Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers Podcast, we're talking with Tobin Jarrett Poppenberg about becoming the voice of his niche in the audiobook space.

Tobin's come from a very successful career, and he shares how developing a bond with his nephew by reading Harry Potter stories inspired his new venture. The challenge now is profiting in this competitive space.

So we had a great conversation about the options in becoming the voice of children’s audiobooks, and how a podcast, sponsor opportunities, and using recordings to launch additional products can help him become the go to person in this space.

Summary:

1. Tobin Jarrett Poppenberg discusses his journey in the audiobook industry, revealing the intricacies of audiobook performances, the difficulties in making a profit in the industry, and how he discovered his passion for audiobooks.
2. Tobin shares a personal story about his bond with his nephew, fostered through reading Harry Potter together, showing the powerful impact of storytelling.
3. The idea of creating a podcast dedicated to reading public domain stories and introducing new books to listeners is explored. 
4. The potential of children's content on platforms like YouTube is discussed, as well as the possibility of Tobin becoming a curator for children's books.
5. He presents his vision for the podcast, discussing details such as the publishing calendar, potential sponsors, and how to keep the audience engaged.
6. The potential use of podcast recordings as a basis for books and other ventures is considered.
7. He shares his plans for exciting giveaways and how much he values listener feedback.
8. We explore Tobin's background, including his past in marketing automation and his discovery of audiobooks during his time at college.
9. We look into the difficulties of competing in the audiobook industry and the copyright constraints for performers.
10. The possibility of Tobin's podcast serving as a platform for discovering new children's books and authors and the potential size and scope of the podcast's audience is explored.

Show Links:
More about Tobin Jarrett Popenberg
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
90MinuteBooks.com

Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 253

Dean: Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson. Welcome to World Headquarters here in Winter Haven, Florida, for the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, and today we've got a very special guest. I'm very excited about this because I'm going to I don't know how many different. We've had some people with cool names, but we've never had a Tobin Jarrett Poppenberg on the show, and I'm very excited about that. I don't want to unpack the name and find out everything about Tobin here, so welcome. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm excited to see you look exactly like you would expect a Tobin Jarrett Poppenberg. That's right, First of his name. Okay, perfect. So what's the Tobin story here? Where are you from and what are we going to focus on today?

 

Tobin: Yeah. Well, I grew up all over California, especially on the Central Coast, in San Luis, visto and Santa Barbara Beautiful, yeah, gorgeous. And then I went to college in Humboldt County in the Redwoods, and I actually got into just sort of fell into the world of marketing automation. When I was in my 20s, I had just graduated from Humboldt State University with my degree in studio photography and I thought I was going to move to San Francisco and hang a shingle out and then the clients would just be fighting each other through the door. And that did not happen in any way. And so, while I was living before college in Santa Barbara, I had made a really great friend by the name of Landon Ray and he, when I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't get my wedding photography business off the ground, he said well, you should move back down to Santa Barbara and answer the phones for my new marketing software company it's called Office Autopilot.

 

It would wind up becoming Contraport and so I wound up joining forces with him and was the third member on the founding team over there with the first two developers and helped hire and train the first employees and wrote all the instruction manuals and figured out how to use the software so I could train our clients and then I left Entraport back in 2000. No, I started in 2007, and then I left in like in 2014. And I've been consulting with Entraport clients and I have a digital program and I really help small businesses, especially coaches and consultants, to put systems in place to grow their list and make better offers and, you know, automate fulfillment and delight and all like that get more referrals, but bringing humanity into it and especially for folks that are out there trying to make a difference, so that I can kind of have an impact through osmosis like that. But over the last several years, actually while I was in college, I listened to Jim Dale perform the Harry Potter series. I had a very tedious task that required my full visual attention, but I could let my mind wander and so I discovered the miracle of audiobooks and I fell in love with being told a story versus just reading a book, and I thought, oh, my goodness, this is well before I had kids. But I thought if I could do that I would be like in heaven. And then, a couple of years later, I had the opportunity to.

 

I have a nephew that I really love but from whom I lived very far away and I didn't ever see him. He was eight years old. He didn't like to be on the phone, as eight-year-olds are, you know, disinclined that way, but he loved to be read to. So I just started picking up the phone and reading Harry Potter to him. And then, you know, fast forward, all these years later I had got married and had kids of my own, and evening story time has always been the most incredible time of my day, because I get to do all the voices and really bring these stories to life with the full emotion and like that.

 

But I've always really struggled with you know how do I make this a money-getting thing and because if you want to compete in the systems that have been created right for audiobook performers to do their craft, it's not a great system and my other career pays a lot more. So I've never been able to justify even trying to do the sort of, as Dan Kennedy says, the sort of singles, dance, pick me kind of, and that's what the system really is. So Jeff Bezos set up an aspect of Audible, right, I think it's called SPX, and it's a brokerage that pairs authors right together with, you know, audiobook performers, voices over artists, so that they can, you know, make deals and, you know, see their full royalties and no upfront pay, or all upfront pay and no royalties, or a blend of the two. But at the end of the day, what you wind up doing is, you know, nine out of ten or maybe 99 out of 100 of these voice actors will go out there and do their rehearsals and audition for these books and they'll get picked, and only the number of copies that are in the person, the author's family will ever get sold, you know. And then you wind up doing all that work, sweating in a hot studio and having to do your own edit, unless you're Claire Danes, right? Or you're some other Hollywood star who has the cachet to warrant a, you know, professional director and editor. Otherwise, you are your own director, your own editor, and you're the talent, and after you put in all that time, it's like you're making minimum wage and there's no way that I can do that. So that's what's really stopped me from competing, and again within the systems that have been set up for this industry.

 

But a wise friend visited me a few weeks ago and he said, tobin, you know, I invited him to come and lay down at the foot of my kid's bed and just listen, because he got there before his wife did and afterward he took me aside and he like grabbed me by the shirt collar and he said Tobin, I have no idea that you could do that. I mean, I am a 53 year old man with no kids. I never would have read that book, and now I'm like all invested in the characters. I want to know what's coming next. I feel like I know each one of them. You like completely brought this thing to life and you have to get that out. You have to share that with other people. And so I thought, okay, this is it.

 

I cannot no longer do this you know, and so we went downstairs and we had this brainstorm and, of course, we came up against the incredible might of the legal departments at publishing houses. Right, they own the intellectual property, the rights to the intellectual property for these works of art, and you can't just read books that are copyrighted on a podcast. So, and again, I've come up against that objection just internally as well, as I've considered this.

 

Dean: I wonder is it any different? Is there no mechanism set up similar to doing cover songs, like? Is there no way that, like, if you're a band or a singer and you perform, you record a cover of somebody's song, you just you have there's a statutory royalty that you pay, but they're almost always cleared, and it's an interesting dynamic. I wonder if there's anything set up like that with audio books.

Tobin: Yeah, well, in my research and I did some like good old-fashioned Googling and I brought AI into it as well what I have discovered is that they would not like me to be doing it just one-to-one and I'm likely to get either a cease and desist or worse. But there are a couple of avenues that do create sort of similar provisions, but not one-to-one with the cover scenario. The first one is I can just choose to perform works that are already in the public domain and no longer covered by copyright.

Dean: I'm just going to wonder about that. I'm sure there's a lot of the classics are like that, yeah.

Tobin: Yeah, winnie the Pooh, all the Winnie the Pooh are in there and that's, incidentally, what we've started with.

 And then there is the Fair Use Act where, if I add more than just the straight reading of the text, you know, hey, stay tuned, we're going to discuss some of the vocab words and we're going to have a discussion about what the author themes that the author was trying to convey within tonight's reading. And then the other piece is right, it's the timepiece right. So my friend said he said, yeah, it takes a long time, but you're already doing it every night, you already go in there and read them, right, you just tap a hell mic on there and then you know, you just position it as this is the pure transmission during actual story time in our home, right, and that's almost like in position at like a feature, not a bug. So there's the little exchanges for my kids and them asking questions and, a little off the topic, you know, joke and maybe one of the kids you know, toots. I mean, it's like you know that's why it's not Either way.

 Yeah, hey look, I might feel a little bit about that.

 Dean: That's funny, that's right, that's funny.

 Tobin: So that's really what we've, where we're headed with this. I've got a little website created and I've got the trailer created and I'm really excited and inspired, and the goal is create enough of a groundswell of listenership, excitement, enthusiasm with these works that are already in the public domain, such that I get noticed by publishers and authors and they are become willing to or even approach me about. Hey, can we have our author featured on story time at Tobin and then maybe you can do a an interview afterward and share where the your audience can find her other work Right, right, so now it's collaboration, not competition, right, yeah, no, that makes total sense.

 Dean: I mean they're so. Are you gonna do it by video or audio?

 Tobin: Well, I want to. That's the trouble is, you know, in a highly visual world. Right, we're on a podcast right now, but you know we're both on screen as well. As I as a marketer, I think. Oh well, you know, reels are really amazing for creating reach, but I this is there's something that is really pure about an audio only experience, and part of the positioning is look, in this world of hyper. You know, screen time media round the clock. As parents, we really struggle to find entertainment that is screen free and storytelling. You know it really is an auditory experience and so we don't. I don't want to muddle that with getting visuals.

 Dean: Yeah, that's great. So there's certainly then you're taking it like I mean picking a lane right and having the. I really do like this idea of the taking the public domain ones or known things and building an audience that way. But then there's also the opportunity, just like you said, to now introduce you. Once you build that audience, that reach is the asset, right, that's what's really valuable is being able to now you've got, you know, thousands or hundreds of thousands of, or millions of listeners, you know, an audience of that. That now becomes, just like you said, they're going to be pursuing you to perform their new book or to do and to introduce them. It becomes a real. You can become a curator of new stuff, you know, introduce things to people.

 Tobin: Yeah.

 Dean: And building that audience.

 Tobin: you know, yeah, and there's so many.

 Dean: I mean kids stuff is just there's so much reach for that. You know you look at these. We had a friend. I remember this. I always bring it up to him because if you're seeing on YouTube Ryan's toys, it's one of the most popular YouTube channels we do about, you know, $5 million a month now on, yeah, on YouTube. And he I've got a friend here in Winterhaven. He adopted two, two boys, and we came up with the idea of a toy review podcast. Before Ryan did the thing, we had the logo and everything done up and the idea was go, we'd take the boys to Toys or Us, we'd let them run and pick any, pick one toy and then we'd come back and they would unbox it, play with it and then they would give the review and the thing was you buy toy now as the right thing.

 And that was going to be the format. And, you know, for whatever reason, his wife wasn't thrilled about the idea of the kids doing that stuff like that, so we ended up not doing it. But then, you know, Ryan's toys came in and it was a, you know, big hit when I first saw that they had done, you know, $3 million in the first. You know, in a year that they had done and now they're you know huge numbers and you see so many kids. You know some of the biggest YouTube channels that you've never really heard of are kids, kids related. You know, so it's crazy. So there is that. I think you're right on track and you're passionate about it and it's unique in a way. That is what is the landscape of people doing this type of podcast.

 Tobin: Yeah, that's a great question.

 You know I don't want to come off as being any kind of way, but it's not great.

 I mean what's out there is, I mean it's great for me, but it's like you know, it's people who don't have the, don't have the talent, that have not cultivated the skills that embodying the character and really bringing the characters to life and telling these stories in an engaging way.

 I mean, I do know of there's a preschool or kindergarten teacher out there with a story time kind of podcast and this way I know that there's not like a provision for cover works that would protect us from that kind of use, but he was reading magic treehouse books and the author says and assisted him and but you know, it's mostly just people reading, kind of just like they normally read, and kind of like cheesy, hokey voices like you'd expect in like a preschool or kindergarten class, and it's just like it's not what I would reach for, like there's not a solution to the problem other than, of course, paid, audible, you know, and like that.

 There's not like a podcast that does it for me in terms of when I'm reaching for a, I'm in a road trip with my kids. Hey, I want to put something on that isn't going to be flooding them with visual stimulus and advertising to them, right? There's nothing available like that, so that's why it's a little weird, like I'm almost like first in, you know, like in the category here it feels kind of right, you know it's.

 Dean: So I wonder that children's book category seems like there's a huge number of people that want to get into that world in that, you know, I mean self publishing on Amazon and independent publishing of children's books that there may be a whole audience of people who would love to you know, partner with you in a way that you almost become development. You know, on their way to getting a publishing deal or on their way to getting you could almost be like I'm just thinking out loud, right, because the first time I've thought about this kind of thing, but this is what these discussions are valuable for is what, if you kind of positioned yourself as an A and R kind of you know, an artist and repertoire kind of talent scout, that you look for all of the books that have promised that you could bring them to life, your performance of the book would make a otherwise kind of lost in the sea of endless children's books that, like you said, even if people do the audiobook, they get out there but it's only their family that gets the books, nobody's, there's no discovery mechanism for choosing the children's books over there. So maybe being you discovering this children's where you could be the Elton John to somebody's Bernie Taupe. You know that somebody's writing these children's books and you're bringing them to life through your readings and you can tell you know the stories or the. It's a pretty interesting, it's a pretty interesting model. I'm here at the studio on map right here, juan, guys producing the show. There They've just written the children's book and illustrated and are in the process of getting it up. But I mean it's so easy to see that there's so many. It's a thing you know. I mean there's. That might be a really interesting way of kind of building that audience, you know.

 But initially you need that reach there's and that's what building it through a podcast per se is a little. The podcast is not a great lead generator, right, a podcast is a much better lead conversion tool and audience building, you know I mean audience nurturing tool, that you get to know people kind of thing. But it's usual that it's not, especially now because there are so many podcasts that even podcast discovery is a little bit, you know, more difficult. So I always look at, if you're going to do a podcast, I say to people, and you certainly want to monetize it, it's not going to be a situation where you put up the podcast and then all of a sudden, everybody's going to find you. You still have to go out and find the audience. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, unless you're doing it on YouTube, which is a search engine, essentially you know you can build.

 I think that's the way you can build an audience on YouTube in a way that you can't build an audience on iTunes or Spotify. You know in that people are constantly searching for things.

 Tobin: Love that. So a couple of things I want to speak to there. This idea around building an audience, what you know so funny I'm old enough that I actually had Frank Kern's mass control product when it came out. One of I don't know one of the distinctions that I think he created, invented, was this Hester method. Remember that? Yes, of course.

 Yeah, so it was like go in and you know, like make friends, make nice in groups, communities, where your audience is, and then answer people's questions and be in authority and then and it's like you know, don't be a dick, and stuff like that Right, well, we're looking at converting that strategy into and this thing is so beautiful because there's nothing to buy here, right, so there's, no, there's nothing to buy yet right now.

 What there is, to just get to know it and listen and get yourself interested in coming back for more and like that, because that creates a sort of a workaround for, from the sort of no self promotion, no pitching, that is now standard.

 It's like, hey, there's nothing to buy here, just go listen to my podcast and you can have something wholesome for your family and your kids to listen to. And then, so you know, there are in every city and every county. There are 10 different parent groups parents of Asheville, parents of Orlando and it's like some of them have really incredible engagement, right. So part of the strategy is going to be like hey, you know like you struggle to find wholesome screen free stuff for your kids Like I did too, and that's why I created this and you can go and listen for free and love it. And, you know, leave us a review if you want and like that. So that's one of the strategies that we're going to use to spread the word and if we find a that we're still flagging the, you know, the no self promotion rule, which you got to be a special kind of. You know, karen, yeah, yeah, in order to shut somebody down for that.

 Dean: Right, exactly.

 Tobin: Yeah, Then we'll have other people do it like oh my gosh love this podcast I just got turned on to and you have to listen to it too, so it's not coming. It's not self promotion, it's just somebody spreading the word about this amazing.

 So I'd love to get your take on sort of branching off of that, because that sort of is it accomplishes the same goal and perhaps with greater efficacy because it's just in the perception of other members of the audience Now, never mind the admins who are in there trying to reinforce the rules and see who's breaking them and, like, have that whole ego experience or whatever but also just when social proof comes from truly not the creator and the person who stands to benefit, it tends to have more weight. Right, yeah, absolutely yeah. That's what makes it social proof instead of just, you know, a fail phase, right, exactly. So I'd love to, if anything comes to mind about that, how to sort of do it better or with greater, a greater sense of authenticity or a greater chance of it, you know, sort of seeping through and doing its work.

 Dean: Yeah, part of the thing of doing that is making them great, you know, is that they really are good, that that builds its own legs. And on momentum, you know, that's something that people remark about, things that are remarkable, you know, and that's kind of what we want to do, but it sounds like what you're doing is pretty remarkable in terms of the feedback that you've gotten and the way and it tells you, tell your passionate about it, and so building that audience. Where is it at right now? You've got no, it's not up into the world yet, or have you?

 Tobin: recorded Only a first edition of the trailer, which is, admittedly, on listening a few times. It's long with it needs to, we need to get the get the act out and trim about a minute or two off it. So, but yeah, so you could listen to a trailer, but I'm not telling people about it because I want to have a few episodes that before I right bell.

 Dean: Yeah, and how many? How many stories are there that you could tell, like, what would be your publishing calendar? Because all these contextual things are really what you need to figure out, you know, is this going to be? Is it a weekly thing? Is it a daily thing? Is it, you know? How is it serialized? Are you reading, like, is each episode a complete book that you're reading? And what kind of books are they? What age? Or are the children's books? Because you mentioned, like, harry Potter, that's a long thing, but Winnie the Pooh is like the you know picture turning pages. Yeah, what's the? Yeah, what's the vision for? Totally yeah.

 Tobin: So some very short stories occasionally may finish in a single episode, but I read for between 20 and 40 minutes in a session and that's mostly good for like a chapter or a section of a book. So it could take anywhere from you know two or three episodes, right, and that with a given chapter is an episode, and so it's not quite like it's sort of a hybrid of serial or an episodic, because it's chunks, like a few three to five or 10 episodes make up a book which is a complete package.

 Dean: Yeah.

 Tobin: And that'll be clearly labeled and also in the description it'll say you know we're reading this, this chapter of this book.

 Dean: go back and start at the beginning of the part one of six, part one of four yeah.

 Tobin: Exactly so. And then the cadence releases. I aim for three per week, that's kind of a groove to where, like, there's some stuff to dive into and a listener could actually get their feet wet and really experience and get a sense of it.

 Dean: So that's fantastic. So then you start to think this is a reach issue, right, like so you've got the, you've got the capability to create them, you can record and you can produce the actual episodes. That's one thing, right. So now you'll, you're building that asset, that in a year you'll have 150 of these, which is a nice footprint, right, but you're not, yeah, and so then it becomes the number. One thing is about reach of who is this going to.

 So you know you'll, I think you'll build some organic reach just by being on, you know, being Spotify and iTunes and some of those, and if there's a way to kind of orchestrate getting grassroots kind of things like you said, like getting in these groups on Facebook and building that distribution kind of the street team to get the word out about the podcast. But once you build that kind of audience there, then you might be. You start to think who would be a good sponsor for something like this. Like you, you think back to when I was growing up. You know we had Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom was like a show that came on before the wonderful world of Disney, which was also a sponsored show, you know.

 And so you start to think who else who would want to be in front of that group of people? Like, what kind of audience are you building? Who else would be interested in that audience? And how could you align in a way that this becomes a you know a great thing for them and maybe there's one sponsor, maybe there's one you know company. That you're kind of aligned with. That philosophically gels with that If you think about the big picture of it, that they want to get in front of that audience, and maybe there's, you know, or maybe it's one, maybe it is a publisher who wants to get their book featured on your that you now become. It's not of like hey, stop reading our stuff too. Hey, will you read our book? I mean, that's the way. That's the thing, right Is that you find the ones that are looking that would view it as a, you know, as a good thing, exactly.

 You got almost like a what a great like market research tool, in a way too right Like, if you think about the way of gauging that, the response or the reception to this particular story, that you can create some, you know, almost curating or discovering new, new people. That could be a neat way. There's lots of opportunity when you kind of look at the through line of this, that three times a week we're putting out a kid's you know audio. It's going to be, you know, books that are. What is the? What's the sort of philosophy that you're trying to curate here? Or what's the? Is there a you know a meaning or a message? Or is it, you know, inspiring kids? Is it educating kids? Is it empowering kids? Is it? What are the kind of values of the content that you're creating?

 Tobin: Love that? Yeah, so it is. It really is about inspiring kids, developing, cultivating that love of literature, of stories, of creativity itself. Also, you know I'm going to be talking about, you know, my own journey, just in snippets and snatches, and really my journey is very much the journey that many people can relate to around really suppressing the creative urge. I mean, to be fair, I have been actually doing the limited audience of just my kids all these years. But be that as it may, suppressing the creative instinct to share it for so long and feeling that sense of being stifled and then having the experience of now sharing it is in itself right, a sort of bit of that and, as Elizabeth Gilbert would say, that big magic, right, just like living this life of creativity that is beyond fear.

 Dean: Yeah, yeah, I love that and that's kind of a thing. But there's the opportunity I think to. That's the big picture of it. But you can also kind of frame it in a way that it's pointed in a direction that could turn into something and, like, give yourself the best chance for that. Because if you look at it that you're you know what is the kind of way. Well, what would be your monetization goal for it If you said, like, is it just something that you want to do as a fun side thing, or did you see it as something that you could build into your primary livelihood, type of thing?

 Tobin: Yeah, it's a great question. So the truth is, I actually don't really know what is possible in this arena. You know, I know that what most audiobook narrators make is not interesting to me, right, and that's why this other whole other avenue where there can be these other you know deals, and there's also just, you know, listenership, engagement, paychecks, that the different platforms are cutting to people. And you mentioned YouTube as a place where audience can get cultivated. I intend to have episodes be there as well, with, just you know, some screen animation on there as the visual, since it is an audio only thing. But the truth is I don't have any frame of reference, but I would but just be clear, I would very much love to have this take over the next, you know, one to three years as a primary way of, you know, generating my livelihood and, like anybody, I want to be wealthy and like, have nice things and all that.

 Dean: Yeah, and so I think part of it is that the real way to that is going to be by having the audience. That's the most valuable thing that you could do is create this audience of your, of you know very specific targeted group Right. So what age is the sweet spot for what you're kind of?

 Tobin: looking on here. Well, it's interesting because I like reading books that are a little older, just for my own personal enjoyment, yeah. But then there is a little bit of like well, winnie the Pooh, even though it does have a weirdly broad appeal, like my 12 year old daughter is still able to get down with it, you know, and four year olds can get down with it.

 Dean: So it kind of feels like the four to 10 kind of range is who you're talking about, right?

 Tobin: Yeah, or maybe even five to 10, but you know it's better if they start listening earlier and stay later.

 Dean: Yeah, so what would that? So I wonder, if you think about that is like how many? You know how many five to 10 year old kids are there? Millions, you know. I'm always curious about that because I know there's this is like the biggest generation, right? There's there's 10,000 people a day turning 65 right now in America. You know, hey Siri, how many people are aged five to 10 in the United States right now? More of children by age six to eight, zero to five, 22 million, six to 11, there's 24.5 million, 24 million people. It's a pretty good size audience, right.

 Tobin: Hey, I would say. And then there's also the rest of the English speaking word.

 Dean: Exactly. That's just which should probably, you know, maybe double or triple that number of there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe there's a hundred million, yeah, and that's pretty interesting. But to have an audience of, you know, even a hundred thousand of those is a very valuable, a very valuable thing. Yeah, totally so. I think that part of it is the core of it has to be able to be doing it, even and that's why it's something where the passion comes into it that your kids, you know how old are your kids?

 Tobin: They're actually aging rapidly out of the eye. That's why I feel a certain sense of urgency to get and that's it's worth mentioning there nine and 12 right now. Okay, and so I'm sort of kicking myself when I started this five years ago. But you know that's time to plant an apple tree. Second best time is today. So my, my sense is like I got a year or two to really lay down some episodes, get an audience so that I can transition to actually just reading in their absence and it will change things, but look things change?

 Dean: Yeah, absolutely, and maybe that's the thing that maybe every third episode is without them. So you're all along. It's normal that you're doing one without them.

 Toban: Interesting, interesting. Yeah, normalizing it ahead of time, yeah, okay. And then that also frees me up if I go on a trip and I'm not with them. And the other thing, too is, you know, I, early on in my career, I had, I was fortunate enough to have Adrian of yoga, with Adrian as a client, and I don't know if you're hip to that, but they're, they dominate the yoga, the online yoga space that they have a video on demand business that is amazing, huge and and really sweet people.

 And the guy called Chris Sharp was is the sort of business, end of that business. And Adrian Miller is the is the talent. And Chris, what was that thread I was on? I can't remember what were you on about before. What were you on about before?

 Dean: I was saying normalizing, making episodes. You know every third episode without the kids. Oh, now I remember.

 Tobin: Yeah, so you know, it started out as just doing free yoga videos and put them on YouTube and then, all of a sudden, she had millions and millions of subscribers, yeah, and she had this amazing audience and it was like, hey, maybe we should do like a 12 city tour where I go and teach yoga, like at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, to 10,000 people in the room. Yeah, it's like what about?

 Dean: that.

 Tobin: And it's like. I mean, maybe it's not the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, Maybe it's like the New York, you know city library and it's, you know, a hundred kids or a thousand kids, Maybe that's the whole point.

 Dean: I mean wonder, if you know, I just had an idea of maybe one element of it to get sort of a live thing is to do the recording on Clubhouse or something where people can listen in, Like if you do a story time, you do, if you're doing some episodes without the kids, that maybe you just do it live where you're recording but it's on Clubhouse and people can listen in or whatever. You know, that's an interesting. I just did a series like Clubhouse has kind of changed and evolved as a medium. They've really figured out the audio and intimate form of gathering in the audience. But you know, being able to, you know, do that and then maybe even shout out people or whatever, where there feels like they're on there, you know, that's a pretty. There's a pretty interesting thing. I just did a series for real estate where I did five Clubhouses in a row at noon where I did every you know, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, a different, a different topic for those five days and had, you know, people come on live. But I recorded them as podcasts because you get the recording of it and so I recorded them for the purpose of using it as a podcast but also to transcribe and turn into a book, you know, and so I look at that as, yeah, you're.

 I think the core really has to be I was love watching Mr Beast kind of unpack what his secret sauce is and he says their number one focus always is just make the best videos possible. That's the whole thing. That's his single minded thing is just make great videos and I think would translate to that, just record great podcasts. You know there's something to that. Now you can't just that's not to say in any way, that's just enough.

 You know that you've now also got to think about how to gather the audience and get the word out there and do it with an eye to in two years or three years, what does this look like when you've got a hundred thousand or more listeners and you are now a known thing that it would be. It would be great for you to be able to break a new book or to introduce a new. You know, a favorite thing that people you're going to, I don't think. I don't think content is going to be a problem for you. Like, if you just look right now, if you just looked on Amazon or Kindle or where you know, amazon, I guess is where people go to publish all the independent kids book. I think you could see who's independently published and think about ways to, you know, feature those where now, like you're saying, you're not asking for permission, it's a benefit and honor for them to get featured on to read your, their, your, their book.

 Tobin: Yeah, interesting, you know. Of course, I'm sure you're familiar with the sort of pay-to-play model where you know content creators or people with a developing platform pay to be on a podcast. So that is another sort of monetization strategy where it's like, cool, if you're not like one of my favorite authors or you're not already established, it's a thousand bucks. I'll read your story or part of it, I'll do an interview with you and then you're exposed to a hundred thousand people instantly or whatever it is. Thousand, five thousand, whatever the package is right. And then another idea that I had was you familiar with Patreon? Yes, yeah, so similar to the, this idea of Clubhouse, but like, hey, you know, free, free, free, free, free gift, free, free, gift, free, free gift, yeah, yeah. And then if you're, if you give a dollar or five dollars a month, whatever it is, then you get access to these other cool things.

 Dean: Nps, you know, you're entered into the monthly if you're an aspiring and and I would do whatever I could to build an email list of subscribers, which is so much more valuable than just this ethereal podcast subscribers or people that are regular listeners, because you can't really control that. It's so much better to get how always have something that there's a reason that they'll subscribe by email. Yeah great reminder.

 Tobin: Yeah, and I mean, do they're like put it in the outro? Like I guess it is yeah, yeah.

 Dean: I guess it is yeah, for sure, always. And that's so you start to think about what could you do. Could that be like a you know where it becomes a curator of and reviewer of books, or and when you select things? I mean, you know what's very interesting? The thing that most people don't really understand about what Reese Witherspoon just did was she built her Reese's book club. You know, modeling simply Oprah's book club. So she built her thing and she would go and you know, include. She'd find authors, like find books that she really liked. She would go and and feature them in her book club and the data that she got on that was who's really what books are getting traction. And she would option the right to make the movies of those books and so she was using it as a feeder thing to create the. You know what market research tells her are stories that people want to hear, and then she'd make the movie and they'd be big hits. And she just sold her Sunshine production studio for $900 million and that's you know. But she was so amazing because we saw a documentary that was, I think, called like the time is now, or something like that.

 But it was all these angry Hollywood women directors who were, you know, talking about the patriarchy and how they you know they actually tried to sue the studio system for showing favoritism to men and you know all their sexist practices and they would meet at one of these ladies houses every Saturday for a year to build their case and try, and, you know, sue the the studio system. But then Reese Witherspoon was on the, on the documentary, and she said, you know, I went to all the studio heads and sat down with them and said, hey, have you got anything for me? Or what have you got in development? And she said she was shocked at how little content was being developed that was for, you know, strong, empowered women characters, kind of thing. So instead of getting mad at the system and trying to sue the patriarchy to get what they're entitled to, she said, so my partner and I decided we'll start a production company and we'll make these kinds of movies that I wanted to and see.

 So she went out and did something about it and created this whole thing, and now she just sold for $900 million, you know, and that's. It's just such a, rather than trying to fight the system is there's nobody holding anybody back from any of those other women could have done exactly what Reese did, but they were so busy trying to fight the patriarchy about it and try and fight that. It's not fair the way things are done, and I think that there's a way you could almost become that. You know you become that voice for people, that trusted curator of an introducer of great children's content. You know love it.

 Tobin: I love it, I really love this, that the framing up of and that's one of the things I love about you is just the way that your mind works around. How do we create a game that we can win? Right, exactly I that of fighting up against, yeah, banging our heads up against the systems that are not created in order to have the result that we want.

 Yeah, we're just going to go out, and it's like we don't often think about this like be the change you want to see in the world in through that lens, right, but it sort of is like that Like, okay, go, I'm just going to go out and do this, yeah, and there's nothing to stop me and it sounds like fun.

 Dean: Yeah, and that's kind of the cool thing because then when you're looking at it, that now you're not just even about books, that it could be that you could feature music and feature all the things that you know. Now that you've got that audience of these people, then now you've got the things that you know you could do. Look at the daily wire right now in the last year, everything that they've done with you know. Did you follow the story about Harry's razors that the daily wire had? Harry's razors were like a huge advertiser, daily wire podcasts and website and then one day one of the daily wire you know show hosts said something that was that Harry's didn't buy into. Like they were talking about some, about men or men and women or women or something like that Talk about gender identity and Harry's said, you know, you know, woke moment canceled them. They basically canceled the daily wire. We're not doing any more advertising. And so Jeremy, the guy that, jeremy Borenger, the president of the daily wire, said, okay, well, rather than replace the advertiser, who we're going to be always at the mercy of advertisers who might not like what we say, like almost like surprise, some conservative on a conservative platform said something conservative, that's kind of a weekend, you get canceled for it. They said, well, let's say, replacing the advertiser, let's just make the razors. And he started Jeremy's razors. And now they have this super successful subscription razor business for men. That that's really the thing that they're doing. And they did the same thing with Hershey. Hershey canceled them as well and they opened up. You know they have two chocolate bars that they sell now, and so it's amazing, once you have that audience built that you're, you know you've got such a huge platform there. You know, building that audience is really where it comes down to.

 I think, now that I think about it, how Ben Shapiro how they started the Daily Wire was you know, they really got venture funding told the story of going into the meeting and just drawing on a napkin, basically showing dollar sign money, and then drawing an arrow to Facebook and then drawing an arrow from Facebook to the website and then from the website back to the dollar sign. He said that's the business model. We're going to take money, we're going to run ads on Facebook, driving people to the website. We're going to build our audience. We're going to take the money and we're going to put it back into Facebook and we're going to create a never-ending money machine, which is exactly what they've done. A $200 million a year business now, wow, yeah. So just simple models like I think you're onto something there the desire people have been reading their kids from the beginning of time. It's not going away, it's not going, it's not getting old. Yeah, five to 10 year olds are still. They're always going to want to hear stories, you know.

 Tobin: Totally. And the problem is a lot of parents are tired at the end of the day and you know they want to be doing it. Or maybe they're like they can't muster the gumption to put the effort into the different voices, or they feel embarrassed, or it's just too much work, or they just.

 Sometimes they just want to lay there and snuggle with their kid and be entertained, right along with them, but not be staring at a bunch of blue lights, right, that's super smart, just all the different narrative positioning it's like hey, as a parent myself, I get all of these angles, except for not the one where I feel embarrassed to read in different characters Right, right, right yeah.

 Dean: Well, I think I mean it's, I think you really got something there. I mean it's such a you could see it finished. I can imagine it right. Imagine that if this did exist, you can see. And there's other kids platforms that have millions of audience.

 Tobin: Wow Huge. It's the most reliable. Yeah, I love that.

 Dean: Well, what's your takeaway here? What's the takeaway from?

Tobin: Well, just first of all, the reinforcement of the greatest challenge before me is reach is cultivating that reach, the idea of developing the values based philosophical positioning of the show and that guides their curation, so that parents can know on a deeper level what they're exposing their kids to on and what they can lean into and expect from that, beyond just nearly entertainment and just this idea of positioning myself in the show as almost like an A and R, where that's a whole other way. It's like hey, you're up and coming, I'm an exposure to my audience and this is the fee and this is one other way that we monetize here.

 Dean: Or you become the publisher in a lot of that. That's really. The next evolution is that you're publishing the content right.

Tobin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the idea that I love hearing because I didn't know this that Spotify and other podcast platforms are not great for the actual cultivation of the audience, and so that really reminds me I need to. Every episode has to get put out on YouTube as well.

And then just this idea of make it great. You know that would seem self evident, but you know it's important to have that as a reminder because it can feel tempting when you're tired and there's a million steps to. You know, just phone it in and that shit will never do. You know, might do here and there, but it's not any kind of foundation I want to build this thing on. So yeah, and then this idea of training the audience to expect that that sometimes it will just be me reading. Right Will not be, so that then I can begin to sort of wean off of that as my kids age out of the desire to have their daddy read to them.

Dean: Right, yeah. Well, maybe as they get older, maybe they will do some of the reading. Hello, you know, I mean maybe that they get bitten by that bug too. They trained under the master.

Tobin: Sometimes I'll just as an experiment to see if everybody's still paying attention, I will just start reading in my just regular old voice for the characters, and you know my kids will go. Daddy, do it normal when I do that.

Dean: That's funny. Right, right, right. That's funny because they're like that's not that character, right, that's not normal.

Tobin: What are you doing? Yeah?

Dean: You're ruining it, daddy, yeah.

Tobin: I love it.

Dean: Well, where, if people are listening and they want to kind of follow that journey and watch it all happen here, knowing that we kind of birthed it right here, where can people go to check it out? Cool?

Tobin: Well, you can go to storytimewithtoecom, okay, and there you'll find links to all the different podcast platforms. You can listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, and then you can also subscribe, you can join the email list and never miss an episode, and obviously I'll be. You know, after this conversation I'll also be figuring out cool stuff to give away, you know, for the folks on the list. And yeah, I just reach out right now I don't even have, like it's still in the works, I don't even have an auto. Respond to this hey, welcome to storytime with Tobin. It's just, you know, but that'll be coming. And but I would love to hear from you if you have ideas, or you got kids, or you got kids and you want to listen, or if you have ideas.