Meet Alex Sanfilippo - Founder of PodMatch

—to be fun.

It is definitely. We're live.

We're live. It's good to be fun. I am so excited. So, okay, I'm really excited about this because I am a PodMatch user, huge fan, love the program, and I'm doing something very exciting. So I'm here to introduce everyone to Alex Sanfilippo. I know I said that wrong, but say it for me.

Sanfilippo. You were so close. It actually sounded more Italian the way that you said it than I do. So I'll take it.

I watch a lot of Netflix Italian shows, so it really helps. So, Alex, this is, this is unusual because I usually don't know my guests. It's no prep needed on purpose. I like being different. So I— your poor PodMatch. So I, I love PodMatch. I'm strictly getting my guests from PodMatch, and they're always— they have to be bright, they have to be bold. They're all beautiful looking. So I'm not sure if you got something going on with your guests, but everyone is just Beautiful Inside and Out, um, with your clients. And I have to say, you have to be very bold to go in live because anything can happen. So we're live on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and ChatterSocial. And oh, hi, Ira! I'm gonna bring you up. Beautiful co-host Jonathan Howard. Thank you, Jonathan, for doing this. And let's start because I want to hear the beginning, like what— like who is Alex before PodBetch and how did it start stirring? What happened to give podmatch idea and then put it together.

Sure. Before I share, I just want to mention I've been listening to your podcast. It's a lot of fun and I love that. And earlier today I was listening to it and I was like walking by where my wife was and I just said, thank you. And she goes, for what? And it was because you said something on podmatch and said, thank you, Alex, an episode. So I just out loud repeated it even though I wasn't listening live. I was listening to a replay on the podcast side. And she goes, what? I like unmuted and like let her hear it. She's like, oh, that's so fun. So Um, thank you for mentioning, uh, PodMatch. Me, it warmed my heart. So, um, yeah, so I, I'm grateful to be here getting to talk about this. So I actually did 15 years in big corporate before, uh, becoming like a full-time podcaster through PodMatch and my own show. And I'm one of those rare cases, Adrian, I don't know if this happens a lot for you, but I loved my corporate life. Like the 15 years I did were like super fun and I didn't really want to leave. Um, It was kind of one of these weird cases where I came up with something, and I'll kind of share that story, but it was sacrificing the good, which was my corporate job. It was a good job for the sake of potential great. Like PodMatch had potential to be something that was going to be better for me, better for the people that I get to serve. It was only a potential though. There was no guarantee. And then for me, I like risk assessment was something I kind of did incorporate. So I was just like, what's the risk? Like, could I do this and ultimately end up leaving my job? And I'll say this, my last year at that job, I was working both things. So PodMatch was kind of the evenings, like nights, nights and weekends. And my job was 40 hours during the week. But my last year there was my best year I ever had there after 15 years. I was at the C-suite level. And, and I believe the way you end one season is the way you start the next. And so for me, I wanted to leave on a good foot because I knew I wanted things to start off right. And I'll never forget it. December 7th, 2020 was my last day there. Uh, cried on my way out the door, just stood at the, like, stared at the building, you know, like it was just parts manufacturing. It was nothing fancy or— but, uh, but I loved it and I knew it was the end of a, of a very long season in my life that I, I really adored. But, um, PodMatch again had that potential to be great. And, um, I got the idea because I was, I was a podcaster and I was just passionate about it. I was just doing in the evenings, weekends, just for fun. Like I wasn't— I didn't know what I was going to do with it. But I just had so much fun. Everyone I met seemed to just be wonderful people, good-looking people, like you said, right? Like just really just amazing people. And, um, and so like as I was meeting, I realized like, man, I want to, I want to do something in podcasting. Like I want to be able to make a difference among these individuals and help if I can. And that's ultimately where the idea was born from, was actually in Orlando, Florida. This was, uh, during 2020, it was right before the world shut down. Actually, I should mention that like we 2,000 of us in a room though. And I just, I told my wife Alicia, like, when I get off stage, I'm going to ask them a question. And sure enough, I finished up my talk. I just said, hey, if you'll give me 2 minutes, I'd love to meet as many of you as I can. I talked to a bunch of people that day and I just asked them the same question. Hey, what are you struggling with in podcasting? Like, what's the problem? And I heard a lot of things that day, but 100 people, and I wrote down their answers, said the same thing. Alex, I'm having trouble finding the right guest for my show, the person that's going to really move the needle forward, that's going to be good for my listeners. And the whole process is so cumbersome. I want to, I want to streamline it all. And so I kind of went home with that idea and whiteboard the whole thing out. Took me a while, but finally like figured out, I was like, you know what we need to do? We need to create something that's like a dating app, but instead of connecting people for dates, it connects people for podcast interviews, puts the guest host together, lets them message and schedule on the platform and they can go have their, their time together. Right? So, uh, instead of reinventing the wheel, we looked at an industry that was already doing it well. Granted, I've been married too long to ever be on a dating app, but I had an idea of what they're supposed to do. And that's, that's where the whole thing was born from, was that. And to just simplify what I just shared, like, at its core, what I feel like entrepreneurship is, is getting into an area of passion, like finding your passion, right? Getting into it. For me, it was podcasting. Joining that community. For me, I was speaking at these conferences. I was meeting with any podcaster I could. So I was in the community. Find the simple problem they're struggling with, then offer the fastest possible solution. And so when I had the idea, we, it was I will never forget it was March 10th, 2020, and on June 15th, 2020, we launched that early beta. I invited those same 100 people I met at that conference to come check it out, and the rest has kind of been history.

Actually, I want to talk a little bit about the history. Where has the growth been since 20— since you launched it to now? Because I, I have said to a few people, oh my gosh, you, you know, go back to it. It's doing some things that are so important. That we all need. So I would love to, like, know for those that maybe tried it in the early days and then left it, maybe we can have them come back once they hear the great changes.

That would be really fun. I'd love a second chance. Early on when we launched, we didn't have a logo. Every page took like 10 seconds to load. I'm not exaggerating. It was like 10 seconds. So 10 seconds on a computer seems like a lifetime, right? So, and it was just, It, at its core, it did what it was supposed to, but it wasn't pretty. And again, we launched really early, wanted to get it out there and see if it was even solving the problem. So since then we've gotten a logo. Um, we have a very quick website and I'm grateful. We've got, we've had no downtime since we, since we launched. So, which is really great. I should say since that first iteration of it. So like we, we did beta for about a year and a half before we like launched into the full version of PodMatch, which we've been in now for, for years. And we just keep on changing it. So it's quicker, the matching's more automated, uh, and more precise. And then what it can do inside the messages on helping schedule and get everything organized, it's night and day different than it even was. I mean, I'd say even a year and a half ago, it's a different platform. And we actually, it's funny you mentioned this because I had somebody recently, they rejoined PodMatch. They're like, what have you done in the last year and a half? Like, like, how is it so much better and different? Like, listen, This is just my philosophy. I am big on continuous improvement. Like, I want, I don't want it to be perfect. I want to get it out in front of you now because I think it helps and it serves. But I'm just going to keep on trying to make it better and better and better. And I'm happy to share some specifics if you want, or we can keep moving the conversation wherever, wherever you want. No, I do.

First of all, I want— Leah, are you available to say hi? I am. Do you recognize that beautiful voice?

Who is this? I lost you, Alex.

I met you at the Empowered Podcast Conference. Um, your talk was one of the ones I talked about whenever I came back to Chatter because it was— I'm not a podcaster yet, and it was completely applicable to life. So I loved that you took that stance so that anybody could benefit from your talk. And yeah, anyway, I'm very excited. Well, thank you, Leah. Leah. Oh, okay, cool.

So I didn't catch the name. Leah, thank you for that. I appreciate it. And I think I took a little bit of a risk with that talk, but this— you helped me today. Thank you. Makes me feel really good because that was a talk I knew I wanted to give and I'm glad it landed. So thank you for that.

I love that. And actually, let me just take a second because if people are listening, they're going to be like, who's that pretty voice that I heard a guy before? That's not Alex. So I decided to do something different. This is my first book. Leah is the first chapter, by the way, talking about Chatter Social and the community that we have built here. But my next book, which is gonna be teal color, is all of PodMatch's, 15 of the PodMatch's clients, or for me, the guests that I have interviewed using this program, which is amazing, by the way, And so it's a beautiful book, as you can see, and each of the chapters— and Alex, of course, will have a chapter too. So very excited to have the next book, and it's blending the two things that I love. I absolutely love ChatterSocial, and I am loving PodMatch like crazy. So it's nice and exciting to have a blend.

It'll be ready for Podfest, which I have that book, by the way. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you so much. So, Alex, I, I was thinking two things. One is I want to hear what you were saying, and two, I want to know, can Can we show everyone behind the scenes? I'll use my, uh, my website, my login, so people can actually see what it looks like.

Of course. Yeah, for sure. Whatever you'd like to do. Yeah. Is that okay?

I would love that. If you have stats to share, would love that. But I do, I do wanna say, Alex, that you, you have to be committed to do the work. And one of the things, so I, I have a client and I hope to get more where I book them on podcasts and you can say, well, but I could join PodMatch and I could book myself on podcasts. Yes, you can, but it takes time. Like, I, I take advantage of the 3 matches a day. Why would I not take a time? You want to respond. I don't want to be like known as not responding quickly and, oh, she responds in a month. Like, that's just not who I am. There's a leaderboard, so of course I'm looking to get on the leaderboard because I'm very competitive with myself. But I think that, you know, like, in my mind, I think it's 30 minutes a day to just make sure you answer everything, you set your release dates. Like, as a host, we have responsibilities. PodMatch takes so much of it away from us. On the other hand, you know, it doesn't know— it does not intuitive enough to go into like whatever platform you are getting the episode link. So I, I'd like to make sure that people do that. But if it's okay, Alex, and then you could share, we'll do this. I, and I'm going to go right here to my account. Yeah, it sounds fun.

I've never gotten to do this before, so this is cool. I like it. Oh, and by the way, I like you doing this. I set a, um, I set a, um, an event in my calendar, and I spend 20 minutes a day on PodMatch, and that's literally all it takes. And I'm, I'm booked as a guest forever, and I'm— I've got all of my guests that I need as well. So, um, because I do my, my podcast like I— in the background, no one knows this, but I do it in seasons. So I'm working 13 weeks at a time. So like, I'll like get on there and I'll just— 20 minutes a day 5 days a week, I'll get it knocked out. So anyway, this is cool to see. Again, I've never done this before.

This is fun. Exactly. I mean, this is like important to me. And so you can walk us through it or I can show you what I know. It's up to you.

Yeah, well, I'm kind of curious. Can you walk us through it? I can just kind of interject if that's okay. Like, is that a fun way to do it?

Of course. Of course. So when I come on, the first thing I do is look at my dashboard and I notice that I have 3 matches and 13 messages. So I like, and I'll look and see. So I have 15 episodes upcoming, and that may sound like a lot, but I was requested to add dates in it. So they're booking January and February too. So as a podcast host, you just have to make sure that you give time. And, you know, if I didn't, if I didn't have the time to do the upcoming, but I'm really enjoying it. And again, it's good for, for me, and it's good for Chatter Social. Unscheduled is 16. That means that they have to do the work, Alex, not me. I have my calendar link in there. So when I see unscheduled— oh, I'm getting my own tutorial, Alex. I am so brilliant doing this.

You are. This is great. I hope you share this, this clip of you doing this, because this will, this will do well. I'll send it to people myself.

Oh, I would love that. I would love that. So this unscheduled, can you share with me exactly what that means?

Yeah. So the, the unscheduled, you're the host in this scenario. So because of that, the host doesn't schedule typically, occasionally, like maybe there'll be a guest that there'll be a unique, um, uh, kind of thing going on with them. They kind of ask for help, but very rarely does it happen. So what that means is unscheduled, this is guests that you have matched with saying, yeah, you'd be a good fit for the podcast. Love to have you on. And now it's up to them to go to your calendar, the host, to schedule a time. And then at that point it would drop off of this and we move from unscheduled to upcoming.

Got it. Interesting. Okay, good. So is that okay? I completed 14 episodes, uh, 14 interviews. I have 12 reviews now. I notice it doesn't— oh, it does bring it. Oh wait, but I don't see— oh, here we go. Oh, so yeah, I'm very competitive, so of course the reviews— I, I think I've only been on here for a month. Yeah, you're really new.

So yeah. I think when we started talking, you weren't on here yet, right? Is that correct? I just messaged you today on PodMatch.

So it's crazy. No, I never. But I love Carol. So Adrian runs a wild live podcast and has a fun group of listeners who turn up with interesting questions. If you're ready to roll on the fly, this is a unique podcast to check out. I love guesting for her. But yeah, no, I've got a lot of— these are all—

are you seeing reviews right now? I'm not seeing— I'm still on the dashboard.

Yeah. Oh, let me see, let me see. Oh, share this tab instead. So sorry. Okay, cool. All right, perfect, perfect. So see the reviews? Oh yeah, okay. So I'm excited about that. Loads of fun. I guess if you're gonna come on, that's—

your podcast is fun. That's a good review.

Oh, I love that, I love that. I loved, uh, yeah, everyone was really fantastic.

So Rachel Allen, I listened to her on your podcast. She's brilliant.

She dropped some bombs too.

She was really good. She did. I took some notes. Thank you for that episode, by the way. I encourage everyone, when you're done with this one, go over to that one. That one's worth listening to.

Oh, I like her too. Yeah, she's, she's gonna be in the book, so very excited. That's another thing with the book from podtobook.ai. It's allowing me an opportunity to continue that relationship because often you have it, maybe you're connecting, right? But that's about it. So, okay, so we're gonna go back to the dashboard. And by the way, you know, reviews work both ways, everyone. So I give for the 5-star positive reviews. You know, it does work both ways. Um, and if I was gonna— if someone was not good, I probably would talk to them before I would put any negative review because I, I wouldn't want to do that to them.

I do the same thing, by the way. I do the same thing. And one thing I like about— we made that decision to allow people to leave reviews for guests as well because what I realized is guests, when they reach out, like on LinkedIn— not there's anything wrong with that, but you don't really know how they've done on other podcasts. Like, you're just taking their word for it. Seeing this going to their profile, being able to read some reviews actually helps me understand like, how are they really going to show up? So, wow, you've got some really cool people on here. You're right. You said it earlier. All three people. Is that a requirement of your podcast? Am I pretty? Thank you. I'll take this as a compliment.

No, but they have to be bold. So they're all bold too. They were really— it's been an amazing experience right now. Also, one guest, we're talking to him about coming into the promo industry. James Helvoski, if I said his name right, he was a guest on Grow Your Business and Grow Your— the podcast industry is small, right? So you met Jonathan, you met Leah. We're going to be at Powered Podfest. Like, but I've noticed as it grows, it gets smaller because everyone does know each other. OK, so now workflow episodes and work, zero, which means because I am on top of things, right? That's a good number to have.

So Workflows is a, is a, I don't know if you've used it. It's a tool we built inside of Podmatch that helps you keep up with your production if you don't already have an existing system. So that just means you don't have any episodes in production that you're using on Podmatch. Um, I can, if I can share my screen and show you what it looks like.

So, cause I, I use it. Yes, I would love that. Yes, yes, yes. Let me, yes, let me stop sharing. Let me do that. Yes, I would love to see that. Look at it. I'm getting a fresh tutorial. Okay, let me— I think you should have the right to share your screen.

Can I just— did— can you see it now or no? I don't, I don't know if it worked. Can you see it? Is it showing?

Yes, I have it. I'm going to add it to the stage right now. Perfect. And then I'll make it larger, guys. Okay.

So this looks like a lot, right? Um, but I will just quickly show you basically if I wanted to use PodMatch to make, uh, to do my episode production, I can hit add new episode and then I can say Podcasting Made Simple, uh, episode. I can just say new episode, whichever the title is going to be, release date. Let's say it's tomorrow, uh, episode number, let's say it's 500. I could link it to a guest as well. And now what that's gonna do is that's gonna add this new card. And what this is, there's 20— I've already predetermined there's 23 tasks involved in every single one of my podcast episodes. And then what it does is it automatically adds all of 'em with the instructions on how to make them, on like what to do. It assigns team members, allows me to chat with team members as well here, everyone who's working on it. We can attach files. Everything you would need to basically manage your podcast production can be done from right here using these episode card builders. So I'll delete that because I have a whole team in here working. And any of these, like this one, this one's got 12 tasks done on it. So I can like hide the complete ones, show only mine. The whole idea is just if you want a simplified checklist for every single one of your episodes, that's what we're doing with workflows. So I'll stop sharing.

So you create the show notes too and all of that?

So you would need to go, you need to use like, um, like in this case we're on StreamYard. StreamYard would generate those, but you can, you can upload them there and give them to your team member if they need them. Example, what I do is I give everyone my raw files and like my video editor pulls them off there, then re-adds them. So the whole idea is it's just kind of like a hub or a CRM, if you will, uh, some sort of like project management software that allow you to be able to, again, just kind of keep up with your task of your podcast. Cause for me, like having a good checklist of everything that happens every time is important. So we just built a system for that.

Oh my gosh. Amazing. Yeah. No, I have not been using that and I absolutely want to be using that. And that's included. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yep. That's, that's freely included for any host. We've not done a great job promoting it, which is on me. It's my favorite thing I think I'll ever build. Like we use it as a team religiously. So there's 6 people involved in our podcast that work on it. And, um, the rest of them are like virtual assistants and, uh, each of it's, I, this made me feel good. Each of them has separately come to me and told me. Hey, can you get all the rest of my clients to use this as well? So anyway, something to look at. And I've got some tutorials on it. So yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Thank you for sharing that. Okay, I'll continue with this. I love it. You should see. Okay, I'm so glad I asked. Amazing. I have 8 incomplete to-do items, so I'll go to my messages. I just got paid my first commission. Come on.

Nice. Congratulations. Oh, that's right. Zero right here because you just got paid, right? Probably yesterday.

Yes. Yes. I mean, immediately. And I, I love it because I now could say, yeah, I get paid a little bit to interview podcast guests. So yay. Like, yeah, it's amazing. Cool. I love the review swaps are coming.

Oops. I just noticed, I noticed a problem on our website. It should say 2026, not 2025. That's supposed to be coming at the beginning of 2026. Oops. There you go. That's my fault. I will fix that later. Actually, it'd probably be done before I could even get it fixed. So, oh well. Uh, Jesse, if you're watching this, my co-founder slash developer, help Um, get to it, Jesse.

Let's go, let's go. Um, you're all— at least for Jesse, let's just be honest, he's only 11 months old, so it's okay, Jesse, right? You could have been all year that we didn't notice it. All right, now I don't know what happened with Gwen. It was weird. I have the date here, but she never actually did, um, get on the calendar. So I don't know if she made an eternal mistake. Um, if it was a lot of people, I would be concerned, but it's not. So here's where, guys, where you get your upcoming interviews. So I could see I have interviews booked out till January 21st.

Nice. That's lovely. Once ahead, that's great. I need to get on your level, Adrian. I got some work to do. That's good.

I mean, it's weird because, yeah, I guess I'm more organized than I think. But you know what it is, Alex? I have a saying. Lee has heard me say it a lot. Just do it. Do it now. So I try to, like, during that 30 minutes I'm on PodMatch and, you know, I try to be twice a day, early, early in the morning and then the afternoon to get to those 3 so that they don't— I don't know, I just feel like everything anyways. These are who I've episode. And then guys, the other thing I love is just coming here to the messages and seeing. So Alex asked me, I should pass, but I'm gonna say match. So now I've matched with him, which I love. And this is how it works, guys. You could do this so I could see Jake and your expertise that deserve this member has a low acceptance rate. You know what? You guys know me, Alex, you don't know me as much. I like to shine the spotlight on the people that don't. I'm not the person that says, oh my God, you have to have you know, do all these reviews. Jake may not get as many opportunities. So you sure as heck know that Jake's gonna get this message. Let's do it, Adrian. And then there's one other thing that sets me apart from someone else. It's the craziest thing ever. I don't know if you could see it. Says, let's do it, Adrian Barker, 386-631-4577.

Is that a phone number?

All right, how many people give the phone number? I love it. I do it.

Do it now. No kidding. You just put that into action. Nice job.

Let's do it, right? Because why not? Let's do it. I got to get rid of these. So hold on. You got to have it. Let's do it because I want to do those that, you know, and then I put it in their corner because I don't even know who they are anyway. So it'd be weird for me to like semi-pass if I'm like really busy. Oh, and who wouldn't want like power contractors? Now, I may not be good for her. She— I don't want her to feel because I don't— that's not who I— who my audience is. So I'm gonna pass on her. You guys, this is how easy it is. And then I'm gonna pass because construction is just not what I'm about, um, though very cool. Anyways, and if I didn't have that many— so you will be guaranteed some great, uh, guests from this program. And that's simply— is there anything I'm missing? Because I did—

if I can share my screen, I'll show people the other— the receiving end of this real quick because Oh, I love that.

I'll, uh, yes, share it again.

I just saw that your conversation, you hit match on mine, so, uh, with me because we were already— we've been talking since before Adrian's been on PodMatch. So, uh, here's our conversation. Now that Adrian's accepted the match, me the guest, it's back on me. Uh, real quick, one thing that we added, this is really cool right here. This tells Adrian that I have listened to the podcast, which I think is really helpful. It's great for me if I'm a host and it says— it tells me someone's listened. I'm like, great, that's good to know, right? Like, as a host, that's what you like. Um, so now it's back on me. Adrian accepted the match. There was no pre-interview because we're here. Uh, I'm gonna sign the release form, which is our official release form, so I'm very familiar with it. So I'm just gonna go to the bottom and type in my name. It's funny, try to fill in a credit card. I wonder why I did that. But anyway, um, oh, that was actually a setting on my end. Never mind. Um, and then so from here, uh Now I would schedule it, which we've already done the time. It's actually today and I, 2 o'clock. Is that when we, 2 o'clock Eastern? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now it's scheduled and oh, look, I've already got the recording link. So like that was so fast and now we're good to go. We wouldn't have to do anything until that date and time. And then when it's done, I'm gonna come back here and hit confirm complete. And then we're gonna review each other. And then Adrian will set an estimated release and a link so I can share it later on. And we're actually getting ready to add a 9th thing here, which is me, the guest. Showing where I shared it so we can actually confirm guests share or not. So we're very close to having that done, which I'm excited about. So some inside info for you there.

Oh my God. You know what would be cool too, if you don't mind my suggesting, please, is a place where I could like do the socials for them so that, you know, so like I would have like, oh, here's a, here's so, you know, like it would be in their first person.

So wait, so you mean like explain a little bit further. I'm going to take notes real quick.

Just so. Okay. So I do, I, so I have the podcast and then I do the show notes. But what I would like to do, I would love to say, hey, by the way, here's a social media post that you can use to promote it. And then that way they have it. Or here's an email copy that you can use to send out by email, you know, or even here's an article blog, because I don't want to assume that everyone knows how to take the content from a podcast and, and, and they're not, not giving them the transcript, right? So the best that they're going to be able to do is do the show notes from the, from, they're going to do the social from the show notes, right? Right.

Okay. Because they may not get that transcript.

So I'm thinking, you know, and then I, I, I would love that too, because that way, um, they would have the ability to do that. So for instance, for my client Tom, it would only make sense that even after he airs on a podcast, that one of the things that I would do is say, oh, and here's a, here's a social so that you can send it out. You know why? I'm already doing it. We're honestly— how long does it take, right? I've already put the avatar in. It already knows the tone and voice. So I think that could be cool.

Otherwise, I just took notes. Thank you.

That's good. Oh no, you're welcome. You're welcome. I'm happy to be on your no, um, idea team. So I do want to just double check and see if Jonathan or Leah— and welcome River. River is one of my favorite people in the world. Hi. So happy you're here, River. Did Jonathan and Leah— do you guys have any questions? Well, I just want to ask Alex, because I know— I think he just surpassed a, um, a goal of his— but how much have you given back to, um, podcasters?

Uh, thank you for asking. Yeah, we, um, I don't know the exact number, but I know it just passed a million dollars we've given back to podcasters on Monday. Reached that milestone, which I posted on social media, and I, I I gave a quote and it's something I told Alicia when we launched that. We, we started that in 2022 and I told her, wouldn't it, like, wouldn't it be so cool if someday we could reach giving $1 million back to podcasters? Um, and it's through what we call our Pod Value Initiative, which is just we pay podcasters, the host that uses PodMatch. If they use it, they get, they get a cut of our profit. And, uh, what do you know, Monday we, we reached that goal. And so I'm, thank you for asking about that and for bringing it up. I'm, I'm so excited about it. Like, that has been my primary goal for a long time. Actually, tonight Alicia and I are celebrating. We're going to like a really nice dinner with some friends and stuff like that just to kind of internally celebrate. Right. But it would be a lot of fun. So I look forward to it.

Great question. Thank you, Jonathan. You saved me with that fantastic question. Your wife is beautiful, by the way. I love the pictures. I love that you, you really do the storytelling. Yeah. Your wife. I've seen her because you, you also weave who you are into your socials. So, you know, like showing that your drive from, you know, your town in Florida up to Charleston, like all of that to me makes you so likable. Oh, thank you. You're amazing. Do you, do you do a lot of—

are you a guest on a lot of podcasts? Yeah, I mean, I don't— I guess the, the term a lot is like, just depends. Like, I love to be on a show every week. That for me is a lot of fun. So I like to be able to do that. And, um, sometimes I find some that I like to be on and sometimes I don't, right? Like, I, I I don't go on shows unless I know I can actually add value. Like if I can't show up and really help, I just tend to say no just because I don't want to take the spot from someone who could actually help. And so, but yeah, I go on them. My goal, if I can get on one a week, I'm really happy. And I've been doing that for many years now and it's been a lot of fun. So, and I try to weave in my personal life as much as I can. Like I'm not one to separate business and personal. I just, it's kind of all personal to me, which maybe is good or bad. I don't know. Um, but you know, going back, I mentioned Rachel Allen earlier. Um, by the way, again, the episode she did, I think it was titled Human is the Only Move Left, something along those lines. I know it aired on— I'm good with numbers— and it aired on, uh, November 4th, 2025. And I encourage everyone, like, go check that out. But something that she said really stood out to me is like, whatever you're posting, make it sound like you and make it weird, right? Like, a software founder posting a picture in a car driving to a sort of spot instead of like a first-class ticket is weird, right? For some people to see. But at the end of the day, I just like showing up as myself. And I find that when I do that on a podcast, on social media, wherever, it tends to do a lot better because it builds a real human connection versus me just trying to like be a stereotypical air quote software founder or something like that. Right? So I'm just having fun and I mix it all together.

I love— well, it sounds like you've taken Jonathan Howard's course on creative storytelling, right, Jonathan? Well, yeah, and embracing your weird, because I love when people do that.

Yeah, I mean, you got to. The secret, I think, to every human being is that we're all weird, and if no one thinks you're weird, they probably just don't know you, right? So there's something there. Absolutely.

I love that. I'm not weird according to Lee, I'm just quirky. That works. Quirky and fabulous. Oh, that's right. I forgot the fact. They go together. I love that. You know what is the review swap for 2026?

Yeah. So we, we, we've had like a separate tool that we tested for a while. It's still, it's still live. It's called Pod Lottery. And the idea is it's a review swap system among podcast hosts because we realized is a lot of hosts don't get the opportunity to get reviews. And when I was like, oh, talk to your audience about it, I got some kickback. And at first I was like, I like internally, I was like, hold on, I know I'm right about this. But then people started saying, hey, I've got a podcast about like overcoming trauma, overcoming grief. The people that are listening to the worst phase of their life, they don't want their name on a review on it. I was like, oh, right. I was like, that's too bad. Your show is never going to get reviews because no one who listens to it wants to tell anyone else they're listening to it. And rightfully so. That's the beauty of a podcast. You don't need to. So that's when we got this idea of like, can we do some sort of peer thing where it's like, hey, I'm not a listener necessarily. And, but we always encourage you to listen to the podcast first and then beyond that. But like, hey, but I, I can speak for Adrian. I like Adrian. She's not weird. She's quirky, right? Like I can say something like that, right? Like, cause we, we know each other and so that way some reviews can happen. So we've kind of tested this with this idea of called, called Pod Lottery, which again is a system that currently exists. We're going to roll it into PodMatch and just include it with the PodMatch membership as a way to do review swaps among each other. The system will match a podcast guest and a podcast host together. And they can do two things. One, the, the guest can leave the host review on like Apple Podcast. And if the, the guest has like a book, then the host can go on Amazon or wherever and go leave a review on the book. We're making sure that these things take about the same amount of time so we can do these review swaps just to be able to speak from this place of like, hey, we've met. I can speak for this person at least from like the type of human being that they are, cuz integrity is really important in this. But the idea is just building out this whole swap system where we can just say as a community, let's, Let's build an easy administrative way to be able to help each other get more exposure for our own brands, whether that be our podcast, book, or speaking and portfolio, whatever it might be. Right. Let's just find a way to help each other out. So that's what we're going to be launching very early 2026. It was supposed to say 2026 on it. I probably did the typo and put 2025, but regardless, that's what Swaps is going to be.

Okay. So with that question, and I would, because I was just thinking too, what if you had the podcast host swap? Because I, I've been thinking I want to interview— so, all right, so I hope nobody takes this idea. Don't. I had a— I had, uh, Attorney Bonderer on. He's one of your clients.

He was great. Yes, I don't know him, but I listened to the episode and it was brilliant. I love the part where he started about software patents because I was very curious myself. Great job with that. You asked some good— like, all the questions you're asking were all the ones in my head, so thank you.

You know what? That means more to me than— like, is that outright my questions? Because I don't know who the guest is. So I will say, when I'm listening to a podcast and I know the questions have been like already like kind of talked about with like, with, you know, the host says— because I write questions for my hosts, so I get that. But for me, I definitely want to be a little different. So it really means more when people say, that's a great question, because I'm like, yes. Okay, so my question is, what about the host swaps though? Because I— my next book Unscripted Brilliance. Next one is with PodMatch, going to be color teal. But the next one that I want that's going to be color purple, I want it to be with 15 podcast hosts talking about their journey. Cool. And so instead of having to look— so now I'm looking, going, okay, is this a host? Is this a host? I am wondering if that podcast review swap could be podcast host to one host to another.

Yeah, it actually will be. There's actually— there's 16 different types of swaps that we're enabling inside of it. And so like you'll, when you basically, it's still pretty beginner stage. So forgive me, this is my first time literally trying to explain it. Basically when you said, yeah, I want to do swaps on PodMatch, it'll have you select the type of swaps you want to do. Do you want to do podcast swaps? Do you want to do, um, do you want to leave, like, what are you willing to do basically is what it's going to ask. So are you willing to do podcast swaps? Are you willing to review books on Amazon? Are you willing to go to YouTube and, and leave a comment, right? It'll ask all the things and then it'll pick based off of what you're into. Right? Like, let's just say that, like, let's say you're like super anti-surfing and it's not going to match you with a surfing podcast or guest or host. And it's going to say, okay, these people don't gel, so let's not put them together. But hey, both these people hate the water. Let's put them together. Right? So it'll kind of do it like-minded and make sure that, again, the type of swap is good. But yes, we will definitely have a way for hosts to do an interaction as well. Very, very cool.

I think, and I think Leah, you may agree with me, I think instead of calling it, you know, swap, you call it swinger.

I don't know. Hey, why would I agree with that?

Or is this a joke? It's a joke. It's a joke. Podcast Swinging. Come here.

Okay, I'm not going to do it then.

For the couples.

Oh, man.

Funny, funny, funny. Sorry, but it does exist in Celebration, Florida. Don't get mad at me, people. I've seen it for myself. Anyways, I have enjoyed this interview. I'm curious if there's anything that I have not asked that I should be asking you. So let me know.

Uh, the one thing that I'll mention is, uh, when we launched Podmatch, you know, we actually on the homepage, we, we mentioned that it was like an AI build that we did to match guests and hosts together. It's so funny when 2020, no one liked those words AI. Like we built our own AI. We were really proud of it. And the reality is now I look back, we probably should have created what ChatGPT is and we had like the tech to do it. We like designed it ourselves and we were very proud of it. We're like, it's for matching guests and hosts when it should have been for everything. But regardless, we removed the words AI from our homepage because so many people are like, that sounds scary. And then like 2 years later everyone was like, oh, AI. I'm like, what? You know, timing's everything. But my point in saying that is inside of PodMatch, um, and you actually went on some profiles. Have you ever pressed the match alignment button? Have you clicked that before? No, no, no. I want to share my screen more time just because—

okay, you do it, you do it.

Yes, I will see. I'm, I'm quite proud of it because it's, it's done really well. So like, here's a match, kind of like what you were saying. And I can hit, uh, show match alignment. And this is an AI blurb that will basically come up and say how we actually align. So my podcast, Podcast Made Simple, and how Tom would be able to align based off of what it knows about how we can show up and what we're looking to serve our audience with. So it's not, this is, well, if you matched with Tom, it would say something completely different here because it's looking very specifically to what my show does. And what Tom can show up and say. In addition, the other thing I'll show real quick, and I don't know if yours will have it yet. Yeah. So this button here. So now I'm on— can you see this? Now I'm on our conversation. This interview. Okay. This interview analysis. Well, same idea. Well, give me some high-level ideas for how I should show up as a guest. So it'll tell me this is what Adrian's likely to want. This is what listeners are going to expect. And this is how I can serve at the highest level, like how I can really show up to really do my best. And so none of this stuff I'm going to follow word for word. And on your end, Adrian, it'll actually show you interview questions, but it's not generic. It's unique to me and to Adrian. So Alex Sanfilippo and Adrian, uh, Adrian Speaks, right? So those two tools alone I find to be extremely valuable in the whole administrative process, and we continuously enhance those. So I just want to show this real quick because I'm really excited about it. It's helped me so much to show up with the right mindset when I'm showing up as a host and as a guest. Same thing. So anyway, I'm excited about those things. I love that.

I do have another question. Are you okay? Do you have like—

Yeah, no, I'm good. I think we— Okay. Yeah, we're good right now.

I appreciate that. I have a hard stop because I have a 3 o'clock interview with who? A Bob Batch guest. All right, cool. Your client, my guest. Okay, so on Chatter Social, Joseph and I host Debate the News True Crime. And it's a podcast, and we go live on ChatterSocial, and then we, we stream it. So we get both of both worlds, and we are getting people that want to be a guest on the show and share their story, their true crime story. Would it make sense for us to put Debate the News True Crime as a, as a client, as a podcast, as a podcast itself, and then Are there, are there guests that would even fall in that genre?

That's way out of my wheelhouse. I don't know. Um, here, I'll just— so true crime, would that be the kind of genre? Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

I'm just gonna do it on the Explore page and just search. I mean, a whole bunch of people came up for true crime, but again, I don't know that niche. I have to click on each of these profiles. I'm not sharing my screen, I'm just looking at it, but there's like a whole bunch of them actually. There's one guy, the first guy comes up here, um, his name is David. He's actually like a big name in the true crime space. Um, so anyway, there's at least one that I can speak to because I've met him in person. I met him in LA at a conference one time, um, and he's like a big name in the, in the, uh, true crime space. So I'd say yes, there are some. And if you are inviting people, like, to— this is one of the beauties of PodMatch, is like we're really big on, uh, first of all, I never say like client, customer, like you'll never hear me say those words. It's community member.

Oh, sorry, I was saying community member.

I'm not, I'm not saying that I would change that. Like we don't use the term user. It's not internal anywhere. It's all members. Like we value human beings. So we talk about like, hey, they're valued members of our community. Um, just like us, we're members ourselves. But, um, the, the thing that you could do is we like to really try to give back. So you could use your public-facing profile. Like if you created a profile for that podcast on PodMatch, you can send them the public-facing version of that profile. And what that would do is it would encourage them to join PodMatch from your profile link directly when they join, they get a chance to message you, but also they automatically become your affiliate when they're signing up and doing it that way. And so like a lot of hosts that we have on PodMatch, they make a lot of affiliate commission because any guest that comes anywhere other than PodMatch, they send them the same kind of like little blurb they've come up with. They're like, hey, I'm only booking guests through PodMatch. Here's my profile, check it out and join from there if you're interested. They kind of put in their own words, but basically everyone who does that, maybe not all of them join, but 1 out of 10 probably joins. And after a year of doing that, And you do that every day. Like there's people who literally make thousands of dollars a month using PodMatch and that's the tactic they've used. They're like, it saves all my time because I'm not looking at anybody other than people on PodMatch, which saves my time. So I automatically just earn all this affiliate commission. So for me, I think it's a really wise, um, strategy I've implemented in myself. Um, wish I came up with it, but I do it now. So anyway, sorry, I probably said a little much there.

Oh no, no, I love that community member and I'll remember that for the book. Um, because we'll have, uh, 15 community members. That would be important.

Thank you. I'm glad we talked about this.

Yes, yes. No, I'm so glad too. And I, I felt awkward. That's why I kind of wasn't even sure how to say it. So community member is beautiful. Uh, yes, I have an affiliate link. So for all you listeners out there, and Jonathan, if you don't have one, Leah, River, now I do have an affiliate link too. So yeah, I will get that out there. I mean, how smart am I to interview the owner of PodMatch, the founder, the man that created it, and then, and then actually have the affiliate link. So I got it, I got it. It's— I love this program. So, okay, so the genre— I also have an AI podcast. It's a debate style. I use it for AI for corporate etiquette. Nice. So it's the only one in the etiquette industry, but actually doing that just to turn it into a book because, because I can't get AI guests unless when you start to have different AI guests, I'm going to be right there. I'll have a professional on my podcast, my podcast, my AI. Anyways, Alex, thank you. Thank you for being here. I'm excited to interview 2 more community members today. I'll be working on the book, so I'm excited about that. And thank you again, Jonathan, Leah, and River. Actually, I'm going to be keeping this room open because I'm just going to funnel the new guests right into this room. And then we have Sheila at 4:00 talking about Pod to Book. So I'm going to close out. Alex, you're awesome. I look forward to seeing you in January. I'll pass you on I-4.

Okay, I can't wait. I look forward to hanging out at some point here, right?

So thank you so much. Okay, I'm gonna end the stream.

Thanks everybody, take care.