Getting Specific with Monica Padman of Armchair Expert

Welcome back at Landia. So, Alexa, recently I sent you a picture that is circulating the Internet of a Netflix billboard, and I thought we might start there. I have a confession. I have to tell you something. I saw that and I like started to sweat. When I was like two three, Yahoo had a billboard to billboards one in Times Square one in San Francisco, just like the Netflix billboard. And guess who had to program the content on that billboard. Guess guess who yours? Truly it was me? Every week

a new message and guess what I did? But wait, were you changing the messaging yourself or not? It wasn't climbing a ladder, Laura. I was going into the visual of you not only concepting, but producing and actually executing. That would be amazing. No, But I concepted the copy and then I had to send it to the installer who would go up and put up the letters. Right.

So this is like two thousand and three, two thousand and four, I was like a bitty boo in the agency world, and I get this call from my client for freaking out, like the Internet had broken. And I was like, what what's wrong? And they were like, you put the u r L on the billboards incorrectly And you would think like all of Yahoo went down, but now but now it was a slight change of the dot. The dot was in the wrong place for the U

r L. That was my biggest career fumble. You could call it a fumble, or you could have asked to see the back end visits to know whether or not your billboard was an effective traffic driver, a truly unique Alexa Christian u r L. It was a truly unique Alexa Christian you are L. And in fact it was a hundred percent bounced percent bounce on that U are L shining moment. Then the Netflix copy couldn't be more on brand Alexa. The copy said, don't give up on

your dreams. We started with DVDs, I started with incorrect U R L and the full circle. I think that's where the show begins and maybe hands today. So Alex, we have a great guest on the show today, Monica Padman from Armchair Expert is here, so good. But before we get into the Monica interview, we had a really

good conversation last night. I called you last night because something has been bothering me, something that actually this episode got me thinking about in a slightly different way, and it's in context to what's been happening in the news with media outlets in the last two weeks and something that Monica said and you guys will hear this in

the episode. The Armchair onm Brella has a huge, huge audience, right, They do like twenty million downloads a month just on Armchair Expert, like on their main show, which just just to put that in context, Tom Brady came back to play the New England Patriots Sunday Night Football doing twenty point five million viewers. So just to give some context as to the universe that we're talking about here, and that's Armchair Experts doing that monthly. And so when we

brought that up to Monica in the episode. She was like, we don't think about that. I don't want to think about that. In fact, I don't even want to hear that number. And it got me thinking about how are we actually quantifying and more importantly qualifying what is good in media? And Laura, you said something to me last night. We've gotten in the game of more is more? But is it is it really more is more the goal?

Because as we go into the issues that have come up in the last week with media companies, they've been chasing scale, the race to the bottom, and that's become the measuring stick, which is how big is your audience? Because you can sell more ads, how do you get to more eyeballs? And what's happened is through years, right, what you and I ended up talking about last night was what's the solve Because as long as media is race to the bottom, more is more volume volume volume

buying on a CPM. Until that changes, we are going to see media outlets continue to put profit over great content, over people over what's right, and we will constantly see some form of inflation of those numbers. So, in building on that, bridging last week's episode to this week's episode. There was something that Austin said in our conversation with Morning Brew on our last episode that really stuck out

to me and I can't stop thinking about it. When he was talking about receiving one of their first big RFPs from from a major advertiser, they RFP for a range of budget and as part of that conversation, he posed a question which was, well, how big does our audience have to be to warrant your five thousand dollar

commitment or RFP? And it's sat with me because there's a common denominator here that we've applied as buyers in the industry that the same model or methodology I applied to buying a major broadcast network would be the same

methodology I apply to buying a niche newsletter. When I think about people raising their hand, subscribing to a newsletter, spending five plus minutes with the newsletter, sharing the newsletter, coming back the next day in their inbox, opening the newsletter, it's a different behavior than being exposed to a thirty second spot on television, But yet I buy it the

same way. Is that correct? So last night, after we got off the phone, which you know, I went on the Internet to try to figure out the origin of the CPM model. I would love to have somebody in Landia come on the show and take us through the origins of the CPM model and why it hasn't evolved into modern media. And I think the thing that we're getting to today is the creator economy and Web three might just be the thing that breaks the model. It breaks the model, and it has to break the model.

It has to break the model. That's what's so exciting about this. When we talk about media capturing audience, the flip. The flip is audience voting with their wallet on that media. I mean Twitter, tip Jar is an example of that sub stack, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This is not, by the way, this is not a drill. What's going to happen as more audiences fragment and they start to find who and what speaks to them, that's when you start to see

the hockey stick. That's when you start to see the growth. That's when you buy the T shirt. It's exactly right, it's the t shirt, it's the ticket sale. It is a difference between monthly active users and fandom, and fandom and the metrics that you quantify for fandom as opposed to passive scale. It's just like we're talking about a

different model. It's a totally different game. Kicking us back into the Monica episode, there are a couple of gems in here that could be ignored and it's what hooked me and got me thinking about this stuff last night, which was volume versus specific and are those things. It's very similar to the common station we had with Alex and Austin, which is niche and scale are not mutually exclusive. You can have niche and you can have scale. The

specificity specificity why specific is universal. So with that, Atlantia, we hope you love this. Listen, we'll be right back al right at Landia. We are back with our partners that yield Mo. If you remember, we spent our first mini series talking about how yield Mo works with brands to make audience attention actionable and in this mini series we take on how contextual targeting is being reimagined as brands make every interaction with their consumer meaningful. Welcome Lisa Bradner,

GM of Data and Analytics from yield Mo. Thank you so much, great to be back. Always great to talk to you guys. Lisa, how does real time factor into context irrelevance? Real time for contextual is critical because if you don't have that audience signal that says I know who this person is and I know the message I gave them previously, you need those real time signals to say and I serving the right creative or not? Is

this message hitting or not. In addition, so much media is now integrating commerce that that window between exposure and sale is getting shorter all the time. So if you're not real time, you may miss a sale. Right, It's not just you're missing the impression, you actually missed the opportunity to close the sale. So being able to quickly optimize and adjust and using machines to do that is how you're going to increase your row as your r o I, your sales overall. It's a critical component to

marketing and advertising today. And if we need to get that close to increasing the potential of that sale conversion engagement, what are the implications that marketers need to be thinking about in optimizing the process. I think there's a lot of things that and then marketing that we need to turn on their head. I would challenge the first thing we should do is take the c DJ right, the consumer decision journey, throw it out and rethink it right.

We've always come at it from oh we you know, Laura likes to listen to radio when she's up in the morning, and then she comes home and checks her phone for weather, and then she watches TV. As a marketer, I don't know what to do with that. I suggest that we turn it on their head and say, what do I want to communicate throughout my day? What is the right message, when, where and why for my customers

and match the media and creative to that. I think we're really on the edge of marketers coming back and really owning that customer experience. And instead of worrying about each individual and thinking if I can just collect enough data about you, I can get you to buy me, they're going to take a healthy step back to saying who is my brand, where does it belong, and how should I show up in each of these environments and when to do that effectively, your creative and media strategies

have to be completely linked, right. You can't build out the entire creative campaign and they say, oh, yeah, I guess we should have a media plan for this. You should be building that media plan and then building the creative notes that go with each step of that media plan. So instead of having a consumer decision journey, it should be the brand decision journey and mapping the creative and media to match all that. Thank you, Lisa Bradner and

our partners at yield MO. Looking forward to having you back for part three of our four part series Welcome Back at Landia. We're super excited if you have a special guest with us today. Monica Padman is joining us in Adlandia. Monica is the co creator, co host and producer of Armchair Expert. Welcome Monica, Monica, Hi, thanks for having me. We're so excited to have you. I have to shout out our friend Brad Grossman at Zeit Guide,

who connected us and was like it was hilarious. Actually he texted me he said, do you know Monica Padman? I wrote back, No, why would I know, Monica Padman. So you're gracious enough to come on the show and talk to us about audio podcasting talent and the breakout show that you and Dak Sheppard have created, and I don't want to Actually it's not even a show anymore. It's a network yeah, it's a true network. So Laura and I have read all of the things, right, like

how you and Dax kind of got started. I think people can read about that. It's a great story arguing about serial dak saying I'm really interested in podcasting. You guys have created something amazing. I think there's a lot of magic in the relationship that you have. Obviously you have a really strong perspective about the programming of the show, how you edit the show, how you produced the show,

the shows that you've selected. It as the kind of network has started to really mature all of those things. So that's the kind of stuff we want to talk about. But before we get into that, really talk about when I was reading I think it was the l A Times article that was profiling the show and really got deep into a little bit more detail. And one of the things that they said was Monica presented Dax with the business plan. So Dax said, I want to do this,

and you presented him with a business plan. But nowhere could I find what the business plan actually said. So Monica, what was in the business plan? Well you probably haven't found details on that, because that's a really h that's really fancy way of saying what happened by saying that I proposed a business plan. Really what happened is he said, I kind of want to do a podcast. It goes really nonchalant, and I was like, okay, let's do it. I'll figure it out. So that was kind of the

business plan I suppose. Um. And then from there, from there I was like, oh, I gotta I guess I gotta figure it out. UM. So I approached via my therapist. This is so bizarre, but my I found my therapist. It's not gonna their podcast. I was listening to this amazing podcast called Totally Lame that I used to love so much, and it's it's no longer a recurring podcast, but it was so good and my therapist was on it randomly before she was my therapist, and I heard

her and I was looking for a therapist. So I, like, you know, reached out to like hello at totally lame dot com whatever they're like general email was, and I was like, can I have the email for this therapist? And they sent it to me and so she's my therapist now. Um. And then I sort of reverse engineered that and reached out to my therapist, and I was like, can you please connect me to Elizabeth? That totally lame.

I'd like to pick her brain on this. So she did and I met with her, and then I sat in on a recording and like watched how they did it UM, and I left and I thought, Okay, we can do this. UM might be easy to bring in a third person who can like do the sound board and I don't have to worry about that. So we did. We brought on Rob and then from there we kind of really got into the weeds on what we wanted the show to be. You know, I have a lot of opinions. Dax has a lot of opinions. Luckily, in

business they often align. In many other ways they never align, which is part of the fun, but in business they do, so you know. He he considers himself an armchair expert, which is a hilarious phrase. He learned an anthropology and call it into it where you think you know everything

about everything. I must say, it's a really compelling like you get it instantly right, which just as marketers were always thinking about how do you communicate directly without having to kind of click in Well, yeah, I mean I think generally and ax is just really really really good in general at naming stuff, um, you know, titling scripts and everything. So that's that's sort of his whealhouse in general. But um, it is true like I think in marketing.

And I also was a double majored in theater MPR, so I took a lot of marketing classes as well and lived in that world for a bit. And so I just think relatability is, yeah, the key. It's the key across the board. And everyone knows someone who's an armchair expert or who themselves is considers themselves an arm track expert, like I know it all essentially, Um, everyone has one of those in their life. So you can

immediately click into that when you hear it. I think that's sort of one of the powerful things about that title in general, um and and titles overall that attract me. It's like if your brain can connect into something personal, you're like you're half the battle is done. I think. Well, also a level of accessibility to yeah exactly. I think you just like described everything a marketer is trying to do.

By the way, like period, like you can get all this fancy shit, but that's what a marketer is trying to do ultimately, how do I relate my product whatever that is to you exactly? And now where it's getting cool is in fans and community and creativity and opening that stuff up I think with more players hopefully right uh, in places we didn't expect them. So, Monica, you had the business plan, which is I'll figure it out to

meet Rob. Rob joins the team. How did you begin to think about the thesis for the show and how you were going to program it? And was there a playbook that you kind of set out to deliver on or was it iterative? And as you grew you sort of learned where the sweet spot was. I think both. So we both loved Sam Harris's podcast It's now called Waking Up with Sam Harris. We loved that show and and and love that show still, UM and a lot of our debates were centered around Sam's podcast every week,

and we love that format. It was just an interview show,

you know, but Sam is a genius. I think by like real metrics, he's he is a genius, and so his questions were not normal, you know, they were very specific, in very different, very unique to his brain, which lad these interviews into such um interesting territory, I think, And so we just wanted to replicate that, not replicate what Sam did, but replicate an interview show that's very authentic to us and what we think about in the way our brains work, which is a lot of vulnerability and honesty.

Those are kind of the main tenants. And you know, decks coming from a a so focused on progress not perfection, Um, the journey, not the result. You know, all of those things, and any aligned with all those things too, just cause, and so that has always been what we've been been interested in talking about. Like you know, we always say we're not interested in the day you won the Emmy, but the two weeks after when you're out of work and you don't know what to do, because that's the

thing we can all relate to. So um. Yeah, so we always knew, like intellectually this is the show, but we didn't really, of course, know what the show was until we started it, until we started testing it out and doing it, We didn't know what we were doing at all. Um. The first episode was with Kristen and I didn't say anything. I sat there, I had no words, like, I didn't know, We didn't know, We didn't know what

it was going to be. And we had Chris Hardwick on pretty early on in the show and he gave some great advice which was like, yeah, do a little research, but don't be afraid to not not look at it, because that for our first few were like a little bit more regimented in that way because it was like real question. You know THATX had a list of questions and he wanted to get to them and it felt

a little more confined planned. Yeah, and I think us doing the fact check kind of helped with that because that is a space where we could really be us and not even could really be us. We had to be like we just didn't even have an option. We're just the two of us in a room. It's gonna happen. We're gonna argue, we're gonna laugh, we're gonna make jokes. Uh, we're gonna get mad at each other. Like you know,

these are all just the realities of our friendship. And there's no We're not good at hiding it or making it look pretty. I mean you can tell, you can really tell on our fact checks the ones where we have just had a fight. Um, we tried to be We try to put it aside and be professional and have fun on on the factor. But I mean, we're just not good at it. Like we are very much um animals of our emotional state, which is normally good

and fun, but you know, we have our moments. So so anyway, once we started doing that, which was I think off the first episode, but once we started to realize, oh, this is fun, like this organic chatter is where the as you say, magic is, we started incorporating that a little bit more into the actual interviews and just realizing, like, organic is the way to go. How did you guys go from okay? So episode one right now you have

like over twenty million listeners. That's a monthly number. It's bloggers, it is, I know. So my question is, what was the trajectory, if you know, like generally right, like what was the trajectory? And could you guys feel astride from okay? This feels good to us programming wise, cadence, our cadence, our relationship and the show downloads and success. That's so funny that you bring all this up because as you're saying those numbers, there's a part of me that wants

to like put my fingers in my ears. And not hear it, because I really think the reason our show works is that it's very intimate. And the reason it is is again, like I said, like we're best friends, so when we're when we're together, we just feel like it's us and the person. Definitely not thinking about numbers like twenty millions. None of that is in our heads at all. It's three three people, me, him and our guest.

And again, to give everyone their due credit, we launched our show with Kristen, as I just said, And so you know that people want to hear Dax and Kristen. That's that is a truth. So it was not lost on us that that would probably have like a fair amount of people come to see us. But the fact that they stuck around, um was a shock to us. We were so thrilled and excited by it, and um grateful,

so grateful for it. But really we just want to I mean it sounds so cliche, like I wish there was a not cliche way to say, you just got to do what you like doing, But it's the truth. Like the reason we wanted to do this is because it's just fun to talk to people and learn from people. We both always say that we in our retirement, we

want to go back to college. UM. And this in a way is that is just like learning from each person without the you know, final exam, which is you know, it's just the best part of all those things, especially our Thursdays. Those are always my favorite. UM. We have like professors on and the most you know, scientists, the most insane insane people. Bill Gates like, why are you

talking to us? Bill Gates? Laura and I are in the in the business right of creative, the commercial side of creative, and all the time people ask us, but prove prove it, prove the proof that it works. Prove that it works, prove that it works. I would love to see We talk about metrics all the time, like how are you measuring it? Why does it matter? I would love to see a metric that said. Bill Gates asked the two people right to have a conversation about humanity,

the future of humanity. Yeah, Monica, was there a point in the journey since this started that you knew this was going to go from having these debates that sounds like you were normally having off the mic anyway, to

like full fledged business platform. Was there that moment for you I can't say there was an exact moment so much as in fact, I am sort of slow, like you know, at the beginning, like I'm very scared to be like let's do this this, this, this, this and this and this, and you know, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,

let's let's slow down. Let's do this for a bit, let's make this amazing, let's bring people in with this, and then let's talk about the next thing, and then let's do that for a bit, and let's and it's scary, you know, because everyone feels like their time is limited. Um and but but I feel it's really important to like take the time to build and earned people's trust

before you move on to the next thing. So there was a lot of talk at the beginning about like and let's do this also and this and this, and I was like a big voice of I think we need to go slower than that. And then you, I don't know, you just feel it, like I think there's a moment where you're like this is steady, this feels steady,

let's add something to the list. Or if someone comes to us and and the opportunity feels really special, chal or fun, really it's that it's like, oh, is this something we are going to like doing right now, Let's let's pursue it. Um. And like with our live shows that that happened fairly early on, and it because mainly we were like, oh yeah, traveling to places and getting

to do this like on a stage. How fun. UM. I always felt like this, how cool would it be if we could be a gimblet where there's lots of shows and we're not on all the shows or on some of the shows, and we get to produce them and we get to have a platform for really cool voices. Like I've always thought about that, and we've we've slowly grown more and more and more towards it, and hopefully

we'll continue to UM. So that was kind of just like an overall thing I had it in floating around, but it definitely wasn't like a main focus until Pieza started to fall into place a little bit. I want to talk about how do you choose your guests? Sometimes, Lauren, I have a method to our medness and sometimes we're like, just like you were, like that person is freaking cool and they need to they need to come on the show.

They need to be known or we need to talk to them about something different that they don't actually talk about publicly, like you know those types of things. Do you have like a method or a creative brief so to speak, on who you bring on the show. No, actually,

we are really open. In fact, we would just want to talk to as many uh, just diverse people, people from different backgrounds, different experiences and and and that's why even on Mondays, you know, we have a ton of obviously actors and musicians and those celebrities, and but we don't ask them about their movies or we don't ask

them about their celebrity. You know, we asked them about their childhood, the relationship with their parents, you know, things that that make them different and interesting because everyone is so we we do not have a method. We reach out to people that we like or we find interesting or you know, we watch we watch something on TV and we're like, that person is awesome, let's reach out to them. We have people reach out to us at this point for projects. You know, that's been a nice

alignment for promotion for people. Um. But yeah, we have no like, we have no rules about who we will or won't have on And again, like I said, In fact, we like to have everyone on, even people who you know. It's We've had some guests where some of our audience is like, why do you have that person on there in trouble or you know those types of things that we're like, yeah, but they're still a person and we want to know their story and and maybe their story

will inform whatever decision they made. You know, we're just interested in those those nitty gritties. But yeah, no, there really isn't a h a method. There is a method to the shows we put under our umbrella. It's important to us to have shows that kind of fit in with our ethos, which is like vulnerability working on oneself, like nurture versus Nurture is the family therapy show where Dr Wendy Mogul talks to parents and she is a

family therapist, so she gives them a therapy session. You get to listen in on it, and it is incredible. I don't have kids, and I it's like my favorite thing. I look forward to editing um because you know, and I've been saying this a lot lately, I just think it's increasingly true. The more specific you get, the more

universal it is. And I think that's in marketing big time as well, because I think there's a thought of like, you gotta you gotta reach the masses, you gotta reach everybody, and it's like, you know, actually you're reaching everybody by by honing in on this very specific detail because weirdly, the details are what our brain can connect to. And

I also learned that in improv. It was like one of the first rules I learned was like, don't call it um a basketball, call it a Spalding basketball, so that the audience can literally pick they know exactly what you're talking about. They can smell the Spalding basketball. Yes, and everyone is immediately on the same page. It's not like I'm thinking of the basketball from my house and never the end of the basketball from your house. It's like no, no, no, now we're we all know um.

And and so again it's universal. You know, it's interesting when you talk about the specificity. At the top of the show, Alexa said, you know, if your program for everyone, you program for no one. Can you click in on that a bit further? So, are there shows or examples you can give us where the universal, you know, element of it was? That was a proven thesis well, yeah, I mean I think the biggest one is Monica and Jessla Boys. So when when I started that podcast, I

was really hesitant. You know. Well, of course I was hesitant because it's it's me and my love life, which is so so scary what am I doing? But but I was also like, who is going to relate to this? Like this is so bizarre. This is because that was you know, me and my friend Jess and and I, you know, serially under date and he serially overdates, and he's gay and I'm straight and we're just opposites, but you know, and we approached dating in a completely different way.

And it was like, let's and we're single and we don't want you know, we we eventually want to find a a partner, and so it was like, let's talk about that and let's have experts on to help us through basically our issues. And we did, and we had challenges at the end of each episode that we had to then uh complete by the following episode. It was

it was so fun, but it felt really specific. I mean, we we were talking to estro Perel and she's telling, you know, we're talking about the moment when I was well at the swimming pool and the boys said this to me, you know, it's all like it's me and it's just and it's not universal at all. And I was like, oh my god, nobody is going to relate to this, like is anyone gonna listen? And then of course what you learn is like I mean, really, what

you learn is like you're not unique. Everyone experiences the same stuff and everyone was like, oh my god, that's me or I connect with this, and even like so many married people, which that was like the most flattering what was learned. It's like, oh god, like people can really relate to this thing that feels so deeply personal and that was really eye opening for me and just made me feel like, oh yeah, And that's why Wendy

show you Know again, same thing. It's two parents talking about they're very specific children and growing up in Sweden one of the episodes, and then when you hear it and you're like, oh my gosh, like I can learn from that because I know that it's just beauty. It's kind of it's beautiful, like it's beautiful to know we really are all way more connected than we think. M hmm.

I love that. What is the experience of um bringing brands into the fold, and are there things we might be surprised as marketers to know that on your end as creators, you're open to our not. Yeah, so our revenue is solely on ads, so we you know, we have to do We approve all the ones that we read obviously UM, and we we don't approve a lot of them UM that come to us. And then we really have to feel like, oh, this is something I believe in or this is something I can get behind

and everyone's really awesome. Did they send us the product? We get to like really get tactile with it and know it. We do some integrated sponsorships in the fact checks. Those are a little bit more and uh, what's intense? I guess not really, but we just get a little deeper. And especially for those, we have to make sure it's like it's a company we like and we believe in their product, and we just talk really honestly about it.

And I also think that's part of it. The advertisers we work with know that our ads are gonna be organic and very specific to us. If we can read a copy point for you if you'd like, but it's not gonna connect like what connects are, like the fun stories. There was this whole saga with Dax in this raccoon like real thing that was happening nightly, and you know, we were able to tie that into Ring because it

Ring was up of this story. And so the more opportunities we have to do that, the better the advertising is for everyone, for us, for them, And like, yeah, so we didn't integrated add with Google home um for a while. We did it over a bunch of fact checks and it was really fun because we would ask Google facts um and it was just it just led us so much fun. And once that ended, we were

both like, I missed that. Well. I was listening to the episode you did with Brad and you were doing a host read um for door Dash I believe, but you were talking about your Christmas Eve Eve ritual of McDonald and I'm like, well, I understand this was an ad for door Dash. I'm going like, where's McDonald's with

the Christmas Eve Eve special? Exactly? Well, Well, that's really funny because what must have happened is and I don't remember, but my guess is we did a door Dash ad totally regular, in which we talked about getting McDonald's um. And then after that we did do a McDonald's integration and we expounded on our Christmas Eve ritual, but none of it was made up, Like I think the door Dash ad it must have been where we came up with the idea to do it, and then the McDonald's

ad was the like full through we did it. I love Laura's point of the reasons you're saying, like the intimacy, the personality, the perspective, all this stuff, but also to start to like even launch new kind of products and collapse and fun stuff like that totally. And it depends on the show, like if it's a cooking show or something, or the or the host love cooking. I mean even

even us. So I got really into cooking this year, and um, we talked about it a lot on the fact checks and and there was this whole debacle where my apartment ended up smelling like fish for like a week, and we talked about that. It was a whole thing like did Monica's apartment smell like fish or not? Like you know, and that that is an opportunity anytime you have something on your in your show that people are

commenting on. I think brands need to pay attention to that and be like whatever, if there's like a deodorant spray that is following that thread, that's an opportunity for them to be like we want to get involved, we want to send some product, we want Monica to talk about it. Did they get to hurt the fish? Smell out? You know, little things like that. Just paying attention to the hooks of these different shows where people are laughing and are interested, Like I think writing those waves is

the best. So question is there a place And Ryan, our producer, and I were talking about this, and I love this question where armchair umbrella turns into a dare I say a products is but a product that's tangible or something outside of audio, something outside of and not merch right like right now you guys are doing and I love your merch ps. And I definitely think the Monica shirts probably the best. Um and also like the

hot dogs from the Live show. But um, but but you know, is it does it become something where people can touch it, feel it, experience it, you know, in a in a different way? Yeah, I mean, uh, currently the Live show, as you as you just brought up, is the version of that is the different thing that you can get close to, UM and it feels different, like those shows are are different. There's a Q and

a you know, and it's different energy. So that's us like kind of connecting a little bit more directly with our audience. UM. And again we move on to the next step when we feel we're ready to or we feel like our audience wants it, or there's a space for us. And so yes, I guess is the is the overall answer is yes, I can see expansion in

different realms perhaps down the road. UM. But and you know, we we've had discussions about some other putting our hands in some other pots um that are fun and organic to us. But it's um, nothing set in stone right now. But we yeah, we keep you know, we're keeping everything

on the horizon. Okay, three ideas ready, here, here's theater in it absolutely like I'm thinking like jobs raymore flat again, Like there has to be an actual armchair that is the armchair expert, right, Like there has to be a furniture one. So that's one second idea. I mean, there has to be a coffee table book with all of the amazing interview experts. Like I just like if I'm sitting on my armchair. That has to be the coffee table book and you know the third place i'd go.

And Alex and I've been talking a lot about, you know, sort of the future of education, thinking about curriculum. I feel like anywhere you turn, like especially in the tech business space, even in the media space, people are having like short form classes, right. Yeah, Like I totally imagine armchair expert curriculum, Like how do I come in and get like, you know, six classes and meeting these people?

But I just think that the tone and like how you're approaching it, it's a really interesting way to think about learning um while having like edutainment, I guess is the way I'm thinking about in a way that's beyond audio. But what you said about improv hits so many things on the business side, so many things on the creative side. And the point that you hit about specificity for relationships, like point to the thing that you want them to imagine, right,

be very specific and then let their imagination go. Yeah, has been actually probably a subconscious thought in everything at least I've done in my career that was creative. Right for a commercial on the commercial side, it was like I know I want this thing, and this thing is the thing that seems to be the tuning fork, but everything else, you know, it starts to become really exciting. One thing I want to I do want to add real quick. I also have been in thirty plus commercials

as an actor. That really is like for the acting space, that's pretty much been my bread and butter. So I'm really really familiar with that world. To mention, I also write commercials for Kristen and I'm on set for those. So UM worked with many different ad agencies on all of those and and I um, we just did so. Kristen has a CBD skincare line called Happy Dance, and UM we worked with Wide and Kennedy on those and it was so fun and so creative and so great

and they really get specificity. Um, they really understand it in a way that others don't. But you see a lot of these agencies make a lot of mistakes in that arena when you're on set, like trying to go as generic as possible when it's like no, no, no, no no, that's not funny. This is funny, and it's hard. It's hard.

This is there's a lot of money on the table for a lot of people, and I think, going general, I feel safe, and it is, but it's not the thing that's going to make you rise above everyone else. So Monica specifically in the brand universe, let's put it out into the brand universe. Who is top three brands you would love to work with? I really want to work with a clean makeup brand that has many different shades UM. I think that's really missing in the makeup space.

There are brands that do and I you know, but some brands have like four foundation colors and that's not realistic. It's just not life UM and it and it makes people feel excluded. And I connected at I really connect to feeling like, oh, I need my skin to be wider because there's not I mean because of a million reasons. But also I walk into north room and I don't see my color represented. UM. That must mean my color isn't good enough to be represented. You know, these are

the things that sort of go through your head. So I personally am just like dying to be a part of a brand that UM works to negate some of that. So, yeah, let's say a clean, diverse makeup brand. I really want to work with a cookie brand because I'm obsessed with cookies. I am a girl Scout bomb now. But I think you would be like, Girl Scouts should come and do something with Monica for Like, I would love it, Girl Scouts of America. I really would love that. Like that's

like so cool girls. You know, I have learned, like learning about themselves, skills independence exactly. Yeah, I love it. I love that. Not to stay in the beauty space, but I my hair is kind of the only thing, the only part of me that I have ever had any confidence. And of course I started out not having any compliments in it, but at some point I was like, oh,

like this was something something I can work with. My first actually my first commercial ever was an herbal Lessence commercial and I was a mermaid in it with these two other girls, and it was so fun. It was like one of the craziest shoots to this day that I've ever ever been a part of. UM and uh and one of the girls they're both amazing actresses and one um is on was on Westworld and the other has her own awesome, amazing career, and I was like, oh my god, we need to remake that commercial now,

um revisit these mermaids. I think that'd be so fun anyway, So I'm trying to make that happen. I'll put that out there before we go. We play a game with all of our guests. Bye bye bye. What would you get rid of? What would you buy or acquire? And what would you do yourself? God? Can I I had not to get like so deep and so political, but this is where I am right now. Can I want to say by two guns, I don't no more, no no more. Yeah, They're not for me. Guys know what

would you buy acquire? Well, I'm going to I would like to buy um enough wrapping paper to fill up an entire nice size room. I want a wrapping paper room, So I'd like to buy all the stuff for that. I'd like to buy the wrapping paper. I'd like to buy all the ribbons. And you know, I'm looking at you Hallmark here is looking at you craft room, but specifically wrapping. And what would you do yourself? What would be by Monica that you haven't done or are not doing?

I mean I kind of already wasted it on the other thing I just said about representing a makeup line. I would love to do that myself. I would love to be a part of a makeup line that has a lot out of diversity of color um represented in it. Sorry that's a repeat, but it is the truth. If people want to get in touch with you to build any of these ideas, talk podcasts, integrate on any of your amazing shows, how can they get in touch with you? Um?

I would say Instagram is probably the best way, and then I can redirect to whoever it needs to go to, most likely will just be me at mL padmin. Well, thank you so much, thank you, thank you. You know what I love about what Monica said around the specificity piece was not just what she said, It is a right on that actually specific is universal when you're talking to a certain group of people, when you're in a

certain community. But the thing that I love of that she was saying that I think we can kind of abstract a bit is this idea of improv. So improv is this give and take. It's, you know, putting yourself in an environment with other actors or other people or the audience, and you're playing off that environment that context. Modern media is exactly that. And I even think about how yield Mo has been on the show and has been talking about context and talking about being relevant. That's

exactly what they're talking about. They have the instrumentation, they have the technology to do that, and sometimes I think that conversation and ad tech gets obscured by the tech rather than this deep understanding of you have to play on the field to even be in the game. Modern media at this point is all about that, and it really it really goes back Laura to like even people talking about performance marketing. Performance marketing has been again largely

this race to the bottom. But performance marketing done well and done in a way that understands today's context, is exactly about putting out MVPs of messages, putting out things for people to grab react to and then give you feedback on. And I think that that's exactly how marketers could start thinking about instead of having the typical process

of brief RFP, creative concepts, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And this one shot waterfall process is really to think about how you start to improv experiment in the context and the audiences that you want to be a part of, that you want to reach, that you want to buy your product, and that that turns things from broadcast to dialogue turns things from ownership on the corporate brand side two ownership in the audience's hands. I think this line, and I've

said it many times on the show, still hold. It is one thing to buy impressions, It is another thing to make one. This has got me thinking about eminem eight mile, your buyer, your marketer, lose yourself in the moment. Laura hit it with the list of all of our friends and family and my heart who have been so good to us and helped us get back on air. Big thank you to Bob Conal, Carter, Andy, Eric Gayle Val, Michael jen We appreciate you. Thank you so much for

this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks.