355 Pat Cheung - How to Build a Community of Podcast Superfans

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:03

Fan. Les, thank you so much for making it onto podcast junkies.

Patt Cheung

0:04 - 0:06

Oh, man. Thanks for having me here.

Harry Duran

0:06 - 1:09

So I love these conversations because they're a way for me to just kind of have a reengagement with folks that I've connected with and the conferences and, you know, everything goes by so quickly at those conferences. And I know that's sort of like how we started to become friends and meet. And unfortunately, we don't get enough time to go deep diving on learning and, you know, a little bit more about you. And, you know, I know if we had some good chats in the past, but I thought it'd be nice to kind of share your story about, you know, how you ended up in the world of podcasting and a little bit about your background. So we'll start there. I know that you've got a background like me. I saw that you had some experience with Citibank, and I actually started out in banking. I started out as a teller, like way back. I'm dating myself, but this is way back in like my mid twenties. But I'm curious about your journey, like how you, you know, as you started working full time, and I know you've got some experience in some ux stuff, like what your thoughts were about, like where you wanted to focus time and what type of business is or what type of work you were looking to get into.

B

Patt Cheung

1:10 - 2:07

Sure. So as you alluded, I had a colorful history, a colorful past, and now I'm a founder of a tech company and I've been in tech for a long time. I guess overdose. Yeah, not to date myself. I hate these date myself type questions, but yeah, over 15 years in tech, probably over 20, quite honestly. But yeah, I've been in tech for a long time. And yeah, most recently founder of fan lists, which kind of brought me into the world of podcasting and the conference that you alluded to. So happy to talk about that. But yeah, I feel like I've had many lives over the course of the career, and one life was in banking. I was in mortgages. Learn a lot about that, actually even tried to start a startup around real estate before. So that's kind of what I usually do. You know, it takes some, something I know, something I'm a little bit passionate about and try to do something entrepreneurial about it. But yeah, worked for Citibank for a while as a account executive.

Harry Duran

2:07 - 2:53

It's interesting because I looked at the timeline and I think you left around 2008, which is obviously a big time in the mortgage world. And I was working at e trade at the time. And it was wild because I remember my boss, he was the head of FP and a, like, finance. He was having twice daily calls with the finance team because people were, like, withdrawing money at an alarming rate from their accounts. And it was a pretty crazy time. Like, there was a couple of weeks when we didn't know if we were, like, we were gonna go out of business or like, we were gonna have jobs. So, you know, you caught the tail end of that. But it's crazy to have been through a crisis like that and also to see how much rippling effects it had for people who, like, you know, were not prepared or just people who were just getting into the wrong kinds of investments. So it was a pretty wild ride. I remember that at the time. Sure.

Patt Cheung

2:54 - 3:39

Yeah, totally. And you hit the nail on the head 2008. So I cut the tail end of it also. The sweet end of it, too. It was, like, such a crazy time. It was my sister, she worked at Citibank. She's like, hey, Pat, I was kind of going through a life transition. She's like, hey, you should try mortgage for a little bit. It's just like, things are just blowing up, and we need people, and I think you'd enjoy this. I was like, oh, you know, I was at a point in my life where I was like, I'll give anything a try. So, yeah, went into that and. Yeah, and I quit because of the meltdown in 2008, they shut down our whole. We sold home equities, which has nothing to do about podcasting, but interesting time. If it wasn't for that meltdown, I'd probably still be doing mortgage, because it's a pretty fun industry, too.

Harry Duran

3:39 - 3:42

You got into ux. Did you have a design background?

Patt Cheung

3:43 - 3:49

Yeah. So I had been doing. No, I don't have a design background. I actually went to college for studying english literature.

Harry Duran

3:49 - 3:50

Maybe we'll get into that as well.

Patt Cheung

3:52 - 4:18

Maybe. Yeah. I feel like in the past, we talked about writing. Yeah. So, I mean, being an english lit, you kind of have to be pretty agile to adapt, because there's not much you, you know, you could do, unless you want to be a writer, a lawyer, or maybe a teacher, and that's out of college. I actually wanted to be a teacher. I love teaching. Wanted to be a high school teacher. But, you know, I went down the road of. And sorry if this is, you know.

Harry Duran

4:18 - 5:07

No, this is great, because I think what's interesting is, like, I. The reason I love these conversations is because just all the different ways people arrive into the world of podcasting, and we all have a. I mean, I got into podcasting because of djing. Like, I'm a. I grew up as a house music dj and I. I had a mobile app I was working on, and I was like, oh, I'm going to go to a podcast conference and start a podcast to interview DJ's. And I went to new media expo in Las Vegas in 2014 and quickly changed gears. You know, Pat Flynn was there, and I need Porterfield, and I was like, probably easier to interview podcasters than DJ's, so let me do that. You know, but I called it, you know, someone mentioned, like, podcast junkies, and I was like, oh, yeah, cool. That's a cool name. So I grabbed a domain and quickly shifted gears. But I mean, that passion remains for, like, house music, but that's literally, like, I would say, like, house music and djing got me into podcasting.

Patt Cheung

5:07 - 5:36

Yeah. And I mean, quite honestly, that's why I love podcasts. I love, you know, we could talk about how I stumbled on the fan list and stuff, but I just love the people that I meet in podcasting because they come in from such diverse backgrounds, and I have a pretty diverse one. And, yeah, I mean, just to close out that story of english lit and teaching, you know, a student taught while I did my studies at Berkeley. I went to UC Berkeley and I student taught at a inner city school. And I was just like, wow, this is one of the hardest jobs ever.

Harry Duran

5:37 - 5:38

Just like in the movies, right?

Patt Cheung

5:38 - 6:01

There's just no appreciation. Yeah, it's hard. And teachers get jaded. And I work for this really sort of jaded type teacher, and I'm like, you know what? You know, she probably started off as this kind of, you know, bright eyed person, like, me too. And eventually I'm gonna get jaded, so maybe I'll do this kind of later in life. So that kind of brought me to all these different things.

Harry Duran

6:01 - 6:02

And so how'd you get into Ux design?

B

Patt Cheung

6:03 - 6:21

So, ux design, it was, yeah, kind of that transition from what do I do now? So I really out of college, I went to entertainment. Cause I lived in LA. It's kind of one of the things you do. So I kind of worked in the tv and all this stuff I leave out of LinkedIn, by the way. It's like the stuff that you don't want to talk.

Harry Duran

6:21 - 6:30

No, that's the stuff that, like, when you're like, late night or a couple, you're at the bar and you're just like, okay, let's talk about all the interesting journey, all the odd jobs.

Patt Cheung

6:30 - 7:16

Exactly. So I had a lot of odd jobs. I was like a tv writer for a while in Hong Kong and all this stuff, and somehow I got a job in tech. I think it was just because the first dot and second dot comma tech blew up. So I got a job in there, and the thing I gravitated towards most was designing how a product worked. So that got me into, even before they called it ux, it was information architecture. Fell in love with that and just started doing ux. And ux eventually led me into doing this thing called product management. And now I do a lot of product management and product design, which usually kind of lends itself to being kind of like that founder role. Yeah. So it kind of took me deep into tech, I guess, really quickly.

Harry Duran

7:16 - 7:33

So then you sort of began to have like a slow affair for tech and this love affair for creating your own products or creating your own businesses. When did you start to realize that you were leaning towards becoming an entrepreneur?

Patt Cheung

7:34 - 8:26

I mean, really early on, you know, just like a lot of people had imposter syndrome for what I was doing. So I just started consuming a ton of books, and a lot of the tech books were around entrepreneurship and a lot of the stuff people I was following were tech entrepreneurs, and I. So it just kind of quickly seeps into your DNA. You read about all these tech journeys and it's like, yeah, I could be an individual contributor, sure, that's going to be good for a while. But I started gravitating towards the stories of people who are founding companies, like have an idea. And it was kind of played along with my strength, too, of like designing products that kind of solved problems and, yeah, just kind of fell in love with it through a lot of reading and through a lot of experience and quite honestly, like sometimes through being a little bit frustrated with some of the companies I work with, it's like, I think there's a better way to do this. Yeah, maybe the ego got the best of me, really.

Harry Duran

8:28 - 8:42

So having had that interest in startups, you had a couple of experiences before families. So, you know, without going into the nitty gritty detail, what was that experience like, founding your own products and your own companies?

Patt Cheung

8:43 - 10:41

Sure. I mean, the sort of the successful I founded a lot of ones that I'd rather not talk about. They didn't really go anywhere. But, yeah, the sort of last successful one was in healthcare, and it's because I met my founder at a previous job that I had, building up an influencer network and not to get too deep into the story, but my co founder was a medical doctor. He just, you know, became a plastic surgeon, just went through residency. And then he started this other company where I worked with him at. He sold that company, and when he went to go do his next company, he wanted to tackle something in the medical field. And he's like, you want to, you know, you know, I had a great working relationship with him already for, I don't know, three or four years. And he was like, yeah, you want to start the next company? And that company was, you know, we did something, you know, pretty in the weeds around medical credentialing, which is something I'm totally not interested in. But I was interested in entrepreneurship. I'm just interested in solving problems with tech. So I said yes. But I, I mean, the relevant part of that story was, you know, I realized, you know, how important it is to work on something you're passionate about. And although I was passionate about solving problems with tech, I wasn't really passionate about that problem. Space. Like, that was definitely more of a story for my co founder, who, you know, was a doctor. You know, I kind of dealt with that kind of problem before, and I'm like, I have no idea what that problem is. Happy to dive into it. So I dove into that for six years. So we ran that company for six years. We grew it to, yeah, a long time. I think we got up to, I don't know, 60 to 80 employees, and it got acquired and, yeah, and then, so when I thought of what we're going to do next, I just thought, you know, let's kind of, you know, yeah, go towards something. I'm a little bit more passionate about something. I could wake up every day and think, yeah, let's solve this problem. Be pretty happy trying to solve it. Yeah. So that's how I got into podcasting.

Harry Duran

10:41 - 10:59

Like, what was your awareness? Were you coming in at it from a consumer perspective, like listening to, or did you jump straight into, like, figuring out, you know, where you could, you know, where you could add some value from a business value perspective? Perspective?

Patt Cheung

11:00 - 12:07

Yeah, good question. It was really definitely from a listener or a fan's perspective. That's why it's called fan list today. It's like, kind of where it comes from. It's like, that's how I wanted to interact with podcasts, from quite honest, like a superfan perspective. I wanted to participate, and so I didn't really know the pain points coming into it. From a podcaster's perspective, I've always wanted to start a podcast before that company, but I just did not come from that perspective. So I had to learn all these things. I think that's how we met. So my first foray really into, you know, the podcast community, the podcaster community, not the listener community, was, yeah, going to podcast movement. That's where we launched. Oddly, you know, I probably broke a lot of startup rules of like, not doing homework before show up. Yeah, yeah, I should have showed up first and kind of learned a lot more. But you know, I think at that time I had some podcaster friends already kind of picked their brains and kind of just kind of studied I guess from arm's length how they worked and yeah, just pick some pain points to solve.

Harry Duran

12:07 - 12:55

Talk about the thought process or origin story for like panelists and, you know, how did you go about figuring out, figuring out what the pain was that you're trying to solve and maybe talk a little about any research you've done beforehand because, you know, imagine, you know, a lot of podcasters are also entrepreneurs. And I myself graveyard shuttered business ideas. I think I did a poster last year, a couple years ago about all the dot coms that I had registered register in the hopes of like, in the hopes of, in the hopes of like, it started way back, started way back in like in 2011 or twelve random ideas. But it's so funny because when you look at the registrar, oh yeah, I tried that. You know, so I'm curious, you know, how you curious, you know, you think about deciding like this is what I spend some time on. Spend some time on.

Patt Cheung

12:56 - 13:12

Sure. By the way, I have that same graveyard. It's funny, I look at it every, what is it? Every year we have to renew and like, should I keep this or not? And it's like, yeah, let's keep it. It was, it's kind of funny. Nostalgic reminder of how you thought like.

Harry Duran

13:12 - 13:24

A Marie Kondo, like domains and just kind of just like, just kind of just like hug it, you know, and then just let it go and just be like, this is fun. Nice ride. Like kind of like you do with your closet clothes and stuff. Like clothes and stuff like that.

Patt Cheung

13:25 - 15:06

Well, it doesn't take up much space, so I say keep it. Keep it for the memories. But yeah, the journey was really, you know, I was listening to podcasts, some of my favorite podcasts at the time. And you know, one of the things that made me fall in love with podcasts is like, oh, I feel like I me as a listener, I developed a relationship with these people. Even though it's a total, what do they call it? A parasocial relationship where I have no idea who I am. But I noticed some of my favorite podcasters were doing the thing wherever, you know, they take listener call ins and, you know, they're talking to the listener. You know, one of the earliest podcasts I listened to was this week in tech by Leah Laporte, one of the pioneers. And, yeah, he just, I was like, you know, I remember thinking, and at that time, I don't think I had a lot of money, but he did this thing where he was building a new studio and he was selling bricks. I don't know if you know about this, but he was building. He was selling bricks that he was literally going to put into the new studio. So you could have your name on a brick. And even me not having a lot of money, I was like, oh, this is so brilliant. It's like, I want to be part of this. I wanted to support him in buying a brick. To my shame, I didn't. I should have studio, still have the studio, but I'm not sure. He's moved a couple of times. I mean, he's just gotten big over the years. And I think he was doing the bricks pretty early on. I just thought, wow, this is so cool. So, you know, that's really sort of the pattern I started seeing. It's like you feel close to these shows because, you know, they need you to survive and you could take part in their survival and in their success. And I just kind of love that sort of give and get type thing.

Harry Duran

15:06 - 15:52

Because my marketing brain never shuts off. So, like, you start talking and I'm, like, thinking about ideas, and I'm like, you could create a background that's kind of like simulates, and it could be, and it could be in a way where it's interactive, where you could change the name. So each name would have, like, to your point, like, you could have it, but it's almost like a panel, so it's unfair background. And if they wanted to, they could. The panels, the pan, you know, there, because I could just see that, like, having, like, my brand colors, like yellow as my background and then kind of see, like, kind of see in a brick format. It's almost like a faux brick wall. But the ones would have, like, the names of that totally could be something monetization. A monetization.

Patt Cheung

15:55 - 16:10

Yeah, yeah. Which made me think it's like, you know, a lot of podcasters don't know that they could change their cover art on every episode. So why not sponsor that cover art? That's kind of neat. I know. I don't see any podcasters actually changing up their cover, their per episode cover.

Harry Duran

16:10 - 16:13

Art too much and cover art actually show. That's interesting. That's interesting.

Patt Cheung

16:14 - 17:18

Oh, that too. Yeah, that'd be neat. That's how I got a kind of, maybe the original idea germinated. So just to tell you a little bit about sort of the origin story, it didn't start out as fanless. A lot of the old timers, you know, remember it as pot inbox. We actually just did a rebrand earlier this year. So fanless is kind of new. We kind of relaunched with a ton of new features, a lot of which a lot of people still don't know about. So. And the idea was very simple. It was started as pot inbox. It was sort of an inbox for podcasters to receive audio messages so that they could do this segment where someone leaves you an audio message for whatever reason, it could be a question or whatever, or a story, and then you play it back on the show. And those are the shows that I kind of tended to gravitate, the ones that kind of included the audience. I thought they were really smart, so I thought, yeah, why not just build a solution for that, which is still one of our core products, is sort of this fan mail inbox type solution. Yeah, that's kind of how it started. And, you know, we just kept on building.

Harry Duran

17:19 - 17:20

Do you have a co founder?

Patt Cheung

17:21 - 18:05

No, I don't. I have our sort of CTO as this guy I've worked with for, I'd say about eight years, you know, with other startups. So he's basically like a co founder, but, you know, for right now, we're bootstrapped, which is this journey that I sort of was very curious about. My last company was venture back. We raised a lot of millions of dollars, and it's like, oh, let's try to bootstrap. At this time. You know, I had a windfall from the acquisition. I thought, you know, maybe I could fund this myself in the beginning and, yeah, right now. So I don't know if you know much about bootstrap startups. Sometimes it's just easier to not have a co founder. You can move a little bit faster and, yeah, that's kind of what we opted for is like, yeah, let's move a little bit faster.

Harry Duran

18:05 - 18:10

And that are not familiar with families. How we describe. How would you describe the service? The service?

Patt Cheung

18:10 - 19:11

Yeah, good question. I would say it's a fan engagement platform where you could create a fan page, invite your fans to come participate, where you can connect with them, and then eventually you can monetize from them. So probably the best analogy is a little bit like bundling a bunch of solutions that podcasters already use, like a Patreon and buy me a coffee and like a shopify. So it has all these kind of features and we kind of bundle it all in one fan page. So kind of making it simple sort of not just for the podcaster, but also for the fan who, you know, maybe they'll just like, come take a free action. Like maybe they want to leave, you know, you, Harry, they've been listening to you for years and you have a Q and a segment and they want to ask you a question. So they could do that. And then as they kind of look at your fan page, they might see you have other offerings too, maybe, you know, giving you a tip or buying something from your shop. Yeah, I don't know if that was succinct, but elevator pitch, right? Yeah, I know.

Harry Duran

19:13 - 20:05

It's always a challenge, right? Like, you know, you think about nothing about it from an agency perspective, right? Like I literally just rewriting my, I was realizing and it's like I'm working on my link profile and best practices. Like, people go to your LinkedIn or your Twitter or your Instagram or your YouTube. Like it should be the kind of same header, same tagline. So there's like look and feel. And I've landed on like, along the lines of like, I help part led entrepreneurs amplify their done for you podcast services. That's like a one liner, but it's helpful because I help with, you know, blank, you know, so it's kind of like, you know, so it's kind of, I help podcasters podcast monetize, or we help podcasters monetizers monetize and engage with their, with, you know, most diehard fans or through a one stop through a shop platform or something like that.

Patt Cheung

20:05 - 20:09

Yeah, I like that you said that better than me. I like that you know how to steal that.

Harry Duran

20:09 - 20:25

I'm gonna, having had rebranded to fan less. Describe that, that. Describe that so far, like, what's it been like and what have you learned along the way? And what's been the response from folks that have engaged with the, with the tool?

Patt Cheung

20:26 - 21:40

The response has been great. Like people are seeing, I think, like for the first, not for the first time. So when we rebranded, we had to develop a bunch of new features. Cause we were going from pod inbox where we were just an inbox to kind of the suite, a bundled suite of tools. So to make that statement true, that, like, now, you know, we're a place to help grow your fan lists. That's kind of part of our title. We wanted to offer a suite of tools, and we still have a lot of tools that we're still working on. So it was kind of a long journey to get users to see that aha. Moment where, oh, I see. I see what you're trying to do now. You're trying to make it just make my life easier for me so I don't have to go, you know, use all these other tools and send my audience to all these other places. So, yeah, the feedback recently has been good as people are seeing our suite of tools mature. So, like, right now, we're doing v two s on all our tools. So, for example, I do demos every day, and one of the things we demo is our chat. We have, like, this group chat. So a lot of times it's like, oh, I want to meet other Harry, you know, Harry's fans, you know, from one of your podcasts, maybe vertical farming. By the way, I talk about your vertical farming podcast all the time.

Harry Duran

21:40 - 21:41

Thank you.

Patt Cheung

21:42 - 21:51

Like, super fan of this thing that you've done. And, you know, sometimes you want to send people somewhere so that they could connect and connect.

Harry Duran

21:51 - 21:55

Do you mean like fellows with each other? Connect with each other? Okay.

Patt Cheung

21:55 - 22:46

Yeah, so that they could chat. Right. So. And, you know, some might say this is a solved problem with slack or discord, but if you think about, that's kind of a heavy lift for the busy podcaster, right, to set up a slack or discord room. So we just wanted to have a turnkey. So we created v one of the chat and every demo. What I was getting at is, I say, don't use this v one chat yet. It's just not quite there. So right now, we've done, like, you know, we've done a v two of almost all our core features, and, like, except, you know, one or two, slack being one of them, or, I'm sorry, chat being one of them. So, yeah, so as we're getting v two all polished up, it's really kind of becoming where people are like, oh, this is better than, you know, often work compared to Patreon. You know, a lot of times people like, how are you different from Patreon? And I'm always like, well, you know.

Harry Duran

22:46 - 22:47

Gotta be the main question.

Patt Cheung

22:48 - 23:04

Yeah, and I have a good hack. I was just gonna post a post on LinkedIn. Today I have it kind of queued up and ready to go. But you know, what I like to say is, like, when Patreon, when someone says, go visit my Patreon, you know, what's the first thing that comes in your mind?

Harry Duran

23:07 - 23:19

Figure that out and sign up for Patreon and anyone's patron in a while. I had signed up for a couple in the beginning, so it's kind of like, so it's kind of an ecosystem I haven't been, like, engaged with in a while.

Patt Cheung

23:20 - 23:30

See, I mean, that's a good point, too. That's a good response. So when a creator tells you, go visit my Patreon, it's usually a pretty, it's a call to spend money. Right. As a transaction.

Harry Duran

23:30 - 23:32

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Patt Cheung

23:32 - 25:00

Usually a lot of people are saying, like, go subscribe to some premium content. And although we believe in subscription, we have that feature, too. We more believe in this fan journey that it's not always transactional. The funnel maybe starts off with some free actions, and then it might lead to some paid actions, like subscribing, buying something, giving a tip, or whatever. So we really want to brand ourselves of like, hey, create a connection first. Create a deeper connection. Then they'll kind of see these other things that you offer, and then they might partake in these, like, monetization ones to further support your show. It's like if Leo Laporte, if I heard his podcast and the first thing he did was like, hey, come buy a brick, I would be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know who you are. You know, let's, let's develop a rapport first. So that's what we want to be known for. And it's funny, the thing I said, I, you know, the thing you said about, you know, getting your elevator pitch, and I'm horrible at it. I'm horrible at telling our story sometimes. And so I went to AI and I said, you know, how is fan list? This is what I was going to write on LinkedIn. The prompt is, how is fanless better than Patreon? And they wrote such a beautiful description. I'm like, oh, they nailed it. First of all, I'm glad, you know, they know, you know, they're pretty smart system, I guess. And yeah, they wrote a really good rundown that, I encourage you, if you're curious how we're different, to type it in yourself, because they're going to say it better than me.

Harry Duran

25:00 - 27:09

Interesting. Because, interesting. This is another sidebar, but, like, I think learning, learning how to engage with these new chat tools. And, you know, my focus has been chat because it's just the easiest. They were first out. I know there's others like Claude, there's like, claw, you know, mid journey a lot stuff for images of it. For images and stuff. You know, it really, it's almost like if I think about how much money I would have to spend for, like, a copywriter, proofreader, a research assistant, research assist. Sometimes there's just top of mind stuff, like, you know, like, I need some, you know, like, I need some, you know, questions on, like, buyer Personas or ideal customer profiles. And I'm like, and I need to just brainstorm ideas. And the fact that you can just iterate so fast, iterate so fast, you know, it really feels. And as much as, like, stressed about, like, all the jobs that are gonna go away, I mean, but I think you can't, like, deny that and you have to, like, learn this ability. I would, I said, but I, like, we have to learn how to, like, with the robots. Like, we have to learn their language and we have to learn how to, like, learn how to build a relationship with them because not that they're going to become our overlords, but it's interesting, and it's funny. I like to say please in my prompts, too, just in case you never. In case, you know, just in case. I remember I'm the nice human. I'm the nice human because I was just using it today because I'm doing some, like, rethinking. I want to do my content marketing strategy, and you have to think about it from the different phases of what customers are. Like, solution aware, problem aware, you know, all the basics, and you have to write copy specific to them in that area. And then what are the pain points and problems? And I just, I've been uploading, like, all our services, what we do. I've uploaded, like, I've up my ten part email sequence. Email sequence. And it starts to understand because now we can understand, like, you know, prompts across different channels within. Right. So over time, it starts to know, like, this is how I speak. This is how, this is my audience, this is my offerings. And I think to the extent that we just get better, better at this, you know, it helps us as entrepreneurs, like, you know, get our message out there so you can find the people that are looking for this type of service. I've used other tools similar to it. And to you, like, articulate. Like, articulate clearly. Like, clearly, like, the offering and how it benefits them. How it benefits them.

Patt Cheung

27:10 - 28:10

Yeah. One of the best pieces of advice that I got that kind of changed the way I use, and I'm like you, I use chat GPT. I mean, I do comparisons all the time, like with pretty much with chat GPT, Gemini and perplexity. That's the one I kind of go back and forth on. And yeah, chat is still, it's like just so thorough. I don't know if it's just because they've been around longer or it's their thought process. Process. But one of the best pieces of advice I got that I find has really changed my relationship with these tools is like, the advice is like if, you know, use AI for things that are your weakness and for your superpower, then don't rely on them so much. And that was just an easy frame to think about it. So like I said, I know I'm a little bit, sometimes I'm a little too wordy. I'm not that concise. So I'm like, I know that's my weakness. So, you know, let's see, you know, how does chat GPT say it? You know, they're probably going to say it better than me.

Harry Duran

28:10 - 29:06

Well, the key is to feed it examples of how you talk your style because obviously those first couple of prompts in the beginning, they're just going to sound like a rope chat GPT prompt, right. And they're using words that like you would never use. But I think if the key is to really feed it, you know, feed the algorithm and just say, hey, this is how I speak a little bit of like funny or witty or you know, whatever likes, throw an occasional pun in there, you know, so it starts to sound a little bit natural. I'm glad. Some good results. So when the biggest challenge in terms of like, in terms of like getting people aware of the tool and maybe understand if this something need, because the best part about it is that there's no to sign up like. And I think that's like the strangest thing for people. Like when they come, they immediately go to like service pricing. How much is going to be like, I do this all the time and you know, you just charge, you collect the fee based on whatever fee generates. In terms of revenue. Generates in terms of revenue.

Patt Cheung

29:07 - 29:54

Yeah, it's funny. I think you're a sophisticated buyer then if you go straight to slash pricing. Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. It is very challenging in the world that I play in. It's called product marketing and as a smaller company. I do all the product marketing in terms of sending out the emails and making sure people really know. So we have a lot of little widgets on our site that kind of tell you all the new features. But it's still, you know, one of the things I battle with personally is I hate spam and being like sort of a spam hater. I tend to not send a lot of product updates. But, you know, other products that you do sign up with, you know, they're sending you updates almost, you know, twice a week, three times a week. So we probably have to do better at that. Sending more updates, getting people.

Harry Duran

29:54 - 33:01

There's important distinction because, distinction because, yeah, it's all really like perspective and how you look at things as well because Spam is, you know, like, you know, I will promote your podcast, your Apple podcast, Spotify, you know, all, you know, broken English, like not, not a clear full statement, clearly. Like you're getting like number one iTunes promoter, like podcast, Spotify ranking service, like service, like immediate spam. See those come across or you see those LinkedIn connection requests. Connection. But as an entrepreneur myself, like, I'm always thinking about, I have to learn new tools and new skill sets, like sales lead. How do I generate new business, as much as we've built will do a referrals basis. If I want to stay, I want to stay current and active and continue to grow the pipeline. I've recently learned, like cold email, like, and just worked with a company that does cold email strategy and there's a process for doing that. Process for doing. And I've sort of, sort of looked at it from a different perspective because, perspective. You know, I've responded to the occasional cold email because they've targeted in the just right time when I had a specific need for that service, I'm like, oh, like some sort of like video editing, like promotion tool or something, actually, like I'm thinking about that or we're looking at companies for that service. And, you know, I've tried a couple and tried to think one or two. I've ended up like working with them. So it kind of worked, but again, it worked, but again, really, really low, I think. 0.02 return on cold email like, you're doing well, right? You're doing well. But when I look at it, but we're doing something right now. And so, you know, I just need maybe like ten or 20 positive responses if one or two of those close a month service is more than that. Smartest patriots. And I did get someone who just replied, hey, Harry, I was like, literally, you got me at the right time. I'm looking to start a podcast. He was, like, the ideal, ideal customer, you know, for me. And we're having that conversation down, and hopefully it'll close. Knock on hope, close as a client, but as a client, I think it's. I think I. The way I say, the way I. And I think about this, you know, how we podcast for people, but also as an entrepreneur, if you have a service beneficial to your target audience. Target audience. It's almost like you're. Almost like you're. It's your responsibility to just do whatever you can. If you feel like you're clearly solving a painful, like, it. You know, the new to, like is on you to, like, do whatever you can as a business owner to get in front of that. Figure out all the different ways to get in front of your audience, because, like, hey, I'm not like, about, like, what I do, okay? Some people are just like, unsubscribe, and I'm always super polite. I'm just like, hey, you know, sorry this wasn't a fit for you. I'm in you right now. And I replied because I'm just like, okay, there's a human being here. Like, I'm just trying to out, you know, obviously you'll always get up. You'll always get people who just, like, want to burn your inbox or just, like, blast you for, like, the most horrible person in the world. But just, I just want to prize some context about that because you did mention spam. And if people are signing up for the service, give me an update to get the emails. Which is different, too. Which is different, too.

Patt Cheung

33:02 - 35:17

Yeah, I agree. Well, first I got to say thanks for Ted talk. I appreciate it. And for your listeners, definitely listen to Harry. But I'll tell you my weaknesses. So, yeah, definitely one of my weaknesses is marketing. Marketing. I'll actually tell you. Even a funny story that kind of relates to you is there's this one podcast movement. I can't remember if it was podfest or podcast. One of these big podcast conferences where we were on stage at the same time on a different stage. And I remember I heard you were giving a talk that I heard before. It was your vertical farming talk. And I was like, oh, and there are friends that I'm like, oh, I think they need to listen to that talk. So I was, like, driving. I drove at least five people that were like, hey, they wanted to come to my talk. I was like, no, go listen to Harry's talk. You already know about fan lists. You don't have to know any more about it. Like, don't come to my talk. Go to Harry's doc. And that's just kind of a little bit how I'm built. And I think it came from this place where I study a lot of businesses. And there's this business called five guys. It's like this burger restaurant, right? Yeah. Pretty popular burger place. And their origin story was they just wanted to make the best burger. And they broke this cardinal role in retail, which is they picked a horrible location. So their thesis for that was, we're going to pick the worst location that people can't find. And if they still find us, then I think we got something here. So they picked this horrible location. They didn't do any marketing, and people were lining up the door for their burgers, and they thought, you know, we really got something, so let's expand. So I think I have a little bit of that mentality. I don't think it's a good one. So once again, don't take my advice. It's like, Harry's advice is the truth. But, you know, I think I. Part of the thing, you know, this philosophy that I have is like, I'm just so product focused. I just want to build this product. You know, we definitely have to do way better on marketing, you know, like you. You know, so I love your advice. It's like, I think sometimes I feel like I think I'm selling too much. But I think we did build a product that, you know, does the community a good service. It's at a good price, and, yeah, I should talk about it more marketing strategy.

Harry Duran

35:17 - 35:28

So just keeping being conscious of the time. We usually have a couple of questions that we ask towards the end of these conversations. Something you've changed your mind about, change your mind about recently?

Patt Cheung

35:29 - 37:35

Something I changed my mind about. So maybe I'll kind of. For podcasting or for business, so maybe I'll share briefly on both. So for business, you know, there's this concept of bundling and unbundling. For a while, I was sort of in the unbundling camp, but, you know, when I think of fan list, it's like what we're really trying to do is bundle a lot of tools so just to make life and the ease of use of a product easier for both the fan and the creator. So we really kind of doubled down on bundling. Like, we, you know, the pattern that we see is like a lot of podcasters are, like, reaching for, I don't know, three or five tools to do this thing that sometimes it's a hobby or sometimes it's, you know, ancillary income. So I sort of become more of a fan of bundling, which is a little bit of a hot take. And some of the industry is kind of going towards bundling as well. So that's very entrepreneurial, geeky revelation. And I would say from a podcaster's perspective, I used to have a podcast. It was like sort of to get my reps in to, you know, learn more about, you know, life of a podcaster. It was a podcast about podcasts that I thought was relevant to my business. Yeah, I, a pod faded. I don't do it anymore. And I think, you know, what I switched my mind about is I kind of bought in to the industry, thought that pod fade is kind of a bad word, but I think there are seasons for everything. And maybe even the use of seasons is kind of a good word because now when I think I'm thinking of launching a couple more podcasts and I'm thinking of, okay, let's really lean into something that I think we'll have a little bit more resonance to me as a person. Yeah. So when I'm thinking about the new concepts, I'm kind of giving myself the latitude to be like, oh, it could be seasonal. Like, it could, you know, it doesn't have to be forever, or if you do have one forever, it doesn't have to be weekly. Like, there could be different formats and it's kind of up to you. So that's, yeah, something, I guess. Yeah. Really did a 180 on interview chat.

Harry Duran

37:35 - 40:16

Because I got so many ideas. I gotta talk because I'm like, talk you think about. I definitely seasonal because we've done shows for clients and they've done like, I have a client that will do twelve episodes and they'll break a year and then come back and do like another twelve, and they're like, and then he'll come back a year later and he's like, I want to do a daily show, 30 episodes each five minutes. And he's just trying different things. He's just trying different real estate. Branded his show, his biz get traction. It's a real estate business now. It's called the art and science of real estate negotiation because I'm really big on naming shows, as you can see with performing podcasts. Like call it what it does on the, what it says on the label. It should be pretty clear. Should be pretty clear. But it's interesting with your concept. You know, there's these, you know, there's these shows that are nurturing these superfan community. So you could have a rebrand of Superfan stories, you know, and figure out your audience or from your clients, like, clients, like, you've all got these superfans. I could probably name a couple of just for podcast junkies that have been, you know, important for me. And I think about them immediately, you know, Dave Jackson, Dave Jackson talks about, you know, you know, he would put like this was back in the day, I don't know, like putting pictures of like people that he knew were fans of the show, like on his wall, like on his. So when he would be recording his show. And so now, like he's recording solo content, he's thinking about those, thinking about as his superfans. Right. So it's really like interesting. Really like interesting to tell those stories and, you know, you know, one of our, it's always interesting because as you think about the service and how the podcast can play into that, you know, when people say like, oh, why it's important to engage with my fans, that's a good question to this episode. And you can hear how superfans like, can really like, you know, like help the culture, you know, within the community. So that's one idea. That's one idea. One of our clients, one of our past three seasons, it's called leadership impact, coaches, CEO's. She just, and that was enough. But it's all evergreen content. So when she's talking to, talking to prospect, she'll say, hey, Pat, it sounds like you've got some challenges in your organization with like leadership or honesty. Go back and listen to season two, episodes five and six and then schedule follow up with. And she calls those prescriptions, which I love. So it's basically like podcast prescriptions. And she's like doing the heavy lifting so you don't have to feel like you don't have convince people like, oh, why should I do what's so great about fan list and be like, hey, listen, both these episodes, you know, you can hear like here people with their success stories about like, how much fun they're having. That's just some idea. Somebody, you know, like I say, I think about ideas. All.

Patt Cheung

40:19 - 40:21

Those are great ideas. Yeah, they'd be fun to riff on.

Harry Duran

40:21 - 41:36

Something keeps you motivated. Like, this is like, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. The entrepreneurs journey is fraught with like, fraught with like tons of failure. You know, I don't know which has more, which restaurants or entrepreneurs because restaurants are pretty high. But, you know, I've been thinking about this myself, like, for myself, like, you have to be comfortable and embrace and failure, because those are all the reasons you've now didn't. All the reasons or the things that don't work. So that gets you closer. I think it's someone, I heard someone mention this as, like, if there's ten ways that something works and you try and the first nine don't work, every time you'd experience that failure, like, your rate of success gets higher because you're like, oh, I've limited one more failure, eliminate one more. Now you're getting closer and closer to that. Win or win success. That's. But you have to keep getting up. And I think so many times, entrepreneurs, just as you're getting close to that breakthrough, like, they give up. Like, I give up. This is not funny. I'm going back to my nine to five. You know, I've seen that in the podcast. Peers and colleagues back at their nine to five jobs podcasting company. How do you, you know, how do you think about this from this, from just a personal perspective? Like, what keeps you, what keeps you going?

Patt Cheung

41:37 - 44:22

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I'll have to say, you know, so many things, but I think in general, I have, like, a very positive personality, and I'm kind of like, cup is half full type guy. I mean, that goes a long way. It seems so obvious. But, you know, I think without that, it'd be very easy to give up. But when you. I just tend to spin even failures as, like, a win. Like, for example, a lot of people are like, should I even try this thing? And, you know, try building something, try doing something. I'm like, well, you know, what's it gonna cost you? Like, I don't know, a year of your life, maybe, which sounds like a lot, but. And then, you know, you think, well, even if you fail, what's the worst case? It's like, you have something tangible that you could show for it if it's even just a story. You know, stories are so valuable in people's lives. It's like when they go back in their life and kind of look at the chapters, you know, there's not, you know, a lot of. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people live chapters that aren't worth reading. There's just not a lot there, right? So I'm like, just, you know, it's kind of worth an interesting chapter here and there. So, like, at the least, you know, there's that kind of gain. So, I don't know, I just, personally, I'm always kind of spinning things to a gain. That said, you want to be smart about it. To me, part of my framework for when I chose to do this, it's like, well, what's something? I could wake up every day and be pretty excited to tackle that problem or be pretty excited to serve that community. For example, one of the businesses I did right before this, I experimented for about a year, was building something for real estate, because that was part of my story. I do like real estate, but we built a product for real estate agents. And not to disparage any real estate agents, like, my brother in law is a real estate agent. I sort of dabbled in being one at some point, some chapter in my life. But I was like, oh, I woke up every morning thinking, I don't know, this is a community I was really meant to serve every day. I think I still love the product. I love the problem we were trying to solve for them. You know, it just wasn't a fit for that community. So for me, you know, I really took a hard look. It's like, you know, every podcaster I met up until then, it was just like I enjoyed the conversations. I think they're doing something interesting. I think they're brave for taking a risk. And it's just, I just thought if I had to serve this community for the next 1020 years of my life, I think I could do it. I think that's the community I want to serve. So I think, yeah, that's kind of being excited to wake up every day to do that. That's kept me going pretty good so far. It's been three years.

Harry Duran

44:23 - 44:50

Surprised by the kind of the way in which the podcasting community kind of welcomed you or what was your experience? Because a lot of people have that experience. They come in from under industries or like, everyone in podcasting is like, so friendly and like these conferences, and you start to meet people and everyone's like, wants to share ideas and share. I'm curious what your experience was like and how it's been over the past few years, especially from attending the conference. Especially from attending the conferences, yeah, that's a good question.

Patt Cheung

44:50 - 45:24

I don't know. I mean, it's been, yeah, very welcoming. I don't know if I had a lucky break or whatever, but I mean, my first conference, we sponsored a booth, so I don't know if that was a little bit different than other people's experience. But in general, I think it's a very open community. You know, I tend to just personally, I think on a personal level, I just don't like industry with a lot of gatekeepers. I don't know if the verdict is still out, but, like, I hope this doesn't become that kind of industry. I could kind of see it becoming.

Harry Duran

45:24 - 45:26

That because it's, and then, like the last podcast.

Patt Cheung

45:30 - 46:21

Yeah, they're getting very corporate, so. And it's good. It's probably good for me that it becomes bigger and, but, you know, gatekeepers are always kind of a little bit problematic. You know, just from a philosophical point of view. From an entrepreneur standpoint, I always sort of tend to, I guess, commiserate with startups. So I'm always friendly to startups. So, I mean, couple legends in the field, right? When we were starting, they welcomed me and I was like, wow, this is so cool. Like, I mean, I'll even like, you know, Evo Terra, you know? Right. I was like, wow, this guy's so accessible, so welcoming, and our product was really not that great at that time, probably. It's like, hey, you guys are doing something really interesting and really great. So, yeah, so it was very supportive. I love it, and I just hope it continues to be that way.

Harry Duran

46:21 - 46:25

That's good to hear. What is misunderstood thing about you? Misunderstood thing about you?

Patt Cheung

46:26 - 47:16

About me. I mean, I do kind of. It's weird. I think you mentioned something about heartfelt entrepreneurs. Is that part of the tagline? I think I belong there. But sometimes, you know, as an entrepreneur, you got to get stuff done, too. And there's like competition. There's all these, you know, things kind of that you have to be responsible for. So, you know, I like to be thought of as a pretty nice guy, but every once in a while I could tell, oh, man, I probably rubbed someone the wrong way. I probably did something I shouldn't have done. And I don't know if that happens a lot or if I'm really misunderstood by that. Hopefully I still kind of give that impression, but that's really the genuine meal. It's like, you know, people come first in my life. Yeah. So hopefully that's something misunderstood.

Harry Duran

47:17 - 48:30

It's almost like a great way to this conversation because that's been my experience with you. Like a couple of times we've got to engage podcast conversations. You know, I always go in there just looking to see, I think it was, you know, who's there, who's doing something new. And I think it was probably when you had a, it was probably when you had hot in box booth that we started chatting. And it's always exciting to see startups, being an entrepreneur myself, like, what people are doing and how people are thinking about solving some of the problems. And so when someone comes at it from a unique perspective, it always catches my eye. And we've had with, you know, we've hung out as team as well. And then just like, you've got to meet, you know, some of the community that's been there for years, and I've been, like I said, I've been podcasting since ten years, and so. Ten years, you see people come and go see people come. You can always tell, you know, where all the interactions I've had with you have been positive, and I always have. Nice to see you. And I just grateful for this opportunity to kind of deep dive and just get to learn a little bit more about you because, you know, you want to do it at a conference, you want to do it at the conference. And those days go by super quick. They're super loud and super noisy, and so just to be able just kind of like, settle down and with our good mic kind of heart to heart for an hour, what lights me up.

Patt Cheung

48:31 - 49:03

Yeah, I appreciate that, and I love this conversation, too, and I totally agree with what you say. Whenever I see people that I already know at conferences, I'm always like, I'm not avoiding them. I'm really just saying, oh, I'm really just thinking, oh, I don't want to monopolize their time. They already kind of know me. We could kind of, you know, talk outside of it and, yeah, hopefully that's not misinforcer, too. Yeah, so I'm glad, you know, we got this. Yeah. And I'm just kind of, like, going to get some coffee.

Harry Duran

49:05 - 49:34

I was like, we ran into each other briefly, and then we kind of saw each other at the airport, too. We gotta, like, we gotta, like, slow down and have this chat. It's like, kind of gotta pick like, two or three people, like, you want to kind of connect with and just connect with. Deep dive, deep. You know, this idea of going, you know, deep, you know, with, you know, people are supposed to like, broad and just shallow bunch of people. It's always been something I've always been struggling with and trying to be struggling with. More intentional about, more intentional about what's next for you. Any upcoming conferences?

Patt Cheung

49:34 - 49:38

I think I'm looking at Chicago. I think that evolutions.

Harry Duran

49:38 - 49:39

Evolutions.

Patt Cheung

49:40 - 49:41

Evolutions. Yeah.

Harry Duran

49:43 - 49:46

Evolutions. Yeah, I guess. Evolutions. Yeah, I guess.

Patt Cheung

49:47 - 49:52

That's funny. Yeah. I miss him, by the way. Hopefully he shows up to one of these.

Harry Duran

49:53 - 49:53

Yeah.

Patt Cheung

49:54 - 50:09

I'm not sure I like this thing that they're doing, that they're going around different cities. So when they come to the city. Yeah, yeah. I think I'm located in Portland, west coast, so it's tough. Even evolutions and even podcast movements. Do you go to all of them or.

Harry Duran

50:09 - 50:12

I have to pick and choose nowadays because now I've got indoor farming conferences to get.

Patt Cheung

50:16 - 50:37

Yeah, yeah. I'm slowly beginning to realize it's like there's a limited sort of resources, time for these things and energy. Quite honestly, like you said when I saw you at the airport, quite honestly, I was like, oh, I got so excited to see you. I was like, oh, let me finally go catch up. And then when I saw that you kind of had your head slunk down and then you were with your partner and it's like, oh, you know what?

Harry Duran

50:37 - 50:38

It started.

Patt Cheung

50:38 - 50:40

This is not the right time.

Harry Duran

50:42 - 50:44

I want to take a saw you. And I was like, what?

Patt Cheung

50:44 - 50:44

Saw you?

Harry Duran

50:44 - 50:50

And I was like, let's. I was like, this is, this is a much better way to catch up. So my energy is a little energy is a little better.

Patt Cheung

50:50 - 51:07

That's a. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And. Yeah. So I think I'm trying to pick and choose. I think evolutions. Yeah, probably the next one. And maybe podcast movements. I don't even know where I think Dallas really started. Yeah. So those are just close enough where it's not on the opposite side.

Harry Duran

51:07 - 51:09

So where's the best place for.

Patt Cheung

51:12 - 51:31

Yep. Families.com. like you said, it's free. That's kind of how we get people to check it out and anywhere else. Yeah. I mean, if you want to engage with me, I'm really only active, barely active on LinkedIn. But if you want to see, you know, all the other places, all my other links and stuff, you go to patchong.com.

Harry Duran

51:31 - 51:55

I think those links in the show notes, I think you give those as well. Thanks so much, Pat. Thanks so much, Pat. Love here in your journey, your entrepreneurial journey. Very inspiring for folks who might be boat and it's been interesting to kind of see your journey with boxing now fan. I think it's. It's a value for podcasters and I hope we'll get some more about it. So make sure all the links are available in the show notes. Available in the show notes.

Patt Cheung

51:56 - 51:57

Cool. Appreciate it, Harry.

Harry Duran

51:57 - 51:59

Really enjoyed our time together.

Patt Cheung

51:59 - 52:00

Yeah, me too.

Harry Duran

52:00 - 52:00

All right.