Todd Cochrane: Podcasting in the Age of AI

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  00:02

The Sound Off Podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  00:12

Todd Cochrane is the CEO of Blubrry, which is a podcast hosting company with lots of solutions for podcasters. They have virtually every toy in the box when it comes to podcast accessories. They've been integrating podcasts into websites for years. They've got a full slate of podcasting 2.0 tools, and now they've unveiled Thrive, which are some AI things to help podcasters improve their workflow. Todd was inducted in the Podcast Hall of Fame back in 2015. He hosts a weekly podcast show with Rob Greenlee about podcasting, called Yhe New Media Show, and if you listen to it long enough, I'm told you can get a PhD in podcasting. And now Todd Cochrane joins me from Coldwater, Michigan, and you're catching us mid-conversation, talking about Blubrry's new offering, Thrive. Todd. What is Thrive?

Todd Cochrane  01:04

Thrive is a bundle we added to Blubrry hosting plan. You know, basically what we've done is we have the basic hosting plan for all the podcasters. But not everyone needs everything that we offer. But the Thrive bundle is really a series of add ons that we've added to the platform when we continue to add value to it, as we roll new stuff out, and how much stuff I'm going to continue to add this ride, I don't know, but I know that we've got a pretty rich package right now, and includes our AI assistant, includes dynamic ad insertion for pre roll for podcasters, add some stats features like episode comparisons. It's got some listener subscribe tracking information, average daily play information, stats. So again, it's a whole bunch of stuff that we've added, including the ability to get out podcast reviews in for stats, you don't have to go over there look at them and quick links. But the really, the biggest are some features additionally to Quick Links, such as a quick link is a page that is an example podcast that show forward slash podcast, basically, is kind of a link tree type of page for podcasters, but it's much more. It's very, very rich and easy to remember, but the biggest value so far has been our AI product that we've added to the Thrive package.  When

Matt Cundill  02:27

When did you decide that AI was going to play such a big role in the offerings for so many of your clients?

Todd Cochrane  02:34

Well, you know, I think when ChatGPT4 kind of hit the scene. Well, 3.5 obviously, that's when, you know, everyone kind of become aware that this was a thing, and I've seen some of the AI products that other companies in the podcasting space have rolled out. And to be honest with you, I said didn't look that hard to reproduce. So we spent probably three or four months as a team experimenting with other tools, and basically came up with a plan. And the podcast AI assistant that we built is broken down into four areas, planning. There's also post production, social clips and email. And the social clips are specifically in that segment, audio clips. And then the fourth piece is clip creator. Basically we have the ability now to create video clips. You basically set in and out points overlays. So in the end, what we pretty much knew in the beginning that we felt that only a certain segment of customers would use the planning tool, because maybe people already got a pathway, but we designed a planning tool to help be a kickstart. Kickstart your brain on a specific copy help you with some questions. If you've got a guest coming in, you've entered their bio, it basically goes out and finds information about them and then pre produces some questions, and you can add your own or select hours. But the post production tool. For me, what I was finding was, as I was using all these third party tools, I was using chat, GPT as using Claude anthropic, you know, I was using, you know, image creation tools. And what I was finding was it was taking me about an hour to get through all of that to have my show production done this. This is just takes too long. So when we built this tool and streamlined it, what I really wanted to do was I base the production value on this is okay. Before I was using any AI tools, when I was doing it manually, it took me about 15 to 30 minutes to have a good episode. Title, good description, some links, and really kind of get that blog post ready to go. So my goal was to get this process down so that someone could do a production in 15 to 20 minutes. And what we've really done is, on the production side, we analyzed the audio, create a transcript. From the transcript, we suggest titles. You pick a title or create your own. I think it gets it about 50/50, I probably picked the title 50% of time. 50% I write my own. Then it writes a full description in two different formats, one in a summary format, and the second description in a bullet point. So depending on the type of way you like to write your show notes. And then we have it generate the art, and then also chapter files. And chapter files, many folks don't know, is tied into podcasting 2.0 and it's really awesome. You can say, Well, I think I talked about 15 things. You tell it how many chapters you think you need, and it does a real good job segmenting things out so that you get a chapter file. And really, if you're on the dashboard at Blubrry, we save a draft of all this information that you've selected so that you can basically say, okay, I'm going to my episode now. I make a few edits. And the media files already linked. The transcripts already there. The chapter files are linked. You just hit publish. So those on dashboard, it's really streamlined. For those that are on Powerpress, we're currently not pushing that to Powerpress, you have to copy and paste into your blog post. So we're pretty happy with it. And really, what it end up doing is saving me time, and I have a much, much better output now, and again, you know, the thing I say about AI is it's not a replacement for common sense. Because, you know, no matter how much we try to make sure it's good, sometimes it runs home to mama and says something stupid. So, you know, you have to just, you know, QA, everything the biggest challenge, and initially was in the email generation. It was like, it was, give me this real flowery email, and I was like, listen, the audience already knows who I am. They've signed up for a newsletter. We don't have to introduce and talk about the accolades of the podcast. Just give me a summary of the show. And finally, we worked through that prompt and got a good output. So I think from this instance, what our ultimate goal is at Blubrry is a lot of people are paying for third party services, so the part of this Thrive bundle being $10 a month on top of their hosting, it's much cheaper than basically a whole lot of other services out there, and you get it and it's integrated. So that's what we really did there, was to make it a good user experience.

Matt Cundill  07:19

And this is why I'm a little bit excited about it, because over the last four months, I've noticed that I'm paying for about five or six different services, and I'm using 20% of each service altogether. It kind of reminds me of my cable TV experience and my streaming experience. I've got nine services, and I'm only watching a little bit of each instead of taking advantage of the whole thing. So let me ask you then, a lot of companies have jumped in with two feet. And is there a feeling that you have to be all-in early with this sort of thing in order to get engagement, or is this something that, like a company can sit back and wait and say, well, let's see how other people do it first, and then we can do it better than them.

Todd Cochrane  08:01

My prediction is, you better get in there now. The clock is ticking. And the good thing is, is we built this, and as the models improve, the language models, the product will get better, just based on the pure fact that it's going to improve. Matter of fact, we were having challenges with one specific piece of the system and and we built this so we're not tied to any model. I said, Well, I heard good things about this model. Let's, let's do the call over there of the API call. And we did, and it the product just got better. But the whole world, no matter what people are going to say, is going to change over the next couple of years here. But one thing I truly feel is that podcasting, including folks that make YouTube videos or anything buddy that's doing original content, our true voices, our storytelling ability, really this, this, what podcasting is known for, this lean in medium, is going to be very, very successful, even more than it is now, because the amount of content that's being produced today is by AI is just flooding the world with garbage. Now, the difference with what we have done here is it is using what you have said in your show to help come up with that summary. So we're really isolating what it's able to look at in creating the social the clips, everything that is going to be tied to this product. It's based upon your original content. I'm worried about then we've already seen some of it. And people doing shows are completely generated by AI, using an AI voice, or basically using a clone voice. I'm concerned about that, especially when it comes to disclosure. I'm kind of old school. I feel if you're going to go in and edit any significant part of your podcast and replace it with a voice replacement, if you are doing it just you? Probably not a reason to disclose, but if you've had a guess and you make a change to what they've said, I think that's fraught with concern, and we should be disclosing if we're making changes with AI. Now, this doesn't change the audio. We don't touch the audio. It goes up. Your master is still your master, just for the metadata. And for a very, very long time. I've always said that you record for your audience. You write for Google, but now you're probably writing for the language models, so you're probably trying now to build authority, not only for Google and for Bing and for everyone else, but it's this data is going to get sucked in, and it has to figure out, you know, search is going to change, and that's the scary part for podcasters, businesses, etc. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg of what they're going to do, but I think there has to be more rich metadata around shows. This one paragraph of content for your podcast is not going to cut it anymore. You have to have a full summary, even though you have a transcript, I think it's going to make a huge difference down the road if your metadata is richer than just a show title and one paragraph of text about the podcast.

Matt Cundill  11:12

So I had a client call me to say I made an error in the episode. I said, go left. I meant to say, go right. I use AI technology with their permission to make the change. Do I have to disclose that, in your mind?

Todd Cochrane  11:28

There's no rules. I think it's- at this point, maybe there should be a mention, you know, maybe it should say, hey, we edited for clarity or for a mistake, we've edited the show. But again, I think it's a personal preference here. If I make a mistake when I'm recording my show, I can go back and rerecord it right. And with some of these tools, if it's small, like go right instead of go left, I think it's probably acceptable not have to disclose that. But again, how far do we go on that? I think someone that's trying to be deceptive is not going to want to declare that because, you know, if they put something in someone's mouth that they didn't say, I think then that could be, you know, a real issue from a legal standpoint. So I don't think very many people are going to do this. Of course, we've heard voice clones already of politicians and so forth. So, you know, can it be considered a deep fake when you've done something like that with someone's voice? I don't know. I think if you disclose it, the other person knows about it and signs off, and I think it's okay, but there's real no mechanism now in the metadata to disclose this. I don't think using descript or something like that to edit your show requires a disclosure. But at what point do we replace sentences of information or create a whole show with a from a written script? I think those shows should be completely disclosed that this did not come from original voice. It came from a transcript that I created. I think clarity is important.

Matt Cundill  12:58

Does ChatGPT replace Google?

Todd Cochrane  13:01

It may, you know, they did a demo here the other day, and you look what Bing is doing already and Google, it's, you know, they're doing summaries now on search results, and being what for select group of people, you have a summary that is basically where you would normally find the search results, and then the actual links are in a sidebar that you would have found, so you know, what happens when you know how accurate is this? And I think both Google and Bing have had challenges in some accuracy. I think there was like one summary where it- on a pizza, it told you to add, I don't know, some product that would have killed you, or something, you know, there was basically a bad summary. So it goes back to my point that you know this AI output is not a replacement for common sense, but if you are looking for a how to, you know, and the how to tells you to podcast, you should publish your episode a .wav file. Well, that's wrong. And you know, but someone that's looking for the information may not know that. So if you're not a subject matter expert, and you're looking for information, and you get some, you just have to do your homework. I think we're a very slippery slope here. And I think podcasters are gonna- again, original voices, real stories, original subject matter experts, you know, people that know the real world. I think they're gonna be very, very very successful. And I think shows are going to continue to grow that are original content.

Matt Cundill  14:25

So it's safe to say, and fair to say, that you think podcasting is going to do very well throughout this forthcoming era, because, you know, social media platforms are going to get involved with like deep fakes and stuff that just isn't real, and it's going to be litter.  My

Todd Cochrane  14:39

My strategy for growing my show has completely relied on Google for many, many years. So what happens when Blubrry and Libsyn and Podbean and Buzzsprout were not surfaced anymore in a search result? What happens when there's another winner picked, and Google has done this for years, there's winners and losers picked upon, you know, the first page of the search results, and whole industries are trying to get people on the front page. Well, that could be going away. So how do you then get heard? How do you get discovered? How did you get your brand discovered? I think this is where every episode that you put out has to have this rich metadata. Otherwise people complain about discovery. It's going to get worse. So building your network through word of mouth is going to be as important as it ever is. It's still the number one way people find out about podcast is listener one tells perspective, listener two and so forth. You know that's six circles of separation, or whatever that term is. So I think we're going to have to really learn to make sure audiences are sharing our shows.

Matt Cundill  15:48

You actually did this as an exercise right on your show, and you asked ChatGPT to provide you with a list of the most popular podcasts about podcast. And I think when I was listening to that exercise, I thought, oh, this is interesting. And I wonder exactly what's out there? And a few times I've had listeners come back to me and say, Oh, ChatGPT returned the time I was on your show. And I thought, oh.

Todd Cochrane  16:11

An actual time hack of the time they were on during the episode or a date? How deep did it get?

Matt Cundill  16:17

According to an appearance so and so made on Sound Off Podcast, they said this. So that was a nice return with a shout out to my show. I thought, don't know how it got in there, but I'm happy that it did, I guess.

Todd Cochrane  16:29

Yeah, you know, I think in the end, you know, one thing that we've fully realized here is that there's a lot of choices out there. There's a lot of tools, and people are spending a lot of money on those tools. You know, I kind of chuckle. You know, 10 years ago, maybe a little more. You know, the biggest complaint we had was cost of hosting. Oh, my God, you're $12 or $20 a month. Well, now we're not even the majority of expenses for most podcasters. We're now the least amount of expense if you're using the script, if you're using any AI tools, if you're you know, all of a sudden you got $100 worth of additional charges you're hosting, which has stayed the same for literally the last 15 years. Is the minor expense in the end, though, we know that podcasters quit because it's too expensive, because the cumulative total of all the tools they're using, you know, $100-$150 a month. And if you're doing this as a hobby, and you have a partner that is wondering, you know, where this expense is. So again, trying to fill holes with stuff that we don't have, so that folks can keep the cost down, and also just, you know, help in the overall production of people's podcast to have better output.

Matt Cundill  17:44

Yeah, something that got expensive for a lot of podcasters over the last year or two is the jump to video. And I feel the need that I need to jump into video in order to be found in search, or because they believe that everybody is watching the video. And I think when this show's done, we're gonna get about 10-15 people who have watched this on video, and we will have, you know, a few hundred who will listen to the audio experience. But why is there still this immense pressure for video?

Todd Cochrane  18:10

I think it's a narrative that's being- let's also recognize that there's a lot of choices. Now you think about it, Tiktok, you've got YouTube, you've got Rumble, you've got Instagram, you have a whole plethora of places where creators are putting content, and there's ultimately this big pressure to be everywhere. You know, when I started doing video more than 13 or 14 years ago, it was because I was lonely doing the solo podcast, and I wanted a little interaction that was really part of it. And, you know, the interaction doing live probably carried me through some, you know, some lonely nights when I was recording in Hawaii. But again, it was ones and twos and threes and fours, I think, the majority of podcasts, and as we've looked through these variety of video platforms. Yeah, you've got two or three hundred shows that are doing very well, very, very well. But I think the majority of podcasters, me included, my YouTube channel does not get that many listens, 30, 40, 50. But I also don't have a YouTube first strategy. I have a podcast first strategy, so I'm sure if I took the time and really worked hard, the YouTube numbers would go up. But some one guy talking in front of a microphone for the majority of my shows, that's not conducive for someone to watch. It's not like a YouTube channel where there's 25 changes every minute.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  19:41

Transcription of the Sound Off Podcast is powered by the Podcast Super Friends, five podcast producers who get together to discuss podcasting. Sharpen your podcast and creation skills by following the show on the Sound Off Podcast's YouTube or Facebook page.  this

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  19:59

This podcast supports podcasting 2.0, so feel free to send us a boost if you are listening on a new podcast app. Find your new app now at podcasting2.org/apps. That's podcasting2.org/apps.

Matt Cundill  20:12

It was a year ago that Google was in the throes of getting rid of their podcast app. They made the announcement. How would you grade this?

Todd Cochrane  20:13

Have a second show.

Matt Cundill  20:13

Yeah. Okay, so create another RSS feed inside Spotify for podcasters or elsewhere?

Todd Cochrane  20:13

Yeah, and then do your video on that, and then keep your audio pure. That's one way to do it. You'll have two listings. See now that's way the show I do, the two shows I do have both an audio and video Apple podcast listing. And what that end up over many, many years is about a 70/30, split, 70% listen, 30% watch. But those numbers were established very, very early. It's been that percentage, probably for the last 10 years.

Matt Cundill  20:13

Can I watch The New Media Show on Spotify?

Todd Cochrane  20:13

No. Well, Google wanted people on YouTube, you know, so they can monetize against that content. Google Podcasts was a money pit. They weren't making no money there. Google's a for-profit company. So for the few shows that qualify to be monetized, yeah, you'll make something on this transition. But for the majority of podcasters, you're just going to have your content monetize around and even worse, you're basically your audience profile. Same things happen on Spotify. So you know, by its essence, producing video- and I've been producing video on YouTube for years, so I'm, you know, I'm just stating here- but you basically now are basically selling your audience to be remarketed to. So if they listen to your episode, they're going to know that they particularly like something about podcasting. So they're going to remarket podcasts, tools, services, features, and make money off your audience, and you'll get zero. And not only that same thing with Spotify, with video is they have said, okay, if you put video up there, we're going to play that versus your audio file. So audio has been on pass through, so you get in this metric data for advertisers, back through pass through on Spotify. Now, if you put video up there, that replaces- that sits on top of audio, and they listen, they get video first, which, again, Spotify then can monetize against and or resell to your audience. So I think people just need to realize this is what you're giving up. And at the same time, remember that there's a whole new ecosystem of advancement in podcasting tools that is, you know, part of, I think we're year three on this podcasting 2.0 journey of introducing new features that are not being carried by Apple or YouTube or by Spotify. You know, podcasting 2.0 is the primary reason transcripts happened, and that's something Apple did adopt. So there are other options, and RSS is still open, so that when you say something you shouldn't, your episode gets asked by either Spotify or by YouTube, or worse yet, your channel gets taken down. You still have the ability to podcast with open RSS.

Matt Cundill  22:33

So you mentioned the Spotify and video, and I was so excited, because I've been doing video episodes for close to a year now, and Spotify is like, well, go ahead and upload your video. I realized that you get the video show, but the audio show changes. The audio experience for the Sound Off Podcast is wildly different than the video experience, so I've just left the one episode up there in the end.  Knowing what I know and what you've disclosed about Spotify, I believe I'm your only Spotify listener.

Todd Cochrane  23:47

Probably, and we're not the demographic that people listen to content on Spotify. There is certain demographics that do very, very well on Spotify, religion does not, business does not. There's a number of categories that people do not listen to audio on Spotify. So you know, again, where you should be promoting is, depending on your content. Got to go where your tribe is. So they don't listen to tech shows on Spotify, unless you're, you know, a Rogan or somebody but his, he's really not a tech show.

Matt Cundill  24:21

I'll use The New Media Show as an example though, if you made the decision, you and Rob made the decision to just put video up on Spotify, because you're not editing your show, the only incremental loss would be the dynamic audio insertion.

Todd Cochrane  24:36

Yeah, which we don't do. We're not doing DAI. So there's really no loss to us on The New Media Show, from a DAI standpoint. That- for a lot of podcasters, that's, you know, that's how they pay the bills. But again, if you're not doing any DAI and it's just a pure show, why not? If you're going to add video, then go ahead and dump it over there as a second show profile. You know, I've always said, be everywhere you can be. But again, it's extra work. You know, that's an extra 10 minutes that you're gonna have to post, go over there and manually upload it and post. And I think the same thing with YouTube. I don't believe podcasters should be doing the automated input, because I don't know if that's the experience you want. If you're gonna do video, do a video show and put it up on your YouTube channel as a video. Don't put this automated generated .m4v, that ends up being just your album art and, you know, your voice playing in the background. So again, that's my personal opinion. Everyone has one. That's a good thing about podcasting. You don't have to listen to me.

Matt Cundill  25:38

We did that for a year. I think we felt pressured to do that for a year, and then eventually we felt the pressure to, let's do a real video show and take the time to learn how to do the video.

Todd Cochrane  25:48

You're mostly doing pre-recorded, right?

Matt Cundill  25:50

Yeah, I do have one podcast that is- it's called the Podcast Super Friends. We do it live, and we use Streamyard for that.

Todd Cochrane  25:57

You know, I've been live from the beginning, but it was a- there was a reason. Wasn't necessarily, again, to grow a big audi- my audience on Apple podcast is huge. That watched the video on Apple podcasts, even though Apple has, in my opinion, really done a disservice to video on the app, because they've made it a second class citizen. It's buried. I show people that there's a video on Apple podcasts, and they're blown away. They don't know. And even on my video podcast listing in Apple podcasts, when you start playing, it looks like it's audio, until you click the player, then it opens up and you can see the video, and you're like, I didn't know that existed. You know, I begged them to make video a first class citizen again on Apple podcasts. But then the podcast hosts have to support native RSS video too.

Matt Cundill  26:43

Yeah, I wonder if they don't do it because it will eat up a lot of space on the phone and create a negative user experience in the end?

Todd Cochrane  26:50

I don't think a lot of people are. It could be, because, you know, my show ends up being about a gig, so if that's auto downloading, that definitely takes up space, but they could set it so that it plays on demand only. I'd be okay with that too, if that's the concern. I think they just basically, kind of got caught by surprise, and the videos took off, and they'll move fast over there, but it's a big company, so they're going to make a change. It's, you know, they never do anything super quick. The transcript piece was a long time being built because they wanted it to be a perfect experience. And, boy, they just knocked it out of the ballpark. And they create their own transcript, unless you override yours. And but I'm going to tell you, their engine's pretty powerful.

Matt Cundill  27:37

They spelled my name right, which I was shocked.

Todd Cochrane  27:40

That's huge.

Matt Cundill  27:42

Do you think Spotify abandons RSS and forces us all to upload directly there at some point?

Todd Cochrane  27:48

Hope so. No, I don't think so. They have reverted. They kept Rogan exclusive on Spotify, and then they bought megaphone, and they think they finally realized that the sum is much bigger when the distribution is everywhere. So now Rogan's again available via RSS on everywhere you love podcasts, they're still able to monetize his content based upon basically serving ads and that content that's being fed via RSS. So I think they kind of had a come to Jesus moment and realize, oh, this is dumb that we're- we're limiting what we can earn from the show based upon just having it on Spotify. So I think it's purely financial, the reason they did it.

Matt Cundill  28:32

We are, I think you mentioned, three years into podcasting 2.0. I guess what's the future? Where are we at with it, and what needs to happen next?

Todd Cochrane  28:40

More adoption. I'm hoping that Marco from Overcast, I hope he drops a few features in. We were hopeful when he came out with this new version, but we'll see if he's got, you know, the building blocks. But there's, you know, PocketCasts and Fountain, and there's a whole list of great tools out there. And here's the thing I think people need to understand about the podcasting 2.0 piece that's often forgot. If you participate in the value for value ecosystem, everyone gets a piece of the pie. The app developer does, the index, does podcaster does, your co-host, you can set up- and some splits happen automatically through fees. So those shows, those apps, are actually earning money when you are using the app and providing value for value by streaming SATs. And there's some challenges right now with SATs and the way things are working with wallets. And I think within the next six months, we're going to have it completely on FIAT. So basically, someone comes in and and basically says, for 20 bucks, you know, divvy this out at so much a minute, and knows what happened, and people not know that there is a link to crypto that's basically getting from your cash wallet with, you know, US dollars, or whatever it may be, to the podcast or the podcaster can get it. It goes through crypto, then it comes back on the other side for the podcasters in dollars, so that in the end, it's transparent and it makes more sense. But again, the value value for piece is just one of many, many, many, many features, and it's a whole different mindset. So I think it's an education piece. We're getting ready to do a webinar with Blubrry customers at the end of the month. The folks at Fountain are actually putting that on. I don't have to do nothing. They just, are just getting access to the audience and where they're educating podcasters on these features. Some of it is geeky. You know this pod roll thing? I don't know how far back you go, Matt, do you remember the days of blog rolls?

Matt Cundill  30:43

I do.

Todd Cochrane  30:44

Well, you can do pod rolls now in apps. So basically it shows the shows that you recommend as a podcaster. And, you know, I've got six or seven shows that I recommend, so it basically is a recommendation engine. And then there's the ability to do credits and basically getting people content faster. So you come onto my web player, or use one of these apps, and you want to say, well, I know Todd's talking about, he talks about in his description, or he talked about somewhere that you talked about this, you can find that subject in the chapter file and jump ahead. You can jump to that content. So it's just stuff like this. It's just making things more efficient, but we need more- more apps to participate. Apple maybe will adopt onesie twosies here- in there, we've made recommendations to Apple, and of course, Apple goes, oh, that's cool. And you know, they probably put a note in a notebook somewhere, and if it gets enough requests, then they move forward with it. Spotify, no, they're not. They're not going to end up. They don't want you leaving Spotify. They want you in their platform. They want you to be a captured creature so they can market every possibility to you, to inkle out every dime they can from you as a user and as a podcaster. You know, thank you for your content, and you go away. We're not paying you nothing. So at least YouTube, you get that 4000 hour mark, at least you make some money on YouTube.

Matt Cundill  32:09

One of the better pieces of advice that I've heard over the years from you is to not build your kingdom on rented ground. Yet your studio was built on rented ground and you were served an eviction notice.

Todd Cochrane  32:20

Yeah, my physical studio was in a rented commercial place, yes.

Matt Cundill  32:25

And so for somebody who's in the throes of rebuilding your studio, what are you thinking, I'm going to do better?

Todd Cochrane  32:31

Well, number one, I can't be kicked out where I'm at. The studio is actually being built right over there. And I'm, you know, be honest with you, I was not well adapted from working from home. It was good for me to get up, get a shower, shave, go to the office, do my Blubrry day job, no distractions. And then periodically, once a while, I would work from the house. Well, you know, May 30, that was interrupted with my landlord saying, hey, you're out, and we're terminating your lease, and I was getting ready to go overseas, and so anyway, I vacated. So now it's a new, new reality for me and being able to stay focused. And I'm setting up some provisions here in the- I live in a big law office, 2000 square foot open space, making some provisions that basically make my workplace more isolated from everything in this open working space, which is kind of weird, but simple thing of having just the TV on, even the screen capture can make you go, oh, it's, you know, distract you. So what's going to be new is, I won't be evicted. That's the number one thing. But it was probably a blessing in disguise at the same time, because I want to do more travel, and I just spent two months overseas in the Philippines. I did my show for two months. I didn't do a video component. When I go back next time I will. But this gives me more freedom to basically work and live wherever I want to.

Matt Cundill  33:56

As somebody who's always invested in the ROI of going to a place like Podfest or Podcast Movement, do you know where you're going to be at Podcast Movement, where we're going to be able to find you on the floor?  the

Todd Cochrane  34:06

Yeah, we'll be booth 303, I think is the number. I just looked that up. We'll be there in DC for the whole event. Mike Dowell, Mackenzie Bennett, and myself will be manning the booth and waving the flag, and happy to have you come over and we can show you what we've been up to. We've been busy, very, very busy, in new products and services, and we have more coming. The roadmap is rich, and my development team is on a rocket ship right now. They're building stuff as fast as I can get the market material ready, sometimes quicker.

Matt Cundill  34:37

Todd, thanks again for doing this. Love having you on the show, and it's great and good luck. We'll see you at Podcast Movement.  

Todd Cochrane  34:42

Thank you so much, and thanks for having me on the podcast.

34:44

The Sound Off Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill. Produced by Evan Surminski. Edited by Taylor McLean. Social media by Aidan Glassey. Another great creation from the Soundoff Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.