Episode 10: How It All Started + Celebrating 10 Episodes! I It's Like That Madison Podcast

🎉 Episode 10: How It All Started + Celebrating 10 Episodes! | It’s Like That Madison Podcast 🎙️

We made it to Episode 10! 🎉 In this special milestone episode of It’s Like That Madison, hosts Jannea Wood, Tiffany Tobias, and Katie Kolakowski take a step back to celebrate the journey so far—and share how the podcast all began. And you get to meet Jeri who makes it all possible.

From the original idea to launching the first episode, we’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what inspired us to start a Madison-based real estate & lifestyle podcast, what we’ve learned along the way, and some of our favorite moments from the first 10 episodes.

If you’ve been following along, thank you for being part of this journey—and if you’re new here, this is the perfect episode to jump in and get to know us!

Whether you're interested in Madison real estate, local lifestyle, or just love a good behind-the-scenes story—this one’s for you.

📍 It’s Like That Madison is your go-to podcast for all things Madison, WI—real estate insights, local favorites, neighborhood highlights, and more.

👍 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow along for future episodes!

Jannea Wood, Stark Company Realtors: https://jwood.starkhomes.com/ Instagram

Tiffany Tobias, Stark Company Realtors: https://ttobias.starkhomes.com/

Katie Kolakowski, City RE: https://www.cityremadison.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Alright, so welcome to It's Like That Madison. We are today we're meeting at my house. Yeah! So we thought it would be fun. So well we started this, gosh, how many was it May? May May. May yeah. So May of last year, we thought our goal is to get to 10 episodes. Yeah. And to see how we do and to see, do we like doing this? And um just be able to celebrate when we get to 10. Yeah. You know, a lot of it, some of my time the ideas take the work into putting in what we're gonna do. Um, and certainly we have Jerry sitting with us today. Um, so we thought it'd be really fun to just kind of do a really short episode and just talk about why we got started and kind of what our goals are going forward.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah. Should I pop pop our champions? Yeah, our cranberry, sparkling cranberry, and a champagne. Since we all have worked together.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Right. Yeah. Middle of the afternoon, we'll be working after this.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

So again, I'm Tiffany Tobias with Star Company Realtors. Janae Wood with Star Company Realtors, Katie Kolikowski with C D R E.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Jerry Casper with Star Company Realtors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah. So yeah, so how'd this even come to be?

unknown 1:20

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

I mean, we all worked together at one point. Sorry, Pop.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah, so we all were together at one point. Yep. So what was your I mean, you guys started talking first.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, I don't remember how the topic came up, other than I think Katie suggested it. And I am incredibly camera shy and normally would not want to do something like this, but there was something about doing it with Katie. It was like, yeah, okay, I'll do it.

unknown 1:50

I'll do the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

And then we needed another, and then you must have already talked to Tiffany about it, because then it was the three of us we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

You know what it was? I was I was watching, um, I like a lot of trashy TV. I was watching Southern Charm. And remember, I think I mentioned it to you, those two guys had broken up their podcast while they were breaking up. Craig and Craig and uh Austin.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Austin, yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Yeah, and I was like, oh my gosh, that would be super fun to do to do podcasts. And then she said, we already started talking, and she's like, We should, we should definitely get it together. So yeah, how did you come up with the idea?

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Um, well, two things I think I watched on um what is the Ryan Serhant real estate show, Selling Manhattan? Those two got in trouble because they were talking inappropriately on their podcast, but I thought podcasts could probably do a lot of good. Um, and also two shout out to Landon Smith, my old realtor in Colorado. I watched his podcast and always thought it was really informative. And I was looking around in Madison to see Effany Real Estate podcasts, and and there's a couple, but there's there's not an enough. And um, female-led ones are always important to me too, with women, women doing cool things, and that's what I love about this crew, also. Um, and so I just thought it would be my goal is I it doesn't matter to me if we go viral or not. I just like sitting around with people I enjoy and talking about topics that I'm passionate about, and I wanted to do that with friends, and um, I'm really thankful for this group here because uh, you know, some people that's that's what they want to do, and some people that's not what they want to do. But this group, too, all of us kind of jumped out of our comfort zone and said, Hey, yeah, let's try this. And we never thought we'd be here today at 10, which is really fun with our how many followers? 35, which is exciting.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

35 on YouTube, but we have like 240 downloads on Apple Podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Thank you, everyone. I never thought we'd be here, so that's exciting. Um, do you want to talk about our love of why we rap music and why we picked our title as well?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

I like that. Well, I was driving down the road and had like an epiphany because I was listening to the 90s channel, as I often do on Sirius. Oh, yeah, that's the one I listened to. Oh, yeah. So Nothing But a G Thing came on by Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. And I'm not gonna sing it for this. You can look it up, or maybe one of you will sing it. But I was like, that's gotta be the song for our podcast and the name of our podcast. It's like that. So that's where that came in. I think I texted you while I was driving, but with the microphone, to say, like, this is what I was thinking we could do.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

I feel like, too, there was a showing that Janae and I had early Saturday morning, but we didn't know we'd both be there at the same time. And I roll up and she's bumping her 90s radio station, and I can't remember what she was playing, but the song she's referencing to is like it's like this, like that, like this, then uh. And I saw her jamming in her car. I rolled down my window, and I can't remember if it was salt and pepper blaring, but we just had this moment where I was like, I didn't know you'd be here. She's like, I know you'd be here, but we were both blaring our 90s, 2000s, early 2000s rap, and then we had this showing with our prospective clients at the same time. So it's just kind of been a bonding for all of us. Tiffany, you and I always say biggie smalls in Tupac.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Like, yeah, I remember when we were both working with a client, and so I was showing everything on the east side, and you were showing everything on the west side, and there was like a lot, there was like multiple days where it was so funny because like you would be like, and and so like I'd be showing them what's like two places, and then they'd be like, Okay, we're heading to the west side, we're gonna meet Katie. And then she one of us would call and be like, Send them your way, Tupac. Send him on your way.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Uh-oh, we're yeah, it was great because yeah, we feel like Tiffany's biggie smalls on the east as Teapac on the west. So it was just fun. And then um, I feel like Jerry, you have a lot of commonalities with us too, with animals, music, just ideologies, but we just really appreciate you putting up with us. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

You can listen to us all the time. It's very fun to hang out with these ladies.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

And I'm not just saying that. Yeah, so it worked out really well because you know, we needed to find somebody, because the three of us, I would say, are we like, okay, if we want to do this, how do we like what do we do? Like, do we use a we're just gonna use like our eye? Like, what do we passively use? And so when you came into the picture and we're like, let's try out a few things, let's see how things work. Uh, it was just fantastic because then we could come up with some of the ideas and we could, you know, kind of have more of the professional on your side of things. So thank you so much for sticking on. Thank you for making it.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

But I also feel like too, Jerry, like, um, and I have a question for you, but a statement, of course, I always have first. And it's uh, I really love like Jerry's behind the scenes with the fun words and the fun graphics, and so we don't we don't ask Jerry to put those in, but when she puts them in, we all just kind of giggle and agree. And so we love that just professional funness that you have. Like, what are like what are your favorite part of like doing the podcast, like putting it together? Like, is it is it doing like clips and you're putting your creativity in, or is it like listening to us babble? Probably not.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Um I do like putting together, um especially like the shorts, because I feel like I can be a little more creative with those because it's like in this defined thing. Yeah. Um because yeah, it's harder with like a full episode for me at this point in my learning how to do this journey um to like pepper that into an actual episode as much because I'm always afraid I'm gonna do too much or too little or whatever. Um, so I do like putting those together. Uh but honestly, like for me anyway, there's not like a ton of like lulls in your conversations um where like I have to go in and like edit out like ums or anything like that. Um so that part, like working with you guys has been so easy in that way, is that you pretty much consistently give me good stuff and then I'm just fixing any mistakes I made with audio or or like oh the video's a little crooked, like um, so yeah, I I I have been kind of learning as I go with you all, and I've appreciated all the learning I've been able to do as well. Um, but yeah, it is fun to find like little uh like audio clips. I was so we just did the episode last time about inspections, and you guys were talking about the poo that we even find in the world. Yeah, and I did I did like go in and I got like like weird bathroom noises and screaming, and but I decided to get I got like a giant poo emoji, but like I was like, yeah, maybe I'm leaning in too much to this uh thing that probably most people should prove.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

The bat sound there, which is I did put the bat on there, turned out. So if you're only listening, you're missing the cool graphics that Jerry does. Yeah, it's worth a watch on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

It was super fun. We always ask you to validate us too, which I think is fun, and you're a fact checker as well. So you're you're a woman of many talents that we're appreciative of too.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah. So uh so we I think we mentioned this maybe in our first one, but we are all all of us are animal lovers. Um which is fantastic because the throwboat, the three of us don't have kids. So I mean our our animals are our have been our kit kids. Um so that was definitely drawing us together. Um mostly dogs.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

That's why our first episode was about dogs, yeah. Yeah. Some cats or something.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I just revealed today that I'm jumping to the cat.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, Katie was telling Jerry Buddha.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

I don't actually believe it, but we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

See, I'm a cat person, but I don't dog I I tolerate dog people, it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

So dogs in common. We're dog moms. Yeah. Our significant others travel all the time. So we like run the house and run our own a lot. Run our own business. Food.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Food's definitely one of them. And the one that's probably I mean, what we found, we haven't had to deal with this yet on any of our tapings, but we we did have an issue where we do we all kind of square a lot. Are we like really doing well with our lack of swearing?

SPEAKER_03 10:30

And not sworn once is. No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

And it's not even like it was not, you know, it's one of those things where you catch yourself and you're like, oh, or if you're really passionate about something. And so we laughed because we thought that's gonna happen sooner or later because we have similar.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

I think as we get freer, maybe down the road it might happen.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, but no, I'm pretty proud of myself for making it 10 10 episodes without a F bomb.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

We're gonna have the necklace that set it.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Our money jar in the middle. Yeah, square jar. Yeah, put it on the minute. That's funny. No, that's that's true too. And I I think too, like one of the commonalities that I'm really excited about this group, too, is um just an underlying tone of ethics and professionalism. 100%. And I I think that might be why we're not swearing as much as we normally do, because we also understand and take this job very seriously and want to be taken seriously. And I mean, there's a time and a place, and I I don't think in our podcast we've found that time and a place.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Yeah, it's probably not there. But it was I was saying it more.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

It's funny that I've made it 10 episodes, like knowing from the East Coast what I sound like, my dad being from Long Island on a regular.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

And I meant it so I meant it more so like things that brought us, it made us laugh when we first started talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah, yeah, and and and with that being said, too, um, one of the things I feel really comfortable with when we're in a discussion about um inspections or contracts is how we care about our people. And I I think that that's like Jerry's on the back end of real estate, but she really cares about what she does. Like we all have a high care factor. And I I think we we see people as people um and houses as uh a basic need and a necessity, right? Um, and and I and I think that that is something that really draws me to this group as well. Yeah, the integrity, ethics, yeah, the same ideology when it comes to you like how I struggled with that word. It was a big one for me. The same ideology when it comes to work ethics, people, and what we're doing and creating as a community, whether it's behind the scenes in real estate or front-facing.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah. And I think it says a lot that we might not be of the same brokerage, but we can do this together. We can collaborate, we don't have to compete. Yeah. Because it's an industry where a lot of people are competing with one another, and we don't feel the need to do that. Yeah. It's just we can rise, you know, raise each other up and just know we're all doing a good job.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Well, I think we each run our business um with the idea of abundance, right? We're not putting, we're we're not concerned about the competition side because like like I know that my clients are gonna use me and and hopefully continue to use me. Um as well as you know, you kind of have we have separate bases, even though we operate on such a similar similar level.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah. Well, and I don't see our podcast as like I'm trying to generate business, right? Informative. I think a lot of podcasts might be where it's like for other agents and they're or you know, they're trying to recruit or they're trying to get it. For me, this is fun. Yeah, never thought I'd be doing it. Love it, but I just I just enjoyed doing it. I'm not looking for anything from it other than just the time together and the creative outlet it allows. And no, I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

And I like to think that we're bringing some good education.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah, that yeah, that's true. It is for the consumer, you know, some fun and some education. I think I got the most compliments though on the um houses is wines. If we can ever like figure out how to do like anything.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I think that would be that would be great. We'll have to look at while you're good at digging into the Google and then asking it for the second round and the third round. So maybe we could figure out what are some of the other ideas that we can compare for what a house would be.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

And we're open to ideas too. So if you have ideas and want to send them our way, like totally open to that. Let me ask you all this. What's a fun weird fact that like the world might not know about you? Or like something that you enjoy doing in your downtime if you can't think of a fun weird fact.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

It's always a loaded question, a fun weird fact. Do you have yours off the top? I mean, I have a bunch of fun weird facts. I don't know that mine's like fun, but I was at a police station when I was in like the eighth grade. I kind of got arrested for being out late at night when I was telling you secrets. So I don't have a record, but yeah, people probably wouldn't think that about me. I'm gonna be the more straight and you know, what organized individual. We were out at a sleepover out late at night doing um aerobics in the courtyard, messing around as like eighth grade girls do. Yeah. And people called the cops on us for being out at like, I don't know, maybe it was midnight. We were probably making noise and laughing. And so the cops came and we all scattered, and I went to go hide behind a car, and unfortunately, three other people followed me, and I was like, get out of here, get out of here! Like, you're a leader, Janae. Janae's a leader. And then like the super athletes in our group just, you know, did like their track run and they got home. But we got caught because there was like four little people, you know, behind this car, and they just brought us in to, you know, make an example out of us call our parents, and that was the scariest part of it. But yeah, I got like I got like booked when I was done. They're like, What are you doing? You're like aerobics, and I was in my pajamas, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

So no aerobics after 9 p.m.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah. Do you have a fun story?

SPEAKER_03 16:20

No.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Well, I'm listening.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

I'm not gonna tap that, that's for sure. That's a great one. I would never have guessed that. No, um okay, give me one, give me just a second. I can I can go. Yeah, go.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

So I have a bunch of weird ones. Like, I'm always kind of like that person where like life throws it your way. I'm like, well, why not? Unless, like, I I really enjoy naps though. So if it's gonna interfere with like a nap or like early bedtime, sometimes I'm like, no, but in um remember when MTV had like the VJs. Oh yeah, back in the day. Remember they had Jesse Camp who was like want to be a VJ, and then they had the VJ tryouts? Yeah, I went to New York City to try out to be a VJ. Oh, yeah, but I was a little late in line, and so I didn't make like the line tryouts, but I did meet that guy, Jesse Camp, and I don't know if you all remember him, he was always high as a kite, like 24-7 on MTV. And my one of my favorite things was Did I tell you this whole story? No, no. So one of my favorite things was if I if I wasn't gonna be a VJ, my roommate had a monster crush on him, and so I needed to at least get an autographed. So they had a chain link fence because I had arrived too late and it was shut. And so I climbed the chain link fence and I yelled, Hey Jesse, at the top of my lungs. And he's really tall, and so he could see me. Well, of course, I was on a chain link fence, and then he was like, Yeah, and I was like, Hey, listen, I need my roommate loves you. Can you autograph this for me? And he was like, Yeah. So he I pass it through the crowd to him. He signs it because I had a pen with me too, and a the picture of him, and then he passes it back. And I got down from the fence, because of course, by that time, security is like, get off the fence, and I'm like wandering away, and I look down at the picture and it says, kisses and hugs, not too many drugs. Love Jessica. So forever. Love that exit greeting. I secretly wouldn't mind signing, not that I do drugs, but it wouldn't. I think it's funny to sign like emails in a weird way, but I don't because of the like that. But I just secretly love that his goodbye exit was kisses and hugs, not too many drugs. Love John Seeking up. So yeah, if you haven't seen him, look him up. And Jerry can insert a photo of sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

That was a fun weird thing. I have so I have way too many to choose from. You know, I actually I was thinking of like when you were saying that, like something more like spontaneous of just like making a decision when you said I went out to New York to obviously do that. Um, I was thinking back when the Chicago Cubs were going to the World Series, you know, we were hoping they were gonna be going to the World Series. So when I was young, my grandfather um has passed away a long time ago, but he got me into baseball, like absolutely got me into baseball. And he was a Chicago Cubs fan because he grew up in Chicago, and so when we were I probably as young as four or five, we would take the train down and go to Chicago Cubs games, and he taught me how to score, which I still do today. It's one of my favorite things to do if I go to a game. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I had always said, okay, if they go to the World Series, I want to be in Chicago, I wanna be a part of that, be able to go to some of the games because we still go to some games. And so when um it was getting closer to the World Series, the tickets are were already, you know, supposedly if they made it, we're gonna be in the thousands. And um, so it was like that's not gonna happen. But we had every single year from I would say since I had met my husband and I, we had always got a hotel in downtown Chicago for the week of World Series, just in the event that they would be there, so we thought we could have it. Because it was$90 a night versus whatever they ended up spending.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

But right before the World Series was the NCLS championship, and um, they were playing against the Dodgers, and I had gone on and looked, and this was like nine o'clock, I don't even know what day of the week it was. And I said, Oh my gosh, they have tickets for tomorrow's game, and they're only$90 apiece. And I'm like, this would be awesome. We could see the NCLS game, see what it would take him to get there. And I called my friend who's I use as my travel agent, Clara, and I said, Can you help me do this? And literally within like 25 minutes, she got she was like, Can you get on a bus to go to Chicago? And I was like, Yeah. So we got on a bus to go to Chicago, she got us tickets, she got us a room um in Chinatown, which wasn't too far from the um baseball stadium, and we got the tickets for the next morning. So we flew out that night, ended up staying two nights, and came back and watched them win there. And then as we were flying into Chicago, all the fireworks were going off because they had um made it to the World Series. Yeah, so yeah, and then we ended up staying down there for a week. That's a really good one. Oh my god, yeah. But it was within, and and I walked into the living room and I said, Jason, um, I just booked us tickets to fly out to LA, and he's like, When? And I go, um, now and he's like, Timmy, I have to work. And I said, I know, I already reached out to your boss. We're going.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Oh, that's cool. Wow, that's a great surprise. That's cool. Gosh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Uh the only thing I could think of, I guess, is uh I I it's not a super weird fact, but I volunteer every week. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. Dane County Wildlife Center. Dane County Humane Society Wildlife Center. Um, I work with songbirds, so I prepare little meals for recovering songbirds. What do they eat? Um, a combination of bugs, fruit. Some of them eat vegetables, some of them eat like seeds and stuff like that. It just depends on the bird. You get like a diet book based on the bird's diet. What do they recover? From? Oh, all sorts of things. Um, pretty common stuff is like window strikes. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Is that who you call? Yeah, actually, yeah. It's the what it's the wildlife of Dane County Humane Society.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

It's attached to the the regular Humane Society, too. Okay, so if a bird I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

I didn't know what to do. So if you come across injured, yeah. No number at the bottom of the screen. How long do they about three? This is my third summer, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

How long do they take to recover too?

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Um, it really does. I think it depends on the bird. I don't know a ton about like the that aspect of it because I'm not like a why I not a rehabilitator. Yeah. Um it kind of depends on like what happens because it can be anything from like neurological to oh, they just you know are a little sore. So um, yeah, it it really depends on the bird. Um I don't know a lot about the other animals that are there, but uh mostly just the songbirds.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Well, it was fun little catch-up and explanation.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Houses bird. Oh, I would be so good at that. Maybe then we do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Huge bird nerd with the birds. We could have the birds. I think we should give the birds the microphones.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

You want to wrap it up? I think so. I think so. I think what's great about this is we're just we're here to catch up. We're here to thank you, those of you who are subscribing and certainly downloading. Um, but I think the the theme is we're not stopping. Yeah, cheers to that. We need more ideas though. All right, so cheers. Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

It's been super fun. And we will be back next month.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, thank you for watching. It's like that, Madison.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

See ya. It's like that is hosted by Janae Wood of Start Company Realtors, Tiffany Tobias of Start Company Realtors, and Katie Kolakowski with City RE. Engineered by Jerry Casper, produced by Katie Kolakowski, Tiffany Tobias, and Janae Wood. The show was recorded in beautiful Madison, Wisconsin.