Welcome to Podcasting Tech, a podcast that equips busy
Speaker:entrepreneurs engaged in podcasting with proven and cost effective
Speaker:solutions for achieving a professional sound and appearance. I'm
Speaker:Matthew Passi, your host and a fifteen year veteran in the podcasting
Speaker:space. We'll help you cut through the noise and offer guidance on software and
Speaker:hardware that can elevate the quality of your show. Tune in weekly
Speaker:for insightful interviews with tech creators, behind the scenes studio tours, and
Speaker:strategies for podcasting success. Head to
Speaker:podcastingtech.com to subscribe to this show on YouTube or your favorite
Speaker:podcast platform, and join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full
Speaker:potential of your podcast. Taking out
Speaker:to San Jose, California, we are chatting with Jordan Thibodeau. He is the
Speaker:cohost of the SBIC podcast. It's two tech
Speaker:industry veterans, from Google breaking down the latest in
Speaker:technology. Jordan, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey. Thank you for having
Speaker:me here. I appreciate it. So, I mean, obviously, we're talking
Speaker:about technology. As you and I are recording, CES is happening or is just
Speaker:wrapping up. So definitely wanna talk about that and some of the trends that you're
Speaker:seeing in technology overall, but also specifically any tech in the podcasting
Speaker:space that has you interested, you know, given the name of the show. But
Speaker:tell us, how did you first decide to get into
Speaker:podcasting and and launch the show? That's a good point. You know, best
Speaker:part of the show is tech and comedy, so I haven't watched very much the
Speaker:CES. So failing to do my job. I think,
Speaker:one aspect of what's going on in tech is there's just so much coming at
Speaker:people. That's hard to figure out, like, what is actually the, signal from the
Speaker:noise. And, me and my cohost, we
Speaker:used to work at Google together. And when you're inside working in a
Speaker:corporation, you see how the sausage making process works,
Speaker:but then externally, you get to hear people commenting on on on
Speaker:things. And a lot of the commentary is not that good.
Speaker:And but you have a very you're getting paid very well
Speaker:your tech job, but you take a valve silence because you don't wanna be one
Speaker:of those dastardly leakers. Those people are not good.
Speaker:So you can't say anything. So, eventually, as time went on, me and my cohost,
Speaker:we moved around with different jobs. And then
Speaker:chat GPT happened, which was, like, a magical moment. And it was
Speaker:the first time it felt like since the launching of the Internet,
Speaker:maybe CRISPR, where real novel technology was coming out. It made
Speaker:us wonder, like, what what were we doing for the last ten ten years, like,
Speaker:releasing chat apps and releasing other social media apps that were
Speaker:crap like Google plus. Oh god. So
Speaker:I'd I see. Take that one to the grave. Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk
Speaker:to you about Google and podcasting. Oh, boy. Okay. So I I remember
Speaker:when I was at Google for an acquisition, I was helping Google's
Speaker:chat team do an acquisition. And while I was working the deal,
Speaker:they launched four chat apps on the same day. It was
Speaker:like, Aloe, Duo, and some of their crap. And people
Speaker:at my house were asking me, like, so can you explain the differences? I'm
Speaker:like, knowing less, I have no idea what we're doing
Speaker:right now. So, it it was just it was interesting
Speaker:times. So we me and my buddy,
Speaker:my coach, Joe Joe, we have we'd have barbecue every two weeks,
Speaker:and, you know, we eat ribs together. We go way back.
Speaker:Dead giveaway. Sorry. I'm trying to play. You know, the guy who who the the
Speaker:black dude when they found the, the missing white girl,
Speaker:and the guy found her? Oh, god. I have I have this
Speaker:I have this on hold. Give me one second. Dead giveaway. You
Speaker:wanna go you wanna go, Charles Ramsey, original dead
Speaker:giveaway guy. Yeah. Yeah. I I actually have in in our
Speaker:soundboard from Riverside, I have him saying dead giveaway. I use it for, like,
Speaker:good areas. Anyways, so one of his one of his quotes is we eat ribs
Speaker:together, and barbecue, and we listen to salsa music.
Speaker:So me and Joe have barbecue every two weeks. And,
Speaker:after we we eat, I talked to some of my homies, and they would say,
Speaker:you know, be great to hear what you guys were talking about. And I'm like,
Speaker:well, I guess we should, like, do a podcast. And back in
Speaker:2016, Joe was saying we should do a podcast. I was like, ah, no one's
Speaker:gonna listen to this garbage. So, eventually, we start the podcast,
Speaker:and we work a breath a breath of fresh air because
Speaker:when everyone was talking about this AI hype of, like, oh, like, when Chechnya came
Speaker:out, it's gonna be sentience. Sentient. It's gonna kill us
Speaker:all. It's gonna take all the jobs. Or people saying, it's
Speaker:worthless. I I, tried to ask her for the meaning of life, and they didn't
Speaker:give me an answer. And we're like, hold on. Like, there's a lot of in
Speaker:between space here that we think me and Joe can fill. Like, yeah. It's not
Speaker:gonna destroy society, and no one's gonna give the nuclear launch codes. But at the
Speaker:same time, I know that I'm using it at work at at
Speaker:Salesforce to take very long too long didn't read executive
Speaker:emails and synthesizing it down to, like, okay. What do I what should I know
Speaker:here? Or helping me take, what I wanna
Speaker:be curtain to the point to someone who I'm I'm mad at at work, going
Speaker:to it and saying, hey. Can you actually make this nicer and fluffier so I
Speaker:don't get fired? So there is value here. So our show is focusing on, like,
Speaker:just taking the hype out of tech, but also including real talk about how the
Speaker:sauce making process work inside tech companies. Because people from outside just say
Speaker:basically see, like, you know, oh, everyone's so like, they see the comms messaging and,
Speaker:like, Google hires the smartest people, and we're so nice to each other and
Speaker:blah blah blah. But we were inside these big tech companies, it's just like a
Speaker:free for all, and no one really knows what's going on. So,
Speaker:we started the podcast just help noobs and folks learn about
Speaker:what's going on tech, but also include some comedy. We won't be at the boring,
Speaker:like, welcome to the next Freedom podcast. And today, I'm gonna talk
Speaker:about how I want to service Elon's crank and how,
Speaker:I always love Elon. And I'm gonna talk about how much I love Elon to
Speaker:Sam Altman, and it's gonna be very awkward. So take your pens and paper
Speaker:out, and get ready to take notes. Yes. You know, it's it's funny you
Speaker:talk about how people perceive the tech industry and then what it's really like on
Speaker:the inside. I worked in media for a very long time and, you know, you
Speaker:obviously hear a lot of stuff about, well, the media is doing this and the
Speaker:media is doing that. It's like, you think the media is that organized, you are
Speaker:out of your mind. Right? Like, it is just, you know, I I
Speaker:appreciate a good conspiracy theory, but there has to be some some
Speaker:plausibility to it, and there just isn't in that case. So We all like
Speaker:ancient aliens. You know? Yeah. Sweat But no. No.
Speaker:It's it's just it's just people. Right? People make mistakes. People do things. And, yeah,
Speaker:you could piece it together and frame it and shape it however you want to
Speaker:make, you know, support your message, but it's just people. And
Speaker:on the whole, people are good, but, you know, there's a lot of people who
Speaker:just suck, and a lot of them work, at various industries including ours. True.
Speaker:It's like it's like Occam's razor, basically. There's another wonderful
Speaker:member of our community who's like his name is Maj. Super smart. He's one of
Speaker:those those freaks of nature who knows he's really good with a pen, but
Speaker:also he's a computer science major. So he can do both things really well. And
Speaker:then he has a good heart. He's a really good person. But there's another there's
Speaker:a different type of Occam phrases for for politics where basically says, like, it's not
Speaker:the conspiracy of the one world behind their pulling on the the strings. It's
Speaker:usually either, bureaucracy,
Speaker:red tape, miscommunication that leads to some of these
Speaker:failures. And the same thing for some of these tech companies. You always hear stories
Speaker:of, you know, Google's monitoring me or of a law. It's like,
Speaker:no. Actually, no one cares about your data. We actually have more to
Speaker:lose monitoring you because you do a class action lawsuit, that
Speaker:we would gain knowing about your grandmother's secret sticker duel recipe.
Speaker:To be fair, those snickerdoodles are pretty damn awesome. They might be. And listen, I
Speaker:will go to the grave. You will never convince me otherwise that Facebook isn't listening
Speaker:to me because I will talk about the most obscure crap. And then next time
Speaker:I open up Facebook, I've got an ad with something related to that. So Okay.
Speaker:So that's a Facebook tracking pixel, and that's another I can't go
Speaker:side note real quick. So, Facebook tracking pixel is on is is
Speaker:on your cell phone or you've you don't even have to maybe launch
Speaker:the app. It could the app could just be on your cell phone and it's
Speaker:still tracking pixels and it's still monitoring in some regard or either the
Speaker:websites you're on. And so I'll just go type some random things in here about
Speaker:a mattress and also on my Facebook feed, it will show you the mattress. Now
Speaker:I Which that I understand. Yeah. But I didn't type anything. I just
Speaker:said something, and now you're in my phone. Exactly. And then
Speaker:another thing too is, it's not my
Speaker:area expertise. But when the FBI wants to
Speaker:track down terrorists or whatnot, they'll go to Facebook and be like, hey.
Speaker:This terrorist has a friend who's on this phone. We're
Speaker:trying to get to this this terrorist, though. Can you help us out? And Facebook
Speaker:has enough good enough data that they can basically track just based upon the per
Speaker:that person's IP, what other IPs are in the area, what
Speaker:routers they were going through, and then go back to the FBI and be like,
Speaker:here is the person you're looking for plus all their homies they were connected, and
Speaker:here's all the cities they went through, and they didn't even open the app.
Speaker:So it's it's dead. I'm closing down my computer right now.
Speaker:No. I enough for everybody. If you think about George Orwell's nineteen eighty
Speaker:four, I mean, it's it's it's impossible in this day and age
Speaker:that you're not being tracked in some form. You know? And I'm not justifying
Speaker:it. Like, oh, this is a psy ops actually. He actually stole the payroll for
Speaker:Google, and he's trying to get everyone used to this stuff. But it's just it's
Speaker:a it's a it's a fact of life in this day and age. But, anyways
Speaker:Well yeah. And and the amazing thing about 1984 is we are happily handing
Speaker:over a lot of that information. Right? We are posting about it. We're filling out
Speaker:forms. We're, you know, competing in those little challenges and games and all that stuff.
Speaker:We're basically just telling the algorithms, here's what you need to know about
Speaker:me. Enjoy. Exactly. Now I'm gonna get crucified because we, we
Speaker:have a great audience, and we have a lot of privacy folks here who I
Speaker:love and respect, and they're gonna crucify me for this. But I look at it
Speaker:always as a give and take of, okay, I give you some of my
Speaker:data, but so long as you can give me back more value for what I've
Speaker:given you, then I will be okay in some regards. Like, for instance, like,
Speaker:ChatGPT, if you have an enterprise version of it, it's not trading
Speaker:off your data. But if you give ChatGPT more information about you,
Speaker:it will start collecting memories on you so that when you give it a request,
Speaker:it will say like, oh, Matthew Passi, you're running your podcast and whatnot. I
Speaker:saw your request, but also I wanna put in additional context about your unique
Speaker:situation so you get a really robust answer or response.
Speaker:And for me, when I use ChatGPT, it's doing it more and more. I'm like,
Speaker:hey. This is this is fantastic. It's one though they are taking your
Speaker:information and just giving you, mattress ads all day
Speaker:long, or they are not adding any value. You're getting very
Speaker:creepy, where you're like, okay. Now you you kind of you you've crossed the line
Speaker:here. We need to, you know, dial this thing back. So, anyways So,
Speaker:I'm so glad you brought you know, I'm glad you you kinda took us in
Speaker:this direction. I wasn't planning on having this conversation, but I think it'll be interesting
Speaker:with you. You know, one of the the shortcomings of podcasting overall
Speaker:is the lack of data, is the lack of information.
Speaker:Right? We know we have downloads. We we're getting a little bit better with where
Speaker:they're coming from, what kind of devices, but, where, like, it
Speaker:is like the number one question I always got when I was, consulting with
Speaker:clients and now working with podcasters. Everyone wants to know, how do I know who
Speaker:my listeners are? And we have very little information on that.
Speaker:Do you think that can change, or do you think there's any appetite for that
Speaker:to change in the tech space? That is a really good question. I
Speaker:gosh. I
Speaker:I look at for for myself as for when you first start in
Speaker:podcasting, I'm I'm still starting out. This is, like, year one I've been doing
Speaker:a full time, so I'm I'm a complete noob. And a lot of people, like,
Speaker:ask me, like, are you looking at your metrics? Do you look at this and
Speaker:that and this? And I say, well, yeah. I can go on YouTube because I
Speaker:do YouTube is where I post my podcast, and I also cross post it onto,
Speaker:Spotify. And YouTube will tell me metric of people
Speaker:who open up the video and then how long they stay. And that's great.
Speaker:And I can see spikes sometimes of, like, okay. Yeah. I really shouldn't have told
Speaker:people that we're gonna change this to a mukbang podcast and start eating pizza in
Speaker:front of them, burping. Probably not a good idea because retention went down. But other
Speaker:than that, like, there's random spikes in every different direction. So I could sit there
Speaker:forever and just, like, try to overanalyze this point
Speaker:to the point that I get into my head that when I'm having an interview
Speaker:with Matthew, I'm thinking of, okay. I gotta say the most interesting perfect thing
Speaker:possible so I can get my retention spike going. So there's one thing about psych
Speaker:Let me bring the rate back up. Exactly. So I think the second and the
Speaker:second thing is, I think a lot of it is,
Speaker:will will we ever get to that level of information? We'll get more data and
Speaker:and metrics on people and folks. I'm sure. In some in some regard.
Speaker:But, I think there's an aspect of people like their anonymity of I'm
Speaker:listening to a show, but I also don't wanna give my whole entire profile who
Speaker:I am. I probably happens to you, but I've had it happen to me on
Speaker:LinkedIn a lot. People will message me on the side, be like, I saw your
Speaker:last post. It was really, really good, But I can't like it because then my
Speaker:management chain is gonna see it. So on the side, I'm just gonna give you
Speaker:a thumbs up. And I'm like, thanks, pussy sweat, whatever.
Speaker:That's why that's why I'm bugging I'm bugging LinkedIn. Okay. Hey.
Speaker:So LinkedIn needs to do, they need to make it so that okay. Why
Speaker:is blind popular? I'm gonna get back to your question. I'm sorry. Blind's popular because
Speaker:I answered my I asked my own question, answered my own question. I'm terrible. That's
Speaker:why you shouldn't have podcast host on this show. Blind's
Speaker:great because it's anonymity, because you can just ask a question and no one knows
Speaker:who your background is. And so you can ask, I need a price check on
Speaker:my comp, having a tough issue with my manager, like, what's going on here and
Speaker:things like that. But the issue with blind is you don't really know who's on
Speaker:the back side asking the question or answering the question. You're trusting blind that
Speaker:these are real people. But we know, and I have friends who worked for
Speaker:Reddit do write fake anonymous posts that are super
Speaker:juicy for engagement bait to get people to be like, oh, do you see a
Speaker:person said I read it? Am I the asshole for not allowing my mother to,
Speaker:hold my newborn baby or something? You know? So you don't really know.
Speaker:Well, LinkedIn will be great is what if you can set it to is people
Speaker:who are my first, second, third, third degree connections. I can
Speaker:post a question anonymously, and only they can answer,
Speaker:and they can decide if they wanna answer anonymously too. And
Speaker:what that allows me to know is, well, if I'm getting an anonymous response on
Speaker:my a question, it's someone I've actually genuinely connected to on LinkedIn who
Speaker:I know, which is better than me going on blind because I don't know who
Speaker:the hell is out there. And I could be asking this question anonymously to all
Speaker:Googlers. So I know that my MyKey has a response from Googlers who are in
Speaker:the know but can't actually tell me because they're worried about their job or whatnot.
Speaker:Then you get the ability. And people say, well, what about you people gonna start
Speaker:trolling you? If someone trolls you anonymously, click do not
Speaker:allow this person to respond anonymously to my post going forward. And so that would
Speaker:allow people then to then have a more robust conversation LinkedIn, and it would become
Speaker:just a constant corporate crap you see twenty four seven of, like,
Speaker:I love my manager. Agree? Like, it's stupid crap. You wanna have real
Speaker:talk. And people might mention and say, hey, well, like, this is not important.
Speaker:Well, if it is not important, why do corporations every year do anonymous
Speaker:feedback surveys for all their employees? Because they wanna hear real talk.
Speaker:Why do corporations also do anonymous surveys to other corporations
Speaker:asking about how much are you paying your employees so then they know
Speaker:what how to charge how to pay their employees.
Speaker:So imagine how powerful it'd be people to go on LinkedIn and be like, hey.
Speaker:I just got an offer. My employer decided to give me a promo, but I'm
Speaker:giving you 10% bump. For people who are level six at this role, what's your
Speaker:what's your pay bump what's your pay right now? So then it would give empower
Speaker:people to do that. Or when people wanna talk about dicey subjects, I think I'm
Speaker:getting sexually harassed in this issue, blah blah blah. Can I get some advice on
Speaker:what my options are here? Or I'm getting put in a performance improvement plan right
Speaker:now. Here's the situation, like, what do you think I should do? And so anyways,
Speaker:sorry. That was my that's my I'm always running that one. But let's go back
Speaker:to your original question about, getting more data and whatnot. I think,
Speaker:Annette, there's gonna be anonymity. People are gonna be
Speaker:anonymous here. They like to listen. They they don't like to give all their information.
Speaker:So the next question is when how can I learn more about my audience? I
Speaker:think it's important that you form a community as much as possible. Get into YouTube
Speaker:comments. You're gonna see trolls in there. Always trolls. I got a troll comment
Speaker:today. It was like, oh, the show's still on the air. You suck. And then
Speaker:I clicked that person's profile. He has one video, one view. And I'm like, I
Speaker:was gonna if I didn't say anything, you'll be a jerk. But then, same time,
Speaker:I got a comment, got a super chat for $15. And I was like, hey.
Speaker:That's great. Thank you. I appreciate it. But what's important is you gotta get in
Speaker:those comments because you're gonna find some really great comments on people, and you're gonna
Speaker:be able to learn more about them and build a sense of community with them
Speaker:by responding to your comments and being sincere about and what I like
Speaker:doing is there's an app called, well, two things you do. You could use YouTube
Speaker:Studio, and you can go through your comments and use your Android or
Speaker:iPhone device iPhone if you're a tool, best Android, real men, real people
Speaker:represent. You know what I mean? You probably have iPhone. I know. You're like, oh,
Speaker:blue dot blue dot gringo. I'm better than you, me, Steve John.
Speaker:Me. But anyways, what you can do is you can use YouTube
Speaker:studio, see the comments, and you can just use your audio feature
Speaker:in your phone and just do voice to text and respond to people quickly.
Speaker:And by doing that, you're gonna learn about what they like about your videos or
Speaker:what they don't like about your videos. Or in your videos, you can say is,
Speaker:hey. And don't make sure to comment about your comment about this podcast. And what
Speaker:did you think? What did you like? What didn't you like or whatnot? So then
Speaker:you could hear from people of, like, certain aspects they really like and pop about
Speaker:your video, and then you can incorporate that into how you do
Speaker:stuff. So for instance, we would do research reviews every now
Speaker:and then, and I started asking people, like, do you like this research stuff? And
Speaker:people were like, yeah. So overwhelmingly. So we start incorporating into our podcast. Or people
Speaker:started saying we need to start incorporating more comedy. And so that's how we were
Speaker:getting kind of signal in the early days. But as far as now, it's like
Speaker:you mentioned, getting to, like, the here's a master data sheet of everyone who's
Speaker:listening and what's good and what you should say. I think we're we're quite a
Speaker:ways away from that, but also I don't think it's ever been a perfectly materialized
Speaker:in that way. So That's fair. Well and and I love the fact that you
Speaker:talk about how important to have a community. So many podcasters think, I'm on the
Speaker:microphone. I've got the megaphone. I'm talking to my audience. Whereas
Speaker:the best podcasters, the one who do this really, really well, most
Speaker:of them are listening to their audience as well. And, you know, community
Speaker:is a great way to do it. I wanna go back to the very beginning
Speaker:of the conversation, we talked about Google and podcasting. And years
Speaker:ago, before Spotify got into the game, you know, it was really just
Speaker:dominated by Apple and a couple of independent apps. And it
Speaker:boggled my mind that Google wasn't trying
Speaker:to have better inroads into podcasting.
Speaker:Right? First, it was on the Google Play Store, which is convoluted. Then
Speaker:we had Google Podcasts, which actually I thought was a pretty good product and the
Speaker:information they were giving podcasts was pretty good. Then they shut that down. Now they're
Speaker:moving it over to Google Music and to over to YouTube. But, you know,
Speaker:why didn't why didn't Google just replicate the
Speaker:YouTube model and strip out video and
Speaker:own the podcasting space between searchability,
Speaker:their advertising ability, their ability to deliver media and
Speaker:track that. I mean, they could have blown everybody out of
Speaker:the water so quickly if they had, if they had really taken,
Speaker:you know, a real deep look into it.
Speaker:Let's do a quick moment of silence for all the dead Google products. We have
Speaker:about 296 here. I'll hold the time. Five seconds.
Speaker:Thank you. I appreciate that. So
Speaker:amen. Preach. If you're if they're passing the collection till right now at church, I'll
Speaker:be putting a hundred dollars in there for what you had to say. A lot
Speaker:of it is, I hate there's a guy who
Speaker:wrote a book called From Good to Great, and actually, a lot of the stuff
Speaker:in his book actually didn't play out well, but he said, companies
Speaker:don't die from lack of opportunity. They die from indigestion trying to
Speaker:eat so many things at once, and they choke to death and die. And so
Speaker:with Google, there is just so many different things they could be doing at the
Speaker:company. But internally, all decisions come down to
Speaker:a few VPs or they're the CEO, and there's only so many things you can
Speaker:chase. And then there's a feedback loop of, okay. You
Speaker:get an idea approved, but each time you wanna iterate on a product or idea,
Speaker:it's connected to another product. So they need sign up for their VPs. So it
Speaker:slows the iteration loop down. Whereas other companies like Spotify can
Speaker:just go all in on streaming and what they wanna do because they're just focused
Speaker:on that one mission. And so there were p PMs
Speaker:inside of Google saying what you were saying, but they didn't have the right
Speaker:political capital or their other priorities going on. One of my first
Speaker:acquisitions at Google back in 2014 was a company called Songza. And what Songza
Speaker:did was Songza? Yeah. Right? Elias Roman was a CEO.
Speaker:Great human being. Side note. Everyone who's on Twitter,
Speaker:the CEOs always talk about how great they are to their employees on blah blah
Speaker:blah. That only matters when there's actually money on the line
Speaker:because once a term sheet comes out, term sheet means when we go to acquire
Speaker:a company, it's kinda similar when you go buy a house or something. You have
Speaker:very expensive $6,000,000 chanting in San Francisco that you want
Speaker:that he has poop everywhere and whatnot. But anyways, you try to apply you try
Speaker:to put an offer on that thing, with, like, the the the poop and everything
Speaker:over there. And this is a call, like, a purchase agreement. And the same thing
Speaker:is called a letter of intent in m and a. When the purchase agreement says
Speaker:letter of intent comes over, it's from us in the m and a side, and
Speaker:we say how much we're gonna buy your company for. Now there are
Speaker:employees there are CEOs who will go on Twitter and say, I take care of
Speaker:my employees. They're great. And then we slide over letter of intent, and they'll
Speaker:say, actually, I don't want these employees getting any money from
Speaker:this. I don't want their equity vesting. F them, f this, and blah blah blah.
Speaker:Elias Roman was a type of, CEO who actually backed his employees
Speaker:and actually cared about them, and he built a really good company called Songza. Now
Speaker:Songza, what they did was, they focused on
Speaker:hiring all of these temporary employees who were, masters in certain music
Speaker:genres to curate playlist manually of different types of hip hop
Speaker:and rock and things like that. And so we acquired them, and then
Speaker:we integrated that into Google Play Music. And Google Play Music
Speaker:was doing pretty decently for a while, but then Susan Wojcicki, rest in
Speaker:peace, great person. She was the one who set she was the one who decided
Speaker:that Google should buy YouTube. She they launched
Speaker:YouTube Music. And so people at the company are like, wait a minute. We
Speaker:have Google Play Music, then we have YouTube Music. Like, what's what's
Speaker:going on here? So left hand wasn't talking to right hand, but it kinda underscores
Speaker:your other your other point of just there's so much opportunity. There's all these
Speaker:different people inside the company trying to run their own product roadmaps and get
Speaker:power and control enough to get their message going. So eventually, after
Speaker:years of work, it all consolidated into into
Speaker:YouTube music. But then we had this podcast thing called the YouTube, the
Speaker:Google podcasting that came about, and eventually that got deprecated. And I think
Speaker:the reason why that got deprecated is because YouTube music is like, no. We're gonna
Speaker:be the future of how this thing works, and having these two separate teams doesn't
Speaker:make sense. So going back to, like, why Google wasn't
Speaker:able to do it, I would say one is just, the company is becoming too
Speaker:big. Two, there's just too much opportunity, to get too much
Speaker:opportunity out there. And then three, internal bureaucracy prevents them from getting
Speaker:these just nailing these easy opportunities.
Speaker:And then four, what makes things tough is there's also the revenue model. You're
Speaker:probably wondering right now, do you use perplexity at all, for AI
Speaker:search? Okay. Or do you use chat gbt search? Yeah.
Speaker:Okay. It's pretty I don't know if what what are your thoughts on ChatGPT search
Speaker:compared to Google search? Oh, sorry. Search. No. I don't use it for search. I
Speaker:use it for just, you know, random tasks, you know, help me with this, clean
Speaker:up this, do that for search. I I still just Google everything. And I honestly
Speaker:usually ignore the first AI response I got. I got homework for you.
Speaker:I want you to either use chat GPT search. When you open chat GPT, you'll
Speaker:see a little world world icon in the chat box. Click that,
Speaker:and it basically is an AI powered search. So instead of it set set
Speaker:getting 10 blue links, it will summarize the links and give you an answer,
Speaker:and will do research for you. I use it for researching things and whatnot.
Speaker:Google could integrate something like that, which is a thousand x
Speaker:better than basic Google search. But if they do that, they're going to
Speaker:cannibalize their existing revenue, and that's gonna hurt a business model. So
Speaker:that's another reason that what gets in the way of Google iterating and then launching
Speaker:new products is they have those four concerns that I mentioned. So it's a
Speaker:long winded answer. Hope it made sense. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Like and
Speaker:subscribe to the show. It's great. Well, I I doubt anybody
Speaker:who was tuning into this episode thought they were getting quite this kind of an
Speaker:education on technology and how, you know, large tech companies
Speaker:like Facebook and Google work, but it is fascinating. As a reminder, everybody, we
Speaker:are chatting with Jordan Thibodeau, cohost of the SVIC
Speaker:podcast. Of course, you wanna check it out, we'll have a link to it, in
Speaker:the show notes. We can find it very easily on YouTube if you, Google
Speaker:that. Before we let you go, we ask everybody the same questions, and I'll be
Speaker:very curious about your answers because of the conversation that we've had so far.
Speaker:So the the first thing I wanna know is you've only
Speaker:been doing this for a year. I imagine you've been listening to podcast for a
Speaker:little bit more. Is there anything about podcasting
Speaker:could be producing content, distributing content, consuming content,
Speaker:or is there something like you're like, god. I wish podcasting did blank.
Speaker:Oh, great. Great, great question. When I
Speaker:was at Google, I used to work for Google's YouTube channel, and I worked for
Speaker:the talks program. And so all I have to do is just get great
Speaker:speakers, prepare questions, use the communities, help me get questions,
Speaker:and then ask. And then there was a whole editing team, recording team
Speaker:that handled all of the work. And it was, like, the greatest thing ever because
Speaker:I could focus on what I was good at is finding the right people, getting
Speaker:them on, get channeling the community's questions, and shutting
Speaker:up during the interview and just letting the person cook. And so I was able
Speaker:to get Sebastian Junger on there, Tim Ferris on there, Ray Dalio, Annie
Speaker:Duke, Susan Wojcicki for or Anne Wojcicki from twenty
Speaker:three and me. Just a lot of great people in the show. And then when
Speaker:I started this podcast, I was like, oh, wait a minute. I'm bootstrapping
Speaker:this, and I guess I'm now the editing team, but I got all their crap
Speaker:work in the back end. And there's just so much just,
Speaker:editing crap and box checking that you have to do in the back end just
Speaker:to get the content out. And I feel like it's a big miss from YouTube
Speaker:and Spotify and some of these editing software packages for them not making
Speaker:it easier to get podcast content out there. And right now, people say the
Speaker:solve is either go hire someone. It's like, well, with your check,
Speaker:I don't got that money right now. I gotta you know? Other solution is like,
Speaker:oh, you just spend more time editing. But it's but here's the thing.
Speaker:I've seen a lot of like, there's just I feel a lot of sketch
Speaker:podcast. I don't do any I'm in a sketch podcast. I'm in the back I'm
Speaker:in the meth lab right now. And I've had videos where I haven't made a
Speaker:good YouTube thumbnail. The background was turned to like a like
Speaker:a a Chernobyl disaster site, and I ended up getting, like, 30,000 views
Speaker:and 300 subs. I didn't do crap. And so,
Speaker:I think I wish one just the
Speaker:editing process, all the operational back end craft work will be improved for
Speaker:podcast to make it easier. So people who are podcasters can focus on just getting
Speaker:their stories out there. Because there's so many people who have good stories, but the
Speaker:technology just is not fully there yet to allow them to
Speaker:get those stories out and allow them to focus on what they do best, either
Speaker:getting stories or getting right people on their show. That's, I love that answer.
Speaker:I mean, we definitely have, I mean, from when I started doing this, the tools
Speaker:have improved dramatically and greatly and, you know, there's a lot of AI supported
Speaker:tools that will, you know, cut corners in certain places and different editors that will
Speaker:kinda make it faster to script and Riverside is a really good editing tool as
Speaker:well for stuff like that. But, yeah, it it still requires, you
Speaker:know, piecing together a couple of different tools and even with that
Speaker:assistance, there's still a lot that goes into it. So, I I
Speaker:really I really, really like that answer. Is there any tech on
Speaker:your wish list that you're hoping for, like a microphone, a camera, a
Speaker:piece of software, something that either exists that you haven't bought yet or
Speaker:something that you're like, god. I wish somebody would invent a blank to make my
Speaker:life easier. I mean, I guess your prior answer kinda answered that, but
Speaker:is there anything else in mind? So I will say if you're doing podcasting,
Speaker:shout out to Riverside. They have one of the best we're not getting paid for
Speaker:this, but they have a really good customer service team. It's probably the easiest place
Speaker:to get started for either video podcast or audio podcast.
Speaker:I try to influence a product roadmap and make and make requests on the WhatsApp
Speaker:group. That's how we found each other. And thank you for reaching out to me.
Speaker:If you'll be on this, appreciate it. Kendall's great, by the way, at responding to
Speaker:all those. She's she's amazing. She's really good. So they're one love to that
Speaker:team. I what I really want is
Speaker:I started the podcast because we were really interested in talking about tech and AI,
Speaker:and I really want computer use agents to improve so that then,
Speaker:I can have an agent that can can connect different pieces of
Speaker:software and do all the clicking and manual work in the in the back end.
Speaker:Like, do you, upload videos to YouTube for your podcast? Okay.
Speaker:How many times have you clicked the disclaimer of, like, no, this is not pornography.
Speaker:No. This is not hate speech. Yes. Put monetization, accept. You know, every time you
Speaker:put the you know, if I have an AI agent that could just do that
Speaker:for me, I can offload that, just automate that. That would that's what
Speaker:I want. And I've I'm I'm praying that this is the year because there's a
Speaker:company called, Cohere that had their own AI agent. Another
Speaker:company called, oh, crap. I'm bringing the name right
Speaker:now. They created their own AI agent, and I was able to get it to
Speaker:upload YouTube Shorts from my computer into YouTube
Speaker:and have them run. But here's the thing, it would do it once correctly
Speaker:out of 20 times. So I I can't does not it doesn't work.
Speaker:It's because the underlying agent, the foundation model is
Speaker:not there yet. And they're making improvements now, and I'm hoping that this is a
Speaker:year where I can at least say, okay. Can you do this correctly 85, 90
Speaker:percent of the time? So I can offload some work, and there we go. So
Speaker:that's the thing I want. I want a computer use AI agent that can help
Speaker:me put together these various software tools that I'm using that requires no code
Speaker:and can just serve as my low level assistant editor and just go,
Speaker:assistant productions person. If anybody if anybody listening out there can do
Speaker:that kind of stuff, I'm sure there's some, investment dollars to, to help you
Speaker:get it done, help you, get across the finish line. Yep. Alright.
Speaker:Last question. Is there another podcast or two that you listen to, you subscribe
Speaker:to that, you know, when they drop a new episode, whatever it is you're
Speaker:listening to, you're gonna stop, check that out, or you're just you're never gonna let
Speaker:one of their new episodes get past you. Oh, that's a really good question.
Speaker:Yeah. That's a good question. I I listen to various podcasts, but I got when
Speaker:I was when I was a kid. I guess I used to used to
Speaker:listen to Tim Ferriss podcast a lot. And then as I grew older,
Speaker:now I find myself listening to more audiobooks. And then when I do listen to
Speaker:I do listen to podcast, but it's more of work focus. So I do
Speaker:reaction videos to either Sam Altman's on whatever podcast.
Speaker:I, what So it's a lot of it's a lot of guest centric,
Speaker:listening? Yeah. I'll listen to Kill Tony when it comes out when I have time.
Speaker:He's for I like, like, comedy. And then, Shane Gilles has
Speaker:some good stuff I'll listen to. Oh my god. Last weekend
Speaker:last weekend podcast with, for his name. He has a mullet. He's from New
Speaker:Orleans. Theo Von.
Speaker:Theo Von has a podcast, I'll I'll listen to it. And,
Speaker:what I like about his podcast is he stays in his lane of comedy.
Speaker:He won't go on there and just be like, okay. Now let's go talk about,
Speaker:like, why you shouldn't do vaccines and stuff like that. He he knows, like, where
Speaker:he's supposed to be. I also for people who are new, who are listening,
Speaker:setting up, I always it's the cliche advice of just get
Speaker:started with any any crap technology you have. If you want inspiration,
Speaker:go over to MKHV's YouTube and then click
Speaker:like, sort his videos from the very beginning. And his first video is, like, him
Speaker:at, like, 10 years old, and he's, like, using a flip phone, like, re
Speaker:recording, and everything's crap, but he started. And
Speaker:what's important is you just get something out there and
Speaker:then focus on what you can improve from that last
Speaker:video. Don't focus on all my views or my subs or
Speaker:someone's mad at me or, you know, if someone else's product is beautiful.
Speaker:No. Look at your last video and say, like, what can I improve? Extra points
Speaker:is get the transcript from your last video, put in the chat GPT and
Speaker:say, what can I improve from this interview? And chat GPT will give you some
Speaker:recommendations on what you can improve from your your interview. And then do that step
Speaker:by step. Don't even spend money on buying equipment. If you can just
Speaker:use what's on what you have, even if it's like your your integrated
Speaker:laptop, camera, whatnot, just use that. And then if you get super
Speaker:chats or donations, then use some of that money to buy pieces of equipment, but
Speaker:buy cheap stuff. This is a $50 microphone. I have a depth
Speaker:depth sec camera that's, like, maybe a hundred dollars or so.
Speaker:I have a, you know, that light that has this it's a light, but it
Speaker:has the cone on it. I don't know what the hell they're called. It's like
Speaker:I should cure. Okay. I have
Speaker:this light box for, like, four forty five bucks,
Speaker:and then I have, like, a my I have, like, my dual monitors.
Speaker:But all this is, like, kind of just put together, like, bit
Speaker:bit by bit in my headphones. So keep everything cheap because
Speaker:everyone thinks, like, when you start up, it's gonna be, oh, it's gonna be success.
Speaker:I'm gonna go it's not that way. You just grind you need to grind stuff
Speaker:out. And if you're constantly out laying cash, it's gonna be eventually, you're
Speaker:gonna get the call from the wife, like, what the hell is going on here?
Speaker:I have kids. I have kids to raise here. Like, with the You
Speaker:you must be listening to my phone because I give out this exact advice all
Speaker:the times when I was consulting clients and doing audits and, you know, just going
Speaker:out of the podcast and talking about the space, like, just verbatim. So I I
Speaker:love that advice. I love the energy. I love the spirit. I love what you
Speaker:guys are doing. Once again, it's the SVIC podcast. Co host, Jordan
Speaker:Thibodeau, joining us today. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed
Speaker:the conversation. Thank you, Matthew Matthew. And also, Matt, like and subscribe
Speaker:Matthew's podcast. Do it right now. Like and subscribe and comment and share
Speaker:with a friend. It means a lot. Thank you. Jordan, check us in the mail.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us today on Podcasting Tech. There are links to all
Speaker:the hardware and software that help power our guest content and
Speaker:podcasting tech available in the show notes and on our website at
Speaker:podcastingtech.com. You can also subscribe to the show on your
Speaker:favorite platform, connect with us on social media, and even leave a rating and review
Speaker:while you're there. Thanks, and we'll see you next time on Podcasting
Speaker:Tech.