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You had said that you have changed your business model to be more podcast friendly.

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So tell me a little bit about that.

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Yeah, quite unintentionally.

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Um, and, and that is, um, start with this, right?

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When the car is in motion, it's so much easier to turn the wheel when you know that

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the wheel needs to be turned when you're sitting in parked, you're not really going

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anywhere, it's really hard to get to where you need to get.

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Okay.

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So savings angel, which I launched in January, 2007, um, was an unintentional company.

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Right.

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I had a problem.

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I needed to save money, um, because I was spending way too much money at the

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grocery store, created a solution for myself.

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Wow.

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Maybe this could be a membership type thing.

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And we ended up becoming a seven figure year company with that.

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Um, now while I was doing that work, you know, in business was life was good.

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I started serving in our local community.

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So I started doing, um, pro bono mentoring workshops, served on boards, um, for

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minority owned women owned veteran owned businesses, just doing what I can to give back.

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And I was talking about how I built everything with zero paid ads.

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That was a seven figure company with zero paid ads.

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Um, so obviously people want to know, well, how'd you do that?

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And I talk about, well, here's how you get the media.

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It's pretty easy.

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Um, and let me break it down for you step by step.

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Now in the course of that work, where you plant your seeds is not necessarily

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where you reap your harvest, right?

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So, um, when you're out there, just doing the good work, don't be surprised if

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opportunities become presented to you.

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So that's what led to unintentionally starting up my influence, uh, is people

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would say, wait a minute, you're pretty smart at this media stuff.

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Can I just hire you?

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And I was like, oh, um, well, I guess.

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And so low and below that.

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And, and while we were helping people get tons of media coverage, I had, um, we had

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developed, we had a problem and my problem was, is that I was getting good.

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Customers, you know, from showing up at events, speaking at events, you know, spoke

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for the Tony Robbins organization, spoke that, you know, all the kinds of

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podcasts and conferences, FinCon, social media, market world, et cetera.

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Right.

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And I would get some good business there.

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Um, mainly from the green room, right?

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When I would talk with network with other people or just kind of at the

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mixers and stuff like that.

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Um, but.

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The inbound was up and down.

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Like we'd have good months.

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We'd have bad months.

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I'm like, how can I level that out?

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And so, um, we, you know, really had the brilliant idea is like, wait a minute,

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let's take this podcast we're doing the thoughtful entrepreneur.

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And why don't we just open up the flood gates and say, listen, if you are

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doing six figures in business, come on in, I'd love to interview you, um, with

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the intention that I'm going to cultivate a relationship with this person and

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we'll see where it goes.

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Maybe we end up doing business together.

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Maybe something else, right?

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But I believe, you know, Michael, Michael Gerber, E-myth, right?

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For as business owners, we are charged with growing the business.

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That's our number one job.

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And so, um, I believe that the best activity that we could be doing is to,

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um, is to, is networking in that high level networking just leads to amazing

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stuff, collaborations, joint ventures, strategic alliances, you know,

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pro cross promotional opportunities, client work, right?

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So, um, so yeah, that's what we did is we opened up the flood gates.

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Now it was an investment of effort for sure.

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And we didn't know if it was going to work out.

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Well, it did.

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So what we find is between 10 and 30% of people that I interview, I end

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up doing business with in some way.

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Sometimes I'm hiring them.

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Sometimes, you know, they're, I'm, they're hiring me, right?

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To, to, to help solve a problem.

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So I believe Ashley, if we're just talking about revenue, profit center,

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potential profit centers, this is going to blow anyone who's in the

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podcasting world, it's going to blow your mind.

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And I've taught on this a lot over the years.

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I believe that most podcasters are tripping over big stacks of

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cash to pick up pennies, to try to get value from your audience and get

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an audience member to quote unquote, buy your stuff.

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That's a lot.

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That is a grind.

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It's, it's just realistically, if we think about your own behavior, um, as

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a podcast consumer, don't really, we really don't do much where most podcast

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listeners, some people are not going to like me saying this, but most podcast

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listeners are pretty passive, right?

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Um, now that said, they're building relationship for sure.

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So, um, but what I, you know, what we discovered is that, uh, if I can

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cultivate a relationship with whomever I want, why not, um,