0:00

Welcome Mere Mortalites to another round of

0:01

the conversations today.

0:03

I have Jason Hudgins here

0:03

from podcast guru

0:07

who is the lead

0:07

app developer, I guess,

0:09

and perhaps even the

0:09

the co-founder of a

0:13

I suppose, a business that you guys have have going on.

0:15

But you mentioned

0:15

that you're in your lair

0:18

and you're ruining

0:18

the cypherpunk, the,

0:22

the crypto layer,

0:25

all the, all the perhaps

0:25

shadiness that's going on.

0:28

And I wanted to ask you,

0:28

first of all, is Panama

0:32

nice and July? And should I come the.

0:36

You should definitely

0:36

going to Panama and

0:39

to locals here. There's there's

0:41

two seasons of the wet and the dry season.

0:44

But to me, it's just I'm

0:45

from North America and I'm used to the

0:47

for it. So here it's like this

0:48

same all the time.

0:50

So it's it's

0:50

like it ranges from like

0:54

88 to

0:54

92 degrees Fahrenheit.

0:59

If you do Fahrenheit, if you do Celsius, we're talking like,

1:00

you know, low thirties.

1:04

And it's always like that. Like every day.

1:07

Yeah, that's like every month. That's, that's sorry,

1:09

my temperature.

1:11

I love that. I love the

1:12

that kind of moderate

1:15

temperate climate. And yeah,

1:16

I was asking that

1:19

because I am travelling to Brazil in about a month's time,

1:21

actually, and I've got about

1:22

three months there

1:25

and then I've kind of got

1:25

this month gap

1:27

and then working my way up into to North America,

1:28

some kind of like trying to find some, some places

1:30

to fill some time.

1:32

And I have been

1:32

to Central America,

1:35

Guatemala and Mexico.

1:38

I guess this is North America still. But yeah, I'm I'm tempted.

1:42

I'm tempted by kind of like the Panama

1:43

Costa Rica type of area,

1:47

El Salvador. But there's there's a

1:49

lot of interesting places. And I haven't even

1:51

Explorer Panama. I will say that

1:54

the area

1:54

I live in, Panama City,

1:56

there are not a lot of like really nice beaches

1:57

that are accessible,

2:00

like to even get to a swimmable beach,

2:01

you got to go like an hour

2:04

down the Panamanian

2:04

highway to get to one.

2:07

And it's mainly

2:07

because the canal,

2:09

the water around the the cities,

2:12

they tell me it's cleaned up a lot over the years,

2:14

but there's so much boat

2:14

traffic

2:17

that the canal water

2:17

comes into like the Bay

2:20

of Panama, and it's just

2:20

nobody's swimming.

2:22

Yeah, like it's kind of greasy. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah.

2:24

Not so nice.

2:26

How long have you been in Panama for? Has it been a.

2:31

It's between a year and a year and a half. So I think I came here

2:35

late 2022. Okay, cool.

2:37

And what was, what was the, the drive to to move

2:38

down the.

2:45

like, okay, so

2:47

they used to have a deal

2:47

where you could get

2:50

a permanent residence down here. Really easy

2:54

for, you know, a few thousand dollars. So we came down here

2:56

and got that

3:00

and you were thinking about it, you know, maybe a retirement spot

3:02

later in life.

3:04

I mean, this store is going to be long. Yeah, not here.

3:08

I wanted to do a bio of you as well,

3:10

so perhaps you could mix that in with the with the story

3:11

of moving down there.

3:15

Okay. Well, I mean, it's really

3:15

about my kids, My son,

3:18

he he was around

3:18

15 years old,

3:20

and I started hitting it my mind is like, you know, he's not going

3:22

to be around much longer.

3:24

And I've been doing this

3:26

crazy paced corporate

3:26

IT lifestyle for 20 years.

3:30

I haven't really got

3:30

to spend time with him.

3:32

Couple more years, he's going to be going to college somewhere

3:34

and then off on his own.

3:36

And like I felt like I only have like a

3:37

tiny window to, like, quit working so hard and

3:40

hang out with him

3:40

and then, you know,

3:44

Podcast guru had always been something that that mean

3:45

if you guys co-founded and had been burning

3:47

on the side so as a bonus I would

3:49

get to work on that more

3:52

so I quit my job in the U.S. and then I looked into

3:54

getting health care

3:58

for my family. So we had the typical,

4:01

you know, coverage you get when you work for a company, which is pretty good. But

4:04

when you're self-employed,

4:04

all that goes away.

4:07

And it was around

4:10

2 to $3000 a month

4:10

to get the equivalent

4:13

coverage

4:13

that I had, like company.

4:15

Was like,

4:15

Damn, that was crazy.

4:18

Exactly.

4:20

So then I priced it in Panama, like, how much would it cost me

4:21

to get the same coverage in

4:23

Panama? And it was like $340.

4:28

So I said

4:28

I so I can move to Panama.

4:31

That delta right there. Well, I pretty much cover

4:32

my rent.

4:34

I don't have to own a car here because Uber drives

4:36

are like three, 3 to 4 bucks anywhere

4:38

you want to go.

4:41

And yeah,

4:41

there are just so many.

4:43

Plus I get to experience a new country. So. So it

4:45

there are a lot of it.

4:48

Another one is to is taxes

4:48

right so if you're

4:52

if your income is derived

4:52

from outside of Panama

4:55

like podcast is then you

4:55

don't pay any tax on that.

4:58

Now that would be an

4:58

awesome deal of podcast.

5:01

You actually made a profit. But it does it.

5:04

So I'm still waiting

5:04

to leverage that.

5:06

Yeah, there are a lot of reasons like that that made me

5:08

want to come down here and check it out.

5:10

So here we are. Yeah. Interesting. Because yeah, it's I've met a

5:13

couple of Americans who I,

5:16

I used to work with here and it always seemed

5:17

rather difficult

5:21

to kind of like escape,

5:21

I guess,

5:23

because there were

5:23

so many reasons.

5:25

Like, I believe

5:25

you guys get double taxed.

5:27

So if you earn money here

5:27

in Australia, we tax you

5:31

and then the US taxes

5:31

you as well.

5:35

Yeah, it's the same thing here, except there is a foreign income

5:36

exclusion credit,

5:39

which is like up

5:39

to 120,000 a year.

5:43

Now it doesn't

5:43

really apply to me

5:45

because like I said, I'm not make it illegal. I'm like, I quit my job.

5:47

I'm just living off of savings right now. But if I did have

5:49

an income, if I was paying taxes

5:53

of 220,000

5:53

a year, I could write off.

5:55

And and I think the only thing

5:56

you would have to pay

5:58

is Social Security tax.

5:58

Okay.

6:00

Whatever that would

6:00

come out to. Yeah. Yeah.

6:02

And then the other reason,

6:02

I guess was like,

6:05

I've travelled a lot,

6:05

but I actually don't meet

6:07

that many Americans

6:07

really travelling.

6:09

I'm not sure it's

6:09

part of your culture

6:11

as much as in terms of at least the

6:14

backpacker type lifestyle.

6:16

Perhaps I, I was just more

6:16

in that world.

6:19

But I do remember this one

6:19

guy in Mexico who had a

6:24

he was organising

6:24

interviews for himself

6:27

for, for some companies

6:29

and he'd had like a little bit of a break off

6:30

and was like, I might as well

6:32

just travel somewhere. I haven't been outside

6:33

of the U.S. And he was down there,

6:35

but he had to like

6:38

make really sure

6:38

that he was booking rooms

6:41

where there wouldn't be a Spanish speaker

6:43

coming past. So you couldn't tell

6:44

where he was

6:46

because he was saying it kind of looked bad to have

6:48

a little bit of a break in his resume to to

6:49

to travel somewhere else.

6:53

And this was back

6:53

in 2018, 2019.

6:56

But yeah, it's it's

6:56

very different

6:58

lifestyle, I suppose, or culture compared to

7:01

what I'm used to here in Australia. Yeah.

7:03

I mean I can't I can't claim that any of my friends

7:05

are like chasing me down to Panama,

7:07

which is,

7:09

it's a shame really. But yeah, I, I would

7:10

agree with that sentiment.

7:15

Most of the people I've met around

7:15

hostels around here

7:18

have been, you know, from all over the place. A lot of Germans,

7:20

a lot of Europeans,

7:20

Canadians,

7:22

a lot of Canadians here

7:22

in Panama. Okay, that.

7:24

But not a whole lot

7:24

of Americans.

7:28

Yeah. And have you travelled

7:28

much before?

7:31

I'm just kind of starting

7:31

to, but,

7:34

like last year

7:34

I spent some time in

7:36

Madrid

7:36

and Spain in general,

7:39

and then a little bit of time in Portugal, which I enjoyed

7:41

quite a bit.

7:44

But yeah, I got a lot more travelling to do myself. Yeah, Yeah.

7:47

And you were mentioning the, I suppose like the 20 year

7:49

grind of the

7:52

what exactly

7:52

were you working in

7:54

before you started becoming full time I

7:56

guess on, on podcast gear. let's see.

8:00

Well I was a

8:00

Java enterprise developer,

8:03

which is a really boring job. This is a long time ago

8:06

when the mobile phone

8:06

revolution kind of hit,

8:09

and I've been trying to

8:14

I was trying to do some mobile app development just for fun on

8:16

a BlackBerry at the time.

8:19

And I was just it was just

8:19

really constraining.

8:21

It was like some ancient version of Java

8:23

that you could use, like you could

8:24

barely build anything cool with it

8:27

and then iPhone would come out. But the iPhone did not

8:30

give us a lot of people say, well, why did you start on

8:31

Android instead of iPhone?

8:33

And the reason is because

8:33

the Android developer kit

8:36

actually came out before the iOS Z code on Android for us.

8:40

So as soon as Android

8:40

was announced in 2007,

8:45

they were going to have what they call it, they call it a fireside

8:46

chat in Mountain View,

8:48

where you we could show up

8:48

and talk about this thing. So I bought a ticket

8:50

and went out there and met a bunch of their

8:54

early guys and I don't think any of them

8:55

are there anymore.

8:57

Just got really into that

8:57

ecosystem,

9:00

started building apps,

9:02

won a couple of prizes

9:02

for them,

9:05

and then I was in the Start-Up scene for a while.

9:09

actually one of my first apps was that was do with other

9:11

people was it was a media player

9:13

cartoon wiki,

9:16

which got me really

9:18

interested in what the multi media

9:18

apps on mobile.

9:21

But then it kind of life kicked in. I was like, Hey,

9:23

can we go on vacation?

9:25

And I'm like, I don't know if we're going to get to, you know,

9:26

the next round of funding. And, and it I was just

9:28

I wasn't a co-founder

9:31

of this company. It's kind of like a low

9:31

man in the in the pecking order.

9:35

So it just got really hard

9:35

to like plan activities

9:39

for the family within in the Start-Up scene. And I had a friend

9:41

back in Dallas say, Hey,

9:44

we're finally starting to do mobile. Why don't

9:45

you come down here and be be the global

9:48

mobile manager at this company? So then I got into the

9:49

corporate world again and

9:55

yeah, I just ended up I worked at Barclays

9:56

for a while. My last big corporate

9:57

job was USA,

9:59

you know,

9:59

just this big, monstrous

10:02

60,000 employee companies,

10:02

lots of stress,

10:06

lots of meetings,

10:06

lots of work on meetings.

10:09

Meetings, the bane of my existence.

10:13

Like I had very little and

10:13

I still couldn't handle.

10:17

Yeah, it gets to the point now hours. I if I have one

10:21

meeting that

10:21

I'm not looking forward to

10:25

and that can just make my whole day kind of sour, you know.

10:26

Yeah.

10:29

yeah, definitely. Definitely.

10:31

And I suppose the was it,

10:31

was there any like

10:36

I suppose you're talking about with your kids that was the precipitating

10:38

factor of,

10:41

of going down the how they handled

10:41

the move as well.

10:43

Cause I imagine they came down. Yeah. Yeah.

10:47

It's, you know

10:51

they were doing kind of online schooling

10:52

before in the US, so they just continue

10:55

doing the same online

10:55

school here.

10:58

it's a really different experience than I growing up

11:00

because they spend

11:02

80 or 90. Their social interaction

11:03

is all online. Yeah.

11:06

And they're still basically in the time zones, the same time

11:07

zone, roughly. So they're still doing

11:09

the same things

11:12

they did in Texas

11:12

and even in Texas.

11:15

You know, you get in the

11:15

summer and it's, you know,

11:18

July.

11:18

August is 105 degrees.

11:21

Nobody wants to go outside. So like,

11:24

they just grew up in an environment where they're

11:26

they're playing online and they're chatting

11:28

with their friends and

11:30

and they really just

11:30

continue that here.

11:33

My daughter does have a

11:33

she takes gymnastics here

11:36

and she's got a class

11:36

and there's a bunch of,

11:39

you know, Panamanian girls in there. So she's picking up Spanish for like really quick.

11:44

my son, he, he mostly

11:47

if I let him, he would

11:47

stay on his computer

11:49

all day long and do nothing else. Yeah, yeah, but it.

11:53

I know you like to go the gym, so one of the things that is

11:57

great is like, if you were to hire a personal trainer

11:58

in the US, a good one,

12:00

it probably, I don't know what the rates are, but like in Dallas,

12:02

if I recall it

12:04

like 80 or 90 an hour

12:04

here, they're way

12:08

cheaper,

12:08

like 25 to 30 an hour.

12:11

So that's how it

12:11

what I do for my son.

12:14

I had hired him a personal trainer. So he's hitting the gym

12:15

now, so he's at least not

12:20

on the computer all day long. He's getting

12:22

he's getting some exercise

12:22

and he likes it. Nice.

12:24

So now that's that sounds

12:24

great, man. It's.

12:27

Yeah, because I was really wondering, like, how what's Jason to it

12:28

in Panama?

12:31

I just was kind of trying

12:31

to think like what what

12:33

series of logical events

12:33

would lead to that.

12:36

And then the last thing just before we perhaps

12:38

get onto podcast gear and some

12:39

before we talk was

12:42

you mentioned stem cells

12:42

and that's that's

12:45

something as as I've been

12:45

getting older and just

12:49

go into the gym so much, you know, all of these

12:52

like mini niggles

12:52

which I'm just like, jeez,

12:55

that would be nice if,

12:55

if that could

12:58

would go away. I'd go away quickly.

13:01

And I've heard stem cells are a really good

13:02

for a lot of

13:04

those sorts of things. Perhaps it's just a trend

13:05

or something, but,

13:07

yeah, you're looking at doing some stem

13:09

cell therapy for yourself.

13:12

Yeah. I had a torn

13:13

meniscus on my left knee

13:16

and just got it repaired,

13:16

and I'm hoping that'll

13:19

help with the recovery.

13:23

the only difference between stem cells in the U.S.,

13:24

from what I understand,

13:26

which is not a lot, is you can get the same treatment in the U.S.,

13:28

but here they're allowed

13:30

to get the microcosm

13:32

of the MSE stem cells, and they can actually

13:34

reproduce them four or five times in the lab.

13:37

So you can get like a lot more of them. But for some reason the US

13:38

are not allowed to like,

13:41

I guess culture them. Is that the right word

13:42

to have them multiply? but yeah,

13:45

that's, that's what they do

13:47

down here in Panama. There's a couple

13:48

of really big clinics and

13:50

if you're already here,

13:53

they give you like

13:53

a really good discount.

13:55

I'm not going to say it's cheap. It's it's still

13:56

pretty expensive, but

13:59

it's like

13:59

if you're in the U.S.

14:02

and you want it to come down to here, do it, you would pay a lot more

14:03

than what I'm having to pay.

14:05

Yeah, Yeah. And I think I heard

14:06

just in general, that's

14:09

that was like the place that was perhaps

14:11

the leading innovators of, of stem cell therapy

14:13

and and things like that.

14:16

I'm not sure it could be true. I know there's it's

14:18

popular here and it's also

14:21

a big thing in Costa Rica. how I found out

14:23

about this place is like,

14:26

because I live

14:26

in this big building and

14:29

I, I just run into people,

14:29

talk to them,

14:33

and I kept meeting

14:33

this guy. James.

14:35

It turns out he's like the chief scientist

14:36

for the stem cell place. He's the guy that runs.

14:38

Out. There. So it's like another.

14:40

They made them.

14:42

Yeah. So him and I became kind of,

14:45

I don't know, say we're like close friends or anything, but,

14:47

you know, we're very friendly

14:48

with each other. And, you know,

14:49

my wife wanted to try it.

14:52

So it's kind of like we're

14:52

doing it together and

14:55

just it's like a five minute drive from our building.

14:57

So. Yeah, it might as well. I mean, like,

14:59

I was also thinking it could be,

15:02

you know, people are going to travel but have

15:04

perhaps taken some time off because they've

15:06

they've hurt their knee or they've had their elbow

15:07

or something. And it's like,

15:10

look at all the all the Panamanians

15:11

are noticing like all these damaged

15:13

tourists coming in

15:15

the holidays. And like, maybe we could

15:16

do something with this.

15:18

Yeah. Yeah. I and when it comes to doing

15:21

anything health related,

15:24

I'm in a biomarkers I want to see like show me

15:25

what these biomarkers are for

15:26

and what they were after.

15:29

And when it comes to stem

15:29

cell, I, I,

15:32

I haven't

15:32

really felt like,

15:35

I haven't seen like a long

15:35

term human study

15:37

that shows how it improves your biomarkers. I wish there was.

15:40

All I have is kind of like this you know

15:42

people coming on Joe Rogan and saying how great it is

15:44

and things like that.

15:46

So you know, I'll just be another

15:48

guinea pig, I guess. Could just be

15:49

a very expensive placebo,

15:52

you know? Yeah, yeah,

15:54

yeah, that's cool. That's cool.

15:57

Yeah, I'm very interested

15:57

in those sorts of things.

16:00

So especially just travelling, I've, I've gotten

16:01

a lot of benefits just from travelling,

16:04

opening up my mind,

16:04

really seeing how I works.

16:08

So I'm sure your listeners probably know,

16:09

but I haven't heard you shows like

16:12

what do you wear your face, favourite places

16:13

to travel. So like have mostly done

16:15

like I've got a big

16:18

bout behind me of Latin

16:18

America that,

16:21

that was my big trip

16:21

that I've done.

16:23

And then, I'm half Kiwi,

16:25

so I've been to New Zealand a lot and Japan

16:26

is the only other real

16:30

and a

16:30

place of a travelled.

16:33

you know, it's, I would say it's,

16:35

it's more, it's not really

16:35

about the place itself

16:39

or the country, it's

16:39

more about the,

16:42

the type of place within it. So I'm not a fan of big

16:43

cities.

16:46

No. I've been

16:46

to a lot of big cities now

16:48

because you just fly into

16:48

Santiago, Buenos Aires,

16:52

Mexico City, places

16:52

like that.

16:55

Guatemala City. And I've, they've been

16:56

the least favourite thing.

16:59

So it's always kind of

16:59

been like the mid to

17:02

small

17:02

or still still relatively

17:05

large places which,

17:05

which kind of captured

17:08

my interest. And I'm not really sure

17:09

why, you know, because it's, it's

17:11

not like I kind of do

17:13

the same things that I do normally here

17:15

while I was travelling.

17:17

Like I just like to

17:17

work out.

17:19

I like to learn languages, you know, meet new people.

17:24

And I don't really try to and I like to try

17:25

and I guess

17:28

integrate into the culture a little bit. So if there's if I have

17:30

the opportunity to make

17:33

like a really good friend

17:33

or I know someone there

17:36

and then, you know, just have like a barbecue

17:37

with them, it's it's pretty, pretty simple

17:39

standard stuff for me.

17:42

But, but

17:42

those moments are the,

17:44

the things that

17:44

I really enjoy the most.

17:46

And yeah, just getting

17:47

little insights to that

17:50

into, into a different culture. So I think it helps

17:53

help helps me like understand more of the world and

17:54

put some pieces together.

17:58

Now that's great. I mean,

18:01

I remember when I got to Madrid

18:03

the first time, which is a big city,

18:05

and I got to central Madrid and I just saw it

18:07

and I just kind of felt

18:10

I grew up in in a small

18:10

town in Arkansas,

18:13

was there was just sometimes

18:16

I'm amazed I'm still alive because what you do

18:18

when you're a teenager

18:18

in Arkansas is just

18:21

you find I'm bored,

18:21

so I find dangerous shit.

18:24

So yeah, but I,

18:24

I survived all that.

18:28

And, you know, I get to like, a place

18:30

like Madrid and central

18:30

Madrid is just like this.

18:35

All these walking areas,

18:35

there's all these bars

18:37

and, you know, all these not even just all kinds

18:38

of cool stuff around and

18:43

I just felt like, yeah, how is it why is it fair

18:45

that people get to grow up

18:47

in an environment like this? And I got to grow up,

18:48

you know,

18:50

doing what I did, riding on the back of a pickup truck,

18:51

getting hit by rocks.

18:55

See, the thing is,

18:55

those same people would

18:57

would probably look at you

18:59

and be like, Man, that's so interesting

19:00

that you got freedom.

19:03

You got to do

19:03

all of these things.

19:05

You know, I was

19:05

I was stuck in the city.

19:07

I never went outside, know more than three kilometres

19:09

from where

19:12

I lived,

19:12

those sorts of things.

19:15

I kind of look at the same

19:15

with some of the things

19:17

that I do. Like if I'd done

19:17

gymnastics

19:20

like your daughter when I was young, I would probably right now

19:24

be playing soccer and be like, Man,

19:25

I wish I'd played soccer

19:27

from the ages of 10 to 20,

19:27

which is what I did.

19:31

And and I kind of think

19:31

like it's

19:34

just yeah, there's there's always a little bit

19:36

of looking over the fence or looking at the other

19:38

posture and be like, Man, it's really green

19:39

over there, you know what?

19:42

If I could have done that, if, if, if I tried that,

19:44

how would I have been

19:44

a different person?

19:47

I think you're pretty,

19:47

pretty spot on with that.

19:50

Yeah. Let's, let's jump

19:52

onto podcast guru and

19:55

especially V for V. I usually like

19:56

to kind of jump into the value for value

19:57

tool in the

20:00

I suppose,

20:00

middle section. And

20:04

your funny one because

20:04

I didn't have much chance

20:06

to do much research because I don't think

20:07

I have any really interviews

20:08

out there with you.

20:10

Perhaps the one on pop news was was the

20:11

the only one I saw.

20:15

So there was a thing

20:15

you mentioned there

20:17

where you said you didn't

20:18

really have a reason for implementing

20:20

the value for value.

20:22

You just kind of

20:22

wanted to do it.

20:24

And in particular,

20:24

I'm talking about

20:26

being able to stream

20:26

satoshi's Bitcoin and

20:30

and boost through the app. So I was just wondering

20:31

like what kind of captured

20:34

your attention? Perhaps Drew you

20:35

into podcasting 2.0 and

20:39

made you want to implement

20:39

some of those features?

20:42

I just think the

20:42

the concept of

20:45

of Microtransaction

20:45

microtransactions

20:50

is great and it's a very good alternative

20:52

to having ads in the app. So like almost

20:54

every podcast app,

20:56

just any mobile app,

20:56

not just podcast apps,

20:58

almost any app on the App store would get into this

21:01

premium model where they're going to bombard

21:02

you with with banner ads

21:05

and make you pay money

21:05

to get rid of them.

21:08

And my app has never had

21:08

that for one.

21:12

A lot of them like do goofy

21:13

stuff and play audio.

21:16

They're actually little web views or little web browsers

21:17

and they take up a lot of point

21:20

points and I just

21:20

don't like ads in the app.

21:23

So that concept of

21:23

monetisation

21:26

with with micropayments is just kind of like,

21:27

Hey, this is a way

21:33

that not just me,

21:33

but everyone in the value

21:36

chain can,

21:36

can kind of like

21:41

get some value out of this with, with without just,

21:43

you know, selling your data,

21:44

being forced to watch

21:48

whatever. Play. Slot machine gambling

21:51

ad they're going to throw up on there. Yeah.

21:53

And the

21:55

so it wasn't a

21:55

because I did read a

21:58

blog post that you guys put out. I think it was August

22:00

12, 2023.

22:02

So it wasn't too long ago.

22:04

And you were you've already mentioned

22:05

that podcaster is,

22:08

you know, not

22:08

making a profit as of yet

22:12

and, and you're mentioning

22:12

you might need

22:15

to have like an app

22:15

strategy,

22:17

sorry, an ad strategy

22:17

for podcast gear.

22:20

What are your thoughts on that still? Are you leaning.

22:22

Yeah. So the other.

22:27

I'm going to do everything I can

22:29

to not have to put ads in in the app,

22:30

but if I do put ads

22:34

in the app, they're not

22:34

going to be like the the

22:38

320 by 240 banner ads

22:38

that, you know, like,

22:43

you know, ad mob would put an ad they're going to be audio

22:45

based. Right. So,

22:49

I've got some ideas they're like one of the ideas is

22:51

I would take a podcast.

22:53

You're like, you record a,

22:57

you know, 32nd quick

22:57

clip of you

23:00

pitching your show. And I just play that

23:01

in the app as an ad

23:05

and not I, I wouldn't interrupt

23:06

a podcast with it, like it wouldn't

23:08

be a pre-roll mineral. It would be basically

23:11

like if you had autoplay on, maybe it would come

23:13

between

23:15

and nobody's really doing that. So that's

23:18

one of the ways I'm thinking about doing it.

23:21

Another way is

23:25

basically selling

23:26

a featured slots, right?

23:29

So we have

23:29

we have featured,

23:32

which is basically just

23:32

we pulling down the iTunes

23:35

charts for various reasons. So iTunes has a top

23:38

100 chart of podcasts

23:38

for like all the different

23:42

countries in the planet. So we put those down

23:43

and then we kind of like

23:45

do our own little algorithm to and you know, that's

23:47

just taken out, you know,

23:51

Apple's data, which, you know, is

23:51

not really personalised.

23:55

I think there's a lot of things I could do

23:56

there, right, to, to like

23:59

highlight

23:59

particular podcasters.

24:02

To the apps.

24:05

One of the things I like about podcasting

24:06

or at least distinguish

24:09

it is it is, I think, one of

24:11

the only ones

24:11

that I really use

24:13

and I'm sure

24:13

that there's others, but

24:15

I mean there's so many podcast app, so I haven't tried them

24:18

all out that, but that you

24:18

will auto play something

24:24

after finishing an episode or it'll just queue up

24:26

something else and it'll usually be

24:26

within the same podcast itself.

24:30

But yeah, I could see that

24:32

that audio insertion

24:32

working well.

24:35

And I just think back to pod news and every now

24:37

and then they have one of those little slots

24:39

that you were mentioning,

24:39

like a 32nd

24:43

advertisement promotion is probably the better way

24:45

to call it, I think

24:48

for, for another podcast,

24:48

which yeah, it does.

24:50

That does make much

24:50

more sense than

24:54

Yeah, matricide or whatever right now.

24:59

And then the goal would be

24:59

to target it. Right.

25:01

So you know,

25:01

if someone listens to a

25:03

true crime genre podcast,

25:03

then that would be like

25:07

they're like, I wouldn't put you in that. You would, you would be

25:08

more of a lifestyle. Yeah, exactly.

25:11

And just try to lining up

25:11

to what

25:13

where it actually it's actually hopefully something that the listener

25:15

would be interested in

25:18

and not just something

25:18

random and.

25:20

Yeah. Yeah. So you said you've done

25:22

a lot of app development

25:25

over the years

25:25

and the micropayments

25:29

is something kind of new. Have you seen anyone else

25:32

try anything similar

25:32

with with micropayments?

25:35

Is this because I hear

25:35

Adam saying regularly like

25:40

this is the first time micropayments is actually

25:42

worked

25:42

and it's kind of like

25:45

creating its own ecosystem. Have you

25:47

have you seen

25:47

any other models like that

25:50

in your time working in app development? I would agree with Adam.

25:52

I mean, I've seen people try it, but I've never seen it

25:54

really gain any traction

25:59

like small little social media sites

26:00

where you can,

26:03

you know, tip each other. I guess

26:05

there's going to be a lot of people mad at me that can say,

26:08

I know a project that does. That. And it's successful.

26:12

Gosh,

26:12

I can't remember it now.

26:14

Yeah, there have been

26:14

a few that have done it,

26:18

but I think I haven't seen

26:18

anything with

26:20

with this low attraction yet. So yeah.

26:23

And I'm finding it

26:23

hard to gauge

26:25

how successful successful

26:25

it is or not.

26:28

Obviously I, I've,

26:28

this was one thing

26:31

I bookmarked on Mastodon

26:31

and that was Adam

26:35

two years ago or something

26:35

saying like you know

26:39

I'm a I don't care about

26:39

he was responding to

26:42

someone is I don't care about this

26:42

thing because know

26:45

there's 50,000 satoshis

26:45

flowing through a day

26:47

and now I look back on

26:47

like wow that's,

26:50

that's not that much.

26:50

And look where we are now.

26:52

It's, you know, a million and something. But but it does also have

26:57

that feel of at times being like,

26:59

am I just sending stuff back and back to and forth

27:00

to the same people?

27:04

Yeah, it's, it's like when, when,

27:05

you know, I give my dad

27:07

a $50 Amazon gift card

27:07

and he turns out, I guess.

27:10

Yeah, yeah. It happens way too often.

27:13

But I think it's like the

27:13

sentiment of it because

27:18

the values can be so small you don't even really

27:20

care. Sometimes

27:21

it's just cool to see. It is cool that someone

27:22

sent you a message.

27:25

I, I don't know. It's just, it's

27:27

just a really fun way

27:29

to, to earn money,

27:29

I guess.

27:31

And I,

27:33

I don't think about it. About it to me,

27:34

I don't really.

27:38

It's just fun. I, I don't look it. I'm

27:38

not refreshing my hobby.

27:41

Well so I got another $2

27:41

and I don't really care.

27:45

It's just fun and I like doing it and I like that it exists.

27:48

Yeah, I think that's probably the best metric

27:49

to to look at.

27:53

So it's kind of like these longer term things,

27:54

or at least trend wise,

27:58

you know, is podcasting

27:58

2.0 and, and the value

28:02

for value integration

28:02

with that

28:04

becoming more fun

28:04

or less fun.

28:06

And it's I'd say it's definitely becoming

28:07

more fun. So

28:09

that that is encouraging

28:09

in that aspect.

28:13

And, and it can just be the, the small time horizon of,

28:16

you know, I'm just looking at something

28:17

over a week or a month

28:20

or even a couple of months period,

28:21

whereas if I compare to, you know, two years

28:23

ago, it's, it's completely different.

28:27

yeah. Do you get

28:27

much insight into search

28:31

So you take 1% rate

28:33

for every transaction that

28:33

occurs within the app,

28:37

Do you get much insight

28:37

into,

28:39

I guess, just activity in general? Have you have you noticed

28:42

any interesting

28:42

trends, things going on?

28:47

No, not really. We do so like whenever

28:50

like if you tip with our app, I'm going to see that microtransaction

28:52

in our wallet, but I haven't actively

28:56

gone in there and tried to like analyse

28:57

that data at all.

29:01

I'm sure there might be

29:01

something interesting.

29:03

I looked, but I haven't gotten around

29:04

to doing that yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:07

Because I suppose

29:09

music, for example,

29:09

seems to be becoming more

29:12

and more popular. I'm noticing more music

29:13

shows, I'm noticing myself

29:16

starting to, to, you know,

29:19

I've started up the value for values show again yesterday

29:22

and I started putting

29:22

some music in that.

29:25

I think that's just such a

29:25

awesome idea.

29:28

Yeah, it's just,

29:28

it's really, really cool.

29:31

Yeah. And, and,

29:31

and it's not just,

29:35

so, for example,

29:35

I'm starting to hear

29:38

some Latina music popping up

29:40

every now and then and a

29:40

couple of different shows.

29:43

So it's, it's

29:43

not just the,

29:47

I don't know, you know, just, just random core

29:49

group of people

29:49

in Nashville,

29:51

for example, who, who heard about it. It's like,

29:54

no, some other people around the world are starting to get it

29:56

and and they're starting

29:56

to put their

29:58

their music up online because it's like,

29:59

yeah, why not?

30:01

I think there's

30:01

a lot of things just wrong

30:04

or not helpful with

30:04

I mean, especially music,

30:07

but I mean even the podcast industry that that's what I was

30:09

feeling back in 2020,

30:12

2021, before I found

30:12

podcasting to point out,

30:15

I was just like,

30:15

I don't know what to do.

30:17

Like how, you know, I wanted to, to kind of

30:19

like grow my show or

30:22

the same thing

30:22

like, I'd love to

30:24

make this a lifestyle,

30:24

a living, and,

30:27

and that does require an income. But I've also got a very

30:28

strong dislike of ads

30:33

and did not want them

30:33

anywhere near

30:36

anything that I was creating. So it was really nice

30:38

that I kind of

30:40

just stumbled

30:40

into podcasting 2.0 and

30:45

yeah, not, not just the monetary aspect, but the all

30:47

the other things that are attached with that.

30:50

Yeah, I mean, I'm

30:50

super appreciative,

30:52

like the Help videos

30:52

you've done for,

30:55

for everyone.

30:55

You know, like

30:58

I watched

30:58

one of your videos

31:00

where you were just, it was a YouTube video

31:03

where you were just explaining, okay, this is how

31:04

you set yourself up. This have split kit works

31:06

and that was great.

31:09

And now we're giving

31:09

you more tools with

31:11

I'm excited about RSS Blue because he's going

31:13

to make it really easy for people

31:14

to get their music online and it's just growing

31:15

really fast.

31:20

and I think a lot of

31:20

people are enjoying it.

31:22

They're connecting and they're telling their friends about it.

31:24

It's got a

31:24

kind of a virality to it.

31:30

but yeah, I mean, you came

31:30

in at the right moment

31:33

and, you know, you're one of my favourite voices

31:35

in the, in the space

31:37

to learn about things

31:37

I learned about.

31:39

I'm an app developer,

31:39

but I still learn a lot.

31:42

There's stuff you're talking about that I had never heard of

31:43

sometimes. So let's go

31:45

teach me stuff. Thanks.

31:48

Yeah, I. I definitely am not.

31:51

I straddle boundaries in some respects

31:52

where it's like

31:54

I tried learning

31:54

coding a year or two ago

31:56

and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't force myself

31:58

to spend more time

32:01

in front of the computer than I already do. And, but,

32:02

but I do have like a,

32:06

it's like a semi interest

32:06

in technology.

32:08

It's, it's sometimes

32:08

it frustrates me.

32:10

And then other times I'm like, man, this is cool stuff out.

32:12

It'll change the world.

32:16

So I do hope I can communicate

32:17

those sorts of things. How did you find

32:19

podcasting to follow?

32:21

When when did you kind of

32:21

jump into the to the,

32:25

the scene?

32:27

It's pretty simple. One my co-founder,

32:28

a co-founder,

32:31

signed up to produce

32:33

the just the newsletter,

32:33

and he said, Hey,

32:35

you should sign up for this. And then, you know, it was

32:36

sooner or later then

32:40

podcasting

32:40

2.0 came out and

32:44

I didn't know anything about it. So I dove in and it,

32:48

it was just really cool

32:48

because, you know, like,

32:52

you know, a

32:52

lot of the big, big what's

32:55

Adam's word. Podcast

32:57

Industrial complex. Yeah.

32:59

You know, they're just doing everything they can

33:01

to squeeze us out.

33:04

And this was something, hey, we could start

33:05

adding features that

33:07

they're just not going to be able to do. At least

33:09

they're not going to be able to

33:10

pivot their ships and and do this

33:13

cool stuff like we can. So that was

33:14

really exciting.

33:19

and you know,

33:19

when you when

33:22

I think it's McCormick

33:22

put that video on on

33:25

Twitter like and he showed them

33:25

how I could do that

33:28

distribute like a,

33:28

like a mini documentary

33:31

in podcast apps. I was like that

33:33

that's the endgame for me

33:33

because, you know,

33:38

YouTube, Spotify, they're coming, they're trying to

33:40

take the podcast market

33:40

that now we're

33:42

now I'm going to put videos in mine and now we,

33:44

we can pretty much

33:46

do everything that YouTube

33:46

can do, right?

33:48

So yeah, yeah, exactly.

33:51

I think that's also the,

33:51

the one of

33:55

the ultimate engulfs of well maybe not end goals

33:57

and outcomes of of what

33:59

all this will now enable

33:59

which is just

34:02

a really good competitor

34:02

to YouTube.

34:05

I think something

34:05

will crop up which will be

34:08

a bit more open

34:08

or competitors perhaps.

34:11

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think there

34:12

is a a market for just,

34:16

just people who because I see it all the time

34:18

and like

34:20

just going to YouTube

34:20

and I'll watch people

34:22

and they'll, they'll,

34:22

they'll sense themselves.

34:24

For example, like they won't say

34:25

the word suicide or they'll, they'll,

34:27

they won't have that anywhere

34:28

near any of their content. because

34:33

that,

34:33

that gets demonetised and,

34:36

and that just,

34:36

you know that I suppose

34:39

they're the YouTubers they get

34:42

they've got to

34:42

make a living and

34:44

but I can just imagine

34:44

like, jeez,

34:46

how much content is not being made

34:47

that could help,

34:49

you know, suicide prevention or things like that

34:51

just because people aren't

34:51

willing to say the word.

34:55

Yeah, I imagine that's

34:55

just like one example.

34:57

I imagine there's a lot of things out there

34:58

very similar to that.

35:02

Yeah, you don't want

35:02

to live it and it's just

35:05

super sanitised world

35:05

where

35:09

certain opinions, you know

35:11

that that's, you know,

35:11

part podcast is podcasting

35:16

is never going to have those limitations. So yeah yeah

35:18

it's a it's boring

35:21

to strive to more into That's, that's

35:22

why I kind of also follow the fun metric of

35:26

what's the what's the things that not only am

35:28

I excited about,

35:30

but other people are excited about. So when when I was first

35:31

starting to hear

35:35

about the music stuff,

35:35

I was kind of like,

35:37

okay, yeah, maybe, maybe that'll be alright. But then I've kind of,

35:39

you know,

35:42

got to witness the door

35:42

falls, for example.

35:44

I think it's just like it's the best story,

35:45

you know, family band of.

35:49

I just imagine them living in the, the,

35:51

the world of the Dukes of Hazzard.

35:54

That's just how I

35:54

imagine they grew up. And

35:58

there's just such a great story of like, you know, they,

36:00

they make really good music and it just didn't

36:01

work out for them in the

36:04

in the music industry. And now they're having like a little mini

36:05

revival. And it's it's reignited

36:08

their passion for music again. I just think that's so

36:10

cool.

36:12

Yeah, I I assume travelling around you see your fair

36:14

share like street bands.

36:16

The street musicians. Yeah. Yep.

36:18

And yeah, like there's so much,

36:20

there's so many talented

36:22

people there. And you know, if you're just locked into like the,

36:24

the mainstream

36:28

record labels, you're never going to hear any of that.

36:30

So and so unless

36:30

you really look for it.

36:33

Yeah. So and

36:34

you do get the breakouts.

36:37

There's a girl

36:37

not far from here.

36:39

She's in Byron Bay,

36:39

who if she was a straight

36:43

musician for, I'm pretty sure the store. She was a street

36:45

musician for a while and

36:48

then she just had like one of her songs

36:50

go absolutely ballistic

36:52

and she does tone tones

36:52

and I.

36:54

And the dance

36:57

monkey stands monkey. So I should probably know

36:58

better.

37:01

But that

37:03

for every one of her,

37:03

I'm like, There's probably

37:06

ten equally good people

37:06

with an equally good song

37:09

that if it got like Adam says, if, if,

37:10

if it just gets replayed

37:13

enough times,

37:13

you enjoy the song itself.

37:16

So I just imagine there's

37:16

so many people out

37:20

there like that

37:20

which are just

37:22

kind of like not

37:22

getting served, I guess.

37:24

And I think this is a really cool way

37:25

for the people to get discovered,

37:26

not not only just for

37:30

music and podcasts, but

37:30

I think it's other people.

37:33

You mentioned Cole

37:33

just before.

37:35

And yeah, I think he's

37:35

he's looking at

37:39

or thinking about, you know, create an audio book

37:41

or perhaps recording some

37:44

public domain poems. I was telling him like,

37:45

man, if you if you created,

37:48

you know, like mini

37:48

speeches of Invictus or

37:52

if by Rupert Kipling

37:52

or something like that,

37:55

I would listen to that. And I would also

37:56

probably be tempted to

37:58

to just grab that and play that in some of my,

38:00

my podcasts. If it's like I wanted

38:01

a quote to talk about

38:03

or things like that. That would be pretty.

38:04

Awesome. Yes. Yeah.

38:08

sorry. My dad's here. You mentioned that

38:10

you were a percussionist

38:12

at one point. I was used to be. Yes.

38:16

I did the same thing

38:16

in high school.

38:18

Yeah. And I think you're

38:19

talking about the the the nervousness of it.

38:23

It reminded me when I was playing cymbals,

38:24

and I was.

38:26

They were the we had. A band of like. I said.

38:30

80 people and I just had

38:30

that was it.

38:32

I had one one playing. I was supposed to do

38:34

the entire song

38:36

and a half the time

38:36

in their performance,

38:38

I would I would freeze

38:43

and the conductor

38:43

would just get so mad she.

38:45

Throws a. Tantrum at me. Nurse

38:49

Yeah, that that brings back memories. Yeah,

38:53

I said I always I knew. Exactly

38:55

what you're talking about. Go ahead.

38:57

Yeah, I there was, there was one

38:58

beat signature where I would

39:00

always be in triples.

39:02

So instead of like, you know, the normal four four beat signature

39:04

of being in triples,

39:07

it was a couple of songs like that. And I did not work

39:08

well with, you know, triple

39:10

D, triple, triple T, and

39:14

same thing. Whenever those songs came off, I was like,

39:16

this is going to be bad. This is not going to

39:17

it's not going to be good. Yeah.

39:20

As a precaution is you don't play douche

39:21

y answer. You got snare drum, bass,

39:23

drum, timpani, trying to go

39:24

like anything. Anything with a mallet

39:26

and a hammer.

39:28

Yeah. You run. It all. You got to learn a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

39:32

I can't say

39:32

I miss doing that,

39:35

but yeah, not, not,

39:35

not my favourite thing

39:38

to, to reflect upon

39:38

because I just go.

39:41

What I'm really grateful is there's not, I don't,

39:42

I don't think

39:44

my parents recorded

39:44

any of my,

39:48

you know, like performances or anything like that.

39:50

So there's no videos of me

39:50

out there just like,

39:53

absolutely screwing it up

39:53

or, or not,

39:55

or even probably worse

39:55

than really screwing

39:57

it up is just being consistently half a beat off.

40:02

But that was that

40:02

was kind of my experience.

40:05

Wow. Yeah,

40:05

I remember those days.

40:07

I, I quit my now

40:07

my senior year, my,

40:11

my junior year. I quit. I just I couldn't

40:13

do it anymore either. Yeah.

40:16

Junior year that that would be like around

40:18

age 14, 13,

40:18

something like that.

40:21

I'm not, I. I think I Yeah. 1415

40:22

if I recall.

40:25

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The the US system of

40:26

sophomore freshmen.

40:31

yeah. I never know what,

40:32

what any of those mean.

40:36

Well the US media confuses

40:36

me sometimes.

40:39

It's, it's, you're

40:39

basically ninth grade

40:41

for three, so it's freshman. Sophomore. Junior. Senior.

40:44

Yeah. There we go. Which I have no idea

40:47

where those names came

40:47

from, by the way.

40:49

She's one of us. Yeah, we just say

40:50

eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th.

40:55

I wanted

40:55

to ask you about the.

40:57

Yeah,

40:57

you kind of like story of,

40:59

of the co-founding as well

40:59

because one,

41:03

how did you choose the,

41:03

the rather bold

41:05

name of really bad apps

41:05

and was it

41:08

just the three of you

41:08

three co-founders to.

41:13

Originally it was just me.

41:17

So, so it was me

41:17

and I started

41:19

making it.

41:22

My first podcast app was a it was a kind of

41:24

like a white label thing.

41:26

So, so say,

41:30

Kyran And

41:30

you wanted your own app.

41:33

So instead of building like a general purpose podcast app,

41:34

I would just say, come to you and say,

41:37

Hey, can I make you

41:37

a podcast app

41:40

and brand it to you? And that business model

41:42

was just a lot of work,

41:44

and I would make an app

41:44

for somebody and,

41:47

you know, three months later they would quit

41:49

podcasting. And I just felt like

41:50

I'd done all that work for nothing because a lot

41:53

of podcasters fall out, you know?

41:56

So then I just said, Well, you know,

41:57

I've got all this code, I'll just make a general

41:59

purpose podcast app

42:01

and you know, how long did it take me? Like three months,

42:02

six months.

42:04

And that was like five,

42:04

six years ago, right?

42:07

So and I still get hundred

42:07

and 80 items

42:10

in the backlog. So at some point

42:11

I was like

42:15

a friend of mine

42:19

decided to,

42:21

you know, I,

42:21

I had a friend in Turkey,

42:25

and he could work for,

42:25

like, dirt cheap

42:27

over there, and

42:27

he wanted to help me out.

42:30

And then we found another friend. So that ended up

42:31

being three or four of us.

42:36

So one guy kind of bankrolled us for two years, and we

42:37

got the first version out,

42:44

the initially

42:44

really bad apps.

42:48

That was just kind of our name for our incubator. Like we didn't know

42:51

that we were only going to be a podcast app, so we tried a couple other

42:52

things, right?

42:55

We even did a crypto app

42:55

for Dash Like Way.

42:58

But yeah, I was looking at that and I was wondering like,

43:00

Yeah, would you,

43:02

you know, do value for

43:02

value with Dash as well?

43:05

Yeah. No, I mean

43:08

Dash is a hard

43:08

ecosystem to work in,

43:11

but that project was fun

43:11

when we did it. But

43:16

yeah, so we were trying

43:16

a bunch of different apps

43:18

and really bad apps was just kind of a

43:19

incubator and

43:23

podcast guru's the one that we just kind of

43:24

became the flagship that we had the most fun

43:26

with, and it's pretty much

43:28

the only one we're working on now. So for a long, long time

43:31

we only had the Android version and then I wanted

43:34

to have an iPhone version

43:37

this. So if you go back to the corporate days

43:40

of mobile phone development, you have these

43:41

things called MIPS.

43:44

I think it stands for mobile enterprise

43:45

application platform

43:47

and it's just as terrible

43:47

as it sounds.

43:50

So so people were trying

43:50

Android developers

43:54

and I stories are really expensive, so they were trying

43:55

to invent these

43:58

technologies

43:58

where you could

44:02

just write

44:02

one single code based

44:04

and it would run all the apps so you'd have

44:06

the same code base, run Android iOS,

44:10

and you would change it in the cloud

44:11

and it would come down. And they were so terrible,

44:12

it just permanent,

44:15

permanently altered me. So I hate those type

44:16

of models.

44:19

So for podcast Guru, I'm

44:19

one of the few

44:22

app developers that maybe

44:24

I just hate, hate myself.

44:26

But I said no, every podcast, your app is

44:27

going to be its own app.

44:30

So the web app, the iOS app

44:33

and the Android app, they're completely

44:33

different, right? They're all I wanted

44:35

the Android app

44:37

to be a native Android app

44:37

as run as fast

44:39

and be as optimised as possible. And I wanted it to feel

44:41

like an Android app

44:44

and this. That's why the iOS app

44:46

looks different because it's all done. It's swift, it's very

44:47

efficient, it's very fast.

44:53

So, you know, that's why

44:53

when when you did that

44:56

nice Android video, I can't just straight up

44:58

and say, hey, iOS users,

45:01

look at this because their app experience is a little bit different.

45:03

Yeah, yeah. So

45:08

I kind of

45:11

I don't know, I'm trying to say here, it's, it's

45:14

kind of like trying to explain why I do things like that

45:15

because I just

45:18

I'm slower writing code

45:18

and getting out

45:21

to everybody. But in the end, I, I, I view

45:23

my product is almost a

45:26

piece of art, right? I want it to be

45:29

how I want it. I want it to be perfect.

45:30

I want it to be robust.

45:32

I want it to be fast. I want it to be optimised

45:33

and efficient.

45:36

And, you know, that's not always the best

45:38

business decision,

45:38

but it's just one of these

45:40

if I'm going to build

45:40

an app, this is this is

45:43

I'm going to share, I'm going to try to to give the most quality,

45:46

the most Polish

45:46

I possibly can.

45:50

Yeah, I look at a lot of things in my

45:51

life and it's the same if I if

45:54

I was looking for the most like money or best

45:56

business decisions,

45:59

like I would, I would do things a lot, lot differently

46:01

in terms of where I spend my time, what I spend

46:03

my focus energy on. But it's yeah,

46:06

it's about doing the thing

46:06

that you find enjoyable

46:09

and that that make

46:09

you want to do more of it.

46:14

Because I met some people,

46:16

there's a guy here, for example, he's really cool

46:17

guy in the gym and he wants to get into

46:19

investment banking

46:23

and he's like, He's

46:23

smart, is ambitious.

46:26

And he was telling me like, Yeah, I'm applying for these jobs.

46:30

It's probably going to be like a 100 hour workweeks.

46:33

And I'm I'm just like,

46:33

Dude,

46:35

do okay,

46:35

Do you really enjoy it?

46:37

Because, like, the money,

46:37

you know, that's great.

46:40

That's it's amazing money. But yeah,

46:43

if there's like even a hint of you

46:44

not enjoying your work

46:47

and you're doing 100

46:47

hours of it a week, like

46:50

you're going to go insane,

46:50

you won't last.

46:52

So yeah, it's, it's,

46:52

I think it is about

46:56

finding those things that you love and do. Do you love coding?

47:00

Like is, is coding. That's something

47:02

like it's on your mind

47:02

all the time. Yeah.

47:04

I absolutely love it. I but I want to,

47:08

I like doing it

47:11

if I'm getting to build what I want to build, right? So when I was working for

47:17

a financial services

47:17

company or something,

47:19

there's nothing more boring to be been

47:20

writing a banking app

47:23

and having to get 13

47:23

people sign off something

47:26

before you can get it out

47:26

in the App store,

47:29

you know? Yeah, I hate that and

47:34

I don't like that type of coding. So to me

47:35

it's like I have to love

47:37

what I'm building, right? And that makes it

47:39

fun for me.

47:42

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And has that when did you

47:44

first get into coding?

47:47

Like, how long have

47:47

you been doing that for?

47:51

I think I started when I was like

47:51

nine years old.

47:55

Yeah. Wow nice.

47:57

In the mid eighties, coding was a bit

47:59

bit different than well,

48:01

I mean, like I said, I grew up in Arkansas and I got rocks thrown

48:04

at me and maybe it's safe,

48:04

safer to stay home

48:07

and being on a computer

48:07

some days.

48:10

That's that's

48:10

an interesting backstory.

48:14

What were you what

48:14

what are you excited about

48:16

to put into podcast guru as well?

48:17

Because I know you're doing

48:18

some stuff with Ipfs.

48:21

I've got to say personally, I think yours is probably

48:25

the best app at the moment for I mean,

48:28

Ellen Beats is is good, but in terms of

48:30

like a podcast app that,

48:32

that has integrated music, I think yours is the best just,

48:34

just going into, you know, just, just

48:37

the way that you showcase

48:40

the individual songs and the track when you click onto that,

48:42

you can then go into that profile

48:43

and search more

48:47

music from that musician,

48:47

from that artist.

48:50

Yeah, I think you're really doing well with that.

48:53

Thanks. And basically you want to

48:53

continue on that theme.

48:56

So we've got a section of the app

48:56

now called Feature. And like I said, it's just the iTunes charts,

48:58

but that's not music.

49:01

It's just kind of

49:01

everything mixed together.

49:03

So we're working on

49:03

some designs now to

49:07

kind of, you know, where maybe you just

49:09

want to look at music and you can kind of select

49:11

which medium

49:13

you want to browse,

49:13

and then you can maybe

49:15

look at Giovanni's specific genres

49:17

and just make

49:19

it a lot more discoverable. The music in the app,

49:27

the I mean, it's slow going

49:28

getting that designed

49:31

because we're trying to do tablet designs

49:32

at the same time.

49:35

So I'm not really in

49:35

for like

49:40

some people when they do a like an overhaul

49:41

of the app, they just change

49:42

everything. Just big bang release boom

49:45

and you get your phone update and you don't recognise

49:46

anything anymore. I, I try to do things

49:48

more iteratively so.

49:52

So we've got

49:52

like I say, we got the

49:54

Discover section. So everything in there

49:57

we're doing with podcast

49:57

right now where you can,

49:59

you know, browse genres

49:59

and things like that

50:01

that can all be done

50:01

from music to and,

50:05

and then we could puts, you know, people are starting

50:07

to come up with different charting

50:08

algorithms. The top 100 of this

50:11

there's just a lot of cool stuff like that

50:12

we could put in the app. I hate that

50:15

the featured section in my app is just pulling down

50:16

Apple charts, right? I think I can do

50:18

better than that. So we're really focussed

50:20

on that at the moment.

50:24

And that was some sort

50:24

of integration with Ipfs.

50:27

I think that you were there. yeah. Yeah. So a.

50:33

IP office, it's just

50:36

for those don't know, it's

50:36

a peer to peer protocol.

50:40

It's a different way of architecting in the internet

50:41

where everything's using content

50:42

based addressing.

50:47

There's no reason that podcasts

50:48

can exist on it.

50:51

And that way you don't.

50:55

You don't have to like

50:58

rely on it

50:58

on a centralised hosting

51:00

provider. I don't think

51:00

we have really problems. Like, you know,

51:02

there's not a lot censorship

51:03

with hosting providers. I think it's pretty good.

51:06

But yeah, it's,

51:06

yeah, it's, it's.

51:08

Just an alternative to it and that's why I,

51:10

you know, I said on the, on the

51:11

Mastodon server it's like

51:14

it's just something I want to do. I think it's, it's

51:15

really cool.

51:17

It's,

51:20

it's kind of challenging.

51:25

Like the thought

51:25

process is an IP office

51:29

node is

51:29

actually a server because,

51:33

you know, in a peer to peer network,

51:34

you're not only having

51:37

files shared with you, you're sharing them with

51:38

others and a lot of peer.

51:41

It's like, okay, can we do

51:41

that on a mobile device?

51:43

And you really don't want to you do not want to run

51:45

a server on your phone.

51:47

You want to run a server on something that's plugged

51:49

in the walls, doesn't have a battery

51:50

life. It's not cost

51:51

you money to use network,

51:54

so you can't get

51:54

the perfect app

51:57

your first solution. So then you have

51:58

to hunt around for like what's

51:59

the best way to do it? And I've looked at the way

52:03

some other apps

52:03

have done it,

52:05

not not podcasting apps,

52:05

but like I think

52:10

I think like video LAN

52:10

and some of the

52:13

just desktop apps are

52:13

starting to integrate it.

52:17

And basically

52:17

I want to make it where

52:20

when you publish your

52:23

podcast on Ipfs

52:23

it's going to be use

52:26

the alternate enclosure tag, but it's not going to be

52:28

hardcoded to a particular gateway. It's going to be like,

52:31

like not HTP,

52:31

it's going to be ipfs

52:35

and your phone

52:35

will be able to

52:38

detect the,

52:38

the closest node to you're

52:41

the one that's the fastest

52:43

and download it from that

52:43

because if you are,

52:46

add it to the gateway. If you're travelling

52:47

around, it's no better than the web,

52:48

right? You want to

52:50

you want to still use apfs protocol

52:51

and maybe talk to

52:54

local gateways that are close to you. And, and the real magic

52:57

is if you have a home desktop, you can run your own

52:59

IP office node on that.

53:02

So when you're in a house, your phone is just going

53:03

to talk to that. But when you're out

53:05

and about, it'll just talk to the closest gateway you can find

53:10

and I'm

53:10

going to open source it.

53:12

I've already got the

53:12

Android libraries done.

53:14

We still got to do IO iOS.

53:17

I'm just testing it now

53:17

to make sure it works

53:19

before I kind of like

53:19

launch it in the app.

53:22

But yeah. Does.

53:25

You mentioned

53:25

you were looking at,

53:27

I suppose other protocols

53:27

or other apps, other

53:30

different types of apps

53:30

like a video, one

53:32

that integrate these things. Have you

53:35

do you get much inspiration to to put things in podcast

53:36

gear from outside of

53:40

the podcasting world

53:40

as well,

53:45

Yeah, I would say so,

53:48

but I, I couldn't name

53:50

anything directly right

53:52

now. Probably the, the live functionality,

53:53

for example.

53:56

So when I go live on,

53:59

on on with,

53:59

with some of my

54:01

podcasts, not, not this one, but with the book reviews

54:03

and with the value

54:06

for value show, you know, I've,

54:07

I've now enabled it so that it's, it's almost

54:10

like a radio station I guess like you you can listen in life

54:12

that's essentially like

54:16

synonymous with radio I guess. And I guess

54:19

like that's that's typically not

54:20

what people think if they're thinking

54:22

of podcasting app. It's like,

54:24

no, I'm podcasting,

54:24

I guess was defined by it

54:28

being downloadable

54:28

overnight.

54:31

So that's not showing up your bandwidth

54:32

and things like that.

54:35

So yeah, like, well, and you've got video

54:36

in your app as well, you're starting to put

54:38

music in

54:40

is a starting,

54:40

but I suppose another way

54:43

of asking the question is, is your app

54:44

becoming more

54:46

or different than, than just a podcasting app

54:47

now? And it's it's

54:49

kind of morphing into something else. Yeah, that's I mean,

54:52

when did you start throwing music and everything else

54:53

into it? It's absolutely

54:55

a podcast app in the sense

54:57

that if

54:57

a podcast is an RSS feed,

55:00

that's what it is. It's just as the average

55:01

person understands. Yeah, I mean, it's hard

55:03

to get the average person,

55:06

it's hard to get the average person to understand.

55:09

That podcast can also

55:09

be video and I'm really,

55:12

really excited

55:12

about video,

55:14

that perfect example,

55:14

what you just mentioned.

55:17

So you can do a less

55:17

adaptive encoding

55:23

where basically you take

55:25

take your take

55:25

of your video output

55:28

and you record it at three

55:28

different Bitrates

55:31

and that basically goes to a special kind

55:32

of playlist file

55:35

and then my app can take that. So whatever speed

55:36

you have available to it

55:39

can just like or YouTube

55:39

or anything.

55:42

It increased

55:42

the media quality

55:44

based on your bandwidth

55:44

in real time.

55:47

Nobody's really doing that. All the podcasting hosts

55:50

just it's just like flat amp, three files

55:51

or audio files.

55:54

I think that's something really cool

55:56

that we could do that. I got that idea

55:57

from other technologies.

56:00

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's had that idea,

56:01

but things like that I'm

56:04

really excited

56:04

about playing with.

56:06

Yeah, yeah,

56:06

you can. Even do that.

56:08

You can even do that with Apfs. I've tried it.

56:11

They got. Very interesting. That's what I love

56:13

about all of this. It's really the creating.

56:18

I think it's creating something new. It's whether it's

56:19

a new medium, as in like,

56:23

you know, five years

56:23

time we'll all look at

56:26

a show or something

56:26

can be like, okay,

56:29

no, this isn't a podcast anymore. It's a, it's a value

56:32

for value show

56:32

or something like that.

56:34

I'm not sure exactly

56:34

is going to go

56:38

to like that type of level of it being something completely

56:40

brand new.

56:42

But I do think that these

56:42

these creations are

56:45

forming different ways

56:45

for people to collaborate.

56:49

That's that's

56:49

kind of like one of the

56:52

the themes I'm hitting on, I guess recently,

56:53

which is, you know, I'm

56:55

getting musician music

56:58

into my show, digital art,

56:58

because now I can do it

57:00

through the chapter

57:00

Art and Cole.

57:04

I'm using him to do

57:04

some voice acting for me

57:06

because he's really good at that. And I just look at all

57:08

of these other places

57:11

like the, you know, the tiktoks

57:12

of the world or something where it's, you know,

57:14

it's people

57:14

creating videos, but

57:17

they're all collaborating

57:17

in a certain sense.

57:20

It's just it's just devoid

57:22

of the real closeness

57:25

of the interaction because they'll just pick a

57:26

like a random music song,

57:28

chuck that and they'll perhaps

57:29

grab some filters

57:32

or some highlights

57:32

or some technology

57:34

which allows them to like blur out the background or,

57:36

you know,

57:39

create different visual effects. And all these people

57:40

are collaborating. But there's a

57:43

there's a distance away from all of them. There's a

57:48

I don't know what you call it. It's it's just it's

57:49

just a little bit off

57:53

something. It's not right there. And I think these sorts of things

57:55

are allowing people to

57:59

create stuff and

58:01

be able to attribute that to and then share the value

58:03

as well through all the.

58:06

Yeah, the mechanisms.

58:06

Yeah. Yeah.

58:08

I heard that

58:08

that remote item tag

58:10

where you can just link together

58:10

other people's stuff and you can share

58:12

the value of them and

58:14

that's really groundbreaking. Yeah.

58:18

There's so much. I've actually got

58:19

a question related to that with,

58:20

with your app.

58:23

So I was just looking up today, so I just released

58:25

the value for value. So season for

58:26

the first episode of that.

58:30

And so I do have value

58:30

time splits in there, but

58:34

I have one of the value

58:34

time splits.

58:36

Well, two of them actually go. So I got two questions

58:38

for you. So I did like

58:40

a double value times, but because I use

58:43

intro music from the Dolls

58:43

at the very start

58:45

and then I played it at the end and I was like,

58:47

Well, for fun I'll just

58:47

reference it twice.

58:51

So it's the same song

58:51

and I referenced it twice,

58:53

but one was at the very

58:53

start, you know, from

58:57

5 seconds

58:57

through to 25 seconds

59:00

when the intro music was playing. And then

59:01

and then right at the end. And then I also referenced

59:06

one of my own podcasts,

59:06

the book reviews.

59:09

So I was doing a value time split,

59:10

but of a podcast,

59:13

not of a of a music,

59:16

like a music podcast,

59:16

I guess.

59:18

And I'm just noticing like

59:18

in Europe, for example,

59:22

normally when you would see value time splits,

59:23

it would be

59:26

so that for musicians,

59:26

so does it do it?

59:28

If it's for a referencing,

59:30

like a podcast,

59:30

for example, or a custom.

59:33

I don't think it should care what the medium tag

59:35

is with this podcast or music. I think it treats them all

59:37

equally. Okay. All right.

59:39

Maybe I'll maybe we can just discuss that more

59:41

after this because, yeah,

59:44

I was just like playing around. I'm like, I'm not sure this is

59:46

showing up how I thought it would show up, but it could just be me

59:47

as well.

59:50

Yeah. I mean, we found

59:50

a lot of little glitches

59:52

that we're still trying

59:52

to fix. For example,

59:58

there's when you're using Albi, which is our our partner

1:00:00

that does the payments,

1:00:03

like there's a limit to how long the URLs

1:00:04

can be the payment URLs.

1:00:07

And what Alex was finding

1:00:07

is that I asked

1:00:10

if he was finding that

1:00:10

on people that we try

1:00:13

to use a link shorter,

1:00:13

but for some people

1:00:16

they were using like

1:00:16

graphene O's

1:00:18

that they didn't have

1:00:18

the same phone photos,

1:00:21

had that link shortened or wasn't working. So you get these massive

1:00:23

long URLs that were sent in Albi in those transactions

1:00:24

weren't going through. So there's that.

1:00:28

There's a lot of little edge cases we're still trying

1:00:29

to figure out,

1:00:31

even if you're on Mastodon, you split it like not all

1:00:32

the apps are using

1:00:35

the exact same method

1:00:35

to calculate the split,

1:00:38

so I am pretty sure

1:00:38

we're going to get all

1:00:41

that figured out and there's going to be like a kind, a universal

1:00:43

standard we all use. But.

1:00:48

It can be rough around the edges. Yeah. Is that because.

1:00:51

Because you I think I'm pretty sure you said, like

1:00:53

without Albi

1:00:53

you wouldn't have

1:00:55

been able to implement.

1:00:55

Yeah. For value stuff.

1:00:57

Was that purely because of the tech

1:00:59

support nightmare

1:01:01

or was it. Yeah,

1:01:01

it really.

1:01:04

Is it now

1:01:08

that this kind of goes back to me working in

1:01:09

financial services and working on banking

1:01:12

apps and reading the,

1:01:12

you know,

1:01:17

I don't know, we're

1:01:17

trying to the mobile,

1:01:19

the retail payments

1:01:19

specification regulation.

1:01:22

You know, there's all these regulations like about doing

1:01:24

mobile payment. Great night

1:01:25

time reading like.

1:01:27

Yeah it's horrible stuff

1:01:27

and. And.

1:01:34

I have a hard time just explaining

1:01:35

to people like okay

1:01:38

you can like import in RSS

1:01:38

feed into the app

1:01:41

or you just teaching

1:01:41

like really basic

1:01:45

that the podcast

1:01:45

audience of today is not

1:01:49

the same as it was five years ago or even ten

1:01:50

because back then it was lot more hardcore

1:01:52

tech people.

1:01:54

They understood how things

1:01:54

work under the hood

1:01:57

and now you have

1:01:57

people like,

1:01:59

you know, when a podcast doesn't play, when they hit

1:02:00

the play button or just

1:02:02

basically anything doesn't work, they always

1:02:04

they always want to blame the app developer.

1:02:07

And it

1:02:07

takes a lot of my time

1:02:10

trying to help those people because

1:02:11

I want to help them.

1:02:14

But the last thing

1:02:14

I want to deal with

1:02:16

is, you know, someone losing 100 bucks, like,

1:02:18

you know, messing up.

1:02:22

And it's it's

1:02:22

such a nice split

1:02:24

because with without B folks, they know their domain

1:02:28

better, not better than I do. So it's a very nice right.

1:02:32

So if if someone has payment issues,

1:02:33

they can go to Albi and I will help them

1:02:34

with their podcast issues.

1:02:37

I can help with that. But

1:02:41

you know, I don't think I could at least at scale,

1:02:42

right.

1:02:45

You know, if

1:02:45

if this really blows up.

1:02:47

Right. I, I can't imagine

1:02:47

having to like, you know,

1:02:51

people are losing money and they're

1:02:53

I have no control over it and I don't know

1:02:55

how to help them. And that just reminds me

1:02:56

too much of the life

1:02:59

I left behind. I don't want to return to. And I totally feel that

1:03:01

there's there's so many.

1:03:04

Yeah. When it comes to money especially, I think it's best to just

1:03:06

separate things out.

1:03:09

And if you have if you're making any one was talking

1:03:13

about one always has.

1:03:16

So my co-host on the on

1:03:16

the Model C

1:03:18

he always has like a he's an idea's guy

1:03:19

more than an implementation guy,

1:03:21

although

1:03:23

he has has done things

1:03:23

and created stuff.

1:03:27

It's not it's not totally, but he definitely creates

1:03:28

more ideas. And I do.

1:03:30

And I remember just

1:03:30

over the last year or two

1:03:34

I like he was talking about like, okay, what if we do like,

1:03:36

you know, someone boosts in this amount and then we do

1:03:38

like a boost back program. So if they're the one

1:03:40

who boosted the most for this month

1:03:41

and I'm just like third

1:03:45

one, it would take so much time to create all of this.

1:03:47

But I don't want to want to be responsible

1:03:49

for like making promises

1:03:52

with regards to money and

1:03:52

and sending that to

1:03:55

and from and back from people and things like that.

1:03:57

It's just like it's

1:03:57

got to be easy.

1:04:00

Like it's got to be easy. I can't, I can't have anything

1:04:02

to do with money and money

1:04:06

not going to places

1:04:06

where it should do that.

1:04:09

It causes so much strife

1:04:09

just can't.

1:04:11

Yeah, I mean, you want to get

1:04:13

someone upset, you know,

1:04:17

have them lose 20 bucks and think that you're

1:04:18

the guy that took it from. Yeah, exactly.

1:04:22

No, I don't want to. Be that guy here.

1:04:25

You know, there was nothing you mentioned then,

1:04:26

which was I saw a recent

1:04:30

post on Twitter

1:04:30

X from Podcast Addict,

1:04:33

and I think it was something that you'd posted up

1:04:36

probably not too long before a month or two

1:04:37

before where someone

1:04:41

was gave them

1:04:41

like a one star rating.

1:04:44

And it was because, you know, this app

1:04:46

is putting ads in that even though they promise

1:04:48

like there would be

1:04:48

no ads or like,

1:04:51

you know, it's it's

1:04:51

marketing itself as a

1:04:54

as not having ads. And then they're putting ads. And it was actually just

1:04:57

of course,

1:04:57

it was the podcaster

1:04:59

putting an ad in their own audio. And it's like, I can't do

1:05:01

anything about that. And if I did,

1:05:03

I'd be, yeah, completely

1:05:06

changing

1:05:06

the show kind of like

1:05:09

that. That service I can't remember what they

1:05:10

it was on pod news not too long ago

1:05:12

where they were

1:05:14

somehow being able

1:05:14

to filter out ads from

1:05:16

within actual podcasts

1:05:16

and just take them out,

1:05:20

which would screw up a bunch of things as well

1:05:21

if you've got chapters

1:05:23

and stuff like that.

1:05:23

So yeah.

1:05:25

I said that was one of our

1:05:25

marketing things.

1:05:27

Like we like I said,

1:05:27

we don't have banner

1:05:30

ads in the app. You're not going to see like a little ad for like a casino pop

1:05:32

up in your phone

1:05:35

when you're using our app and people will write

1:05:37

reviews like, it's great.

1:05:40

This app has no ads. And then other people

1:05:41

review that. They'll just skim it and

1:05:43

think, I'm not going here.

1:05:45

I indie audio ads. And then

1:05:47

they try out the app and then they get

1:05:48

really mad at me

1:05:50

because they think it is

1:05:50

false advertising

1:05:54

and, you know, it's. Gotten false advertising.

1:05:59

Irony. Yeah,

1:06:02

Yeah. And that's that's a shame.

1:06:04

Have you so,

1:06:04

so you noticed.

1:06:08

So when did you start podcaster That was like 2018.

1:06:11

So, so when

1:06:11

I got the numbers right.

1:06:14

Yeah, I think it was 17

1:06:14

2018, I can't remember.

1:06:17

I started it but I think

1:06:17

I released it in 2018.

1:06:19

Gotcha. That's right. And so, so even just from

1:06:20

then you've noticed

1:06:24

the just general trend

1:06:24

or people using podcasts

1:06:29

in a in a different way

1:06:29

compared to

1:06:32

like now compared to 2018,

1:06:32

it was still a bit

1:06:35

more techie back

1:06:35

then. Yeah.

1:06:38

I mean, I was listening

1:06:38

to podcasts myself back

1:06:41

before then,

1:06:41

but you know, when

1:06:45

when Joe Rogan

1:06:45

came on the scene and you

1:06:48

know, the Serial podcast before that

1:06:49

and you started getting

1:06:52

just a lot more

1:06:52

just general listeners,

1:06:54

you know, and I said they don't

1:06:57

your average podcast listener doesn't know that.

1:07:02

I don't,

1:07:02

I don't have like I'm

1:07:04

a data centre

1:07:04

with all the audio files

1:07:07

on it, right? So when something loads,

1:07:08

you know,

1:07:10

they could be talking to

1:07:10

a server anywhere, right?

1:07:13

It's a decentralised system. So I just had to start

1:07:14

having to explain

1:07:18

that a lot more to my customers. You know, I'm sure every podcast app

1:07:20

developer has to do it.

1:07:24

It's just a process

1:07:24

of education.

1:07:26

Yeah, Yeah, for sure. And do

1:07:28

do you still enjoy it? You know, through

1:07:30

all the through all the

1:07:33

miscommunications,

1:07:33

false advertising,

1:07:37

all that sort of stuff. Do you still enjoy

1:07:37

creating the app? Is it still as fun as it was

1:07:39

when you first created it?

1:07:42

Yeah, I still have

1:07:42

a lot of fun doing it.

1:07:44

Sometimes I'm surprised. It's one of the things

1:07:47

where like, like I said, when I first started it, I thought I'd

1:07:49

be done in six months and

1:07:52

I keep for a while I had

1:07:53

this unrealistic fantasy

1:07:56

that eventually I would finish the app like an end

1:07:57

state to it, and

1:08:01

I've just given up on that

1:08:01

because

1:08:05

there's just so many new ideas and so many features

1:08:06

I want to add to it. And

1:08:10

yeah, I don't think I ever

1:08:10

maybe one day

1:08:13

I'll get bored of it, but I'll be going out for like six or seven years

1:08:14

now and just

1:08:18

I'm just having fun, so

1:08:18

I see no reason to stop.

1:08:21

I've talked to a few of your app developers now and the image

1:08:23

that always comes up to my mind is just Sisyphus

1:08:25

rolling them

1:08:28

the boulder up the hill. It's just you guys,

1:08:29

you guys have people like

1:08:33

it's just one of the most,

1:08:33

you know, fulfilling.

1:08:36

So it depends how you look at it fulfilling

1:08:37

slash endless drudgery

1:08:42

that you can. Yeah I mean there,

1:08:46

you know if you're if you're looking to write mobile apps

1:08:48

and you know, have a high you know

1:08:49

make a lot of money

1:08:51

podcast apps is not where you want to go. Yeah right Yeah.

1:08:56

I think you know I heard Oscar

1:08:58

Maria talk about found

1:09:00

you know only 4% of his

1:09:02

users even subscribe

1:09:02

to their membership.

1:09:06

And you know for us it's it's even a little

1:09:07

less than that. So it's like

1:09:11

yeah you know if I

1:09:11

yeah I think

1:09:13

we make enough money where if if I quit

1:09:14

working on and Alex

1:09:17

quit working on it

1:09:17

and because

1:09:20

you know, it would, maybe it would, it would probably cost

1:09:21

it would cover the server costs for a while,

1:09:23

but it would just be dead

1:09:25

app at that point. Yeah, but, you know, if I want to pay

1:09:26

a graphic designer,

1:09:29

if I want to keep,

1:09:29

you know,

1:09:32

hiring Alex to help out

1:09:32

on the iOS app, it's up.

1:09:36

Then I have to keep working and putting money into it

1:09:37

and hopefully we'll we hit

1:09:39

a point of sustainability.

1:09:43

But yeah, if I didn't love it, I wouldn't

1:09:44

be doing it for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

1:09:47

Well, I really hope that comes Jason, because it's Yeah,

1:09:48

you've got a fantastic,

1:09:51

a real a really, you know, it's, I try and divide

1:09:52

my time up between them all

1:09:54

and I find I have like

1:09:56

special use cases. Like I said,

1:09:58

I've been using yours more for music

1:09:59

than, than anything else.

1:10:03

But, but there's always,

1:10:03

you know, fascinating,

1:10:05

exciting things coming along. I think

1:10:07

when Ainsley Costello was doing her program

1:10:11

and just loud were doing the that gigs

1:10:13

I'm pretty sure I was using podcast guru because I just found that

1:10:15

to be the the most reliable of the

1:10:16

of the couple that I tried

1:10:21

and and

1:10:21

yeah there's always just

1:10:24

fun new exciting

1:10:25

things on the horizon.

1:10:28

yeah. Do you got any questions for me? Anything else

1:10:30

you wanted to talk about

1:10:30

before we wrap it up?

1:10:33

Yeah. Well, how long

1:10:34

you've been podcasting, if you don't mind me

1:10:35

asking. I started on September

1:10:37

15, 2019, I believe.

1:10:42

So that's. Yeah, it's four,

1:10:44

four and a half years

1:10:46

getting close to that. That's

1:10:48

a good amount of time to refine your skills.

1:10:49

I, I keep juggling around.

1:10:52

I know that I should start

1:10:52

my own podcast

1:10:55

even if no one listens, just so I can learn the

1:10:58

kind of the art

1:10:58

of doing it.

1:11:00

Because

1:11:03

when I first started building podcast career, all I would think about

1:11:04

is a listener experience. But now I want to like

1:11:08

kind of explore what it's

1:11:08

like as a podcaster

1:11:11

and what you guys would

1:11:11

like to see in the app,

1:11:13

because especially now

1:11:13

that we've got

1:11:16

because value for value kind of enables this direct

1:11:19

line of communication from the fan

1:11:21

to the creator, right? So I,

1:11:23

I want to put myself kind

1:11:23

of into podcasters use

1:11:26

and how can I make the app better from that context.

1:11:29

So yeah, at some point

1:11:32

I'll try to make

1:11:32

my own podcast, but.

1:11:35

That time wise is it

1:11:37

it's the same thing,

1:11:37

like unless you love it.

1:11:41

Yeah, it's not I,

1:11:43

I certainly don't approach it as like

1:11:45

a moneymaking venture.

1:11:47

I don't approach it

1:11:47

with the,

1:11:50

what was,

1:11:50

who was it recently.

1:11:53

I think it was Cole. Yeah. Cole was mentioning like,

1:11:54

you know, is it.

1:11:58

I was thinking no, sorry. It was another another podcaster

1:11:59

I follow and they,

1:12:02

they'll just say like,

1:12:02

you know, it's,

1:12:04

it was just done and become

1:12:05

like slightly cheaper, like to do two episodes

1:12:06

a week. And I was like, Dude,

1:12:08

you got it. You got to cut it down.

1:12:10

Like, because if as soon as it becomes

1:12:12

like it feels work,

1:12:15

you just won't be able to

1:12:15

sustain it and it'll just

1:12:19

be like one of the, the podcast, not only a podcast app

1:12:21

that's in the graveyard,

1:12:23

but a podcast that's just in the graveyard where it's kind of

1:12:25

just like limping along. But yeah,

1:12:28

I think you'd find

1:12:28

some real insights, just,

1:12:31

just the small things like, you know, blueberry,

1:12:32

for example.

1:12:35

I don't know why,

1:12:35

but the spacing on the

1:12:39

how the actual show notes comes out can vary widely

1:12:40

based on the app.

1:12:43

Your app looks great and then some others,

1:12:44

it's like it's just huge.

1:12:48

It's just extra

1:12:48

extra spaces.

1:12:50

And I'm like, I don't know what's going on here. Like, what?

1:12:53

How did I do this?

1:12:53

I had a delivery device.

1:12:55

Yeah, there's all sorts of little mini like that. I get to play with that

1:12:57

because there's so much like

1:13:00

when I built the app, the only thing

1:13:02

that existed was iTunes.

1:13:04

And, you know, you'd have

1:13:04

the the description.

1:13:06

There's no person

1:13:06

had, there's location tag.

1:13:09

There was no, like, linking out

1:13:10

to other creators or getting to where

1:13:11

there's a lot of more there's

1:13:13

a lot more information that you can pack in about

1:13:14

an episode or a podcast.

1:13:17

And even my app,

1:13:17

I would get

1:13:20

I'm not really happy with the state of things

1:13:21

right now. I really want to make

1:13:22

that experience better. Well, I mean,

1:13:27

you know, it's picking and choosing, right? Because you do have

1:13:29

some great stuff. Like I was just going to

1:13:30

the person tag down, down below

1:13:34

and I can see like, you know, those,

1:13:35

those myself, those call those

1:13:36

the graphic designer.

1:13:39

and that all shows up

1:13:39

perfectly exactly how

1:13:42

I thought it would. I click on the link

1:13:43

and it takes me to the,

1:13:45

to the link of that

1:13:45

I did with him.

1:13:48

So you know, all that sort of stuff, that's that,

1:13:49

that's so cool.

1:13:52

You know how many people know about it? How many people

1:13:53

appreciate it?

1:13:55

I think it takes time for that, for those sorts of things

1:13:57

to do

1:13:59

to kind of like catch

1:13:59

fire, I guess, or to,

1:14:01

to for people to just realise like, yeah,

1:14:03

if I just click on this link, it'll take me here.

1:14:07

And I think just things take time

1:14:08

to, to discover as well.

1:14:11

And as a developer, I'm always kind of

1:14:12

torn between,

1:14:15

do I add the new feature

1:14:15

that everybody wants

1:14:17

or do I fix this thing

1:14:17

that's horribly broken

1:14:20

that I should affix to you? But I still don't,

1:14:21

I still don't support

1:14:24

tablets

1:14:24

like in the Android app.

1:14:26

The only screen in it that supports a landscape mode is

1:14:28

is the now plain screen.

1:14:31

That's it. Right? So if you tried to put

1:14:33

this my app on a tablet and turn it into landscape mode, it's

1:14:35

going to look terrible. So

1:14:38

but from the marketing

1:14:38

perspective, like

1:14:42

98.5% of users on

1:14:42

phones, right?

1:14:46

So there's still bugs me,

1:14:49

there's that one and

1:14:49

a half percent of people

1:14:52

and I get emails

1:14:52

from like, why don't,

1:14:54

why don't you support tablets. Yeah. And what I'll do is I'll

1:14:56

send them the binaries.

1:14:58

They just sideload this,

1:14:58

it'll work it or run.

1:15:00

It might look bad

1:15:00

but yeah, do it.

1:15:04

Do I work on just those those little like the standard core

1:15:06

things that people expect or do I

1:15:08

you know, add some new cool

1:15:10

podcasting 2.0 feature.

1:15:12

I'm I'm always wrestling with that. Yeah same for us,

1:15:14

same for us.

1:15:16

You know my

1:15:16

my feed is full

1:15:18

broken links

1:15:18

of old imagery of just,

1:15:23

just so much stuff

1:15:23

that needs fixing.

1:15:25

But it's like, man,

1:15:25

that's those episodes.

1:15:27

Like, you know, three years ago,

1:15:28

it's like episode

1:15:31

100 and something. It's just people even listening

1:15:33

to it now, you know,

1:15:35

is it worth going back and fixing? Yeah. Yeah.

1:15:40

That the next release

1:15:40

is going to have

1:15:42

the ability

1:15:42

to create an account

1:15:45

and log in because we have

1:15:45

that VIP tier.

1:15:48

It's going to let you do that via email like your own.

1:15:50

Like right now the only way

1:15:51

you can sign up to our VIP

1:15:53

program is if you have a Google account

1:15:54

or an Apple account. And that cuts out

1:15:57

a lot of people that just don't want to be

1:15:57

in those ecosystems. So

1:16:00

that's just one of those,

1:16:00

you know, it's

1:16:05

it's not like

1:16:08

it's not a cool new shiny feature, but it's going to enable

1:16:10

a lot of people to use the app. They don't want to be tied

1:16:12

to Google or Apple.

1:16:15

So that's the next thing. And then after that,

1:16:18

we're working on

1:16:18

Smart Playlist.

1:16:21

So we had a whole bunch

1:16:21

of overcast users come in.

1:16:23

Are you familiar with the concept? A smart playlist?

1:16:26

No, you track So.

1:16:29

So our app is does

1:16:29

kind of like

1:16:31

YouTube style playlist. So you add specific

1:16:34

episodes to a playlist

1:16:34

and it's static, right?

1:16:36

So when you create

1:16:36

a YouTube playlist,

1:16:38

you have to manually put stuff in there. It doesn't just auto populate

1:16:40

a smart playlist,

1:16:43

you don't put episodes in it. It just tracks

1:16:44

a set of podcasts. So

1:16:49

you have three podcasts you track. You can maybe

1:16:52

label it the comedy playlist, you know, just always be updated

1:16:54

with the latest stuff from this podcast.

1:16:56

So that's the next thing

1:16:56

that's coming after that.

1:16:59

Like you said, there are 183 things

1:17:00

in our backlog and

1:17:05

we got to write them for both apps. So I'm very busy

1:17:06

quite a while.

1:17:08

Yeah. All right. Well, yeah,

1:17:09

sounds like you've

1:17:13

you won't, you won't be. Short of pushing

1:17:13

the boulder up the hill as the hill

1:17:15

just gets longer.

1:17:18

Yeah. Jason,

1:17:21

thanks so much for spending the time and I really, really do

1:17:22

appreciate.

1:17:24

If people wanted to know

1:17:24

more, how can the download

1:17:27

the app and if they want,

1:17:29

do you want them to get in

1:17:29

contact with you if.

1:17:32

Well, sure. They can

1:17:36

email me at Jason

1:17:36

I really bad apps that com

1:17:39

they can get the app by

1:17:39

going to podcast your IO.

1:17:45

yeah that's pretty much awesome. Thanks so much.

1:17:47

Yeah no problem. It was fun. I can't believe the time

1:17:49

really flew. It's been. An hour.

1:17:51

Or 20 minutes. Yeah. No meetings here.