Episode 829 - Why We Don’t Pay For Guests
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Why We Don’t Pay For Guests.
Why We Don’t Pay For Guests - Episode 829
Maintaining integrity and authenticity in media is crucial, especially in a world where money can easily compromise these values.
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew explain their policy of not paying guests to appear on the show. They believe that when money is involved, it can compromise the quality of the content and lead to biases or ulterior motives. Additionally, they discuss their decision to not share their download numbers publicly, as they believe this information should be reserved for attracting sponsors only.
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's happening, everybody. Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And on today's episode, Andrew and I are going to talk about why we don't pay for guests. It's a more complex reason than you might think. That is not because we don't have money. That is part of the reason but it's also not at all part of the reason. So stick around we're going to talk about why...
Andrew Adams:
We're going to take all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we make from this podcast. We just want to keep it for ourselves. That's why.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's why you have a hat that says sport. You have the most generic hat possible.
Andrew Adams:
Go sports ball.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why we're wearing essentially the same shirt? If you are new to the show, thank you for joining us. If you're returning, double thank you. We appreciate you watching and listening. It's nice knowing that there's a strong audience out there that looks forward to our content, to our two episodes each and every week. And if you want to go deeper on these episodes, go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. It's the show's online home. It gives you all kinds of great stuff, links to where you find the show, behind the scenes information. If you want to submit a guest or a topic suggestion, there's a form there to do that as well. whistlekick.com is the place to go to see everything that we do in our mission. Our mission to connect, educate and entertain. Our goal of bringing everyone in the world to train for just six months and all the things that we are doing along those lines from our events to our training programs to our products like apparel or equipment. All kinds of good stuff like that. And if you use the code podcast15, it's going to save you 15% in the store and we appreciate those who do. Other things you might do to help us out? Well, you could join the Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick starts at $2 a month. It's how you find out what's coming up on the show. And at higher tiers, we give you more and more and more. Lots of value there. I was recording some Patreon-exclusive content earlier today. You could also do the free, simple, easy thing that everyone appreciates. Tell people about cool stuff. If you love this show, if you find yourself tuning in routinely, it fits into your life in some way. Don't you wish you'd found out about it sooner? Why would you deprive the people that think similarly to you from finding this show? Truly, like, I don't understand why people don't do this. If you find something cool, tell people about it. Makes everybody's life better.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, why we don't pay for guests? Now, this is a subject that comes up once in a while for a few different reasons. There are times where we reach out to a potential guest and they say how much money are you going to give me? And Andrew, you're going to tell a more specific example without naming names because the person's actually been on the show. And then the other half of it, for me is it's kind of the opposite flow of money. It's when I listen to a podcast and I can tell that the guest has paid to be on. We don't do either. We have had people try to pay us. We have had people try to pay us directly or with hey, I'll give you a cut of this thing that i'm selling, that i'm going to push on your show, things like that and in every single case we have said no. In fact, the offer for people to pay us happens more than people wanting us to pay them. Probably two or three to one. And the reason we don't do either direction is for the exact same reason, it changes the ethics of the show.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. I was going to say one word, ethics.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeap. Now, when you came on and I'd like you to speak to this, Andrew. When you came on, you started working with the show, you got the behind the scenes, right? Like right away, it was the curtains peeled back and you got to see the process. And our process is fairly organic. And I hope you don't mind speaking to it cause you, I mean, you've taken it and run with it and improved it far more than when I was doing that role. And help the audience understand where our kind of collective integrity I guess fits into that process.
Andrew Adams:
So, yeah, so when I came on board, first off, my life was a lot easier then because I didn't have to do all this on-camera stuff. I was just a producer. I just was behind the scenes. It was great.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Stick around. Heads up to anybody out there. You stick around long enough, I'm giving you a job. That's what happens.
Andrew Adams:
So, you know the process back then and still to this day, you know, is we reach out to a guest or whether it's someone that I wanted to have on the show someone you wanted to have on the show or whether they're a guest suggestion and often you know, a listener will suggest the guest to come on the show. But that guest knows nothing about our show. Sometimes they do, sometimes the listener has talked to the, hey, would you, I listen to podcasts, can I connect you to them? And, you know, would you go on? And sometimes, you know, it's really easy for me when I contact them. But sometimes more often than not, the person that I'm contacting to come on the show has not heard of us.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Which blows my mind because we've been doing this for so long.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, and if they have heard of us, they haven't necessarily listened. And, you know, they're busy, they've got all the stuff going on, I get that, that's fine. But what I then have to do is say, you know, who we are, what we are about, and, you know, this is kind of our mission statement, and are you interested in coming on the show? And 99 times out of 100, the answer is absolutely. But occasionally, I will get someone who will be like, well, I'm not sure, maybe not 99% of the time. 98% of the time they say no problem. 1% of the time they're like, I don't think I'm good enough. You know, I look at the people you've had on your show and I don't think I should be on your show. We usually tell those people we disagree and we want you to come on the show anyway.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's our show. We know better than you do. Just come on the show. Darn it.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yeah, basically. My favorite was a person who told me that they don't think that they should come on the show, that they don't have any stories to tell. And I said how long have you been training martial arts? And they're like 35 years. It's like, okay, I win this argument. But the other 1% will often say like, well, what is your show really about? How big is it? And then, so I'll say three-quarters of a percent say that. And then one-quarter of a percent, occasionally someone will say, you know, is there a speaking fee? You know, how much is the speaking fee will I get for being on your show? And the first time it happened to me was someone that I reached out to was someone that I follow and said, you know, I'll be really cool to have this person on. And so I reached out to them and they're like, you know, what is the speaking fee? And it had never happened to me before. And I actually reached out to you and it's like, I'm not sure what to say to this. And they also asked what our listener, like what our download numbers were. They wanted to know basically, essentially they're asking me and what, we had a discussion about it and you know, your answer is, well, essentially what he really wants to know is how big is your show and are there going to be 10 people listening to it? Because is it worth my time? And you know, after you and I going back and forth on how to handle it, I just responded and said in terms of the finances, you know, we don't actually pay for any guests. If this is a deal breaker for you, that's, you know, I'm really sorry to hear that, but we just don't, it's not something that we do and here's why and which we will continue. We'll talk about more of the episode right now. But you know, I encourage you to check out our show. You know, here are some of the guests we've had on the show. And when this particular person looked at the guests we'd had on and how many hundreds of episodes we'd had at that point, and when they realized, oh, all of these guests have been on the show and none of them got paid. Oh, okay, and they change theirs too.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's usually what happens.
Andrew Adams:
They were great. It was a great episode. And it just took that knowing that, you know, this isn't what we do and the same thing with download numbers, which, you know, I'll let you speak to a little bit more about that. But it does occasionally happen and there have been guests who have said okay, thank you. I'm not able to come on.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that's fine. You know, I think part of this is you know, I don't know how much the audience knows about the podcast industry, you know. 20% of the population doesn't even listen to podcasts at this point. We're at somewhere around 8 to 10% consistently listen. It's still a small minority with maybe about 20% have listened at some point. Those are kind of my inference based on the latest numbers that I saw a couple of years ago and where things were headed. So, what that means is that there are still a lot of very small podcasts you know. And it doesn't take long. If you look around at the martial arts podcast out there, you will see that there are a lot of very, very small podcasts. A lot of them that did not get past 5 or 10 episodes. The average podcast does not make it to 10 episodes. In fact, it's some massive majority don't make it to 10 episodes. So, if you get somebody that starts a podcast and they set up their first 5 or 10 people they want to talk to and they reach out to big names, if you're a big name, how often do you have people reaching out to you saying, well, will you come on the show? Will you come on the show? Will you come on the show? And you've got to draw the line somewhere. And if you're used to saying, how big is your show? Oh, I just started. How big is your show? Oh, I just started. How big is your show? We're on episode three. Most of the bigger names are going to want to wait a little bit because to put in the time, knowing that four people will listen, not really the best use of your time. Now, I'll go on anybody's show.
Andrew Adams:
Me too.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because I remember what it was like the beginning when I was scrambling to get people on the show. And so it's just kind of my way of paying it back forward however you want to look at it. I have never turned down an invite to go on a podcast. And I'm putting that out publicly to the audience. If anybody out there has a show, even if it directly competes with ours, I'll still come on your show. Because I want to help.
Andrew Adams:
You've been on multiple other martial art podcasts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. And I'll go on them again. Because I've been very honest if somebody finds a show that they like better, that actually serves our mission to connect, educate and entertain and get people trained. So it's not about the show. It's about the mission. So if I can help, fine, let's do it. Okay. Now the the other thing, the download numbers, this has become relevant again lately as we are working on the sponsorship side as you know, we just closed up our second sponsorship run with the episode that we recorded just a little bit ago. Audience, it was last week.
Andrew Adams:
Last week's, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
The Safest Family on the Block stuff. Jason was the second sponsor. Kataaro was the first. So we've got a whole bunch of stuff we're working out. The currency of a podcaster is that back-end information, including who's downloading from where, what those numbers look like, et cetera. And we reserve that for sponsors. It's the only group that we're going to share that with. And we try to convey what we do a little bit differently to guests because if they don't understand podcasting and specifically martial arts podcasting because we're a niche of a niche. We're the biggest fish in a really weirdly shaped pond. And if you don't understand that, then it can look strange. So, I think I answered things you passed them all over to before?
Andrew Adams:
Yeap.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Andrew Adams:
Especially we don't divulge our download numbers publicly. And we don't pay our guests because ethics, you know. I mean, one of the perfect examples that we have talked about many times, semi related, is Free Training Day. That you know, we don't pay people to come and present at Free Training Day because it changes things. Money? Absolutely and I don't think there's a listener out there that will disagree. When you introduce money into an equation, it changes things. Absolutely, unequivocally it does.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yep. One of the things that we talk about with Free Training Day, and it's kind of ironic that we're both wearing Free Training Day shirts from last year, and on audience, if you're whether or not you're watching or listening, Andrew's wearing the, that's the northeast one and I've got the pacific northwest one. Andrew's got mount manadnock on his shirt. I have mount hood. And when we talk about Free Training Day, our job is really simple. And the other Free Training Day directors, their jobs are really simple because the wrong people don't want to teach for free. Only the people who get it will teach for free. And if people look at it and they're like, oh, it's free for me to go, it must be terrible. Well, then, you know what? We don't want you. And that's fine. But the people who show up, the people who get it have an amazing time. And that ethic grew out of Martial Arts Radio. And now what we say that the best stuff that whistlekick does is free. It's free for you to listen to this podcast or watch this podcast. It's free for you to come to Free Training Day. We do all kinds of stuff for free and we will continue to do so because that is you know, that is in our ethical code. And for us to do that, and then to turn around and pay someone simply to give up their time, when we give significant amounts of time to the martial arts community, it doesn't line up. And if that if that is a hard and fast rule for someone, they're going to need to be paid to come on the show, then 2 things are going on. They don't see the value in coming on, which is fine. They don't have to. And two, they're not our people. If you take a look at the huge names that have been on the show, people who are paid significant amounts of money to appear for teaching seminars, or television, or movies, not one of them has been paid a nickel.
Andrew Adams:
No, no. The only, and I know that you have said you've had people offer to pay you to come on the show. And you know, we don't accept that stuff. The only quote kickback that we would occasionally get is unprompted. Someone will send us a book.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sometimes people send a book. Yep. I've never asked for one. It has never been conditional on someone's appearance. A good number of those books went into the VIP bundle bags for Free Training Day Northeast last year. And the only ones that didn't were ones that were personally signed to me because who wants a book with somebody else's name in it? Maybe if I get really famous, they'll want those books, but you know, I'm not there yet. So, to me, it's really clear why we handle it this way and I don't see us changing that. And that's not to say that it's inappropriate for others to do it, you know, everybody's got to do what makes sense for them. There are plenty of podcasts out there that pay their guests. There are plenty of podcasts out there that the guests pay to be on. In fact, there's a podcast I can think of right now that they've made a significant amount of money. They built a huge audience and then they flip the switch and if you wanted to get in front of, I think what I'd say was like 1.5 million people that they got up to? If you want to get in front of those people, you paid a certain amount. Okay, great. You know, if that works for you, that's fine. And then the other side, there's a podcast I could think of, neither of these are in the martial arts space by the way, that I could tell the moment that they went, I refer to as pay to play. The moment that their guests started paying to be on, I was like, I can see it. Because all of a sudden the teeth went away. The teeth went behind the lips. It was just, there was no substance to the show. It was very fluffy. And fortunately, that show does two different formats and I don't listen to those guests interviews anymore. They're wasting my time. Because I don't trust the information.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. The minute you accept money, you become beholden to someone else.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, if you've been a fan of the show for a while, you know that sometimes episodes come out where you know, we bobble a little bit, right? Like maybe something's a little bit off in the editing. There's a pause that could have been handled better. Or you know the video quality dips a little bit. We do our best to constantly improve those processes and actually we're recording with a newer tool now because we're trying to improve from Zoom. But if somebody was paying, what's the standard? Well, I don't like the quality of that. That came out bad. I insist we do it again. And now we're doing it again and we're hoping that their Internet doesn't drop out again because it's almost always their internet. I have 2 connections at home. You know, this way, we get to run our show, our way and we get to be as authentic as possible when we bring it to you. Anything we've missed?
Andrew Adams:
Nope. I think that pretty much covers why we don't pay for guests.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So if there are bits we've missed and you want us to go deeper, if you want to reach out, if you want to ask questions, if there are adjacent topics that you are curious about, you know, you can always ask the question. If it gets a little too inside baseball, if it's too private of information for the company, because remember, this is a company that is attempting to become profitable. I reserve the right to not answer the question, but I will at least acknowledge your question. And I'll try to provide some, some information. Yeah. Because as you said in the example, the potential guests, it's not the actual number that they care about. It's they're trying to make sure that there's substance there. And I will answer questions in that way as long as they're asked respectfully. Thank you for coming by. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Andrew, thank you for your time and all that you do for the show. Patreon contributors, unlike a lot of shows, we don't name you and put you up on the screen. Anybody wants that? I don't think people want that, but you know we could do that, but I am still very appreciative. And those of you who do contribute to the Patreon, tell other people to contribute to the Patreon. It grows and it offsets a significant amount of the expense on this show. Not all of it, but a significant amount. And it would be nice if it covered all of it. That really would be the goal. So, if you haven't taken a look at what's available in the Patreon tiers, go to Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick, and check it out. $2, $5 a month. It goes a long way. Other ways you can help us out, buy something at the store, share this episode by a book, leave a review, reach out to have me teach a seminar, or reach out to get your school on the list or honestly right now the waiting list for consulting offerings. You want to make more money, bring in more students? I'll bring the same sort of integrity and team-driven approach that we do for everything to your school. No tricks and hacks here. This is just solid business practices with lots of integrity. If you want to reach out to us, andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media is @whistlekick. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.