Today we're presenting Aaron (A.J.) Armstrong! Aaron is the host of Winners, Wallets, & Worldviews Podcast and reminds us to let our curiosity drive our podcast.

Aaron is an engineer, real estate investor, speaker, and thought leader. He has been featured in several mainstream media platforms. He is a West Point graduate, former Army Football player, and founder of three thriving businesses, including the Venture Project in downtown Oshkosh.

Guest Links:

• Get 50% a single podcast studio rental at the Venture Project! Just mention the APC
• Follow Aaron on Instagram @aaronarmstrong33

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David Kalsow 0:00

Today's episode is sponsored by the Venture Project. The Venture Project is an affordable Art Deco inspired co-working space that offers shared office space, a professional recording studio, professional events, and expert mentorship in downtown Oshkosh. Go to theventureprojectoshkosh.com to learn more. On to the show.

Aaron Armstrong 0:22

My wife and I've always joked though, our biggest hobbies are just working on our businesses. Because this is what we like. I don't know. It's weird. I'm David Kalsow. And you're listening to APC Presents Bri showcase independent podcasters from Northeast Wisconsin.

David Kalsow 0:40

Today's guest is Aaron Armstrong. Aaron is an engineer real estate investors speaker and with the recent addition to his family, a father. He recently founded the venture project co working space you just heard about what he does there. It's kind of interesting. So my favorite description of it, in his own words is helping idea attics recover. The whole purpose of the venture project is to help people bring their ideas to life from business plans to creative endeavors. Aaron has a podcast of his own, as you might have guessed, and he records in a studio space adventure project where we recorded this very episode. switching up our regular style, we immediately the behind the scenes of Aaron's podcast, and end with some more personal stories. I'm pleased to present Aaron Armstrong.

David Kalsow 1:34

Awesome, man, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. I'm really looking forward to talking with you. Such a bright mind and entrepreneur leader in the Fox Valley area. And I'm very active within the APC as well. So I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.

Aaron Armstrong 1:50

Well, thank you so much, Dave, for let me jump in today. This is awesome. I'm really excited to really dig into some podcasting tips and tactics with you. I'm sure we'll get to that later. But

David Kalsow 1:58

this is a fun opportunity. Yeah, and we're actually recording in your new studio here in Oshkosh. That's

Aaron Armstrong 2:04

right, the venture project. We have a studio here. And the ideas, you know, similar mission that that you have with EBC is how do we get more podcasters in the doors, get them started? And we got a studio where that's available to people.

David Kalsow 2:16

Yeah, it's so cool that we can sort of collab on that and then get to use your your acoustically treated space as well. Wonderful. Very awesome. So let's kind of get to know you as a person. Sure. Tell us your story. You said you grew up in Nina.

Aaron Armstrong 2:31

David Kalsow 5:32

here we are. And it sounds like you were a lot of haves, and have throughout your entire career, an athlete, systems engineer, an entrepreneur, a leader, and everything else in between, how do you balance all that? Yeah, I

Aaron Armstrong 5:46

was thinking about that the other day, because with the venture project, you get a lot of bizarre different business ideas. It's me It's kinda like Shark Tank, where people come in with anything from I want to be an influencer to I have an invention idea to I want to get into podcasting, social media, movies, whatever I don't know, is the commonality. And all of that is there's an opportunity for the market to take a bite out of this potentially. So I think the common theme is kind of the concept in the marketing that goes into it is understanding who are you serving? How are you becoming valuable? So I focused a lot of my work on figuring out the answer to that question, how is this can be valuable to people? And how do we bring that into what you're doing. And it takes us a lot of different directions. And that's, I think the fun part is the variety. And to balance all these different hats. It's just been a matter of, you know, I have modes, I guess, that I turn on, you know, there's certain times that I have a very light kind of time of day that I do certain activities, and I know myself, I know my system. And it's about putting all those in the right place consistently. Like I meet with people, when I'm in a certain mood, I get X's and O's done, or black and white thinking done in the creative things done. And I have different times of day that those work for me that I just know my circadian rhythms and things like that. And that's kind of how I've rolled out my habits and systems, but

David Kalsow 7:06

starts with knowing thyself. Exactly. philosopher whose name I can't

Aaron Armstrong 7:11

remember right now, Well, some people can relate that like exercise, right? So some people are not morning people, they can't work out in the morning, they're the afternoon people, or the evening exercise or some people you got to get like me, I got to get done in the morning or won't get done. So it's kind of like that with everything. There's certain times a day that work well, like I kind of treat creative work is what I enjoy the most, I treat that as kind of like dessert, like you get you get like when everything else gets done. Now you can have your cupcakes. Now you can do some of the creative work, your cheat hour of creativity, right? Because you're always going to be able that you can always eat a cupcake anytime a day doesn't matter, because they're delicious. So that's kind of the idea with creative I can do that no matter how tired or fatigued I am because I enjoy it so much.

David Kalsow 7:51

You would say that's your sort of favorite hat to wear is your creative hat. But you sort of know your limitations of when to put that on.

Aaron Armstrong 7:57

Right? Because if you sit and creative too long, nothing gets done. And I think a lot of people can relate to this, the starving artists kind of thing that happens because of that, you know, if you don't have a tactical strategy, discipline, and some of the unfun pain points that have to happen before you're kind of given access to the chaos. It's like, you know, if you play an instrument play guitar, and I play guitar, learning guitar is very orderly, it's very there's there's frets, you have to learn notes, you have to get your fingers to do things they don't want to do. You have to memorize chords, it's very hard and tedious to learn. But then once you've gotten the basics, and the intermediate down, it becomes very free and exciting to play different things and the creativity comes out. So it's almost the idea of having the order first allows you access to the creative.

David Kalsow 8:44

Yeah, I think sticking with your musical sort of analogy there. Like I cried the first time I picked up a guitar because I was just playing a G chord over and over again. And I think pretty sure my fingers were almost bleeding. And I was like, Mom, I can't do this. And she was like, just give it another week. And like, week, months goes by I was like, I love doing this. I was like, I'm sure I was inspired by the musicians that I was seeing on stage and hearing. And I was like, I want to be able to play music like that those guys. And if I have to suffer to a little bit to get through it. And

Aaron Armstrong 9:14

Soviet the delayed gratification, yeah. And then the other thing is you start to hear the G chord. And at first it sounds all clunky, it's all muted. Your fingers are not in the right spot or whatever. But eventually you hear it and then you hear that how it mixes with a D and A C and now you have this DC g progression. Now you're playing Sweet Home Alabama, because it sounds familiar. Now you're playing can't just see by Marshall Tucker band because it sounds familiar. And now you're seeing progress happen. And the progress feeds your hunger to keep going. Yeah, so I don't know. I think that's kind of now let's flip it and relate that to the business world. I think it's the exact same thing that can be applied in multiple disciplines. So it's like, you can wear a different hat like you might say, how does being a musician relate to health and how does health relate to being a business? People picture those as all different things, but it's the same thing. We just talked about the progress that goes into it. A lot of times, not that I recommend, the best way of, of getting in shape is to lose weight. But it's like you can see a number on the scale. And you can see the progress the next day, if it's a little bit less than a little bit less, which feeds your drive to stay consistent. If you can't see that progress, it makes it difficult. That works with a business. If you can start to see progress, you can see a sales metric, you can see increases in revenue, you can see increases in the amount of reviews you see online, whatever those things are, it feeds the hunger to keep doing what you're doing and going in the right direction. So having not having those metrics or indicators makes it very difficult, I think, to figure out how you can grow. And that's what all these things have, I think in common is that there's little indicators of progress, and progress and achievement, I think feeds the beast, the

beast being your, your business, your creative competition, your desire ambition to get better. I have a thing Exactly. What would you say? Are those like key performance indicators for your podcast?

Well, there's I think, one thing I like to look at is it's kind of it's kind of a hard, Tange. It's kind of a hard metric, but the feedback at a depth level. So I'll give you an example. There was a guy that reached out to me a couple weeks ago, on LinkedIn, so a platform I'm not terribly involved in, but I have a following on LinkedIn, I guess I just don't post a lot. And he reaches out and said, I'm from the UK, your podcast really changed my life. And I was like, Wow, it almost doesn't matter how many downloads or listens, or whatever you get, if you have a couple people like that, that reach out, that's why I changed a life with a podcast, like this idea, I had three and a half years ago, changed a life Wow, that's, that's impactful. And every couple months, I'll get a message like that. And that's usually what I would say is the progress indicator for me that wants me to keep it going, wants me to keep my content valuable. It's things like that, that go more than just the listens. And the, the length of time that people listen to retention, I guess you could say, or all these other indicators that are out there. So I guess it's an unusual thing that I look for, but that's what I figured out, that's my my pound on the scale. That's my revenue. Like, that's what I know, feeds my hunger to keep going. Did you think that that's what it was gonna be when he first started? I don't think I thought it was gonna be that I hoped it would. But I don't think I was I never thought that was gonna happen. The people would reach out and say, You've changed my life. And like I said, every couple months, I get I get, I get a message like that in that level of depth. And I think that's what makes it all worth it. I mean, you could do a podcast for three or four years, and get one of those, and that'll be worth it because you changed a life. And this guy went into a story. And it was incredible. I mean, he was, he was addicted to drugs, he didn't have a father figure in his life, he had no faith or spirituality of any kind. It was just kind of nihilistic lifestyle. And to reach out and say that my podcast was something that changed his way of thinking, to find deeper purpose and meaning to start rekindling relationships with his family, to start getting off of drugs, to start trying to exercise achievement, to dig deep into his passions and grow was like, you know, brings almost a tear to my eye. And that's, that is a metric that I think is really beautiful to look at. So what I would ask, you know, other people that are in the space or the podcasters is, what does that look like for you? How do you get how do you know that you've really hit the value Mark? Because you can get tons of downloads or views or whatever. But did you really hit your goal? So me starting out, like, I don't know, I hope this will help people. But I don't know if it would. I don't know if people want to listen to me talk. I don't want my wife doesn't like listening to me talk

while she married to somebody. Yeah,

she's duggleby doesn't like those. But yeah, that's, that's, I think what I would look for

it comes back to like, not necessarily worrying about getting those downloads, especially at the beginning, but like, how are you providing value to whoever's listening on the other end?

I mean, if you're, let's say, you're a podcast that has some kind of sales call to action. You know, you're all fixated on how many downloads or whatever you're getting, like, Well, why don't you just look at how many sales you're getting? by people that have said, Yeah, I listened your podcast and tuned in and I decided, this, your whatever, you know, what's your actual goal here? Because you can get $5 you get five downloads a month, and you get one sale? That's pretty sweet. You know, you're 20% That's great, you know? So it's like thinking like that, I think is like what's your What was your goal with the podcast? Was your goal to be an influencer? Okay, well, if you're trying to be an influencer, how are you influencing what what is your What are you making them do that you think they're doing? Are you an activist or you are whatever and figuring that out and finding those metrics of the result you want? I think people get too caught up in downloads and those things which are good indicators Don't get me wrong, but it's just like how do you Now that it's working, is the question.

And that's something that every person needs to figure out. And it sounds like you didn't get there right away. It

took you a little No, I was all, you know, read all the, what you do to start a podcast and how to get to be new and noteworthy and all those things that people tell you you need to do. And it's just like, well, you just got to keep doing what you're what you're doing. And people say your lives were changed. It's just like well worth it worth it. Three years that you've been doing, it benefits a lot of responsibility on you, you're like, wow, I really got to be careful with what I'm saying. Because people are taking this very seriously, which is a whole nother idea on topic. But

so of all the mediums that you could do this to influence people say the video is the most likely to drive engagement to get people to respond and things. Why did you choose the audio medium of podcasting? there?

I think, a lot of reasons. Due to understand, you know, you read a book about what business to start or what direction to go on with your life or whatever. And everything seemed to come back to playing your strengths. I've got a deep, you know, Barry, white kind of voice. And I was told I was a good speaker, and I could talk about most things. So I thought podcasting would be a good forum to experiment with to market my services, I guess, in addition to that, there were some secondary consequences. And benefits to podcast over video specifically, you know, if you're looking at me, David, I'm no, I'm no one special look at I got a face for radio, right? Yeah, I got this big beard. And it's just, you know, whatever. But the idea is that, with podcasting, you can multitask, right? You can, you can read other things. When you're podcasting, you can go for a run, you can exercise, you can drive in the car, it's a very dual purpose medium. That's not like when you're in a video, you're watching a video, when you're reading, you're reading, when you have a podcast, you can listen to that anywhere, you can do that while you're working or whatever. So you have an opportunity to digest additional knowledge and information in a way that's never been possible before. So if I'm going to have a platform that I think is primarily educational, as I'm interviewing experts, and they're kind of crafts that I that made a lot of sense as well. So I think between and just my burning curiosity to learn about other people, it's exciting. I, you know, I've gotten feedback from friends, like, they're always saying, our conversations are so deep and crazy. It's like, let's bring people along for those deep conversations.

Those deep conversations, that's sort of what you want to talk about in your podcast, winners, wallets and worldview, can you just give us a little summary of what that podcast is all about? Yeah,

I named it winners wallets and worldviews, because we have winners, I wanted to find people that have reached new levels in kind of their different industries or fields, whether it was professional athletics, whether it was business, leadership, these kind of different spaces that people have competed in and overcome adversity and achieved. I talked while it's because is any entrepreneur, business owner, or really individual wealth is certainly a part of our way of living, and understanding how to build that grow that strategically, whether it's small business, real estate, investment strategies, entrepreneurship, whatever it happens to be, we wanted to bring in experts in those areas, and then worldviews he has something that supported me as I have Christian faith. But I also have noticed, there's a lot of Annette, there's, there's a lot of people that don't find the Christian worldview very attractive, they find other mass marketed spirituality mediums much more attractive. So I bring those people on and we discuss it, you know, I provide a little defense of my faith and let them kind of articulate their view and allow people to come along for that journey to see, okay, we have successful people, we also have these different ideas that might drive them at the deeper levels. What do we have in common? What are some things that are still consistent with my view? What are some things I disagree with, and allow people to kind of experience that as well? So it opens the door to a wide range of topics and possibilities, but I call it business philosophy. Yeah.

In a world that's like, everyone gets offended at the tiniest thing, how do you have start those conversations with people that may have an opposite worldview view?

It's difficult. I mean, I'll give an example. I had a guy on our podcast, he is a medium. So he communicates with the dead. And I'm a Christian. So if he does do this, that's not a biblical thing. So I wanted and, you know, I was quoting some Bible verses that that say things like, you know, if you speak with the spirits, if the spirits don't point you back to the Bible, don't point you back to Christ, well, then they're misleading you and they're demonic, right? So I'd ask me stuff like that. I'm like, Okay, well, if you're talking to these people is he's like, well, all religions, you know, are good and all this stuff. I'm like, Okay, well, that's clearly not the conversation I want to have. But it's very different. You know, having those religious conversations on your podcast, you want to be respectful of the guests, but you also want to have some friendly debate and discussion. So I think navigating it with respect, but you always get hate from people no matter what, you know, if you get bad reviews, or people don't like what you said and you just eventually get first year really sucks and it kind of ruins you and then eventually just kind of laugh it off. shrug it off and move on to the next That's just war. You know, it's just they don't they don't want to kill you. They're just, they're just anonymous people on Twitter or YouTube, just throwing grenades

frustrated by that one thing, and then they scroll past it and never think of it again. Right?

Exactly. Like they're not spending any time of day thinking about it. Why would you? So it's just kind of like you want to be proportional in your, in your energy you dedicate to nastiness.

And I think that's where the podcast medium works well, because it is just like having a phone call and conversation with someone and it's less of, I'm crafting this best response possible that will crush your worldview. It's like, Hey, I'm, and we're here to talk for more than just five seconds on the street or something, I want to hear what you believe. I want to be able to have the chance to share what I believe as well, right.

And it gives you an opportunity to defend your position, and also allow them to almost reduce sometimes in a lot of cases, I'll just ask enough questions to really highlight how unclear they are with what they really think. And that's just enough to show people like, okay, they showed a point of weakness and their worldview, they must not be that convinced of it. And things like that, you know, I think it's called reduced to absurdity. I was just asked enough questions, torture sounds preposterous. Yeah. Okay. Well, I did my job. So next topic, right?

You asked me now Good luck. So you have a ton of variety of different guests than from a medium to entrepreneurs that are crushing the game in the tech world right now? How do you decide who to interview on your show?

So a lot of things I'll look for in a guest is, is this something that I'm personally really interested in or unfamiliar with? Because I think in order to be a good host, there has to be a natural, organic level of curiosity. And I usually look for things like that. Is this a topic that I'm very interested in? I try to vet topics like, I don't know, a few months back, I was unclear on topics of like Facebook ads. So I tried to find some experts that have used that. And I asked them all the same questions I have, because you get, you can google enough stuff. But if you don't know what to ask, or sometimes they'll just bring up a little nugget. And then you can dig into that nugget. And that just opens the door to all the real answers. So things like that what I'm really personally interested in. And then people, it's almost like a karate belt system where people can start out when I was a novice of certain topics, and then they can follow my understanding of them further. And they kind of get an education along with me. And it's just like, I'm just the guy asking the questions. And there if you listen all the episodes, you're kind of on the same level of understanding of the world that I'm on, you know, that brings up a good point of you didn't feel like you were an expert, when you started. And you said that earlier? Like, how did you get over that hump of, oh, let's just bring along people from my journey of understanding that you didn't have to be the expert of all expert know, everything in the world to be a podcast host. That was, I don't know, like, especially when you're trying to market yourself as a, as a coach or a consultant, you want to be able to answer all the questions. So that's tough. But I think that people recognize the humility and part of being a coach or a consultant is asking the right questions to the person to be able to understand. And I don't know if that makes sense, like, I'm always impressed with people that can ask very few questions and get immediately to the problem very quickly. I think that's really impressive when people can do that. And it's almost more impressive than people that already knew everything. So I started to try to learn how to do this with podcasting, because and then eventually, people listen to me ask questions like, well, he asked me some of these questions like he'd know everything there is to know about my situation, they'd feel like I really understand their situation, then we'd be able to truly problem solve through it. And I think that was a reassuring way of saying, like, I might not know the answers, but I'm, damn Well, sure. I will be able to problem solve and improvise through this just based on my way of thinking. And that's kind of what I base a lot of the initial episodes off of was like, This is my way of thinking, here. Listen to this conversation here. Here's how we go through it. And then you learn stuff. And then you can always become an expert later on, as you've started to learn stuff, right?

Yeah, to have some level of perseverance and all of that. I think I just asked that. I think like two days ago, that said, Only 44% of podcasts make it past three episodes. Wow. And you're like, almost 150. So where did that mindset from you to keep persevering come from?

Well, I knew I was going to commit at least a year to it, which didn't seem like that much. Because when I first started the podcast, it was or when I was thinking of starting the podcast, I was like, I'm gonna commit at least a year to it. And then I think it was February I launched the podcast in March, I went to a conference at Grant cardones TEDx conference. So he's Grant cardones, big real estate personality guy. And he had a one of the speakers was Lewis Howes, who has the podcast School of greatness, very popular podcast in a similar space that I'm in. So I saw them they had it was after he got off the stage or what And had sushi at the same restaurant that we were at. And I see him over there. So I was like, how am I going to get a conversation with this guy? So I said, Okay, let's put value first. I'll buy him. I'll buy the whole table dinner. So I paid for the dinner. And I was and then the waiter comes back. He's like, hey, how much did you spend? He's like, are you sure you want to buy their table dinner? I'm like, Oh, crap, how much? He's like, $690. I was like, You know what, I gotta have this conversation. So I said, well, we'll get twice the points put on the card. And then Lewis house came over after thing just was really gracious. And I asked him that question, I said, you know, building a podcast like you've done. And I didn't say this, but for someone that really didn't have that impressive background, you know, he was kind of a middle class guy, just never, there wasn't really a huge, crazy problem he ever overcame. How do you do it? Then he said, it's really about having consistencies, like nobody will do it for three to four years. So I tell people don't even start a podcast if you're not gonna go for three to four years. So that became the new target. It was like, how do I do this for three to four years, and consistently put out content, and I've taken breaks, but it's just like, I don't know, like, I'm trying, I'm in this Bible reading challenge cover to cover and they said, Look, you're gonna try to do it in a year. If you take a break, a lot of people just put it back on the shelf. And they never finished the Bible cover cover. But if you just after your break, just bookmark it and just pick up where you left off. And then eventually, over maybe a couple years, you finish it. And that was kind of a new mentality. So if I take a break, like I took a two month break, when we did the bunch of project here, just pick back up, like, just get back into it and just keep going with it. Like it's okay to like, take a breather, it's okay to take a sabbatical. It's just coming back from the sabbatical. Like, it's very important. And that's, I guess, the mindset I've had with it.

Yeah. Do you have any tips for a podcaster? That may want to take a break? Because there's certainly going to be some level of the audience is going to miss you. How do you sort of fill that gap? Or how do you prepare your listener for you being gone for that little

bit? I think it's if there's like a natural break, it makes a lot of sense. So what I did in this last break that I just went through was over the holidays, you know, so it just made sense. Like it was right after Christmas. And then I took January, February. And then I came back and kind of explained everyone that worked on the venture project, new studio, and everyone's like, Okay, I see what's going on. And the downloads pretty much picked right back up, you know, and there were downloads obviously, happening. When you have 150 episodes, people will download all those episodes now. So you'll see a huge increase in them. And it was kind of cool. And in a lot of ways it was beneficial to because people would, they wouldn't be looking for new episodes, they just go back to the old ones, which is kind of cool, because some of those are have a lot of value that you don't always look for so

because so they may have hopped on episode 130. And then they caught up and then you have that break, and he gives them time to go back and listen to those 100 right.

Welcome to the Podcast Fast Class. Lesson 7 was branding elements. Lesson eight, we're talking about distribution and trailers. In order to get your show on the listening platforms, you need an RSS feed. And the hosting service is what does that for you. It gives you a user friendly interface for combining all your audio cover art and text information and then spits out a link to your RSS feed. Now this feed is important. It's an agnostic way to get your show out to so many different listening platforms while still keeping ownership in your hands. But that hosting service, there's millions of them out there ranging from $0 to $100. I personally love Captivate but I know Podbean is a really great one for starting out. So let's say you pick your host, and you've got your RSS feed. Next, you have to submit it to the listening platforms. I'd aim for the big four right now: Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon Music. Submitting a show is not instantaneous, though there is a review period once you've done, ranging from one to 14 days. To avoid getting approved after your marketed launch date, I suggest publishing a trailer two to three weeks ahead of when you plan to launch your first episode. The trailer should be short and sweet and really just give a summary of the show. So what distribution platform are you looking at? For some help deciding and to watch the slower more detailed video version of this, go to the APC members Facebook group. Link in the notes, back to the show.

Because mine's not time based. It's not like I talk about current events or politics. It's irrelevant, really all the way back to episode one. So that's what's the benefit of that style of podcast? Yes,

having that evergreen content

like can disadvantage is coming up with new ideas, which you get with current events and politics and stuff on sports. They always have something new going on.

You said that there was a that came from a level of curiosity within yourself. How do you keep being curious, then you come up with those ideas? Yeah.

I think everybody's growing all the time. And whatever phase of life you're going through, there's topics that are interesting, and there's things you want to learn in that period of time. And if you don't have like a curiosity to learn or anything like that, well, that's I think more of a character issue. And not a character issue. That's maybe a strong word. But I think that having an investigative, curious personality is a good characteristic to have and someone that has a drive to be successful. I think it's virtually impossible to be successful if you just don't if you have apathy towards what, towards knowledge, right. I mean, I think that's easy to argue that if you don't have A lot of curiosity or a lot of drive to increase your amount of knowledge, skills or attributes, it's pretty unlikely that you're going to be successful long term. Well, so I say that and so there's this burning curiosity. And then in every phase of life, you have new questions. So like, my questions when I was 20, in my early 20s, I want to get rich and do it. All right. And now my questions are much different. I got a baby on the way in May. So now I'm thinking, I'm going through this whole like, experiment of thought experiment with like, what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to raise a boy? Because I'm having a boy? What does it mean? Like what is the future of men look like? What is masculinity look like. And it still relates to this worldviews topic. Because it's certainly something that's interesting. And a lot of like driven alpha personalities have a lot of these characteristics in the winner's column. So it's kind of like a blend, and it just kind of tailors my curiosity now. So now I'm starting to bring in different guests that are more in the masculine understanding space.

I love that the podcast space can allow for that to like, just follow your curiosity. One, let me backtrack. Congratulations on the baby.

Thank you.

Do you would say that you've grown then, because of your podcasts? What do you think is the biggest way that you've grown since starting your podcast? Oh, 100%.

The most I've grown, I would say in my, my spiritual maturity. So I went through lots of different phases. And I've also taken interest in this on my show, but like, you know, early on, it was it was unattractive to me. Like I said, the the preaching, I grew up a Christian, it didn't really make sense to me for a while. So I kind of went into this, like more Christian agnostic space. And then I moved into this whole, like, New Age kind of thing that I just was like, This doesn't make sense. But I want to make sense. But it never really did quite, some of the earlier episodes have some of that weird stuff in it. And it's interesting to listen to it as you keep going, because you kind of see my faith journey and how I became a much more outspoken Christian, throughout that. So I think that's a really interesting growth period that you started to see. And then also my behavior, the way I portrayed myself, I think, on social media, even on my podcast, the arrogance that I had early on, versus today, it's just a lot different. So I think that's a really, that's the most obvious transition I've seen from a growth perspective,

would you say that was because of all the conversations that you were having that were allowing you to process sort of your own identity.

And then you also have the conversations, you start to just become the people that you interview in a lot of ways, you start to see the characteristics I like, and you start to associate with them, they start to become friends and mentors, that you have their personal contact information to. So the networking side of podcasting is unreal, especially when you get to extroverts in a room, they're talking to each other for a while we're all resume. And it's awkward at first. And eventually they're like, you know, we've got this thing now this is fun, are all pumped up. You got it. Now you got a great contact or a business contact?

What interview would you say was the most challenging for you?

I did I just I'm going to be releasing this one very shortly. I just did an interview in October with General David Petraeus, who was the former director of the CIA. He was a four star general and had a lot of controversy in 2015. And I got a chance to interview him because I was speaking at a conference and I was helping the promoter of the conference guests. So I just reached out to him. And he's like, sure, we'll do it. I said, in order to negotiate the fee down, I said, I'll put you on my podcast, and we'll be able to market some of your stuff on my podcast. So we knocked his fee down. And when anyway, so I interviewed him. And that was a difficult interview. Because as somebody that you saw, who like he led the surge in Iraq, and as an army veteran, it's just like, he's kind of a hero, like, He's a legend. And then he had some controversy that I think, led to some of his downfall. But coming up with questions for him, and then having the confidence to be able to rock it. I mean, like, I opened up with saying something. He's like, hey, yeah, this is the only interview stopping me from between me and a date with a peloton bike or something. I was like, Yeah, I was like, Oh, so I'm the only one standing between you and your hard body or whatever. And everyone's picking, picturing the 60 year old man with his shirt off, you know? And then it's a room of all like, former veterans, and they're just like, stoic, no laughs like nothing. But he laughed, and I'm like, have we loosened him up? And it's just, you know, having, being able to be confident up to make a joke being having some personality to it with someone of high status, like that, at least to me, was was a challenge. And there's now it's, it's kind of getting to the point now, where it's like, I'll talk to anybody, I don't really care if they're the president or whatever, you know, it's just, you get the gist eventually get this confidence, where it's like, we're gonna have a good time, we're gonna show value for people. What's that prep

look like? Especially for a conversation like that. When you do know that there's, there's controversy. There's just a ton of history and background and they're a public figure. How do you approach an interview like that?

So most of my interviews, I actually try to be completely raw because I want to like I said, I favor. What I'm curious about. I find that my listeners have What I'm curious about more than something that's scripted or researched too heavily. So that's how I do most of my interviews is just kind of ask a little bit about their story. If there's something in their story that's thought provoking. I tried to get into that, if there is a tactic or business or something unusual or unique. I tried to dig into that. And I do it almost completely improvisational with General Petraeus, because there was some controversy that I think his PR people wanted to make sure they had kind of scripted questions. So then I just went to my thought process of how I normally ask questions and went through those and laid them out ahead of time. And he really enjoyed him. And it kind of was, you wouldn't really be able to tell that I had questions, by the way, that I kind of prep for it. But he's obviously understanding a little bit about their background and their realm of expertise, because you want them to be in their sweet spot when they're in the interview, because that's going to deliver the most value to your audience. And I tend to be mostly friendly with almost all my guests. They're not I don't try to debate them. Just sometimes we get into some little debates, but it's mostly very jovial and friendly, but I want to make sure that whatever I'm pulling the best out of them. So I want to know, what is the best? What's their best stuff? And let's, let's give them the highlights.

How did you learn that skill to do it on the fly?

I think it comes back to having curiosity like that's authentic. Because even when I was interviewing General Petraeus, I remember one of my buddies was like, Dude, that was such a skill, you asked some really good follow up questions, because you got and then I, I usually try to repeat back to them, in my own words, what they said, to make them feel like it was read, just to re summarize. So number one, you understand what they just said. So you understand it, and then you can dig into the next level. So being able to like really listen. And if you're interested in what they're saying, you'll retain it, you'll be able to summarize it, and then you'll be able to dig into interesting follow ups because it's like, oh, well, how does that work? Exactly? It works. If you're not really listening, you just kind of sit there like, Okay, next question. We're like, but if you're really interested, you're like, wait, you said hold on what blockchain like, what do you mean by that? That's really interesting. So they like mine it and and you get to actually open up the same questions. Everybody else has everybody else's understanding, I'll come and follow along with you. I mean, like, if you listen to a podcast, like what's like a couple famous ones, maybe like Joe Rogan, he does a pretty good job of, of doing the following. Tim Ferriss does a pretty good job of it. So if you listen to those two podcasts, their interview style, I think, is very similar. Tim Ferriss has more like quirky off questions to try to open people up. But Joe Rogan does a very natural way of digging, I think that you can kind of observe sort of like latching on to a few things. Yeah. And then you see how far down you can get with it. And then if it's becomes uninteresting to me, then I'll usually change topic.

You mentioned authenticity. To me, authenticity is kind of one, it's a buzzword. And it's sort of paradoxical in nature, because I feel like as soon as you identify, I want to be authentic, and loses some of the authenticity to it. So how do you bring that to the table without thinking about it without thinking about it?

Yeah, I think it's about not thinking about who you want to be. But just being who you are. It's easy for someone that's been coached a little bit, you get this kind of politician side of you, that's, oh, I'm on the mic. Now, I need to be like this and say the right things and do this and that. And it becomes very inauthentic really quickly, because you turn on I'm now I'm watching my words. And I'm very careful with what I say. And unseating every single thing. You getting like modes, right. And that's, and that's I think, the first step to starting to become inauthentic is now you're, you're putting on a character, where if you can just be yourself and think through a problem out loud, and allow the listeners to kind of come along with that journey of thinking. It's very interesting, and then they get to see how you came up with it. The downside of that is it can expose you to risk things you don't necessarily believe per se, but because you're thinking out loud as you're speaking it, it opens the door to your thoughts, which is a problem because you if you're writing, you think about it for a while you structure the piece in a certain way. That's very clear. So doing that speaking improvisationally has very difficult so it takes some time, I think to gather your thoughts collectively, and put them in a coherent structure. That's still what you're trying to communicate because the things that get in there you might not actually agree with things you're actually saying. Yeah,

I think that's what I love about the podcasting space is that it makes space to have those thoughts and what's not video or like we got limited time we got a role and whatever you say better be the right thing to say otherwise it's going in sorry, we no retakes video, especially when people get a camera on them. They something changes in their head and within with podcasting, it's just like, oh, there's just this thing in front of me and I'm just Talking to

you. Right? Right. Yeah, it definitely takes it off where there's the the audience is further away from you than it is with the video for whatever reason. And I think that's so that you definitely have a different personality. But you know what, that's what makes you, that's what makes you you, that's what makes you unique. And that's what makes the podcast spawn is that it's, it's raw, that it's a little bit unscripted that there are goof ups that there are things that make you understand how to get to know this person. And especially if like a service, like my web marketing, coaching and consulting where someone's going to work with me. They get to understand very quickly if they could work with me or not based on how I act. And it's great because I don't really have to do any of the vetting or the awkwardness that goes into that. It's just this person like, yeah, I'll get along with him or I won't. Based on his podcast, it's kind of like, Okay, great. It's like a pre vetting of, of clients for me. Yeah. Like,

we feel like we know you already. Right kind of thing. Right? Exactly. You've made your content, you've got your episode, you've got all the little bits and bobs? Is it only Facebook that you push it out there? And then say, Oh, that's there. What do you do after that? How do you get more eyes on

it? So what I'll usually do is, if I try to see, I call this jujitsu, it's like, what's the motive of my guest. So if they're trying to push a book or a new product, or get their name out there, I usually ask them to share it on their platforms. And then I try to share it with my audience, so that they are more interested in sharing so that like the shares get around, and that seems to do really well. And believe it or not, even some of my lower profile, guests sometimes get more downloads, because they were just excited that they were on a podcast, and they share it with the entire universe. And everyone thinks that's so cool that they were on a podcast, and they all listen to those episodes. And I get leads from that sometimes. So it's like, it's not that they're like, they're not really public figures. But they might be experts. Like, for example, I had a real estate expert on not a public figure. But he shared it with everybody on his in his investor network, because he does syndication deals and pulls investors together. That was awesome. Great. So everybody listened to it, listen to my podcast. And now I have, you know, Desa millionaires and plus, listening to this episode that I interviewed him on. It was just like, things like that, that you don't think about, but finding out what's the motive of the guest and being okay, having lower profile people that you think will be a big fan?

Yeah. Because they still have audiences of their own and friends and family that may be interested, interested in just them. But that maybe they won't be interested in you at that point, too. So you really isn't our organic sort of like to stick to the organic and really have that authentic, kind of, I'm excited about this not not any like Facebook ads or anything like that. No, I've

never really done Facebook ads. Obviously having your hosting service that pushes it out to as many of the listener opportunities as possible.

What What advice would you give to someone who would want to start a podcast just sort of broad scoped if there was one thing that you one piece of advice that you could give someone,

I think the biggest piece of advice is to find something that will hold your interest long enough to be consistent. So picking topics like I said, that you're genuinely interested in. If you're not interested in business, or education, or x y&z there's millions of different topics that probably you are interested in. Like a friend of mine who sits right here, Dan was really into sports. And he was in the sports comedy. So it's like he wanted to have a podcast on sports comedy that holds your interest long enough to where you can go three, four or five a decade, whatever you this is never ending. So finding those types of things, you're really into politics, if you're an activist of any side of the aisle, there's definitely a place for you in podcasts. There's, if you're into religion, if you're into, you know, fiction, like I mean, you've opened me up to this whole idea of audio dramas and things that I didn't even know about. So that opens the door to any fiction genre that you're interested in. Dragons, dungeons, Dracula, I don't care, you know, just like I mean, so it's kind of just understanding what's going to hold your interests long enough to where you think you're going to still be able to be motivated to put out content. Yeah,

identifying that thing that you're most passionate about most curious about, as we sort of said earlier. Is there anything else you want to add about podcasting? Otherwise, I think I'll go back and spend five minutes to talk about some of your other hobbies. Not talking about music a

little bit. Sure. No, I'm good. We can jump to the next cool.

Cuz I think we covered a lot in the podcast thing and I don't want you overwhelmed. That was really good. So you said you play guitar? Yeah. What kind of guitar Yeah,

I've got a couple guitars. So I've got a I've got my favorites. Probably my Fender Stratocaster American strat. I've got a Gibson Les Paul, I've got

Oh, so that that question of Fender or Les Paul is just went up? Oh,

yes, exactly. I think there are two different styles and like, I think you need a different you need the sound for what you're going for. So you got to have both in your collection. I just believe in that. I got an Epiphone acoustic which is a cheap acoustic but I only play acoustic for campfires and, you know, homeless people, really Wonderwall? Wonderwall, yeah, you never know when you're going to get that good party. Except one time at church. The power went out So we had to go get our acoustics I'm like Dang, I would have had a better acoustic if I knew I was ever gonna play this in church. Yeah, I got another Yamaha acoustic and then I also have an Epiphone by Gibson hollow body. That's really nice. It's basically like a it's a it's a humbucker pickup on crazy. We want to get with it, but it's got a nice beefy tone, and it's before Epiphone. It was both Epiphone and Gibson were like kind of both one before was Chinese made. Its basic and American made up a phone, so it's pretty nice. The Gibson sound

really solid brand there. What kind of music do you like to play? Mostly?

I like to play like kind of dirty blues. So like, maybe a Stevie Ray Vaughan style, Jimi Hendrix, kind of that like really dirty off note sound?

fuzzies those most iconic sort of guitar? Yes. Yeah, those

are my favorite. That's my favorite to play. If I'm just noodling. Then obviously, the only serious music I usually play is like with our worship pan.

Do you ever tried to insert a little bit of like a blues lick or something into worship songs? Yeah,

there was, you know, this idea for the song king of my heart. Yeah. And there's so there's like, there's this little solo at the end of it. And when I was listening to that track, I was busy. I'm like, I don't know there's a solo in here. And I just frickin dug into it in rehearsal. And just like we'll just face melted the room and everyone just looks over at me like looks at and then the worship pastors is like, yeah, don't do that

kind of experience. We're going for

that our engineer in the back. He's like a big rocker. He's like I like to.

Modern worship music is really usually reverb be and sort

of great, all the delays. You're gonna have dotted eighth and a whole bunch of chorus and a nice big reverb on it. And build a room up, have a little chime. Like, I want to bring my Les Paul in sometimes for certain songs. But usually my worship pastor talks me out of it. Tip with a strat stick. That's perfect for this. Like any just really chill voice stick with this dress. Really nice.

How did you get into music originally? That's fine. You've got so many, as we said earlier, so many hats that you put on what was how was, well, how did music fit into that?

I liked listening to classic rock when I was in like Middle School. And obviously, the genre of classic rock is very heavy on guitar. So I was like, I want to learn guitar. Let's be sweet. Like I'm sick of plein air guitar. So I asked my grandma who was like my grandma's very like polished academic. Yeah, I was like, I want to learn like an instrument. She's like, why and I'm like guitar so great. She talks my dad my dad's just like, what's your gonna be like a pothead and grow your hair out and all this stuff? I'm like, No, I just want to play good music. And so eventually, my grandma, she was a guidance counselor. She like sits us down. She's like, Is it okay? If AJ gets a guitar for Christmas? And then my dad's like, Yeah, I was just joking. So anyway, I learned guitar. And it was just like the same thing. It's just, you know, one, one foot in front of the other stay focused on it. And by the time I was a freshman, I started to learn a little lead. And then when I was like a sophomore, we had a little band, it was just terrible. But it was bad. But it was a ban. And then I that's all I could do at West Point for fun was just sit there and noodle on my strat. So I got pretty good at West Point. And then, yeah, I don't know that I only knew dirty blues. And then I was like, you know, just God put this calling on my heart is that you should really reach out to the worship pastor. I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, worship music. Just reach out to him. So I did, they were starving for guitar players. I go in there and I start playing dirty blue stuff. He's like, okay, you're a good player, will have to work with you to get some worship stuff figured out. So I spent 15 $100 to get all my pedals in order and everything to go because I mean, all these delays and he's like a sound engineer. So he's really particular. And then before you know, and I'm playing in the band, every Sunday, no, we have probably four electric players. So they get a week i get i get a couple weeks off once or twice a month usually. there any other hobbies that sort of help you fuel your relaxation muscles, so

you don't burn out. Who or is it just music?

I like traveling, traveling. I like traveling, but I can only do it for so long. If it's not business related. Oh, really? So yeah, I can probably I can make about a week.

And then you just start your brain goes back to what owner how my business is doing. I wonder

Yeah, worse, or how do I monetize what I'm doing here?

I was just like, I can't. My wife actually pina colada. How can I make money? Okay, well, we

started a tiki bar down here. Like let's buy a couple condos and rental, you know, eventually you're just sitting there like, Okay, I gotta go back to work. I know how to hire a property manager. I can do that here. Right? Yeah. That's actually one of my goals this year is to get a vacation rental. Oh, yeah. So I got that on the list. But I love travel with my wife, my wife and I've always joked though, our biggest hobbies are just working on our businesses. Because this is what we like. I don't know. It's

weird. That this is an entrepreneurial mindset you like actually enjoy the work you do and you're not necessarily just in it to make a living,

right. Like look at like the venture project. It's part of my job is creating a social atmosphere for my co workers, you know, the members. So like just being myself and having fun is part of the job. So I mean, talk about a win win, right? It's like, you know, we want to introduce people and hey, you need to drink. You know, just, that's my job.

My wife and I walked in here and you're like, hey, coffee, whiskey. What do you need? Yeah, right,

right. This is I don't know, it's just habit at this point. Yeah, some people drink whiskey at noon. That's okay. It's venture project. There's no rules here.

You get to be that hospitable business leader and like, they whatever you want, let's talk about it, and we get it done.

That's how I like those personality tests. You take in like corporate or whatever. And they're always, like, I always worked in engineering. So it's always like boring analytical engineers are everything. And then mine was like, the party planner guy. And everyone's looking at me like, well, what value? Are you here? I'm always like, Yeah, I don't know. This engineering thing. aven. Like the party personality, like the van Wilder just school for seven years. But yeah.

Do you still have that technical processes brain as well? Or is that you just take that to, like, let's be let's start a party.

Let's kind of like, honestly, when I decided to be a systems engineer, why I decided that I was good at English and literature, and like, all the creative stuff, and I was terrible at math. So I was like, I want to, like balance myself out. So I ended up getting into it. And I just figured out it's just, it's math is kind of creative in a lot of ways. And I was just curious, I liked all subjects in school, I never really had a favorite. So I just started to enjoy it. And I decided to do it to round myself out. Because I'm like, Well, if I just become English, then I'll just like, be good at what I'm already good at. Right? Why don't I do something I'm bad at and then get good at it? I don't know. It was my thought process at the time. And it seemed to do okay.

Fair enough. And now you're here and you saw that you're finished? Did you finish your MBA

may and get done with that? It's actually the day my babies do. So really? We'll see how that day goes, Oh,

can they postpone the walk?

versus just hold that baby in there for a couple hours? Yeah.

Whichever one? I'll try and try and coordinate that schedule. Well, Aaron, I really appreciate you giving me this hour to sort of talk through everything. Now's your chance, give a plug for the venture project.

Well, I want to specifically invite your listeners to come check it out. We got a studio here at the venture project with sound treated acoustic walls, we can kind of bring in the level of production as needed. If you want to do the big guns, we got you in the network, you know, a bunch of other people that can do some high end stuff. And we also got plenty of mics and some some more the entry level gear as well, just to get started. Like I said, it's about consistency. Like how do we just get you going as quickly as possible. If you don't have a budget, don't worry about it will take care of you. So there's that option. But what the venture project is at a larger level is a co working space, and a business incubator. So we have shared office space where people can rent they get access to the amenities like the podcast studio, the conference room, the event space, they can rent out offices, they can rent out cubicles, or they can go to our event cafe, hang out lounge and squat at different price points. So we we offer incubator services, as well. We encourage people with crazy ideas to come in the door and pitch them to us and figure out ways we can help you out. We can help you in various different ways we can even partner with you. We can help you design it, we can help you with strategy, business, anything like we want to work and figure out a way to get this off the ground. Because I didn't have that when I pitched my super middle class family business ideas. I said shut up and work on your job. And I was like, well, we can help you figure it out here as we encourage ideas of all kinds. Like I told you, we had a guy that just came into it with an invention idea for an ice shanny. And it was just like kind of cool. I brought in the engineers and we talked about it. Yeah, you know anything. And I'm I say that because it's the business world because everything is a business. And that's what everything has in common. And there's a way to figure out how to make this idea valuable. And I encourage you guys to have a conversation come and venture project. Check us out. We're at 210 North Main Street, downtown Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Awesome. Aaron,

it has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, my man.

This is so much fun, brother. We got to do this more.

What a great conversation. I particularly liked hearing about the curiosity driven mindset and candid honesty Aaron brings to his shows. I really hope that inspires you to do the same with yours. I'm happy to report Aaron's new baby boy and MBA are both healthy and accounted for. If you'd like to snag a tour of the Venture Project podcast studio in Oshkosh, contact Aaron Armstrong on Instagram, or at theventureprojectoshkosh.com. As always links in the notes. And if you've got the curiosity, but you need some technical help, head on over to the Appleton Podcast Co-op comm for community support resources and the chance to win some free gear just for starting your own podcast. If you know someone in Northeast Wisconsin who wants to start a podcast, share this show with them. If you made it this far, please rate and review the show pod chaser or start a business of your own grosset business and have your review of the show printed on your letterhead for every external communication. Just an option. I'm David Kalsow, your neighborly podcast nerd and thanks for listening.

That's one of the reasons why I moved away from Lipson When I initially started, Lipson was one of the very first ones and I moved to captivate Actually, there was

Definitely like an early 2000s kind of not quite green and black screen but yeah,

You can you can tell there's like a lot more gradients and it was just weird how everything's laid out but anyways

Transcribed by https://otter.ai