Speaker 1: 0:01

The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Speaker 2: 0:09

We've got a power supporter joining us. Her name's Rocky Thomas. She is the Chief Strategy Officer over at Soundstack. Rocky hello, how are you?

Speaker 3: 0:18

I'm doing well. I'm very excited to be here. I'm a big fan of what you guys do, so thank you for having me to be here. I'm a big fan of what you guys do, so thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you Now, rocky. I want to start off with a few basic questions. Okay, so, who or what is Soundstack? Let's start there.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Yeah, absolutely so. Soundstack is what we call a full stack audio and service provider. We really focus on everything from linear streaming to podcast creators. We provide hosting, analytics, ad tech, distribution. We even have our own content management solution for podcasters. We love all audio, so we do everything from end to end spec.

Speaker 2: 0:58

So how long have you been with Soundstack?

Speaker 3: 1:01

So I started out with Soundstack in 2018. Prior to that, I was one of the first employees at AdsWiz, and then I've been in this industry streaming since 1998. And I always like to joke I was 10 when I started doing this and actually my first I guess my experience with streaming was streaming some local radio stations on Mark Cuban's company back in the day. Oh yeah, broadcastcom made me learn how to hate the real media server, kodak. And then, through my entire career, I started doing ad insertion client side in 2000 with a company called Silicon Valley and really have been in the tech side of the audio business, did a stint in TV for four years during the recession, realized I'm not quite pretty enough or speak slow enough for that industry, so I came back over to audio.

Speaker 3: 1:50

So it's been a great career. What I love about digital audio is I have a music degree and it just really speaks to me. So it's great when one of your passions is also a career for you, and I love how much it changes. I know it drives a lot of people crazy, but it is constantly iterating, which makes it really exciting.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Now you mentioned AdWords, but you also worked with the IAB in the early days as well. What were you doing there?

Speaker 3: 2:18

So that's kind of a funny story. So I started out with the audio committees and really trying. I'm a big fan of creating standards in the industry because I think when we all speak the same language and nomenclature it just makes it a lot easier for people to buy, people to understand what's going on and how we could really develop this industry. And so it was funny because Sarah Van Mosel and I decided to approach the IEB to start podcasting committees and kind of branch off a little bit from the audio side. And so she took the business side and she's like you're geeky, go take the tech labs. And I'm like oh, this will be great. After two years of a lot of great discussion between a lot of the people who are still in there, we finally came to a consensus of our first standard. And wow, it was tough Because it wasn't that anybody was really doing anything wrong. It's that we all were just measuring like uniques and everything just slightly different, which made it really hard and everyone had a really good reason of why they were doing it this way. So we launched out our first standard and honestly I thought for sure it was going to be like a short-term deal because we started seeing dynamic ad insertion kind of really start coming to the forefront, and the major reason we are having those download measurement standards at the IEB Tech Labs is so we can count ads that are embedded within the download. So I just thought it was going to be a short-term issue.

Speaker 3: 3:33

Fast forward about 10 years. We are still talking about it, and I think that there's a lot of challenges with an audio. One is that it's pretty independent. Still, even on the streaming side, we have a lot of different ways to approach problems, from a coding to open and closed gardens, and then also, I think, the other challenges, everything from content taxonomy like are we all going to just use Apple forever? How are we going to be able to define this? I mean, there are so many inherent kind of challenges that IAB are trying to overcome. Then you add layers of programmatic, and that makes it even a little bit more challenging. What is interesting, though, is that we're seeing that we have a really we're very similar to CTV, which at first I kind of bristled against because I'm like I don't want to be like CTV, but the nice thing is that when you have similarities with a very large part of the industry, it does make it easier for buyers to understand the nomenclature that we're talking about, so their challenges are sometimes ours, which is not bad.

Speaker 2: 4:40

Now that's one thing that you and James, when you were in Venice, were talking about was the problem with the way that podcasting and buying of media is probably talking Swahili. The two parts are not talking right. So what do we need to do in podcasting to make media buying easier? Because Tom Webster recently said that you know, or it was the media leader that said that podcasts have a $74 billion opportunity in advertising, but we're only getting about 0.2% of all ad spend, although we are seeing the growth rapidly of more and more people coming into the podcasting space as listeners. So we've got more listeners, we've got more engagement, and yet we are still getting a micro, micro amount of the advertising spend. What can we do to change, rocky?

Speaker 3: 5:33

You're right, it's so shocking I like to say. You know, podcasting is the most popular and one of the most consumed, underbought modern medias I've ever run across and it's really frustrating. And I said that in Venice. I'm like it's just it's too hard to buy, and some people took a little bit of bristle to that. I'm like, well, let me rephrase it, it's too hard to buy at scale for large brands. And I think one of the challenges is what we're just talking about is consistent measurement across the side.

Speaker 3: 5:59

So today we're getting bought, basically because you know we're getting bought basically because we're getting the extra 10% buys that are happening at the buy level and we're not actually part of what we call sales planning right now. And that's just not podcasting, that's actually digital audio as well if you look at it from a streaming standpoint, and we're never going to get more than our 5% or 10% afterthought until we are actually part of the media plant's initial planning time, when they're looking at their year-long strategy. We're talking millions upon millions of dollars and right now, what we're focused on and we are working with partnerships which will probably be coming out in the next couple months of how to get a measurement into those platforms so then those buyers can actually identify all right, how many like old school stuff, like gross rating points, which some of them still use. You know how, if I have 10 GRPs in New York, how can I bring podcasts in there to basically target those listeners within New York and how can we basically keep on expanding it? Because at the end of the day, I don't, I don't, I don't blame the demand or the advertising side.

Speaker 3: 7:02

It's really hard to be swivel-chairing. I call between a whole bunch of different platforms to buy a very large media spend and so I think really gosh, it's not like a broken record. But it comes back to measurement. I mean, I would say that our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity in this industry right now is measurement and I would say on the publisher side is also making sure we're consistently passing the correct signals to those buyers. And that can mean everything from the type of content it is.

Speaker 3: 7:31

I would say brand safety is not so much of an issue, and I say that just because most of the podcasts out there are pretty brand safe and if a podcast user is going to go listen to that certain type of podcast, it's a user-initiated action. So I kind of look at it as if you want if an advertiser wants to target that, that's what they're going to get, and also dynamic ad insertion plays into that as well. So really my goal this year is to figure out how we can get a measurement of podcasts into the planning tools that buyers are using today podcast into the planning tools that buyers are using today.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Okay, so we have to change on our side, but they have to understand the platforms as well and get the tools for it. Now, bumper, which I love it's a lovely agency came out of Pacific Content. They talk about a download not being a listen and a listen being how long, right? So James and I talk about very consistently, listen time, percent completed, as two metrics that need to be done in podcasting. Is that what the buyers want? Because that's what Spotify and YouTube can give them. First party data which says, yes, rocky listened to this episode for 18 minutes, which is 42% of that podcast. Right, and Rocky's based here, here and here. Female gender, demographic right, and Rocky's based here, here and here female gender, demographic right, and that's what the buyers want. So what has to change? Because at the moment, nothing seems to change.

Speaker 3: 8:52

Well, I kind of look at the buy industry for podcasts in two different buckets. So the buyers are going to be buying at scale or typically be transacting programmatically, and that's not just you, not just open bidding. That's what we call programmatic guarantee, which is essentially just like executing an insertion order you still do a handshake, you still negotiate the rates, it's just you're not the one who's trafficking in it. The demand side, or the advertiser, is actually trafficking that, and that's going to be fueled by dynamic ad insertion and when you get that, you're going to get the impression counting, you're going to see the completion, you're going to have portals, all the loveliness that they absolutely want.

Speaker 3: 9:29

I am still a huge fan of what we call baked in or personal endorsements, or live reads or fake reads, or that whole category of direct advertising, or I'd even say within the representation firms that are out there that represent those podcasters. Because the reason is is that direct really does work, because you're able to really craft that creative. And when I first I sold radio in my career, I sold air, and so I didn't have a list, and back then all you had was yellow pages and you used to take categories, and so my shtick was that I would interview every on-air primetime, on-air talent, find out where the eight slept, lived, and then I would go to those places and do personal endorsements. I find that when they're already passionate about the brand, it's crazy and really we're getting to an area because of all the privacy issues and the data issues the trend right now and it's pro and con. I'm not sure if I stand in one camp or other. It's really about outcomes and I think the advertisers are truly looking at the outcomes of their advertising, which really bodes well for podcasts, because we've been so DR direct respond focused for so long. It's really trying to tie those two together For many years.

Speaker 3: 10:38

I tried to launch a programmatic marketplace at AdsWiz called Podwave 10 years ago and I had national public media. I had great advertisers ready to go. I could not get the podcast publishers to come on board yet. It was just way, way too soon, and now I'm seeing the inverse. I think a lot of podcasters think that programmatic should be 100% of their advertising and sometimes that could work. When I say programmatic, I'm talking more open, not really programmatic guarantee, and I believe that you should always try to have a direct or a representation business working with a podcaster and then the programmatic if it's open bidding, it's kind of like it's the extra fill, the yield optimization you should be doing. It's symbiotic. They should really try not to be one or the other and I think that we have to think of it like that, especially as new opportunities come up. And I think that we have to think of it like that especially as new opportunities come up with I'm a big fan of possible hyper-local coming up here and I think there's great opportunities across the bounds for podcasters.

Speaker 2: 11:30

So, given your radio background and radio, I think, has 15 minutes in the hour of ads, you know saturation, we're not there with podcasting. Now again, tom Webster's talked about three ads per podcast, an hour podcast. Do you see, in 2025, people upping that to five, six and competing with the saturation of radio?

Speaker 3: 11:56

I do and I wish they wouldn't. And I am a hobby economist because I'm not trained, but I do. That's my thing is. I like to research economics and I think we're kind of doing a slight disservice when you keep on adding more spots to an ad break. The problem is that you're adding more supply. My old local sales manager is in the back of my head saying you know, basically constrict the supply so you can increase the rate on the demand side of it. I know that's easier said than done when everybody else is opening up all their spot sets and they're getting more money.

Speaker 3: 12:30

But I think what happens is and I'm noticing it more myself as I listen to such a wide variety of podcasts across the whole ecosystem is that it is going to impact how people are going to want to listen and when they know that you have a two-minute spot break, they're going to take out their phone and they're going to skip, versus having a 30 or a 60-second spot break. What is going to be your influence of pain? Are you going to go ahead and open it up? And I think when we keep the breaks tight, I'm a big fan of a 15-second ad.

Speaker 3: 12:58

I know that's really tight, but I find that we really have an ADHD transactional brain nowadays and I think that people really like to have concise messaging and I think that's one of my biggest challenges with some endorsement or live reads is the guys don't hold tight to like a clock when they're doing their reads, and I've heard like two minute Casper ads. Sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, guys, you've got to keep it tight. And then also hearing the same bullet point creatives going over and over. The beautiful thing about live reads is they're not supposed to burn out on creative and they're starting to burn out and that's where I think it's an opportunity to mix up the creative, have a different challenge, find out the first demo, the second demo, the tertiary demo. Make sure you're making a message towards that, just because, at the end of the day, it increases your outcome, which is going to increase the ability for you to get bought again.

Speaker 2: 13:48

Do you see AI ads being a better way of then staying within those boundaries? Create the script, have it AI driven, change the voices, make it a little bit different, but you don't have the fallibility of humans who are going to then drift over in your amount. You said that Casper mattress ad goes from 15 seconds to two minutes. That's a bad ad, but an AI is never going to drift, so do you go back to that format?

Speaker 3: 14:12

Yeah, I think the way I look at AI voicing because I almost call it like dynamic, creative to some extent is I think there's great applications for it for certain types of advertisers and certain types of outcomes that people want. I'm never a person who's going to be like I'm cut and dry on it. I think every situation is different. I do think that we should be testing it because I'm curious. And then also, how do people feel if it's the announcers or the talent's voice being synthesized into AI? I also look at it from a different point of view.

Speaker 3: 14:44

Would it be exciting if you had a global brand that you could actually switch to the correct language for that listener? I think that could be possibly exciting. Again, it'd have to definitely be a larger global brand or brand that's in that country, but I think there's definitely applications for it. I don't think we should be too myopic to say that, oh, it's going to kill the talent. I don't know. I think there's room. We're such an emerging still industry. I think right now we need to be testing and seeing what's really working the best for serving not only the publishers but also in creators as well as the advertisers in demand.

Speaker 2: 15:16

Well, we will see what happens. Now one of the other areas why are you against it?

Speaker 3: 15:20

I'm kind of curious what's your view on it, sam yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:22

I think one of the trust points of podcasting is the host. You tune into the regular host and you build I think Alberto from rsscom call it parasocial a one-way relationship with the host, because you hear so much about their life through the form of the podcast, but you then form a picture around that person, but they don't know who you are as a listener. Let's say so. You have a trust relationship with that person. So if you then break that trust relationship with an AI, I think that's going to sort of juxtapose against the listener. Oh, that's not what I expected. No, I'm not sure. I'm comfortable, I don't know. Again, I don't know either.

Speaker 3: 16:01

I think it's going to be interesting. I think also that it really depends on the type of flavor of your podcast, like I think certain ads are, you know, more accepted on certain types of how the flavor and the flow of a podcast is. I think it's always really jarring when you're, you know, having it's an interview. It's very chilled and all of a sudden a FanDuel ad comes in and kind of yells at you. So I think it really comes down to the tonality of the podcast. So that's why I'm never really cut and dry on everything and some podcasts the hosts just don't have that type. They're more informational, they're more educational. I'm thinking of some of my economic podcasts I listen to. I don't feel like I have a relationship with the host as much as I have a relationship with the content that they provide and I have a respect for the content they provide. So it's a little different. I think it's tough, right, because there's so many different flavors of podcasts, right?

Speaker 2: 16:52

So the one thing and we won't be able to go into a great deal of depth here because it's too out there for the moment but one of my beliefs is that the reason that users skip ads and that's who the advertiser wants to reach right at the end of the day is because their time and attention is not valued by the ad that's delivered. It's either contextually out of sort or the ad is just not in line with what the content is that they're listening to and actually most of the time you're going, actually I don't want to listen to an ad at all and the podcaster doesn't care because they've been paid, but the only person who's not getting the value is the advertiser, which is why I go back to how long did the person listen to the ad and how much did they complete the ad. So I built a model I'm not going to go into today for true fans that actually measures how long someone listens to an ad and their engagement level, and that's, I think, going to be a much more powerful way.

Speaker 3: 17:48

But, as I said so well, on the dynamic side we've been counting quartiles for 10 years, much like the video side, so we're able to see when somebody you know bails out 25, 50 or 75% within like a 30, 15 or 60 second ad. I would say that I think it's exciting. I think the challenge comes in is that you know, in our openness that I look because we're very open web, we believe in free media and open standards and we always have been a sound stack because we are independent, we're bootstrapped, we're not owned by a media company. We get to build whatever we want to, which is challenging and fun at the same time. But I really think that it's always tough when you don't have control of the client.

Speaker 3: 18:26

I'll be honest with you. That's why we started dynamic ad insertion in the beginning, because back in the day we had to fire a banner ad to count the audio ad impression, which is really killing my soul because it was like the advertiser was getting a two for one impression at that time. And so that's really where we started doing server-side ad insertion on that side so we can accurately count, because we didn't have control of Apple, we didn't have control of the client. It's, I mean, it goes back to streaming audio with Icecast, shellcast, shellcast, yp, back in the day TuneIn. I mean you can go through all the aggregation apps, the aggregation apps. You just don't have control over them. But I don't know.

Speaker 2: 19:01

We've been playing around with those chapter tags. So we'll see. Okay, let's hit a couple of questions. So, given you talked about open, given you talked about you know what you're doing with chapters. Where are you with podcasting to the O? There was a podcast out today from Mark Askwith which was podcasting to the O has failed, and he openly admits that was clickbait, but it was also a very interesting. Okay, let's throw the conversation back open. Has it succeeded? Has it failed? Has Soundstack adopted it? And if they have, great. And if they haven't, why not? I mean, where do you sit as strategy director on this?

Speaker 3: 19:36

I love a lot of the elements within Podcast 2.0. I think the challenge with Podcast 2.0 is there are so many options that you can do in there and the way that we approach it. As Soundstack, we definitely adopt some of the elements and tags. It really comes down to what our publishers are asking us to implement. You literally have implemented almost all of them, which is incredibly impressive. I have to say it's incredibly impressive. I would say, obviously the transcripts, the person, the location ones, because that makes a lot of sense. A lot of our publishers also tend to be broadcasters or they tend to be podcast networks. And then also I wouldn't say it's a secret, but actually it kind of is we actually provide a lot of the delivery for some people who would be considered competitive to soundstack. That I can't talk about because that's how we've grown as a company. We actually provide delivery and hosting for other companies.

Speaker 3: 20:27

But the one I'm excited about is, you know, the live item tag. I mean that's the cause. I see that as really like the cool thing about merging possibilities between the linear as well as the on-demand and and doing live events, and I mean this is like. This is where it gets really cool for like local sports and just it's just. This is like a kind of a geek audio girl's dream come true, and so I, to answer your question, do I think the podcast 2.0 has failed? No, I would say that it has failed in its focus, and when I say that is that I think we'd be better served if we find a couple of the tags that are really going to help.

Speaker 3: 21:06

Either One's going to drive monetization, maybe for more transparency within what I call programmatic signals. One's going to help maybe merge the lit tag between linear and on-demand. Maybe one that helps out with metrics, I think, really focusing, taking elements of it, the value for value. One and I know that recently changed and I'm still trying to follow you guys on how, because we don't do too much of that type. Most of our clients are enterprise clients. I understand the concept, tip jar and trying to get that in there, but I'll be honest with you, I still do the credit cards with you guys, just because I'm on Pocket Cast, which is, I feel, like a newer 2.0, but it's definitely not like the True Fans app or some other stuff that we have on there.

Speaker 2: 21:47

I think I'm equally giddy and excited about Lit as you are. One of my predictions for 2025 was that it will go big. Finally, adam and Dave do a live show every Friday night. Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee do a live show. There are many that are doing it. I think you've seen Netflix get into NFL. You've seen Amazon get into football and soccer in this country. You've seen RSScom nearly got into it fully.

Speaker 2: 22:14

They adopted the live tag, but they didn't put a server capability, an HLS server or an Icecast server into it, and I think that's what's missing right now. I think I've talked to James about the field construct for the live item tag, start time, end time, name of URL for the server. All that is too geeky for the average user. They need to just simply go to a host and go. I want to go live a bit like StreamYard did or a bit like Riverside a host and go. I want to go live a bit like streamyard did or a bit like riverside does. Right, I want to go live, click that button and in the background, it does all the geeky stuff for you. They don't need to know how to do that, and so I'm really hoping hosts will start to provide their clients, the podcasters, with that one click access to live, and then I think you'll see more people adopting it.

Speaker 3: 23:01

Well, and that's why I think that Soundstack is really. This is why we get real excited about it, because this is really in our sweet spot, because we know the Icecast Showcast. We just launched our own stream server with HLS and we're still iterating and developing on streaming protocols and we just look at it as for efficiency and how we can balance out our own network that we own. And so we get excited because we're finally seeing that we could really help out the industry, because we are those people who are independent who want to help out creators who actually have incredible deep knowledge on streaming protocols. And I was listening to I think it was maybe a podcast 2.0 or one of them with those guys and I could feel their frustration of figuring out metadata within Icecast or Shoutcast. And you're right, people think digital audio is all the same. It's not. It's audio, but the delivery mechanisms are so different.

Speaker 3: 23:54

And how can we at Soundstack help bridge that gap a little bit is something that I'm really excited about and where I'm working on, because I've been on revenue forever and I love making revenue and I love, uh, and I love making publisher success.

Speaker 3: 24:06

I like paying publishers, I like and I like seeing them continue to grow because, I'll be honest with you, they're the heroes. If we, if we don't support publishers, we don't really have an industry anymore, and I don't think people kind of think about that. We can have an industry that's basically driven by the mega companies and we'll be back to where radio was, you know, circa 1996. And I don't think we really want that. I think we want to keep independent voices thriving and that's something that we're excited about too, because we want to help out the industry with our knowledge. We actually really understand that and I would say we probably need a little bit more podcast 2.0 people to kind of work with us so we can figure out how we can help make it easier because, you're right, it is deep, geeky yeah, given where sound stack is, with its radio background and with its podcasting.

Speaker 2: 24:50

So are you saying that you are going to enable those radio stations to use medium equals radio for being a little bit techie for a second, but fundamentally they will then have another channel to market? So, as I said, when I had my own radio station, we would do DAB, but we would do web. Alexa and lit wasn't around, but we had a shoutcast server that would broadcast through those channels, and all I'm hoping is that radio stations and people who run them, like yourselves, go. Yeah, no, don't worry, we're going to add one more distribution channel for you. It's going to be called a podcasting 2.0 or it's going to be called, just you know, live item tag or whatever you want to call it, and you don't need to do anything. You need to broadcast what you're doing today, your shows, and we'll distribute it for you.

Speaker 3: 25:41

That's exactly. That's exactly. And then, conversely, we think it's really exciting that we've already done beta tests with podcast networks of stacking their content in a linear form. So not only is it the ability to go full streaming when you are going live, but also how can you archive that. So I have a lean back experience. So and this is not going to work for all podcast creators Some of them have great, evergreen content that I could probably listen to how stuff works for two years and not have a repeat of their content. I mean, how gasoline is made does not change that much, so I mean, I think that it really depends on it. But I think it's also really exciting because I can start seeing verticalization. Then we even know how can we take music stations. We have 4500 music uh publishers on live 365. How can we get, possibly, podcast content shows within that streaming, which and this sounds familiar, sam it should, because it's how radio has been running no, it's what I've been shouting about.

Speaker 2: 26:36

It's like itication. Yes, it's like if the content doesn't have to be live live, it can be live schedule, but it can be recorded into the live schedule and it's so basic.

Speaker 3: 26:48

We, we are we are very much the fans of create something really cool once and let us help you distribute it as many different ways as you possibly can. I mean it does it's. I would say that it's not that far to think that you know Barn Talk. You know, like a podcast group. It should be in a country station on a syndicated time period, I don't know eight o'clock on a Friday night on the East Coast. I mean, it's just like the old radio tricks that we used to have for syndicated content. Why would we not do that? It's kind of cool.

Speaker 3: 27:15

I would say that probably that listener would probably enjoy a 15-minute segment on this, that probably that listener would probably enjoy a 15-minute segment on this. So that's why we get real excited about this, because we just see it as a way of cross-pollinating content. It's not going to be for everybody and we understand that. We're really trying to innovate and iterate on cool things and we're like, wow, that'd be really cool. And people are like, is that what radio used to? Yeah, it is, but I think they forgot about this, so we're going to bring it back up.

Speaker 2: 27:44

Yeah, and I think Adam and Dave are very right, the hyperlocal, as well, is going to come back into fashion. I think that's going to be through live item tag. Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity. No, I think it's exciting and then think about the kids.

Speaker 3: 27:50

We can get involved in this, and that's where I kind of geek out, because it's like the Gen Z and Alpha is the ones that are quite young. It is really about putting their. They're almost like micro broadcasters now. I mean, that's essentially what TikTok and social is. So how can we really grasp those people to become the new, like journalists and like the producers of the future? Because I mean, I'm not getting any younger. I don't know about you, sam, but it's like that's. We got to get those folks and those young people really excited, and I think you're always starting to see excitement. That's what's so great about podcasting it really does target younger folks, and so now we just got to get them creating and, you know, possibly participate more in our industry, which will be really fun.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Awesome, I could talk to you all day with Rocky. Now, look, we'll geek out after this show. Now, rocky, if somebody wants to find out more about Soundstack, where would they go?

Speaker 3: 28:40

Soundstackcom. We're obviously on LinkedIn and all the other social places. Anyone can reach out to me at Rocky R-O-C-K-I-E. Like the mountains, Rocky at Soundstackcom, and love collaboration, love talking about the industry. I believe there's really not any one answer. I think it's all about making sure that we're all kind of figuring out the best way path forward, and I'm excited about it. It's a great time to be in this industry right now. We have our challenges, but it's interesting because, just on the final thought, it's funny because everybody you know wanted to be, you know, really popular and mainstream in podcasts and now that it's happened, we're having a little bit of a challenge dealing with our new popularity, which is a really great problem to have if you look at it, you know. So it's nice to know what your parents do when you say podcasting, so it's cool.

Speaker 2: 29:29

I remember when I was an army officer my mom was so proud and then I said I was an entrepreneur. One day she was like what the hell's an entrepreneur? And if she was still alive and I said it was a podcaster, she'd lose it. She'd still alive and I said it was a podcaster, I should lose it.

Speaker 3: 29:46

You should have no idea what I did. Rocky, will we see you in London at the London Podcast Show? Will we see you in Chicago? Where are you going to be? So, yes and yes. So I am doing a panel or a fireside chat with Larry Rosen from Edison Research, and then also I just booked my ticket yesterday for London, so I will be in London, which I'm quite excited about. Soundsec has been there the past couple of years. We're bringing about seven or eight people this year to that show as well, so that'll be exciting.

Speaker 2: 30:08

Nice, we'll catch up then properly. Rocky Thomas, thank you so much. It's been wonderful interviewing you. I had to wait a while, but it was worth the wait.

Speaker 3: 30:16

Same here. I really enjoy it. Thank you for your time and your support.