Robert Plank 0:00 David Ledge Ledgerwood is here from ListenNetwork.Co, and Listen Network is an ad tech company focused on podcast growth, audience data, and download tracking. Larger podcast agencies use this to generate additional revenue, improve client retention, and we're here to chat about it because there's so much possible with your podcast. But if you get 100 listens or 1000 listens, who knows what that really is? Is that from some far off corner of the world? Is it some other demographic, or is it the customers you're actually trying to target? Well, listen network will help you get this tracking figured out and to kind of get these guaranteed, measurable results, they deliver real human downloads from precisely targeted audiences and the analytics to help agencies prove the ROI of their podcast. So it's time to get serious with podcasting with Mr. David Ledgerwood from Listen Network. So how are you, friend? David Ledgerwood 1:00 Well, Robert, you're hired. You're you're our new sales director. That was that was perfect, man. So I I am so happy to be here with you. Have enjoyed all the chats we've had off mic, and it's always it's always fun to get in and share a little podcast time, that's what we do. Robert Plank 1:16 Yeah, and we embrace that randomness, right? There's just always weird tangents, and sometimes you chat with someone, and you forget about things that happened in the past, right? You forget about Napster or Commodores or Basic, and it just reignites something in you that was always there, you just you forgot about it. David Ledgerwood 1:33 Right, right, absolutely, we have to take the dive through computer history. It's funny how you know as I get like more and more, I'm like I'm the I'm the older guy now in a lot of the places that I hang out, and when did that happen? Like I in my brain, I still feel like a 30 year old, but you know, but it's not it's not that way anymore. And I know things that you know it's like pattern matching, right? Like over whatever it is now, you know, 20 some odd years of of career, you start to see things over and over again. You know, I'm on my you know third or fourth major recession. You know, having run businesses through like total economic collapse. You know, several times, and it's it's interesting when you realize like a lot of people who your peers have not actually gone through anything like that, they may be aware that you know the economy collapsed in 2008, but they weren't running businesses at that time. I was doing that, and I remember, and I think those things do impact your entrepreneurial journey when you have that benefit of history, so yeah, always always into you know sort of recalculating based on what do we know from one of our priors, you know, so we can adjust our decision making. Robert Plank 2:51 Yeah, history rhymes, doesn't it? And and in the the tech world, the joke is always it goes to the cloud and then goes back to being local to the cloud, and you you see that with you know private AI and and then the thing you know the the cloud is out there in the open and and yeah there are people out I feel like when I was young the the grown ups said you don't remember the moon landing I was like no I wasn't alive and then now the equivalent is now we would say to someone young you don't remember 911 and they said no I was two years old or I wasn't born yet, and you feel so old. But then you feel like there's so the only constant is change, right? So you can't get too attached to that that business or that app. But then it also seems like there's a lot of like just foundational stuff that persists, doesn't it? Like the the branding, and I mean like podcasting and like being consistent with your content and socializing and networking, so it's like there's a a healthy mix, isn't there? There's the the things that stand the test of time or keep showing back up, and then there's the trends and paths that come and go, it seems. David Ledgerwood 3:54 Yeah, I think, I think that's absolutely right, and I think that it's only through the benefit of time that you can start to recognize the repeating patterns, and and that's why if you stick with entrepreneurship through the highs and lows and you know all those things, it does. Like I say, it gets dramatically easier, but you know, like now after whatever 17 businesses, you know, you kind of learn how to stamp them out, and to you know we could we could set one up quickly now and in ways that you you know you couldn't do before. You could recognize you got a big network that you could draw on. You understand what it looks like to actually niche down. You know, instead of just reading these concepts, you you know you can actually do that, and you can have the patience to, you know, weather the trough of sorrow. You know that that everybody draws in the chart. I mean, that's that's real. You know, you have the times. It's like I don't know if I should keep doing this thing. I might have to drag this outside and shoot it. Yeah, but you also, and you get the. Strength to do that, like you're gonna survive another day, even if you don't have this particular business. So, yeah, I I think about that a lot. I try to write about those things too. You know that now now I'm the grizzled old guy with the getting the grays, and I remember being told in my first company, you know, you're not you don't have enough gray hair to sell that, you know, and now I do. Yeah, now you've I made it, man. Robert Plank 5:27 Yeah, so you have the the war stories, and you know when sometimes you have to make these tough decisions, and yet it seems like there's been so many times where I've done it or I've seen it, where sometimes you just get attached to a dumb idea, or there's something where like it excites you because maybe it was hard for you or solves a problem for you, but then you put it out there in the brutal marketplace and and like no one wants it, no one cares, and you have to move on. David Ledgerwood 5:53 Yeah, yeah, that's right. And you know, I I get into these nichey businesses sometimes where I'm like, you know, it is a we really have to decide, like, is the TAM big enough? You know, is like there are some people this is hugely beneficial for, but are we talking? There's only a couple 100 of them because then reaching that is, you know, is very difficult. Is it 10s of 1000s? Like, okay, that's a little bit better. You know, I like nichey businesses. I like things that I'm not the one that's trying to go out and make $100 million from a company. I'd be stoked if a company gets to 10 million or 5 million's fine with me. You know, as we bootstrap everything and we do it in collections, so we don't have any money in in this. We bootstrap everything and then whatever it generates, like that's just sort of net benefit to us. So we think really, really small, really niche, and you know, just kind of like have a portfolio type of mindset where each business kind of feeds the other ones and supports the other ones. There's always one that's up. There's always one that's down. There's some that are middling, you know, kind of in the middle. So we try to when something is generating, you know, excess cash flow, put that away in our own little fund, and then we use that as the the basic startup capital for whatever the next one is. So never take never take too much money off the table. That's that's one of my that's one of my rules, and always have cash is king. You know, I went through like I said, the 2008, and I saw what it's like when your revenue goes to zero, you know, and stays at zero. And I never forgot that lesson. I don't, I don't borrow, you know, I don't, I don't rack up debt because, like, you get wiped out. I mean, it's entirely possible that once in a while, things can go to zero, and you don't want to be in a you know a negative cash position, Robert Plank 7:44 Right, the tide flows out and comes back in. And a friend of mine and I were just talking about this. Like he discovered Google Data Studio. There was like this really cool tool that just could like visualize just all kinds of data, and it was just like kind of hidden in whatever the back rooms of Google somewhere, and we just got to talking about how, like you know, Google AdWords at first was their only profit center, right? And they lost money on YouTube. They lost money on all kinds of goofy projects like Google Wave and all kinds of things that we hadn't heard about. And then at some point, Google became so profitable, they were like buying up land and buying up like oil refineries, and they they made it, but it seems like, Speaker 1 8:25 Google X, yeah, yeah. Robert Plank 8:27 It seems like there was just this this kind of period of time when they were playing that game of like okay the different businesses were at different levels and one was the big money maker and like fed the others and so like what's the current like collection of businesses for you right now. David Ledgerwood 8:43 Well, we talked about Listen Network, that's one of our that's our biggest one right now. We have another, we have an owned media studio or agency called Riggg: R I G G G, and in that in that space, we're really interested in thinking about. It's not just podcasts. It's what is the total owned media infrastructure that you need to drive the rest of your marketing. So we have a system that we you know employ there where we think about all of the video, all of the podcasting, all the newsletters, webinars, community based building, and then all that feeds into your sort of AI footprint as well. So it's a little bit different way of thinking. Like we need to arm companies with the ability to own and build out their own infrastructure. So you're not only building on what they say, like rented land, right? Like I can't build my entire presence on social networks. I can't only rely on third-party PR, and I can't only rely on paid. Those are really important things that you ought to be doing. All of those, the basis and where you're actually building the trusted content that's going to be your owned media. So we're we're deeply involved in that. We have a sales consultancy called Ad One Zero, that was our original company. We're dabbling now with some training and consulting packages that might help us to kind of round out the the whole thing with little little services actions, so we have a holding company that we you know we invest from and we do some light angel investing. We have a portfolio in there of stocks and bonds, and you know things of that nature. So we treat that like our own little, little tiny private equity type of company. So it helps fund the other ones, and we can you know create credit out of out of that. Robert Plank 10:37 With all those companies, do you ever have thoughts about if you're properly distributed because it's like well if you only have like one or two solutions then those waves that come and go we were talking about you might get wiped out but then if you're kind of too much entrepreneurial ADD then you're not really making any progress so I wonder if maybe the the then you thinker well you put money into this put people into that but how do you make sure you're properly balanced? David Ledgerwood 11:04 So the, the, the most important. I mean, look, money is important, but I would say the most important thing is your time, right? So you know, so how are you allocating? So you know, we we think a lot in the partner group about you know who owns what, where, and which thing is the closest to revenue at any given time, and then we very regularly shift the priorities, so we manage it all as one big kind of like a Scrum system. So you know a backlog, right? Like you can only be working on one or two things at the same time. So what flows to the top based on any given business relative to the other businesses, so it's like we spend a lot of time thinking about that exact problem, and also it takes a lot of like self awareness where we we're constantly measuring. You know, hey, am I burned out? Are you burned out? Is everybody healthy? Like, is everything cool at home? You know, this is like the total package is a very like holistic. If you're cooked at home, or you're, I don't know, you know, somebody has a relationship problem, or, or they're having a home money problem, or like partners bring that to the table too. It's like you don't just leave that out of the equation. So we're very mindful to try to stay on top of like, how's everybody feeling with this? Like, are we doing too much? Do we need to dial back? Do we need to hire somebody? Is that business ready to hire somebody so that we don't have to do that thing? Which thing do we have to do? Which thing isn't necessary, important, not urgent? You know all that stuff. So we we spend a lot of time reconfiguring that pile because that is the most difficult part. Is how do you have time and focus where you don't you don't get the whiplash and wasted energy of switching all the time. Robert Plank 12:45 Oh, nice! You make it seem a lot of like the chaos can be fun because I remember like when I was like 1718, years old, just starting college, and there there wasn't a thing as DevOps, right? There was like waterfall method, and I remember just trying to trying to like just time manage my time, and it wasn't fun. And I was I was afraid to even like look at the priorities, look at the task list. But it's like when you're the way you put it with like all the kind of reconfiguring the mess, you know that okay, you got to configure, but it won't last, and you'll reconfigure later because everyone has their own personal lives. Like it's kind of a fun chaotic system to be solved the way that you present it. David Ledgerwood 13:23 It is, yeah, I mean, we really enjoy doing that type of like we love building, we love creating new companies. So if you know that, then you know what is the environment where that's going to be successful. And and you talked about balance, and I would just say like I think all of us have a if we're paying attention, we all have an innate sense that if something feels out of balance, you kind of know that. It's when you ignore that and you keep trying to grind through or you know beat yourself with getting work done that you become ineffective. So we built our companies around the idea that you know, look, we're both parents, both have family. Like that always comes first, you know, and then whatever's left. And some days when they're school driving, we're talking like, hey, you get from like nine to two, where you get to work on all this stuff. So I mean, you got to be dialed because like, and then some days you're not, and some days just like we kind of just take an honest accounting of it. Just like, yeah, I sucked today. Like, I, I just stared at the screen and moved stuff around and checked Slack for like four hours and did nothing. And you know, you just know those are just not the days. So I think it's it's like people plan as if they're going to have like 40 hours of productivity, and I think you're just not, you know. So, like, be honest with how much available time you have, and and whatever you have available, you're still not going to be 100% productive in that. So, it's often slower than you'd like. I mean, we're not we're not creating rocket ships here, you know. We're, we're more like, you know, ocean liner. Robert Plank 15:01 Okay, fair enough. So you know what reality is and what some of those limitations are, but you still try to do your best, right? You still try to achieve things and make the best of that time window. And so you mentioned some of these companies, right? There's Listen Network, there's Riggg. Is there one that you think is worth talking about today, or like unpacking a little more? David Ledgerwood 15:19 I really, I love Listen Network, and you and I met talking in about that. And I think it's because it solves a a really substantial business problem that I experienced myself. And I I've run sales for podcasts and media agencies for years now, and I found that as as that agency selling and an AM type of person that you know, client retention was a challenge because, particularly in podcasts, you just had no good data. It was like if you had to go to that next client meeting, like what were you going to talk about? Like the some downloads happen and we don't know who they're from. But if we could figure out like how do you annotate a download so we can say, like, actually, now a download's not just a vanity metric that means nothing. We know it came from our target market, so we started kind of thinking about that. Well, who's got all the data about everybody to the level of like creepiness? Well, that's ad networks. And if we said, okay, maybe we could build technology that will allow us to say we know that that campaign drove that download, and we can map it directly. Then we can definitely say that we have, we know, we guarantee that that download came from your target market because we built the campaign to reach your target market, and then we can report on all the data that comes from that, and we can say your target market reacted to your campaign on your web on your podcast in such and such ways. We can get all that data, and we can say as a result of that data, when presented with the opportunity to interact with your podcast, people did this. People had these characteristics. It was greater male than female. It was certain age groups. It was household income. It was job titles. Like all these things come out from that data, and we can say as a result of that, we believe the data is telling you you should do these 12 things editorially in order to align with the engaged audience, so we could start to get more and deeper into this whole idea that we can know who those people are, and as a happy byproduct, those numbers are going up. You know, because we just engage that one center. The beautiful thing about paid media, to me is it's the only media that you can actually say I want this in front of that person or that group of people. You can't do that in social. You can't do that in email. You can't do that in PR. You can get a rough approximation. Even me being on your show right now, like I don't know. I can estimate that well, there's probably a similar audience because it's entrepreneurial, and you know these things, and some people are interested in podcasts, and you know whatnot. But if we can get really precise with that, that's a really valuable piece of the pie, and it can be like statistically representative of what my target audience does when presented with this show. Robert Plank 18:20 Oh nice! Yeah, I can see how that's that's very helpful because, like, you know, numbers on the internet-it's-it's such a mixed bag, right? Like, you hear all the jokes about, like, oh, there's 100 impression. Well, that sounds like nothing, and then you know, the even like X counts an impression as if you're scrolling through the feed and you stop on a video for like two seconds. Okay, cool. That's there. You go. It's impression. It seems worthless. And then with, I think the the reassurance of podcasting is they say, well, if you if you pictured 100 people in a room, that's a lot of people versus 100 impressions. So if it's like 100 of the right people are listening to your show, then that's that's really cool. And if if one of those leads to a a sale, a client, then that's valuable versus 100 views on YouTube. What is that even? So it's like this better targeting. David Ledgerwood 19:08 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Robert Plank 19:09 Something we want that. David Ledgerwood 19:10 And we, we have agency clients using our our tooling, and and they they say you know we know we have millions of dollars of attributed pipeline, and it helps you know your your thing helps us do that so yeah you know that's that's great right I mean that's what you want to happen I've just always been passionate about you know this podcast agency space is so interesting you know there's lots of them and everybody does things a little bit different but you know overall we're all kind of fighting against the beauty of podcasting is it's an open protocol, right? So RSS, like cool, it's open. Anybody can have it. It's it's it's anonymous. Like it's you can just consume stuff, and that's also the negative part, right? Like from a marketing perspective, people are used to Google Analytics or you know Data Studio and like charts, graphs, mix panel. Like I know everything I can track my whole funnel, podcasts don't play along, but if we can apply some of those tools on top of that podcast world, we can actually make good inferences that make it behave a little bit more like one of those standard high data channels. Robert Plank 20:15 Yes, very much needed to have that better tracking in this medium. That it it is valuable. It is helpful to have a podcast about your company or interview the the best customers about the data stories. It's more, at least for me, it's more exciting than the webinars or the white papers. It's a pretty cool format. And so you have these companies, and you've seen all kinds of stuff. And I want to make sure that we focus on what's important to mr. Ledgerwood here and what's passionate to you? So, in this conversation we're having in the final few minutes, do you think there might be a missing question that I should be asking you? I just don't know what to ask you. David Ledgerwood 20:50 Well, you know, now that you're saying that, and what makes me passionate, and you know, all those things, like I'm a dad, I got I have five kids, and you know, everything is built around being a dad first, and so I think that it's easy to talk about our businesses and not be humans. I mean, that's that's the jam, right? Like I, I get excited that I can do what I want to do, and you know, during the day, and then I get to hang out with my kids. You know, so I think like that's it's kind of just where I live. Like I, it's in my LinkedIn headline, data five. Like that's that's what I do, you know. And I think like that part gets missed, you know. We we all forget to get out of our business hat sometimes, and you know we talk about that balance again. That that's what that's what occurred to me as as my passion, you know. Like that's that's what I do. I'm a dad, and then I start businesses, but it's definitely in that order. Robert Plank 21:43 Yeah, you have your priorities, and you have your freedom, and you're all about the next generation. And when I was younger, I didn't get it. Like, like you know, you you end up watching like a talk show or something, and they they always end up just talking about their kids. I'm like, okay, here we go again. Like you got you know Hugh Grant and Jay Leno or whoever, and they end up just talking about each other as kids. But now that I'm a dad, I get it. Like my my son's my best accomplishment, and it's just it's such a such a cool experience. I David Ledgerwood 22:11 I call them my organic startups, so. Robert Plank 22:13 Nice, yeah, and, and who knows what what they will achieve in their own separate paths, and you'll you'll be so proud of them regardless. Speaker 1 22:20 Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and maybe they'll go bankrupt too. But you know, it's all part of that learning process. Robert Plank 22:25 Oh yeah, part of the adventure, and and the way that the the crazy future is ahead of us with a AI takeover. Who knows what? They probably will go bankrupt with the. David Ledgerwood 22:33 You sure do wonder about you know the future of jobs and all those things. Reading this stuff, and I'm just I got I got four around college age now, and I sure don't know what the hell they're going to do in this this AI world. So we are encouraging them to you know study broadly and learn how to hustle, and you're probably going to have to go make your own money, just like we did, so. Robert Plank 22:56 yeah. David Ledgerwood 22:57 This what happens, right? Robert Plank 22:58 Yeah, well, so and so since you kind of brought up that tangent, like I'm kind of I love the randomness of podcasting, and so you're a dad of five. Do you have any parenting advice or anything that you know now that surprised you that you didn't know back then? David Ledgerwood 23:15 I think that you realize over the years that you know children are smarter and more resilient than we give them credit for. And you know, any advice it would be like you know, really talk to your kids, and and they're gonna give you the whole like how was school fine, what'd you do today? Nothing, you know. But if if you can try to dialog with them, and one thing I do with my kids is, you know, we just we make sure a couple days a week. It's always people are always busy, but like, hey, let's at least have a dinner and let's sit down, you know, sometimes as a family. And you know, I think that that would be my advice. Is like just don't let it pass by everybody looking at their phones, and you know, put the phones away. Maybe play some games, you know. Just find some ways to to talk, learn about their friends, learn about what they like, learn about their challenges. They won't tell you unless you ask. Robert Plank 24:12 Yeah, that's great. Find the time and attention and ask those questions. And yeah, I remember when I was a teenager, I was difficult, and I think my parents they were kind of like, like shocked and surprised that they had resistance. Like, but like, weren't you a teenager at some point? Didn't you treat your parents with like similar disrespect? So that's good to think. David Ledgerwood 24:32 I wasn't disrespectful, but I was kind of a like juvenile delinquent. So I'm glad that I got that phase out, so. Robert Plank 24:39 You got it out of your system, yeah. So there's a lot to to think about, and like Bill Cosby said it so right. Kids say the darnedest things, and my son just surprises me with he'll say some phrase or say I'm like there's no there's no way someone around him said that, and he doesn't watch that much TV, David Ledgerwood 24:56 They do come out with some funny stuff. Yeah, I had, I had one that we were driving, he must have been four years old in the back seat, and the trunk at the car in front of us was kind of bumping up and down, and there was junk hanging out of it, and whatever. He goes, "People these days, am I right? Robert Plank 25:15 Like, where did he pick that up? David Ledgerwood 25:17 He's like, "What? What? Yeah, so yeah, I mean, kids, kids are hilarious. They'll drive you crazy, but they're they're the greatest joy, the hardest work. Yeah, I always say like doing startups is the hardest thing, unless except parenting. You know. Robert Plank 25:34 Yeah, and times five, I can't even imagine. Well, my six year old is at the the disagreeing with anything you say stage, so I say you have to put on your sunscreen. No, I want sunburn. Well, use the bathroom before bed. No, I want to wet the bed. So anything you say just it goes, and it just it's it makes me laugh because there's always new material. David Ledgerwood 25:52 Bless you, man, bless you. Yeah, there's sixes. Yeah, wow, he's pushing it there. Like yeah, fours and fives. I think, were were tough. You know, six. I started to feel like they're at least remotely resembling a useful human. But I got to say, like 1212, to you know 17 has been a lot of fun. So 1212, 1314, those are great years. Robert Plank 26:17 I'm looking forward to my exciting times ahead. And as far as giving our audience some place to go and getting excited about what you offer, what are some next steps here? Where should they go to tap into the Ledgerwood genius? David Ledgerwood 26:30 Appreciate that. You know, I I am a an avid LinkedIn user, so David Ledge Ledgerwood. That's sort of my front door. If I could be useful to anybody, I my DMs are open. I love talking about owned media, podcasting. You know the growth of businesses, integrated marketing. You know content, all all those things. You know, I I really like helping entrepreneurs make more money. So if I can if I can do that, then you know I'm I'm happy, and all my businesses. If anything sound interesting that we talked about, well, we can talk about it there, and and I'll shoot you straight. I'm one of those guys say that's a fit for you or that's not a fit for you, and I'll, I'll tell you right on. Robert Plank 27:15 Very nice, worth having that conversation to set up a call or send that message, and it's good to chat with someone that's thinking these things through, because even on your LinkedIn, it says that a lot of what gets sold as content strategy is volume without architecture. It's more posts, more newsletters, more guests, but no mechanism for any of it to build on what came before. And your own proprietary system, which we talked about right before the call is the 5p's: produce, package, publish, prove, and preserve. So instead of doing the good old spray and pray with content creation, why not apply some actual strategy and track and measure and throw out what's not working and amplify what does work? Well, it's worth having that conversation with Mr. David Ledgerwood from ListenNetwork.Co if you want to perform that that tracking, if organic growth is too slow, or even Riggg: Riggg with three Gs, where he can help you and your brand, your company build up that owned media and turn expert conversation into owned media that works forever. Capture and produce, package and publish, distribute everywhere, and create that content library that compounds. So go and look him up on LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn.com/in/DavidLedgerwood. He's an owned implementation partner, and he can chat with you about some of these podcasts and solutions to just get that internal owned media figured out. So if you're a CMO, CCO, CRO, or CHRO, then you have one of these conversations about you know making more sense and getting some results out of the content that you're putting out there. So David Ledgerwood on LinkedIn. But before I let you go, Mr. David Ledgerwood from Riggg and from Listen Network, it's time for the scary part of the podcast, where I try to stump you, I try to put you on the spot by asking you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson? David Ledgerwood 29:17 So, here's here's what what pops into my my mind with that. I've always been fascinated by the Navy SEALs, and they have this mantra, I guess, or quote: "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And I think that I bring with me everywhere. You know, I really want to just like act with deliberate nature, work really good with what's in front of me. Don't rush. I think you have time, and things actually get done faster when you do it right. Very good. Proper planning and preparation and problem solving. I'm here for that. We all are. We try, right? You know. Then and then you know. There's a few times where you. Go! I did not do that thing that I that I said I should do, and and you can see the results don't don't come out the same. You know, so it's like I think we all need that constant reminder. You know, so I I try to say that little thing in my head. You know, stop rushing. Robert Plank 30:14 Yes, stop rushing, slow is smooth. Smooth is fast, I get that right. David Ledgerwood 30:19 That's right, yeah. Robert Plank 30:20 Very good, well, let's consider that as we check out David Ledge Ledgerwood on LinkedIn, and he has these companies such as ListenNetwork.Co, paid podcast distribution with guaranteed measurable results, and Riggg with 3G's, where you can get these expert conversations turned into own media. So, thanks so much, Mr. David Ledgerwood, for stopping by and embracing the randomness of podcasting and dispensing the nuggets in all areas of life. It was such a fun conversation we had. David Ledgerwood 30:51 Thank you, Robert. You're you're a blessing to podcast world, man. Thanks for putting in the the extra work to get us all out there. Robert Plank 30:59 Of course, you humble me, sir. I put in the long hours. Thanks again.