We Started This Podcast on the Side of the Road | Season 1 Finale

So Dave Skatchard, took a chance on us and he came

in and sat in that chair and just totally got real about his life

and his concussions and, addiction.

And that was the first episode, the first taping, really.

And I sat there

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…on this side and thought, "My God, this guy's talking about

some real shit." And then Ian Lopatin comes in and talks about he's almost

one year into his sobriety, he talked about surrender, which Dave talked about.

And those kind of things, I come home and I thought, I

need to start paying attention.

These are God winks for me.

Mm-hmm.

You know, my life's good.

I've got great things, but I can always be better.

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Every voice. Every scar.

Every road. What's your story?

Mike and Scott.

Let's talk.

What's up, everybody?

Welcome to another episode of the "What's Your Story?" Podcast.

I'm Scott Leese, here with my good friend and co-host, Mike Lindstrom.

We've got a really special show today.

It is actually our one-year anniversary.

Ooh, one year?

Shout out to Mike.

Shout out.

One year, man.

Yeah.

I can't believe that.

We did it.

I know, man.

Yeah.

It was, actually little over a year ago.

It's in the summer.

I think it was in July of last year, out in Austin, Texas, and Mike and

I were having lunch with, Dan Lier, who actually one of our, guests.

I can't remember which episode number, but not too long ago.

And Mike had to get out to, see some friends just outside of Austin,

and he was gonna take an Uber.

I'm like, that's not, you don't need to take an Uber.

I'll drive you out there." So we're driving out there.

It's like 45-minute drive or so, and I blew a tire

[laughing] on the way out there.

Of course, as fate would have it, no good deed goes unpunished.

I didn't have a spare or the spare was in bad shape.

I don't think I had a spare.

Anyways, so I had to call AAA.

So we're sitting there on the side of the road and, just catching up and, we

were talking about, "Man, it's about time we did something in business

together." And Mike was the one who hit on, "Well, maybe we should do a podcast.

You know, I know you've done one before and, Mike does all these speaking

engagements and things like this.

We should put together a podcast." So real quick, we said, "Yeah, let's do that."

So that was in July.

So by August, like one year right now, it's, I don't know when this is

gonna air, but it's August right now.

I flew out to Arizona.

We met up, came into the NectarFlow office here in Scottsdale.

Shout out to NectarFlow, who's one of our, sponsors.

And we started recording.

We recorded 10, 11 episodes.

Dave Skatchard was our first episode that we ever recorded.

So it's a special time and, you know

Yeah.

Wanted to kinda commemorate it a little bit.

I was thinking about that actually in preparation

for us getting together today.

So much in the podcast world has changed.

I mean, it's just amazing how quick things have happened in

12 months in the podcast world.

Like everyone's kinda getting into podcasting a year ago, but now

everyone's like, "Oh, I gotta podcast. Gotta have a podcast." And that

was not where you and I came from.

We weren't in that mindset business-wise when, Hey, we're in FOMO, we need

a podcast." It wasn't like that.

We knew all the big names were out there.

We were inspired because we're fans of them, but there was never a

part of us like that had that FOMO.

It was honestly from genuine care, love, compassion, the message that

you and I teach our clients is like, "Hey, why don't you and I get together,

get some of our clients out here, our friends out here, and just talk

openly." now it's become, "Holy crap, we're getting judged by downloads and

views and all the stuff that you and I had no clue about 12 months ago."

Talking about some of the, the metrics, we've done well

north of a million impressions

Yeah.

Across all the different platforms.

We've done pretty well on Instagram in particular

Yeah.

In terms of our real views and stuff like that.

The number of subscribers and followers to the show continues to go up.

We're into the thousands on YouTube now, for example.

I didn't, I don't know.

I barely know now what some of the benchmarks are that are,

They changed by the week.

Success or whatever.

They're changing by the week.

Changing all the time.

But that's one thing I really enjoyed about when we agreed to

unite, because we have such unique worlds.

Me being in, the insurance, financial space, you're go-to-market & tech.

So we were bring our separate brands together and that still counts.

If you did a collective of.

And we've never done that by the for, by the way.

If you took all of your socials

Uh-huh.

All of my socials, all of our databases, which would include

emails and everything, and added them up, and that's just contacts.

Yeah.

I don't even know.

It's a lot.

It's a lot.

It's pretty big reach and it keeps growing actually.

It keeps growing every single month.

I mean, at the beginning, especially with the podcast, our stuff was always going a

direction it was within our niches, right?

Cause we had built those.

But with the podcast, it's such a slow thing.

And then it was that 90-day mark and started to go like this,

but then of course we brought on Robert, you know, Robert McLaws

came on as our Executive Producer and things started to go like this.

Yeah.

We weren't leaning into YouTube at all, zero until 90 days ago.

Yeah.

Now we see you start hitting those benchmarks, you

gotta get to a thousand subscribers that haven't even sniff you.

Then you get, 3,000 minutes of view time.

They start to sniff you.

So we're hitting all these benchmarks slowly but surely, but it's now not

just, "Hey, we're on the side of the road. Let's go do a podcast."

Yeah.

It's like a strategy.

And now we have sponsorships.

We got

-  Scott Leese: I know.

…e3 Wealth.

We've grown up a little bit.

NectarFlow supporting us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we have companies that are coming to us saying, "Hey, we wanna be

a part of this vision." So to me, it's not just the passion of what we talk about.

It's beyond that.

It's the responsibility I feel like we owe everybody, not just our guests,

our sponsors, but, our brands ourself.

We've stayed true to our form.

How do you feel you've changed in the last year, if at all?

Through this

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

Experience?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think from day one, and I mean this, Dave Skatchard, We don't

do prep questions for people.

They don't get, questions.

They don't know what's coming.

They don't know.

So Dave Skatchard, took a chance on us and he came in and sat in that chair

and just totally got real about his life and his concussions and, addiction.

And that was the first episode, the first taping, really.

And I sat there

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…on this side and thought, "My God, this guy's

talking about some real shit." And then Ian Lopatin comes in and talks

about he's almost one year into his sobriety, which I didn't even know.

He's founder of Spiritual Gangster.

And I gave him a big hug after the recording and said, "Dude,

I'm really proud of you.

I knew you in your fun days.

I knew you in your party days.

I've done some of those things with you.

And now to see, and listen to you on the chair talk about, giving it

up to the Lord or to his future." We talk about forgiveness or,

what's the word I'm thinking of?

Surrender.

He talked about surrender, which Dave talked about.

And those kind of things, I come home and I thought I need

to start paying attention.

These are God winks for me.

Mm-hmm.

You know, my life's good.

I've got great things, but I can always be better.

And when I'm listening to people like a Dave or an Ian and watching them open

up and be real and authentic, it made me wanna be more real and authentic

with myself about some of those things.

So it's inspired me.

Even listening to your guy talk about peptides and longevity.

Yeah, Nick Capozzi.

Yeah, Nick Capozzi.

Yeah.

And I started thinking, man, I'm gonna be 53.

This is at the time I'm 53 now.

I need to start doing more of that stuff.

So I have.

I've started incorporating a lot of the things.

I just got off of a five-day water fast recently.

People talking about the stuff inspired that.

Yeah.

A year ago, I wasn't d oing that type of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Think about longevity differently because the guests come in

here and teach us, listen to John Moriarty

Yeah.

Talk about how you talk to your kids about money and wealth.

Yeah.

How do I not go home and think, "You know what? I need

to think about my approach a little differently with Rhett and Colt

because John makes some good points around scarcity and abundance and what

you should talk to about your kids." it's like we're bringing people on

the show, but they're our, teachers.

Yeah.

That's one of the, best parts of being a podcast host is you have the opportunity

to learn from an expert, basically

The best of their trade!

In what, in whatever their field is.

Yeah.

You have the opportunity to sit across from them

and learn from them for an hour.

Yeah.

Right?

That's a blessing that a lot of people don't get.

I mean, you flash back in your mind and think

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…of all the, every single person.

I mean, if we had somebody flashcard us, "Hey, what about Sharon Lecter?"

Yeah, what'd you learn from this?

What'd you learn there?

Every single person I had some major takeaway.

And I was re-listening to them recently, actually, in preparation

for us getting together.

I think I listened to about, probably a dozen of the episodes just here and there.

I was listening to a little bit faster, like 1.2, 1.5, because I

know generally what we've said.

Hearing it again though, even after nine months or a year, I go back and think, "Oh

man, I forgot about that. That's a great quote. Or that's a great line." So for

me, it's that, but I'd be curious to know for you, how have you changed other than

what's going on in your life landscape, how have some of the things impacted you?

Yeah, I think, we said in the beginning, let's give it a year and

see how we're, we're doing or whatever.

And how we feel about it.

Right?

So for me, the, verdict or the scoreboard, if you will, is like,

we've done much better than I expected

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…frankly.

The quality of guests, the caliber of the interviews, the actual KPIs

in terms of downloads, subscribers, impressions, all this kind of stuff.

The kind of professionalism that we're applying behind the scenes with Robert,

with Christian who does the filming that has been a s a surprise to me, I think.

And just, I feel, proud of the caliber of the, work that we've done.

So that's changed me in the sense of, I need to take this kind of seriously.

Yeah.

You know, I can't, this is not just like a, hey,

turn the microphone on and

That's right.

Goof around and see what happens.

Like no, that you said earlier there's a responsibility here and it's like,

"Okay, there's a business coming, from this, right?" So that, that

part has changed me quite a bit.

And then just the learnings, from everybody that you talk to.

You know, you talked about applying some health stuff, some financial

advice that you get here, career advice here, advice on book, advice

on leadership, advice on this.

And it's, I go apply those things.

Yeah.

I talked to, Dan Lier a couple weeks ago, about coaching.

And not coaching of like life coaching, not coaching about sales or anything.

I was talking about coaching soccer and he was talking about coaching basketball.

And we were both saying, Man, I wanna kinda go back to my roots a little bit."

I'm the assistant men's head soccer coach at Huston-Tillotson University now.

And Dan is working on something in Las Vegas and he might be doing that.

So you have these conversations, you learn from these people, and

then hopefully you go take action the way that we've done on it.

So that, those are some really, noticeable ways that it's impacted me, I think.

Yeah.

The Dan Lier one was a big one.

I, since you brought him up, I've known Dan a long time, but, I, and it's always

interesting that social media gives us feedback, you know, even though

you and I talk about, you know, don't listen to the haters and don't watch the

numbers so much or read the comments, when you get a guy like Dan on there

who says, he shouldn't even be here.

He said, what, a year, then five years to beat amyloidosis, a rare blood disease.

And then to be able to say, "Hey, I'm nine years sitting on this couch.

No doctor said I would be here at the 10-year mark." And he's sitting here

proud saying, "I'm at the nine-year mark and I'm still making it happen."

Yeah.

I walk off that.

I mean, I teared up.

You saw it the last episode.

I had to listen to it the other day and I'm like, "What's going on in

the episode?" I was listening to it and I forgot that I had such an

emotional impact on me because I was flashing back in reality of what I've

gone through with Dan and his life.

So that's what's kind of cool.

Went back and re-researched a lot of our guests after the fact, because they

brought up stuff that I didn't know about.

You know, when Alexy was talking about the movie deal that she's gonna have

coming up, which is again, making a movie as we know from Mark Kerr.

Sure.

That doesn't happen overnight.

Yeah.

That was a five to seven-year journey to get

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…"The Smashing Machine" where it is.

And now Alexy's in a position to work with a guy like Rick Flair with DJ,

the Rock, to be able to do something.

I'm thinking, "Wow, this is kinda cool." I feel like I'm along for the ride with

some of these people and the things that they have coming up in their lives.

Yeah, you can become invested in the journey

Yeah, absolutely.

Journey a little bit.

100%

Right?

Yeah.

100%

What are three mistakes that we made that coulda, woulda, shoulda

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…killed us?

Yeah.

But didn't.

So for anybody listening, Hey, here's three mistakes that we made

- Mike Lindstrom: Yep.

…launching a podcast.

Don't make these."

Yep.

Number one, it's a good thing and a bad thing.

Number one, I love about it is we didn't come into this to make money.

It wasn't a business strategy.

So we didn't really have business guidance.

We didn't have somebody like Robert or the coaches that we've surrounded

ourself with that are experts in social media, Spotify, messaging.

We didn't have that day one.

Yeah.

So I think that was kind of the pureness

of the show though, honestly.

Mm-hmm.

So it was good for the time, but it got us so far that

I think both of you and I both knew.

We're like, "Okay, that, that got us to this point, but now we need

to take it to the next level." So maybe if a, a do-overs you had more

guidance and strategy at the beginning.

Number two, I had some mishaps with some people marketing and helping us.

We don't need to name names, that are no longer with us.

They can show you immediate impact.

Yeah.

They can go out there and promote you on Spotify

and do things to kind of trick algorithms, and get your numbers up.

And they're all out there, by the way.

If you don't know, just do your homework before you align yourselves because

people will get you views and downloads and Instagram or whatever that stuff.

So I mean, that was a little bit of a misstep, but we learned from it.

You were like, "Hey, that didn't hurt the show. It just, it wasn't reality."

Yeah.

It felt good.

It had that dopamine hit to wake up every day and go, "Oh my God, that's

a lot of people that just watched our show." And they were watching it, but

they weren't watching the same way that we would want them to watch it.

So it's just the way the marketing strategy was going there.

I would say that.

And then the other thing is now we're planning ahead.

You have to remember at the very beginning, I don't know what episode,

let's call it 30, first 30 episodes.

I did the editing and put everything out there and we were reacting, Hey, who are

we gonna get on in like three weeks?" and that was difficult for both of us.

You have to fly out here.

Yeah.

You have to plan with your family.

And there's that stress that comes when we're not really planning ahead.

Now, we don't do that.

We already know the next shoot's gonna be in two and a half months.

We're already booking people for two and a half months in advance.

Yeah.

That makes me breathe, that makes you breathe.

You know when that date is.

It just takes the onus off of that.

I think those are the big three for me, which were stress points,

but we learned from those.

Yeah.

What would you say?

Whew.

I know you agree with those three, but

do you have anything else?

Yeah.

I think not knowing where to focus in terms of which platform, in the beginning

we're like, "Should we focus on Apple?

Should we focus on Spotify?

Should we focus on YouTube?

Should we focus on Instagram or whatever?" and I don't think, I don't think we knew.

No.

So you don't know where to focus, you don't get

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…the right kind of results.

So that, I think, coulda, shoulda killed us, metaphorically speaking.

We could've taken some of the early feedback of, I don't know if the

numbers are not where we wanted them to be like, Oh, this is, not worth it

or whatever." so that's number one.

I think, the second one is, you always run the risk doing a show the way we

do where you're not really, prepping the guests too much, where maybe you

ask somebody a question they didn't appreciate or it backfired or whatever

or, they felt not prepared at all.

And so like, "Hey, you need to, kill that episode.

I'm not comfortable with that going out." Or we maybe screwed up and,

didn't feel prepared and we're like, I can't release that." Right?

So you're toeing the line between improvisation, authenticity,

and just winging it too much.

So I think, it would've been nice, the level of prep we do now for ourselves,

we probably should've done that level of prep upfront in the beginning.

Oh, no doubt.

Not putting it on the guests.

Yeah.

I think you have to make it real easy for the guests.

So that's probably, that's the other thing that probably stands out.

Yeah, but I think there was a little element for both of us.

I can speak for myself, but I was kinda proud of that at the beginning.

Yeah.

I knew who you were.

Look, by the way, we're not sitting there cold.

We know your

No, no.

Background, your title.

We know

Yeah.

We know enough

To be dangerous about the guests.

So let's be clear.

But we don't have like a 10-page dossier or something like that.

No, absolutely.

But now we do.

Yeah.

We actually have

Yeah, there's actually more than 10 pages now.

Yeah.

We have more questions now that we wanna dig through because we wanna

be more strategic in the time.

You have to remember for a lot of people that don't know, we only have 50 minutes

max, like actually recording time.

So when you bring out pauses and ums and ahs and you edit in

post, maybe a 50-minute episode ends up at 42 or 40 minutes.

So our target is always about 45 minutes of recording time with the guests.

That's, it goes by like that.

Yeah.

There's times, I know we've had a couple people who haven't

aired yet where they go, "That's it?

We're done?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's it.

I mean, you just talked about your whole entire life.

You talked, you brought us from childhood to college and

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…med school and, your career and your marriage and your kids.

And we asked you five great questions and we did rapid fire

and yeah, we're outta here."

And that was it.

But then you watch the final product and it's 33 minutes.

I was really happy with, one of the more recent episodes, Susan McGalla

who was at Brophy Prep and who had this amazing executive career.

That was one of my, that was one of my favorite conversations, by

- Mike Lindstrom: I agree.

…the way.

I agree.

Just from a professional

- Mike Lindstrom: 100%

…standpoint, I'm like

- Mike Lindstrom: 100%

I wish I would've worked with her for 15, 20 years.

I still want to.

I know.

I still want to.

[laughing] I saw her recently at a school function and I gave her a big

hug and I said, "I'm so proud of you. Like you're not only your life and

what you do, but just your authenticity as a professional woman and a mom

and how she delivers that stuff." But I was thinking about that show.

She covered… and if you watch the final product, I think it was 33 minutes or so.

She brought you from beginning to end for kids, all the way through

getting married, where she went to college, working for the Steelers.

And I'm thinking, "Wow, that's how a podcast quote 'should go'."

Yeah.

You can cover all that stuff in 30 to 45

minutes, but that's not everybody.

She's got media training.

Yeah.

She's been a CEO.

She's a founder.

But then you have somebody who's got no media.

Look at your guy from ASU.

Yeah.

You come, you're friend Jon comes in from ASU.

Yeah.

He's in front of people all the time.

Jon McQueen's a professor at Arizona State.

Yeah.

Had a lot of activities

- Scott Leese: First ever podcast appearance.

First ever podcast appearance.

No formal media training comes

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…on here.

And we weren't sure how that would go.

Yeah.

Guess what happens on social media?

I can't remember.

He's somewhere in the top five in terms of

- Mike Lindstrom: 100%

…downloads and impressions and stuff like that.

Who knows?

Yeah.

What's gonna resonate?

Yeah.

You just never know, man.

Should we tell people a little bit about what we're thinking for

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…year two?

I think so.

Nothing's concrete yet, but

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…maybe give people a little glimpse of a couple

ideas that we have for year two.

I'd like you to start because

Okay.

Most people who watch the show should know by now.

We're in Scottsdale.

I live in Phoenix.

You live in Austin, Texas.

If you haven't watched the show or you haven't figured that out by now,

then you're probably under a rock.

But you do live full-time in Austin, Texas.

You have a family out there.

In case people don't know, that's kinda podcast central.

Everyone knows Joe Rogan, all the big guys are out there.

People ask, "Why are we not doing stuff in Austin?"

So

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…first place outside of Scottsdale would be Austin.

Austin.

Yeah.

So what do you envision with that if that's

to happen in your backyard?

Yeah.

I think, I've really enjoyed kinda deep diving into the Phoenix,

Scottsdale ecosystem, right?

We, we have, 52 guests, roughly, and almost all of them other than a

couple live here, they're from here.

So one of our ideas we have for year two is, what if we do the show in

Austin and just pump 50-something guests from the Austin ecosystem?

And who would they be?

Which entrepreneurs, which athletes, which musicians, which politicians, which

newscasters, which professors, whatever?

Same kind of thing.

And then we started thinking, we've actually got a big ecosystem in Kansas

City, and we've got one in St. Louis that's kind of growing a little bit."

And so we're starting to think of, maybe it's not a whole year in one city, but

maybe we do 10 episodes in name your town.

Yeah.

And 10 episodes here and 10 here.

And we take the show on the road a little bit, and the natural kind

of first choice is probably Austin.

So, you know, you can fly to me and we, Love that.

There, there's logistical challenges a around it, but it's all solvable.

So that's one of the things that we're thinking.

Anybody who is a follower of the show, interact with us,

tell us where we should go.

Tell us

- Mike Lindstrom: And you know what?

I

- Scott Leese: …tell us what city to come to and which guests we should get.

Now, think about this.

We should try to get like

- Mike Lindstrom: We haven't got this far ahead, but now that you're bringing

that up, there are certain cities I know that you and I absolutely love.

There's some cities that maybe we don't love that are people

we're well-networked or we're not.

I would love it if we had somebody, whether it's a friend or somebody

who sees the show that says, "Hey, Mike, I am the man in Miami.

I'm in whatever.

Club promotions.

I know celebrities, athletes.

If you came to Miami for a day and a half, I guarantee you

I could fill 12 to 14 guests.

That would be amazing.

Yeah.

We would do it.

Yeah, we would.

We would do it.

That'd be awesome.

You know what else I'm thinking of right now?

You're from Modesto.

I'm from Chico, California.

The name of our production company is Highway 99.

We should probably at some point

Yes.

Go to the scene of the crime, the origin

- Mike Lindstrom: Yes.

…story and do, a Highway 99

- Mike Lindstrom: Yes.

…shoot and try to get some guests from around there.

So that's one of the things that we're thinking about.

And that's a big thing that we haven't talked about.

Highway 99, actually.

Yeah.

At least because we're spending so much time talking about

"What's Your Story," which is the guest.

So it was actually on May 5th, we were technically incorporated, Scott and I,

and then we were going back and forth on names of a new production company.

And we said, "Well, you were from the north of the 99 side. I'm

from Modesto," which is where the 99 freeway runs through.

And we said, "What's this called? Highway 99."

Yeah.

So that's the name of our production company.

And what we wanna do beyond this is to be able to do this with other people.

Yeah.

So we've already had it.

We can't name names.

We've had people reach out to us already and say, Hey, we wanna do what you do."

Yeah.

"You've already done the hard stuff.

We wanna mimic our own podcast in our own way.

So we wanna have the likes of a Christian or Robert or have you guys

be our coaches or even a co-host

-" Scott Leese: Yeah.

"…to help us get our small business off the ground." So

if that's out there, reach out to us.

Highway 99 Productions is beyond "What's Your Story?" and we're looking for those

kind of partnerships and relationships

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…where we can be your advisor, consultant, coach,

and show you how this is done.

We've done all the failing, if you will, in the first 12 months.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But we also know what the wins are, and we know

how to do it from front to back.

One, one last question from me at least before, before we

get outta here and wrap this episode.

We're still focused on Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Yeah.

Give me five names of dream guests in this area, in this

community that we've not got on the show yet, that we really wanna have.

Maybe somebody will see this, can reach out to them, shoulder tap them, whatnot.

I have a million names, man, By the way, these are on

my dry erase board I have a running list, so and it's not because we're

not trying, so if you hear your name, we may have already reached out to

you and you're already in the queue.

Alice Cooper, and this is in no particular order.

We've already reached out to Alice's people.

We're looking at that, potentially for, next year.

We're talking to his team there.

Alice Cooper's a no-brainer.

Charles Barkley would be a great one.

Jim McMahon from the Chicago Bears.

Mm-hmm.

We're already reaching out to his people nothing's

happened yet, but I'm really good friends with, the Payton family.

Walter Payton obviously passed away, and Jared Payton and his,

sister, Brittany, who's local.

Mm-hmm.

I would love to have JP and Brittany come in and sit on

this couch and talk about the family.

Sure.

Man of the year at NFL.

Yeah.

That would be amazing.

Kurt Warner would be a no-brainer.

I know

That's five.

You, you already

- Mike Lindstrom: No, I gotta

- Scott Leese: …got a huge list.

I gotta throw it out to the universe, man.

For his foundation, first things first, which we've done stuff with in the past.

I would love to support them.

Jerry Colangelo's been a mentor and a friend of mine.

Jerry's, getting up there in age, and I mean that only in the way of he doesn't

like to go out there and do a lot.

He's very active.

Godfather.

Great.

He's in games, sitting courtside, but to have him break away from,

Ambassadors of Compassion, which I do with him in nonprofits, to come

sit like this is difficult to have him break away on the schedule.

Yeah.

So that's just a few that I'll throw out

there off the top of my head.

It's just one of the things I was just thinking when you were reading

these names off is, I used to, before this show, this is one area that I changed.

I used to think of a particular city, name the city.

And it was like, "Oh, there's, three or four, big names there,

whatever." Fuck no, there's not.

There's

Yeah.

Hundreds, if not thousands

Yeah.

In probably any particular market.

Yeah.

Super interesting people, super successful people,

inspirational people, whatever.

It's just so cool.

And you go like, "Damn, we've had 50 something episodes and we

didn't have any of those people

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…yet.

I'm really looking forward to that, both, deepening the relationships

and impact we have on the Phoenix and Scottsdale community, as well as Austin,

St. Louis, Kansas City, Miami, wherever else we might go at some point in time.

Yeah.

I have a question for you.

So let's flip the script a little.

We're talking about a lot of positive things.

Let's talk about the challenges.

For you, what's the biggest challenge?

I mean, you have to come out here from Austin.

Oh, yeah.

I get to, like, roll out of my bed, get ready

Yeah.

Drive 20 minutes.

What's the biggest challenge for you with the show the last 12 months?

It's 100% the travel and time commitment, because I have to come

out here, a day before, basically, right?

So I, I lose a day in terms of my work, spending time with my

kids, exercising, what whatever.

Your normal routine is just thrown off.

And then, you know, there's, there's a shoot day.

Sometimes we've had two days of shoots, then there's a travel back day.

So I lose three, sometimes four days.

So now I go back home and, it's like taking a mini vacation.

You're just, like, buried under work.

I got a million slacks, a million, you know, calls that I pushed.

Now I gotta jam them back in.

So it takes me a week at least to catch up again, I've had to adjust

my co-parenting schedule at times.

Luckily, I've got a good relationship there where there's some

flexibility and things like that.

Otherwise, probably wouldn't be able to make it happen as much.

And, traveling back and forth like that and the increased stress is

hard on anybody, but, I've got a long documented, health struggle on everything.

It's hard on, on my body sometimes, traveling that much.

So that's been the biggest piece for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Is just the logistics and the impact it has on my business

and on, on my health and, ability to just do the things that I normally

would do and wanna do at home.

Yeah.

So let's go part two on that.

A lot of people ask me, I don't know about you, they say, "So how do you do

the show? is this the thing you do every week, do you and Scott?" I'm like, Guys,

this is, Scott lives in a different city.

It's not what you…" We've had guests coming here.

Not just different city.

I live

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

…2,000 miles away.

We have guests coming here go

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

"Oh, you got like a couple of these today?" So

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…tell, tell people out there, what's the reality?

Let's get them behind the scenes

Yeah.

Of how this goes.

Sure.

Yeah.

I'll give you play by play.

Let's do it.

So the average day would be, I fly out the day before,

usually get in 9:10 PM at night.

Mike picks me up, drops me to the hotel, crash out, in the studio by 7:00 AM or so.

And then we are normally recording 10 episodes.

That's 10 hours minimum.

Not to mention, we might do, little shoots like this of you and I. Mm-hmm.

Little clips specifically for social media.

Maybe rehearse a intro or an outro or, a sponsorship kind of

advertisement or whatever, right?

And then we've had times where it would come back day three for me of being

out here, where I have like a half day.

So I have maybe four people that we interview, then I scoot back

to the airport and fly home.

So these days, they're marathon days, I think it's hard for most

people to work a 10-hour day.

Try talking for 10 hours straight.

Listening.

Try listening [laughing] for 10 hours straight.

We've forgot to get lunch multiple times.

[laughing]

Right?

We have.

We forgot to order it.

Yeah.

Went the whole day without ordering anything.

We scarf something in at some point in time.

We've had a couple guests come in at the end of the day and say to us,

"You guys okay?" [laughing] You know, like, Yeah, I just splash some water

on my face real quick or something like that, you know?" So it's a lot.

Yeah.

For, for those couple days, it's a lot, and then for me personally,

again, I have sort of the after effects of, fuck, I gotta catch up now.

Yeah.

You know?

I don't, you don't have to deal with that, I don't think, as, as much as me,

but it's still disruptive to your normal

No doubt.

Work life schedule and everything.

So for the first time since I was in high school, I had

a high school job, in the summer.

I would drive from Modesto, California to Stockton to work for

Swift Transportation, and I was a dispatcher making, summer money.

And I was so tired.

I was young.

I was 21 years old.

You go out the night before, you get up, you had to be at work every day.

I remember driving my Honda Civic and like almost falling asleep at the wheel so

many times because I was so effing tired.

I haven't had that happen until the last shoot.

I remember you told me that.

From my 20-minute

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…drive from the studio to my home, I was so depleted.

I remember going down Scottsdale Road.

I hit, Indian School, which is like only five miles from my house.

And I was like, I have a Tesla." I was kinda self-driving or it was self-driving

a little bit and I was just nodding off and I'm like, "Whoa." I haven't

had that ever since I was a teenager.

Huh.

So I knew this is something

- Scott Leese: That was a long day.

Four or five times six times a year.

Yeah.

But that's how depleted I was.

And so I know for you it's that on steroids

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…because you're two hours different with the

health stuff, you're staying in a hotel, you're out of your pattern.

I get to go home to my wife tonight and my kids and be at my home.

You don't.

Yeah.

So I appreciate it, man.

Yeah.

I, number one, the, the vision you've had with us together

and we haven't had any fighting.

And we have arguments and debates around how we wanna do things creatively,

but after 12 months of partnership and starting a corporation, we don't

argue about anything like money, you're like, yeah, let's do it.

We'll invest in that.

There's never been like

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…true contention.

And to me, that's, not just a, testament to our friendship, but the kind of things

that we both see in the bigger picture.

We're willing to put any kind of divide or dif difference because we see it for

the guests, the responsibility of the sponsors and the future we wanna create.

Yeah.

Whether it's going on the road or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I just wanna say thank you for me

Yeah, thank you.

And the, and the belief that you have in me, bro, and

let's continue making this happen.

Been a great year one.

Yeah, man.

All right.

So I'll let you sign off, acknowledge everybody

we'd have and do the thing.

Yeah.

All right everybody, hope you enjoyed a little bit of the,

behind the scenes stuff, the What's Your Story podcast year one.

Wow, 52 episodes in the can.

We're excited about what year two and beyond brings.

If you are interested in being on the show, you're interested in sponsoring the

show, you know some people or can suggest some potential guests to us if, tell us

where you're from, what city, we might be taking this show on the road, in year two.

So we're open to all ideas and all possibilities and Mike and I and

Robert, Christian and the whole team, we're very excited about what

we've done with "What Your Story?" Podcast and where we're headed.

So thanks for tuning in.

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We'll see you next time.