All right, welcome back to the prospecting Show. Today is Wednesday, November 10. Second episode of today, we're doing two back factors really interesting. Today we're gonna have a cool guest because we've been pushing podcasts back and forth for the last year without actually talking to each other. So today, we have Ryan Estus, from Kitt caster on the show. So welcome. Thank you so much, Connor, I appreciate it. And we actually have really good audio today too, because, you know, you got you got the good setup going and all that and it's gonna sound real nice. So we'll get this added in post production. So most people who are listening to the prospecting show, we kind of run this format, past, present and future we want to learn about you what you do, how you do it, and how you can help people. So to start things off, walk us through who you are and what your company does.
You bet. So the company kid caster, we book entrepreneurs on top podcasts like this one. Specifically, we work with funded startup founders, entrepreneurs, with exits, and C suite executives. And you know, what we do is we've we put them on podcast tour about me, you know, I'm, I'm a Colorado guy through and through. I, I've been doing a little bit of soul searching to see what got me into this podcast. Well, I've been podcasting myself for 10 plus years. I've always absolutely loved it. So you know, starting this company is kind of a dream job for me. But I kind of pinpointed a story of like when I really found this conversation, even larger point to be like maybe a focal point of my, my life. So I was 19 my freshman year in college had wrapped me and a buddy drove from Denver to Fairbanks, Alaska, and then down into Anchorage. We were supposed to have a job building cabinets. in Fairbanks. The guy was like, how did you guys get here? We're like we drugs. I know why? Well, I don't have a job and like what? So we went down to Anchorage and just started scrounging up work and just had the most wonderful summer ever. About halfway through, he kind of got cold feet. I think he had a girl back home. So he left and he's like, we got to go. And I was like, You know what, I'm having good time. I'm stay. And he's like, What are you gonna do? I was I don't know. So I was kind of couch surfing I had my guitar with me at the time was kind of a coffee shop, songwriter type guy. And there's all these like great bluegrass festivals in Alaska. So I started hitchhiking to all these bluegrass festivals. And at the time, who knows what, I don't know, 97, Alaska was still pretty safe to hit again, I don't know what it's like now. But it was and so I'd go to these festivals, I bring my guitar with me. And you know, I, you know, didn't have a pot to piss in and didn't have $1 or two nickels to rub together. You know, but because I had my guitar with me, I would just go in the stage access. And so I'd kind of do go backstage and watch all these performances. Well, what's cool about the time too, is that the, it was all campout type stuff. So in the festivals, all these bluegrass musicians are camping out, too. So concerts were great. But after the concerts when the show is over, there would be you know, a big like a bonfire. And so all the musicians would grab their, their guitars and their bass or whatever, and gather around the fire and start playing together. And one of the coolest things that ever happened to me was at this music festival, and I was not very confident with my skills. These guys are real pickers. You know, is there like, everyone's going around to do a song and that guy comes to me. And I was like, Okay, well, you know, let's go, I'm gonna try. And so I started playing, stir it up from Bob Marley, you know, and the, this guy stops, he's like, Hey, man, stop, stop, stop. And I was like, you know, at this point, and he's like, hold on, and he points to his buddy who had a tuba. And he's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, it starts playing it, and then the whole play, sing it with me. So, you know, Trump was going around to these festivals and hanging out with these artists, just these amazing conversations, you know, I was 19 years old, and like, learning a lot from people older than me and musicians in the business. And it was just wonderful, you know, and I realized that like, outside of my Spectrum was like, this world of like, connection, and particularly the hang that happens with musicians. So I think that's what really got me started and pushed me down the road to this podcast world long before there was even podcasts.
Well, and that's a big jump to right I think like, you know, being a professional musician. I just thought brand new walk by in the background dance. That's funny there. Yeah, for those of you're watching right at this, we we we always go back and forth people right. It's like we get some of the best introductions from kick Katherine. Oh, this is an aside from from the show here. But like we get some of the best introduction from kick couch because like people come in and like I really want to podcast I really want to be a guest. I really want to talk about what I do. So it's like, that's what the whole show is about right is having good people on it. So that back to your story, like, you know, going from a musician that kind of like, hey, let's you know, try to make it make a few dollars and being in the network. I think you build that Community, right? You build a community of people who want to help you, you want to help them and kind of go from there. How did you make the jump from musician kind of doing your thing over to podcasting? Because that's like a, you know, similar but still pretty different.
Yeah, totally. So I spent probably, you know, 10 1015 years in music industry, you know, as an artist, I ended up going on to having a bunch of bands, and I put out records and toured and did that whole thing. But also as a music director to a famous jazz club here in Denver called Dazzle, and just kind of worked on the periphery of the music industry trying to put together a career in music. Back when there was such a thing. I managed a warehouse, music record store, you know, so figuring out trying to figure out how there was a How could, you know, make a living in music? Well, then I had kids, you know, and music is not necessarily the fulcrum of commerce, you know, I'm saying on a local level, that's one
way to budget. Yeah.
So I had to make some tough decisions. And I was also at a point in my musical career where, you know, work until 4am, to get paid and getting paid half of what the contract said, I just didn't have the temperament for it anymore. And so I really was like, I got to put this music thing behind me. So I did, broke up the band, I packed up my guitars and didn't look back. But I did a little, you know, at first I was a little a little blues. And, you know, I didn't, I thought it was like, I missed the music. But it really wasn't that it was the Hey, it was the guys my band and like we practice on Tuesday nights and Thursday nights, and I just missed the hang and drinking beers and hanging out. So what I did is, at this time is probably iPhone to era. This is before the podcast app on iPhone, you know, and you could you could download podcasts into your, to your phone, so I was doing that. And then I realized, like, oh, wow, I don't have to download this at all, I can actually stream it, you know, it's like 2g, you know, but you could stream it pretty good. You know, so I started listening, just tons of podcasts. And I was like, You know what, I'm gonna do a podcast, because this is a way that I can get the band back together, and we're not going to be, you know, obstructed by trying to make music. We're just gonna, you know, talk shit and drink beer. And so, I started, that was my first blog as called eighth grade ball, and probably my most popular one I've ever done. You know, and this is probably, you know, as a while ago, and then kind of just developed over the years, you know, the, the flagship show I had for a long time was the Denver business podcast, which is how I met Brandi, she worked in PR, and would bring her clients to me. And then, you know, maybe two and a half, three years ago, we're kind of getting coffee, like a sewer project together, as do some in podcasting. And kind of landed on this idea of a booking agency. And we both liked it, because we're both kind of coming from, you know, SAS and tech startups, and, you know, lean and mean with 90% margins. But, you know, thinking about an agency like this, and the way that we wanted to do it, which is like, you know, hire people, you know, create a culture have, have a headquarters, you know, and do it like that. So we kind of set out to do that. We also liked the idea, because we felt like we could be the best in the world at this. And so that's been the goal ever since, you know, we're officially launched about two years, and you know, growing really well.
Yeah, I think that the interesting thing, too, is there's a lot of people who are trying to build the podcasts, and you talked about people who may be, you know, wanted to build a podcast wanted to start a podcast wanted to grow a podcast wanted to advertise podcast, it's just not that easy to do, right? Like, it's on paper, it sounds really cool. It's like, yeah, get a domain on GoDaddy and go, you know, spin up a podcast on anchor and just launch it and hope, I hope it works, right. But I think the problem that people have is they don't actually monetize, right? They don't have a way on the either through their, their for profit business, whatever that is, or through referrals, or, you know, whatever the method is, a lot of people forget to monetize on the back. And I think what you guys done super cool, right? It's like, hey, let's monetize the whole thing. Right? Let's take people with cool ideas, people with exit businesses, people who are running businesses, put them on cool shows. And let's charge people for that right. And you built basically built the whole business out of taking two different people put them together, virtually no one's ever met anyone ever right before the show, for the most part, right? Maybe there's like a pre call or something. But you guys have essentially built a business from zero, like absolutely nothing, right. So tell us about, you know, how you decided to scale that, right? Because like in podcasting, there's production and there's booking like, why did you choose the booking agents?
Yeah, that's a good consideration. And largely, it's like, you know, if I'm going to do something, it has to have the potential scale out to some capacity. And when we're looking at podcasts, like you said, there's a lot of moving parts you want to get into podcast production, we consider that but you know, then you're looking at, you know, five figure minimum budget, six figure minimum budgets to produce shows and then you got a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Difficult to scale. You get heavily leveraged on a couple of large clients, you know, so we wanted something that we could we could deliver you My experience is, prior to kick caster, I had a media and marketing agency that really worked on on business launches, you know, and brand launches. And so you know, figuring out a way to find clients and work them through. It is something that I take seriously and also something that requires a lot of thought, particularly from service. So, you know, productize service is really kind of my jam, is putting together something that one is clear that people understand what you're doing, and gives them a clear path to purchase. Is is how you would scale a business like this. So that was kind of the objective. It's like, let's do something in podcast. But splinter off a small piece that we can actually clearly communicate what we do. Because if you're just a if you do six different things in podcasting, you do nothing in podcasting. Oh, we make podcasts, we book podcast, we do this, we advertise with podcasts, and then you have no specialty. But if we're we just booked people on podcast and people, they can remember that, and they understand it very clearly. And you can just kind of move the conversation to whether it's a good fit or not.
Yeah, and I think the point is super valid, right? Like, if you have a productize service, that is the key to success, right? Like all of our businesses are productize. It's like, hey, we come in we do XYZ, we deliver that thing and as a fixed cost over a fixed period of time with a fixed scope of work. And then you can predictably put money in the front of your business and get money out the back of the business. Right? Well, obviously, acquiring customers as you go for you guys. I think the cool thing is is like you guys have flexibility, right? You have one thing you do podcast booking, but you have flexibility up and down throughout the spectrum, you could have a company that is a $50 million company that works with you or you could have a startup founder that's exited, right? You don't really necessarily have to have you've niched the service, you haven't niched, necessarily just the audience, right, which is really, really cool. Because some of the people have been on our show from you guys had been very different. We get people in technology, we got people in music, we got people in business, we got people in startup space, I've got people everywhere. And the nice thing is like we can have a conversation with every single one of those people. One of the questions I have for you, as you know, what is the direction you are thinking of going, where do you think caster's gonna go? What's the direction coming up in a guy two years old, very similar to us? Right, fairly young company trying to grow? What's the next move for you guys?
Yeah, you know, I think probably a diversifying revenue streams, you know, we've got service down pretty well, we'll probably add a couple service offerings. But I'd like to get into entertainment.
I'd like to get into software, maybe goods, you know, maybe a personal brand of brandy wants really wants to blow up? Not me. Yeah. So you know, I think probably software is next, we got a couple of tools that we want to build internally, that if they work successfully for us, and it lends itself to like some kind of licensing agreement from there.
Yeah, I think that that would be a good direction to go. And I think one of the other things that people are missing out on the podcasting phase, we have this all the time with zoom as we get a little bit of lag, right video and audio lag, if there's a solution. I know there's some solutions out there today that allow people to record on both sides, and it gets a little like, their sophistication level of building a good podcast. So there's not tons of post production required is something that I think realistically is probably a good idea, right? To be able to have that it would make it a lot easier for people to get what they're looking for. For those kind of people. Tell us again, Who's your ideal customer? So if they're listening the show, and they're like, hey, I want to be on podcast, I want to do a tour. Who Who are those ideal customers?
You bet. I mean, specifically, it's funded startup founders, entrepreneurs with exits, C suite executives. The differentiator would be these people have budget for marketing. You know, this is a show about lead gen. Now, if you're looking at podcasts as being a lead gen, I don't want you to be disappointed. I'm not gonna say it doesn't happen. I'm not also gonna say that their outcomes from podcasting are incredible, seven figure fundraising rounds from podcasts that we've put people on. Okay, but we, you know, go on podcast, obviously, because we love it, but the way we generate leads is with LinkedIn, Google ads, Facebook and Instagram, you know,
traditional media, right? Like actually, yeah, absolutely.
You know, and and also like our, our services, not cheap, you know, you could get a virtual assistant and try your luck with that and probably, you know, find a smaller podcast nothing wrong with smaller podcasts. But, you know, we really, you know, when I when I talk about you know, being the best in the world, it really comes down to craftsmanship, you know, I'm saying like, we all live in Denver, you know, these are real people that have real lives and you know, it's it's not a bot and no disrespect to my Filipino brothers and sisters, but they're not contractors. You know what I mean? It's like, we really go EXTRA MILE as much as we can for our clients and in the price reflects that, you know, so for folks that are like looking at this as on The outside of their marketing budgets probably not the best bet for them right now, you know, but if you're in a position where you need to demonstrate that leadership and you need differentiation between brands, maybe you're in some really Sharky waters, like podcasting is possibly the best thing you got, you know, everyone wants content marketing, but what are you gonna sit down with a blank piece of paper and try and type out a blog post? Good luck. Yeah,
yeah, when and the contents dynamic, too. I think that's the thing about podcasts that makes it really cool is like, we can come on the show here. And we can talk about stuff without having any agenda, right. Like, that's the thing that I've always loved about podcasting is like, I have no plan, right? It's like past present future. Let's talk about you what you do, how you do it, how you can help people like that kind of model is just like, it's free. I don't have to sit there and get the writer's block, like you said, and it's it. You're absolutely right content is like the goat right now. Right? Everybody wants content. Everybody wants more content, better content, faster content, shorter content, more valuable content, like everyone just wants that and you look at like Facebook reach today, if you put out content we have a group right now it's 1516 weeks old 3000 People watching every single one of our videos we put out seven a week and they watch everything front the back and it's like content marketing is absolutely killing it right now. And that's what we're doing today. So one thing I would like to keep the show fairly short here, for those of you who are listening to this or we're gonna post produce this but anyone who's listening to this if you are a, you know, startup founder, you're you're funded or somebody wants to grow maybe you're trying to do an exit you have done an exit your think about the kind of person who's going to come on the show. If you're interested in that you can check out Kip caster will drop some links below so that people can actually listen and figure out you know if this is a fit for them, but Kip caster.com Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show and have a great rest of the day. You too, Connor really appreciate it.
