The AI Podcasting Strategy That's Smarter Than Generative AI | Mike Montague

What do orange juice, artificial intelligence, and podcasting have in common?

In this episode of the Pedal Stomper Productions Podcast, we're joined by Mike Montague, founder of Avenue9 and former Sandler executive, to explore a smarter way to use AI for content marketing.

Instead of asking AI to create more content from a tiny idea, Mike explains why the best marketers do the opposite. His "Degenerative AI" approach uses podcasts, interviews, and long-form conversations as rich sources of expertise that AI can refine into blogs, social posts, emails, newsletters, and more.

If you're a business owner, marketer, or podcaster looking to build trust while scaling your content creation, this conversation is packed with practical advice.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why podcasting is one of the best marketing tools for growing your business
• How AI can help scale your content without replacing your expertise
• The "Orange Juice" analogy that changes how you'll think about AI
• Why podcast transcripts are a goldmine for marketing
• How to protect authenticity and audience trust in the AI era
• Why AI should filter your expertise, not create it
• Practical ways to repurpose one podcast into weeks of marketing content

Whether you're just starting a podcast or looking to improve your content marketing strategy, this episode will help you use AI the right way while strengthening your brand.

If you're looking to talk podcasting and get more information on how to make your podcast shine, our 30-minute "no pitch" podcast consultation is right for you!  Click the link to sign up for a time. 
https://pedalstomperproductions.as.me/no-pitch

Staying up to date on the latest podcasting news and trends doesn't have to be difficult. We can deliver them right to your inbox. 
https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/

Want to start your own podcast?  Go here!

You can book time in our studios here 

Want to read about this? Check the blog! 

Transcript

0:00

What does orange juice, AI and podcasting all have to do with each other? That is what we're going to talk about this week. There's going to be more stuff to stay tuned. Mike, you spent twenty five years. You've studied buyer behavior. You spent a fifteen year run at Sandler. You hosted a branded podcast there. And then you said, you know, I'm going to do this on my own with your own agency, Avenue nine. Like what? Like first off, what was the trigger for that? And then you've had a podcast in that for a long time. So was that part of your strategy from the beginning? Oh yeah. Absolutely. On the podcast stuff. So without going all the way back to the beginning of time, but in the in the late nineteen hundreds, I was a DJ. Ouch. Ouch. Um, so I've been like in radio and audio and stuff in my, uh, in my twenties and I, I actually designed the websites for the radio stations and stuff too. So that's the other background part. And then, um, I was like the prize guy and in charge of like creating marketing campaigns and, and fun stuff. And, uh, my dad was a sales trainer. So those are kind of all the, the like threads that weave into this thing here. But the second part of your question was the catalyst, which was just AI. Um, that when I realized when ChatGPT hit that I could do my day job that I was doing as a marketer in like a tenth of the time, I was like, oh, I could do this for ten companies and try and make ten times the amount of money. Um, and so I started my own and, uh, so far I'm over half that, uh, which is not bad halfway there, um, after a year and a half or so And, um, it's been really great. But yes, podcasting was definitely going to be one of my, um, methods to, to communicate. And I could tell you all of the, the wonderful reasons, but, but the biggest thing is it lets me meet people. It gives me content that I can share in my marketing plan every week. And it's the one channel that I enjoy the most. So those are the, the big three. I it's funny you say that because from a marketing perspective, you can see what different businesses enjoy doing for marketing. Um, and, and with podcasting, once again, we both, I really enjoy this otherwise, like, you know, the work involved, I know the work involved. Otherwise we'd be like, screw this. The microphone would be in the garbage can over there. It'd be in the closet where it is for most people. So yeah, I one one hundred percent get that. So I mean, let's go back to the AI piece. Um, AI seems to be something that people occasionally talk about just once in a while, bring it up. Um, these days. Right, right. Just once an hour at least. Right. Just occasionally. And I also want to go into scaling. Now the first thing is, is like you said, like, hey, I can do this ten times. And once again, to hear that you're halfway along that goal. That's amazing because I always like to joke that I'm never disappointed with the numbers in my bank account. It is just where the decimal point is, which seems to be a scaling problem. Numbers are fine. The decimal point is the one that I have the complaint about. Um, you really you got to shoot for the commas. Uh, the key is in the comma, right? Right. If if I could just get rid of the decimal point, I'd be a happy guy. I'd be a really, really happy guy. Uh, that being said, you talk about like, your degenerative AI method, like, Give me the rough thirty zero zero zero footer of that. I mean, this is beautiful for podcast people because that's kind of where I got this. This whole thing is that everybody talks about generative AI. And I use like the concentrated orange juice analogy that like, if I give it a small idea and then I water it down with AI, and I try and generate like a whole marketing plan from this one idea, uh, it doesn't work very well. But if I have a whole podcast or I talk to a founder for an hour and I record it, or we have an internal sales and marketing meeting and we take all of that transcript from this two day marketing offsite. And then we ask AI to boil it down to the best ideas. It's actually really good at that. That's what AI is best at, is synthesizing massive amounts of data. So I think podcasters miss this a ton when you've like, I have seventy five episodes of my new show, I before AI, I couldn't really have like, somebody go listen to all seventy five episodes and pull out the best bits or tell me what the themes are or the most books that somebody mentioned or, um, you know, the, the famous quotes that we use the most. It would have been impossible. Um, and for a long time as a bass caster in the twenty tens, I was paying people overseas to listen to the episode and type out the transcript. That's how long I've, I've been doing this. Uh, but now, um, you can flip that on its head and I don't think enough people have have adjusted. So degenerative AI means like, let's take a lot of context and then boil it down to something that's like really super powerful, meaningful and like, um, help it to clarify our message rather than like try to add complexity to a, a simple idea. I, I think that's brilliant because I see that in so many cases where people take AI and they're like, well, can you expand on that for me? Can you expand on that for me? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, you need to let it be the filter, not the expander. Not not the extra. Yeah. Make it be the extruder, not the, not the poor. Uh, with that, I mean, we've seen so many cases where people are like, tactically AI destroys audience trust. Um, why do you think that's from that? Like just pumping some stuff into AI and saying, what should I talk about next week from a without a context information? I guess I would say, yeah, I think there are, um, four big points here for trust that I, I talk about, uh, a lot and AI, if you're not careful, can really mess up all three. Um, so the first one is, um, credibility, which is if it hallucinates, if it gets something wrong, if you water down the message, or if people can just tell that you didn't write it, you kind of destroy your credibility. It's like, do you know anything about what you do for a living? Or are you just asking ChatGPT? Because I can ask ChatGPT what it thinks. So your credibility is is ruined. Um, and I also add a new one here, um, that I haven't talked about on a podcast yet, but I think like AI does C plus work, which means if it's not in your area of expertise, that's pretty good, right? If you're failing, uh, at, at, at podcasting, a podcast, that's, that's, you know, like, that's the, the cheat code to get you up to average. But if you're really good at what you do, and if this is the core message of your business and you regularly deliver, you know, B plus A minus results for your clients, the C plus is going backwards. And if you're using C plus work to market your business, you're going to lose that credibility. I thought you were an A plus expert and now your marketing looks like C plus. Um does that make sense. Oh, it it one hundred percent does. Because like my understanding of AI is it's probabilistic, meaning it is just looking at probabilities of what the next word is. So and it's taking, it's really, um, it is the sum of all information, I guess I would say. And I work in sales and marketing. I mean, most sales people miss quota. So if you took the average of all the sales people in America, they would miss quota if you just did what ChatGPT told you to do. Um, and so I did promise that there was four of those. The one that's tied closely to that is authenticity as well, which is like we can tell, and we trust people who we feel like we know them, we can verify this. And like, that's why podcasts and other things are great because like, you can't be inauthentic for hours and hours and hours at a time. People really get to know you. But if you generate inauthentic stuff with AI and it's artificial, then that's going to destroy trust. Now, the, the other thing that I think people mess up a lot here is generosity. So if you're using AI to make extra stuff for your clients to like, make a better pitch than you could have before or to save them time, that's great. If you're using AI to save you time, but it costs your your customers more time, that's not generous. And so that's gonna destroy trust. And the last one here that I think AI can really help with is reliability is that in order to be trustworthy, you have to do this day in, day out repeatedly. And that's one of the reasons I love doing the podcast and other things is that like, I'm showing up week after week. I've interviewed seventy five experts. I'm here a year and a half later or depending on if you go back to my first show, I've been podcasting weekly for like over ten years. That's a lot of shows. It's over like eight hundred interviews that I've done and they go, okay, I can trust that this guy is going to be here next week because he's been here for the last seventy five weeks. But you can use AI to help you be more reliable. But if you start getting unreliable because it's wavering or you produce a whole bunch of stuff one week and then disappear the next week, we've seen that in all kinds of mediums where you're like, let's show up and and we'll release thirty AI episodes today and then zero tomorrow. That doesn't prove reliability, right? No. And it it's so interesting you say that too, because the other thing that we see it with is pod fade. Um, I mean, I know when a podcast is ready to die because let's say it's a, it's a weekly podcast, then they miss a week, then there's two more weeks where they're good, then they miss two weeks, then there's an episode, then they miss a week, then there's a string of four or five episodes and then just poof, gone. So yeah, it's that like, like you said it is that showing up every week? It's the same as a coworker in a sense. I mean, when you think about it, if, if Bob is late every day and it's nine oh one and you need, you need Bob at nine o'clock to, to help you start something, you just need to plan on. It's nine oh four before you're going to be able to start. Um, it's that once again, he's not reliably good, but Bob's reliable in that fact that he's always going to be a couple of minutes late. I think even then people can work around that. We can realize like humans have flaws and stuff. And he might not be timely, but he's going to be good. And we can rely on the quality, and I think AI can help us in all of those buckets. So I know I gave you a really meaty answer on that one, but I've done a lot of deep, deep dives on this. This is the core of my business because when I'm marketing for other people, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for the authenticity, the expertise, the reliability, and the generosity that is going to say, oh, if I need somebody, I'm going to call that person. They're the ones that I trust, and it makes a huge difference. Anything else is really just kind of shouting into the void. In my opinion. It's just AI slop and it's just like everybody's on social media yelling, nobody's listening. Um, and no, it's kind of pointless. And it even goes to the bots that are out there, which to me, like when you look at vanity metrics, boy, do they look better than ever for so many people. Yeah. Um, but over half the traffic is AI bots and one hundred percent of humans one hundred percent. I have I have a great story that I've told people about how that I can tell you later about how I found bots about a year, year and a half ago. But with that, like you said from the beginning, a podcast was there for Avenue nine. Um, you're helping to scale like those, the scale, different types of brands. How does that, like, how has the, how have you used the podcast for lead generation? I mean, we've heard all sorts of ways, but like someone always has an interesting twist on it from what I've found. Yeah, I have a few twists. I mean, number one, you probably hear a lot, which is just the guests and the referrals to, to people. So I found in my industry, marketing is so huge. No one person can know everything about marketing. AI is so huge and so fast changing. No one person can know everything there is to know about AI. So for me, it turns my business into a team sport. Now I get to learn from all these experts I get introduced to to them and their connections, or they know somebody that needs what I do that they don't do. So right before I jumped on here to record with you, I was talking to a guy who does kind of AI automation in, uh, accounting and bookkeeping, and I'm like, God bless you. I don't want anything to do with that. If any of my clients ask for it, I'm sending them to you. I'm not a bookkeeper. Um, but same thing I found like bookkeepers and really technical programmers don't like the marketing and the sales part that I do. So they're like, oh my gosh, like if you're gonna help them figure out the marketing or the, the sales presentations, great. Happy to refer you over to them. And so that is largely how I build it. The other part for me, which may not work for all your listeners, but sales and marketing is, is sort of a very meta thing where, um, I feel like people want to know that their marketer is also a good marketer. And so for me, being found and showing up in searches and having a bunch of followers or, uh, on, on YouTube or on LinkedIn, when people go to look it up, they go, oh, he must know what he's talking about. He's got almost one hundred thousand followers on YouTube, and it's a big credibility builder for me. Uh, which leads to mostly speaking events. So I, I love to do this and talk and so I get paid to speak. Then when I go get a speaking event, because they go, oh, he hosts a podcast and you know, he's writing a book and, uh, has a bunch of followers. He must be an expert, bring him in to speak. And then at the speaking events, I meet a bunch of people that are in my ideal client audience. So the one thing I haven't cracked is interviewing my ideal customers on my podcast. But when I talk to my clients, that's the one I tell them to do the most is like, if you sell to plumbers, then start the, you know, thoughts from a plumber podcast and interview all the plumbers you can name. It's so funny because we've done the same thing. And in so many cases, like from a podcast production standpoint, we're working with people that are just getting into it. We've got a couple of people that were established that came along. Um, but how like for how do you interview people about so you'd like to start a podcast, you know, nothing. Let me ask you questions about nothing. It's just not going to work well. Yeah. Right. Although I'm sure we've both guested on shows that our show's about nothing. Um, just not in a good way. That Seinfeld was right. We could both easily do that. I think we've done enough podcasts that we could host a show about anything if we called upon. What what what have you found, like from the speaking gigs? Um, if something that we're working through on another podcast that I that I met. Did the podcast really seem to open up the door for other avenues like the speaking gigs, other like coaching things like, have you found it besides your core business? It brings those other things in for you. Yeah, I think of those as sort of, um, the three tiers of revenue. For me, the number one is like those a clients, the, the retainer work, the ones that are really, you know, like I said, I'm only looking for ten good companies to, to be my clients on a regular basis and I'll get to where I want to go. So, um, those are the ones that I'm always searching for and I'm trying to make content for them and interview people that they would think would be interesting. So I can attract those and have more conversations with people like that. But along the lines, I am going to get speaking events which pay pretty well. So I charge between seven thousand five hundred and ten thousand depending on the event and length and, and whatnot. And so, you know, one of those a month is, is pretty good. Right now I'm at like one a quarter, but, um, I haven't actually been working that line of the business. That's kind of like just those are going to come up. I've, I've spoken my whole career. People see this stuff and they ask and you're like, yeah, sure. Great. Here it is. It's easy for me to do. And podcasting helps me clarify my thoughts and come up with these analogies and stories to tell. So I always have stuff to speak about, which is great. Um, but those are large enough numbers that if they do add up, it's a good kind of B line of business. And then the C tier stuff is like you always get, especially if you're out in the public or talking to a bunch of people, those one off little projects like, hey, I heard you mention you, you did this. Like, can you, whatever, build this custom GPT for me? Or can you help me fix this? Or can you, you know, redo my website? And those aren't going to be ideal for me, but I evaluate them carefully for my business and then say, oh yeah, if it's easy, I can pick it up. Or some guy wanted to pay me three hundred and fifty dollars an hour to just chat and do a free coaching session. I guess not free, but a paid coaching session. Um, then, uh, I'm like, yeah, all right, that's not going to take me away from my core business. I have time to do it. And it's great kind of supplemental C income that just kind of fills the holes. And I include like affiliate programs and other stuff in there, products that I'm already using and endorsing. And that kind of fills in little gaps and, um, doesn't add up to a whole lot. But I feel like if you're in business long enough, it really can, uh, including like if somebody wanted to sponsor my podcast or something like that, I would take it. That's not why I'm doing it, but hey, great. Happy to have him on board and, and add that to the pile. I like money it, it can be big or small. I like it when it's yeah, I like it when it's coming in. I totally understand this. Remember, we're focusing on commas though, correct? Correct. Those commas. That being said, um, you've had probably. Do you think it's over a thousand episodes total? Oh yeah. For sure. Yeah. So you've had that. I'm assuming you have learned a couple of lessons in those one thousand plus episodes. Um, what one thing that you've said is that the key to success is perfectly executing your own vision instead of twisting yourself in knots trying to go viral. And we've like, we talk about that. I'd love to hear like, if you've ever tried to be everything to everyone and how you ended up like, like Bugs Bunny where the gun went off in your face instead of going off the direction you wanted it to. Um, I do have a couple of specific stories there. Uh, you're alluding to my, my favorite quote of all time is, uh, a former Supreme Court justice, Howard Thurman. And he said, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive. I love that. I think it's great quote for podcasting or any other kind of creative art, which is just like, go do what makes you come alive, what makes you happy. And there's eight billion people on the planet. There's enough people that you can find that will want that versus trying to figure out what eight billion people want. And then, like you said, twisting yourself in knots, trying to like be something to everybody. I learned that lesson pretty young. So I was, I mentioned on the radio and, um, I sold out super early. Like if I was broke, I needed the money. If they wanted to read a commercial for anything or appear anywhere. I would take the money and I would show up. Sure. It was actually really hard because so would anybody else in those situations, like if they're looking for nobody in particular, they're willing to pay like the lowest amount of money. And you're chasing so early in my career, you know, you pay me fifty bucks, I'll read a commercial for you or I'll show up somewhere or DJ or, um, I hosted karaoke shows and game shows and, uh, read commercials for adults, uh, stores and lotteries and, and everything in between. I didn't wear, uh, the worst one. The worst one was, um, I went to the University of Missouri, uh, for my undergraduate, which is the, the Mizzou Tigers. Our biggest rival is the Kansas Jayhawks. And, um, I got offered a commercial for one hundred bucks for the Ku bookstore, and they had the fight song playing behind me and I was like, we got the cure for what's ailing you. Jayhawk fever. Come on down to the Ku bookstore and, like, just totally sell sold out for one hundred bucks. But I had to, I had to, you know, pay my bills and pay my rent back when I was like twenty, twenty two, twenty three years old, the good old days. But what I learned afterwards and along the way was that we talked about those threads earlier in my career that like, not a lot of people, um, have radio experience. Not a lot of people have website design experience. Not a lot of people have professional sales training and marketing experience, but very, very few people have all of those things for multiple years. Like I've put in my ten thousand hours and all three of those buckets. So when I tie those together, they become something that's truly unique and valuable. And so when I speak to young people, I say, like, if you could guess how much a website designer makes. You could go on Glassdoor or something and look up that salary. Um, same thing for a radio DJ. It's not much. My highest salary was twenty thousand dollars for a year of being on the radio, which is why I had to do all those other add on gigs. Um, and same thing for like a sales trainer, a public speaker, kind of what they make on average, if you add all of those numbers together, that's what I make for doing all of them tied together. So I've, I've basically kind of doubled or tripled my income by becoming a triple threat in a unique person versus trying to be something to everybody. So if you want my particular set of skills, um, it's going to cost you, but I've worked hard to develop those. It's funny, one of the ways that I, I mean, one of my first big clients, um, was a company that sold garbage trucks because I have a, an innate knowledge of trucks and how to work with them. I was at a semi truck dealership when I started doing a lot of the videos. Yeah. And same idea. They were willing to pay because they're like, look, we need someone that can film and be on camera and talk about trucks. Three very different, very unique skill sets. And I was like, yeah, let's, let's do this. I mean, once again, same idea behind that and a ton of fun with it. Um, with that, like the problem, the problem that I always like to talk about is the vanity metrics problem. I alluded to it a little bit earlier about like, hey, bot traffic is amazing because it's pumped. Let's pump those numbers up. Son is, uh, is pumped those vanity metric numbers up. How do you steer people away from looking at just downloads or looking at just, I got one hundred likes on Facebook. How do you how are you steering your clients away from that and showing them what success actually is. Yeah. Three ideas here. Number one is, um, if you really want the vanity metrics and that's important to you, you can pay advertisers, you can pay YouTube and LinkedIn and they'll send you traffic. So like, don't, don't work that hard at the content. Just pay for the ads and they'll send you traffic. It's an easy fix. Um, the second thought here though, is that like most of the time, going viral does not solve your problem. Uh, I've worked with a lot of people over the years who have gone viral. One artist got over fourteen million views in the first two weeks of him uploading a rap video, and he made basically no money from it because it was his first video. His channel wasn't monetized, so he got no YouTube ad revenue. There was no like calls to action or ways to buy the song. There was no merchandise. There was nothing when that happened. And so if you're not prepared and if you're not, you don't haven't thought through kind of the marketing system and the strategy or, or have a way for a mass audience to benefit you, then you're just kind of wasting your time on the vanity metrics anyway because they're not that valuable. Um, so I would rather have one hundred of the right ideal customers, especially for me. I work in B2B space. I told you I need ten good clients this year, which means I don't need a million people to watch my videos. Um, but I need the right, like probably one hundred prospects to allow me to get ten new clients, which I think is a whole different game. And then the third thing that I was going to say here is about getting your head right, that if you're the one doing the podcast or you're the one in the video, it will feel good when they get more views. But sometimes that wears off and we think, oh, my last video got a thousand views and this one only got one hundred. But I tried to picture those as real people. If a hundred people showed up to your house this week and said, hey, we want to hear your thoughts on podcasting. We want to hear your thoughts on AI marketing. You would take that seriously. You would prepare, you'd be like, oh crap, I got one hundred people coming on Monday morning and I pick Monday. My podcast goes live Mondays at ten a m, Monday at ten a m a hundred people are going to watch this, or a thousand people are going to watch this. I'd better pretend like those are real people and show up with thought and care. And don't be distracted by the likes as some sort of, you know, comparison to MrBeast or, or, you know, a podcast or the Kelsey brothers, uh, for, um, you know, like, I'm not going to get the millions that he does, but if, if the hundreds or the thousands or even ten of the right people showed up at your door Wednesday and said, I want to hear you talk for an hour, what are you thinking? What would you say then? How seriously would you take that? I, I love that you said that. I haven't heard really anyone else say that, but it's something that I've told people for a while. I'm like, look, I teach a podcasting class and I always tell people, if there's eight people in the room next door that wanted to hear from you, would you go over and talk to them? Yes. So when you only get eight downloads, don't think, well, this sucks. I'm like, because we like comparison is the thief of joy. By all means. With that, if you're trying to compare, like if you're thinking, I'm going to be Joe Rogan, you're not, um, he, it only took him like twenty five, thirty years to build what he has. Um, so yeah, I'll also tell you that like it does add up over time. The. Yes. So I, I have another one to add here, which is, um, the number one reason people will not listen to your podcast is because you didn't make one. Um, and if you just keep making them and you don't stop, eventually those numbers add up. So I have had millions of people listen to my podcasts. Um, the How to Succeed podcast had over four point seven million downloads, uh, at this point. Um, there's over a million views on my YouTube channel for Avenue nine. Now in the, the new human first AI marketing podcast. And the only way to get there is by releasing the first episode and having your friends and family and, and ten people watch. Nobody starts the show and has a million downloads the first episode, so you can build it over time. If those things are important to you and you want to build a cool, fun show and be proud of it and, and get awards, all you got to do is keep going. You'll, you'll get there eventually. I truly love that. As we start to kind of close out here, of course I have to address even a little bit further AI. Um, once again, it seems that people ask about it occasionally. Um, like where do you see podcasts in the next? And because like, look, I've always said like, she can hit the fan in the next three weeks and we have no idea. Um, your crystal ball, your magic eight ball, go ahead and shake it. And like, what do you see over the next six to twelve months for podcasts, for marketing in general? I am not just saying this because I'm on this show. I've built my company around this idea that human conversations are going to become one of the most valuable things on the planet, because AI has run out of data. It's already read everything there is to read on the internet. And so the only thing that can help add to its knowledge base is actually new conversations between humans. If AI trains off of AI generated content, it becomes a photocopy of a photocopy. It drifts and it fades over time. And the the AI companies would already be doing that, right? If they could use ChatGPT to write something new that it could train ChatGPT on. They wouldn't need us. They wouldn't be going to LinkedIn and Reddit and podcasts. But podcasts in particular are human conversations. The way that we speak with original thought that is transcribable and and analyzed in its original form. Everything else besides live performances and podcasts gets some sort of editing AI pass like clean up. And so I truly believe that if you want to be found in, in AI conversations and EO searches, if you want to become more valuable, be the people that can still create original thought, original content, original, like contributions to society. Because in a world where everybody can make everything, like the question becomes, what are you going to make? Why? Who are you going to make it for? And like, how are you going to add your own version of the story? That is I, I truly love that also because it means that we may still have a job next week. Uh, we'll be fine, right? No, but I, I, I wholeheartedly agree with that too, is the human experience is unique and AI is learning from that. But the human experience is also changing every day. And for us to be able to talk about that and communicate, that is new stuff and why AI is a great tool and is a great way to use things, but it's not necessarily going to replace humans. Um, truly, truly love that. Mike, where can people find you and the Avenue nine podcast. As we mentioned earlier, it's not very hard to find. I'm in internet marketing, so type Mike Montague or Avenue nine into whatever AI chatbot search engine, wherever you're watching or listening to this would be great. The Human first AI marketing podcast is my current show. Uh. It's fun. I interview an AI or marketing expert every week and try to get right into it and get helpful stuff for, for small business owners. Um, and then Avenue nine dot com is the website and Mike Montague on LinkedIn are my preferred channels. So reach out if I can help you, I'd be happy to do it. Wonderful. Mike, thank you for the time today. I really appreciate it. For everyone else out there, I've got I've got more notes than normal here even. And I'm going to go back to the orange juice idea, which I absolutely loved. I'll be back with a summary. Thanks. What an interesting episode. What an interesting story. What an interesting guy. Um, the way Mike looks at things, I. I really do love. He's looking at it from the way AI actually works. So many people are just saying AI, ai, AI, and they forget the fundamentals behind it. To me, it's almost like trying to do multiplication before you know how to do addition you're building. We've said it on the business fix. On that one. You're putting a fancy porch on a house with a shitty basement. You get the foundation, right? Get the the fundamentals right and then start to build off there. That's the the orange juice idea. The degenerative, uh, intelligence to me is awesome because once again, too many people are using AI. They're trying to it's like using a funnel upside down. Um, they're trying to stick their ideas in the, the narrow part of the funnel and hoping it comes out, when really you should be taking all of your ideas and shoving them into the wide end of the funnel, and then having it filter through and seeing what comes out the bottom. To me, that is such a great approach and it's such a great way to look at it. Additionally, those four points that he talked about as related to AI and podcasting, the credibility, the C plus work, authenticity and generosity, um, as well as reliability. So five points on that to me, those are, those are big, big things. If you don't have credibility, why are you doing podcasting? Even as someone that's a host that is trying to learn from guests, you're you've got credibility, you have a certain amount of credibility that you're trying to build off of. That's a, that's a big thing. And you're using the podcast to build that credibility. Don't destroy it by going backwards and taking something that's just AI that you just don't have the knowledge about the C plus work thing. Also, just once again, it's so beautifully put by him. It's an average AI is taking an average of all inputs in that and looking at probabilistic outcomes. If you're okay with average, then that's fine. But I feel like most of us want to be above average. Now, granted, we all can't be above average, so there's some people that have to be below it, but that's why you're going to have guests in. You can be the below average one and have the above average guest come explain these things to you. That is what's going to give you the good content, the authenticity piece of it. I truly like, I've preached this ad nauseam. You guys all know that podcast. And the reason why I think podcasting will stay around is the authentic connection that you are building. Granted, I one hundred percent realize that I am looking at a glass camera lens right now, but I also one hundred percent realizing that I am talking to you. You specifically. I'm talking to you about this. And that makes a difference because it's not this filtered, degenerative intelligence thing coming at you. It's genuinely me. The generosity I love to give, give from your podcast, it will come back to you and make sure you're showing up reliable that I mean, I've preached that a thousand times, show up every week for people, become a part of their routine, become a habit for people. Truly love that. The fact that he mentioned how the podcast can turn into other avenues, other things other than just marketing for your business. Truly a wonderful piece to that. The other thing is the quote, people don't listen to the podcast because you didn't make it. You have to start. You have to get going. You have to record that episode. If you don't, there's no way that they're going to be able to listen to it. That being said, do me a favor. Make sure that you're able to listen to the next episode of Podcasting Momentum. So hit the subscribe. If there's someone that you think may find this valuable, go ahead and hit the share button. By all means, I would love to hear what you would like to talk about next or who you would like me to interview. As always, take care of yourself if you can take care of someone else too. I will see you very, very soon.