The 7 Figure Playbook: From Touring Musician to Podcasting Pro w/ Ike Fontaine

In this episode, IndeCollective Alum and Ike Fontaine joins our Head of Community Jan Almasy to share his remarkable evolution from a touring musician to a podcasting and online business expert. Get ready to unlock the secrets of leveraging a niche audience for impactful client acquisition, and peel back the curtain on the networking and content strategy that can transform a single podcast episode into a multi-platform goldmine.

We'll tackle the practicalities and myths surrounding podcast startup—debunking the idea that you need fancy equipment to make waves in the podcasting sea. Whether you're contemplating a podcast launch or transitioning to entrepreneurship, we'll provide the reassurance and actionable advice to help you navigate these waters.

Lastly, we confront the emotional and social dynamics of embarking on an independent path, discussing the deep currents of friendships, the law of attraction, and the ripples of positivity we can all send into the world.

If our conversation leaves you raring to join an IndeCollective cohort or you're just curious about what it entails, learn more at: https://indecollective.co/program/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/indecollec

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:52

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Modern Independent. As always, I'm your host, jan Almacy, the head of community here at Indie Collective, and today you are listening to an episode of the Launchpad. We have a couple of different episode types here at Indie Collective, one of which is the Launchpad, the other of which is called the Seven Figure Playbook. In today's episode, you're going to be hearing from an indie alum that is out doing amazing things in the world, and you're going to hear a little bit about their journey into independence and the things that they're improving on and continuing to improve on after graduating from the Indie Collective curriculum as they move through their independent career.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Today, I get the chance of sitting down with one of my closer friends from the cohort. We went through cohorts together and now he is back as one of our expert guides, mr Ike Fontaine. Ike is a Webby Award-nominated executive producer and the founder of the podcast accelerator, through which he has launched dozens of podcasts, accumulating over 80 million downloads under his vision and many of which ranking in the top 10 and top 100 on Apple podcasts. He's also the founder of Future Media, an agency through which he has partnered with large brands and entrepreneurs to develop a modern approach to their content marketing. Outside of his podcasting work, he is an active songwriter and enjoys spending time in the water surfing in Southern California. Ike. Welcome to the modern, independent Hello.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Jan.

Speaker 1: 2:13

How's it going? I'm good man, I'm good, so I always like to start these off very simply and kind of just give the good people on the other side of the headphones that are listening right now a little bit of a background of who you are, where you're from and how did you get started in your independent career. What was that leap like into becoming an entrepreneur, freelancer, independent, whatever you want to call it?

Speaker 2: 2:43

Totally there wasn't much of a leap. I was always someone who kind of actually walked a different path so I never traditionally had like a nine to five or was employed by some larger corporations. So I grew up in Boston and grew up in a very entrepreneurial type family. My father was a contractor, electrician farmer, my mom was a scientist and I had to figure things out on my own basically and we you know very entrepreneurial from a very young age, working with my dad and his various pursuits, and that just kind of launches me into a career of music. So as a on a record label, touring recording artists at 18, and that went for about 10 years and during when I was on the road as an artist you know we had all this downtime in between shows my always wanting to find like you know, I have all these ideas and so I started raising money for applications and some advertising ideas and that kind of led into eventually like finding this VA company that employed like people to work for other, basically placed VA's in other businesses and they had like this marketplace for it and that was like a kind of like a big break into the independent world because I didn't even know that like independent working or like this was like before remote working was even. It was kind of like not even a thing. Yet I would say like 20, 2010, 2011, 2012. And that was really the place where I got into this one business and they saw I'm on the road and like during our downtime, like I'm quite literally like hopping on calls with clients and like building email campaigns, building websites, building funnels, figuring out software, infrastructure and basically the whole through line was like how do you grow a business online was the whole thing. And I'm like wow, okay, this is a crazy world.

Speaker 2: 4:48

One thing leads to another and, you know, just start working with more and more clients. You know I rise in the ranks at this company and then, kind of along the way, I realize, you know, I love working for myself, I love, you know, kind of having autonomy and getting to work on what I like to work on. So I guess that's really where my independent journey kind of, I guess, really blossomed. I was always kind of on this independent journey, but that's where it was kind of like wait a second, I can do this full time almost and I can continue all of my music and I can still make this whole other like career work in the same time. And then one thing leads to another. I started video marketing company, I started another, the agency, and you know, podcasting started to be this thing. That was like really churning in the background. So I started just going more, all in and more all in on helping businesses essentially build client acquisition systems through podcasting. And that leads me to where I am today, talking with you at future media.

Speaker 1: 5:50

Yeah, I was going to ask like it sounds like podcasting actually entered the picture after a little bit of iteration, like you were already in the space. You're kind of playing around helping people grow to start out with with you having your own show and playing around with that first, or was it? Clients started approaching you organically and said this podcasting thing is like really catching our eye, can you help us get into this? And then you just learned it based on demand that was coming in.

Speaker 2: 6:18

And I was like I'm going to add a ladder. I just got lucky. You know, there are all these clients that already had podcasts and they're like we want to make this better. And I was like, oh well, I understand marketing, I understand content, I understand systems, I understand, you know, like sales and all this and growth, and I was like, okay, cool, let me, yeah, let me start, let me start trying it out. So, yeah, it was really just kind of like school of hard knocks, just like started working on these podcasts and, you know, had some success here, had some success here, and that leads to the next thing. And then it just starts to snowball.

Speaker 2: 6:51

And I recognized, you know, at the, at the heels of like a growing podcast movement. I was like, wait a second, there's more and more people who are wanting to do this. And then I started looking into the numbers. I started looking into, you know, audience growth and like just people who are creating podcasts and the number of podcasts that are getting created compared to other platforms. And I was like, wait a second, there's like a, there's like an exponential curve that's starting to happen. So that was, that was a defining moment where I was like, yeah, now I'm going to just start going in more and more.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Do you, do you have any of those numbers kind of ballpark numbers off like the top of the head just for people to get a little bit of context of how how many people are actually in the podcast these days? You're consuming that info.

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, I can speak to it from a to to perspective. So, in terms of the number of creator accounts or shows, right, like you have a podcast, there are around 5 million on the index. Now, the important piece here is that that's a total count. So there's there's actually more like 2 million active shows and the rest of them are inactive, dead. People just thought they'd start a podcast and not really serious. Like I call it the competitive set. There are around 2 million active competitive shows that are uploading every single month like building, kind of like doing it seriously.

Speaker 2: 8:12

The context is that you know there's 60 million active YouTube creator accounts. So, like, in comparison to like other long format platforms, like it's it's still early days, but it's a, you know, in 2019, there were only about 600,000 shows on the index. So it's grown considerably just in a matter of a few years and we're going to reach over just over half a billion listeners by the end of this year and that's up about 100 million. So the amount of what's more important is like the people who are coming to consume, right, so there's actually it's really interesting there. The subsets of those people are just like their college educated, they have money. They listen to more podcasts than Netflix or HBO. So they're the rabid listeners, rather consumers. So it's it's interesting, definitely an interesting space.

Speaker 1: 9:44

I think that's important for people to kind of keep an eye on, because I hear all the time like oh, yeah, I don't want to get into podcasting because it's already saturated or anything else. And I did you say 60 million YouTube accounts? That was the 60 around there. 60 million, yeah, and then to 2 million for the podcast.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so think of that arbitrage there, like that, that gap between 2 million and 60 million, and then also the difference between and this is a good lesson for anybody in content or anybody that's looking to put out, you know, marketing material always try to look for those platforms that have a high gap between the creator and the consumers, like the number of consumers and the number of creators, right, and that's why it's beneficial to like catch some social platforms earlier on and you see these people rise to massive morality because there's only 500 creators on the platform at the time and there's 10,000 people consuming. Then you have a higher chance of your stuff entering the algorithm. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. But think in your head mentally 2 million active shows and 500 million listeners by the end of the year, that is a huge, huge amount of listenership that you could access.

Speaker 2: 10:54

It's very exciting. And then, even when we start to go into the benefits of, you know you don't even need to build shows for a popularity. Now you can build shows that can quite literally be sales funnels, and it's that's what gets also exciting. So you can not only have a sales ecosystem for closing more clients, but then you have an entire content marketing strategy and system around you, right, and all you have to do is hop on a hop on a call with, with, with someone and record all that content and then it turns into all this other stuff. So it's like the. I really started to see the power of it Early on, when I was like, wait a second, you could just do one thing and I could feed everything else that you're doing while having sales calls with people. I was like, okay, this might be worth the worth the energy, right, right. I'm glad that I stuck with it.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Well, and I love a lot of the things that I love about the way that you articulate podcasts and the session that you teach inside of the indie collective cohort now, and and just I mean the conversations that we've had around operationalizing the podcasting space, right, I think that that's one of the really unique things that you're able to bring to the table because of your background and kind of rising up through the school of hard knocks and having to be that jack of all trades for a period of time, is you don't look at podcast as strictly a PR thing, right, like this is a part of a sales plan. This can be a part of a sales strategy. Over archingly are there. I guess this is a perfect time to kind of get into, like some of those benefits of podcasting in the different ways that it can be used. What are some of the most common things that you come across? Or the when, when you're building out shows for people, what are they? What are they using for most often?

Speaker 2: 12:32

to clarify what are they using in terms of the strategy Like what's working or the operational? Are they kind of the operational system side of that, like?

Speaker 1: 12:40

I guess the we can start with like the overarching strategy, like why do they want podcasts, and then the operations behind, like making those shows successful.

Speaker 2: 12:49

Yeah, I've kind of gone through all these iterations of things that have been working and but iterating on upon things that were like, okay, we could see better improvement here, and I basically have gotten to a place where you know you can build a show that is one of your main prospecting client acquisition strategies. So essentially the concept is like hey, you build a show that is centered around a mission for your ideal prospects in the world and what you do is you're actually looking for your ideal prospects, experience in their industry or niche, and you want to highlight them because your mission is to actually help everyone in that space be better, you know, excellent and so forth. I'm just I'm kind of like coloring with a very broad brush now. But the whole concept is when you marry that type of show format with an outreach system we build outreach systems through like LinkedIn now, so the software system for that.

Speaker 2: 13:51

But when you tie that all together and you build an environment for your ideal prospects and you invite them into a warm environment, it exponentially increases your likelihood of conversion, because you're not doing cold outreach, you're not doing some sort of cold knock or cold call. It's actually more about them than it is about you positioning yourself in a place where you can have a very nice conversation and I find that 80% of the time guests that come on my client podcast you know they ask about you, know how the host can actually help them in the world. So it's a very easy way of not only growing your authority and influence and growing your network generally, but it's just putting yourself in consistent and rinse and repeat method of talking to prospects and getting them into your funnel. So that's like that's the strategy that I'm seeing, just like hit every single time now, and it's not like this mass audience play. It's actually a hyper targeted play, just speaking to your prospects.

Speaker 1: 14:59

Yeah, I want to double click on that and drive that home for anybody that's listening. A lot of times and I hear this a lot from people that are talking about starting podcasts all the time the temptation is there to think I need to shoot for popularity, because I think part of it is just we've been in this ecosystem of looking at people. You know 100,000 followers, 500,000 followers you know you're not a macro influencer, you can't get brand deals unless you have 50,000 IG followers whatever, and that kind of that mentality is like almost leaked into other areas of life. Right, I see people with email lists and everything right.

Speaker 1: 15:39

I'm like you don't need it. You don't need a 50,000 person email list If you have 100 people on your email list and each of them is an advocate for your business and you're constantly keeping them updated. Same thing with the podcast right, like you don't have to be. Actually, I would argue that you. The advantage is not trying to be a show for everyone. People feel like they're a part of something special or they're learning something, if they feel heard, spoken to and it's like very directed towards them. So I love the way that you framed that, where it's like we're speaking to the experience of the customer in the industry and we're giving them advice because our mission is to, you know, raise up the industry, yeah exactly, I love that industry.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So have there been any organizations or like projects that you've worked on that you've been like this was really cool, like I really enjoyed getting the chance to work on this that you can talk about on the show, I guess.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Yeah, there's a couple of parties that I can't talk about right now that are very exciting, but I can talk about them maybe in the future. I would say, as of recently there was a few consultation style shows that have done a long show with J Abraham and Nixon. Umber is called the Optimized Podcast, so that one's really cool, just because the nature of the show is kind of like envisioned Shark Tank but for like a live consultation call. So 50 million plus businesses will guest to be on the show to basically have an hour conversation with J and Nick where they will basically take the one big Donovan. Oh that the guests are their issue. Basically, they come to the show with one issue. We have a whole pre intake sequence to it and before the guests even get on the show we essentially know all of their issues in their business and then, like the call is all about just solving for that issue and the type of content that you can create when you just know so much about the targeted issue and the value that that person gets. I'm really just elevating why the system works so well.

Speaker 2: 17:50

But I was. It was very exciting to like do that iteration because it was just so Shark Tanky. It's just like they get on. It's like the hard picture, the challenge, exactly what they're doing, great Hear, all the solutions and I just like bam, bam, bam bam. So that was just that was. I guess there's a lot of different shows that were exciting, but that one in particular I just like liked the vibe of it. It was just kind of like it was a fun one.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Yeah, that sounds really, really cool. I mean, and I think that that's a unique way to look at it, that you know, a podcast doesn't just need to be you monologuing about something and it doesn't just need to be you recruiting guests, right, like that was a different type of application. This is like a, like a console, a live console, yeah exactly.

Speaker 1: 18:40

You're just a live console and then you can repurpose that into, you know, the podcast itself. And one other thing that I find interesting, that I think you're really, really apt at, or you found a really good way to maximize, is that if you're thinking about podcasting and you think that the long form podcast is the only piece of content that you're going to get out of that, you're sorely mistaken. So what are like, what are some of the things that, like, after that whole episode is created, what happens then? Is it is that able to turn into additional assets outside of the long form podcast?

Speaker 2: 19:19

Yeah, right on, of course. Um, yeah, we. So the systems that we build for clients essentially can turn one episode into around two and a half weeks worth of content. That is short, mid, long format video content for wide and vertical based ecosystems. It's text campaigns, it's email campaigns, blog articles and website content. So it's like an entire diverse map. Um, there's a strategy to how we go about doing that and how we actually train producers and and I mean we do this at our agency for people, but we also train producers to to run these types of systems Um, and it's just.

Speaker 2: 20:01

It's just how you can not only architect how the conversation happens. So we were just talking about like the live consult vibe. So now that we have a really good idea of like great the, the one number one problem in all the context around someone's business, and we know how that conversation is going to run, we can actually create a blueprint or a template or a format for how you go about extrapolating the different types of content from that, right? So what kind of reactions, what type of questions, what type of leading questions, what type of um interactions that can happen, and how you can pull those out, but then also look at all of those interactions as a potential sales narrative. So, like sure, you can just have a clip that you like and you can post that. But what do 10 clips look like? And how do you align them?

Speaker 2: 20:48

In a way, so it just speaks to a, a mission, it speaks to a community, it speaks to something that someone wants, a pain point that someone wants to to solve. So, uh, you can create these, you can create these podcast systems that that just kind of deal with such a huge pain point in the majority of a lot of coaches, consultants and small to medium sized businesses. Um, uh, you know, when they sit down every day, they're like, wow, I can't solve this problem, for, like, how do I actually create content, how do I actually grow an audience, how do I actually speak to my ideal customer in the right way without spending all the time in the world? And that's why talking to your prospects on a podcast is one of the best, one of the best options, cause not only can you actually drive sales engagements, but then you can create all the targeted narrative that you need to actually do. The other uh quotients in the business.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I also want to say too, like, if you, um, you know, if you're just thinking about getting started, and like, why is starting a podcast? Okay, all the content is great, and, like, you know, how am I, um, I can pull all of that together and that's going to create multiple weeks of content. I'm going to have this machine and everything like that. I know, when I first started out podcasting, um, there was a piece of it that I was really surprising to me, and it's the ability to get into the room or have conversations with people that, like, were so far out of my network that, like, I had no business having the opportunity to actually talk to this person. You know, like I'm coming.

Speaker 1: 22:23

One of the things that's coming to mind is one of our first longterm contracts. I actually saw a Netflix documentary, was fascinated by it. E, like found the email for the person that was featured in the documentary, reached out to that person's PR group, and the PR group was like, yeah, absolutely, we'd love to book you, you know, to have to have this person on your podcast. So the next thing I know I'm on the show as a 20, how old was I? 22, 22, 23 year old, like just like I had just discovered Gary Vaynerchuk, like the year prior, like I'm just starting, like I'm going to be in a marketing firm.

Speaker 2: 23:00

And.

Speaker 1: 23:01

I'm on the phone with this CEO of this biotech company out of San Fran I live in Ohio and it was all because I had a podcast and I was like, do you want to be interviewed on the show? You know, and I didn't realize like what weight that actually carried and the type of network that it allows you to access, when you can just say, hey, I'd love to have you on my show. And then they spent that hour. We spent that hour really getting to know each other and you know me asking him in depth questions, and we had the meeting before the show to kind of discuss like what the business was and what the goals of the podcast were going to be. And everything he emails me after the podcast is like that was great, I had a fantastic time.

Speaker 1: 23:36

Can I pay you to interview the rest of my staff? So, like, of course, and then it kind of continued to grow from there. So that's one of the things I want to double click on too is like, you know, it's the content and the self promotion and all that stuff is great once you gain the momentum and you actually have everything figured out. But even before you start to gain that momentum, or you have services or you have clients that you're trying to you know gain before you even know that just having the show allows you to network so far beyond what you would be able to if you were just cold deeming people online. Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2: 24:08

I love that story, by the way. That's a. That's a great, that's a good one. Yeah, I mean the not analogy, but the way that you can visualize this is let's say, you have a group of people that are all standing in a white room and all these individuals you know you don't really know who these individuals are and like, let's say, you're one of those individuals and you need to differentiate yourself. You want to attract attention to yourself. What do you do? And a podcast is kind of one of those things. It's kind of like putting on a big hat and then you look at these people in a room and you're like whoa, that one person's wearing a hat.

Speaker 2: 24:46

It's a really bad analogy, but when you quite literally build a platform and you put yourself out there as an authority figure and you want to have conversations and to improve the world and improve a community, improve yourself, improve other people, like that quite literally separates you and elevates you from other people. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone. Actually, everyone can do it. Yes, it's whether they want to choose to do it or not, right If they want to elevate themselves and attract some sort of energy to them, like they need to do something different than other people. So what are you going to do? And there's a lot of different things you can do. We could talk about so many different options, but podcasting is kind of like one of those things. But in the professional networking world and in the B2B world and kind of almost in the B2C world, like when you're able to, I'm only going to talk about a podcast, I'm just going to talk about when you were able to build a platform to have a conversation, so to bring people in, to highlight a community element or our mission to help people in the world. Like that differentiates you from everyone else. And then it puts that individual in their cloud and their authority right next to you. And what happens to your authority and your influence? Boom, you just click up another level. So it just rins and repeat and you keep doing that. It kind of you can. You can see how that extrapolated, regardless if you have, if you have audience, like that doesn't matter and it doesn't matter if you have an audience, like it matters the activity of doing it.

Speaker 2: 26:08

I always like talking about, like a, the three quadrants of a business. There's attraction, conversion and retention. Right, like a podcast can hit all three, but most importantly, as, like independence or a coach, a consultant or a small and medium size business owner, like we spend the majority of our time probably on attraction type activities, like getting attention to us, getting clients figuring that thing out Everything really allows you to focus on the attraction. Like double down your energy, right, cause we all will spend I don't know how many hours a week, right.

Speaker 2: 26:41

I usually say like you'll probably spend six hours a week in attraction type activities, either hopping on prospecting calls or sales calls, on email, doing email, cold calling, cold emailing, whatever it might be, and those types of activities. Like if you just took a percentage of that time and you just literally ask the people that you want to network with to come into an environment and you can activate those people to help grow your brand and your business and your authority, it just it wins. Like I don't know how to explain it. It's a, it's definitely. It's definitely an exciting, exciting strategy.

Speaker 1: 27:18

Yeah, yeah, Agreed. I mean, we see it all the time with the modern independent. I mean I think that the majority of people that I've had office hours with this cohort have mentioned the fact that they like discovered us because of a referral from a friend, and there's not many of them that bring up like oh, I went to your website and I was like browsing through that for hours or whatever but, consistently I've been like I've listened to five episodes of the modern independent and now I'm here.

Speaker 2: 27:48

We live in a world with humans. What do humans like to do? Humans like to talk to each other and interact with each other.

Speaker 1: 27:54

Right.

Speaker 2: 27:54

Yeah, so it's like if you can just do more of that, you'll be good.

Speaker 1: 28:00

Yeah, and they like to talk about themselves and like, if you can hold space for somebody to be proud of what they've accomplished and like feel really excited about things, I mean that it just turns into amazing content. That relationship gets deeper. We can talk about all of those benefits probably all day. It's just it is something that is truly amazing, and I like what you mentioned, though, too. Like you know, if you're listening to this and you're like I could never do a podcast, like there's no way I could ever do that, like, like I was mentioning, it's not so much about everybody should be a podcaster, because not everybody should be a podcaster, that would be. You know that that's just not feasible.

Speaker 2: 28:36

Everyone can't be a podcaster, Right?

Speaker 1: 28:39

right, and but also, everybody can't be a YouTuber, everybody can't be a great blogger, everybody can, you know, like, find the medium that you feel the most comfortable with, the most called to, and then commit to that medium. Yeah, and consistently put out you put yourself out there, put out content and ratchet that stuff up one by one. The same, the same idea as bringing somebody on a show as a guest for an interview you could have as a blog and say, hey, would you be willing to be a guest blogger on my feed? You know, or can I write an article about you? Can I interview you for half an hour?

Speaker 1: 29:10

You know, and highlight your business is the same type of principle and it makes it so much easier to have those initial conversations with people if you're not in their LinkedIn DMs or in their cold email or your cold emailing them saying I'm so and so and I want to sell you X, y and Z product. If, if that conversation switches from like that cold email and sale to hi, my name's so and so, I've really enjoyed like X, y and Z thing that you do I would love to highlight you in insert interview or blog article or whatever like. Would you be willing to have a half hour conversation. Totally different ballgame, yeah. Totally different ballgame, yeah. So one thing that we talk about all the time inside of. Well, I guess, actually, let me back up before I ask that question. So how did, how did you end up discovering indie? Was it? Were you like a referral from a friend, did you?

Speaker 2: 30:05

find us. Yeah. Shout out to Amory Elmary hey.

Speaker 1: 30:11

And what I don't remember what were you 2021?

Speaker 2: 30:17

Oh man, it's hard. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1: 30:20

Might have been fall 2021.

Speaker 2: 30:21

I feel like yeah, I think it's yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:24

Because I think we were, you were in one of the same cohorts when we both went through yeah, what was you know going through that 10 week process and like having to kind of look at things in chunks and anything like that. Is there anything that you remember like taking away from that first cohort where you're like okay, this like changed the way that I'm approaching things? Or was it the community that you felt was like the most valuable portion of it? Or like what was that first, that first indie collective experience, like for you?

Speaker 2: 30:55

Well, the experience overall was amazing. I ended up leaving indie collective and launching something I was wanting to do for a long time and it was incredibly successful right out of the gate and continues to be to that day to today, which is my, my group coaching environment and I think just being in an environment with a bunch of people who it's just you can just do this iteration thing within any, any collective and I think, like the A teams are one of the most valuable things that I personally experience and there's value everywhere. But, like, if there's one thing that I had to pinpoint, it was this kind of having an environment to see what other people were doing but hear about how they were working through, how they were solving problems, and I think I just let the fire under my ass just to like do it, because I was around a bunch of people who are just doing it and I think it's a big testament to you know your community and who you put yourself around. So big, big props for indie collective because I was like I was able to look at so many different aspects of being an independent worker or building your own consultancy or working for yourself and all these different iterations of what people were doing and all this great information and then actually having actually getting to like apply the things that I wanted to do in real time with people who are very supportive and also moving and shaking was just in an amazing is a great, great and a great energy.

Speaker 2: 32:20

And so if there's someone who, like, hasn't been through any collective yet and they might be on the fence like I would highly, I would highly recommend to take the plunge, because at first I was like with any investment, I was like hesitant and just because it's things are risky and you know we're we're risk adverse creature and we know we don't want to make a change and like, is it really going to do something? You know, like all those like voices but like community is probably one of the best investments you can ever make in your life and any collective gave that to me and gave me the space to long to the next iteration of what I was doing. So big props.

Speaker 1: 32:57

And so above, I've been hearing it more and more that you know the education is, I will, the curriculum is great, you know, by all means, like those, there's a lot of I remember going through my first cohort. There's a lot of. You know terms that you might be hearing for the first time, and so ideas like we I like to say that we break your brain into a million puzzle pieces in the first three weeks. Right, like designing for independence. Ask yourself questions that you may not have asked yourself before. You know, shoot, say things out loud, say goals out loud that previously you know like those are.

Speaker 1: 33:34

That's the place, the headspace that we put you in the first couple of weeks. And then it's okay, get that headspace, we see where you're at. Let's start to get tactical. How do you, how are you actually doing this? And then take you and put you into small groups where you're like okay, now we're that, we're learning the tactics, let's start actually implementing those things. And and I felt that very personally and I hear it over and over again inside of the office hours that once they make it to that week four, week five, mark you know they've met their a teams they're going to, they have the foundation pieces at that point and they're just kind of I like to say they're just kind of pulling on stuff right, like things are just moving around in their brain or connecting puzzle pieces. The momentum really starts to shift and you really have almost like collective permission from a bunch of people that you're not as crazy as you might think you are and the things that you're trying to build are actually more possible than you might imagine Do it.

Speaker 1: 34:27

You can do it. Yeah, yeah, when, when you're like a teams and stuff like that, do you do you still communicate with anybody from the cohort like on a regular basis, or is it kind of like, whenever I have the opportunity, I'm hanging out with people?

Speaker 2: 34:46

I'm still literally in a text group with my first day team.

Speaker 1: 34:49

Really, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 34:51

And I meet and I meet up with. There's someone locally here who went through my second cohort and we meet up every now and then. We talk, you know, on social media every now and then and like we're, yeah, so, but my first cohort were actually always, always communicating, yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:07

Yeah, I love that I'm also in the same boat, like I meet with my 18 probably. I think we told we tell ourselves that we try to meet together like once once a month, but it ends up being more like once a quarter that we actually get the chance to sit down. But it's kind of it's funny it's we always kind of joke inside of our email thread that it's like it's a positive, because two years ago we were able to meet every month and now everybody is doing so much stuff that we're like oh, like, we need to probably just meet once a quarter so that we can catch everybody up. Yeah, because it's good problems to have.

Speaker 1: 35:41

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, agreed. What like if somebody were to get started? I know that one thing that almost everybody gets hung up on is like equipment or you know things of that nature when it comes to starting a pod or like getting stuff. Is there like a bare minimum, like supplies that you would want to advocate for somebody to try out or have before they dive into it?

Speaker 2: 36:10

Quite literally what we're using right now. We're using squadcast or D script now, in a sense, d script acquired squadcast, right, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:18

A couple weeks ago, or actually probably about a month over the summer.

Speaker 2: 36:25

And that's all you need. You need a microphone of some capacity, a computer and an internet connection. I used to I mean I've done podcasts on every, on every iteration of what it is. I still run podcasts a day that are incredibly high production value. You know, our hosts go into studios in a very professional recording studios, all the way down to the systems that I build now with clients which are incredibly fluid, easy to set up, easy to execute.

Speaker 2: 36:57

We live in a world now where, like, technology is increased to a place where I've been doing this long enough to like be like holy crap, wow, this is a lot harder and now it's like very easy. So, yeah, I mean the bare basics is like, honestly, I always recommend people to get like a nice USB microphone, but you don't even need that, so it's like just your computer. If you have a modern computer, your computer has a pretty good microphone on it. Now, let's say that I'm totally advocating for that, but you can totally get it done with it. Get a, you know, get a good web based podcast studio, virtual studio, like squadcast Riverside, and you are, you know, 80% of the way there.

Speaker 1: 37:37

Yeah, I think that that is so, on point, I think that a lot of the conversations that I have with people that struggle with the idea of starting a podcast is because they're they think that the tech, or like you need an audio interface and a SM7B microphone and you know all this other kind of stuff and it's okay, maybe in 2015. I mean, and not even then, you don't need that SM7B, but you're still trying to edit using stuff like you know, audacity or logic, or garage band or whatever. Now, a lot of these virtual studios like squadcast, for I know for a fact partnered with Dolby Audio, and they record high fidelity audio right inside of the virtual studio. Yeah, I'll note separate tracks and d-script allows you to edit a lot of this stuff right inside of the platform. I mean, it is. It is bonkers, how simple it is now to actually get something off the ground.

Speaker 2: 38:27

Yeah, I quote literally everything's now is becoming integrated and seamless, so you an all-in-one platform to do everything that you need. You know I, you know I'm a singer-songwriter, musician. I got a cabinet behind me for anyone walks in the video and I've got about 13 microphones in there. Um, like, I have all the the microphones under the Sun and, honestly, like I don't end up using any of them because it doesn't really matter. Obviously, you know the microphone that I use every single day is a, is a MV7, by sure.

Speaker 2: 38:55

It's what I'm, what you hear me on right now, which is like the workhorse. It just I do use it for everything now, which is amazing. But like you just don't need fancy stuff to get things done and I've tried everything. It doesn't matter. What matters is your intention, the mission, who you want to talk to, how you talk to them, and that human to human interaction right, like that's just most important. People get hung up on all the technical, you know stuff, but it's just like that's not, that's not that it's not right, that's easy. There's no excuse there now.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Right, right one that's and hopefully, if you're listening to this and you've been on the fence about starting a podcast for a while, it's reassuring, is? It's just way simpler to enter the market. And and I Love the fact because I still do all of our editing for the podcast and we record. We record we try for weekly. Sometimes it ends up being bi-weekly if we're super busy, like this past week we didn't release an episode because I was super sick. But I just record them and edit them live to keep things current. No, I don't edit them live but, like you know, same day.

Speaker 1: 40:01

Yeah, in the past I would have to drop it in and out of two or three different softwares. You know one's cutting one's noise, canceling, removal the other one's really good at like trimming Peaks and stuff like that in the audio. Right now I have all that in descript and now it's all in one place and I click one button and it's to the point now where, like it's all in descript and then I put it into buzz sprout For hosting and they have co-host AI as a feature inside of buzz sprout. Now it comes up with my titles for me, gives me a draft of the description, like the whole nine. It's literally. It is so nice Having it all in one place and I think all of that together is under 60 bucks a month for the script and buzz sprout and the AI that helps. So, yeah, super, super easy access.

Speaker 1: 40:51

Okay, as we we start to get into the the the last you know 10 or so minutes here I'm wondering If you were. I know we've been kind of talking about advice all the way throughout the show, but if, if somebody were on the fence about going independent it doesn't necessarily have to do with podcasting, it can. But if somebody were on the fence about going independent and you had to go back and like give yourself some pieces of advice earlier on inside of your process or your career, is there something that you would either tell yourself that you know you're putting too much emphasis on this, it doesn't actually matter that much or, hey, you know, try this out, or do this earlier Are there? Is there something like a piece of advice for somebody that's kind of in that place?

Speaker 2: 41:36

Yeah, I, I think the way that I look at it would be just get really clear on the type of lifestyle that you want to live and the values that you have in your life and, like, I think the thing that attracted me to I don't say that I was attracted, it was just kind of like always, I was always like an independent person but the thing, the reason why, is because I, you know, freedom is a Number one value, but freedom not in the way that you don't have responsibilities or Relationships or anything but freedom, and the aspect that I have freedom of time and location. You know I can work anywhere I want for the most part, and I have no ceiling above me. I have an untapped earning potential and that is incredibly Attractive and the reason why I really did what I was doing. Now, if I'm speaking to someone who is trying to make that decision to to go from one thing to another, I'm sure it feels a little scary, I could imagine, because you're doing something that feels somewhat safe and this other thing might not feel safe. I have a lot of friends that come to me who Ask me about my journey because they see that I own my own companies and that I'm doing my own thing, and you know they are very attracted to that and I always kind of recommend them like, hey, don't quit your day job. Like, don't do that yet.

Speaker 2: 42:58

Like literally slowly start to build Something that works on the side. Like literally slowly Put, don't stop partying every weekend, stop investing your time or things with people that aren't really an asset to you, right? I like to look at people who are, like you know, assets or liabilities, like and like just be very careful with who you spend your time around. And I'm saying don't have friends, I'm just saying just be like smart, like if you want to change your reality, like you have to now start investing in something that's gonna like do that. It's just slowly build that.

Speaker 2: 43:32

Be very conscious of your time, invest in yourself, especially spiritually and emotionally, because you know, trust me, going independent, full-time and working for yourself like you're gonna be Challing. So you better be. You better be strong in some way, you know In some ways and be able to deal with the ups and downs of like working for yourself and having that type of responsibility. But what's great is build that side hustle, keep doing, get one client doing that one thing right, get that process rinsed and repeated down so you really understand how you can then get another client and then another client, and then another client and then all of a sudden you'll start to realize wait a second, I'm making more money over here than I am my, my, my day job. I guess now I can sunset this and I'll put in my notice or I'll figure out what the next plan might be. Hopefully that was helpful.

Speaker 1: 44:18

Yeah, no, I definitely think it is, because I think when you're on that fence, I definitely agree that it is scary and I also really empathize. I actually was just having a conversation with a buddy of mine the other day where we were talking about graduating friend groups and how we've both experienced in our lives he's also an entrepreneur and we ran into each other at our 10 year high school reunion and we were talking about, you know, the difference between how we feel as entrepreneurs versus running into all of our old friends you know from high school, and the different life, the difference in between the lives that we built over the last decade. And me and him were really Kind of clicking on the fact that it feels like to us that we've had to graduate multiple friend groups along the journey and that it's not that we, you know, chose. Okay, you know you mentioned asset liability.

Speaker 1: 45:13

It's not like we consciously were like you are a liability, like I'm not hanging out with you. It's just when we changed our habits, when we changed our motion, when we changed our vision, you outgrown the pathways. Yeah, the pathways just diverged and it's like I'm not, you know, I there's. There are some people that I do have a little bit of a vindictive reason for the reason why they're not in my life anymore. But the majority of people that was not like this. You know eruption and then all of a sudden they're not in my life anymore. It was this, it was this, this drifting apart.

Speaker 2: 45:44

It's, it's everyone's. It's like back to, it's like the spirit, spirituality side of it is like everyone's on their own growth path, and sometimes growth paths. You know you are up, leveling and upgrading at a rate which you are finding your value, you're finding your calling, you're finding your path, you're finding what makes you happy, what makes you turned on in the world and when that value system doesn't align with somebody else, it's just. It's kind of like this on this unspoken thing where you're like it just it's, it happens so naturally that you're like you're not going to spend as much time with someone else who doesn't have the same value system, so you're not going to run into them in the same places, because you're not going to.

Speaker 2: 46:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you're not. You're not calling them because the football game, not, not anything against football. I'm just like not a big sports person, but like this is something for me. It's like I'm not calling someone because of football game, because I just don't care to spend my time with it. It's just not something that's valuable to me. I like the idea of it. I'll walk the Super Bowl every year, right, but it's not something that so like those types of. I'm just not in those groups of people. I don't, I don't speak that language, right. So anyway, yeah, it's. Yeah, the value, the value system is a big one. The growth path is a big one. Yeah, invest in your first sorry, invest in yourself first, before for anything else.

Speaker 1: 47:05

Yeah, yeah, I think it kind of is. It comes back to the idea of like the what do they call it? Was it a law of attraction? Yeah, right, like the energy that you decide to internalize and the values that you internalize and the energy that you put out is the energy that's returned, and that is that principle, right there. It's just when, when you make that shift, be conscious, be aware, look around in your life, like, okay, who is naturally wanting to spend time with me as I'm pursuing this new thing? Who is somebody and I've had to cut people off for this before who is somebody that is saying like, who do you think you are? Like, are you better than us? Or you know, like that conversation kind of comes into your head. It's like oh no, I'm not. You know, just because I don't want to go party every weekend doesn't mean that I think I'm better. It's just that I'm spending my time in another area.

Speaker 1: 47:51

If you feel that way, though, maybe we need to take a look internally and be there.

Speaker 2: 47:55

Yeah, it's on you, that's on them yeah. Yeah, maybe, maybe you feel they're taking it personally, Right Right. If everyone didn't take it personally, you know it's like, then everyone would just, would be, would be just fine. But we're human and we're not perfect, and you know we're emotional creatures.

Speaker 1: 48:10

Life is messy, yeah, life is messy.

Speaker 2: 48:13

Yeah. Yeah, and it's like you know you're not going to be able to do that anymore. You know, smile to more, smile to more people call people that. You know, that you, that you love and you know, just kind of like, put good vibes out in the world and it'll be a much better place for it, not only you, but everyone else.

Speaker 1: 48:26

Yeah, I love that. I always advocate for people and like, if you get an intuitive pulse to like reach out to somebody, just send them a text, be like hey, I'm speaking about you today, hope you're doing good, that's it. You don't need to do much more. You'd be surprised how much joy you could bring into somebody's life just by like realize, especially if they're in a dark place, and you pop into their phone and you're like hey, you know, totally random, haven't talked to you in a little while, but you know, hope you're doing good. You have no idea how much that could bring into somebody's life.

Speaker 2: 48:53

And then it's infectious, and then they pass it on.

Speaker 1: 48:56

Yep, yep, I love it. Okay, so to kind of round us out here, I always like asking this question to round out shows, because I just genuinely interested in like what people find as resources, and you know, I think that people, especially members of the indie collective community, always have some interesting thing that they found that is fun for them. So do you consider yourself a reader, a watcher or a listener and, depending on which one of those you spend the most time with right, like reading books, watching YouTube or documentaries, tv shows or listening to podcasts, which one of those views do you consider yourself more of? And then could you recommend either a book, a YouTube channel or a podcast that you have found interesting or valuable?

Speaker 2: 49:41

Yeah, I love that question. I'm. It's funny, I want to like, I want to pick two, do it, but yeah it's. I think I'm definitely a listener. I'm not much of a, I mean I like watching things, but like, when it comes generally to who, I am, as per some, a listener and and then a read and then a reader, so and that's great because I'm a podcasting. So what I'm listening to probably, it's kind of just something that I've been paying attention to for a while.

Speaker 2: 50:12

Stephen Bartlett show, dario CEO, is just one of these shows that took off and he's doing such a great job with. He's really an interesting guy too. So I I like the way that he's executing a show. It's all about just like you know business, but then it's getting into social and emotional things and health and wellness and just kind of like he brings on such interesting people. So it's like every time that I listen to a show and was like this is just like deep. Also from a production standpoint, the way that they produce their show is just like on such another level, they do viral trailers and everything is just it's just like beautiful, it's like a real entertainment platform now. So I just recommend like, yeah, I have any.

Speaker 2: 51:02

That's what I'm listening to, what I'm reading. Actually, funny enough, like two days ago, I just I was watching it's watching something, and then someone mentioned this book. I don't know if I say I'm not a watcher. I was watching something, but they mentioned this book, so I just bought it and it's called the fourth turning. It's the subject lines like an American prophecy and it's about the cycles of history that will tell us about, like you know, our next rendezvous with destiny or something like that, and it's something that's like really interesting. It talks about the different turnings and quadrants of generational change and there's like 80 year blocks with 20 year turnings with each one and it was fascinating because it literally, just literally was like a rinse and repeat of just like history and 100 year blocks that were just copying each other and I was like, wow, this is fascinating. So if for anyone who's so interested about generational change and the moment that we're in and what might be coming around the corner and what we can learn from history and I think that's what's really important this book might be very interesting.

Speaker 2: 52:13

I haven't read it yet. I just bought it on Amazon two days ago, but I'm excited. So that's kind of like what I'm, what I'm looking at. One thing I'm actively reading right now which I would probably recommend to most would be it's the mastery of love by died Lewis, don DeLewis, don Miguel Ruiz. That's what it is and that's all about just leading with love in life and it's it's served me in many ways and it's affected. I didn't know it was going to affect my business in the ways it did, but I'm very glad that I that I read it.

Speaker 1: 52:52

I love those. I'm 100% going to get that fourth turning book. I just pulled it up on my Amazon right now.

Speaker 2: 52:58

I'm super not the mastery of love.

Speaker 1: 53:00

Come on, mastery of love also sounds like oh my God, okay, well, and then if the last one, if anybody is listening to this and they're like, wow, I sounds like a cool dude. I'm interested in what he's doing, where can they find you online or where's the best place to try to connect?

Speaker 2: 53:22

Yeah, just Google me, ike Fontaine. My agency is get future mediacom. I'm sure there'll be some links in the show notes, so you find me there, ike Fontainecom. Yeah, lovely to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 53:34

Cool, cool rock and roll Alright. And then, if you are listening to this and you were on the fence about any collective, but now you're feeling like I kind of want some more information on this, you can reach out to me at yon looks like jam J and at chase the apex, not chase the apex. I'm going to edit this part. You can reach out to me Yon looks like Jan Jan, at indie collectiveio. That's I and D E collectiveio. Or you can visit our website at indie collectiveco Indie collectiveco. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and until the next episode, I hope you have a great rest of your week. Talk soon.