Sam Sethi: 0:12

Hello and welcome back to Podnews Weekly. I'm joined by a friend of the show. His name's Mathew Passey. Mathew, hello. How are you?

Mathew Passy: 0:18

I'm well, Sam. How are you doing today?

Sam Sethi: 0:20

I'm very good now. For those who don't know you, you recently sold a company, and then you came out of selling that company. And we'll talk about your next new idea. But what was the company that you sold?

Mathew Passy: 0:31

So I ran the podcast consultant. It was a podcast production and consulting firm, ran it from roughly 2015 until early 2023 when it was sold, and then stayed on with them for about six months for consulting. So I really stopped working with them in October of 23.

Sam Sethi: 0:47

So you were a free man gardening, getting under your wife's feet, getting annoying, and you come up with a new idea. So what's your new idea?

Mathew Passy: 0:54

Yeah, I thought I was going to have a lot of free time, but then we adopted a puppy, so that told us everything. So the funny thing is, when I was running the podcast consultant, I had lots of ideas. Things just kind of tumble out of my head as far as podcasting, and I didn't have time to entertain.

Sam Sethi: 1:08

Any of them.

Mathew Passy: 1:09

So a buddy of mine and I, we started a company we're calling custom podcast Solutions, and under that umbrella we're basically just going to throw out all these ideas that we have test them all out, see what we're doing. We've been doing engraved wood blocks for people in their podcast. We're going to be doing custom podcast studio build. So if you want a studio.

Sam Sethi: 1:31

You can talk to Todd Cochrane. He needs a studio.

Mathew Passy: 1:33

Oh, he does? Oh, well, I'll see if I can. Harassment Podcast movement about to see if we can help him with this next one. But so the thing that we're working on right now that is front and center because podcast is coming up, is something we're calling a podcast Beacon and a podcast Beacon is this idea of when you meet somebody in person and they ask you about your podcast, there's this awkward interaction of how do you get them to check out your show? Right. Oh, you have a podcast. What is it? It's called blah, blah, blah. Okay, They've got to go to their phone. Open up whatever their podcasting app is, search for the name. Then they get to click on it, turn around, be like, Is this the show? Right? Because there's 87 with the same name on it and then they can finally hit, subscribe or follow. We are trying to reduce that friction by creating these NFC enabled devices. Right now we're doing a bunch of wearables like bracelets, key fobs, and the idea is simply just that you wear this, we program it with a link that'll take you to a special page for your show. And instead of all that work, it's just boom, tap onto the show and it'll make things almost like a link tree with website RSS. Feed your apple, your Spotify, and then figuring out ways to expand upon that, give you more links. Social video your store. If you're selling stuff and analytics. So just starting out. But that's the idea is to be able to what we say, share your podcast in a tap.

Sam Sethi: 2:55

I like that. So your testbed is going to be a podcast movement?

Mathew Passy: 2:58

Yeah, we have a few that we are bringing to podcast movement that we've made special for a few folks we like and know who we think will get a lot of benefit out of it. And then we're bringing a bunch of vinyl ones that we'll just program for people on the spot in exchange for their email address so we can get them on the newsletter and be able to share more information about these and other things that we're working on.

Sam Sethi: 3:18

Okay. So a couple of questions in my head. First of all, what's the price of these things?

Mathew Passy: 3:23

We are looking at somewhere in the range of like$5 for the cheapest little vinyl ones, up to maybe $50 for these rubber ones that we can actually customize and put your logo on there. And the amount of things that have NFC in them are incredible. So we're really going to see what the market wants, what kind of products we at one point we would put like. So we talked about doing a pin on their chest and I had a bunch of ladies who were like, Please do not put a pin on my chest where people are going to put their phone by me. So we're going to listen the market and see what they want.

Sam Sethi: 3:54

One of the things that's come through my head is the ability to bump phones and exchange your contact details. So I wonder whether a future version of this product that you're building is actually an app on the Apple Watch, where I bump it on the watch and it comes up with the same NFC enabled credentials or I can see that you're bringing to market the prototype and testing the prototype and seeing if that's the right product. But maybe it's just a nice app that simply allows you to do you phone, to watch your phone to phone, even because I think there is that technology.

Mathew Passy: 4:29

So I think that would be fantastic. And one of the things right now that I think is limiting with the NFC that to your point would be nice changes you tap and you've got this notification, then it's a fleeting notification, right? It comes and it goes. What we'd like to see is that tap actually store that information almost like a book list or a favorite so that it's like, Oh, I tapped your watch. Great. Later I can go through and say, All right, where were all the things that I tapped? Great subscribe, click. And I think we're in the early stages of NFC technology and there's way more applications for this be on podcasting. It's just this is the space we know and these are the people we know, so we figure why not try it here first and then take it from there?

Sam Sethi: 5:08

And you said, you know, within the consultancy in the group that you're working with now, you're going to have other ideas. What are your other ideas?

Mathew Passy: 5:14

Woo! All right. So I will give you one that we are very close to showing off. We have a prototype. It's almost getting ready. a podcast case. One of the things that I struggled with when I was consulting and working with clients was people who were away from their home studio or people who were working with gas. The equipment for podcasting is great, but it's still all requires setup. It requires lining things up, p things in, checking this, checking that we are really dead set on, trying to make a product that you open, you hit record, and you are ready to go. Everybody looks good, sounds good. Everything is captured in high quality. And so that's really where one of our big focus is going to be is on this podcast case we have. Like I said, we have a single person prototype that we're just going to get ready to finish up and actually lend to somebody to see how it works. But we've already got dreams for a two and four person, one in the works.

Sam Sethi: 6:12

Nice guy to see one of those in the wild and yeah, they'll be great. May you bring a prototype to podcast movement? Maybe see it.

Mathew Passy: 6:18

Oh, that would be lovely if we can, I'm not sure, but tempting. Very time thinking.

Sam Sethi: 6:25

You've got two weeks, Mathew. You've got two weeks.

Mathew Passy: 6:28

It's less about the prototype and more about will we have it back from our test subject by then? That's clear, concise. He's taking it on his little vacation, really putting it through the wringer.

Sam Sethi: 6:37

Mathew, we look forward to seeing your podcast movement. So thank you very much.

Mathew Passy: 6:40

My pleasure.