Podcasting Built a Movement That Changed Everything with Tim Truax

Podcasting Built a Movement That Changed Everything with Tim Truax

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 261 of the Business Development Podcast. If you are in the middle of the podcast playbook series, wondering if this journey is really worth it, today's episode is going to light your fire. I'm joined by Tim Truax, founder of PodSummit, and a podcasting legend who's been showing up for nearly a decade with 490 plus episodes under his belt.

Tim has built more than a show, he's built a movement. If you've ever doubted your voice, your impact, or whether this podcasting thing can actually change your life, this conversation will remind you exactly why you started. Stick with us. You don't wanna miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development Podcast podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development CapitalBD ca. Let's do it. Welcome to The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, today on this very special episode of the Business Development Podcast. It is an honor and a privilege to introduce you to Tim Truax.

A true pioneer in Canadian podcasting and a relentless builder of community. Tim is the CEO of PodSummit, YYC Canada's premier podcasting event, and the longtime host of the Nerd Room, a show that's run for over a decade and produced more than 490 episodes. Wow. But what makes Tim's story so compelling isn't just his experience, it's his mission.

He's not here to chase downloads or trends. He's here to fix what's broken in the podcasting world. The disconnection, the lack of support, and the feeling that you're building alone. Tim is building something bigger, a nationwide movement to unite podcasters, empower creators, and give Canadian voices the platform that they deserve.

PodSummit isn't just an event, it's a rallying point. It's where ideas are shared. Partnerships are sparked and isolated. Creators become a thriving collaborative force. If you believe that podcasting can be more than content, if you see it as a catalyst for connection, creativity, and real change, then Tim Truax is the leader to watch.

He's not just talking about what's possible in the space. He's out there building it. Tim, once again, honor and a privilege to have you on here today.

Tim Truax: Ooh, I hope I can live up to that intro. Man, that was amazing.

Kelly Kennedy: I am so excited for today's show, man. I am so excited. It's like I said, it's an honor and a privilege.

Podcasters like myself are standing on the shoulders of giants like you. I've said it from the very beginning of this show. We owe what podcasting has become to people like you who got back into this thing back in the 2010s, back in, you know, early 2015 for you. We would not be here without you guys taking that leap and frankly, paving the way for the rest of us who are playing catch up now, you know, me starting in 2023, like, man, it's it's incredible to see what you've done and the fact that you're pushing in on 500 episodes here is it's incredible, man.

Good for you. And thank you for doing it.

Tim Truax: I, I appreciate that, man. And, and it, it feels really good to see the space developing as much as it has all the way into where we are now in 2025. You know, looking back on 2015 when we started, it was, it was still a bit of like this gorilla movement. It was still considered just a form of entertainment and not really something bigger, a platform, a, a community builder.

Even a business builder. It, it wasn't really considered that back then. And now we're really kind of shoulder to shoulder in the podcast space with some of the, the bigger elements, whether it is the news or TV or Yeah. You know, the video stuff that's being introduced now in a, in a real substantive way.

It's made podcasting. Vastly different from what it was in 2015, a decade ago, but the speed it's evolving at and with actors like yourself, just really pushing on the medium to include it as part of a larger portfolio, as part of a larger business model, as part of something that is also a hobby and something that you love and enjoy getting behind the microphones.

Yeah, it's awesome to see how far it's come in that decade space.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I'm excited to hear your story, right? You know, for the people listening, we're gonna get into the whole thing. We're gonna be talking podcasting pod semi, like this show is for podcasters, period.

If you love podcasting, if you wanna get into podcasting, if you already are a podcaster, if you're listening to the podcast Playbook series and we're right in the middle of it, sandwiched in right here, this episode is for you. That's what it's all about. And I, and like I said, my goal here, Tim, is at the end of the day that we, we inspire.

Yes, we inspire even one person today to launch a show and just chat about the passion behind it and, and really the purpose that it gives you mm-hmm. That nobody saw coming, right? Yeah. But take us back to the beginning. Take us back to 2015. Why did you start a podcast back then?

Tim Truax: To be honest with you, it was, it was always about this idea.

And I'll come back to this idea, a lot of community, and this is something that you focus on a lot too. And really for me, podcasting, you know, back then it was something I listened to. I really got into like audio books and podcasting because I was searching out for this niche community, whether it was Star Wars, Marvel, or even into some of the like the true crime stuff that was coming out in around that.

Yeah. And it was, it was very exciting time because you could really dial down into that niche environment of hobbies that you were a part of and wanted to find communities. And yeah, I, I had spent a long time listening to think guys like Kevin Smith, and he was a big proponent of, you know, just get a microphone and talk.

Everyone should have a podcast. Like, he was like a very early adopter oh 6, 0 8. Yeah. And he, he's done some incredible stuff for the space and it was really him that influenced myself and a buddy who. We had this like, great rapport. We used to walk to the comic book shop in, just outside in Kensington, in Calgary here, every single Wednesday to pick up comic books.

And we had this like, great back and forth. It would take about an hour. And one day he looked at me, he said, we should record this and start a podcast. And that's how like most podcasts start, is two dudes be like, oh, hey, we should we should start a book as, and so like, it's like humbly that's how it started.

It was just really about him and I continuing the conversation that we love to have. And one of the things that him and I, other than each other, we didn't have a lot of people to share the passion with. Even 10 years ago, you know, star Wars and Marvel and all that. They were, they were there, but they weren't quite embedded into pop culture.

Sure. And the sight geist of all that is discussed, you just in a broad sense, it was still even different a decade ago. You know, Star Wars had just returned and Marvel had really found its footing, was starting to make a real impact on the film industry. And so there wasn't this like huge online community to degree there yet.

And we said, well, let's try to create something where we have this safe space to go so that him and I could find other people to share a passion with. That was like fundamentally what was built on. And then you rewind that and really looks and feels like we're a community building. And that was like the huge focus is we wanted to create a community.

Yeah. And we found an awesome community online on Twitter in the day. Back then it was a really great space for finding, discovering other people. And then the podcast allowed us to create this platform for discussion. So him and I would discuss and then people would comment on it, engage with it, and then you have this great community that's all of a sudden popped up almost out of nowhere.

So that, that was really what drove us. It was a desire to share a passion. It was desire to discuss more of it and be a bigger part of it, and also to kind of seek out people to share that whole experience with, because the experience of the pop culture, like I collect vintage toys and I'm a giant Star Wars nerd and all this kinda stuff, but I wanted to share more of that, and that's really what the podcast was rooted in.

We never had any desire to be this, you know, mega download thing or even, we've never even monetized our podcast. Oh, wow. It was, it was just purely about getting behind the microphones, having fun with friends, and then that going out into the public and feeding this little creative spark that we had.

Yeah. But also that, that, that, and then inviting people into this, our space, that's the whole like ethos behind the nerd room is like, this is our space to share. Yeah. And that was it. It was like simplistically, it was community. It was just finding people.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. And you know, I think all of us get into podcasting with that idea of we want to accomplish something.

For me, I, you know, I basically cut my teeth in business learning, business development. I was basically handed a business development position at 23, no idea what it was, because nobody had ever taught me about it. And then I couldn't find a book, and then I couldn't find any information on the internet.

And then it was like, okay, guess we're paving this path. And I didn't want that to be the next Kelly. Right. When I, I realized that I could use podcasting as an avenue to share my business development knowledge, my processes mm-hmm. My tips, my stuff that worked. With other business development people. And you know, the moment I saw that I could get the name, the business development podcast, the rest was history.

He is like, Kelly, you are, you are doing this. Come hell or high water because this is the opportunity presented to you. But it's changed my life. Like, there's no other way to put it. Tim, there's pre podcast Kelly and there's Post podcast Kelly, and there's a solid line there. And it's been such an incredible experience, like you said, from a community building standpoint, from a helping standpoint, you know, we did find that at some point we had to monetize because it, you know, basically making a podcast now is not a cheap venture.

No. If you wanna have, you know, a professional show out there in the world. And I, I wanted to ask you, when you got into this, had you, had you like, had any broadcasting experience or like audio editing experience before you ended up in this space?

Tim Truax: Not even a little bit. I've never even really done anything like.

In the creative internet space. Yeah. Like this was, it was just an idea. And we plopped the microphone down and just started talking. I, I'd never even used an editing software. Yeah. I had no idea how to post a podcast even after we recorded the first one. And I, I had no idea about Apple, like how to feed everything.

Like I listened to podcasts and they just, but I had no clue what any of this stuff was. Yeah. And even the, the resources in 15 weren't. Quite there. And so I didn't even know how to create a multi-person record. Yeah. Like we, we, so I ended up buying like a, a mixer and it was only a single channel mixer, so everything came in to one channel and we had like four guys talking on one.

Like it was a split channel, so it was like a pain to edit. I used Audacity and at that point, audacity wouldn't convert directly to MP three. And so you had to run it through other software. Yeah. And when we got to remote recording, we were using Skype and all this like hodgepodge of different online softwares.

There wasn't a Riverside or any streamy yard, anything like that in 15. But when we had these remote discussions with people, 'cause we became friends with people in the UK and out in Eastern Canada and the US and then we started inviting them on our podcast. And so the, there we were trying to find ways to kind of really figure this out on the fly.

And you go back to some of those early episodes as you do with anything and you could hear like the painful editing in all of this. Yes. And the echoey Skype. And there was no at source recording when you're doing ro remote records and all that. And we did our podcast probably right up until April or March of 2020.

We did it in person every single Tuesday for Wow. Yeah, we had two, I had two buddies and at 1.3 buddies, they'd come to my house on Tuesday at eight o'clock after the kids were in bed, we'd all go to the basement. We'd spend like three hours recording and, and then I'd spend the next like. I don't know, half a week chopping it up because it was just a so hard pain Yeah.

To edit. And it was always like two hours of talking. And so yeah, it was I kind don't even remember what the question was there, but.

Kelly Kennedy: No, I was just asking you if you had any experience because Yeah, I think, I think that holds a lot of people back where they feel like, well, I don't have any audio editing experience, or I never, you know, I never went to broadcast school.

Who am I to do this? And, and I, me and you are like prime examples. I still edit my own show. I too, like just from a cost standpoint. Makes sense. You do too, I learned everything. Mm-hmm. On the way, just like you. I started with no experience. I'd never opened a D before period. I Adobe audition. No clue what that is.

Right? So like same as you. I was learning as I went and, and I think the important thing that I just want everybody to take away from this is you can learn these things. It is not that hard. Give yourself 10, 15 episodes. Watch lots of YouTube videos. Listen to the podcast playbook series, which we're working on right now, and you will as well be able to edit and make your show sound really well.

And I wanna speak too, like, you know, you talked back in 2015, even when I talk, even when I launched the show in 2023, Tim, the plugins and stuff really weren't there. Like there's been so much mm-hmm. Massive advancement in the last two to three years of podcasting. It's insane. Yes. It's actually insane.

The difference of quality of show that I could have made in 2023 versus the quality of show I can make today just utilizing technology.

Tim Truax: Yeah. It, it's, it's been fascinating to watch the evolution of podcasting. It's really, really this, on this upward end of the curve, like you said in the last couple years.

But really just rewind just a little more. It's the pandemic that changes a lot of it. It is the pandemic that changes the course, I think of podcasting and remote recording really is kind of the most important piece of it. This is where. Softwares like Riverside, streamy yard really pop up, and then you have like Adobe podcasts more recently with AI really popping up that allows you to convert poor quality shows or poor quality audio into relatively high quality audio.

Yeah, it's so, it's really, I think that's my marking point is that it know microphones are at a point where. For two to $500, you can have a broadcast quality microphone. Like Absolutely. You actually don't even need to make a huge investment in a microphone. They're all so, so good. Like Sure. Has some amazing like podcast microphones now.

Yep, yep. And before they, they were good, but it was a lot harder. It wasn't concentrated on kind of the remote record. And the big change too with, with remote recording software was the at source recording. So no longer using like Skype or even teams still does this, where when you hit record, it records the internet recording.

And so you get the choppiness, you get the broke, broken up kind of internet sound. But when you use this remote recording software right now, you're getting at source recording. So it's recording like directly onto your computer through this microphone that's sitting in front of you. Yeah. And uploading to a cloud, it's incredible.

It's, it's so it that was a game changer. Yeah. And then the at source video too, so that everything you do. Is at the highest quality can be. It doesn't really matter if you have a crappy internet connection because that can, that's all fixed through this. And then, like I said, use softwares like Adobe Podcasts is one I've been using over the last year.

Where it's a relatively cheap online software. You upload poor quality audio, and then you have all these kind of little knobs you can take Yeah. Where you can take background noise out. You can actually take a really hollow sounding air bud or, or kind of microphone, or a poor microphone or like a headset microphone, and you can tweak that very simplistically and get relatively, I'd say like 80% better audio out of it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. It's saved so many episodes that I, because I also edit other people's podcasts, and so it saved a lot of those episodes where you're getting kind of poor quality audio and all this, and so yeah, the technology and a lot of people put the focus on like the microphones and all that.

To me, that's like, we've hit like a bar where everything is just good. Yeah. You get little bit bumps here and there depending on your investment. And if you can get into a space too, where you've created a little bit of an environment that is. It, it, it kind of promotes good sound, whether you have like something on your walls or things around you to kind of take the hollowness out.

You can, you everyone can have a really solid sounding podcast. I always had this rule where I said like, people might not like the content. I talk about people not, might not like my voice, it might not like me or my opinions. Yeah, that's okay. That I can't really control that. Can't that, no, I can't fix that.

But I never want someone leaving my podcast because the audio is bad. That, that, that's something you can absolutely control. Yes. Some of those other things you can't, but audio you can. And for relatively. Cheap. You can create almost broadcast quality audio inside of your basement. Like you and I do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Well, that's it, right? Like I'm in my basement room. You're in your basement room, like at the end. My, my room isn't even sound treated. I got some bookshelves and stuff, but like mm-hmm. I don't even sound treat this room because at this point I don't have to, like, the plugins and stuff available to fix that for me are, are out there.

One of the ones that I wanted to mention, if you're still using you know, the Adobe podcast suite mm-hmm. Or, or the uh uh, basically Adobe Podcast audio enhance. There's another plugin program. Now you may or may not have heard of it. It's called Accentize DxRevive basically does the same thing, but even better.

Oh wow. And, and with less artifacts. 'cause I found that I started to struggle with artifacts on some of the really hard to boost Yes. Situations. There's, there's actually VST plugins now coming out. They're doing almost the exact same thing, but even better.

Tim Truax: That's, it's, it's like the, the pace that it's moving.

Yeah, yeah. Like you said, I do, I did struggle with Adobe podcasts with laughs. Yeah. And kind of like when people are just agree, like mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It has a tendency to like bump that up. And I, so I've talked to them and I know that they're working on, on those elements, but like even a software, like, another one to throw out there is Izotope that I use for a long time.

Yes, me too. Yeah. It, they're denoise, which is kind of taking the static out is incredible for Rx Suite. I recommend it to everybody.

Kelly Kennedy: Just buy the RX suite. Yeah. That's, that's exactly what I have. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's incredible. And when, you know, there's so many, there's so many. I'm gonna get into it actually later on.

So if you guys are hearing this, I will be going through my full plugin suite. Yes. At a later on podcast playbook series. I'll be giving you guys everything. But yeah. Basically there's no excuse to have bad audio anymore. Mm-hmm. And you, and I think, it's like marketing, right? I've spent my whole life in marketing and business development.

You don't get a second chance at a first impression. Yes. And the first impression people are getting of you and your podcast is the sound quality, right? Mm-hmm. You know, like Tim said, they may not like your voice. There's been plenty of shows that I was just like, I can't listen to this person.

I'm sure there's 10,000 people that can, that's not a problem. I can't. So I can't, you know, they can't control that. I can't control that. But I can make this sound great. And, editing your own show, making it sound great, getting high quality equipment at a, at a relatively low cost that is available to all podcasters in 2025 and beyond.

So. Man, I think we're in for an incredible, you know, next five to 10 years of podcasting.

Tim Truax: Oh, absolutely. And one recommendation I'd make as, as we're talking to podcasters here too, is even if you eventually plan to have someone else edit your podcast, try to edit a few of them. Yeah. Because I think it makes you super conscious of the process that individuals have to go through to edit a podcast.

And I think being cognizant of that while you're recording, is super important as well. That it's not always an easy fix or a, Hey, can you please change this in the the post? 'cause sometimes, depending on how you're putting together sentence structures and all that, it is hard to match up some of it. And even I, I'm a big fan, I still edit by ear.

I don't like AI editing because AI editing cannot pick up breaths. And so when you're talking, you're always breathing. Mm-hmm. And this is something that just goes back to the editing piece and when. You take a big deep breath. If you send an or an ah or something like that in there, the AI is just taking out the word.

They're not matching breath. Yeah. And to me that as an editor, that really bothers me when I can hear a breath that doesn't match. And so it's like you want it to sound as natural as possible, and so even taking out ums and ahs and all that, I've really dialed that back in the last couple of years because yeah, it doesn't feel real to me.

I always say that I want my conversation to sound real, not like a sitcom, not like someone that's like reading a script. It is about a natural conversation that you want to insert yourself into as the listener with your AirPods on.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And I actually still manually cut out all my breaths too, so right there with you.

It's a nightmare though, because by the end you look at my like, cut before I merge it together and there's like a hundred cuts.

Tim Truax: Yes. I'm same. I'm same even after all these years. But that, that goes down to a level of perfection that you're kind of chasing, right? Is that It's, I, I have this idea that, and it's something that I really promote PodSummit on, and when we're focusing on, on building all of this stuff, it is, it's focused on the invisible details.

The ones that no one notices until they're gone. And it's those little details that, that people work on as an editor and even side of the podcast. And you're taking out certain things and you're trying to make it feel as natural as possible. People will never notice and never know that you did that. No.

But if you stop doing that. That's when people will notice and be like quality is not as great here. Or I just can't listen to this flow because it's a bit choppy or whatever. And so there, there is, there's a real nuance to putting together a podcast and being very, like I said, cognizant of what you're putting out there.

Because like you said, it's a direct reflection and representation of you, your brand and how you are eventually trying to platform yourself inside of a, a likely a niche space at this point with podcasting.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. Well, and I think that's like important, and I wanted to ask you about this just for our listeners, right?

Like some listeners might look out there and say, okay, there's 5 million podcasts on, on Apple podcast. Is there even space for me to start a new show? And I, I would maybe love your opinion on this. I think me and you both know the statistics of how many of those are actually Yeah. Active, which is a completely different ballgame, but I think it can be.

A little bit disheartening maybe mm-hmm. For a new show, trying to break out to think like, who in the world is gonna listen to me?

Tim Truax: Yeah. I think there's 5 million, but what is there like a, you know, tens of thousands that are actually active and, you know, a couple hundred thousand have published multiple episodes or an episode over the last six months or so.

Yep. And so, like the competition it's there, but at the same time, I think the benefit that podcasting has, again, it is multifaceted, is one it's a very niche driven environment. And so, you know, you might be creating a Star Wars podcast and there might be dozens of other Star Wars podcasts out there, but like, when you look at that relative to TV or movies or have you ever walked into a library?

Like, there's millions of pages of written text. Yeah. Every topic you could ever think about. And it's there. And like, there's still thousands and thousands of books published a year. And so when you look at it and compare it to other mediums, even like YouTube, like there is like hundreds of millions of, of YouTube videos on the platform, but they, they all kind of lose, depend, like save some of the like evergreen things, but they all kind of lose their allure because of the society that we live in, which is kind of like the thank you next.

And so podcasting fits really nicely into some of this because it's not only a, a slower medium, I think but it's a medium that you can chase the niche things you could, if you are a very specific fan of a very specific, like if you're an itchy fan and you love this piece of ET and the video game and all that, there's a podcast about that.

Yeah. And that's a really cool thing. You can't go anywhere else. You can't go to Netflix or Disney Plus, or the radio or whatever and find that very specific group of people is talking. So I would say like from. Like a creative perspective is that the, the uniqueness isn't always the topic. It is your spin and the story that you are trying to tell, and that is what's going to bring people in.

Like you can say, I'm, I'm making a Star Wars podcast, and then here's my unique spin on it. Here's my perspective. My wife has never seen Star Wars movies and we're gonna walk through this with her a fresh perspective. There's always a unique spin you can put on this. And you have your own lived experience as well.

That's right. And so that's where people I think have that connection is like, I'm a Canadian living in Calgary and I'm starting this podcast about this thing. There are other people that have that same lived and shared experience. They're going to connect with that in some way. And people, I always say to people when I said, you know, when they're worried about guests and all this kinda stuff, I said, the people are coming back for.

The content, but the host is the most important thing because that is who they're coming back for. And it's like a cherry on top. Oh, a cool guest this week, or a cool topic this week. Yeah. But they're going to come back because of you, not because of, you know, some big guests that you've had. That'll bring people in, of course.

But they're going to consistently come back for you, for your voice, your perspective, for, for everything that you're doing. So I always say to people when they ask, like, oh, there's so many. What should, yeah, absolutely. Because the people that also stick this out are few and far between. And so by putting in 10 episodes, you've already surpassed a huge majority of the people that have published an episode on Apple Podcast or Spotify of whatever.

You get to 50 episodes, a hundred episodes, like you were saying in the, your, the, the podcast series that you're doing, 250 episodes, you're in the 1%.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Tim Truax: And so that's how you stand out to me. And so I, I, it doesn't, to me it does not matter, like I said, go into a library, go into a used bookstore, and then tell me there's too many podcasts.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and then there's, you know, there's podcasts like yours and suddenly you're in the what, top 0.5% or even higher, maybe in the top 0.1%, man. Like there's so little shows that ever make it to 500 episodes. You know, like it really is an elite group of shows that ever make it that far. So congratulations and kudos on sticking with it.

And I think maybe that's what I want to chat with you about. What what was your driver? How do you stick with a show? For a decade, because I think, you know, I, I always say to people, if you're starting a show, I don't even want you to commit to a show unless you're gonna commit to a hundred, a hundred episodes.

Set it from the beginning. And every time I talk about it with regards to starting a show, I say, look, commit to 100 episodes because at a hundred you're just getting going. Yeah. I say at 250, I'm just getting going. Like, the reality is the traction or the organic traction, you have to have x amount of episodes before you start to really start to roll.

Because people will find you and I, I know I find this for my show, people will find you and they'll go back to the beginning and they'll listen to all of those episodes again. So, like you said, you know, people are going back to 2023 with the BDP and listening to, you know, what is business development?

Our very first episode, you know, and walking it up to today, so. The more episodes you have, the more opportunity you have for someone to stick with you for a long time. But, you know, so if that's the goal, we have to start with a hundred episodes as a goal. And, and I think if you make a hundred, you'll make 200.

I really believe that. But I wanna just talk to you like somebody who, frankly, I, I hope to be one day I hope to have 500 episodes under my belt. What does it take to show up to a podcast for 10 years without revenue generation coming from it, just out of passion. How did you not quit? How, like what? How, walk me through this, Tim.

How has this even, how does this happen?

Tim Truax: I get this a lot. I get this question a lot and it's, it's an interesting question because I think when I reflect back on it, the most important thing for when you're starting a podcast, like there's, I guess a couple things is one, you have to be very clear on your why.

Why are you doing this? And I, I talked about my why before is, is community. And whether that's some retrospection or whether that's something you derive right in the moment, that's an important thing. Second thing is you have to be talking about something that you love and you're actively inside of that community and you're now just adding to that community because I, I love Star Wars and Marvel and all this stuff, the movies, and I was actively living that life.

And that is a hobby of mine and that's why I could do it for 10 years because I just loved doing it. I loved talking about it. And the act of getting behind the microphone with my friends was just Simpl simplicity or simply a. A kind of gathering point. It was something that we look forward to every Tuesday.

It was a, a moment, my wife often says this, she says like, when you went down and podcasted when you came back up, you felt like a different person. Like all of the way to the world had been lifted off your shoulders. A big breath of fresh air. And so it became very much an anchor point for me in my life too.

Yeah. And so it was something that allowed me to kind of do this mental reset, this creative reset. Even in the most stressful times of my life, I still went and podcasted I podcast, we podcasted all through the pandemic. Yeah. And it, that was a major anchor for me. 'cause it, it brought this sense of normalcy for me too and this ability to kind of still have a gathering point even though the world was on fire at that point.

Yeah. We still had this consistent piece of life that we had in the previous five years and then had the five years after. And so for me it, it was really about. I was so invested in the community Yeah. That the podcasting was just a fun aspect of it all. Yeah. And it was a, it was a point where we could generate conversation and it was, it is kind of like when you reflect back on things like Christmas or the build to a big trip or something like that.

Oftentimes the build to the event is better than, the event is better than the event. And we found, we used to find that all the time. We spent 6, 8, 12 months talking about a movie coming out and we get to the movie, we do the review and be like, okay, yeah, it seems good. But like we had we, we spent hours upon hours talking about Yeah, the trailers and the build to it and are, are speculating on what could happen and the insertion of, of different actors and characters and all of that was the fun part of it.

Yeah, the movie is just, that's the Cresta, that's the end of the conversation, and then we move on to the next thing. And so it is just really about being invested in that community. Yeah. And having fun. Like I would always caution someone. That is looking to start a podcast purely for monetary reasons.

'cause that ain't gonna happen. No, it's not right away. At least no. And two, starting a podcast on something that you're not really passionate about. So it's like looking at the podcast charts and saying, oh true crime is the most listened to podcast. Let's true. Let's do a true crime. It's, it's just, you're just not gonna, it's not gonna work.

And that's a really like journalistically driven podcast genre as well. But if you're a huge Calgary Flames fan or Edmonton Oilers fan, absolutely. And you've had this massive passion about this and you watch every single game and you're always talking to your friends about it. That's maybe where you look.

Absolutely. And then, and then even if it's outside, let's say you wanna start a hockey podcast, but you are a, I don't know, a welder for a living or something. I don't know. And they, those two things do not have to align at the start. No. Like you can have, like, I'm a, in my real life, I'm a geologist. I have no broadcast experience, I have no journalism experience, and I'm just a fan of that stuff.

And that's what drove me. And so don't think that all of those things have to perfectly align in your life. And I think for some people that really works, they're really passionate about this part of the aspect of their career. And that, you know, with, with business development and all that, you, you're kind of fit into that boat where it just, it's an extension of what you do.

Yeah. But it doesn't always have to be that. It can be an extension of a very different part of your life.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I, I love that you touched on the passion part. Like, remember what I said in the beginning, the reason I did this is because I remembered, I remembered what it was like to start in an industry and literally have nothing built for you in that industry.

Mm-hmm. And I remember how sucky that was. Yeah. And how hard it was, and that I was reading sales books and marketing books, but nothing really worked for what I was doing. And I just wanted to help myself. Mm-hmm. Like it was self, it was selfish, but not selfish at the same time. I just didn't want anyone else to end up in business development and not have that.

And then what was kind of interesting, Tim was at the same time, at that exact same time, pretty well, I was about two years into my entrepreneurial journey, and so I showed up to everything super curious as a new entrepreneur. Mm-hmm. A long time business developer, but a new entrepreneur. And when we kind of put that spin on it too, where every Wednesday we did business development, but every, every Sunday I was talking with someone like you who's been in the business a long time, and I'm like, teach me.

I'm there learning. I'm excited. Right. Like, I'm, I'm just as excited and I'm learning just as much as everyone else. That you're absolutely right. It just became, it became one of the best parts of my day. Mm-hmm. Showing up to this microphone became one of the best parts of every day where I can just show up and have a good time and chat with people or teach something.

Yeah, and what was interesting, Tim was along that line, what I realized was my passion is actually in teaching. And I didn't really realize that, and I would've never learned that without podcasting. And so that quickly spun off into coaching, which is what I love to do. Now. I'll coach any opportunity. You come and need to coach.

I'm right there. Like I absolutely love the opportunity to build people up and teach people. And that was learned through podcasting. Yeah. Which is cool. Like the door is, it's opened for me.

Tim Truax: It's, and then that, that's what podcasting is. It is. It's a door opener. It is something that. You all of a sudden now find yourself down this very different path than you expected.

Yeah. And all it took was shoring up to a microphone and putting some effort in. It's, it's interesting that you talk about teaching and you discover that through, like I would assume that, and I was the same way with community. Like, I'm like, my why is community building, your why is teaching, right?

So sometimes it takes a retrospective look at what you're doing. There's a guy named Simon Sinek. He's an like an amazing entrepreneur and this, he has these books called Find Your Why. Discover Your Why. These, and I used a lot of his stuff, his Golden Circle idea about this idea of the why. It's not, I'm going to produce a podcast that's going to get 10,000 downloads or whatever.

It's like, you, I want to teach people. Yeah. That's, that is your why and it's so important to understand that when you're on this creative podcasting endeavor, because if you lose sight of that. That's when you get pod fade and that's when you start skipping episodes and that's when you lose the passion and all that and then it, and then it dissipates and disappears.

And so if you have a really solid grasp on that, why? That's where you can then use that as a guiding point or a North Star for other things in your life. And I've done the same thing with community. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: And it's cool too that you're speaking about community because you know, like with the teaching itself led into community.

Mm-hmm. So I actually ended up launching the Catalyst Club community. Yes, yes. I saw that. It's a business community for entrepreneurs, business developers and leaders to kind of come together and share the shit, right? Mm-hmm. Like we're all about sharing the shit, because we don't, we can't really do that on LinkedIn.

It's just a little bit too public for most of us. Yeah. So we need that private space to be able to do it. So that's what we built the Catalyst Club for. And it's becoming a fun place full of like education, community building once again, never set out to do that. Mm-hmm. Became part of the path, just like the door became obvious.

Yes. Once we got to a certain point. But like, like I said, nothing, nothing I have done since 2020. Would've been possible without launching into this podcast. Mm-hmm. Without going down this path. And so I'm so passionate about podcasting, which is why we're doing the podcast playbook series right now. Yeah.

'cause I want to just open that door up for anybody who wants to walk through it, who thinks it's impossible, who thinks they can't do it. I want them to hear this show and realize me. And you were right there. Yeah. We were right there. No experience, no audio editing, just an idea, and a dream and a passion.

We went for it and now, you know, your, you are 500 episodes in, I'm 250 episodes in, and it just took showing up every single week and putting something out there, sharing a little bit more of ourselves with the world. It's not easy though, and I, and I wanna maybe, I wanna maybe hit on that with you and, and I think maybe that's a little bit more towards what I was pushing at.

When I was asking you how do you get to 500 episodes, how do you get to 10 years? Because there's a lot of shitty days in podcasting too, where I've showed up to this mic Tim, I had a water pipe burst. I was in a fight with my, my, my fiance, or I was a fighting with a kid or just had a horrible day at work, or frankly was just exhausted, you know, as a new dad and maybe didn't sleep.

And yet I'm here showing up, recording it, but I still showed up and did it even though it was hard, even though I was sick, even though I had a hard day. And I just wanna chat a little bit with you about that. How do you show up even when it's hard? And I, I know that the passion falls into that, but like mm-hmm.

Talk to me a little bit about maybe one of your worst days of podcasting.

Tim Truax: Well, yeah. And there's, there's been so many. Yeah. Like, and I even find this with meetings that I have sometimes too in the podcast space where I'm like, oh, I, I just don't want to, and, or I've scheduled a guest like, oh, this is just, just not for me right now.

Like, I'm just in a, in a terrible mood. But then you kind of, you, you, you position yourself and you say, and then you, you finish the episode and you feel like a million dollars. Yes. And it's, it's such a cathartic experience. It really is. It's hard to, it's hard to explain unless you've experienced it. But it truly is a cathartic experience for me.

I, I have, I'll, I'll walk away from this conversation we're having today, and I'll be vibrating for five, five hours and I'll have all this new motivation. Same thing happened to me yesterday. I had a, a great conversation about this new AI software that's coming out, and I, I was calling friends and I was talking, wow, you gotta gotta check this out.

This is gonna be amazing. This is revolutionary. And I was just, and it motivated me in my day to day. It motivated me for pot, it motivated me. It just, it is a, a, a kind of this catalyst for creativity, but also motivation. And so. Showing up on the, the shitty days, I think are the, the, the ones you reflect back on that kind of solidify this as being, like I said, an anchor for you.

Yeah, it is. Because you can have that self-realization that if I, if I go and do this, I know the euphoric feeling I have afterwards. Yeah. And so sometimes I, I used to use it as, oh, I've had a really hard day. I'm exhausted, but I'm gonna get behind the microphone and I, I know I'm gonna feel better. Yeah.

But then you have the days where you have a shitty record or a guest that just didn't pan out the way you thought it was going to, and you're like, ah, that was, was not super great and I didn't love it. And then you get into the edit, you're like, ah, that happens. And I think sometimes you have to go through.

Those episodes and guests that don't really align with your vision for how you thought the conversation was going to go, because it informs you in the future you have to go through. As hard as it is, and as cliche as it is, you have to go through failure and hard times to get to the other side of it where you can now look back at a poor conversation, say, that informed me on this other conversation I'm having that isn't going great.

Now I can pivot it and make something out of it. And so I, it's, it's, it's hard to really explain, but I think for me, a lot of it on those shitty days on the, like I started it, I had no kids when I started my podcast. I have a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old now. Wow. And, and so I, I went through all of that.

Luckily, my cohosts were going through the same thing too, where they just had kids and all this stuff. Yeah. Like I, I recorded an episode when my daughter was a day old.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Tim Truax: And I think to be, to, and to be frank with this podcasting also requires a good exterior support system and a very understanding spouse, partner, whatever, very

Kelly Kennedy: understanding spouse and partner.

Oh my gosh, yes. 180000%. Yeah.

Tim Truax: That that's been a huge different maker because, but she also, my wife also realized too, that same thing. She would encourage me when I was on kind of those down days, whatever, just go, do it. Just go log in, do it. 'cause she knew I was gonna come up in a better mood.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Tim Truax: And I, I, I think again, it's because my podcasting is a personal intersection of a hobby of mine.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Tim Truax: And it is also become like this massive passion of mine and then has bled into other things my life. But also I think like you're saying. People have to realize too, when you're going through kind of those shitty times, there's other people also going through those, those shitty times.

And so that's that shared experience piece that I've talked about where it, you kind of have to go through the trenches of like the, the ups and downs of it. Yeah. To, to kinda realize, you know what's on the other side of this thing? And I think once you get to the other side, you'll look back quite fondly on those, those poor moments.

'cause they, they've informed so much of your future self.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and I think there's always gonna be a million reasons to quit. What's the reasons you don't? And those have to be more powerful than anything. And I know one of the drivers for me, Tim, is the fact that I know that we have thousands of listeners out there mm-hmm.

Who look forward to hearing our conversation, who are looking forward to hearing this right now. Who, who want to have that uplifting experience. You wanna have that motivation each week. And if I don't show up, I'm letting all of them down to Yeah. And so, it's bigger than me. A podcast becomes bigger than you.

It starts off as you, but it becomes so much bigger than you in ways that you could have never imagined, you know, to, let's talk about reach. And I think many people don't quite understand this. I think when I launched the business development podcast, I was gonna be happy if someone listened in Calgary.

Dude, we're listened to in 145 countries around the world. Every week we are in the top 100 in at least. 15 to 20 different countries around the world. A lot of the times, heck in that top 20 or top 30, 30 points, which is, I never thought that would even be possible, Tim, I didn't think that people would listen to me in the United States, let alone in Germany or, you know, Russia, China Australia, London, France.

Like I could have never remotely thought that we would have a worldwide audience, but that's exactly what happens.

Tim Truax: Yeah. Podcasting is, is incredible for that because you don't require a broadcast station, you don't require a TV channel. You put this out there and it is, it's one of the first mediums outside of like YouTube and all that where you can have this global reach without the global infrastructure that is required for, TVs, Netflix, all this kinda stuff.

And you can, you could put anything out there. And it also goes to show when you, when you're talking about global reach, that. Kinda the human experience behind these niche topics or whatever is relatively the same everywhere. Yeah. And people are just searching for someone that they can connect to. Yeah.

And like you said, with, with regards to your listeners and all that, that's like the important piece of, of the showing up, producing good content, but also the important piece of being a good host is like those people are coming back because they've, they've now found some common ground with you. And that is some of the subtleties of podcasting that is, is hard to understand is that it's that that connection that people make and the fact that they want to come back and hear your opinion and experience something with you.

Because I, I find podcasting is such an intimate medium because a lot of the times people have you on your headphones, AirPods, like you're right in someone's head. And it's one of the few things that you can kind of do passively as well. Like, I can drive a car and listen to a podcast. Yes. I can cut grass, wash dishes, whatever.

Yeah. I can't do that with Netflix or YouTube. No, really anything else. And so th that connection piece is so important. And, and I think it just goes to show like podcasts really baseline the idea that people are all searching and wanting to belong somewhere. Yeah. And whether they are in Europe or Asia or North America, south, wherever they like, there's this really common ground that podcasting has like really broke society down to, which is really cool.

And I think that the reach of that is, is so impressive. But it still comes back down to that fundamental, that core idea that people are searching for a connection point of shared experience. And the community ultimately.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And dude, like I As a, as a podcast lover myself, not just a podcaster, but a podcast lover myself, I have about two or three shows that every week I cannot wait to hear.

Mm-hmm. I cannot wait for them, Tim, like, I look forward to them. Yeah. Every Wednesday I'm like, okay, is it out yet? Like, I can't wait to listen to it. And you too will have people, and that's what they're for. They love, they love that connection with you. And I think maybe let's talk about it as a connector yourself.

The connection mm-hmm. That podcasting builds with its audience.

Tim Truax: Yeah, it, it's, it, it's, it's immeasurable sometimes too, because I would say when you get into, into podcasting, when you're looking at your connection, when you're looking at your analytics, statistics and all that kinda stuff a lot of the time, again, previously, like back in 15 and all that, it was really focused on downloads.

Like that's how you're measuring your connection really. Now it's, it's, to me, it's really measured on engagement and that is that connection piece that is how many people are actually engaging with in your comment section. You know, what's your listen through rate, like, how long are people staying on for?

It's the engagement metrics that really matter. But a lot of the time those engagement metrics are maybe 10% representation of, of your audience. Like that's how many people are actually going to physically engage, go and leave a review, leave a comment, interact with you on social media, whatever.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Tim Truax: But then there's this 90% of. Of untouched people that you have no idea what's happening. Yeah, and that's what's cool about podcasting is you can put something out there, Kelly, and there's someone somewhere that is even taking like one minute of this as inspiration and then doing something and then that, that has this butterfly effect everywhere.

And so that, that piece, that connection piece, it's so hard to measure, but it's there like it exists there. And it's, and like I said, people especially now in this world that it's never been more connected, but never felt more isolated. Totally. People are searching. So hard for a little piece of like, normalcy of connection, of shared experience.

And that's what podcasting to me provides is this kind of way to just say, here, I'm gonna decompress over this super niche thing. I have this, it's called the Major Wrestling Figure Podcast. It comes out every Friday. It is my, I've listened to it for eight years every Friday. It is just this connection point.

It's this anchor point in my week, and I love it. I listen to it. It comes out on Thursday night sometimes. Yeah. And I'll listen to it at 11 o'clock at night. Amazing. And it's, it's just been this thing, but like, I feel this connection and I've been, I got a chance to meet the guys that do it this past year too.

So cool. And so that was like a really cool experience for me. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's hard connection's. Hard to measure, but it is like ultimately such an important piece. In podcasting. That is, that's my, one of my favorite pieces of it. And it's sometimes you find out years later how you influence someone to do something.

Yeah. And it was through one simple episode that you could, that person could go right down to the minute of that specific thing and that influenced them and it changed their whole life. And that's such a powerful piece of podcasting. And really fundamentally, I think bringing people together in a world that is all sorts of polarized and isolated and, you know, you have this moment in time where you are influencing someone that has this cascading effect all over the place.

Kelly Kennedy: And. And the listeners influence us, right? Mm-hmm. And I love that you touched on the fact that like 10%, I think 10% would even be high, Tim, that might, might be high. I bet you it's closer to like four or 5% of people who listen to our shows actually ever reach out to us in any meaningful way. But I can tell you every single time I get a message in my inbox and email that says, Kelly found your show, changed my life, changed my business. Look forward to it every week. That is such a massive mm-hmm. Motivator. It's like puts the biggest smile on any podcaster's face to see that the work they're doing actu people actually care. Right? Yeah. And, and, and I wanted use this segment into the fact that podcasting is actually really lonely.

And I think that's surprising. It's, I think that's surprising to a lot of people because we're out here talking with tons of people engaging, showing up every single week. But like most podcasters feel really, really isolated.

Tim Truax: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very much so. And that's why in a, in a large part, we created PodSummit.

Yes. Was to get over that hurdle of the isolation of podcasting. It is, it's a medium where you're always talking, always talking to people. But like you said, it, it's a very lonely thing and especially as an independent podcaster, someone that is doing a lot of the process on your own. You're grinding through like the, of a 10 hour production for an episode or six hours, it was only an hour there where you're talking to someone, there's another five hours or eight hours where you are just grinding away at it.

And especially when you're doing it from like zero knowledge, you're also grinding away at learning. Yeah. You can get, there's YouTube videos in this, but I think a lot of times you just have to like, it's dive head first into time and just, just do it. Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's time served inside of, a shitty edit or whatever.

And, and so that to, it's, it's, it's one of those things that it, it's so lonely, like I said, that we were like, we need to try to fix this loneliness piece of podcasting. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's where, where, looking back on my why and my podcasting being community and this hole that we see in the greater podcasting community, we're like, we can, there's something we can do here.

And that's really where PodSummit comes from.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. And, and kudos because it's super needed and especially in Canada. Yeah. We're, we're gonna get into that shortly because Canada is just a different place in general. We're just smaller, like, like unfortunately that's just the way it is. And so there's not a lot of stuff for us.

But, I, I, I wanna pick your brain. 'cause like I said, you know what, I talked to you about this before. You're probably at most the 10th podcaster I've ever interviewed on this show in, at this point, 160 plus interviews. And definitely one of the longest, if not the longest podcaster I've ever interviewed, like that's how small this world is.

That's how little Yeah. Other podcaster interactions is. I think that's surprising. And I actually found that when I became a new podcaster. A lot of other podcasters weren't really willing to help me. I would like reach out, you know, and, and I didn't realize how busy they were at that time. Mm-hmm. I think that's maybe one of the challenges of podcasters, especially independent ones, is most of us are working our asses off, trying to make sure we're getting our shows out to the world, keeping our sponsors happy, doing all that stuff.

But I did find it as, at least in the beginning, a bit of a protected space. I think it's opening up now. I'm doing my best to open that up and teach my knowledge out there to the world. But there, there did seem to be, at least in the beginning, a bit of a protectionism about I'm not gonna teach you because I don't want the competition in the space.

Tim Truax: Yeah. I, I think there's a lot less of that now. Like we saw that kind of early, early days in the Star Wars space. There was a lot of protectionism around even like content ideas and how people are, are developing shows and guests and 'cause like your guest pool when you get into like the niche space is pretty small.

Yep. And so you, you end up trading off similar people and it's who can get that first? And especially in the, the pop culture news space, there's a lot of like, who can get this thing out first? It's the same as normal news space. It's like who can get the headline first? Yeah. And so there's a lot of protectionism around in the early days around like the content.

I personally have never found too, too much of in and around kind of the protectionism of like the podcasting space in general. I find that podcasters are some of the most curious people. Out there because they're doing a show. They're, they're asking questions and they're just curious about other people's ideas.

And so I've always found them willing to share. It's just, to be honest with you, the hardest thing sometimes is just finding the right person to ask the right question to. Yeah. Yeah. Because if, if anyone pulled up and said, Hey, Tim, I want, I wanna jump and I do this all the time with people, like, I wanna jump on and just talk about podcasting.

Absolutely. I have no problem communicating what I do and like what I, my process in my workflow is probably not what you want, but what's what works for me. But you can take pieces of my workflow Yeah. And insert it into your. Kind of personalized, idealized workflow and all that too. And so I personally haven't had that experience.

And again, coming back to pos, that's something that we're really trying to push is this idea of, you know, let's have these conversations. I'd say the biggest silos that you'll see Yeah. Are the independent versus the industry. And I like, yeah. I don't, and I personally haven't experienced that. Yeah, it's hard.

So it's harder in, in Canada to kind of get into that wedge because it's so small. Sure. But like my experience with larger networks and all that has, has been nothing but positive and very, very open.

Kelly Kennedy: Cool. Cool. Yeah, I, I can tell you I definitely did experience that interest in the beginning of the BDP, and yes, maybe it was the fact that I was reaching out to other business podcasts and maybe business is a little more competitive, but trying to get help in the beginning or people to talk to you or just like riff off of dude was like almost impossible for me.

Wow. That's launching the bp. Yeah. Yeah. And may like, maybe that's just the difference of like somebody who's creating a show in the business space versus creating a show in the fun space. Mm-hmm. Right. I I, I do think like the more that I go down this path, the more that I've wanted to open up and do more things.

So we launched a live show, which will eventually turn into a podcast that's called Authentic Hustle. We do it on LinkedIn. Cool. It's a little bit more open-ended. We can kind of talk about pretty well anything we want for the most part, and that's a lot of fun. It's also a group dynamic, which I, I hadn't really done before.

But the more I go down the podcasting space, the more I want to try more types. Yeah. Like I don't know if that happened to you, but like it's like I've done the business space, I've done kind of like authenticity business space, and it's like the further I go down this path, it's like, okay, I wanna do something fun now I just wanna like do something that's like comedy or entertainment or whatever, like.

It makes you wanna try all of the different avenues to see which one you like better. Just like, kind of like, just like in the beginning you're, you find your passion and then you find, oh, there's more things here than just what I started doing.

Tim Truax: No, absolutely. And I think as a podcaster, your best guests are sometimes podcasters Yes.

That aren't talking about the thing that they podcast about. Yeah. It's, I I love coming on podcasts like this and getting outside of my comfort zone and just talking about things because one, a podcaster, like I said, very curious people in general. Two, they always have something to say. Yeah. Re regardless of, of the topic generally.

And so when I was looking at kind of different people to bring on, I had someone say to me, a producer say to me, just go reach out to other podcasters. 'cause they're, they have the equipment, they're always willing to talk, they're curious, they wanna be a part of something. And it's, it's a way for them to get their voice.

Because another thing, great thing with podcasting. When it comes to this sharing of, of voices and all that is when you start to cross pollinate across different genres, that's when you actually see the value in bringing in a, a guest is because now all of a sudden, there's, there's people that listen to Star Wars that also have like a Venn diagram that overlaps with business to be like, oh, you know, Tim was on Kelly's podcast.

Maybe I'll go check out Kelly's podcast. And so you're, you're no longer competing for the same crowd. Yes. That's what we found early days with, in the pop culture space is, you know, we'd guess all the time on other podcasting, but you're, the, the Venn diagram is like almost a, just a circle. There's not a lot of like the overlap of audience that aren't inside that little space, and so you're not bringing in a whole bunch of new people.

But we found when we went outside of that space was like, let's go to, comedy or let's go to and bring someone in that loves Star Wars, but is, has a, a journalism podcast or something like that. Yeah. We found that super valuable too, because. It be, it becomes about just having that, that interaction and knowing you're gonna have a great conversation, but also bringing in different audiences and intersection of genres too.

Kelly Kennedy: And this conversation, like we're not really talking about business. Like this isn't the conversation today, but. I wanted to do a podcasting series that would help everybody. So even though Podcast Playbook is at least 0.1, part one is should you start a business podcast? And then I kind of preface that.

Okay. Everything from this point forward is podcast in general. Yeah. But this part, since we are a business show, this part is should you start a business show. But heck, if you wanna start any show, keep with us. 'cause this is what this is. And the heck, you know, this is probably gonna be one of the longest guest episodes we've done in a long time, Tim.

And the reason being is that there's so much here between mm-hmm. I wanted to chat podcasting with you because you just have so much insight into that space. And then, you know, I wanted to lead into obviously what are some of the pitfalls? Like you just have your ear to so many different shows. Hosting Quad Summit.

Talk to me a little bit about the Canadian podcast landscape. Yeah. What's working and what challenges are we facing as Canadians?

Tim Truax: I think there's the one, the biggest challenge, we honestly, is having Canadian listeners listen to Canadian podcasts and the, the super saturation of American content. You see like a lot of protect protectionism inside of like Netflix and the, the video space and all that with the Canadian laws and all that.

It doesn't exist really for, for podcasting, right? There's, you know, you go to, to CBCs, one of the biggest producers of Canadian content, and there's a bunch of other sonar and a few other places that are producing some awesome stuff. And then you get down to the independent podcasters and all that. But because when you look at the Canadian charts, it's all American podcasters.

There's very few, it's very, it's not really punctuated too much by kind of big Canadian shows. But one of the big things that we're seeing right now is this. Pushing back against American content against America in general. This kind of bi Canadian, or whatever you want to call it Yeah. Has really started to help this idea of people turning and looking at Canadian podcasts and, you know, listening to those more as opposed to listening to the American ones.

The other thing too that I think is super in it is I've seen kind of this increase is people wanting to look for a Canadian experience inside of whatever genre or niche that you're inside of. Because the American experience and the European experience and the, they're all different, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Than the pure Canadian experience. And so like the biggest hurdle we have is getting Canadian people to listen to Canadian podcasts. Mm-hmm. And also we have this, because we're such a small population, that's where things like monetization becomes a lot more difficult. Yeah. Because the threshold to get across it's right now, and I think it's incorrect, but it's 10,000 downloads is kind of that threshold.

Yeah. That most marketers or people looking to spend money on podcasts are looking at. In a Canadian, small Canadian podcast with a Canadian audience, that is very difficult to do. And so that becomes very hard. And so you need to like have, American listeners and European listeners and all this kinda stuff.

And so that, that plays a role in our small population size. The geography of Canada is difficult as well. It is so spread out with so few people as like the Toronto experience is different than the Calgary experience. The Calgary experience is different than what you see in Halifax and all that. And so it's trying to find a way to kind of close the geography gaps in Canada as well.

The other big thing in Canadian podcasting right now is the lack of funding for podcasts to get serious podcasts off the ground or even independent podcasts. Off the ground in a way where they can support or themselves to a degree when it comes to editing the software and the expense that comes, comes behind it.

All website, these type of things. Yeah. There's not a ton of funding. There's some great places like the iso, which is the Indigenous Screen Office, which does some great funding tell Story Hive out here in Alberta and bc they do some awesome funding of podcasts where you can apply. There's lot less government support and so really looking at more safeguards inside of the government, which, gives tax breaks and access to things like film and TV and e-gaming and all this kinda stuff.

Podcasting is still sa outside of that ecosystem of broad support for independent podcasters, for semi independent podcasters or small production houses and all that too. Money, to be honest with you, is a, a big problem in Canada and that's why a lot of Canadian creators. Can't quite make a living at this just yet where you go to the flips to the south of the border.

So a lot of people making a really great living, just podcasting, bringing content to the space. There's a lot less of that in Canada. There's a really great article PO published by Katie Lore. She does Pod the North that she talks about this kind of cycle that we're in with regards to the saturation of American content, the lack of funding and how Kennedy needs to figure out how to break out of this cycle.

And again, coming back to a big reason why we started PodSummit was to try to break down some of those and have those conversations and kind of create this homegrown event that is promoting an amplifying podcasters and also talking about the hard issues that we're seeing. How are people funding podcasts because people are doing it.

Yeah. How are people making money at podcasts? How are people short-cutting some of the kind of the, the audience issues that you're seeing inside of co inside of Canada as well. And so yeah, like all, all, all that being said, it's a lot harder. Like, I guess the foundational piece, it's a lot harder to be a, a professional podcaster or even a podcaster that's making a decent living in Canada.

A lot of podcasts don't even offset their own costs.

Kelly Kennedy: No.

Tim Truax: Yeah, and like when you start adding up costs, you're like 300 bucks for a website for a year. You're hosting fees, a hundred to $300, some gear stuff, some editing software and all that. Like you're, you're north of a thousand dollars just to run a relatively simple podcast.

Yeah. On a yearly basis if you want to have all those connection points. And that does not count any of your personal time invested in all of this too.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no. That's just expense.

Tim Truax: That's just pure expense. And so finding ways to offset that is often the goal. And sometimes people just. If they can't do that, they have to stop the show.

Yeah. And so that's some of the limiting factors that we have in Canada right now is like the longevity of shows. If you're looking for this for even to be like, like even minimally or just cost effective, it's, it's hard to do. I know lots of people that invest a ton of time into podcasts and just aren't seeing the revenue generation out of it.

But I will put one caveat on that. One positive caveat on that is that, and you've seen this and you've, you've already talked about this idea got the kind of the podcast matrix Mina me, one of the, my buddies that we talk a lot about this and is sometimes you need to invest in something to get something else to discover where like you actually can monetize this thing.

Yeah. Monetizing a podcast is very hard, but finding revenue streams that are generated by the podcast by proxy. That happens quite frequently. Or ideas like for me as a podcaster, I never really generat any revenue, but now we own this company called PodSummit that is, is doing work, right? Yes. I'd never anticipated that, but I would've never bought this company.

I would've never had you Not. The journey started the journey. If my journey was, the podcast needs to make money. I probably would've stopped. Yeah. But I always had this idea that there's more to come from it. And so sometimes you cannot see the direct line of sight to that monetization aspect and how you convert actually on the time invested in all of this.

Stephen Bartlett, he, he does diary, CEO, fantastic podcast. He says he, it is the largest capital sink that he has, and he has all kinds of businesses. He is a multimillionaire, all stuff, but he invests so much time and effort into his podcast because of what it generates outside of the podcast itself.

Yeah. And he's a very successful entrepreneur, invests an incredible amount of money and time into the podcast, but he says it generates no capital for him. The immediate podcast, like the revenue from the ads and all that kind of stuff, it's all about what comes as a part of that. And so I think too.

In Canada in general, because there's a harder time monetizing against the audience. We have to have this broader conversation about what does podcasting bring that are what do I consider, like an intangible, like something that you cannot physically measure at the onset, but then all of a sudden, like you probably, you're getting clients, you're, you're starting to teach all, you're starting to, you know, generate revenue from teaching.

You're starting to generate revenue from having this this community now. You know what I mean? Like, so it's all those things that cascade out of it. That would've never happened without the podcast itself.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. You're absolutely right and doors will open for you. Mm-hmm. Like when you start going down this path, people will reach out to you and say, Hey, I have this opportunity, or, I heard you on this show, or I heard you have this expertise in this, let's chat.

Right. Like, absolutely. You nailed that. I do teach though, Tim, that all podcasts should start. Especially Canadian podcasts with the idea of generating revenue. So when you pick your hosting platform, make sure you pick one that allows you to insert ads. Yeah. Make sure that you set yourself up for that opportunity.

Because I do think that there's another piece to this that a lot of people are missing. You're absolutely right. Big networks. They're looking at download numbers. I realized very quickly that joining a podcast network was not going to be the best avenue for me. What was going to be the best avenue for me and the business development podcast was to create my own advertising packages and market them my business, develop them myself.

Right? And that's the, and that's the path we went. And it worked very, very well because we knew we had a niche professional audience of executives and leaders from around the world, and that's who we could present for our customers. So even though, we were pretty well averaging just around 10,000 downloads a month.

Not per episode. Mm-hmm. A month, right? On all episodes. But we realized that we could market that and say, Hey, you know, we'll put you in X amount of episodes. For this much per month. How does that sound? We'll make sure that we get you in front of, you know, the right eyes. Not just a total number of people, but the right number of people.

So there's other angles that Canadian podcasters can take here to still monetize their shows. I think that's important. Yes, there's the traditional ways through these you know, marketing companies or, or large scale advertisers. You too can market yourself. I think that's important.

Yep. And I think a lot of podcasters have to go that route or start exploring it. It might be best for them.

Tim Truax: Well, absolutely. And like you, like you said too, the, the important piece there is more the engagement. You have a very focused audience, right? Yeah. A niche audience. I use that word a lot because it's such an important piece of podcasting, is that you can go to an advertiser and say, well, I have this many, 'cause the advertisers want, they need a metric, right?

Yeah. They need something that's measurable. Measuring engagement scores. It's not something that they're gonna take to their manager and say, look, look at these engagement. Like, it's just, they need to, how many eyeballs are we getting on this is just traditional marketing. Like there's a billboard.

How many cars go by this thing? Correct. Yeah. You know how like, what 3% of people look up at a billboard? I have no idea. Probably. Probably one. We promised you 10,000 cars go by it. Yeah. Like what is like and so, but they just want a hard metric.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Tim Truax: But like you're saying, you can, you can take yourself, market yourself and say, you know, I've got 300 people that are highly invested in this, this podcast that I can, convert into purchasers of this like really niche thing that I've been talking about.

And so yeah, there's absolutely all sorts of different avenues, like the traditional, like programmatic ads and all that kinda stuff that get inserted by a hosting platform will generate very minimal revenue, unless you are, to be honest with you, like well, north of 50,000 an episode. That's right. Yeah.

That's when you can actually start to convert and make, and make serious money. But this idea of host red Ads and the trust that the listeners have now put in, you have become super important, at least from my perspective, is that yes, this comes back to this idea that people come back for the host. Well, people trust the host.

That's why they come back. That's right. And if the host is out there saying, now, oh, I use this product, or I, you know, now affiliated with this brand or whatever, those people automatically leap from, I don't know what this is to, I trust Kelly's opinion, therefore I now trust this brand. Yeah. And that is something that is becoming an emerging as being super important.

And this is beyond the influencer, right? This is beyond like, I use this product because someone paid me. This is like, no, I, I, I am a, a staunch user of, of this thing and I highly recommend it. And good host reads are people that actually use the product. Correct. And then you translate that over to 300 people that now are intimately connected to you and intimately trust you.

And they say, let me try this out. And then that's when you really start to, even with a small group of people, and I say small in a relative sense, have you ever been in a room with 300 people? It's a, that's a lot of people. Yeah, just a lot of people. Yeah. Like, it's like even a hundred people, you're like, whoa, there's a lot of people.

And you're like.

Kelly Kennedy: There was a statistic I found once Tim, that showed that a hundred people a year filled, like, I wanna say like a 30 or 40,000 person stadium by the end or a hundred people, a hundred people per day listening to your show worked out to be a stadium jam packed by the end of the year.

Tim Truax: Oh yeah. And like when we planned my wedding, my wife's like, oh, we have 250 people invited. I was like, whoa, that's way, that's way too many. But then when I say, you know, when people say, oh, I only have 250 downloads. That's a, people have to reorient themselves on, like this thing of downloads and people listening.

200, a hundred, a hundred people. If you could get a hundred people's ears Yes. For, for an hour, an hour a week, that when people have zero time for anything where attention spans are three seconds long, but you have people, a hundred people that show up every week and listen to you talk for an hour, you have an hour, you know, you work.

That, that's a ton of airtime hours that you're putting out there, that people are listening to. The average swipe on a, an Instagram post is like a second to three seconds. I think that's right. But then you have people through a hundred people sitting down with you for an hour, like that to me is the metric.

Yes. The invested, engaged hours. It's immeasurable. Like, I dunno how you measure that properly and consistently so that you could take that to a marketer. But that's what people have to start to understand is that piece fit, is the engagement level of what podcasts are bringing the, in a world where like the only place that people sit and do one thing is in a movie theater, I find.

Yes. And that's almost going away.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right.

Tim Truax: People used to watch Netflix. You're on your phone, you're up, you're getting pop, you're doing this uhhuh, you're doing that. You know what I mean? But like still podcasting, even though it is like a passive, listen, you're still engaged with that.

When I'm cutting a lawn, I'm not, I'm not focused on my lawn. Nope. I'm focused on what's happening. That's right. But I'm also getting this thing done at the same time. Yes. And so it, it's, it's such a cool medium for that. That so cool. It can be so impactful, even. Beyond the 10,000, 5,000. You know what I mean?

Like Yeah. I think a good couple hundred people. It's a lot of people.

Kelly Kennedy: It is. And I think you hit on the point that like we know in business development and in business that trust is built through interaction over time. Mm-hmm. Right? It's the time. Time is the metric. And that's why people trust podcasters so much because they've spent.

Tens of thousands of hours. Yes. With some of us really yeah. When you really consider, like if you were to listen to the business development podcast right now, from show one to where we're at today, it's over eight full days of content. Yeah. For you, you've gotta be pushing up on 16 full days of content.

That's a long time. 16 - 24 hour, you know, days is pretty frigging incredible. It's, it's wild. A sheer amount of.

Tim Truax: I think I did that recently. I think it was at 16 or 18 days of, of pure content, just averaging it out and it, like, it would take, you have to sit, it's, it's wild. It's insane. Close to a month of content.

And so yeah. That, that is, it's trust in the person. Yes. And like there's a responsibility as a podcaster two, that like, as you're building that trust, of course, that you, you're giving and you're being responsible. You honor it.

Kelly Kennedy: You respect it.

Tim Truax: Exactly. Yeah. And the content that you produce it you're producing something that is out of a place of, you know, you're doing your best to produce the best, most truthful and respectful and responsible content that you can too.

So this, that reflects back on us too. Like as, as hosts, we have a responsibility to duty, to produce the best thing we can and the most accurate thing we can. Especially when you start to move into like the political space. Yes. The new space and all that. This is where you have a big influence. Yeah, big influence.

Yeah. And sometimes people aren't even. Like journalists are trained in all this. They're providing commentary, but they have to be careful what style and how they present all of this. Because you are now influencing and, and garnering trust from people. Right? And so they're gonna walk away from this and potentially make bigger decisions with it too.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right. No, there, there is an immense responsibility that comes with being a podcaster too, that we all have to take into consideration. And you don't think about it at first, but you sure as heck do once you know. Absolutely. You're sitting around a hundred episodes and you know, you got your a hundred people every week.

You do. You have a massive, a massive influence on that. Tim, lead us into PodSummit. You know, we've been talking podcasting, we've talking challenges wins. Dude, you create the largest podcast event in Canada at this point. Walk us through how did you fall into PodSummit?

What is PodSummit? And obviously you have an event here that's gonna be coming up really, really soon for people that are listening to this. This is a special episode. I'm fitting this in 'cause I want as many people to attend PodSummit as possible. Especially my, my future podcasters. My current podcasters, and anybody looking to connect or meet their fellow podcasters.

Yes, it's a cool event to do that at. But please. You kind of fell into PodSummit. Walk us into it. How did that, how did that acquisition happen for you?

Tim Truax: Yeah, it was an interesting one and it'll spark some of the, the business aspects of, of your brain there. Kelly, too, as we, we chat through it. So coming back to this idea of community continue to come back to this 'cause this is my why, this is my why in podcasting.

And we, we kind of touched on a little bit here about this isol, the isolationism of, of podcasting. And I've experienced this through, through my whole journey. And then I reflect back on why I did my podcast, the community piece. And I said, well, what if I shifted that why over to podcasting in general?

And I, I saw this void. I was like, I, I want to go down to some of the events in the States, but they're harder to get to. And the reflection of the experience isn't the same because it's an American experience. It's a very large experience and I just don't feel that it vibes with what I'm doing right now.

Yeah. And so I looked at that and then I had an opportunity to. Just through the passion of, of, of pop culture and all that. I reached out to the Calgary Comment Entertainment Expo, and I said, Hey, I'd like to put together a podcast stage for you. It was simply just bringing on shows to do live records.

They'd done this in the past, but they were kind of moving away from it, and I said, I'd love to take this over and just do it. So I did that and I met quite a few people through doing that. And I'm in, in a roundabout way. I, I, in 2019, I attended PodSummit as a, as an attendee. That's so cool. And then I met the owner of it, then a guy named Ernest, fantastic Human, and I, I called him up.

Just through the like LinkedIn connection there and I said, Hey, I'm putting together the stage at the Calgary Expo. Do you have anyone I wanna bring on someone that can talk about podcast creation in general, not just have live podcast shows. And he said, yeah, I talked to these people and all that. And then I suss out a few other people and then he kind of messaged me back and said, Hey, like I'm looking to offload PodSummit.

I don't like, I've moved, I've moved on from it. The pandemic really kind of killed the momentum behind it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Tim Truax: I'm looking to offload it. Would you be interested in it? I'm looking for someone that wants to take it over and kind of run with it. And I remember reading it and I spun around on my chair to my wife and I said, we should buy this.

And so in a matter of a month we had put together the contract. And the sales and the dollars and cents of it all. And we basically purchased the intangibles from him, like the the.com and the social handles and some of the goodwill that was still there from the 2017 2019 version. And then once we got ahold of it, we said, all right, well, like what are we doing here?

What do we want to create? We, we want to create a collaborative focal point for podcasters. How do we do this? How, how are we going to make this experience different from anything else that anyone's had? That was kind of our starting point with all this. Yeah. And we said, alright, we want this to be an experience.

We don't want this to be a conference. We want this to be an event. We want this to be immersive. We want this to be a place where people come and they feel completely and utterly immersed in the creative experience that is podcasting. How do we do that? To me, that starts with a venue. And so once we had kind of the nuts and bolts of the business aspect of it figured out, which took us a couple months, we said, all right, we're gonna pick a date, we're gonna pick a time, and we're gonna pick a venue That is our, our number one thing.

And it's not too dissimilar from like creating a podcast, right? You're, you're trying to create something, a brand. You, you have to pick a lane. You have to really focus around the, kinda, the creation of it to improve the chances that this becomes something is unique inside of the space. And so when we looked at a date, we said, okay, we're going September.

September is commonly a reset month for people. It is, I think next to January, it is probably the next month where people are like, kids back to school.

Kelly Kennedy: It absolutely is.

Tim Truax: Yeah, we're coming outta summer holidays, all this. So we said, we want it there. Yeah. We want this to be part of the, the second new year knew me style of approach to people's kind of reset in their lives.

And then we said the venue, no hotels, no conference centers, no schools, no white walls, no big whatever. Getting away from all that. So we chose this awesome venue in downtown gallery called the Grand. It is this beautiful 110 year old theater. Wow. It's got a vibe to it. It's had stories told there for over a century, and we want to be part of that story.

And so that was our non-negotiable. We said, okay, we're going to create this space again. It's all about creating a space parallels podcasting so much, right? Yeah. You're, you're creating a, a unique space for people to come and then it was really just about creating the connection points. 'cause you think finding listeners is hard.

Try finding podcasters. No kidding. Although they're all there. Yeah. It's really hard to get that initial kind of kickstart of the conversations and promote to those folks as well about what we're building because the first year, whether it was with partners, sponsors, or even attendees, we're purely selling an idea.

Yes. An idea. Come and be a part of this event. Trust us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that was a hard thing to do for someone that has one, no sales experience and two, no experience in being an entrepreneur or building a business or a brand real, like I built a brand, I guess around the, the podcast, but this is a little bit different.

A little bit bigger, right? A little bit different. Yeah. And so we kinda just forged for it in the same path that I did with the podcast. It was just like trial and error. Trial and error. Success and failure. Success and failure. And then we're able to execute this incredible, very community oriented event last year in September.

And the feedback we got from it was exactly what we wanted is this. This felt more than. Just a typical gathering and going and seeing awesome panels and live shows and all that. It was really a community building exercise and experience. Yes. Yeah. And that's what we wanted. We wanted to bridge those gaps between industry and independent.

We wanted to really push the narrative on the idea that the, there's such an importance to shaking a hand, giving a hug, having an in person conversation, and really reflecting that experience that, that we all have after we podcast is to have that in person, to have that like euphoric moment where you've had a really great conversation with someone where you've tended an awesome speaking session.

It's like, I feel motivated. Just go and do. And that's what we're really focused around this year too, is this idea of just do the thing. Yeah. And just get there. Do it. Get that experience, that motivation, that understanding, and just plow forward through it. And so this whole thing has been really an experiment in community building.

An experiment in pushing the idea of what this kind of collaborative focal point is and the experience that people have in it. 'cause like I've come back to this idea again, I'm a big proponent of like shared experience in community building. Once you've had a shared experience, then things start to roll.

I see people that didn't know each other before pods I on LinkedIn supporting, being on each other's podcasts and all that. It's a very, very cool thing for me to see. And so, yeah, fundamentally what we're building with podcasting or PodSummit is a place for podcasters to come, have that collective experience, see some panels, check out some live shows.

We have a great reception. It's just mingle and be a part of the bigger podcasting and creative community.

Kelly Kennedy: I think one of the coolest things about this particular event and I talked about it before when we talked about the Catalyst Club and what we're building. There is a room full of people who get it, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. PodSummit is a room full of people who get it, who get what you're going through, who get the challenges of podcasting, who know if you've showed up for 200 episodes. They know how damn hard that is. Yeah. You know, there are a room of people who actually get you that you will have probably no other real opportunity.

To be in the same room with, especially not on that scope with that many people. Mm-hmm. Like, I think from like a community building standpoint, from putting people together who really get each other and can build real relationships based upon that, there might not be a better event, frankly.

Tim Truax: Yeah, yeah.

And this is, and this goes back to this idea of like the, the intangibles. You, you just never know what's going to come out of being a part of an experience like that. And some people come in, they, they have, growth through the, the sessions and all that. But then they made like one connection or have one experience that completely changes how they approach podcasting.

Totally. Yeah. We have a lot of people too that come, that are looking to implement podcasting into their kind of grander business portfolio. How do I platform myself? How do I create a small, a authority in this space that I am trying to grow? How can I use podcasting to give myself a voice inside of a community?

Yeah. And so it's all about that exploration too. Like we're, we're, we're not here giving answers. We're here providing a forum for discussion. Yeah. And that to me is an important piece too. And every, every person that's on stage save a couple are also Canadians. That's a very big focus for us too, is having the Canadian experience relayed onto the attendees.

And so the person that's struggling with monetization here has someone they can look at that's been successful inside of Canada. And that's the Canadian experience end of it. And that's kind of our unique spin. Inside of Canada is that we are portraying the Canadian experience and then we have a few people from the outside that come in that, that kind of contextualize the Canadian experience inside of the global ecosystem.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. It really is a place to come and meet the who's who of Canadian podcasting. A hundred percent. I I love that you're doing this. I love that it's in Alberta. Yeah. And I just love too that it's done by someone who gets it. Right? Like a lot of these events tend to be done by people who just see the money.

Mm-hmm. Right? It's like, oh, events make money. Great. We'll do that. Right? But it's the same. But, but, but, but then you find somebody like you who's like, we need this. I've been in podcasting 10 years. I'm not even out. I'm still doing this shit. We need this event. And for you to be the one doing it, Tim, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Tim Truax: Well, I appreciate that man. And it's always been important for, for me to do something like this and have that lived experience. I've never wanted to be one. And I, I think like, and I think a lot of podcasts just struggle with this idea of imposter syndrome and all that. Yes. Like it, that's a, it's a big piece of, of getting over that hurdle of, you know, why, why someone come and listen to me.

It's the same, like, I have that same syndrome with, with PodSummit, but I do have this backing where I, I've, I've lived this experience and so I feel that when I'm talking about it, when I'm organizing it and putting it together, it's a, it's a reflection of my experience too. And I try very hard. We have a, an awesome board of advisors too that kind of help guide things like the programming and that, so it's not just a pure reflection of our small team here.

It's actually a much broader reflection of what people's experience are, what they're looking for in the programming, and how to kind of motivate the individuals to, to kind of move beyond a very, very small or even their individual podcast experience. And kind of moving into this, this much grander one, because the thing that's awesome about.

Canadian podcasting. And I know you've had kind of like a, an up and down experience with it, is that everyone I've met is so curious and so willing just to be like, hell yeah, I'll jump on a call with you, or let's do this. Yeah. Or let's go over here and talk. Like even some of the folks that are in some of the higher up positions that do attend, they're the nicest people.

I like, honestly. It's just jump on a call. Let's talk, let's hash this out. And yeah, it's, it's very, very cool the willingness and I think the people's generosity with their time as well. Yeah. They're willing to kind of give up in the pursuit of something bigger. And I think that's kind of a common thing I saw last year in the community is like there's this idea of the pursuit of this bigger vision for Canadian podcasting and it's just trying to navigate through all of that.

And this event just provides a point in time where we can have those conversations where we can kind of facilitate. Some of those really, really important connection points and kind of bring something to the, the Canadian podcasting ecosystem that just wasn't there before.

Kelly Kennedy: And you know, the other side to this as well is that there's something that you can learn from these events, like every single event you go to.

Mm-hmm. There's something that will absolutely change the way you do podcasting or the way you think about something forever. Right. I'm a huge advocate. If you don't know what you don't know, I'll regularly be riding in a car with, with my partner with Shelby and just saying like, what do I not know right now that's holding me back?

Because guaranteed, there's that one thing that if I just knew it would absolutely change my life, change my business, change my podcast forever. An event like this with the caliber of people you have up there on stage teaching. There's no way you don't walk away from this event without, without something that's gonna blow your mind.

Tim Truax: Well, we're, we're very focused on that too. Like we are, we're very specific about our programming and one of the things we always communicate to, to those that are up on stage is we have kind of a couple things. We don't, we don't put any really guardrails up. We say You are the expert, you talk about the thing, but we always kinda want to be, it's Canadian focused, forward looking, and we always want people to be able to take at least one tangible thing away.

Like someone you can pluck one sentence or one idea. Yeah. Take it out and you could walk out into our lobby area, jump on your laptop, and immediately implement it. Yes. That's very, very important to us. It's not about abstract talks about certain things, it's about workflows. It's about getting into the weeds of the discussion.

Like I said, there might not always be an answer, but it makes you think in a different perspective. And that's where the curiosity is so important with podcasters is when you walk into this event, you have to drop. Some of those preconceived notions of what you know and what you don't know exactly what you're talking about is you have to be open to the idea that you don't know everything.

'cause no one does. None of us do no doing this for a decade. And I, I'm still learning every single day from people. And that's an attitude that that's, it's sometimes hard to try to put out there, but you have to kind of drop those. And we really try with our keynotes in that, especially both our, our keynotes aren't, or at least are one this year and even last year.

The talks aren't about podcasting. They're about motivation, inspiration. Mm-hmm. Getting inside your comfort zone. Jesse Lipscomb, who's our keynote for this year, his focus is on the art of doing. Yeah. And he's, as, he has podcast experience, but it's not about podcasting. And so it's trying to take people outside of that comfort zone and really shake them up at the, at the onset.

And then you get into kind of some of the, the hard and fast things, but it's about bringing in keynotes too, that are able to convey messages as opposed to just pure techniques or, you know, people coming in. How do I monetize my podcast? There's not an answer for that. No. But if you listen through all the experiences, you might be able to start to map your own path through this.

Yes. Yeah. 'Cause it's all individualized. There's no silver bullet for how to do this thing. You have to take bits and pieces and what works for you, what works for your audience, and what works for your timing and all that too. And so it's totally just so individualized. But you can learn so much from the community when you're building out that, that whole workflow and what you're doing inside of podcasting.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, exactly. And, you know, let's talk about that monetization part, right? You might walk in there saying. I'm looking for that thing, or I, I want to know how to monetize my podcast. And you might not walk out with the exact roadmap, but you might walk out with the knowledge on how to start doing that roadmap for yourself.

Exactly. You don't know. You don't know what you're gonna find, but you're gonna find something if you're there looking for something.

Tim Truax: Exactly. And that's, that's often like add to say anyone's experience when they're going into an event or a conference or whatever is that you have to be, you have to have the idea that you're not gonna get the answer, but you're going to get ideas that will eventually get you to the answer.

I think that's one of the, the hardest things to, for people moving into, in coming into a conference is that that expectation has to slightly change when you walk in the door. Like we have, we have sessions, we're gonna have sessions on monetization, on funding your podcast. We're also have sessions on, on using your voice and AI and video and Canadian metrics and all these type of things.

But you have to go into with this idea that what they did, I can't just copy that. I can't just take that blueprint. Like you said, you have to build your own blueprint. You have to build your own path. But the only way you're gonna understand how to do that is by listening to others' experiences.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Lead us into it. You know, they're probably hearing this, I wanna say late July, early August, but what we're talking about is coming up real soon here. Yes. It's September 19th and 20th, 2025 in Calgary at the Grand. Is that correct? That's correct, man. Nailed it.

Tim Truax: Perfect. How do they get tickets?

How do they get tickets? So you can go to our website. They are, we have three paths. What we've done to is we don't tier anything. So what we effectively have is you buy a pass, you get two days and you get the whole experience. There's a couple different levels and that's just with regards to experience types.

So students and new grads get, there's a slightly cheaper pass. We have some of our legacy passes that we give out to people thanking them for their participation in our Summit Pass. And you go to our website, you can find it there or you can go to show pass.com and just type in PodSummit YYC 2025 and you can find all of that information there.

And it's very simplified. We try to keep the exclusivity out of things too. So when you buy something, you get access to every single session that you're able to attend. There's some that conflict and are concurrent and so it's, you can't attend both. You get access to all of our live shows. So we have two live shows, Sick Boy and True Crime this year, which are some really awesome podcasts.

Cool. We have a reception which we provide bevy and food, and this is meant to be kind of the icebreaker for discussion. We'll be throwing out our programming after the long weekend in August here. And so you'll have a full look of over a month to kind of digest what's going to be there. And we try to really drive a narrative through things where we're giving you both the soft and hard skills inside of podcasting.

So, yes, September 19th through 20th, right here in Calgary. If you go online too, you, if you're traveling, we have, air Canada's given us a discount. We have a hotel downtown Calgary at the west in there. There's a couple blocks from the grand itself that that we found. We got some discounts there, so trying to again, lower that financial threshold for people to, to come to PodSummit here.

And, you know, we we're, we'd love to and it's I think one thing too. Love to say that it's for everyone. It's not meant to be this threshold where you have to have 10 years, or five years or two years of podcasting if you're thinking about starting a podcast. Yeah. This is the event for you. We promote to this idea when people say like, who's your audience?

And we say storytellers.

Basically storytellers. Everyone has a story to tell. You don't even have to be a, an active podcaster. You can be just looking to explore the idea of how can I use podcasting or how could I use storytelling in my creation? Whatever it is that you're doing, you're gonna get something out of it there.

So storytellers are our audience. And that can be anyone, anywhere. It could be you telling someone's story. It could be you telling your story. That is the most important thing, is that there is no barrier for entry to get into PodSummit.

Kelly Kennedy: No, that's amazing. And not to mention, like I said, if you're listening to this series right now, you probably are thinking about launching your own podcast.

This is the perfect event for you to, for you to go into the timing of this couldn't have been better, Tim. This is gonna be the perfect event for you guys to come to. And like, you know, sometimes it's just talking to somebody. Lights that spark in you. Yeah, it's just that quick conversation. It's like, do it your idea's.

Amazing. Do it. If you have somebody do that for you, sometimes that's all it takes. And so, absolutely. Whether you're a new podcaster, aspiring podcaster, or a longtime podcaster, this is the Canadian event to go to this year. Period. Tim, it's been an honor and a privilege. Thank you so much for gracing my stage today.

Tim Truax: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Kelly. I love what you do, and thank you for kind of carrying and bearing that flag of, of podcasters here inside of the business space.

Kelly Kennedy: It's it's my pleasure, honor, and privilege. Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast. Check out PodSummit 2025 in the Grand in Calgary, September 19th and 20th.

Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.