cable, Montgomery.
Now here's your host, DerekKenney.
Good day and welcome to what'sHappening, MoCo.
This podcast is different fromany other podcast I've done
(00:21):
before.
Number one we are at theuniversities of Shady Grove.
Number two we are before a liveaudience Audience.
Make a little bit of noise.
Make a little bit of noise.
Yay, All right, all right, allright, all right.
Number three we're going to befocused on careers, and not only
just about careers, but careersin content creation.
(00:41):
And when you think aboutMontgomery County, you think
about MoCo, you think aboutcontent creation.
Who do you think about?
I know who I think about.
I think about Alex Saronis.
Mr MoCo 301 is joining me todayfor this podcast.
Give him a round of applause,Alex.
Thank you so much for beinghere today.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thank you so much for having me.
(01:02):
All right, All right.
And since this is a podcastabout careers and we talk about
government careers a lot, I'lltake a quick moment to say that,
in addition to being a podcasthost for the Montgomery County
government, I have a positioncalled the community engagement
manager.
Now it may seem that that's acommunications-only potential
(01:27):
job.
Okay, but it's actually a jobthat incorporates a lot of fun
things, but a lot of otherthings.
Business functions likeprocurement.
Why do you need procurement?
Procurement is needed toacquire services and equipment
all the things needed to producea podcast like this today.
What else do I do?
I provide oversight for thecounty's cable TV stations.
Did you know that MontgomeryCounty has nine cable TV
(01:51):
stations dedicated to informingand engaging the public?
Anybody, no, Anybody new, Allright, cool.
So now you know, and guess what?
One of those communitytelevision stations are geared
towards empowering people likeyourself, students, faculty
others, Alex, myself inproducing content creative for
(02:11):
your own benefit.
So make sure you loop backaround, look up Montgomery
Community Media, come back, askus those questions, ask the
question what's happening inMoCo?
Where can I go to produce mypodcast?
Ok, and we'll take care of that.
So now let's get down to brasstacks.
A long time ago, many moons ago, Alex, how long ago was it when
you first developed the hashtagMoCoSnow?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So MoCoSnow actually first was developed as a
bulletin board in my classroomin like 2008 or 2009.
I was a teacher for many yearsand then we went on to Twitter.
I want to say the hashtag cameabout in 2012.
And that's when we created ourMoco Snow Twitter account.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Now, why was that such a popular hashtag and what
about it kind of got it startedgenerating awareness and traffic
towards your brand?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, number one, it rhymed, so it was kind of easy
to say and people wanted to sayit.
But secondly, everyone lovessnow days or hates them.
It depends on where you're at.
But as a kid we all loved them.
As teachers, we loved thembecause we got to stay home and
get paid.
It was amazing.
And then parents were maybe onthe other side of it.
(03:23):
They were like oh no, I got tofigure things out now.
But everyone cared right.
So everyone wanted to know arewe going to have school?
Is there going to be a delay?
And that's kind of what I aimto answer with, just like fun
predictions.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Now let's take a quick step back.
I know Alex.
A lot of you guys know Alex, alot of you guys know Mr Moco301.
But what brand would peoplemost associate you with?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Currently, I would say, the Moco Show is probably
the most popular brand.
We have a pretty big followingon social media and our website
is currently getting over twomillion hits each month.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Oh my God, that's incredible.
That's incredible.
So now we know where he is nowTwo million views a month, which
I will say is extraordinary.
And he started rather humbly.
You were a gym teacher, ofcourse, right, and for the
Montgomery County Public Schools, and so your first passion
wasn't content creation, am Icorrect?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
That's correct.
Yeah, I was a PE teacher and Iloved sports.
I loved working with children,I loved teaching sports to kids.
And through that, because I wasa teacher teacher and I loved
sports, I loved working withchildren, I loved teaching
sports to kids and through that,because I was a teacher that
snow thing came about and Istarted creating.
Obviously, every teachercreates content in their
classroom, so you have to haveengaging content to engage
students.
And then I just kind of turnedit into something else and, by
(04:42):
default, I had all these kidsemailing me after they left my
class and saying oh, we're goingto have school tomorrow.
I created this website and itwasn't until a 12-year-old
student of mine came up to meand he wouldn't stop pestering
me about creating a social mediaaccount for Moco Snow and
finally I created it.
Well, actually, I had himcreate it at lunch for me and he
(05:03):
said here you go, and threedays later we had 1,000
followers.
This was over a decade ago and Iwas like wow, I was like
there's something here, so letme kind of continue to build
this and then we'll get into howMoCo Snow kind of transitioned
into the MoCo show.
So we'll talk about that, Iguess, coming up soon.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, coming up soon.
Yeah, coming up soon.
So you have a popular platformand you're now on your first
social media platform, which waswhat it was Twitter and I was
not familiar with it at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So the time period Facebook was number one.
At the time I had a personalFacebook account.
It was post MySpace.
I know a lot of people won'teven remember what MySpace is,
but Facebook was number one andI thought to myself no one's
going to care about the weatheron Twitter, why would I join
this?
But this 12-year-old kid keptsaying trust me, trust me until
(05:55):
I let him create it, and I'vethanked him.
He's got to be in his late 20snow, but I've thanked him so
many times since then forhelping it make happen.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And that was a while ago.
So now Twitter is now known asthe social media app, formerly
known as Twitter.
Now it's X, and some peoplelike to have fun with it and
call it Twix, because it isTwitter and it is X, so it's
like two things right.
So you start off in thisplatform and you started off as
a social media novice.
You weren't into social media,you didn't get into the game
thinking about social media orcontent creation, but you found
(06:30):
that there was a need in thecommunity and you were
fulfilling that need.
What was the next step, fromMoco Snow and the Twitter
account to the next milestone inyour journey?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So around the same time I decided to make a
Facebook page too.
At the time it was the numberone social media platform I
think technically still is Metaas a whole and I created a
Facebook page.
I was a lot more familiar withthat and we created a following
there too.
Then a couple of years passedand winter would end and I had
all these followers and everynow and then I'd say like, hey,
I tried out this restaurant.
I thought it was great.
(07:03):
And some people were like, ohcool, I got to check it out.
And then other people were likestick to snow.
So I was like, all right, letme figure this out, let me
create something where I cantalk about these things that I'm
doing and those people who carecan kind of follow along.
So I had moco snow and I waslike let me figure this out
let's create.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
If I could just get your guys's.
Oh wait, hold on, I don't wantto be in the zoom.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Okay, and, as I said before, we are live.
We are live from University ofShady Grove, we're talking to
Alice Rones and we just learnedquite a bit about him, but I
think the one thing we want tonote is that there was what
sometimes, when you want to gointo a certain arena
professionally, even as anon-professional, there are
barriers.
In this case, there were nobarriers to entry.
(07:50):
When you're going the socialmedia route.
All you need, basically, iswhat?
A cell phone, a computer, areason to be there and content.
So all right.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yes, so we created the MoCo show and it's called
the MoCo show because it was apodcast.
It started as a podcast so itwas me and a friend discussing
what we were doing in MontgomeryCounty, what we liked about how
cool was this restaurant Stufflike that and we grew this
following and we made a lot ofconnections and what kind of
(08:35):
happened was these people thatwere following along?
I remember one time someonesaid, hey, I work at the gym
here in Rio and I heard we'regoing to close and Dave and
Buster's is going to take over.
So I was like, oh, that'sinteresting, made a few phone
calls and nobody was kind ofadmitting to it and finally I
got in touch with someone whosaid, yes, we're looking to take
over that space.
It's from Dave and Buster's hadto have been 2016.
(08:56):
And then, a year later, it wasannounced that Dave and Buster's
was moving into Rio taking overthe space in the gym and we
kind of reported it first and it, you know it got shared by so
many people and I was like, wow,people really care about this
stuff.
So let me keep talking aboutthings that you know.
We're hearing that we're ableto confirm.
Hey, I hear Toys R Us isclosing and this other place is
coming in and people weresharing that hundreds of times.
(09:19):
So we kind of got a start doingretail and restaurant news and
then kind of expanded from there.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Wow.
So we know that from yourinitial entry into the
marketplace with Twitter, youwere instantly viral.
You went 1,000 followers in,like oh you said three days, and
then you started covering newswhich, again, Alex,
professionally and from aneducational standpoint, you
started off in education,correct?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, I have a degree in education, physical
education.
I have a master's degree inthat same field.
It has absolutely nothing to dowith what I do now, but I was
able to use everything I learnedin school and in my career, to
kind of put it into what I'mdoing now.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Correct, and so he was able to pivot from what he
was doing and learn I would saya steep learning curve to do
investigative journalism, whichI will say that's what that was,
where you were finding outabout the Dave and Buster
situation and then, instantly,you provided value to residents
and you again went viral.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, and that's you know.
That's the thing.
It's easy to want to go viraland it's easy it's you can go
viral for kind of the wrongreasons, but you always want to
go viral for, for somethingthat's you know informative and
helpful to the community, and wetry to do that at all times.
You know from from Wawa comingopening its first Montgomery
County location.
I found that out by accidentwhen I was at the Gaithersburg
(10:45):
Book Fair in like 2018 walkingaround and there was a guy from
Wawa handing out pens and I saidwhat are you doing this for?
There's no Wawa in MontgomeryCounty.
And he said there will be andno one knew that.
And I was like oh, all right, soI actually pulled him aside and
I said tell me a little more.
And he told me everything and Icalled Wawa Corporate.
They gave me the story and webroke that news and that was
(11:06):
huge Because Wawa was somethinga lot of people wanted or
remembered from where they grewup.
For me, I had it in CollegePark when I was in college.
It's gone now but I might havecome back.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I don't know, but it was big news in the area and
it's a fun way to go viral and Ithink this is a good
opportunity to highlight forcontent creators a fun way to go
viral and I think this is agood opportunity to highlight
for content creators what doesit take, in your opinion, to
create content that people, thatresounds with people, that
people will find a value thatcould benefit your brand as a
content creator.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
So I tell people all the time especially the people
that kind of work for us.
I say there's contenteverywhere.
You can take a picture ofsomething that looks interesting
and that's content right and alot of people might care about
it.
And then there's things we workon for multiple days, put in
hours into, and it completelyflops on social media.
And then there's times where wetake a picture of something
interesting and post it and itgets shared 10,000 times and it
(12:00):
has 5,000 to 10,000 likes andcontent is everywhere.
So I always tell people lookfor a need, um and, and then
kind of fill it.
We're all experts in something.
Uh, you know, in our own way Ifelt like I lived in Montgomery
County all my life.
So I've been here 41 years andI knew a lot about it.
I was moving all across theCounty.
I lived in Rockville andGaithersburg, but you know I was
(12:20):
going to Greek school in SilverSpring and my church was in
Bethesda and I was doing allthese different things across
the county.
So I knew these areas, whatused to be there, and I just
remembered and I kind of wouldshare it with people and I saw
that people cared.
So I always tell people,whatever it is you share on your
personal social media orwhatever it is you have.
(12:40):
What do people like to engagein that you have to offer, and
then maybe grow that and go withthat.
What do people like to engagein that you have to offer, and
then maybe grow that and youknow.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Go with with that what you're an expert in.
And he's the expert inMontgomery County, maryland,
right, and that's for peoplethat are listening, that are
outside of Maryland and ourlittle hyper-local area of
Montgomery County, maryland,where we have over a million
residents, one of the mostdiverse counties in the in the
country, one of the healthiestcounties in the country.
So MoCo is an abbreviation orlike a pseudonym for Montgomery
(13:12):
County, montgomery County, moco,right, and now you are, mr MoCo
and 301, for those of you thatwere not around for the 301 area
code period.
301 was the area code for-.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
The only area code we had.
The only area code we had.
Yeah, 240 came around and now Idon't know anyone with it, but
227 also exists for our area.
That came out recently.
I haven't met a person that hasa 227 number yet, but I look
forward to it.
Does anyone in here have a 227number?
Yeah, Does anyone know anyonewith the 227 number?
All right, great, so it's, it's.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I don't know, I don't like it, I, I'm, I'm, I'm a 301
guy and anyone else has getsome breaking news from the MoCo
show before anyone else.
I didn't know there was a newarea code for Maryland.
Okay, that's good to, that'sgood to know.
He's, he's in the know.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Last summer last summer Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, awesome, awesome.
Now, one of the cool thingsthat you do is that you're able
to relay to people, or echo,some of the great things about
the county.
What are some of the greatthings about the county?
That, if you meet someone onthe street today or someone
stumbles across your websitefrom Germany or from Texas and
(14:22):
you want to talk aboutMontgomery County, what are some
of the cool things that youwant to share with them?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
So you mentioned like the cool things, like in
general, like our diversity.
That's awesome.
But then there's like fun factsand that's kind of one of the
one of the things I built theMoCo show on was sharing these
fun facts.
And we have all these like coolcelebrities that that have
these very close ties toMontgomery County from.
From Sylvester Stallone we weretalking about him a little bit
earlier.
He played Rocky, he has verymany movie roles and a fun thing
(14:49):
is one time we got a SylvesterStallone impersonator to make a
video talking about the MoCoshow and then Sylvester Stallone
or the account at leastretweeted it and I was like oh,
that's amazing.
And then he unretweeted it acouple of days later.
But that was cool and all theseawesome connections that we
have to these celebrities whohave kind of made it from our
(15:10):
area.
And people are always like,well, what are they doing for
our area now?
And it's like I have no idea.
Maybe they're doing a lot ofthings, maybe they're not, but
they're from here or they wentto school here and it's a part
of who they are.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
And I always share that with people.
I think it's one of the coolestthings.
Cool.
So you've established yourbrand.
You're now doing various typesof content creation from
pictures, investigativejournalism, breaking news and
then topical information, thingsthat are current, but along the
way you developed a podcast.
Tell us about that experienceand, for those that, anybody
born after 2002?
Anybody born after 2002?
Well, podcasting was kind ofbirthed, I think at the time was
(15:52):
a iPod.
It was an iPod Before theiPhone.
There was this device that onlyplayed media and at the time it
(16:13):
was only audio media, right.
So podcasts were actually a wayfor people to Just get this
with me.
Okay, not stream, but downloadmedia to this device in real
time over bit rates that werevery, very, very, very, very
slow to listen to content.
(16:35):
Fast forward a couple of decadesand podcasting is the hottest,
newest thing out, whereas notthe newest thing out, but it's a
valued source of informationfor everyone out there.
I'm not sure if anyone here cansay they haven't listened to a
podcast in the last month orhaven't heard a story about a
(16:56):
podcast or a story that wasfirst birthed from a podcast
over the last month or two.
And so podcasting is verypowerful.
But the reason why it'simportant for content creators
is that.
Number one it says one newthing that goes against the
school of thought that wasrecently believed and that was
(17:16):
people only want to hear 30seconds of anything.
Right.
Podcast is long-form media.
Two it happened to help to showthat a lot of people I think
back to Alex's point your voiceis valuable but, much like
social media, the barriers tocreating your own podcast,
trying to add some value herefor you guys, if you want to
(17:36):
start a podcast is free.
You have a cell phone, you havea Wi-Fi connection at the
school, a Wi-Fi connection atStarbucks, you have value to add
in terms of what you like ordislike or things you want to
cover, and then you can get afree account with Buzzsprout or
Podbean or something like thatand start your own podcast.
So if you don't learn anythingelse from talking to us today,
(17:59):
if you're a content creator,there's nothing stopping you
from starting your own creationplatform, whether it's a podcast
, a Twix account, a Facebookaccount or even getting up
ultimately to where we'regetting to a website that gets
over 2 million views a month,which puts it in very rare air.
Now, many, many, many moons agoI worked in a bit of PR and I
(18:23):
used to get excited when therewas a radio program that had an
average quarter-hourlistenership of 500 people,
right.
So back in the day that helpedme get paid was to get an
interview booked on a radio showthat was on AM that had 500
people.
Now, everyone in this roomprobably has more than 5,000
friends, or 2,000 friends onFacebook.
(18:44):
Everyone in this room probablyhas more than 5,000 friends, or
2,000 friends on Facebook.
You may have more than 1,000followers on TikTok, so now you
do live streams on TikTok, right.
So here we are.
We are in this arena where wehave all these great ideas, we
have all these vehicles insocial media and things like
(19:05):
podcasting where we can shareour voices.
What was it that got youstarted with your podcast and
what were some of the things youliked about your podcast
platform?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So the coolest thing about a podcast is that people
hear you.
They hear how you're sayingsomething, they hear how you're
talking about it.
They can hear your voice.
It's not.
You write something and thensomeone takes it the wrong way
and replies and you're trying toexplain yourself and now you're
getting in a battle of who'sgoing to get more likes on their
response to each other.
A podcast is kind of first off,it's one way You're sharing your
(19:35):
thoughts or whatever it is youhave, but people can hear how
you're saying it, they can tellif you're angry about something
or happy about something or ifknow, simply just stating
something, and I loved beingable to do that kind of letting
people know.
So, like I can say something,like man, I, I, I, I really love
Lake Forest and some peoplewhen, if I write it, you might
(19:57):
think he's being sarcastic, orsome somebody might say, oh he's
, you know he's lying or he'swrong or whatever.
But if you hear me talkingabout it, say, man, I really
loved lake forest, like I lovedeverything about it.
I loved that there was a mallnear my house and I was able to
go when you hear me talkingabout it, whereas if you see it
written.
You might you have no idea howI mean it.
Um, so I love that we startedfrom this podcast where people
(20:20):
can hear, uh kind of my emotionsin everything.
So you know, as it grew and wewere able to cover like all
these different topics before wewere big on social media,
almost all feedback was positive.
You know, not many people listento a podcast and start yelling
at their you know radio in thecar or at their AirPods or
(20:42):
whatever it is they're listeningto them on, whereas on social
media you see something andimmediately you feel like you
have to respond and yourresponse has to make another
response, another responder,feel dumb, or you have to prove
them wrong or you have to getsome likes with your response.
It's not like that with apodcast.
You take in the information andyou hear it.
(21:03):
You can agree or disagree.
If you disagree enough that youwant to reach out to the person
who created it, you still can.
But it's not this like instantgratification of I'm going to
write this comment and I got 37likes.
I'm right, you know it's alittle different.
So I always say you know,podcast is one way you get your
message out and I love thatpeople can hear it and still
(21:24):
respond if they want to, butit's not this whole thing where
here's a big platform foreveryone to see your response
and then ends up bringing a lotof negativity.
That's kind of what socialmedia is.
There's one thing about socialmedia I don't like is the
negativity that it can bring,and podcasts kind of.
While you can still be negativeon a podcast, usually the
messages aren't negative andpeople can just kind of, while
you can still be negative on apodcast, usually the messages
(21:45):
aren't negative and people canjust kind of take it in and oh,
I'm not so angry about it anhour later or a day later, so
they don't feel the need torespond with negativity.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
So talk about your podcast in terms of at this
point, we're beyond becoming aninfluencer for the sake of being
an influencer, or sharingcontent for the sake of sharing
content.
This is now a business, maybe asecondary business, but it's
now a business.
What were some of your thoughtsin regards to your podcast, and
(22:20):
how did that influence your way, moving forward from where you
were at that time?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
So as the podcast grew, we grew to about 10,000
weekly listeners.
We had one episode a week.
We have just over a millionpeople in Montgomery County and,
honestly, if you're not fromMontgomery County there's no
real reason to listen to thepodcast.
The podcast does not existanymore and we'll get into that
too.
But at the time, you know,those are really good numbers.
But it was also very local sowe weren't having national
(22:45):
brands advertise with us, wewere having some local brands
advertise with us.
But it was slowly becoming abusiness.
And when we added the you know,the social media platforms, the
website, we kind of opened itup to more advertisers to make
it more of a business.
So you know, it became abusiness.
Initially it was not, but Ithink, like you know, ultimately
most people's goals when theystart these podcasts is to
(23:06):
eventually hopefully get anadvertiser and be able to have,
you know, their creation funded.
So that's kind of how ittransitioned to a business.
And you know, during thepandemic we were still doing the
podcast.
That's kind of when it ended.
Once things started opening upagain.
But when everything closed downwe had one of Governor Hogan's
(23:26):
spokespeople on our show and Ithink that one got almost half a
million listens Because we wereasking questions like, hey,
everything had just shut downand it was like is it going to
open up soon?
What's going on?
Nobody knew answers to any ofthese questions and we asked
questions that readers were kindof throwing in.
(23:47):
And this was one of our mostlistened to podcasts and it did
well and I was like, wow, a lotof people care and this is a
Montgomery County based podcast.
Obviously we had, you know,maryland Maryland, I think, has
over 6 million residents, but wehad almost half a million
people tune in and I was like,wow, there's something here for
sure.
But we realized that kind of,for us and for what we did,
social media was a little moreefficient for us.
(24:09):
So we transitioned to more of asocial media platform.
While I'd love to still be ableto do the podcast and maybe
we'll bring it back when I havea little more time right now
we're a news media company, soyou know I have employees to pay
and.
I have a business to run so it'sa little more difficult for me
to do this weekly podcast.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
So we're following the journey of Mr Moco 301.
We started with social media, aTwix account.
We grew from there, we starteddoing more Facebook, other
things, incorporatinginvestigative journalism as part
of the content creation, andother timely and hyper local, um
things that resonate withresidents, and you got to the
(24:50):
point where you had to get tothis point where you ask the
question how do I make moneydoing what I love?
Right, um, and that's, that'smonetization.
Everything that you see that isfree and cheap in the beginning
, um, at some point, um it, thebrand has to monetize.
And a couple of things thatpeople content creators maybe
miss out on is what Alex spokeof just now.
(25:12):
Advertising is what fuels you asa content creator, more so, or
more often, than getting paidfrom the vehicle like YouTube.
So, if you're on YouTube and youget past 10,000 subscribers and
you have a million views amonth and then you get some type
of compensation from YouTube.
(25:33):
However, if you have a popularpodcast or a popular social
media stream and that you'vebuilt yourself and you go out
and do the due diligence to getadvertisers or sponsors, then
you can generate income likethat.
You don't have to wait untilyou are the Bees, knees or the
next country, wayne or whomeveryou can start generating revenue
(25:58):
yourself.
There's other ways to generaterevenue.
A lot of people sellmerchandise things like that, so
that's something to keep inmind as you build your brand.
Now you have a great networkwhere you have people in your
family that are just aching tosupport you in what you do.
You can probably get a nicelaunch path in terms of
generating revenue as well.
But I think it's important thatwe share that you're moving
(26:20):
into the business model ofcontent creation what the
different ways are to make money.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, so initially it was.
If I went to a restaurant and Ishared and to this day, if you
see a post that either I put outor our Taste MoCo account puts
out or the MoCo show puts out,if it's not marked as a paid
partnership or if it's notclearly stated that something
was provided for free, I've paidfor that food.
So a lot of social mediacontent creators don't disclose
(26:50):
that they actually have to.
It's very important to do that.
They all don't.
We do so.
If, for some reason, we gotsomething for free, we do say
this was very clearly stated,this was provided to us for free
or it is marked as a paidpartnership.
Any ad that we post is alwaysmarked as a paid partnership.
We try our best to always do itthe right way.
Now here's the trouble was, whenI was going to these places on
(27:12):
my own and you know say, hey, Ireally love this, people were
always like is this an ad?
Did you get it for free?
Or they were supporting theplace.
And I would always answer no,it's not an ad, I didn't get it
for free.
And then they were like okay,great, I love that you're
supporting businesses.
And now if we post an ad.
Sometimes the comments on theseads are just so negative and a
lot of times I don't thinkpeople understand.
(27:32):
They're like this is a bigbusiness, how can you support
them?
Well, in a way, they'reactually supporting me and I
feel like my business is a smallbusiness.
So we're supporting, supportingeach other, we're giving them
some uh, some visibility andthey're uh, they might be a big
business that's operatinglocally through a local
franchise.
Franchisee that employs, youknow, our neighbors, um, and
they advertise with us andthey're helping my business.
(27:53):
But, uh, you can, you can haveads.
We have ads on Facebook, wehave ads on, uh, on Twitter, x,
uh, whatever you want to call it.
We have ads on Instagram and wehave ads on our website.
But one thing we've done iswe've kept everything free.
There's no paywall.
You might be annoyed a littlebit by an ad, but on Instagram
you do this and then the ad justgoes away, so it's not a big
(28:15):
deal.
Right On Facebook, you canscroll past it.
You don't have to engage withthe ad or you might see
something you like.
I think we had a just thismorning.
We had a car dealership do avery interesting ad where the
start of it was a Mike Tysonfight and then it shows Mike
Tyson punching someone in theface and the guy gets knocked
down.
And then it flips to this carsalesman from Orsman and Chevy
(28:39):
Rockville turning around andcoming up and being like, hey,
we have have knockout savingshere and it's like okay, it was
a very good ad.
It's been seen by like 40,000people in the first hour and it
was effective.
Usually when they post their ads, people are like man, this
place is the worst, and whetherit's the worst or not I don't
(28:59):
know, but people just get mad atads sometimes when in reality
you can just scroll by them.
So there are stuff that we haveto deal with.
We always have to have a lotmore of our content than our ads
.
So I always say 80% content atminimum and 20% ads, but we keep
everything free.
So sometimes people will sayyou should sell shirts instead.
(29:21):
I'm like, okay, sure, and we do.
I'm like, how many have youbought?
And they're like, well, none.
I sell shirts instead.
I'm like, okay, sure, and we do.
I'm like, how many have youbought?
And they're like, well, none.
I'm like, exactly, right.
So it's, it's not that easy tosell a certain amount of shirts,
that'll, that'll, you know, beable to support me and my, my
staff, so you can get creativewith it.
You know, and as long I alwaystell people, people will always
say, hey, I don't follow you forads and I'm like, okay, what do
(29:43):
you follow for?
And they go for news.
I'm like, lucky for you, itdidn't go away.
We still do that all the time,so you're good, you can keep
following and, again, you don'thave to engage with the ads.
Sometimes people just go reallyhard on these ads.
They'll comment I'm not goingto go just because of this ad
and I'm like one now, you'rehurting my business.
You're hurting this business,like, what's the point of this?
Why do you want, you know, doyou want to do that?
(30:05):
So keep that in mind.
Once you do start to monetize,there does come a lot of
negativity with it, buthopefully it's you know you can
push past that.
Be kind and honest in yourresponses and we try to do that
when we respond.
We try not to respond much atall anymore, but that's kind of
what's going on withadvertisement and content.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
And I think this is a good opportunity for people to
benefit from your expertise as asocial media subject matter
expert.
You mentioned a few times howyou get people that are giving
you negative reactions to yourcontent.
What are some of the bestpractices, including how to deal
with negative feedback andengaging with people on social
media?
Speaker 2 (30:45):
So it's tough.
With our regular contentthere's not as much negativity,
but there's still.
Every now and then there willbe like an uproar of negativity
and our team always has like athing that are like, okay, this
one, there's nothing bad anyonecan say about this piece of
content and we're like, oh no,there is watch and someone's
going to make that comment aboutwhatever it is they want to
(31:08):
make.
And a lot of times people arejust negative in nature and it
is what it is.
On our end, what we try to dois we try to cover as much as
possible.
And I tell everyone we may notever get to something that's
very important to you and we maynot cover something that's very
important to you for a varietyof reasons.
Usually it's because we can't,for whatever reason.
(31:28):
We can't, we don't have enoughinformation on it, so we're not
just going to post something youknow someone sent.
A lot of times people will belike, hey, there's this car on
fire on 270.
Here's the picture.
What they don't realize is thatwe now have to call Montgomery
County Fire and Rescue.
We have to get hey, we weretold there's a car on fire here.
We can't just post a pictureand say here it is, as many
(31:50):
likes and shares as it would get.
We need to have informationthat goes with it.
A lot of times people get upsetwith that too.
They're like I sent you thispicture and you didn't post it.
We have no additionalinformation.
I'm really sorry.
So there's that side of it.
But you know, with everythingwe do, initially we try to
respond to every comment.
Now we're at a point wherewe're getting about a thousand
(32:11):
notifications a minute andthat's because every like, every
comment, every whatever it isthat comes in.
On the business side of it, wehave something called a business
suite that we use.
It's created by Meta and it hasFacebook and Instagram and it
kind of puts everything in one,so all of our notifications come
in at once.
So we don't see like 99% ofcomments that are made.
(32:33):
And as much as we'd love tolike if I could afford to pay
someone to sit in front of itfor 24 hours and make a decision
nope, this comment gets deleted.
This comment gets to stay.
We just can't do that.
But we're not able to do that.
I'm unable to pay someone to dothat and a lot of times people
will get very upset.
This person made this commentand it's still there.
But what they don't realize isthat comment was made on
(32:54):
Instagram that's owned by abillionaire that has the funds
to remove that comment.
If they wanted to and havesomeone moderate the whole time,
they're able to do that.
We're not.
I'm a very small business.
I can't sit in front of mycomputer or phone all day.
I can't pay someone to do thatall day, so we don't monitor
comments anymore and a lot oftimes that does lead to a lot of
negativity and responses thatare very negative and so on and
(33:18):
so forth.
But I always tell our socialmedia manager I say be very kind
and very honest in any responseyou ever make.
So if they're responding tosomeone's message which we were
getting like a hundred messagesan hour or two so we can't
always do that and the messagesare crazy too People will be
like hey, my power's out, why?
One, I have no idea where youlive.
We have no, you know.
So they'll ask the mostinteresting questions.
(33:41):
We can't respond to all of them, but you know I say let
interesting questions.
We can't respond to all of them, but you know I say let people
know.
You know, kindly and honestly.
And a lot of times if we don'trespond to someone, one it's
likely because we don't havetime to do it, but two, it's
because you can tell there's noresponse that will satisfy that
question, right?
So a lot of times you're notlooking for a response, you're
not looking for me to tell you.
(34:01):
Here's why You're just angry,for whatever it is and it could
be very important to you and Ican't tell you what to be upset
or happy about.
So when you send your messageit's like okay, thank you, we
take it in.
My social media manager sendsme a report at the end of every
week, every piece of criticism,every piece of advice, every
piece of feedback, and we lookthrough it and we're like okay,
sounds good.
(34:21):
I appreciate that.
I don't like having the nametied to it, because sometimes,
you know, I'm a human being too.
I can get defensive as well.
If this one specific personsays something that's that I
consider rude or not nice orwhatever, then I start to like
well, I remember when thatperson said this, so I don't
want to do that, I just want tosee what the content is.
I'm like all right, thank you,and we try to move forward with
(34:42):
that.
But I always say be very kind,be very honest and and be
upfront.
You know I wouldn't be able tosleep at night if if I was, you
know, trying to do things for acertain reason and I and I
always tell my staff likethere's never any conspiracy
behind it People will say hey,you always post about Kennedy
high school.
It's clear you hate Blake, Idon't hate Blake.
(35:03):
I'm not at home thinking likeah, we're not posting about
Blake.
Yeah, like it doesn't work thatway.
The way we post content issomeone says hey, this happened.
Uh, you know, our team won thischampionship.
Here's a picture.
You have permission to share it.
It's a cool or they'll be like,hey, why didn't you post about
this school winning this?
And the honest truth is we hadno idea they won that.
(35:25):
So a lot of times you just gotto let us know and if we get
permission to post and a littlemore information, we'll post it.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
There's no, there's never any secret behind why we
do it there, you go All rightand so.
So you've seen the journey thatMr Mocha 301, alex Saronis has
taken from being and you heardin the beginning, I, I, I, and
then you heard things like we,my staff, I have to pay my
people.
So he's grown from helping tolet people know about the very
(35:57):
important thing snow dayswork,but still love snow days right
To being one of the most trustednews organizations catering to
Montgomery County, maryland andI don't know what others may
(36:22):
think of or may be aware of interms of the news vacuum, where
sometimes localities don't getenough news coverage about
things that are important topeople in that area.
So not only is he now, ofcourse, good at what he does,
but he's also providing a valuedservice and resource to the
residents of the county.
What do you want people to know?
(36:43):
What do you want the next AlexSaronis to know in terms of just
advice to get started in thefirst few steps?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah.
So whatever it is you end uppursuing, especially when it
comes to content creation, I hada meeting in 2018 with a famous
social media influencer and histeam and he said post
everything.
What do you mean?
He was like post everything.
I was like why do you say that?
He was like well, what makesyou post something?
Now?
And I remember back in 2018, wewould only post things that we
(37:13):
thought would get a lot of likes.
And he was like that doesn'tmatter.
Do you get paid by likes?
And we're like no, he was like.
So then why not post everything?
I was like because what, if nota lot of people care?
And he goes take a look at theshares, take a look at
everything you're doing.
He was like you cover onelittle area, but there's
different parts of that area.
So if I post about, let's say,poolsville Springfest coming up
(37:34):
on May 4th, 99% of the peoplewho see it aren't going to care,
but the 1% that does care isgoing to share that content.
And now people from thatspecific area, or people who do
care about that specific event,are going to be like oh, we have
to follow, because they coverour area just as much as they
cover other areas and so on andso forth.
So he said post everything, andthere's going to be plenty of
(37:56):
people who care about everythingyou post, as long as it has to
do with what we normally do.
So we started doing that andour following just grew.
Our like count decreased, butour following grew.
Then more people started comingto our website and I was like
okay, so even though so manypeople don't care about this one
(38:18):
specific item, we're posting 60times a day across all our
platforms.
You're going to care aboutsomething we post and unless you
know, the one thing we post isso terrible that it makes you
unfollow.
It's all good, you're stillinterested in what we have.
So if you do ever decide tostart something, I would say
throw everything out there, seewhat works best for you and then
(38:40):
kind of, you know, maybe focuson what works best for you, keep
up with that and then see howyou grow.
You know I'm growing more onTikTok than Instagram.
All right, let me focus on this, or how can I repackage this
for Instagram so that it works?
We noticed early on that when wewere posting our TikTok videos
directly onto Instagram,instagram was kind of
(39:01):
suppressing them because theyhad the little TikTok logo in it
.
So we had to repurpose it andpost it right on Instagram so
that Instagram can let it beseen.
And then our real count viewswent up by like five times what
it was.
So you got to it's trial anderror post everything you can.
You know, do a little ofeverything.
I know I knew nothing aboutTikTok.
(39:21):
I now do a little bit.
But you know when we startedthat we're up to like 17,000
followers nothing big on TikTok,but we have a following
nonetheless.
And TikTok may not exist in acouple months, but if it does
and if they figure it out, it'sfor the younger generation.
But those who are 16, 17, 18,19, 20 years old today are going
(39:43):
to be the adults of tomorrow.
And if they're using TikTok toget their news, and we need to
be on TikTok or you know, we'regoing to be the next MySpace,
which half the people in heredon't even remember.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I'm not old enough to remember MySpace.
Okay, that's a lie Interesting.
You note that.
So, in case you guys weren'taware, there's legislation that
might require TikTok to changeownership to meet the
requirements of Congress andalso, conversely, there's also
legislation out there talkingabout media platforms, am radio.
(40:16):
There's also legislation outthere to require car makers to
continue to make AM radioavailable to cars.
So I'm not sure if youmentioned remember I mentioned
earlier about that station with500 listeners.
That station may be valuable tosomeone in their car somewhere,
right?
So now, what's valuable to meis always answering questions.
I love to ask the questionwhat's happening, moco?
(40:38):
So now you get to ask thequestion what's happening, moco,
to Mr MoCo 301.
That means you guys, and I amnot shy.
I met some people earlier and Iwill point at them, and some of
them have very pretty orangehair.
I will pick them up and askthem to ask a question here,
live, right now.
All right, any questions?
(40:58):
There are no bad questions.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
Yes, so I'm not from Montgomery County, I'm actually
from California.
I have no idea about anythingin Montgomery County.
So since you have so muchexperience with your time in
Montgomery County and you'realways good at recommending,
what is your top recommendationfor a restaurant?
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yes, in moko that's all right, that's a good
question.
Can I ask you something reallyquick?
Where in moko, because there'syou got to give me like a little
area at least oh, I was likeI'll travel anywhere but um,
let's say, near this area okay,so I would say you could walk to
kava meze, and it's uh, it'sabout 1500 feet.
(41:41):
It's a sit-down restaurant, soit's probably not a place you're
going to go for like a quicklunch.
This is more of like a dinnertype of thing.
You can still go for lunch.
I think, though and it's a it'sa Greek restaurant.
I'm Greek, so I'm a littlebiased when it comes to that,
but it's a modern, modern twiston Greek food, so you're not
going to go in there and seetraditional Greek food.
You'll see like a traditionalGreek food with a twist, but I
(42:01):
like it.
And their story is actuallyunbelievable.
They all started, they grew uphere in Montgomery County Three
guys they worked hard startedthis one restaurant here.
They all got loans they had nomoney at the time and then, five
years later, they started theirfast, casual version of Cava,
which is like a Chipotlecompetitor, and now it's on the
(42:22):
stock exchange and they're allmultimillionaires, and it's
amazing.
So cool, so cool story, butalso great food at their at
their sit down restaurant.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
And we didn't get to that because of a time.
Another brand that has grownthrough your efforts, and that
is Taste MoCo.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah, taste MoCo.
So, taste MoCo.
We highlight food, and so we doit differently than than most
other people.
I don't go to places and getfood for free and say, oh, we
went into a Convo Messe todaywhere we tried the gyro and it
was so delicious.
That's not what we do.
Everyone does that.
That's cool.
If you do it, that's amazing.
So all I do is I order my food,I'll take a picture or video of
(43:01):
it, I put a little music behindit and I show it to you.
And now people are like was itgood?
Now I can say yes, but doesthat mean you're going to think
it's good?
No, right, so so we show youthe dish and that's kind of what
we did.
We it's, it's so like barebones, we.
We just say here's the blah,blah, blah from this restaurant,
here it is.
You look at it.
(43:22):
If you think it's good, go tryit.
Will you like it?
I have no idea.
50-50, right, you might, youmight not, and that's kind of
all we do.
And people will comment on thatand people will write this is
disgusting.
And I always wonder, like,what's the point of doing that?
Like, don't eat it or scrollpast it if you think it's
disgusting, or people will saythis is great, or people will
say this was a little tooexpensive.
(43:43):
We don't.
We don't write the price either, and that's because sometimes,
um, you know, the price canscare people off and there could
be other items that are a lotless expensive that you can
still go enjoy the restaurant,and we don't want to scare
people from going to try arestaurant because of the price
of one item.
But we have everything on there.
So you might see a frozen icedtea from Kenny's for 299.
I don't know if anyone's everhad the frozen iced tea from
(44:03):
Kenny's, but it's amazing.
And there's Kenny's everywhereGaithersburg, rockville, wheaton
, kenny's Sub Shop and theyserve a little of everything.
So good Frozen iced tea.
But we have that $2.99.
And then I have this smokedsteak from the Grove that costs
$90.
Now, I don't eat that every day.
And it was good, but I don'tknow when I'm ever going to be
(44:26):
able to go do that again.
So we have a little ofeverything.
It's not always like the fullexperience.
Sometimes it could be like notthe fries at McDonald's, but it
could be something as little asthat, like we'll do.
Here's the quesadilla atQuapo's and it's a $12.99 item.
Here it is.
It's not necessarily the bestthing and we try to do a variety
from restaurants all across thecounty, um, you know, from
(44:48):
fancy to not, and that's tastemoco.
On instagram and facebook, andyou know we've worked hard on
that for for a few years now wehave like over a thousand posts
from over like 800 differentrestaurants in the county.
Some are not around anymore,but yeah, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Do we have other questions, other questions?
Okay, there, we are all right,there are no, there are no bad
questions.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
Yes, so, um, we actually have two questions it's
me and then him.
But, um, for me I was gonna askwas there a time when you
experienced a difficulty in yourbusiness where you felt like,
okay, I don't know if I shouldcontinue on?
And then how did you overcomethat?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
yeah, initially, when we started with the
advertisements, which was, youknow, the only way to monetize
it, people, uh, and to me itfelt like everyone turned on us.
But in reality it was likethree or four comments but
people would be like, oh, ads,uh, time to unfollow, or
something like that.
And I was like, oh no, oh no.
But when it comes to a business, what do you want?
(45:46):
A follower or a businessworking with you?
It's okay if you lose two,three followers, as long as
you're still doing what you'rethere to do.
So initially, when that washappening, I was very scared, I
would panic sometimes and tothis day, I don't like when
people write negative thingsabout advertising.
Know, advertising in general,but there was that.
And at the beginning of of anybusiness on social media,
(46:09):
whether it's a podcast or or youknow, an account on uh on a
social media network you'regonna see some negativity when
you, when you start to monetize.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
But it is what it is all right, all right, great
question, great question, goodanswer yes, sir so, when dealing
with the whole internet, how doyou preserve your mental health
?
Speaker 2 (46:28):
that's, that's pretty good.
I, I, I don't.
I don't look at commentsanymore, and you know when, when
I do, when I get sucked intolooking at comments sometimes
you know that it does one I'llbe pacing around.
My wife will look at me and belike, oh, was it a comment?
And I'm like, yeah, and, andyou know, I, I dislike that.
But a lot of times what peopleagain don't realize is like with
(46:50):
negativity, sometimes if Idelete this, it's kind of like a
weed, two more will grow in itsplace.
Or someone will now comment onanother post and be like, why'd
you delete my comment on thisone?
And they don't understand thatremoving this negative comment
is going to lead to threedifferent accounts.
All understand that.
(47:10):
You know removing this negativecomment is going to lead to
three different accounts, alltheir friends commenting on this
and be like unfollow the MoCoshow.
They delete comments and stufflike that and it's it's kind of
crazy.
So for me I step away.
I hired a social media managerand her job is to and she still
can't look at all the comments,but her job is to field any
messages that come in and anyserious inquiries.
So I stopped looking at thecomments and that was for my own
mental health.
I used to stress about it.
It would keep me up at night.
I was, you know.
I was about to go to sleep andI'd look at a comment.
(47:32):
I'd be like, oh no, now I'm uptill 2am because I have to deal
with this.
This person's saying this.
It's completely untrue andpeople don't care, they're just
liking this comment.
I'm like, oh no, now I have tohandle this.
So I stopped and that's how Ideal with it.
Personally, I know it's not,it's not the best way, but you
know it's.
It's the way we were able to tohandle it.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Well, that's valuable information.
More questions?
Yes, all right, we definitelygoing to get to you, because
you're my, you're my new bestfriend.
Speaker 7 (48:01):
Okay, so just a question based off of curiosity.
A few of us from the classeshere we've been knowing who you
were since middle school and nowwe're in college, so it's been
a long time.
But I was just curious as to doyou ever look at the
demographics of the people thatare watching or looking at your
(48:27):
social media?
What's the biggest age groupthat you have?
Speaker 2 (48:31):
So our biggest age group is 25 to 44.
And it's broken down, I think,like 25 to 34, then 35 to 44.
But that's our biggestdemographic.
We still have a good amountfrom just about every
demographic.
Every platform is a littledifferent too.
I haven't looked at TikTokdemographics, but I would assume
they're a lot younger.
You know Instagram.
(48:53):
We have some younger followersas well.
However, what I try to do ismake sure that everything we
post, even if it's a veryserious topic, is written in a
way that I would be comfortablewith a 13-year-old reading or
seeing.
Now, sometimes you will see anaccident scene or a crash scene
that might be a little graphic,but other than that, we don't
(49:13):
really have anything that Iwould be afraid of a 13-year-old
seeing or reading.
We're not posting fights at ahigh school.
We're not doing these things.
So I'm comfortable with any agegroup following.
And again, on the content side,on the flip side, you will see
accounts that do post thesethings.
So I'm comfortable with any agegroup following.
And again, on the content side,on the flip side, you will see
accounts that do post thesethings and they'll grow in
followers, but they probablywon't ever make money because a
(49:34):
business isn't going to want toadvertise with someone who's
posting high school fights.
It's a little different, but wehave a wide range.
25 to 44 is our number onedemographic Well, 25 to 34, then
number two is 35 to 44.
Then number three I would sayis 18 to 24 and a few that are
under 18.
All right, all right.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
And the young lady in orange.
I think we have time foranother question.
Okay, let's have a question.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
So I know you talked about everything that goes into
like your podcast and your brand, and I can imagine it can be
very stressful and timeconsuming.
So I was wondering what kind ofthings do you do to like
de-stress, Like, do you go tolike?
Is there any local places thatyou go to Like what do you do in
your free time to just relax?
Speaker 2 (50:24):
So the first thing I have to do in order to relax is,
like this morning, our socialmedia manager is in college and
she said she's got somethinggoing on this morning.
So what I did early on thismorning was I scheduled
everything for the day.
Normally she would be doingthat and because I did that, it
kind of opened me up.
So I've just feel relaxedalready.
(50:45):
So now I can do anything I want.
When I leave here I'm like I'mgood for the rest of the day.
You know I'm going to choose togo home and find some content to
write about, but I and for meit's so relaxing to be able to
write about something you wantto write about, rather than
something that occurred.
You know something like oh no,got to cover this now.
And it's tough.
(51:05):
And even with that again, likeyou know, the content itself so
many things come with it, likewhy didn't you cover this?
Or why aren't you doing this?
And honestly, the answer is wecan't cover everything or we
can't cover it the way you wantus to cover it.
But I would say havingeverything done and being able
to relax is more relaxing thandoing something specific to
relax and being able to relax ismore relaxing than doing
(51:30):
something specific to relax.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
And now it's time for a shameless plug.
Make sure you subscribe to thewhat's Happening MoCo podcast
and listen to as many episodesas possible.
Other thing I want to say thatsincerely that Montgomery County
government is interested inseeing you successful, and there
are a lot of things in place toensure your success.
Not only do we help to supportthe colleges and educational
institutions in the area, butparticularly in the realm of
content creation.
(51:51):
There are resources availableto you and we're going to work
with Dr Clemons to ensure thatit's more easily available and
that you're more easily aware ofwhat's available to you,
including some type of technicaltraining, access to equipment,
things of that nature, becausewe not only want to see you
posting on YouTube and Twitterand TikTok, but we also have
(52:15):
space on our cable channels.
We also have space in ourstudios for you to produce as
well.
So I want to make sure that youguys reach out, ask the
question how can I get mycontent created without going to
Amazon and asking my mom forbirthday and Christmas gifts to
change our living room into astudio?
There's ways for you to getyour content out there without
(52:35):
lifting heavy or going into yourown pockets.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
And let me chime in too I use every video you see,
and some people kind of give ussome grief for it too, but every
video you see will be takenwith this phone, right here.
You know, whether it's food,food videos, food photos, as
long as it's, you know, thestuff that I've created, it's
all taken with my phone.
I don't have an expensivecamera that I use and it's all
put together.
My reels.
(52:58):
I put together a reel for afood truck that opened in
Gaithersburg a couple days agoand it's up to like 180 000
views and I did it all with andthat's on my personal account,
mr mocha 301, if you all want tofollow, but I put it all
together with my phone oninstagram using like the.
The real tab in the instagramapp didn't use anything special,
so I was able to do that andit's uh, you know it works.
(53:20):
So you don't need fancyequipment.
You can.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
you can make it all happen and then for those of us
that didn't recognize that, hehas an iPhone, is that a 15 Pro?
Speaker 2 (53:28):
15, yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Even though it's not necessarily expensive for a
professional camera, I write itoff yeah, so it's still $1,300.
So before you ask your mom forthe iPhone 15 Pro with the three
lenses and the portrait modeand all that, make sure you're
(53:50):
aware of the prices of things.
And to his point, though, he'sable to conduct business because
he was able to use it to posthandle business.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
I write articles on it as well.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Yeah, so there you go .
So you don't need as much asyou may think.
You may have everything youneed to start content creating
right in your pocket.
As a matter of fact, we knowthat most of you have just what
you need in your pocket rightnow, with the available Wi-Fi,
to start content creating.
You just need that boldness,that audacity to know that your
voice matters, people want tohear your voice and that there's
(54:25):
a market out there for you.
Voice matters, people want tohear your voice and that there's
a market out there for you.
And what's the greatest thing,to your advantage.
That may be harder for Alex.
You may be targeting a globalaudience.
You may be looking at peoplethat are interested in certain
types of fashion.
There may only be 100 people inMontgomery County, but there
may be 20,000 people across theworld.
There may be a type of humorthat you like to subscribe to
(54:48):
that there's 1,500 people inMontgomery County, but there's
millions of people across theworld that like it, or you may
be into soccer, you may be intoother things.
You have a global marketplacenow.
You can sell things globally.
There's supply chains likeAmazon that make it easy to
deliver items to people all overthe world and all over the
(55:11):
country.
So I'm going to stop there withmy diatribe.
Any other questions?
Any other questions?
Yeah, one Excellent.
Speaker 5 (55:20):
So one of my questions was, like you
mentioned earlier, about how youused to teach.
So do you think that notnecessarily go back into the
classroom and teach, but like,do like classroom visits or like
teach like an online course onlike public relations or
journalism?
Speaker 2 (55:37):
yeah, so I've done.
I've done a few career days inthe last month at various high
schools and middle schools.
I do that all the time and, andyou know, tell, tell the kids
like I always pull out my phoneand I say this right here that
so many of you have and the onesthat don't had a Chromebook in
front of them.
I say that is enough for you toget started on your own
business.
I don't have much time, butI'll share a quick story.
I have a gentleman that I usedto teach and he created.
(56:01):
You mentioned soccer.
His interest was soccer and hesaid everyone talks about soccer
in Europe and Messi and Ronaldo, but no one's talking about MLS
, which is Major League Soccer,the American Soccer League, and
he created a Twitter andInstagram account about MLS,
major League Soccer, and he nowmakes a good couple thousand a
(56:23):
month extra off of that on theside and it's he figured that
out and I tell students that too, when I go into classrooms,
that he found a little need andhe kind of went with it, and so
when you use these devicesresponsibly, they can do a lot
for you.
So I do have, you know,speaking engagements where I go
and I talk to groups.
(56:44):
I was at a couple real estateagencies where I talked to them
about how to pick up theirsocial media.
So I do it, you know, in aprofessional setting, but I also
go into high schools and middleschools and talk to students
about how to do it as well.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
And I want to take this moment to make sure that we
give Alex Mr MoCo 301, a biground of applause here in the
future and virtually, becausehe's giving of his time and
talent for free.
He is a business owner andstill, even though they have
scale, still a small businessowner.
So time is valuable.
(57:19):
And I have one last questionfor you, because now that you
are a brand and you have tastemoco, how careful do you have to
be when you get a questionabout where do you like to eat?
Speaker 2 (57:29):
so you know what, as long as I'm honest, I can be as
reckless as I want.
That's how I look at it.
I'm never going to tell you aplace is terrible or bad or not
a good, good, uh, place to eat,and that's because my opinion is
probably not going to be youropinion, so.
So I kind of stay away from thenegative stuff.
Just because someone forgot tobring me my ketchup doesn't mean
(57:50):
you shouldn't go eat there.
You know like, and people kindof say that place.
Man, when I went there it tookseven minutes for me to get my
drink and I'm like, oh man, like, thank you for telling us.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
It's like that.
That was crazy, but like that,as long as you're honest, you
can be as reckless as you wantthat doesn't mean be mean Right
and of course, and what I'mthinking, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1 (58:13):
Dr Clemons and her classes in the universities at
Shady Grove was a wonderfulresource here, so a huge round
of applause for them.
I'm going to insert that later.
Thank you so much.
It's been an honor being hereNow.
I think we have what like twominutes 120 seconds.
Someone may have a question andthey think maybe that question
shouldn't be asked.
Maybe it should be.
(58:33):
Now is the time to ask thisquestion and maybe you want to.
There's one more.
Okay, there you are.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
You said you post everything.
So I want to know, like how doyou get consistent content?
Do you make a grid to likeschedule your post, or how do
you do that?
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Yeah.
So when I say I post everything, it's we publish everything
like on our website and we'llshare it somewhere.
But we do have we scheduleeverything for oftentimes two
days in advance.
And then, because we do newsnews happens.
You know, sometimes you have tofigure things out.
All right, this event'shappening in three weeks, so we
(59:11):
can push it a couple of dayslater.
It's okay.
And sometimes you know we makemistakes too.
Sometimes we'll say we'll pushthis and we forget to reschedule
and it never goes up andsomeone's like hey, how come you
didn't write about that?
And I'm like wait a minute, wedid, but we just never published
it.
So I always tell people checkout, you know, check the website
.
The website is going to havejust about everything, but we do
have to have a schedule.
It's not always easy to keep upwith that schedule.
(59:33):
Sometimes you know things happenand we post about them a couple
hours later or a couple dayslater, based on what happened.
And again, there's noconspiracy around that, it's
just.
It's just when we were able toget to it.
We are very small.
A lot of times people will say,hey, fox wrote about this or
posted this.
Why didn't you?
And I'm like, because Fox has5,000 people working for them,
(59:57):
and that's why.
So, if ever there's a mistakewe make, please bear with us,
but we try our best, and we tryour best to schedule everything
so that we do come off as a veryprofessional organization,
which I think we are.
We're just a very smallbusiness right now and, you know
, maybe one day we'll grow.
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
All right, Alex.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Thanks to all of you for
listening and thank you outthere for listening to the
podcast, for watching this onFacebook or maybe even Zoom
today, Wherever you are,remember to ask the question
what's happening, MoCo, becauseyou deserve the answers.
Thank you all.
(01:00:36):
Thanks for listening and pleasesubscribe.
Good day and welcome to what's Happening, MoCo, a
podcast from your award-winninggovernment television station,
County Cable, Montgomery.
Now here's your host, DerekKenney.
Good day and welcome to what'sHappening, MoCo.
This podcast is different fromany other podcast I've done
(00:21):
before.
Number one we are at theuniversities of Shady Grove.
Number two we are before a liveaudience Audience.
Make a little bit of noise.
Make a little bit of noise.
Yay, All right, all right, allright, all right.
Number three we're going to befocused on careers, and not only
just about careers, but careersin content creation.
(00:41):
And when you think aboutMontgomery County, you think
about MoCo, you think aboutcontent creation.
Who do you think about?
I know who I think about.
I think about Alex Saronis.
Mr MoCo 301 is joining me todayfor this podcast.
Give him a round of applause,Alex.
Thank you so much for beinghere today.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thank you so much for having me.
(01:02):
All right, All right.
And since this is a podcastabout careers and we talk about
government careers a lot, I'lltake a quick moment to say that,
in addition to being a podcasthost for the Montgomery County
government, I have a positioncalled the community engagement
manager.
Now it may seem that that's acommunications-only potential
(01:27):
job.
Okay, but it's actually a jobthat incorporates a lot of fun
things, but a lot of otherthings.
Business functions likeprocurement.
Why do you need procurement?
Procurement is needed toacquire services and equipment
all the things needed to producea podcast like this today.
What else do I do?
I provide oversight for thecounty's cable TV stations.
Did you know that MontgomeryCounty has nine cable TV
(01:51):
stations dedicated to informingand engaging the public?
Anybody, no, Anybody new, Allright, cool.
So now you know, and guess what?
One of those communitytelevision stations are geared
towards empowering people likeyourself, students, faculty
others, Alex, myself inproducing content creative for
(02:11):
your own benefit.
So make sure you loop backaround, look up Montgomery
Community Media, come back, askus those questions, ask the
question what's happening inMoCo?
Where can I go to produce mypodcast?
Ok, and we'll take care of that.
So now let's get down to brasstacks.
A long time ago, many moons ago, Alex, how long ago was it when
you first developed the hashtagMoCoSnow?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So MoCoSnow actually first was developed as a
bulletin board in my classroomin like 2008 or 2009.
I was a teacher for many yearsand then we went on to Twitter.
I want to say the hashtag cameabout in 2012.
And that's when we created ourMoco Snow Twitter account.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Now, why was that such a popular hashtag and what
about it kind of got it startedgenerating awareness and traffic
towards your brand?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, number one, it rhymed, so it was kind of easy
to say and people wanted to sayit.
But secondly, everyone lovessnow days or hates them.
It depends on where you're at.
But as a kid we all loved them.
As teachers, we loved thembecause we got to stay home and
get paid.
It was amazing.
And then parents were maybe onthe other side of it.
(03:23):
They were like oh no, I got tofigure things out now.
But everyone cared right.
So everyone wanted to know arewe going to have school?
Is there going to be a delay?
And that's kind of what I aimto answer with, just like fun
predictions.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Now let's take a quick step back.
I know Alex.
A lot of you guys know Alex, alot of you guys know Mr Moco301.
But what brand would peoplemost associate you with?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Currently, I would say, the Moco Show is probably
the most popular brand.
We have a pretty big followingon social media and our website
is currently getting over twomillion hits each month.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Oh my God, that's incredible.
That's incredible.
So now we know where he is nowTwo million views a month, which
I will say is extraordinary.
And he started rather humbly.
You were a gym teacher, ofcourse, right, and for the
Montgomery County Public Schools, and so your first passion
wasn't content creation, am Icorrect?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
That's correct.
Yeah, I was a PE teacher and Iloved sports.
I loved working with children,I loved teaching sports to kids.
And through that, because I wasa teacher teacher and I loved
sports, I loved working withchildren, I loved teaching
sports to kids and through that,because I was a teacher that
snow thing came about and Istarted creating.
Obviously, every teachercreates content in their
classroom, so you have to haveengaging content to engage
students.
And then I just kind of turnedit into something else and, by
(04:42):
default, I had all these kidsemailing me after they left my
class and saying oh, we're goingto have school tomorrow.
I created this website and itwasn't until a 12-year-old
student of mine came up to meand he wouldn't stop pestering
me about creating a social mediaaccount for Moco Snow and
finally I created it.
Well, actually, I had himcreate it at lunch for me and he
(05:03):
said here you go, and threedays later we had 1,000
followers.
This was over a decade ago and Iwas like wow, I was like
there's something here, so letme kind of continue to build
this and then we'll get into howMoCo Snow kind of transitioned
into the MoCo show.
So we'll talk about that, Iguess, coming up soon.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, coming up soon.
Yeah, coming up soon.
So you have a popular platformand you're now on your first
social media platform, which waswhat it was Twitter and I was
not familiar with it at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So the time period Facebook was number one.
At the time I had a personalFacebook account.
It was post MySpace.
I know a lot of people won'teven remember what MySpace is,
but Facebook was number one andI thought to myself no one's
going to care about the weatheron Twitter, why would I join
this?
But this 12-year-old kid keptsaying trust me, trust me until
(05:55):
I let him create it, and I'vethanked him.
He's got to be in his late 20snow, but I've thanked him so
many times since then forhelping it make happen.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And that was a while ago.
So now Twitter is now known asthe social media app, formerly
known as Twitter.
Now it's X, and some peoplelike to have fun with it and
call it Twix, because it isTwitter and it is X, so it's
like two things right.
So you start off in thisplatform and you started off as
a social media novice.
You weren't into social media,you didn't get into the game
thinking about social media orcontent creation, but you found
(06:30):
that there was a need in thecommunity and you were
fulfilling that need.
What was the next step, fromMoco Snow and the Twitter
account to the next milestone inyour journey?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So around the same time I decided to make a
Facebook page too.
At the time it was the numberone social media platform I
think technically still is Metaas a whole and I created a
Facebook page.
I was a lot more familiar withthat and we created a following
there too.
Then a couple of years passedand winter would end and I had
all these followers and everynow and then I'd say like, hey,
I tried out this restaurant.
I thought it was great.
(07:03):
And some people were like, ohcool, I got to check it out.
And then other people were likestick to snow.
So I was like, all right, letme figure this out, let me
create something where I cantalk about these things that I'm
doing and those people who carecan kind of follow along.
So I had moco snow and I waslike let me figure this out
let's create.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
If I could just get your guys's.
Oh wait, hold on, I don't wantto be in the zoom.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Okay, and, as I said before, we are live.
We are live from University ofShady Grove, we're talking to
Alice Rones and we just learnedquite a bit about him, but I
think the one thing we want tonote is that there was what
sometimes, when you want to gointo a certain arena
professionally, even as anon-professional, there are
barriers.
In this case, there were nobarriers to entry.
(07:50):
When you're going the socialmedia route.
All you need, basically, iswhat?
A cell phone, a computer, areason to be there and content.
So all right.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yes, so we created the MoCo show and it's called
the MoCo show because it was apodcast.
It started as a podcast so itwas me and a friend discussing
what we were doing in MontgomeryCounty, what we liked about how
cool was this restaurant Stufflike that and we grew this
following and we made a lot ofconnections and what kind of
(08:35):
happened was these people thatwere following along?
I remember one time someonesaid, hey, I work at the gym
here in Rio and I heard we'regoing to close and Dave and
Buster's is going to take over.
So I was like, oh, that'sinteresting, made a few phone
calls and nobody was kind ofadmitting to it and finally I
got in touch with someone whosaid, yes, we're looking to take
over that space.
It's from Dave and Buster's hadto have been 2016.
(08:56):
And then, a year later, it wasannounced that Dave and Buster's
was moving into Rio taking overthe space in the gym and we
kind of reported it first and it, you know it got shared by so
many people and I was like, wow,people really care about this
stuff.
So let me keep talking aboutthings that you know.
We're hearing that we're ableto confirm.
Hey, I hear Toys R Us isclosing and this other place is
coming in and people weresharing that hundreds of times.
(09:19):
So we kind of got a start doingretail and restaurant news and
then kind of expanded from there.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Wow.
So we know that from yourinitial entry into the
marketplace with Twitter, youwere instantly viral.
You went 1,000 followers in,like oh you said three days, and
then you started covering newswhich, again, Alex,
professionally and from aneducational standpoint, you
started off in education,correct?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, I have a degree in education, physical
education.
I have a master's degree inthat same field.
It has absolutely nothing to dowith what I do now, but I was
able to use everything I learnedin school and in my career, to
kind of put it into what I'mdoing now.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Correct, and so he was able to pivot from what he
was doing and learn I would saya steep learning curve to do
investigative journalism, whichI will say that's what that was,
where you were finding outabout the Dave and Buster
situation and then, instantly,you provided value to residents
and you again went viral.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, and that's you know.
That's the thing.
It's easy to want to go viraland it's easy it's you can go
viral for kind of the wrongreasons, but you always want to
go viral for, for somethingthat's you know informative and
helpful to the community, and wetry to do that at all times.
You know from from Wawa comingopening its first Montgomery
County location.
I found that out by accidentwhen I was at the Gaithersburg
(10:45):
Book Fair in like 2018 walkingaround and there was a guy from
Wawa handing out pens and I saidwhat are you doing this for?
There's no Wawa in MontgomeryCounty.
And he said there will be andno one knew that.
And I was like oh, all right, soI actually pulled him aside and
I said tell me a little more.
And he told me everything and Icalled Wawa Corporate.
They gave me the story and webroke that news and that was
(11:06):
huge Because Wawa was somethinga lot of people wanted or
remembered from where they grewup.
For me, I had it in CollegePark when I was in college.
It's gone now but I might havecome back.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I don't know, but it was big news in the area and
it's a fun way to go viral and Ithink this is a good
opportunity to highlight forcontent creators a fun way to go
viral and I think this is agood opportunity to highlight
for content creators what doesit take, in your opinion, to
create content that people, thatresounds with people, that
people will find a value thatcould benefit your brand as a
content creator.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
So I tell people all the time especially the people
that kind of work for us.
I say there's contenteverywhere.
You can take a picture ofsomething that looks interesting
and that's content right and alot of people might care about
it.
And then there's things we workon for multiple days, put in
hours into, and it completelyflops on social media.
And then there's times where wetake a picture of something
interesting and post it and itgets shared 10,000 times and it
(12:00):
has 5,000 to 10,000 likes andcontent is everywhere.
So I always tell people lookfor a need, um and, and then
kind of fill it.
We're all experts in something.
Uh, you know, in our own way Ifelt like I lived in Montgomery
County all my life.
So I've been here 41 years andI knew a lot about it.
I was moving all across theCounty.
I lived in Rockville andGaithersburg, but you know I was
(12:20):
going to Greek school in SilverSpring and my church was in
Bethesda and I was doing allthese different things across
the county.
So I knew these areas, whatused to be there, and I just
remembered and I kind of wouldshare it with people and I saw
that people cared.
So I always tell people,whatever it is you share on your
personal social media orwhatever it is you have.
(12:40):
What do people like to engagein that you have to offer, and
then maybe grow that and go withthat.
What do people like to engagein that you have to offer, and
then maybe grow that and youknow.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Go with with that what you're an expert in.
And he's the expert inMontgomery County, maryland,
right, and that's for peoplethat are listening, that are
outside of Maryland and ourlittle hyper-local area of
Montgomery County, maryland,where we have over a million
residents, one of the mostdiverse counties in the in the
country, one of the healthiestcounties in the country.
So MoCo is an abbreviation orlike a pseudonym for Montgomery
(13:12):
County, montgomery County, moco,right, and now you are, mr MoCo
and 301, for those of you thatwere not around for the 301 area
code period.
301 was the area code for-.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
The only area code we had.
The only area code we had.
Yeah, 240 came around and now Idon't know anyone with it, but
227 also exists for our area.
That came out recently.
I haven't met a person that hasa 227 number yet, but I look
forward to it.
Does anyone in here have a 227number?
Yeah, Does anyone know anyonewith the 227 number?
All right, great, so it's, it's.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I don't know, I don't like it, I, I'm, I'm, I'm a 301
guy and anyone else has getsome breaking news from the MoCo
show before anyone else.
I didn't know there was a newarea code for Maryland.
Okay, that's good to, that'sgood to know.
He's, he's in the know.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Last summer last summer Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, awesome, awesome.
Now, one of the cool thingsthat you do is that you're able
to relay to people, or echo,some of the great things about
the county.
What are some of the greatthings about the county?
That, if you meet someone onthe street today or someone
stumbles across your websitefrom Germany or from Texas and
(14:22):
you want to talk aboutMontgomery County, what are some
of the cool things that youwant to share with them?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
So you mentioned like the cool things, like in
general, like our diversity.
That's awesome.
But then there's like fun factsand that's kind of one of the
one of the things I built theMoCo show on was sharing these
fun facts.
And we have all these like coolcelebrities that that have
these very close ties toMontgomery County from.
From Sylvester Stallone we weretalking about him a little bit
earlier.
He played Rocky, he has verymany movie roles and a fun thing
(14:49):
is one time we got a SylvesterStallone impersonator to make a
video talking about the MoCoshow and then Sylvester Stallone
or the account at leastretweeted it and I was like oh,
that's amazing.
And then he unretweeted it acouple of days later.
But that was cool and all theseawesome connections that we
have to these celebrities whohave kind of made it from our
(15:10):
area.
And people are always like,well, what are they doing for
our area now?
And it's like I have no idea.
Maybe they're doing a lot ofthings, maybe they're not, but
they're from here or they wentto school here and it's a part
of who they are.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
And I always share that with people.
I think it's one of the coolestthings.
Cool.
So you've established yourbrand.
You're now doing various typesof content creation from
pictures, investigativejournalism, breaking news and
then topical information, thingsthat are current, but along the
way you developed a podcast.
Tell us about that experienceand, for those that, anybody
born after 2002?
Anybody born after 2002?
Well, podcasting was kind ofbirthed, I think at the time was
(15:52):
a iPod.
It was an iPod Before theiPhone.
There was this device that onlyplayed media and at the time it
(16:13):
was only audio media, right.
So podcasts were actually a wayfor people to Just get this
with me.
Okay, not stream, but downloadmedia to this device in real
time over bit rates that werevery, very, very, very, very
slow to listen to content.
(16:35):
Fast forward a couple of decadesand podcasting is the hottest,
newest thing out, whereas notthe newest thing out, but it's a
valued source of informationfor everyone out there.
I'm not sure if anyone here cansay they haven't listened to a
podcast in the last month orhaven't heard a story about a
(16:56):
podcast or a story that wasfirst birthed from a podcast
over the last month or two.
And so podcasting is verypowerful.
But the reason why it'simportant for content creators
is that.
Number one it says one newthing that goes against the
school of thought that wasrecently believed and that was
(17:16):
people only want to hear 30seconds of anything.
Right.
Podcast is long-form media.
Two it happened to help to showthat a lot of people I think
back to Alex's point your voiceis valuable but, much like
social media, the barriers tocreating your own podcast,
trying to add some value herefor you guys, if you want to
(17:36):
start a podcast is free.
You have a cell phone, you havea Wi-Fi connection at the
school, a Wi-Fi connection atStarbucks, you have value to add
in terms of what you like ordislike or things you want to
cover, and then you can get afree account with Buzzsprout or
Podbean or something like thatand start your own podcast.
So if you don't learn anythingelse from talking to us today,
(17:59):
if you're a content creator,there's nothing stopping you
from starting your own creationplatform, whether it's a podcast
, a Twix account, a Facebookaccount or even getting up
ultimately to where we'regetting to a website that gets
over 2 million views a month,which puts it in very rare air.
Now, many, many, many moons agoI worked in a bit of PR and I
(18:23):
used to get excited when therewas a radio program that had an
average quarter-hourlistenership of 500 people,
right.
So back in the day that helpedme get paid was to get an
interview booked on a radio showthat was on AM that had 500
people.
Now, everyone in this roomprobably has more than 5,000
friends, or 2,000 friends onFacebook.
(18:44):
Everyone in this room probablyhas more than 5,000 friends, or
2,000 friends on Facebook.
You may have more than 1,000followers on TikTok, so now you
do live streams on TikTok, right.
So here we are.
We are in this arena where wehave all these great ideas, we
have all these vehicles insocial media and things like
(19:05):
podcasting where we can shareour voices.
What was it that got youstarted with your podcast and
what were some of the things youliked about your podcast
platform?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So the coolest thing about a podcast is that people
hear you.
They hear how you're sayingsomething, they hear how you're
talking about it.
They can hear your voice.
It's not.
You write something and thensomeone takes it the wrong way
and replies and you're trying toexplain yourself and now you're
getting in a battle of who'sgoing to get more likes on their
response to each other.
A podcast is kind of first off,it's one way You're sharing your
(19:35):
thoughts or whatever it is youhave, but people can hear how
you're saying it, they can tellif you're angry about something
or happy about something or ifknow, simply just stating
something, and I loved beingable to do that kind of letting
people know.
So, like I can say something,like man, I, I, I, I really love
Lake Forest and some peoplewhen, if I write it, you might
(19:57):
think he's being sarcastic, orsome somebody might say, oh he's
, you know he's lying or he'swrong or whatever.
But if you hear me talkingabout it, say, man, I really
loved lake forest, like I lovedeverything about it.
I loved that there was a mallnear my house and I was able to
go when you hear me talkingabout it, whereas if you see it
written.
You might you have no idea howI mean it.
Um, so I love that we startedfrom this podcast where people
(20:20):
can hear, uh kind of my emotionsin everything.
So you know, as it grew and wewere able to cover like all
these different topics before wewere big on social media,
almost all feedback was positive.
You know, not many people listento a podcast and start yelling
at their you know radio in thecar or at their AirPods or
(20:42):
whatever it is they're listeningto them on, whereas on social
media you see something andimmediately you feel like you
have to respond and yourresponse has to make another
response, another responder,feel dumb, or you have to prove
them wrong or you have to getsome likes with your response.
It's not like that with apodcast.
You take in the information andyou hear it.
(21:03):
You can agree or disagree.
If you disagree enough that youwant to reach out to the person
who created it, you still can.
But it's not this like instantgratification of I'm going to
write this comment and I got 37likes.
I'm right, you know it's alittle different.
So I always say you know,podcast is one way you get your
message out and I love thatpeople can hear it and still
(21:24):
respond if they want to, butit's not this whole thing where
here's a big platform foreveryone to see your response
and then ends up bringing a lotof negativity.
That's kind of what socialmedia is.
There's one thing about socialmedia I don't like is the
negativity that it can bring,and podcasts kind of.
While you can still be negativeon a podcast, usually the
messages aren't negative andpeople can just kind of, while
you can still be negative on apodcast, usually the messages
(21:45):
aren't negative and people canjust kind of take it in and oh,
I'm not so angry about it anhour later or a day later, so
they don't feel the need torespond with negativity.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
So talk about your podcast in terms of at this
point, we're beyond becoming aninfluencer for the sake of being
an influencer, or sharingcontent for the sake of sharing
content.
This is now a business, maybe asecondary business, but it's
now a business.
What were some of your thoughtsin regards to your podcast, and
(22:20):
how did that influence your way, moving forward from where you
were at that time?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
So as the podcast grew, we grew to about 10,000
weekly listeners.
We had one episode a week.
We have just over a millionpeople in Montgomery County and,
honestly, if you're not fromMontgomery County there's no
real reason to listen to thepodcast.
The podcast does not existanymore and we'll get into that
too.
But at the time, you know,those are really good numbers.
But it was also very local sowe weren't having national
(22:45):
brands advertise with us, wewere having some local brands
advertise with us.
But it was slowly becoming abusiness.
And when we added the you know,the social media platforms, the
website, we kind of opened itup to more advertisers to make
it more of a business.
So you know, it became abusiness.
Initially it was not, but Ithink, like you know, ultimately
most people's goals when theystart these podcasts is to
(23:06):
eventually hopefully get anadvertiser and be able to have,
you know, their creation funded.
So that's kind of how ittransitioned to a business.
And you know, during thepandemic we were still doing the
podcast.
That's kind of when it ended.
Once things started opening upagain.
But when everything closed downwe had one of Governor Hogan's
(23:26):
spokespeople on our show and Ithink that one got almost half a
million listens Because we wereasking questions like, hey,
everything had just shut downand it was like is it going to
open up soon?
What's going on?
Nobody knew answers to any ofthese questions and we asked
questions that readers were kindof throwing in.
(23:47):
And this was one of our mostlistened to podcasts and it did
well and I was like, wow, a lotof people care and this is a
Montgomery County based podcast.
Obviously we had, you know,maryland Maryland, I think, has
over 6 million residents, but wehad almost half a million
people tune in and I was like,wow, there's something here for
sure.
But we realized that kind of,for us and for what we did,
social media was a little moreefficient for us.
(24:09):
So we transitioned to more of asocial media platform.
While I'd love to still be ableto do the podcast and maybe
we'll bring it back when I havea little more time right now
we're a news media company, soyou know I have employees to pay
and.
I have a business to run so it'sa little more difficult for me
to do this weekly podcast.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
So we're following the journey of Mr Moco 301.
We started with social media, aTwix account.
We grew from there, we starteddoing more Facebook, other
things, incorporatinginvestigative journalism as part
of the content creation, andother timely and hyper local, um
things that resonate withresidents, and you got to the
(24:50):
point where you had to get tothis point where you ask the
question how do I make moneydoing what I love?
Right, um, and that's, that'smonetization.
Everything that you see that isfree and cheap in the beginning
, um, at some point, um it, thebrand has to monetize.
And a couple of things thatpeople content creators maybe
miss out on is what Alex spokeof just now.
(25:12):
Advertising is what fuels you asa content creator, more so, or
more often, than getting paidfrom the vehicle like YouTube.
So, if you're on YouTube and youget past 10,000 subscribers and
you have a million views amonth and then you get some type
of compensation from YouTube.
(25:33):
However, if you have a popularpodcast or a popular social
media stream and that you'vebuilt yourself and you go out
and do the due diligence to getadvertisers or sponsors, then
you can generate income likethat.
You don't have to wait untilyou are the Bees, knees or the
next country, wayne or whomeveryou can start generating revenue
(25:58):
yourself.
There's other ways to generaterevenue.
A lot of people sellmerchandise things like that, so
that's something to keep inmind as you build your brand.
Now you have a great networkwhere you have people in your
family that are just aching tosupport you in what you do.
You can probably get a nicelaunch path in terms of
generating revenue as well.
But I think it's important thatwe share that you're moving
(26:20):
into the business model ofcontent creation what the
different ways are to make money.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, so initially it was.
If I went to a restaurant and Ishared and to this day, if you
see a post that either I put outor our Taste MoCo account puts
out or the MoCo show puts out,if it's not marked as a paid
partnership or if it's notclearly stated that something
was provided for free, I've paidfor that food.
So a lot of social mediacontent creators don't disclose
(26:50):
that they actually have to.
It's very important to do that.
They all don't.
We do so.
If, for some reason, we gotsomething for free, we do say
this was very clearly stated,this was provided to us for free
or it is marked as a paidpartnership.
Any ad that we post is alwaysmarked as a paid partnership.
We try our best to always do itthe right way.
Now here's the trouble was, whenI was going to these places on
(27:12):
my own and you know say, hey, Ireally love this, people were
always like is this an ad?
Did you get it for free?
Or they were supporting theplace.
And I would always answer no,it's not an ad, I didn't get it
for free.
And then they were like okay,great, I love that you're
supporting businesses.
And now if we post an ad.
Sometimes the comments on theseads are just so negative and a
lot of times I don't thinkpeople understand.
(27:32):
They're like this is a bigbusiness, how can you support
them?
Well, in a way, they'reactually supporting me and I
feel like my business is a smallbusiness.
So we're supporting, supportingeach other, we're giving them
some uh, some visibility andthey're uh, they might be a big
business that's operatinglocally through a local
franchise.
Franchisee that employs, youknow, our neighbors, um, and
they advertise with us andthey're helping my business.
(27:53):
But, uh, you can, you can haveads.
We have ads on Facebook, wehave ads on, uh, on Twitter, x,
uh, whatever you want to call it.
We have ads on Instagram and wehave ads on our website.
But one thing we've done iswe've kept everything free.
There's no paywall.
You might be annoyed a littlebit by an ad, but on Instagram
you do this and then the ad justgoes away, so it's not a big
(28:15):
deal.
Right On Facebook, you canscroll past it.
You don't have to engage withthe ad or you might see
something you like.
I think we had a just thismorning.
We had a car dealership do avery interesting ad where the
start of it was a Mike Tysonfight and then it shows Mike
Tyson punching someone in theface and the guy gets knocked
down.
And then it flips to this carsalesman from Orsman and Chevy
(28:39):
Rockville turning around andcoming up and being like, hey,
we have have knockout savingshere and it's like okay, it was
a very good ad.
It's been seen by like 40,000people in the first hour and it
was effective.
Usually when they post their ads, people are like man, this
place is the worst, and whetherit's the worst or not I don't
(28:59):
know, but people just get mad atads sometimes when in reality
you can just scroll by them.
So there are stuff that we haveto deal with.
We always have to have a lotmore of our content than our ads
.
So I always say 80% content atminimum and 20% ads, but we keep
everything free.
So sometimes people will sayyou should sell shirts instead.
(29:21):
I'm like, okay, sure, and we do.
I'm like, how many have youbought?
And they're like, well, none.
I sell shirts instead.
I'm like, okay, sure, and we do.
I'm like, how many have youbought?
And they're like, well, none.
I'm like, exactly, right.
So it's, it's not that easy tosell a certain amount of shirts,
that'll, that'll, you know, beable to support me and my, my
staff, so you can get creativewith it.
You know, and as long I alwaystell people, people will always
say, hey, I don't follow you forads and I'm like, okay, what do
(29:43):
you follow for?
And they go for news.
I'm like, lucky for you, itdidn't go away.
We still do that all the time,so you're good, you can keep
following and, again, you don'thave to engage with the ads.
Sometimes people just go reallyhard on these ads.
They'll comment I'm not goingto go just because of this ad
and I'm like one now, you'rehurting my business.
You're hurting this business,like, what's the point of this?
Why do you want, you know, doyou want to do that?
(30:05):
So keep that in mind.
Once you do start to monetize,there does come a lot of
negativity with it, buthopefully it's you know you can
push past that.
Be kind and honest in yourresponses and we try to do that
when we respond.
We try not to respond much atall anymore, but that's kind of
what's going on withadvertisement and content.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
And I think this is a good opportunity for people to
benefit from your expertise as asocial media subject matter
expert.
You mentioned a few times howyou get people that are giving
you negative reactions to yourcontent.
What are some of the bestpractices, including how to deal
with negative feedback andengaging with people on social
media?
Speaker 2 (30:45):
So it's tough.
With our regular contentthere's not as much negativity,
but there's still.
Every now and then there willbe like an uproar of negativity
and our team always has like athing that are like, okay, this
one, there's nothing bad anyonecan say about this piece of
content and we're like, oh no,there is watch and someone's
going to make that comment aboutwhatever it is they want to
(31:08):
make.
And a lot of times people arejust negative in nature and it
is what it is.
On our end, what we try to dois we try to cover as much as
possible.
And I tell everyone we may notever get to something that's
very important to you and we maynot cover something that's very
important to you for a varietyof reasons.
Usually it's because we can't,for whatever reason.
(31:28):
We can't, we don't have enoughinformation on it, so we're not
just going to post something youknow someone sent.
A lot of times people will belike, hey, there's this car on
fire on 270.
Here's the picture.
What they don't realize is thatwe now have to call Montgomery
County Fire and Rescue.
We have to get hey, we weretold there's a car on fire here.
We can't just post a pictureand say here it is, as many
(31:50):
likes and shares as it would get.
We need to have informationthat goes with it.
A lot of times people get upsetwith that too.
They're like I sent you thispicture and you didn't post it.
We have no additionalinformation.
I'm really sorry.
So there's that side of it.
But you know, with everythingwe do, initially we try to
respond to every comment.
Now we're at a point wherewe're getting about a thousand
(32:11):
notifications a minute andthat's because every like, every
comment, every whatever it isthat comes in.
On the business side of it, wehave something called a business
suite that we use.
It's created by Meta and it hasFacebook and Instagram and it
kind of puts everything in one,so all of our notifications come
in at once.
So we don't see like 99% ofcomments that are made.
(32:33):
And as much as we'd love tolike if I could afford to pay
someone to sit in front of itfor 24 hours and make a decision
nope, this comment gets deleted.
This comment gets to stay.
We just can't do that.
But we're not able to do that.
I'm unable to pay someone to dothat and a lot of times people
will get very upset.
This person made this commentand it's still there.
But what they don't realize isthat comment was made on
(32:54):
Instagram that's owned by abillionaire that has the funds
to remove that comment.
If they wanted to and havesomeone moderate the whole time,
they're able to do that.
We're not.
I'm a very small business.
I can't sit in front of mycomputer or phone all day.
I can't pay someone to do thatall day, so we don't monitor
comments anymore and a lot oftimes that does lead to a lot of
negativity and responses thatare very negative and so on and
(33:18):
so forth.
But I always tell our socialmedia manager I say be very kind
and very honest in any responseyou ever make.
So if they're responding tosomeone's message which we were
getting like a hundred messagesan hour or two so we can't
always do that and the messagesare crazy too People will be
like hey, my power's out, why?
One, I have no idea where youlive.
We have no, you know.
So they'll ask the mostinteresting questions.
(33:41):
We can't respond to all of them, but you know I say let
interesting questions.
We can't respond to all of them, but you know I say let people
know.
You know, kindly and honestly.
And a lot of times if we don'trespond to someone, one it's
likely because we don't havetime to do it, but two, it's
because you can tell there's noresponse that will satisfy that
question, right?
So a lot of times you're notlooking for a response, you're
not looking for me to tell you.
(34:01):
Here's why You're just angry,for whatever it is and it could
be very important to you and Ican't tell you what to be upset
or happy about.
So when you send your messageit's like okay, thank you, we
take it in.
My social media manager sendsme a report at the end of every
week, every piece of criticism,every piece of advice, every
piece of feedback, and we lookthrough it and we're like okay,
sounds good.
(34:21):
I appreciate that.
I don't like having the nametied to it, because sometimes,
you know, I'm a human being too.
I can get defensive as well.
If this one specific personsays something that's that I
consider rude or not nice orwhatever, then I start to like
well, I remember when thatperson said this, so I don't
want to do that, I just want tosee what the content is.
I'm like all right, thank you,and we try to move forward with
(34:42):
that.
But I always say be very kind,be very honest and and be
upfront.
You know I wouldn't be able tosleep at night if if I was, you
know, trying to do things for acertain reason and I and I
always tell my staff likethere's never any conspiracy
behind it People will say hey,you always post about Kennedy
high school.
It's clear you hate Blake, Idon't hate Blake.
(35:03):
I'm not at home thinking likeah, we're not posting about
Blake.
Yeah, like it doesn't work thatway.
The way we post content issomeone says hey, this happened.
Uh, you know, our team won thischampionship.
Here's a picture.
You have permission to share it.
It's a cool or they'll be like,hey, why didn't you post about
this school winning this?
And the honest truth is we hadno idea they won that.
(35:25):
So a lot of times you just gotto let us know and if we get
permission to post and a littlemore information, we'll post it.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
There's no, there's never any secret behind why we
do it there, you go All rightand so.
So you've seen the journey thatMr Mocha 301, alex Saronis has
taken from being and you heardin the beginning, I, I, I, and
then you heard things like we,my staff, I have to pay my
people.
So he's grown from helping tolet people know about the very
(35:57):
important thing snow dayswork,but still love snow days right
To being one of the most trustednews organizations catering to
Montgomery County, maryland andI don't know what others may
(36:22):
think of or may be aware of interms of the news vacuum, where
sometimes localities don't getenough news coverage about
things that are important topeople in that area.
So not only is he now, ofcourse, good at what he does,
but he's also providing a valuedservice and resource to the
residents of the county.
What do you want people to know?
(36:43):
What do you want the next AlexSaronis to know in terms of just
advice to get started in thefirst few steps?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah.
So whatever it is you end uppursuing, especially when it
comes to content creation, I hada meeting in 2018 with a famous
social media influencer and histeam and he said post
everything.
What do you mean?
He was like post everything.
I was like why do you say that?
He was like well, what makesyou post something?
Now?
And I remember back in 2018, wewould only post things that we
(37:13):
thought would get a lot of likes.
And he was like that doesn'tmatter.
Do you get paid by likes?
And we're like no, he was like.
So then why not post everything?
I was like because what, if nota lot of people care?
And he goes take a look at theshares, take a look at
everything you're doing.
He was like you cover onelittle area, but there's
different parts of that area.
So if I post about, let's say,poolsville Springfest coming up
(37:34):
on May 4th, 99% of the peoplewho see it aren't going to care,
but the 1% that does care isgoing to share that content.
And now people from thatspecific area, or people who do
care about that specific event,are going to be like oh, we have
to follow, because they coverour area just as much as they
cover other areas and so on andso forth.
So he said post everything, andthere's going to be plenty of
(37:56):
people who care about everythingyou post, as long as it has to
do with what we normally do.
So we started doing that andour following just grew.
Our like count decreased, butour following grew.
Then more people started comingto our website and I was like
okay, so even though so manypeople don't care about this one
(38:18):
specific item, we're posting 60times a day across all our
platforms.
You're going to care aboutsomething we post and unless you
know, the one thing we post isso terrible that it makes you
unfollow.
It's all good, you're stillinterested in what we have.
So if you do ever decide tostart something, I would say
throw everything out there, seewhat works best for you and then
(38:40):
kind of, you know, maybe focuson what works best for you, keep
up with that and then see howyou grow.
You know I'm growing more onTikTok than Instagram.
All right, let me focus on this, or how can I repackage this
for Instagram so that it works?
We noticed early on that when wewere posting our TikTok videos
directly onto Instagram,instagram was kind of
(39:01):
suppressing them because theyhad the little TikTok logo in it
.
So we had to repurpose it andpost it right on Instagram so
that Instagram can let it beseen.
And then our real count viewswent up by like five times what
it was.
So you got to it's trial anderror post everything you can.
You know, do a little ofeverything.
I know I knew nothing aboutTikTok.
(39:21):
I now do a little bit.
But you know when we startedthat we're up to like 17,000
followers nothing big on TikTok,but we have a following
nonetheless.
And TikTok may not exist in acouple months, but if it does
and if they figure it out, it'sfor the younger generation.
But those who are 16, 17, 18,19, 20 years old today are going
(39:43):
to be the adults of tomorrow.
And if they're using TikTok toget their news, and we need to
be on TikTok or you know, we'regoing to be the next MySpace,
which half the people in heredon't even remember.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I'm not old enough to remember MySpace.
Okay, that's a lie Interesting.
You note that.
So, in case you guys weren'taware, there's legislation that
might require TikTok to changeownership to meet the
requirements of Congress andalso, conversely, there's also
legislation out there talkingabout media platforms, am radio.
(40:16):
There's also legislation outthere to require car makers to
continue to make AM radioavailable to cars.
So I'm not sure if youmentioned remember I mentioned
earlier about that station with500 listeners.
That station may be valuable tosomeone in their car somewhere,
right?
So now, what's valuable to meis always answering questions.
I love to ask the questionwhat's happening, moco?
(40:38):
So now you get to ask thequestion what's happening, moco,
to Mr MoCo 301.
That means you guys, and I amnot shy.
I met some people earlier and Iwill point at them, and some of
them have very pretty orangehair.
I will pick them up and askthem to ask a question here,
live, right now.
All right, any questions?
(40:58):
There are no bad questions.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
Yes, so I'm not from Montgomery County, I'm actually
from California.
I have no idea about anythingin Montgomery County.
So since you have so muchexperience with your time in
Montgomery County and you'realways good at recommending,
what is your top recommendationfor a restaurant?
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yes, in moko that's all right, that's a good
question.
Can I ask you something reallyquick?
Where in moko, because there'syou got to give me like a little
area at least oh, I was likeI'll travel anywhere but um,
let's say, near this area okay,so I would say you could walk to
kava meze, and it's uh, it'sabout 1500 feet.
(41:41):
It's a sit-down restaurant, soit's probably not a place you're
going to go for like a quicklunch.
This is more of like a dinnertype of thing.
You can still go for lunch.
I think, though and it's a it'sa Greek restaurant.
I'm Greek, so I'm a littlebiased when it comes to that,
but it's a modern, modern twiston Greek food, so you're not
going to go in there and seetraditional Greek food.
You'll see like a traditionalGreek food with a twist, but I
(42:01):
like it.
And their story is actuallyunbelievable.
They all started, they grew uphere in Montgomery County Three
guys they worked hard startedthis one restaurant here.
They all got loans they had nomoney at the time and then, five
years later, they started theirfast, casual version of Cava,
which is like a Chipotlecompetitor, and now it's on the
(42:22):
stock exchange and they're allmultimillionaires, and it's
amazing.
So cool, so cool story, butalso great food at their at
their sit down restaurant.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
And we didn't get to that because of a time.
Another brand that has grownthrough your efforts, and that
is Taste MoCo.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah, taste MoCo.
So, taste MoCo.
We highlight food, and so we doit differently than than most
other people.
I don't go to places and getfood for free and say, oh, we
went into a Convo Messe todaywhere we tried the gyro and it
was so delicious.
That's not what we do.
Everyone does that.
That's cool.
If you do it, that's amazing.
So all I do is I order my food,I'll take a picture or video of
(43:01):
it, I put a little music behindit and I show it to you.
And now people are like was itgood?
Now I can say yes, but doesthat mean you're going to think
it's good?
No, right, so so we show youthe dish and that's kind of what
we did.
We it's, it's so like barebones, we.
We just say here's the blah,blah, blah from this restaurant,
here it is.
You look at it.
(43:22):
If you think it's good, go tryit.
Will you like it?
I have no idea.
50-50, right, you might, youmight not, and that's kind of
all we do.
And people will comment on thatand people will write this is
disgusting.
And I always wonder, like,what's the point of doing that?
Like, don't eat it or scrollpast it if you think it's
disgusting, or people will saythis is great, or people will
say this was a little tooexpensive.
(43:43):
We don't.
We don't write the price either, and that's because sometimes,
um, you know, the price canscare people off and there could
be other items that are a lotless expensive that you can
still go enjoy the restaurant,and we don't want to scare
people from going to try arestaurant because of the price
of one item.
But we have everything on there.
So you might see a frozen icedtea from Kenny's for 299.
I don't know if anyone's everhad the frozen iced tea from
(44:03):
Kenny's, but it's amazing.
And there's Kenny's everywhereGaithersburg, rockville, wheaton
, kenny's Sub Shop and theyserve a little of everything.
So good Frozen iced tea.
But we have that $2.99.
And then I have this smokedsteak from the Grove that costs
$90.
Now, I don't eat that every day.
And it was good, but I don'tknow when I'm ever going to be
(44:26):
able to go do that again.
So we have a little ofeverything.
It's not always like the fullexperience.
Sometimes it could be like notthe fries at McDonald's, but it
could be something as little asthat, like we'll do.
Here's the quesadilla atQuapo's and it's a $12.99 item.
Here it is.
It's not necessarily the bestthing and we try to do a variety
from restaurants all across thecounty, um, you know, from
(44:48):
fancy to not, and that's tastemoco.
On instagram and facebook, andyou know we've worked hard on
that for for a few years now wehave like over a thousand posts
from over like 800 differentrestaurants in the county.
Some are not around anymore,but yeah, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Do we have other questions, other questions?
Okay, there, we are all right,there are no, there are no bad
questions.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
Yes, so, um, we actually have two questions it's
me and then him.
But, um, for me I was gonna askwas there a time when you
experienced a difficulty in yourbusiness where you felt like,
okay, I don't know if I shouldcontinue on?
And then how did you overcomethat?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
yeah, initially, when we started with the
advertisements, which was, youknow, the only way to monetize
it, people, uh, and to me itfelt like everyone turned on us.
But in reality it was likethree or four comments but
people would be like, oh, ads,uh, time to unfollow, or
something like that.
And I was like, oh no, oh no.
But when it comes to a business, what do you want?
(45:46):
A follower or a businessworking with you?
It's okay if you lose two,three followers, as long as
you're still doing what you'rethere to do.
So initially, when that washappening, I was very scared, I
would panic sometimes and tothis day, I don't like when
people write negative thingsabout advertising.
Know, advertising in general,but there was that.
And at the beginning of of anybusiness on social media,
(46:09):
whether it's a podcast or or youknow, an account on uh on a
social media network you'regonna see some negativity when
you, when you start to monetize.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
But it is what it is all right, all right, great
question, great question, goodanswer yes, sir so, when dealing
with the whole internet, how doyou preserve your mental health
?
Speaker 2 (46:28):
that's, that's pretty good.
I, I, I don't.
I don't look at commentsanymore, and you know when, when
I do, when I get sucked intolooking at comments sometimes
you know that it does one I'llbe pacing around.
My wife will look at me and belike, oh, was it a comment?
And I'm like, yeah, and, andyou know, I, I dislike that.
But a lot of times what peopleagain don't realize is like with
(46:50):
negativity, sometimes if Idelete this, it's kind of like a
weed, two more will grow in itsplace.
Or someone will now comment onanother post and be like, why'd
you delete my comment on thisone?
And they don't understand thatremoving this negative comment
is going to lead to threedifferent accounts.
All understand that.
(47:10):
You know removing this negativecomment is going to lead to
three different accounts, alltheir friends commenting on this
and be like unfollow the MoCoshow.
They delete comments and stufflike that and it's it's kind of
crazy.
So for me I step away.
I hired a social media managerand her job is to and she still
can't look at all the comments,but her job is to field any
messages that come in and anyserious inquiries.
So I stopped looking at thecomments and that was for my own
mental health.
I used to stress about it.
It would keep me up at night.
I was, you know.
I was about to go to sleep andI'd look at a comment.
(47:32):
I'd be like, oh no, now I'm uptill 2am because I have to deal
with this.
This person's saying this.
It's completely untrue andpeople don't care, they're just
liking this comment.
I'm like, oh no, now I have tohandle this.
So I stopped and that's how Ideal with it.
Personally, I know it's not,it's not the best way, but you
know it's.
It's the way we were able to tohandle it.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Well, that's valuable information.
More questions?
Yes, all right, we definitelygoing to get to you, because
you're my, you're my new bestfriend.
Speaker 7 (48:01):
Okay, so just a question based off of curiosity.
A few of us from the classeshere we've been knowing who you
were since middle school and nowwe're in college, so it's been
a long time.
But I was just curious as to doyou ever look at the
demographics of the people thatare watching or looking at your
(48:27):
social media?
What's the biggest age groupthat you have?
Speaker 2 (48:31):
So our biggest age group is 25 to 44.
And it's broken down, I think,like 25 to 34, then 35 to 44.
But that's our biggestdemographic.
We still have a good amountfrom just about every
demographic.
Every platform is a littledifferent too.
I haven't looked at TikTokdemographics, but I would assume
they're a lot younger.
You know Instagram.
(48:53):
We have some younger followersas well.
However, what I try to do ismake sure that everything we
post, even if it's a veryserious topic, is written in a
way that I would be comfortablewith a 13-year-old reading or
seeing.
Now, sometimes you will see anaccident scene or a crash scene
that might be a little graphic,but other than that, we don't
(49:13):
really have anything that Iwould be afraid of a 13-year-old
seeing or reading.
We're not posting fights at ahigh school.
We're not doing these things.
So I'm comfortable with any agegroup following.
And again, on the content side,on the flip side, you will see
accounts that do post thesethings.
So I'm comfortable with any agegroup following.
And again, on the content side,on the flip side, you will see
accounts that do post thesethings and they'll grow in
followers, but they probablywon't ever make money because a
(49:34):
business isn't going to want toadvertise with someone who's
posting high school fights.
It's a little different, but wehave a wide range.
25 to 44 is our number onedemographic Well, 25 to 34, then
number two is 35 to 44.
Then number three I would sayis 18 to 24 and a few that are
under 18.
All right, all right.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
And the young lady in orange.
I think we have time foranother question.
Okay, let's have a question.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
So I know you talked about everything that goes into
like your podcast and your brand, and I can imagine it can be
very stressful and timeconsuming.
So I was wondering what kind ofthings do you do to like
de-stress, Like, do you go tolike?
Is there any local places thatyou go to Like what do you do in
your free time to just relax?
Speaker 2 (50:24):
So the first thing I have to do in order to relax is,
like this morning, our socialmedia manager is in college and
she said she's got somethinggoing on this morning.
So what I did early on thismorning was I scheduled
everything for the day.
Normally she would be doingthat and because I did that, it
kind of opened me up.
So I've just feel relaxedalready.
(50:45):
So now I can do anything I want.
When I leave here I'm like I'mgood for the rest of the day.
You know I'm going to choose togo home and find some content to
write about, but I and for meit's so relaxing to be able to
write about something you wantto write about, rather than
something that occurred.
You know something like oh no,got to cover this now.
And it's tough.
(51:05):
And even with that again, likeyou know, the content itself so
many things come with it, likewhy didn't you cover this?
Or why aren't you doing this?
And honestly, the answer is wecan't cover everything or we
can't cover it the way you wantus to cover it.
But I would say havingeverything done and being able
to relax is more relaxing thandoing something specific to
relax and being able to relax ismore relaxing than doing
(51:30):
something specific to relax.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
And now it's time for a shameless plug.
Make sure you subscribe to thewhat's Happening MoCo podcast
and listen to as many episodesas possible.
Other thing I want to say thatsincerely that Montgomery County
government is interested inseeing you successful, and there
are a lot of things in place toensure your success.
Not only do we help to supportthe colleges and educational
institutions in the area, butparticularly in the realm of
content creation.
(51:51):
There are resources availableto you and we're going to work
with Dr Clemons to ensure thatit's more easily available and
that you're more easily aware ofwhat's available to you,
including some type of technicaltraining, access to equipment,
things of that nature, becausewe not only want to see you
posting on YouTube and Twitterand TikTok, but we also have
(52:15):
space on our cable channels.
We also have space in ourstudios for you to produce as
well.
So I want to make sure that youguys reach out, ask the
question how can I get mycontent created without going to
Amazon and asking my mom forbirthday and Christmas gifts to
change our living room into astudio?
There's ways for you to getyour content out there without
(52:35):
lifting heavy or going into yourown pockets.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
And let me chime in too I use every video you see,
and some people kind of give ussome grief for it too, but every
video you see will be takenwith this phone, right here.
You know, whether it's food,food videos, food photos, as
long as it's, you know, thestuff that I've created, it's
all taken with my phone.
I don't have an expensivecamera that I use and it's all
put together.
My reels.
(52:58):
I put together a reel for afood truck that opened in
Gaithersburg a couple days agoand it's up to like 180 000
views and I did it all with andthat's on my personal account,
mr mocha 301, if you all want tofollow, but I put it all
together with my phone oninstagram using like the.
The real tab in the instagramapp didn't use anything special,
so I was able to do that andit's uh, you know it works.
(53:20):
So you don't need fancyequipment.
You can.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
you can make it all happen and then for those of us
that didn't recognize that, hehas an iPhone, is that a 15 Pro?
Speaker 2 (53:28):
15, yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Even though it's not necessarily expensive for a
professional camera, I write itoff yeah, so it's still $1,300.
So before you ask your mom forthe iPhone 15 Pro with the three
lenses and the portrait modeand all that, make sure you're
(53:50):
aware of the prices of things.
And to his point, though, he'sable to conduct business because
he was able to use it to posthandle business.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
I write articles on it as well.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Yeah, so there you go .
So you don't need as much asyou may think.
You may have everything youneed to start content creating
right in your pocket.
As a matter of fact, we knowthat most of you have just what
you need in your pocket rightnow, with the available Wi-Fi,
to start content creating.
You just need that boldness,that audacity to know that your
voice matters, people want tohear your voice and that there's
(54:25):
a market out there for you.
Voice matters, people want tohear your voice and that there's
a market out there for you.
And what's the greatest thing,to your advantage.
That may be harder for Alex.
You may be targeting a globalaudience.
You may be looking at peoplethat are interested in certain
types of fashion.
There may only be 100 people inMontgomery County, but there
may be 20,000 people across theworld.
There may be a type of humorthat you like to subscribe to
(54:48):
that there's 1,500 people inMontgomery County, but there's
millions of people across theworld that like it, or you may
be into soccer, you may be intoother things.
You have a global marketplacenow.
You can sell things globally.
There's supply chains likeAmazon that make it easy to
deliver items to people all overthe world and all over the
(55:11):
country.
So I'm going to stop there withmy diatribe.
Any other questions?
Any other questions?
Yeah, one Excellent.
Speaker 5 (55:20):
So one of my questions was, like you
mentioned earlier, about how youused to teach.
So do you think that notnecessarily go back into the
classroom and teach, but like,do like classroom visits or like
teach like an online course onlike public relations or
journalism?
Speaker 2 (55:37):
yeah, so I've done.
I've done a few career days inthe last month at various high
schools and middle schools.
I do that all the time and, andyou know, tell, tell the kids
like I always pull out my phoneand I say this right here that
so many of you have and the onesthat don't had a Chromebook in
front of them.
I say that is enough for you toget started on your own
business.
I don't have much time, butI'll share a quick story.
I have a gentleman that I usedto teach and he created.
(56:01):
You mentioned soccer.
His interest was soccer and hesaid everyone talks about soccer
in Europe and Messi and Ronaldo, but no one's talking about MLS
, which is Major League Soccer,the American Soccer League, and
he created a Twitter andInstagram account about MLS,
major League Soccer, and he nowmakes a good couple thousand a
(56:23):
month extra off of that on theside and it's he figured that
out and I tell students that too, when I go into classrooms,
that he found a little need andhe kind of went with it, and so
when you use these devicesresponsibly, they can do a lot
for you.
So I do have, you know,speaking engagements where I go
and I talk to groups.
(56:44):
I was at a couple real estateagencies where I talked to them
about how to pick up theirsocial media.
So I do it, you know, in aprofessional setting, but I also
go into high schools and middleschools and talk to students
about how to do it as well.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
And I want to take this moment to make sure that we
give Alex Mr MoCo 301, a biground of applause here in the
future and virtually, becausehe's giving of his time and
talent for free.
He is a business owner andstill, even though they have
scale, still a small businessowner.
So time is valuable.
(57:19):
And I have one last questionfor you, because now that you
are a brand and you have tastemoco, how careful do you have to
be when you get a questionabout where do you like to eat?
Speaker 2 (57:29):
so you know what, as long as I'm honest, I can be as
reckless as I want.
That's how I look at it.
I'm never going to tell you aplace is terrible or bad or not
a good, good, uh, place to eat,and that's because my opinion is
probably not going to be youropinion, so.
So I kind of stay away from thenegative stuff.
Just because someone forgot tobring me my ketchup doesn't mean
(57:50):
you shouldn't go eat there.
You know like, and people kindof say that place.
Man, when I went there it tookseven minutes for me to get my
drink and I'm like, oh man, like, thank you for telling us.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
It's like that.
That was crazy, but like that,as long as you're honest, you
can be as reckless as you wantthat doesn't mean be mean Right
and of course, and what I'mthinking, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1 (58:13):
Dr Clemons and her classes in the universities at
Shady Grove was a wonderfulresource here, so a huge round
of applause for them.
I'm going to insert that later.
Thank you so much.
It's been an honor being hereNow.
I think we have what like twominutes 120 seconds.
Someone may have a question andthey think maybe that question
shouldn't be asked.
Maybe it should be.
(58:33):
Now is the time to ask thisquestion and maybe you want to.
There's one more.
Okay, there you are.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
You said you post everything.
So I want to know, like how doyou get consistent content?
Do you make a grid to likeschedule your post, or how do
you do that?
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Yeah.
So when I say I post everything, it's we publish everything
like on our website and we'llshare it somewhere.
But we do have we scheduleeverything for oftentimes two
days in advance.
And then, because we do newsnews happens.
You know, sometimes you have tofigure things out.
All right, this event'shappening in three weeks, so we
(59:11):
can push it a couple of dayslater.
It's okay.
And sometimes you know we makemistakes too.
Sometimes we'll say we'll pushthis and we forget to reschedule
and it never goes up andsomeone's like hey, how come you
didn't write about that?
And I'm like wait a minute, wedid, but we just never published
it.
So I always tell people checkout, you know, check the website
.
The website is going to havejust about everything, but we do
have to have a schedule.
It's not always easy to keep upwith that schedule.
(59:33):
Sometimes you know things happenand we post about them a couple
hours later or a couple dayslater, based on what happened.
And again, there's noconspiracy around that, it's
just.
It's just when we were able toget to it.
We are very small.
A lot of times people will say,hey, fox wrote about this or
posted this.
Why didn't you?
And I'm like, because Fox has5,000 people working for them,
(59:57):
and that's why.
So, if ever there's a mistakewe make, please bear with us,
but we try our best, and we tryour best to schedule everything
so that we do come off as a veryprofessional organization,
which I think we are.
We're just a very smallbusiness right now and, you know
, maybe one day we'll grow.
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
All right, Alex.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Thanks to all of you for
listening and thank you outthere for listening to the
podcast, for watching this onFacebook or maybe even Zoom
today, Wherever you are,remember to ask the question
what's happening, MoCo, becauseyou deserve the answers.
Thank you all.
(01:00:36):
Thanks for listening and pleasesubscribe.
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