Building Connections Across Continents: Steve Spears on The Power of Shared Stories and Nostalgia

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Liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. To get past the whole fanboy aspect of interviewing your heroes is to sort of say there's things that we can learn from these people. And yes, it's in a language that we all understand because nostalgia is the language of, when pop culture becomes personal. That's when the magic of nostalgia hits. So we can use these songs and we can use these movies as our language, but what we're really learning from them is something a lot deeper than that. And once that started clicking and working, then I thought that the podcast was hitting on all cylinders.

Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. I am thrilled to have another Believe host on the show today, Steve Spears, and we're gonna talk about something that I know is fun for you because you've been living the '80s for quite a while, but it's also really fun for me to get to think about that. Cause I, I don't often get to the nostalgia time. But when we think about the music that's popular on the dance floor, it's still oftentimes music from the '80s that we grew up with. Even for the younger kids, we think about fashion, right? Everything always comes circling right back around and then it reminds us of how good it was. So Steve Spears, host of Stuck in the '80s, thank you for being on Your Brand Amplified.

Wow. Thanks, Anika Jackson. This is going to be a fun conversation. Any time you get to spend the day talking about the '80s, that's a pretty good day.

Yeah, absolutely. And you've been talking about this for about 800 episodes. But before we get into that and what's come out of the podcast, take us back to 2005. You were at the Tampa Bay Times. You launched what would become one of the longest-running pop culture podcasts on the internet, honestly, even before many of us even knew this thing called podcasts existed. What was that original idea?

So Right. I mean, 2005, set your mind back. I was working at the Times and the manager of the internet department said, hey, there's this new thing called podcasting and we kind of need to learn how to do it. Who here wants to volunteer to do 5 episodes of a podcast so that we can learn how it's done? And we all kind of looked at each other and I raised my hand and said, I can do something about the '80s. We can talk about pop culture and concerts and movies. Everyone just kind of stared at each other and the boss said, well, you, you know, you have volunteered, you have been accepted and go do it. And that was, that was the extent of the direction. We didn't know the first thing about it. We thankfully had an intern, Brendan Watson was, I think he was, he was still a college student and he had done some audio editing and maybe he had done a podcast episode. So he sat us down at a card table that we unfolded. In the middle of the internet department. Everyone's working. We were just, well, let's set up this little table here. And so we all sat there on folding chairs with handheld mics, and we said, let's talk about The Breakfast Club for 10 minutes. And when we were done, my co-host Gina Vivonetto and I just said, well, I don't know what to do from here. And Brendan took it from there and created a podcast. And we went from there. And when we got to 5 episodes, we were— we thought we were largely done, we were shocked to discover that we were getting emails from around the country from people who had found it after only 5 episodes. I mean, granted, we didn't have the competition you'd have today, but people were writing in and saying, I heard your Breakfast Club, you know, podcast, and I loved how you shared the memory of going to the theater and seeing it with your date and how the date went. And I have a Breakfast Club story that I want to share with you. So we started creating these conversations across the internet and the podcast was the conduit and it went from there. It just, the boss said, keep going. And so we did for 20 years.

Amazing. If I recall, you're, yeah, you were first just supposed to start with 5 or 6 episodes, but the response that you got brought so much publicity and recognition to the Times that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Yeah, I mean, the Times is— it was at the time the largest daily newspaper in Florida. It was based in Tampa Bay, but it was a very print-centric publication. It was well known. It had won Pulitzers for its print reporting. The internet was still very much a mystery to most of the people who worked there. Nobody really knew what to do. So we were the pioneers, not only like in maybe the podcast industry in general, but certainly at the Times. No, nobody knew what, what how to cater to an international audience or to a digital audience. So we, we kind of, it became our sandbox where we could try different things and see how they worked. And that's how we learned how to podcast. It was trial and error right from the very start.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, thinking about how it's changed from then to now, how this industry has evolved and how this, even your podcast went from being kind of a side gig, an extra part of your work to its own complete entity.

Yeah, that was bizarre.

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To all of us, that it could be something that could stand on itself. When I left the Times in 2012 to come to Orlando and work for a company that was a little bit more digital forward. They had seen the work that I had done with the podcast and they wanted me to bring that same sort of spirit to their products. And so that was, that was my, those are my marching orders then was like, use your success, use what you learned and help us. But at the same time, the podcast became independent. It was bizarre because we didn't have our, by the time I had left the Times, we had our own podcast studio with a control room and ISDN lines and really professional microphones. We had a, a real producer, the whole nine yards. So in a way, when we, when we left in year 7 to come to Orlando, I had to change hosts and I had to, to do it all myself. And to this day, it's a 2-person operation. Wow. So it's, uh, that's how we get it done.

That's remarkable that you've been able to sustain with just a 2-person operation. And it's, I mean, it's really a brand with a life of its own, as you said. But as a business, I wanna think through and ask you, was it hard to get the IP away from, you know, to separate the two entities? Was that an experience or was it pretty easy for you?

It was difficult in, in the sense that we were starting over from scratch. I don't have an IT background. Thankfully my co-host now does. And so he was able to do the, the research needed to make it happen. What was easy, unexpectedly, was the newspaper really didn't want to keep it. When I left, I was writing a blog that went along with it, same name, Stuck in the '80s. And I wrote the blog every single day for 10 straight years. There was at least one entry every day, 7 days a week for 10 straight years. Sometimes, most days, 5 or 6 entries. And so that was something that they could wrap their minds around and monetize. But the podcast, they never, they just thought of that as the gravy, whereas I thought of that as the steak. So when we left, they wanted to keep the blog. And so I wrote the blog for them for a few more years, but they were more than happy to hand over the podcast. And so we just had to move to a new hosting service and buy our own microphones. Figure out how to do it. And that was no small affair. It took a few months to make the transition and then to start fresh with a brand new co-host who didn't have the same chemistry that, that I had developed over 7 years with my previous team. So yeah, there were challenges for, for sure, but I, I felt at the time it was worth the gamble.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And the fact that you were able to get that IP a little, maybe a little shortsighted on this side of, you know, the times, but how lucky for you to be able to take it, to still go through learning process, but evolve it into what it is today, which is 800 episodes and interviews with so many luminaries and iconic artists, Steve Perry, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Adam Ant, Martha Quinn, right? And getting their stories after their peak, when they've had time to go back and think about what their story was and the impact that they made. Such a rich story.

That is what's kind of unique about our story. When I was writing the book, which I know we'll talk about in a bit, I was— at the same time I was writing my book, I was reading Cameron Crowe's book that he just put out, his memoir. And his memoir is all about catching these bands at the very beginning of their careers. So he talks about Bowie and the Eagles and Greg Allman at the very beginning when they were starting to just figure things out. And here I am, I thought at the time, on the complete opposite end. They've all— their careers have all peaked and have settled down into a nice quiet rhythm. And so I'm definitely seeing them more reflective, sharing stories that they would never have shared 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. There's nothing to be gained by them, by hubris at this point. They're more than happy to talk about the lessons that they've learned and the peace that they found. So it becomes these great— instead of becoming an interview, a lot of times they become a conversation. And when that happens, I really feel like, you know, we're hitting on all cylinders.

Yeah.

And how did you evolve from being a co-hosted show where you and your colleague would talk about your stories? And then I think I remember your other, you know, other people in your office and in your, at your work would share their stories. And you really created a community there with people you already knew. You were getting these stories from other people remembering that time, that moment in time in their lives. That pivotal concert, that video on MTV, whatever the case may be, to now getting people who've had these successful careers we've all grown up listening to or watching.

Yeah, I mean, what's interesting, I mean, and there's a difference between talking to an actor and talking to a musician. Actors, for the most part, aren't so hip to talk about something they did 40 years ago. They're fixated on the next role. When you get an actor these days to talk about some, you know, Spinal Tap or Breakfast Club or Moonlighting, you hopefully you're catching them at some time where that piece of work has become relevant again. Like Moonlighting came back to Hulu a year or two ago. And so I got a chance to talk to Glenn Gordon Caron. And when the guys behind Spinal Tap, they were doing a musical tour about 10 or 12 years ago where they came through and they did the music of Spinal Tap and Mighty Wind and the other movies that they did together. There was some new thing for them to talk about. So it's tough to get an actor to talk about something they did 40 years ago. Musicians, on the other hand, you know, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon is going to have to play Keep On Loving You every single night for the rest of his life. So he's going to have to sit down with me and talk about what goes through his mind when you play a song 300 times a year. So that just lends itself to being more reflective. And I've been lucky. It took me a little while to figure that out, to figure out what the niche was, to get past the whole fanboy aspect of interviewing your heroes is to sort of say there's things that we can learn from these people. And yes, it's in a language that we all understand because nostalgia is the language of when pop culture becomes personal. That's when the magic of nostalgia hits. So we can use these songs and we can use these movies as our language, but what we're really learning from them is something a lot deeper than that. And once that started clicking and working, then I thought that the podcast was hitting on all cylinders.

Fantastic. Yeah. Is there a specific story that stands out to you out of, I mean, I know you've done so many episodes. Yeah, you might have several.

One great episode that people love, even though it's kind of rough on me, was there was— I was in a relationship for a while in the early days of the podcast. And when she and I broke up, we decided to do a podcast about breaking up in the '80s. And we thought, "Oh, this will be fun. Let's just capitalize on Steve's anguish and talk about our favorite breakup songs and our favorite breakup scenes from movies." And I thought, "That's great. You know, I'll enjoy that thoroughly, I'm sure." But wouldn't it be great if we could get a guest on to kind of give us a little bit added perspective? And so I reached out to Debbie Foreman, who played the lead female character in the movie Valley Girl, because she has this great breakup scene with Nicolas Cage in that movie. And so I thought, that's one of my favorite breakup scenes, as if that's something you should have a favorite of. But never mind that. That's one of my favorite breakup scenes. Let me see if she'll come on the podcast and talk about it. So I wrote her this email where I just kind of You know, just spilled my guts about, you know, I'm going through a bad time. I just was in a serious relationship. It just ended. We're going to try to do this podcast as a therapeutic thing. And would you be willing to come on and talk about Valley Girl? And like a million emails I had sent off in the day, you know, you never really expect to get a response, but I did. Like an hour later, my phone rang and it— I pick it up and she's, hi, hi Steve, this is Debbie Foreman. And I'm sitting next to my co-host who had the cubicle next to me. And I go, "Uh, hello, Debbie Foreman." And Sean Daly looks over at me like, "Are you kidding me?" And no, no, it's really her. And she came on the show. We talked about it. She had read my email to her mom. And her mom said, "Oh, you have to help that poor guy." Aw. So she came on the show and we talked for about, 45 minutes, just me and her, not my co-hosts. And she basically walked me through my breakup using the context of Valley Girl and her own personal experiences. Because what I didn't know was that she and Nicolas Cage were dating during that movie. Wow. And when it ended, they did break up. And so she's revealing this to me and giving me the context and— coaching me through it. And you can hear— it's a difficult podcast for me to listen to now because you can hear, like, I'm teetering. She's the one with the lifeline, oh, you know, pulling me back. That will always be a special podcast. There's many more. I mean, Jon Parr made me cry. Uh, Steve Perry turned me into his therapist for our podcast. When you get those It's really special and it never leaves.

Wow. What a story. So it's not always just fun and games and talking lightheartedly about the '80s. I mean, you really are pulling out nostalgia, but also people's real lived human experiences on top of the layer of whatever we recognize them from.

That's really the secret of Stuck in the '80s over the years. It's never been the fact that we're talking about the '80s. It's that we're talking about ourselves, and the '80s is just the context of it. And when anybody comes on the show as a co-host, I always have to explain to them, "Look, we're gonna— gonna be times when I'm gonna ask you a question, and it might be personal, and you've gotta decide whether you wanna share it or not. But I encourage you to share it and to open it up and just tell me how you feel. Put your heart on your sleeve and share these moments, because you're gonna find that people around the world are going to connect with you, not through the music necessarily, but through the stories. So, and they're going to share stories about how the music movies made them feel. And that's going to be what makes this thing move forward. And it always has been. That's the secret of Stuck in the '80s. It's sometimes we talk about doing topics where we say, let's do a whole episode on Caddyshack. Well, do you have a story about Caddyshack? Not really. Well, then we're not doing a story. We're doing a podcast on it. You've got to have, you've got to bring something to it. That's the secret formula. It's not really that difficult. It just, you have to be willing to do it. And some people really, they hit that wall where they're like, there are things I just don't want to tell you. Um, and for whatever reason, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but that's the line you have to cross.

Thinking about the people that you have on. For sharing. I know that on my podcast I had Kevin Serese, who is the godfather of the personal voice activated assistant, which Siri and Alexa are based on his patent, and he has all these other AI patents. And so that was my fangirl moment, having him on and going, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. Like, he's done so many things that affect all of our lives. So the question I have for you is, what are some of the mistakes that podcasters make when they get a big name guest in their chair or somebody who's a, you know, they're a super fan of, and how as podcasters or interviewers or just people living in the world, can we not make those mistakes?

That's a great question. Wow. I don't think I've ever answered that question before. I'll tell you what I think, although I don't know it to be the solution for everybody. The way I do it when I'm interviewing somebody is I go back and I literally try to consume every interview that I can find of the person. I really try to get inside their head and know what kind of questions turn them on, what kind of questions excite them, what kind of questions turn them off. I try to avoid the dingbat questions that they've answered 1,000 times. Oh, hi, you're the lead singer of Wing Chun. Why did you name your band Wing Chun? No, no, no, no. Don't do that. Don't be that person. I mean, don't ask them a question that, that you can find the answer to in a thousand different places. If you're still really infatuated by why they call the band Wang Chung, find another way to ask it. You know, find a way, you know, you named your band Wang Chung and you've had to answer a thousand questions about it. Ever reconsider naming it something else? I mean, just find a way to ask a question in a new way, but definitely Don't waste your valuable time asking questions that are so readily available somewhere else. And by that, I don't also mean ask them some sort of ridiculous, trivial question that nobody cares about. That's the challenge. How can I engage this person with a question that they haven't answered a thousand times, but that also will really resonate with people who either know the person or want to know the person better? Or hey, if you don't know the person at all, now you're super curious. So those are the questions you have to look for. And the only way I know how to do it is to go back and literally read and then watch a lot of YouTube videos. So you can, it's one thing to read their words. It's another thing to hear it. Are they, are they really intense? Do they seem a little sleepy? You know, are they laid back? Do they have some crazy accent that you're going to have to really focus on listening to them? In which case, watch those videos 10 times instead of once. Those are the things I do to prep for interviews and it takes time. So what always rattles me is when I ask for an interview and someone will say, yeah, I could do it today, right now if you want. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I need, I need 2 weeks. I need 2 weeks to prep for this. And, but that's how I do it. I don't think you can go wrong with that approach. I'm always curious when people meet one of their heroes, like if you go to a Comic-Con We have MegaCon in Orlando this weekend. And so everyone's going to get a chance to talk to one of their heroes this weekend. And I'm always curious, well, okay, you finally got a chance to talk to Nathan Fillion. What did you say? And you could tell that they agonized about it ahead of time. And still a lot of times, oh, I don't know. I just said, thanks for making Firefly or something like that. And it's tough. I mean, we're afforded— I usually get about a half hour with most people. Sometimes you get lucky and someone's got I think I talked to Dennis DeYoung of Styx for 2 hours. I think I talked to Steve Perry for an hour. Some others go on for 45 minutes, but usually 30 minutes is what you get. And so you— that's still a gigantic amount of time compared to what you get at MegaCon. So, but still use it wisely, you know, just don't go fanboy on them. Don't tell a 10-minute story about how you saw them perform in 1984 and you really liked it and you bought the shirt. I mean, dude, In our podcast, tell that story before the interview or tell that story after the interview. You got 30 minutes, make it count, you know, just, but do the research, really dig in. No, that, that means that'll do 90% of the work for you. Nice.

Yeah. I think many people get, like you said, intimidated, but were you intimidated that first time that you interviewed?

Oh God. Throw up before interviews. Wow. I was never a train— I was— I'm a trained journalist, and so I took my fair share of writing courses, but I've always pretty much worked as an editor. So I've always been editing other people's writing. So when I finally got to start interviewing people that I really cared about, I was nauseous right down from my head to my toes. And the night before, the morning of, I would just be physically ill. And these are the early days when the interviews were, I'm not saying they weren't as important as the ones I do today, but they were certainly, you know, when you're first getting started in podcasting, half the challenge is telling people what a podcast is. But no, I was sick and it would go away 15 seconds into it. And so I just had to teach myself that over the years that you're, yeah, you're gonna be a little nervous, but it'll go away. You're gonna realize that the person on the other side is just as human as you are and they want to share their story, otherwise they wouldn't be here. So just relax. And if you really, really, really are freaking out, just write your questions down ahead of time and, you know, look at them when you need to. But at the end of the day, remember you're having a conversation with somebody, another human being, and just, just enjoy it.

Great advice. I'm glad to hear that even as seasoned as you are now, that you still had a little bit of that discomfort at the beginning. I think it makes all of us feel better who might have these opportunities someday.

You know what's even tougher is, I mean, 99% of the interviews are on the phone for the most part. In the Zoom era now, now I usually get— now I do get to see the other person. I interviewed Martha Quinn 4 times before I saw her in person. Wow. Like on a Zoom call. It was only about a month ago that she and I sat across from each other on Zoom and saw each other. I've always known what she looks like, but she's never known what I looked like for, for 20 years. She's never known. But what's really freaky is once a year I go on this thing called the '80s Cruise. And as a podcaster, I host all the trivia on the ship, these big sessions. And I always get one of the celebrities to come up with me or one of the musicians on the ship to be my guest for trivia. So now not only am I interviewing them, I'm interviewing them face to face, a foot away from them, in front of 500 people. And then now you're taking every single one of your little phobias and you're just squeezing them all together in one little ball. That's still, that still kind of freaks me out every time. I, you'll see me pacing around like an expectant father or something before every one of those. So, wow. That's an additional challenge.

So the brand has really evolved over time. You've created these brand extensions, the going on the, doing the cruises, and you also have a book that just came out, Stuck in the '80s: 20 Years of Conversations with Pop Culture Icons Who Defined a Decade. Beyond, of course, the nostalgia, what's the deeper story that you're telling?

For me, I had this idea that the podcast is wonderful and I love the podcast and obviously it's probably the first line in my obituary that I hosted a podcast for this long. But they disappear. They disappear into the feed. And so there were stories that I wanted to put down. I wanted to give them a permanent home. And so the idea came to go through 20 years of the podcast, grab the interviews that had the biggest impact on me as a, not only as a fan, but as a, as a writer, but also as a person, look at them again for the first time. Many, many of these I hadn't thought about in two decades and write up the highlights of that interview, but also write up the context of the interview. That was the idea behind the book. What I didn't realize when I was starting was that how much I would see these interviews in different light. 20 years later, interviews that I thought were horrible miscues on my part were these great learning experiences where I, you know, maybe I didn't prep as much as I should have, or maybe I asked the wrong question, or maybe I was too timid. But sometimes the guest persevered through it and some really gems came out of it. And so even in the book, there's a whole chapter of just the interviews that went badly. Like Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper was not, it's not my best work. But I was— I wanted to be honest about the good and the bad. But overall, it's this idea that when you're revisiting the '80s, this is what I was thinking when I wrote it. When you're revisiting these, you're not just remembering the songs and the films. You're remembering who you were at that time. They still are the enduring language. We may not all like Bon Jovi or Duran Duran or Berlin, but we all know the lyrics. And we all remember how we felt when we first heard those songs. And I think that's something that the songs and the movies haven't in common today. When you watch Stripes or Caddyshack or Pretty in Pink, you go back 40 years to when you first saw it, and you remember that person, and you recognize how that movie or song transformed you. These interviews that are in the book transformed me. Every single one of them. Even the ones that went badly, I was transformed. They became learning experiences. The ones that went fantastic became revelations about, you know, how you handle aging with grace, how you look back at, your accomplishments and put them in context. So there, there are larger themes to books, to this book, which always kind of makes me chuckle because I, I mean, I just remember being in high school and reading The Great Gatsby or Scarlet Letter and the teachers talking about themes. Did you see the themes in the book? And I was the worst English student. I never saw the themes. I never could see the themes. And I could read Hemingway and not read between the lines. But when I wrote this one, they appeared like invisible ink that kind of reveals itself to you when you hold it up to sunlight or a candle. The themes became evident to me as I wrote it and as I finished it. And it was a bit of therapeutic resolve in that. And I appreciate that. I, when other people read it, I ask them, what did you get out of it? Did you, you know, there's, you can get any one of 100 things out of that book, whether it's just Learning something about— I didn't know Van Halen asked Patti Smyth of Scandal to be their lead singer, and then Sammy Hagar was their second choice. I didn't know what— great, you got that out of the chapter. Did you get anything else? If that's okay, if that's all you got. I mean, I'm still amazed by that. But no, I— some of these conversations are very interesting to me. And I think anyone who grew up in that decade can relate to them.

And what was the process like? Going from being a, you know, journalist for print to this medium of podcasting, audio, and then audio video, to writing a book?

The hardest transition I've ever done, the hardest challenge I've ever attempted in my life on any level or scale. I can't overemphasize that enough. In the— over the last 20 or 30 years, I've been focused on the digital side of journalism for the most part. That's been my niche. So I have trained my mind to think in terms of what works digitally and not necessarily what works in print. I've tried to push the print out of my brain and think about SEO and keywords and meta descriptions. And my philosophy has always been never write any more than you need to to make the point of why something was interesting in the first place. That has always been my, my coda as far as digital writing goes. And so to, to basically take that and say, forget that, or remember it, whatever you wanna do, now you have to write 90,000 words. It's, there were times when I just wanted to just quit and say, you know what, this isn't worth it to me. I, I'm just gonna go back to, to focusing on what I know best. You know, the podcast is gonna be the art form that I'm known for. It's not gonna be a book. I had to put it together in pieces. I literally wrote of those 60 interviews, I would write them up separately on separate Google Docs with no, no, I mean, there was an outline, but it wasn't, it didn't really flesh out. I mean, the outline had to be thrown away halfway through it. And so I came up with each of the individual conversations and then I had to find kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, how they fit together with each other. And that was the worst part of it. I mean, that was the part that I just wanted to yank my hair out. Thankfully, One of the things that's changed over the last 20 years is that you now have internet transcription services. So I could, I could turn over my podcasts and then have someone give me back the print version.

Nice.

And they were easier to digest. So, and I wanted them to be uber accurate. So that was the other, the thinking. So now I'm basically rereading 20 years of my work and trying to decide, geez, when I talked to Colin Hay of MinuteWork, I know I talked to him, but what did I say? Cause that was 18 years ago. So you'd read through it and go, wow, I didn't know. I forgot that he shared this story. And so you would, it was a discovery process from the very beginning. And I'm thankful that it finally, the path through it became clear. It's like maybe two-thirds of the way through it. Somehow it just started to gel and then I got it together. But it was, it was one of the, I mean, that's a difficult way to write a book.

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Certainly. But you did it and it's out. So talk to us about that experience of actually getting your book out because that's a whole other, again, the publicity, the marketing, We talked about the writing.

Yeah. So, you know that scene in Back to the Future at the very end where Marty's dad, the box of books arrives at the door, and Biff brings it in and he goes, "Oh, you know, look, George, your first novel." And they slice open the box and they pull out the book and they look at it like it's a brand-new baby. That's exactly what it's like. Exactly what it's like. The postman came. It wasn't Biff. It was just the postman came with a box of— 30 bucks and I sat it down and my wife and I sliced it open and I reached in and pulled it out and held it in my hands. And I wish I could bottle the euphoria that you feel at that one exact moment when you finally hold it in your hands, cuz it was, uh, pretty overwhelming. But I was lucky in the sense that the, the whole idea of getting it done now is we had an '80s cruise coming up. There was an '80s cruise that just happened a few weeks ago. And it's a, it's like I said, it's a, it's an annual voyage. They've done 10 of 'em now. Where they go out into the Caribbean on a Royal Caribbean ship, and there's 17 bands from the '80s that are on it and 3,000 fans of the '80s. And so the goal was— yeah, like, so this year they had Bret Michaels and OMD and Berlin and Taylor Dane. And the goal was get the book out, not only to mark the 20th anniversary of the podcast, but get it out there so we could bring it on a book, because it just felt like that would be the perfect way to do it. So we got it done in the beginning of February. The boat left in like 3 weeks. So that's when the final edits were done, like on February 6th, and the boat leaves in 3 weeks. So we ordered 50 author copies and I packed them into my suitcases. My suitcases weighed about 200 pounds and I dragged them on the boat and I brought them up to the merch shop. And I had done all this kind of grassroots marketing ahead of time to tell all the cruisers that, hey, the book's going to be here. We're going to give copies away as prizes for trivia, but if you want to pick up a copy, it'll be in the merch store. And so I was doing what I could on Facebook. The cruise has a bunch of Facebook groups to market it there. And I thought, you know, if I can sell like 10 or 15 of these, that'd be fantastic. That'd be a great start. So I dropped them off at the merch store and then I got a call like 5 hours later saying, do you have any more books? We sold out. Wow.

Yeah.

So I, we sold out in the first 5 hours of it being for sale. So that. That made me feel pretty good. And then I got a chance to do my first book signing on the cruise.

Nice.

That was surreal. I didn't know, I never even thought about, I would, I need to sign these and what am I gonna say? So it got off to that great start and, and it's been a, it's been 10 days now, I think since it's been on sale. Uh, maybe not even that long. Nope. 5 days. It's been 5 days.

It's only, it's been 5 days.

Okay. And I'm, I'm sorry, I, I, I, I had to look down at the, the current date. Came, it went on, on March 11th, March 11th. And it's just been, I've been marketing it through '80s Facebook groups through, we have a Patreon group for the podcast. And so they've all been enthusiastic about it. And that's how we've been doing it for now. It's, it's been largely a social media promotion and some select podcast appearances like yours. And I'm supposed to be on TV this Friday at MegaCon. We'll see if that happens. So yeah, it's just, um, it's when you're doing it yourself, it's, you know, you want to market your book, then get going. And just, that's kind of how it's been. I mean, I will admit, I sometimes go to AI and say, it's day 3 of the launch, what should I do? And it's been very helpful with coming back with, you should write a post about such and such. And okay, let's give it a go. So yeah, AI has been sort of a tool in that respect of giving me ideas, because your brain just gets turned around and twisted when you, you're trying to— I'm not a salesman, you know, and so it's, it's hard for me to market my book, but it just, uh, that's a, it's a good tool for that. And at the end of the day, just as it is with the podcast, just the best way to do it is just to be honest and share your thoughts. Tell people what, how, what, how they contributed to the book. So I was lucky to get people like Martha Quinn and Mark Goodman both wrote endorsements for the book.

Nice.

They were, they, I sent it, I sent them advanced copies and they took a look at it and of course they're both in it.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, it's just, you create this community around something like a podcast and that's, that's been what's driving things so far.

Was there anybody who performed at the cruise who was not in the book who then was like, hey, why am I not in your book? Why have you not interviewed me?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I, you know, what's funny is Sometimes I have no shyness when it comes to asking for an interview. Like, I got Taylor Dayne, who's in the book, and she was on the cruise. She was also my guest for trivia. So, I gave her an autographed copy. I wasn't nervous about interviewing her at all and talking to her. She's just a ridiculous bundle of energy and warmth and love, and it's just impossible not to be drawn to her. But OMD, which is one of my favorite bands of all time, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, they were performing on the cruise. And I did not find the nerve to— they're not in the book. I've never interviewed them. I so badly want to, but I think sometimes you get that thing in your head where you're like, oh God, if there's ever a time I'm going to go into hero worship, it's going to be when I talk to Andy McCluskey. Like, hey, you know, hi, Andy and Paul. I really like Tesla girls, can I ask you a question about that? So I haven't quite— there's still some people that I haven't quite gotten over the hurdle of asking. But no, I mean, yeah, there was people on the cruise. I mean, Bret Michaels is in the book. Bret Michaels was interviewed. So it's just, it's weird who sometimes can intimidate you and sometimes who— people who can't. And there's nothing about OMD that's probably really that intimidating. But man, I just, I can't ask them 300 questions about Enola Gay, you know, just, and that's what's going to happen if I interview them. I'm just going to dive, I'm going to deep dive into all the little things that only I want to know about. And so we'll, we'll get there someday. I have, I have faith.

Awesome. And I, you should reach out to them right now. That, yeah, that's an amazing band that I also love deeply. I mentioned at the beginning that we're both on the Believe Network. So I'd love to hear a little bit from you. You know, what was your journey like joining a podcast network and how has that shaped the growth and the pursuit of your podcast as brand and business?

It's a great question. Believe was actually not the— I was on a podcast network maybe 6 or 7 years ago. There was another podcast network that had come to us and they, they wanted us on the, and we did it for 2 or 3 years. We learned a lot from that. It was a mostly positive experience, but we didn't have much say in who our sponsors were. The ads were all host-read. I don't think I ever had the impression that they, that growing our podcast was one of their top priorities. And so eventually we decided to go our own way because with them, you had, you literally had to record a podcast every single week. You had to. To do the host read ad, you had to send a clip of it, upload it. There was a lot of little chores involved with that, and then the financial return wasn't much. So we ditched that revenue model and we went to Patreon, and we had much more success with Patreon. I mean, our revenue just went through the roof, comparatively. Comparatively, let's, let's keep that word First and foremost, the, so now we, I think we have about 200 paying patrons and there's different membership levels. You can do it for as low as $2 a month. And it's when Believe came to us a few months ago, 6 months ago maybe, and inquired about joining, my concerns were, you know, to the problems I had with the previous network. Do I, you know, are we gonna be required to do a show every week? Are we, are we this, are we that? And thankfully, No, I mean, none of the requirements from the previous network applied to Believe. And it was a very painless experience. And I can't really thank them enough. I mean, I really have been nothing but impressed with the way they do things. And what's really nice is because, you know, we're both on the Believe Network, you and I, there's this interaction between the podcasts, which we didn't have at the other network. That wasn't something that was offered or encouraged. But it is here. And so you feel like, kind of like what you do with the '80s community, you know, that we're all, we're all speaking the same language, even though the subject matter might not be exactly the same. So that's kind of how I feel about it. I feel like they're partners in the growth. I feel like whenever I have a question, I can get an answer like the same day. And no, I'm excited to see where things go. I mean, it's only been a few months, but I have nothing but, I would encourage anybody who is not on a network to, to give it a try. 'Cause I think you're gonna learn a lot about the business as a result.

So what does your day-to-day look like today? Because podcast, you're promoting your book, you do '80s cruises. You've also, of course, have worked in industry journalism, digital. You talked about SEO and a whole bunch of other stuff. So talk to us a little bit about that. How do you, I don't, I hate to use the word balance, but how do you stack everything? Or are you going all in on the '80s, the, you know, the podcast, the cruises, the book?

Right now I'm going all in on the '80s. The '80s cruise is a once a year thing that it's just over now. So I don't have to really worry about it for another 6 months, but 6 months, what I'll start doing soon is interviewing the bands that will be on the 2027 voyage.

Nice.

So I'll go through those and reach out to those and start setting those up. And that's how I get a lot of my interviews these days, is if they're on the '80s cruise, I can use that as— that's— that also gives me their contact information, which, which with musicians and actors, the hardest part of it is reaching the right person. When you're booked on something like on a tour that's going to a local venue or on a cruise, you have— you get the contact information. So that'll start soon. So I've got to start deciding, uh, who I want to talk to. On this, Chaka Khan is on this next one. So is Public Image Limited and John Waite, Loverboy. Yeah, I'm really, I'm sitting on a fence right now about Pill, about do I talk, do I ask John to be on the podcast? Do you think he'll do it? I don't know. I think he'd be monumentally interesting as a trivia guest in person on the ship. It could go in one of any dozen different directions. So, That's kind of occupying a certain amount of bandwidth in my head these days. But in general, these days it's a couple of hours every day looking at freelance writing opportunities or more permanent challenges that are out there. I always look for companies that want to leverage my experience and to see to where I can show where I've had success and how I can make it apply to them. So. I'm always looking for a company that wants that. But in the meantime, I focus on freelance. There's probably 3 or 4 hours a day that is just consumed with book publicity, writing press releases or reaching out to writers and whatnot. And then the rest is literally planning the next podcast and/or editing one because like I said, we, we do our own editing and production. And so for every, every podcast probably takes about 10 hours of production work because we add in music clips, movie clips. We write skits that serve as, that serve as our commercial. Wow. So like, we don't do like regular commercials. We'll, we'll write a whole skit, you know, a whole Back to the Future skit to— that somehow works the '80s Cruise into it, or somehow works in one of our other sponsors, just because that's fun to us. I mean, we want to— at the end of the day, it still has to be fun. I mean, that's always been the idea since the very first moment that I raised my hand. I was I think this would be fun. As long as it's fun, I'm going to keep doing it.

That is a great ending thought, but we're going to have people of course go to the website for Stuck in the '80s, which is sit80s.com to find out about the podcast, your book, and then thisisstevespears.com is your regular website for you and all the things that you do. So just one final question is, do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, a song lyric from the '80s perhaps that continues to inspire you?

Yeah. I mean, uh, when I first got turned on to writing, it was through Hunter S. Thompson. And for the longest time, I tried to emulate his style of writing. And then I realized that my body and my liver cannot keep up with that. But but what I always liked, he had a real simple motto. It probably gets repeated in my head every day, and that is buy the ticket, take the ride. Nice.

Fantastic. Well, Steve, this has been really fun. A little different of a conversation than I sometimes have, right? But still hit on so many things that are important to think about, whether it's communication, it's brand. Evolution of brand and brand building and all the things that go into marketing, whether it's a podcast, a cruise, a book. So I appreciate you giving me so much time today.

Ah, it's been great, Anika. Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you to everybody who is listening to this podcast or watching it on your favorite platform. Take Steve's advice to heart. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Sounds amazing. You never know where you're gonna end up, but it's probably gonna be somewhere really beautiful and something unlike anything other else that you've expected or experienced. So with that note, I will be back again in a few days with another amazing guest to share their story and their journey with you. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening marketing platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

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Few things are as uplifting as the greatest moments in sports, and nothing brings us together quite like Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games. From NBCUniversal's iconic storytelling to the innovative technology across Xfinity and Peacock, Comcast brings the Olympic Games home to America, sharing every moment with millions. When Team USA steps onto the world stage, we're not just watching. We're cheering together. This winter, we're all on the same team. Comcast, proud partner of Team USA.

Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them, plus time management tools. And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

Spring starts at The Home Depot, and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300. Like the NexGrill 4-burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go-to spot with patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from The Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at The Home Depot. Exclusions apply. See homedepot.com/pricematch for details.