Now, how intertwined is podcasting and your business for you? Pretty, pretty intertwined. I mean, it's the, it's the megaphone to, you know, the business. Uh, it's also, I started up the independent podcast conference in 2014 as well at the end of 2014, uh, which has grown immensely, um, since, since then. And we've had a lot of, uh, five in-person events and eventually we'll hold a, we'll hold a sixth in-person event.
Uh, it was supposed to be this year and I actually haven't fully made the announcement. I changed everything on the site, but it's good. We're pushing it to 2023 because there's just not enough people in our community. Everyone's like, I would love to come way too much uncertainty. Flights are a mess. Uh, gas is terrible. Um, and then we have the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the gas is terrible. Um, COVID is still out there. You know, I don't, I don't know.
And I was like, well, I'm not going to gamble a couple of thousand dollars on that. So like let's, let's just, you know, it's not the main focus of my business. It's more of a. Um, a passion project, uh, that does bring money, but it, it, you know, it's, it's a passion project at the end of the day. And, um, I just, I love the community. I love bringing people together.
I've been doing events, whether it's raves, lamb parties, working, doing our, when I worked in my family's business back pre 2014, setting up the annual events that we would have at a local caterer here where we'd have like a thousand plus people come through in about five hours. They'd go through all the vendor booths, go to a open bar and free buffet. And it was a great, I mean, I went to that show when I was a kid running around grabbing pens and stuff.
So for me, getting to take it over was really special. And it kind of played into the, I love hosting events. I love bringing people together and just having a really great time with really great people and connecting. Would you say that podcasting actually helps you to find clients for your business? Yes, so that has been, so that's been an interesting thing.
So part of the problem that I've ran into over the years was not necessarily having the marketing message line up with the business, right? So like when I won best business podcast of the year award in 2017, my show was still called the dreamers podcast. And that's when I was like, all right, I went to a few of my friends and I'm like, what do you think? Does this make sense to you? And they're like, well, Joe, I love your show. I love the guests you bring on. I love the insight.
If I didn't know you, I would have passed over your show because of the name. I would have told, because of the name of the cover art and everything, I would have passed over. So that's when I started to reevaluate and kind of start to tweak and look at that kind of stuff. So it's not that a lot of it's like, not necessarily direct. And I think a lot of times we want to think that everything's a super direct, like, hey, I put out episode, next step profit, right?
And it's not necessarily that way. It'll be that way for some people, but it's a lot of referrals, people that listen, that get that reminder and then they refer somebody to me and that kind of process. So it's not direct, like, I post episode, all of a sudden my phone's ringing the next day. So I would say that that's actually probably a minimal amount of the business that has been brought in.
Just kind of like how independent podcast conference is not, it's a passion project that has brought in money into my business, like actually into my actual core business of consulting because so and so knows so and so that works with somebody that's like, oh yeah, this would be a perfect fit for this. Not, you know, and I've done like a lot of podcast coaching and stuff over the years, but again, I would still put that more in the passion side than the actual business side.
That's really, you know, the business side is really about the coaching and consulting, working on the business model, working on the processes, working on the emotions and the, you know, the ebbs and flows of the owner and the team that they have.