PP 200: The Podcasting Bug with Jeremy Ryan Slate

Command Your Brand Website: https://commandyourbrand.media/
Jeremy’s Personal Site: https://www.jeremyryanslate.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyryanslate
Facebook: https://facebook.com/jeremyryanslate
Google+: https://google.com/+Jeremyryanslatebiz
Create Your Own Life Podcast: https://www.jeremyryanslate.com/podcast-2/

Transcription not yet cleaned up but thanks for checking it out!

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I am so happy that you are here to join us today and I’m thrilled introduce you to our guest, Jeremy Ryan Slate.

Jeremy is the CEO and co founder of command your brand. Jeremy, I could go on and introduce you more in what you do. But you know, it’s so much better than I do. And by the way, I’ve loved every conversation that we’ve had up till this point.

Kim Sutton: Listeners, I encourage you to find a way to get on Jeremy’s calendar if you can. Sorry, that was horrible. I should have asked you if I could say that. But Jeremy, your background is so awesome, and and what you do now is incredible. So can you just share it in your own words? Because you’ll be able to say it so much better than…

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yeah, it’s funny you’re talking about Yeah, we’ve had a lot of great conversations. We’ve talked about puppies and kittens and pigs and lots of interesting things. So I’m stoked to be hanging out with you here today. I have a really weird background that got me to where I am today. My original goal was to be a college professor. So I studied world religions, studied different religions. That was my undergrad degree. I studied literature Oxford, and got my MA in ancient history. Mainly like in classic literature, and somehow taught high school for couple years. I’m like, Dude, this kind of stinks. And was there for a couple years went through a bunch of different things until finally in 2015. I kind of had this like, come to Jesus moment where I realized I need to stop promoting myself and figure out how I can promote other people. And that’s when I started to create your own life podcasts which because I had that viewpoint shift, it really took off. And that led me into doing everything I am now with command your brand, with my wife Brielle, and helping getting people on some amazing podcasts and to become amazing guests so that they really can respect the integrity of the shows they’re hanging out on.

Okay, I have to ask, why did you want to be a college professor?

It’s this is kind of funny. So um, I come from a really large family. I have 60 something I don’t know the exact number but 60 something first cousins 100 and something second cousins, and out of all that number. I’m the only one that ever go to college. So both my parents didn’t go to college. So like to me Like this breathing studious was like the big like, important thing to do, which would separate me and like make me feel like, I guess make me feel like I was really important you know what I mean? Like in that way shape or form and would make people proud of me. But the problem is when you when you try to do something for other people and not just like to fulfill your own goals, it kind of gets a little weird and a little uncomfortable.

Oh, yeah. And I

it’s interesting in my family on one half of the family and I’m not going to point any fingers here. And one parent side of the family, all of the kids have gone to college, all the cousins in, in my siblings, and on the other side. My siblings are the only ones who went. However, it’s funny. I’m the one who’s not using my degree.

No, I’m not either. So I feel you

but Jeremy, I actually wanted to be an AST architect in outer space. When I look at, yeah, I wanted to design interiors on the space station.

That’s bad. If

I didn’t like science,

I got straight A’s in school because it was expected of me. Let me just put it that way. But sitting through science class, I really don’t know how I passed quite honestly. And it’s a good thing I know my kids don’t listen to my podcast.

Well, it’s kind of like, I don’t know, maybe feel me on this. But like, I feel like the way our brains work like either you’re really good at like history and literature and things like that, or you’re really good at the math and the sciences. And I was not good at the math and the sciences. So I totally like feel you there. Yeah.

As it turns out, like one or two of my siblings have their masters from really prestigious schools. The third one went to Cornell. So another really prestigious school, she just didn’t need her masters for what she’s doing. And then I was the black sheep who went to art school, I did go into interior architecture. So yeah, but completely different, but I’m still not using it and if anybody stops by my house, Well, number one, be prepared for a mess. Number two, be prepared for it. There is no inkling that I have a background in interior design someday maybe it will happen but just not today. Are you familiar and I want to get back to your story but are you familiar with Shane and Jocelyn Sam’s from flip lifestyle? They have a podcast.

I am not. That’s that’s the first one here.

And Jeremy, you have to you have to introduce yourself to them and their brand. At flip lifestyle calm. They were actually both teachers, high school teachers, until they realized that they needed to make their own life change. And if you want to listen to their episode, my dog is in putting herself see positive productivity podcast life happens. There episode is Episode 194, which you can find KIM SUTTON comm forward slash pp 194 However, they had some things go down on their life and they realized that they needed to be a change and I don’t think teaching was necessarily what they wanted to do either. And then they they started their businesses and started a podcast. And it’s just amazing to hear how their life has absolutely transformed. And they know this is what they were supposed to be doing. And I think they went from something like 40,000 a year, maybe each or combine I don’t think it was combined to over seven figures just by following their passion. Yeah. Wow. So let’s jump back to, to how your journey progressed. You’re the owner of command your brand with your wife, as you said, Can you share more about what you do for your clients? And, and I know that you and I both know the importance of getting on podcast and marketing our brand, but what have you seen? What have you seen any huge transformations for your clients and actually getting themselves out there? Through podcasts?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, well, it’s funny because you probably know this as much as I do, like with all of the, you know, 200 something interviews we’ve done, I’ve done 300 and something. It’s like, you get some people on that. They’re just like a promotional record. You’re like, it’s Fine, I’ll give you time for that. Let’s just have a conversation and let’s, you know, figure out how we can educate my audience. So like, I got some, like, really, really, like rough pitches from people. So I was kind of like, Alright, well maybe I can actually complete instead of complaining because I was complaining a lot like God, if people gotta leave me alone. I was like, how can I actually flip this to help people? Like, how can I actually like change that? And that was a lot of where the business idea came from. So I was like, Okay, let’s focus on first just how they can be better guests. Let’s just start there. And the biggest thing was, was teaching people to actually learn how to tell a story, but not a pat story, if you know what I mean. Like not like, I’m gonna tell this exact same robotic story every show I’m on because you need to be able to be flexible and like know what the show is about know what the audience is about, know who you’re speaking to. So the big thing was really helping people to become amazing guests. And you know, correctly, reach out to the shows that they’re going to be a fit for and then help them through that whole process and then also helping with promotion. Because you know what, as, as hosts, there’s one thing we love and that’s traffic because it really helps us. So I really tried to focus on all of my pain points as a host from the guest side. And it actually helped a lot on, you know, on the, on the guest side as well. Like, there were some of our clients that because of being on podcast, they saw some amazing changes in their own business because this this space, you know, you enjoy it as much as I do, like, This space is like amazing. It’s so awesome for storytelling. And, and really, there’s, there’s a lot of our clients that have started with us, you know, don’t really have a lot on the press side. So getting in the podcast space is a really quick way, you know, not always easy, but a really quick way to start making some things happen and really start building a brand and start building a personality for who they really are. So it’s it’s been really cool for for what we’ve been able to do for people.

Oh, absolutely. And I love that you’re educating your clients on what to do. Because, well, listeners, you know, I’ve had my technical glitches. You’ve heard me talk about it with guests who have had to come on for their second time to be recorded. However, Jeremy, I won’t ask you for a number, but I will admit myself that there have been a number of episodes that have

been lost, or quote, you know, there must have been,

I never know how to handle that. I’m always like, it was on the other hard drive. It’s exactly, I never know.

And there have been some that have actually come on, and I could tell they were waiting from a script, I introduced them. And they read from a script like infomercial, and it does not have a positive productivity podcast is you know, I try not to get too inappropriate. If you ever meet me in real life listeners in Jeremy, you didn’t really we listeners We met at New Media summit, which was a fabulous event, as well. I’m concerned, but it was so busy every single one of the four days that I think Jeremy and I had a chance to say maybe four words to each other the whole weekend. Hmm, would that be fair?

That’s that’s very fair.

Yeah. So I mean, Jeremy it’s the positive productivity podcast but I have a whole nother like, just goofy inappropriate in a G two pG 13 way. Let’s just put it that way. Okay. I have to be really clear these days with everything that’s going on, you know. But just know don’t come on. And picture infomercials, what I’m trying to say. How did you get the podcasting bug? Had you been on a podcast? And then you started your own or how did that transition take place?

Sure. Well, let me just say on the other note, the funniest like guest experience I’ve had is I had a guest on once and like I picked up this thing from Michael Neal that I like to do and it actually is really helpful when I have somebody on like, I kept the bio for them. Best website and then Welcome to the show, blah. So when I’m asking this one guy, I’ll leave him nameless just because I said, what’s the best website for you? And he goes, Google me bi Tch. I’m like, Okay, this interview is over. Thanks, man. Have a great day. So that was that was my worst guest experience.

Oh my god.

Anyway, so as for podcasting, I’ve been a listener for a long, long, long time. I got started listening around 2000 2007 2008 somewhere around there. I had a professor in college. My classic professor that was like, we just became really good friends. He reminded me a lot of Neil Patrick Harris, and he looked like and it was funny like him and everything else. But he was like one of the smartest human beings I’ve ever met in my entire life. He would stand up in front of class and recite the Odyssey from heart like it was pretty crazy. Like they had it memorized. I walked into his office one day, and he’s listening to this podcast. And it was called the no agenda show with Adam curry and john C. Dvorak. And basically, they deconstruct the news to find out, you know, what does it actually mean? What does it actually matter? You know what’s funny about it, they just kind of make fun of it. And they have all these like, it kind of makes fun of the morning Zoo radio format. So they have all these jingles like in the morning, all this funny stuff. So I just, I’ve been listening to that podcast for they just hit their 10th year that they’ve been around, and I’ve been listening to them. So since their first hundred episodes is they’re closing in on 1000. So for me, I’ve been a podcast listener for years and years and years. And then eventually I was like, well, there’s nothing else I can do. Right? Let’s try this podcasting thing in 2015. And I failed miserably with my first show called rock your life I couldn’t even sell you’re right who you are instead of while you are. And it was all about me being the expert on business and life and all these other things of none of which actually was And it wasn’t until I flipped that around and was like, Okay, how can I serve people? Who do I really want to learn from is when things actually went very well with create your own life and kind of set me up for today.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shared this on the positive productivity podcast before. However, I was planning on launching two podcasts at the same time. Wow. Yeah. And the other one was purely looking at how I could bring in money. I’m not saying that the positive productivity podcasts, you know that I don’t have a dream someday of making money off of it. However, it was purely based upon what I do revenue in my revenue generating job, I hate the word job because I don’t feel like it’s a job. However, I got a couple episodes in and I didn’t even release them. But I already had pod fade. And I was like, this is not going to work. So a couple of those were edited gently and put into the Positive productivity podcast listeners, if you listen to any of the early episodes you might hear mentioned on the other podcast name, which actually, funnily enough, I don’t even remember right now, I think, I don’t remember what that other brand was called.

I did the same thing though I had like my first couple interviews that I did were on, you know, create your own life or from my other show. And yeah, because I needed something to start out with. And I was kind of like, I was terrified doing these few. So let’s just let’s just go for it.

If you could go back and do it again, when you go through your whole college experience, the same that you did,

as in like, from the podcasting point of view, or just like, you know, attending college or what?

Yeah, that’s a good question.

Because Because here’s the thing, like I enjoy all the education I got, but if I could do it again, I probably wouldn’t have went to grad school because I’m in love unless you’re going to go down a PhD track and unless You’re getting an MBA in like business or something that’s going to get you more money at a job you already have or intending to get. There’s not a heck of a lot of point in getting a master’s degree. You know what I mean? Because it’s kind of like, Alright, you’ve got a master’s in history, you’re a little bit more qualified the other guy but not qualified enough to get those big jobs. So it was kind of actually a rough point to be in and it was a lot of a lot of money to pay back to so I don’t I don’t know if I would do that. though. I enjoyed a lot of my college experience.

Yeah, the relationship side of my college experience was definitely worth it. I mean, even Yeah,

I like used to hang out with my professors and stuff like I was weird. I commuted to school. So I would like you know, meet up with professors and stuff like that. And I even earlier this year for pod fest down in Tampa, or not Orlando, but we were saying in Tampa, one of my professors was down in Tampa. So when I had that event down there, I went and hung out with him for a couple drinks, you know?

Yeah. No, I totally understand that. Actually. One of my I had a co op, or Yeah, I guess a co op is the appropriate Or, I worked with the same company for two and a half years through college. And very small company, one owner, one coworker, and they’re like my brothers know, oh my gosh, 16 years later said, that makes me feel really old. But I mean, they know we can call and connect every couple years. It shouldn’t be that long. But we can connect every couple of years and we just pick up where we left off. And it’s amazing. To me, I’m always fascinated to hear about how entrepreneurs met their spouses and how they became part of the business. Would you mind sharing more of that journey with us?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Absolutely. So I met my wife, my wife when I was still in grad school like we’ve been together. I’m closing on eight years now. It’ll be eight years in, met in February to eight years in March. We’ve been married for over two now. I actually like to credit her with kind of pushing me into entrepreneurship. Because I just wasn’t happy where I was. And you know, she’s always been somebody that her family has always run a business. So like for her, it was kind of like normal, it was normal life. And we had met through a mutual friend, because we actually went to high school in the same town, but I’m four years older than her. And I wrestled at the same time in school that her brother did. So I knew who her brother was, and stuff like that. I didn’t know her. And I ended up meeting her through one of my friends, who actually neither of us talked to now, which is kind of an interesting point about that friend. And we’ve been together for a long time. We met her in grad school. She was with me through teaching. And then she was actually the one that that helped me get started as she was approached by somebody else about a network marketing opportunity. And I’m not in that space anymore, but it’s kind of what helped me get started. And neither of us knew what it was. So she’s like, Oh, you know, I’m happy with my job. You’re very unhappy with yours. And I hear it every night. So So give this a shot. So I gave it a shot. It was pretty tough, I quit my job on a whim and kind of jumped into that and kind of struggled through it for the first few months, made some decent money, it was okay. But she was always there to support me and push me and have more faith in me a lot of times that I had in myself, because I guess she always saw the vision of who I really was, and not my own self doubts a lot of times. So, you know, she was always somebody there to push me and, and really helped me through a lot of things. And it’s funny because we both ended up in the same spot, though. It’s not like what either of us ever would have thought would happen as she went to school for PR and I’m self taught and everything having to do with PR, and she actually helped me with a lot of that learning process. And now here we go, we actually end up working together, which is pretty great, actually.

That makes perfect sense considering what you’re doing now.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s really cool to have a spouse it’s on the same page.

Oh, absolutely is I mean and I’ve had one that wasn’t in my husband Dave totally is and he’s the same way he’ll reinforce me and and give me that boost when I’m feeling down and just frustrated and that’s if if you’re listening and you’re not an entrepreneur but you’re married and your spouse is please for all that is holy be their biggest support person if you can’t be that then let allow them to find somebody who is I hate to say it

like that it becomes difficult I could I could imagine like just because I’m from I don’t know for myself I’m just saying from observing my friends that have had that that situation it’s like it’s a push and pull. You know what I mean? Like and and honestly, I’ve always been somebody has been a little bit of an over worker, I may say, and that was actually an issue I had with with previous girlfriends and stuff like that, like part of the game was always Don’t try to try to knock me off of working hard and pushing myself. So I’ve always been a hard worker, but you know, she kind of hit me a little bit with the direction of it.

I should say I didn’t mean allow your spouse to become a swinger. That’s not

That’s not at all what I was trying to say.

I didn’t I didn’t expect that one. But okay, let’s go with it.

But I could just hear some ears like, oh, what was she saying? No, the, my, my ex and I. Yeah, he’s changed a lot since we were married. But our communication now is based on is limited to, you know, passing each other at soccer games or, or a text message about our kids. However, he detested my business that I had at that time so much, and it was a ecommerce little. He was an e commerce shop, that he actually found a way to turn off my access to all the sites I needed to access Wow, run the business from messed up. Yeah. And then he actually got upset when I went and got an office so that I could continue because I had put something. Well, it was let me think about how I could say this because I don’t want to play the blame game. I had also racked up a tremendous amount of credit card debt on inventory because I thought hey, if I buy more inventory, I can sell more. Well, it doesn’t always work that way. And especially the way that I did it did not work that way. But I needed a way to sell like this multi six figure inventory that I had at home. So I got an office. Well this time, thankfully I don’t have inventory. But I’ll say I have the most supportive husband ever. But he also lets me know when he’s seeing too much of the back of my head and we need to have time away but part of that is also me because I am just like you Jeremy I’m very hard working and I will keep on pushing, pushing pushing, but it also took a break in health to realize I can’t do that. Not just physical health, but mental health, I need to get away from my computer I need to sleep.

And it’s funny because even for myself, like I know, like, my wife just had a trip with her mom to Italy recently. And when she was away that week, like I kind of fell back into my old routine of, yeah, I can work till 2am. And that’s great. And this is fun, and I’m having a great time. And it’s like, I don’t really wait without somebody around to kind of balance me out and say, let’s have a little bit of fun too, and go, like go out somewhere or whatever. I kind of overdo it. And I just kind of work longer on projects that don’t really need me to work that long on I’m like, like, I had a friend that was like, I got a great idea. Let’s write an article, the top 40 millennial influencers. I’m like, Okay, great. My wife’s away. Let’s do it tonight. You know what I mean? So it was like, I didn’t sleep and wrote that article in one night. So it’s kind of like it’s it’s also nice to have that balance sometimes too.

Oh, absolutely. And then I am.

It becomes because I’ve started stepping away and I do I it’s not mom. Give It’s actually, let me think about how can I say this? It’s guilt because I feel like I’m ignoring my clients after five o’clock. I shouldn’t feel guilty about that. You know, they send Skype messages or emails and I, for so long it felt like I needed to respond right away. And now I don’t have to wait until the next morning or later. Sometimes it happens later in the evening. I just this week, we introduced our four year old daughter to Mario on the Super Nintendo. Oh, man. Yeah, because she can’t use the new controllers. They’re just too complicated for her. I think the we would probably be manageable, but we don’t have a we my husband’s a video game developer. So we have the classic ending s we have the Super Nintendo we have the Nintendo 64 and the 64 is just too complicated for her. So I got a call it 830 in the evening, and my husband answered the phone. If it was our lamb or her home phone actually. And it was somebody calling about business. And he didn’t know. But he answered it. And so I’m there on the couch, and I took the phone call, and the VA is standing on the couch next to me screaming out of excitement because she has just beat her first level ever. Wow, four years old. And it totally that little moment, made it totally worth not responding to any Skype messages or emails. For those hours. I, I would have been so sad. I mean that this might sound funny to some listeners. But those are the little moments that we’re going to remember at Thanksgiving. 20 years from now, remember when I beat my first Mario level? I mean, especially in our family was with a game developer dad. I mean, our house revolves way too much. Sometimes around gaming. Everybody does. I feel Yeah. And I have to share listen That’s actually my husband is the first one who ever got me behind a mic. It was he didn’t get me on my first podcast, however, I’m an introvert. And he wanted to play a game.

Kim Sutton: Jeremy, do you have played any video games?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: I haven’t in many years, but I used to be obsessed with Nintendo 64 back in the day, GoldenEye for hours and hours and hours.

Okay, but he was shocked to find World of Warcraft on my computer when we started dating. It’s like, you play this? It’s like I did. I don’t play it right now. So we got back into gaming, we found a free game. Maybe it wasn’t free, but that’s what our budget was at the time. And they and they used discord or something similar to chat with each other. And I was so scared to get behind the microphone. He’s like, come on, you need to get on so you can hear what’s going on. And that was my first time ever. Well, there’s a little fib there, but let’s As you can go back and listen to previous episodes about my real first time, which was a disaster behind a microphone. I’ll put that in the show notes. But that was how I actually started sharing my voice. And then I got introduced to a couple podcasts, or I got invited to a couple podcasts and it was absolutely nerve

wracking for Jeremy nerve breaking. Welcome. Yeah, thank you.

And then it got the bug in and I realized this is what I needed to do. I just didn’t realize what I needed to share yet. So I’m glad I waited. How do you control your ID ideas? Jeremy, do you and what type of project management system do you use? Because I know it’s not just you umbrella?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yeah, there’s um, we have one client manager, Brielle and I, we just hired three salespeople as well. So um, I’d like to say that I’m better at this than I am but I need to work at getting it in we we use basically But not consistently. So it’s, I’ve tried to use Slack, I’ve tried to use a lot of these different ones. And it’s just like, I really can’t get into it. So we do need to get more consistent on it.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: But all of our, like our entire businesses run through Google Drive, like every single thing we do is run on Google Drive, everything systemize everything’s joint spreadsheets, all that kind of stuff. So the workflow of everything we do is run out of Google Drive, though, do need to get a little bit better with, you know, consistently using Basecamp. And keeping everybody on the same page there. We do have a weekly staff meeting every Monday to keep everyone on the same page. But I could get a little better with that whole side of things.

Kim Sutton: How do you keep your meetings from being a waste of time?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: I usually beforehand there’s only a few things you really need to go over and staff meeting what were the statistics like this week, because, you know, based on your statistics are, are basically how you’re going to apply what’s going on your business. That’s kind of the first thing Okay, well, we’re everybody’s stats, so quickly go over that. Second thing is, any major things that are going on this week like is a new client coming on board, we all have to have a team meeting to plan, you know, what’s going to be the best plan of action for them. And last thing we just do is, Hey, is there any questions? And that’s pretty much it. Because we try to keep them to 10 minutes to 15 minutes at the most, because if there’s anything else that needs to be discussed, that’s really like big and ongoing, it’s probably on a more individualized basis. But really, the staff meeting should just be able to, okay, where everybody stats at how are we going to handle this having any move in this week, and anything else can be handled, you know, on an individual basis.

When I was in designer in Manhattan, every single Wednesday morning, there was a staff meeting where everybody was required to come in. Every project manager would go through all their projects in there with the owner, discuss what was going on. With all 60 of us sitting there in the conference room. Wow. And these meetings would last An hour and a half to two hours. Now this is Manhattan. Okay, so even I as the entry level noob designer who wasn’t making all that much money, my billable rate was still 100 150. And looking back, I knew, like I, I knew that it was a waste of time. I knew what I could be doing, instead of sitting there every single insert word here, week. But looking back now, it’s been such an eye opener of Do we really need everybody here for this meeting? Because there are so many other things that could be done.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, here’s the here’s the thing. I’ll tell you that that we’re actually where that came from for me is I used to sell life insurance for like six months because I was like, Alright, I’m teaching didn’t work. I want to you know, try this. multilevel marketing thing. Let’s Let’s sell life insurance. That sounds great. A lot of fun to sell a product you don’t really believe in. So I did that for about six months, but every Monday, we would have Have a Monday meeting and it would be like three hours. And our boss would just yell at us for three hours, how much we sucked and how we needed to sell more. And I guess it was supposed to be motivation. But I would always leave like depressed and hating myself. So I was just kind of like, yeah, first of all, I’m never gonna yell at people that work for me like that. Second of all, my meetings are not going three hours. So I guess for me, that’s where that always came from was, I’m never going to do that to anybody else. Because this has been a horrible and motivating experience.

Oh my gosh, yeah, I actually just fired a client like that. She never yelled at me. But she yelled at a team member and it was just not a good experience. And I just knew I had to get out. But I i’ve been amazed with my team. I always ask them number one, what do you want to be doing? If there’s ever anything that you see here at a company that you want to be doing and you don’t know how to do? Let’s have a conversation about it because I don’t want you doing something that you absolutely detest because then you’re gonna go look for another job and I love working with you. And then the other thing is, I realized that There’s not enough gratitude and praise that goes around. And I’m not trying to say that we need to overinflate other people. But those little words sometimes that if we just share them with people, like, thanks for doing such a great job, I appreciate having you. They go so far, even if we can’t give a massive Christmas bonus, or any Christmas bonus, you know, those little words. I don’t know why anybody would think that a screaming session for three hours would be an effective use of time.

I guess if you’re in the military, but that’s about it.

You know, but that’s about the only time it’s really, really gonna help. You don’t mean because we should be building some sort of cohesive team this year. We’re all kind of like playing this game together. It shouldn’t feel like like, like you don’t get much by force. You don’t I mean, like you don’t really get anything by it by force force just creates more force and last Have movement. So you really need to figure out how you can not put that there?

Oh, absolutely. You want to open up the line of communication both ways. I mean, this is gonna make me sound like a horrible mother. But even when my kids, if they do something really bad and I yell at them, then the next time I go to talk with them, and that doesn’t happen very often, I just need to say that listeners, but there have been some crazy things that have happened in my house. And the next time that I go to talk to them, they might like back up a little bit. And then I realize, okay, there may have been a different way that I can handle this because I want my kids to be able to communicate with me. Yes, I am their parent. I want to be their friend, too. But there’s that line. But yeah, you want to open up that line of communication, not to switch topics really suddenly, what’s the most recent book you’ve read?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Oh, gosh, I do a ton of audiobooks and I’m always listening. So I’m going to open up my audible while I’m doing this, and I’m going to let you know because I’ve read a lot of audiobooks and a lot of fiction. Just Cuz I don’t have time to. So last one I read was called rescue tin shadow by Raymond Corey. I ran red origin by Dan Brown before that, and the Great Bridge before that I like biographies of large historical events and largest Oracle figures. So that’s usually the type of things I read. I don’t read business books. I don’t read personal development books, I read fiction and usually things about important people in history because to me, it’s really important to see what they’ve done because they’ve had to handle major events like I not too long ago, read David McCullough’s biography of Harry Truman, which was a 74 hour audio book is a large audiobook. And it was really, really interesting because I got even some different different like, I guess, type of way of looking at Harry Truman because I was always like, Oh my gosh, he dropped those two bombs, how horrible but then you you you find out what was actually happening with the guy. And that contingency plan. have been set up by FDR and it was already an action before they even gave Truman like time to act on it. So you kind of look at and you’re like, he goes from being this guy that felt really horrible about a situation that happened and he didn’t have a lot of effect on it to from being like this guy of oh my gosh, why did he do that, that that event. So it’s really interesting the way we can look at history and the way we can look at a lot of events that do happen once we kind of see a lot of the deconstruction of what occurs so for me it’s really interesting to look at things like that.

I realized yesterday that I have 22 credits on my audible account.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Hook a brother up now.

I Jeremy i

get i get at least one every month.

Jeremy seriously, if you find a way that I can transfer them to you just let me know because I seriously well, because I have started taking the last hour or two before bed to read physical copies of books. I tried not to be in front of my screen.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Right before bed, I will admit that time for me right now is spent on Game of Thrones, my wife so that’s about it.

Okay, it’s a conversation for another day and actually funny, because when this episode is released, I will tell you that my, my 15 year old son is actually getting the box set of the books for Christmas. Oh my gosh, I

read the books first. So like I read five of the of the six. So I read most of them. And then we can Vince my wife to watch the TV series and actually, for Black Friday, this year, we ended up getting like a really big T which I’ve never had before. So it was really cool. And I remember driving we were driving home my wife goes Wow, I’ve never had TV that big. I look at I go Yeah, even tyrian Lannister is gonna look tall. And it was very funny.

That’s hysterical, actually. My 15 year old was a complete surprise. And well, 2002 was when he was born. But we found out right at the beginning of Yeah, we found out right at the beginning of 2002 and back in that time Wow, that makes me feel old thing that that way but back in those days, we didn’t have the flat screens yet. They were flat screens but they saw the huge box on the back. And that and I had decided to get a our biggest TV ever. However, it couldn’t fit in our Honda Civic,

because it was just so no deep.

Like it couldn’t fit in the trunk. It couldn’t fit in the backseat. So I was actually just sharing that with with my son. He’s Jeremy, he’s at the very end of season seven. I think that’s one that we just came out of any as one episode left to go. But a saving oh my gosh, I don’t know how he can do it.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Oh my gosh, well, I read the whole most of the Song of Ice and Fire series and it’s just a really, really, really interesting series. So to kind of get like, like, I don’t know about you, but when I read a book like that, like I had this whole like, like mental like stage play that goes on in my head, like what it looks like so you you actually watch The show in your like, this is the one book that I ever because I used to read the Hardy Boys a lot as a kid and like this is the one book series that are that I watched the show. And I’m like this is actually better than what I had in my head. So it’s kind of interesting. That’s awesome.

I used to read, and then I’ll get back to my next question. And I used to read the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, which is phenomenal. However, he died before he could finish the series. So I actually gave up because they don’t want to find out if they can, if somebody else continued it. However, I actually for another reason I also got off of ebooks, I know I can highlight in my Kindle, but I can’t highlight on Audible. And I use so many things that I hear in Instagram or social media or, or tweet them and it’s a great way of connecting with people online listeners. I’ve made so many great connections with authors just because I like something that they wrote in a book and I will go and I will tweet the quote and connect with them through Twitter. And we never really think about it. Maybe Jeremy, you’ve experienced the same thing. But we’re all people, authors or people podcasters or people when we started our people, and, and never really, Mark Mason was my first guest on the podcast, and I considered him a celebrity. I still consider him a celebrity. I mean, he was one of the podcasts I was listening to. He’s like, you’ll, you’ll know it, give it a year, you’ll know you’re not any different from him or from me. People are going to be tweeting you and you’re going to just love it. And you’ll realize that, you know, you’re just, you’re not any different. You’re just 200 more episodes along than you are now. And it was such an eye opener to realize that we’re all people. There are people out there who are making a massive amount of money, but they’re still just people and I love getting those messages. But

what is the last podcast you listen to? I know it’s not mine.

This morning, I’ve been hooked on this one recently called the Bowery boys. It’s these two guys that from the Bowery in New York City, and they actually go through the history of New York City. And it’s kind of the ones that I discovered it recently. So they have a huge back catalogue. They’ve been doing it since like, 2006. So I’ve kind of been going through that recently, um, that and the no agenda show, which I still listen to, you know, 10 years later. So, so that’s actually abc news. But this interesting one recently, it’s called a killing on the cape. And it kind of deconstructs this whole story about this guy that was they don’t know if he was wrongly accused or actually accused of murder, and they kind of go through this whole like, what happened with the court case? So a lot of things like that.

No, wow. Do you listen at one time span or do you use a speed up to

Jeremy Ryan Slate: I use one time speed I don’t, it actually annoys me to hear things that are way too quick. So my brain Just doesn’t function that fast.

Kim Sutton: My MacBook memory is full. So I’ve been listening at two times speed and when I have to go listen to my own episodes to get the show notes, which I really shouldn’t be doing anymore, but I am. It bothers me to listen to myself at normal speed.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: I don’t actually listen to myself believe it or not after I do a podcast I hate the sound of my own voice after the show.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I used to but I got over that. My last question for you. You already shared what you’ve been doing before bed watching Game of Thrones. Do you wake up to an alarm?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yes, and sometimes I turn the first one off, which is a really bad idea. But yes, I do wake up to an alarm. I’m not a super early riser. I’m up late, you know, around seven o’clock or so head to the gym, do all that kind of stuff. But that’s also because I’m usually like going later into the night.

Kim Sutton: And what’s the first thing you do after you get up?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, my pig usually here’s the alarm at the same time that my you know myself does So, pigs are insatiable once they get hungry. So he wakes up and the first thing that happens is he’s hungry. So he’s gone.

Oui. Oui,

oui, until I feed him and he will not stop until I feed him. So that’s the first thing that happens. I don’t even get go to the bathroom before he eats.

Oh my gosh. So you could really just put the alarm out near him and he would be your alarm.

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Exactly. Because he doesn’t he doesn’t stop. He’s like, he’s the most persistent, you know, creature in the world. He’s very persistent. He’s like, if I keep yelling Daddy will feed me. So that’s kind of what happens.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I haven’t helped me. I thought five kids are bad. Remind me to never get a pig. Jeremy, I’m not saying they’re bad. I’m just saying my five kits are enough.

Jeremy this has been absolutely awesome. Where can listeners find you online and connect with you?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Absolutely. Anything on the business side is over at CommandYourBrand.Media. And I actually put a checklist together for your listeners if they go to CommandYourBrand.Media/checklist which is going to help them to become a great podcast guest and start getting themselves on podcasts as well.

And anything on the podcasting side they can get over at JeremyRyanSlate.com as well.

Kim Sutton: Awesome. Thank you so much Jeremy and the listeners those links will be in the show notes which you can find over at thekimsutton.com/pp200.

Jeremy, do you have a last piece of parting advice or Golden Nugget that you can offer to listeners?

Jeremy Ryan Slate: Absolutely. One of the biggest issues I had in my business life was listening to other people’s opinions and a lot of times who were very negative about what I was doing. So the thing I like to tell people is if it adds to your life, listen to it. If it doesn’t, ignore it, because it’s really not gonna help you go anywhere or do anything.