Episode 627 - Chat with Karate Cafe
Chat with Karate Cafe
In this episode, listen in as Jeremy and Andrew talk with Paul Wilson and Dan Williams of Karate Cafe.
Chat with Karate Cafe - Episode 627
In this special episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk with Paul Wilson and Dan Williams of Karate Cafe all about their experiences with their podcast as well as the impact of COVID-19 in the community and so much more. Listen in and join the conversation!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey guys, welcome to the show.
Paul Wilson:
Hey, thank you very much for having me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You came on. This is in my head I've been thinking about this is like the Brady Bunch episode because it's the first time we've had more than three people in video. We don't do a whole lot of videos. It's kind of kind of crazy.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, it's funny, we didn't do a whole lot of videos. And then kind of once everything went into lockdown and all that jazz, the technology advanced enough that zoom, especially with being able to record, just made things easy, right?
Paul Wilson:
Production crew and the massive Karate Cafe Studio. It was amazing. Like, oh, I don't have to do an audio version and a video version. Or you know, like, the video version was almost like a castaway. When we were doing it. I was like, okay, I've got a video version, whatever. And then Dan was like, “put it on YouTube and my YouTube”. And then when I edited the video part, I was like, oh, then I just export the audio part. Easy.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, and YouTube is my favorite pod catcher. Um, it's like, really? Yeah, I use it more than Spotify. I use it more than the apple one. I think what it is, is that I, I have stuff that I like to podcast that I like to watch there that are video format. And rather than doing half and half, I just say YouTube's my pod catcher. And I'm done with the rest.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Make sense.
Dan Williams:
And a lot of people nowadays too. They stream just a static image with the audio in the background.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's what we still do. On most of our episodes, we use libsyn as our platform just makes it really easy. Okay, yeah, just takes some traffic and throws it up.
Dan Williams:
I'm a big fan of YouTube.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. When we all went into lockdown, we suddenly didn't have to tell people what zoom was, right, because we started using zoom as a recording platform.
Paul Wilson:
And did you really?
Jeremy Lesniak:
18. Yeah, I was on vacation. And Julius, who does all of our wonderful work on the back end, you know, I actually took a week off, not even four days off. And he emails me and says, “Hey, Jeremy, these five episodes, we've gotten the can are blank, Skype recorded blank audio”. One time we missed an episode, because I was like... And people weren't willing to do it again. And it kills me to this day. And I had a fellow podcaster friend and he had started using zoom like, about three months before that. And he said, “you know, you really got to check this out”. I like it. It's simple. You don't need a separate plugin. It's more seamless. And I said, “Alright, let's try it”. And we'd reach out to people, “We use Zoom”, “What? Like, what are you talking about? Is it like, what's it like? Is it like FaceTime? “
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, we had problem scheduling, like, we were using Skype and we had to have a plug in and crossover app and, and blah, blah, blah, and dump it out as one format, and whatnot. And even with Skype, people were still fumbling around. And now within the span of, you know, 12 months, everyone's smooth, Emma's got much cooler mics in me, and they're just in this, we're actually circling around on an interview. And I've been talking to her for, I don't know, three or four years. And when we first started this process, I was like, “Oh, well, we can record your thing by zoom, or by Skype”. And she was like, “Okay, do I need a thing?” And now she's like, “Oh, yeah, sure”. because everyone does zoom meeting. So, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It was amazing to me that's what everybody standardized on. Right? You know,
Dan Williams:
I saw a funny cartoon that was like the CEO of... I know it was a fake interview with the CEO of Skype, going “Skype was a verb, for God's sakes”, like and now everyone is zooming, “What the hell happened?” And I've always kind of wondered that myself, like, how did things transition so quickly?” from like, people Facetiming and Skyping, to people zooming essentially. And it happened within the course of two or three months, it was clear that...
Paul Wilson:
The technology, you know, on the back end for us is great. But the technology in the front end was good, because when I started my online class. I did it like normal, and I had a couple of cameras and whatnot. But then one of my fellow brother instructors in the Federation was like, “use the breakout rooms Dude”, I was like, what I mean I didn't even know about him and I'm an IT guy. And you know, then that was an excellent so maybe that'll be the next level of podcast and be like micro podcasting. You people can watch your stream session. And then like Jeremy, Andrew, you guys can break people off into different subjects of going and then somehow merge them all together. And it would be like a huge Brady Bunch should be like 16 screens.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We call it a micro cast. We should go get a name. Oh yeah. Well, quick microcast.com cast.
Andrew Adams:
Well, and how many you like when the lockdown happened, you know how many people tried to use other platforms for their classes like because I didn't have room at first. So, I tried like Facebook Messenger, you can have up to like four or five people. And you know, I was like, you know, I'll teach you a little, you know, a small session to some guys and we tried it and it just didn't work very well. And someone recommended “Oh, you should try this zoom like everybody's do”.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What didn't work about it?
Andrew Adams:
There was just me even though my internet connection was the same, there was still delay and move, you know, way more than there is with I mean, zoom has delayed too. But that's also not...
Paul Wilson:
That's when Google stepped it up. They're like sort of teams, whatever. Yeah, I think they pulled the trigger on that just a little too soon like Google. Google meet. There's like, they'll get out the door quick. Fill in the space. And we tried it for a little bit. And it didn't work very well. Because again, the rooms. The rooms are everywhere. It was like the killer app for us.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. It's cool stuff. Well, you guys have been doing this for a while. You know, Andrew and I were talking before where we got going. And he reminded me that you are kind of the... Oh, geez. In the martial arts podcast basic. If I am right, is that Andrew, what he said?
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, yep. Yeah. And I've had to explain this to a couple people, like I didn't start it. Yeah, that guy down there didn't start it or over there, whatever it is. I don't know if you guys heard my rant, a while back about wanting someone that develops resume to be able to lock the windows in doing beamlets. So, when you have users when they log in, say this user is going to go over here and this, because in my class, I'm like pointing it's that stuff and mirrored and it's wrong. The [00:06:48-00:06:50] are the guys who actually started the podcast and they're on the east coast in New York State. And I like to call them you know, [00:06:55-00:07:09] And then I came on as a guest. And same way that I pulled down into this mess. Yeah, you know, and then they just had me stick around.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sounds familiar, Andrew.
Andrew Adams:
Very familiar.
Paul Wilson:
And then you know, then I kind of inherited it. And yeah, so yeah, we've been going... I mean, you've got like 8 million episodes. So, we take our time to lovingly hand craft, it's small batch or seasonal podcast.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You can't do it well, do it often. We're gunning for I don't know, Episode 1000, 5000. We'll see how many of these we can get knocked out. We might start releasing, you know, clips. And just, you know, 50-a-day just to ignite that episode, count up.
Paul Wilson:
That way that might even better than the micro podcast.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Micro. Yeah. Whistlekick micro cast, it's actually started. It's three seconds of irrelevance.
Paul Wilson:
Right, right in the middle of a sentence, like not at the beginning of that, you know, like somewhere in the preposition, and then put it down. And we'll try and piece it together.
Dan Williams:
And then just because just because I was curious, I went out my buddy and I started a podcast called pods, or podXor, where we talked about, like, just geek stuff, and martial arts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice.
Dan Williams:
And our first episode was August 5, 2005.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow. Yeah.
Dan Williams:
That podcast is defunct, but still after Karate Cafe.
Paul Wilson:
That's true. We actually had a, I don't know if you guys ever cut the episodes back in the day, there was another martial arts podcast out of Texas, out of Dallas. I'm not going to mention names, but he got really, really mad. Because he kind of, I guess he thought he was the first, you know, or, you know, whatever. And he was, uh, you know, he would like send me emails and like, he'd bicker on his show, and whatnot. And he actually, at one point, said accused at that time, of hacking the internet, to set the date of when he registered the domain and put the first show on. And I was like, and it says this, but whatever your political meaning is, like that, sort of at the beginning of the fake news world of like, do you honestly think we, you know, the whole internet, that number has a lot of skill hacks I can to say, okay, I'm going to, you know, move my podcast, you know, registration date back because he did it like two months after or something like that.
Andrew Adams:
And, you know, and what would have been your rationale for doing that if someone had done that like to get all of this amazing podcast on?
Dan Williams:
Right. Right. It's the podcast riches from being two weeks earlier than the other guy.
Paul Wilson:
It's Karate Cafe coin. And, yeah, I don't know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, it's an interesting subject, because it's so very much parallels the sort of offline arguments that have in our industry all of the time, for no reason, right? You know, you're not legitimate your belt blah, blah, blah, blah, your certificate that was for blah, you know, all this posturing and ego and this bs and you know, that's a recurring theme on our show talking about that, trying to unpack that, understand it. Do you guys talk about that much?
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, well, no, I mean, that was a kind of... We talked about it sort of in a roundabout way. I'm, again, you may have noticed [00:10:32-00:10:34] massive Karate Cafe Studio. Because again, the same catch was talking about how much work he put into his podcast. But nobody says, you know, I put all this money in this massive studio. But he doesn't remember that. a month or three, before that he had posted something on his website. Have a picture of his podcasting area, and it was like a mic and again, a nicer mic than me. Okay, I get the mic thing, guys.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You got a nicer mic with you 15 years ago?
Paul Wilson:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow.
Paul Wilson:
Again, waiting for the podcast money, you know, right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Anyway, maybe that's what's holding it up. Right.
Paul Wilson:
Maybe, it's kind of in litigation. I can't really talk about...
Jeremy Lesniak:
One mic, one mic to rule them all.
Andrew Adams:
If only came out two weeks earlier.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's only a first mover advantage.
Paul Wilson:
As soon as the lawsuit going through the domain of the internet's it settled, then it's all going to come [00:11:30-00:11:39] I mean, but yeah, it was so funny that argument, then moved into this space, which is not actual. I mean, there's no real monetary advantage. There's no, although I did end up getting a sponsor. Yeah, it just it did move right over into this space.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, it's amazing. People think that because there's attention on the internet that money follows. And I find that, you know, our rule of thumb internally is roughly 1%. Anything you put out 1% of people will do something about it. What you know, it'll watch that, you know, they'll comment, they'll engage in some way.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, that call to action is really, really difficult to overcome. And, you know, I kind of learned this lesson. I don't know how long you guys have been listening. But I have a product called the dojo manager that I kind of built from scratch, to help people manage their students in their dojo. It's kind of an abandoned project at this point. And the reason that it was abandoned is because, you know, you just can't get it. If you build it, they will come. Well, if you build it, most of the time, they won't. Most of the time, they won't show up because yours... Yeah, I mean, together with the building skills, you need the marketing skills, you need the, you know, there's a whole cloud of things that surround the core thing that you're doing. And I think, you know, it's just like dojo owners, for example. Yeah, it's a lot like being a chef. So, if you're a great chef, and you say, I'm going to open a restaurant, and you open a restaurant, and your restaurant fails two years later, well, you could still be a great chef. But maybe you're just terrible at running a business.
Paul Wilson:
And yeah, it's a direct parallel to Atlanta martial arts.
Dan Williams:
Because it's so talent oriented in one domain, right. But then, to run a business, there's so many things that you need to be smart about otherwise, you know, need financial management skills, and you need marketing skills, and you need all these other things that happen that genuinely have to happen. You know, one of the things that Paul and I talk about, is the difference between students and customers, right? So, most dojos have this this cluster of students that are a much smaller group than their customers. And those are the people that stay after class and ask questions or help instruct at breakout sessions or come to seminars not to be in the seminar. But to help out though, everybody knows those students, and probably the four of us were those kinds of students, right. And those are the people that you hold close to your heart and that you pay attention to. And unfortunately, the rest are customers doesn't mean you love them any less. But it just means that they're not as engaged in the martial arts aspect of what you're teaching them maybe they're coming for exercise and community and that's really all they care about. It's no different than doing a group workout for them.
Paul Wilson:
The same thing with dial glory for the podcasting because, yeah, we can constantly ask. I mean, just like you guys, you know, give us some comments, give us some feedback, give us some whatever. And, you know, I'm shouting into the void, you know, I'll put out like this really good episode, you know, have a really good interview, whatever, don't on there. And it's like crickets, you know? And then I was like, does everyone just agree with me, which is kind of cool. But that's not what the whole purpose is, you know, the thrust of our podcast is that this is where the conversation starts. Right? This is where we, I want us to all talk about it, you know, I want you to... I don't need, like, I love it. Andrew, give me lots of feedback. And then fantastic. I was like, oh, cool, I get to do that, you know, or here you did one of your episodes. I know, that's kind of an odd thing, but they like look at our Facebook or our forum. You know, we used to have a forum. But way back in the day, kids, “Oh, that's right”. I forgot about there was a thing called a forum. And, you know, we had that, and I carried that for, like, probably three years longer than it was nothing going on, you know, I post a show, I'd post a thing, put the comments here, maybe get one, you know, after six months, you know, YouTube, same thing is like I put it on, like, you know, thumbs up. But you don't want to get the comments. And I really want people to comment, I really want people to start, you know, not be kind of a customer or a client. I was watching an episode of a show the other day, and they were talking about he went one level up, he said, there's customers, there's clients, and then there's students, they said, you know, there's customers, they just kind of come in and do their things, there's clients that you are kind of providing a service for. You're teaching them something, they're taking something in, whatever. And they have a goal, you know, kind of thing. And then there are students. And, you know, so I throw it out there. And but I want people to start talking, I want people to start talking to each other, you know, just like you guys said, “hey, let's all get together and talk about this”. Yeah. Because in my dojo guy, I always tell people, especially when they come in from different, you know, systems and whatnot, I'm like, ask me the question. Just ask me, you know, let's talk about your martial artist. I'm a martial artist, you know, you do this style, I do that. So just talk to me. And I don't just don't go don't compartmentalize, don’t try and shut it down. Don't make it a single stream. Let's just talk about it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think we're at this this time now, where there's just such an overwhelming amount of effort going into vying for people's attention. Yet, when I started the show, I wanted the same sort of thing. You know, because I was listening to podcasts, like yours, like a few others, possibly like the one that you're referencing, I'm going to have to go back and connect some dots. I was listening to [00:17:30-00:17:31] right now, you know, they were around. And so, I wanted to do something similar, but with my own take, and I wanted all this conversation because I've liked conversation. I double majored in philosophy and computer science just to continue the martial arts nerd intersection that continues to be a thrust on this show. But I wanted that conversation and it wasn't happening. And so, what I started to shift into whistlekick, if I know that I'm getting some of their mindshare, but I'm not getting their words coming back. I'm going to shift what I'm saying, how I'm saying. So, it can be a little more compartmentalized. That's where the Thursday shows settled into was, here's a topic, I'm going to unpack it the way I see it, and I'm going to give it to you, and you run with it. You think about I don't care if you agree with me, I don't care if your disagreement, I carry that you think about it. And that's really become a core part of what we do Andrew and I talk about that, you know, frequently and what's happened with our show, and I'm going to suspect yours as well, is a lot of those conversations don't happen publicly. They don't happen in an open forum, I get messages, I get emails, I get texts from people who knew me personally, you know, I liked what you said here. I didn't like what you said, here, here's my feedback on this, they're less willing to have that engagement publicly. And part of it might be the culture that we have now. Yeah, a lot of people are nervous about having an open, vulnerable conversation, be it about martial arts, or literally anything else. Because at the very least, someone's probably going to jump down your throat make you feel bad about yourself, listen, you know, toughened up by, you know, putting your most private thoughts out on the internet for six years. You don't care anymore, or it could have professional consequences for you. We had a gentleman on this on the show, who longtime listeners will be able to unpack this, you know, I can point to you guys offline or Andrew can tell you, he came on the show. And literally, the day of release got canceled. Wow, some horrendous things came to light. And we had an internal discussion about do we pull the show? What do we do? What do we do? You know, we've left it out there. So, you can you can track it back if you want. But it's you can't get away from him. And I think that's what is going on with a lot of people. They just don't want to step in.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, I think that that society will has a tendency in my opinion to oscillate between two extremes. And right now, we're really in the kind of cancel culture extreme. And I do think that eventually we'll backtrack to sanity a little bit where we're really, as a society, we're pretty young, with having all of everyone's stuff exposed all the time. Right? We, it blows my mind when we realize that what Twitter's like 10 years old, not even something like that. I don't know exactly, but it's not as old as you. It's not that old. Yeah, yeah. And so, especially from a popular perspective, it's even more recent. So, this kind of stuff, I think society takes some time to adjust to, and just be like, “Oh, well, maybe we should be a little bit more forgiving to people”. Because, well, the end, and maybe we shouldn't be so damn public all the time. Right. Like, maybe there are some thoughts. And I don't know about you guys. And maybe this is, like, kind of a making the sausage episode, right. I don't know about you guys. But sometimes, the opinion that I express on the show may not even be necessarily mine. Right? I might Express opinion, too, to be a balance point for something Paul is saying, right. I'll play devil's advocate so that we can just have an exchange. I might totally agree with what he's saying. But I'll pretend that I don't. Because otherwise, it's us just going. Oh, yeah, that was good. All right. Really weird. Yeah. I like that.
Paul Wilson:
We've done that many times in the greenroom. Yeah. Like, what topic are you talking about? You know, air? Yeah, air is pretty good. I'm a big fan of air. I'm not so sure about air. Yeah, you know, I'm going to have to today on my anti air, you know, write all about CO2? Because otherwise, yeah, it's just, you know, it's a five-minute talk.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Without the conflict.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah. Well, you know, we've been touching about what Dan was saying about and we talked about it before on our show about there's that fear now. Here's that extra fear of an instructor. And in fact, I think we talked about it on our last episode, was the fear of being saying, like, I don't know, as an instructor, I don't know. And yeah, but let's find out, there's that the glow, you know, of a whoo, it's the sensei or whatever. And then, you know, being able to have this forum, you know, this venue of a podcast of having people listen to you, and having, you know, X amount of download. So, there's people, I know, there are people out there listening to me, there are at least like three. Yeah, and at least three to four of us, it will have at least four listens to this. So, you know, I mean, so I see the downloads, okay, well, people are downloading at the very least. So, I assume people are listening, I'm not getting any feedback. And no one's calling me out. So, I think I'm okay. But you know, in class, you know, I've got three or four students that have black belt in other systems. And so, they know what they're talking about. So, I guess what I'm trying to get into this is, you know, for a long time, martial artists and martial arts instructors, were a sort of a single source of information for their school, you know, and what they said kind of went, because it was really hard to get a dissenting opinion, like you couldn't talk to somebody else in your Federation, you couldn't talk to anyone else in your style, because it was you that right outside of it, for that matter. Now, here with like, these sort of what we, you know, put our stuff out every week, or every two weeks, or however often we want to put it out. And there's can be sort of sort of instantaneous response. And we, you know, are the ones who, you know, are saying, like, call us out, you know, or let us know what we're doing wrong, help us grow, and if we don't want to hear it, we probably shouldn't be podcasting. Well, certainly not. And, if we can't, you know, and I've had people send me email about things and I'm like, we’ll post on the forum or post on the Facebook page. Don't just tell me, you know, if you're mad at me, fine, be mad at me. But go tell the other guys. So, they hear it. And sometimes, you know, sometimes they don't and one of the number one rules of my dojo is do something, even if it's wrong, so it's like, you know, put it out there. If you don't have the confidence to put it out there, right or wrong, you know, you're not going to learn from it. Anyway. It's just going to be what it...
Dan Williams:
Yeah, I think that's tough for people though. You know, I mean, it's sort of like when I was doing Tai Chi back in the day, my instructor didn't have a school. So, we did it in the park. And I was very self-conscious. I was like, I felt weird about people looking at me and you didn't really have anything to do with how good or bad I was, it was just like I felt silly doing it. Right. So, I think a lot of people have that hesitation with, I don't really want to put my opinion in a public space, because I don't want to get blasted, you know, or I'm afraid to do something wrong, or whatever the case might be.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's the second half of that sentence, because people love to put their opinions in public. But they want to know that they've got some support for it from people that they value. And yeah, that's a good point, you know, look at any of the socio-political conversation going on today. I have a pretty good mix of friends, you know, where they fall ideologically. And I see that in various ways, you know, like, so I'm thinking of somebody, in particular, somebody who has very conservative views. But I know that the majority of this person's social groups are politically opposed. This person does not post much about their politics, whereas the people they are friends with are posting all the time.
Andrew Adams:
Because it's...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Go ahead, Andrew.
Andrew Adams:
Because they feel like they've got support from everyone else around them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. And I think you can draw a correlation there with bullying, and fighting, right? Like, you know, when we talk about self-defense, one of my rules of thumb when I teach self-defense is, you are almost always going to be the smaller person. People don't generally step up to someone who is bigger. I'm 5’7 165. I'm not a large guy, I don't generally step up to someone who's 6’3 to 40 and say, hey, you're, let's go. Right? Right. Not that I would do that anyway. But we're not going to expect that in a bullying situation. Unless that person my height has three or four friends behind them. Right now, they feel tough. Right, one of the biggest bullies in my middle school was someone who was actually quite a bit shorter than I was because he had three very large friends.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, you know, and I think, too, that people fear that online and just hesitate to engage or they think my voice or opinion isn't as valuable or whatever the case may be that it's just very difficult to get people to engage. And I know that for me, like, I listen to podcasts while I'm in the car. And so, for me to then listen to a podcast, especially if I'm not on a platform, where I can provide the feedback within the platform, right. So, like, if I'm watching YouTube, I can comment right below, as I'm watching, if I'm on Spotify, or iTunes, but not while he's driving, let's just be clear on that for now, while I'm driving, right? If I'm on Spotify, or iTunes, I then have to go offline of my pod catcher, right? To engage. And so that's that inertia of that second step is really rough. On top of the fact that when I can only do that, after I'm done driving, so I listen to something on my commute. When I get to my when I get to my office, not only am I hit with everything that I have to do for my job, but I also go, “Oh, yeah”, I meant to say something to those karate cafe guys about this, like, I'm not going to do that.
Paul Wilson:
But I like that. And let me tell you why. Because that allows them to cogitate on it. Right? You know, there's not that knee jerk reaction.
Dan Williams:
I generally go, huh. nobody really cares about... Nobody cares what I think.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, well, yeah. And there's that. But, you know, like, when, you know, we like to poke fun or Taekwondo brother and whatnot. Right. And I've gotten some feedback, let's say on that, and, but it counts within, you know, wrapped in the nougat center of our podcast is that we're all self-deprecating, and, you know, we all do the same thing. So, you know, but if you listen to it, and there's no immediate way to like I think it's for me, it's like gives you time to think about it. Like you know, the last couple weeks I've been taking, I've had to transit between Texas and Arkansas and so I load up you know, all my podcasts and whistlekick and I'll load up you know, invisible sensei and, you know, [00:29:45-00:29:46] I load all those up karate without belt, and I'll be like, “No, I'm driving right now” and I'm driving for hours, so I got a steel on it. Sometimes I'll stop and I'd like ping engine. But it gives, I think not having an immediate turnaround is as good as martial artists, I think, you know, because I'll say stuff, you know, in class and do stuff. And I wanted to think about it. I just wanted to, you know, I like data already. And I'll say here's your homework figured out.
Andrew Adams:
And, you know, that's something that we talk about here on whistlekick all the time. And, you know, Jeremy, you mentioned it earlier that we just want people to think like we don't expect people to agree with us all the time, you know, and it's totally fine if you don't but I think, Dan, you hit something there as well. I mean, you both did, in terms of a lot of people, myself included, listen to podcasts while driving, and I can't respond right away, you know, and so, if at the end of my drive, I'm still thinking about it and thinking about I really need to send them or whatever, like that gives me the time to think about it and not give a quick knee jerk reaction. But thinking about it is good, right? I mean, that's the whole reason we're doing this, you know, to get people to think about stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hmm. Yeah, that's a great point. I kind of wish people would disagree with what we say more, because that's how I learned I need that challenge. I need that discussion. And that's been one of the best things about Andrew joining the show is that now, I have somebody to bounce stuff off of in real time. And I think some of the episodes that we've turned out on Thursdays, as a result of you joining the show are far better, I've become better, I think more, you know, and he knows that because I'm shooting emails, you know, 9-10 at night, it's like, what if we do an episode on this, you know, because it's just I'm cogitating, my brain just kind of turning on subjects from recently and sometimes what quite a way.
Andrew Adams:
And the Best of the Best is a good movie.
Dan Williams:
One of the best.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that concludes today's episode, I want to thank everyone for joining us.
Paul Wilson:
And I tell Andrew, I want to get in on some of these because I've got some fairly strong martial art movie geek. And that was another episode where I was driving. I was like...
Dan Williams:
I cannot tell you it's almost a weird effect.
Paul Wilson:
And yes, trust us we have martial arts experience, by the way.
Dan Williams:
What's that?
Paul Wilson:
Well, that was one of the things you guys were talking about, about Chris Penn in there. And it's like, Yeah, he had a black belt in Taekwondo or something, or whatever, despite his shape.
Dan Williams:
But yeah, one of the things that happens to me from a martial art movie standpoint, at least is there are a lot of movies. I don't know why this is. But during some scene, the music in the background starts to sound like [00:32:44-00:32:45] and I just hear that chant from the Van Damme movie, and it could be the silly, it's just gives me that silly flash of drum. It's that drum. Right? Yeah, I noticed a lot of people use that kind of cadence to heightened excitement in the movie. Right, your blood pumping. Yeah, but it's very out of place. When you're watching, like Lord of the Rings or something.
Paul Wilson:
I wanted to get back to what Jeremy was saying. Because I want to ask the question, like, do you guys go back and listen to your own shows? Like, I mean, we like go back or, because, you know, sometimes I'm going there. When I upload the shows, and I'll scroll back through and I'll just, or I'll be searching for something like I'm on a message board someone “Oh”, like, “Hey, you know, we had an episode on that. Let me go find it out”.
Dan Williams:
You listen to your shows at all?
Paul Wilson:
Listening to it and go like...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Andrew, do you still... We did at least initially when you came on.
Andrew Adams:
So, I am. I do listen to every episode for different reasons. So, as you guys know, I'm not on the Monday episodes, right? I don't. So, I listen to the Monday episodes because they're new to me, right? I have no idea who that is the podcast for you then. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I might know who they are because I'm helping, I'm helping set up the in scheduling them and so I've interacted with them but I don't necessarily know their story. Unless it's a you know, a famous person that we're getting on. Or a friend of mine. Fairly often, right? But I still listen to those episodes because to me, it's just a podcast. I have gotten into the habit of listening to the Thursday episodes even the ones we're doing just to hear if I say something stupid that I want to be able to roll back in the future but it helps me because we record like you know, partying the curtain a little bit you know, looking a little bit behind like we don't record and then that episode is released the next day. So, an episode is released we may have recorded it potentially two months earlier. Yeah. Okay. And I sometimes will want to hear like what we talked about so that I it because it might trigger something for me for a future episode. All right, yeah. And then because I know we because we are coming up with episode so frequently, you know, I need to constantly and I have a list on my on my iPad of like, things that we're going to like, “Oh, this is a great topic idea”. This is a topic we can do. So, I will sometimes when I'm listening, I'm sometimes thinking of that.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, I'll listen to either our show or like when I'm editing it, or what I'm sorry, when the production team here at the MasterCard, okay? And yeah, we have a less than, you know, Google Doc, and we just drop it on there as a topic idea. By going in, and that's the other thing with us, like we, you know, initially this was coming out, like, every week, like every week, like Pete and Jim are doing a show. And then when I took it over, I think I dropped it back to like, maybe like once a month, or like, once every two weeks. Just the pace of putting together and thinking about stuff and doing whatever, you know, getting the crew here at that massive Karate Cafe Studio motivated to get it done. I think it adds a little more time to think about it, you know, more time to go, like, what was important? What was something that they, you know, brought out that I want to run down? It's a thoughtful process for us. And so that's what I was just wondering if you listen, because when I listened to the old shows, I kind of like “Did I really think that?”, Oh, yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Well, and the other reason I listen is it makes our numbers go up.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So right, right. Yeah, that one more important by well, believe me, I don't listen, but I definitely download. Right. Oh, yeah. Now, the first I'm trying to remember when Julius came on. Julius, I mean, at most, I think most of our listeners know Julius is our audio engineer, he does a phenomenal job in putting together the graphics and the editing and, and fortunately, he does video too. So, I mean, we're super lucky to have him.
Paul Wilson:
Side note, Dan, let's get one of those. You guys are legit.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I got to say, jeez. Only because of the sheer volume of things that we're doing.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, you guys actually like provide like real content and whatnot.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You guys provide real content, we just have different approaches. I mean, mine is to spend as much money as possible, trying to develop a brand. Yours is probably smarter than that.
Dan Williams:
I love your logo, by the way, you're awesome.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Thank you. Thank you.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, and that opening? I mean, like, when that's on drives, like get them driving, and then, you know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It wakes you up.
Paul Wilson:
I listened to like, you know, I don't know, news or whatever. And then suddenly, yeah, cars, towing a camper.
Andrew Adams:
I would say that, you know, Jeremy, you're talking about how the shows are different. But you know, we're all, those watching and video, “we're doing the same thing”. But we're not. We're all totally different, you know, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to have you guys on the show. Like I was talking to Jeremy beforehand. And I may have been listening to karate cafe before I started listening to whistlekick. You know, it's entirely possible. I don't remember exactly when I started listening to whistlekick. But [00:38:07-00:38:08] is different.
Paul Wilson:
You canceled yourself.
Dan Williams:
Scandal. Yeah, right.
Paul Wilson:
That’s what's going on my website right now.
Andrew Adams:
You know, but just because we, you know, we are doing the same thing, we're totally different. So, we're not like, we're not fighting each other. I mean, literally or figuratively, you know, for our listeners, because that's not what we're here for it.
Paul Wilson:
That's the end. And that was kind of the thrust I think of why we... You guys suggested having us on is the whole like, it's not a competition. And he said it many times in our show, you know, we all wear pajamas and speak poor other language of that, whatever the style came from, you know, we all do the same thing. So why are we all bickering all the time?
Jeremy Lesniak:
And Andrew knows, this is something that doesn't come up often on our show, you know, so you guys may not have heard this, but I'll share it now, just to make sure everybody's on the same page. You know, what's our business model? Whistlekick, we are not a podcast company. We're a martial arts company. We're a martial arts brand. And the whole gist is, if, Paul, you're a tech guy, so you probably remember Google's original business model. If it gets them onto or keeps them on the internet, we'll make money. That's our business models relate to martial arts. If it gets people into and keeps them in the martial arts, eventually they'll find one of the things that we do or sell, and some of them will give us some money. So, it does not matter if somebody else makes a better podcast. If somebody finds your show, or literally any other show, and real old school folks know we have a website called martialartspodcast.com, it's actually in the midst of getting renovated, where we're trying to list all of them. I mean, that's how open to competition we are. We're going to tell people here all the other places you can go to us in the martial art shows. Because if they find a show that they like better than this one, and that engages with them, and helps them foster a martial arts lifestyle that resonates for them, they're more likely to keep training. And one, I think that's a good thing. I think we're all on the same page at martial arts is a good thing for people. And then to it supports our business model. It keeps them in the martial arts.
Dan Williams:
I've always thought regardless of what kind of effort you have, whether it be like a dojo or a podcast, or whatever it is, you should have a mission statement. Right? You should have a guiding principle that says that kind of pulls you back into saying, well, should we have a website that lists all the other martial podcasts? Won't that be competition for us? Isn't that terrible? Well, if you turn back towardsyour mission statement, and your mission statement is to educate the world about martial arts, then you go “Oh, that perfectly aligns with our mission statement”. Yeah, no problem.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, you know, and I think this dovetails... Oh, I hit my mic. Don't do that. I can't because mine's not, do you don't have to worry about that, Paul. But this dovetails nicely into the discussion that Jeremy and I have often had of the concept of there being a Mcdojo, right, that quote that word, “Mcdjo”, which I've never been a fan of. Right? Because, you know, it implies that it's a bad school, well, maybe it's a bad school for me. But it might not be a bad school for the person that's over there. The person that's over there really loves what they're doing, and who am I to say what you're doing is wrong, right. And if they're enjoying what they're doing, that means they will not enjoy the school that I train at. And the school that I try not will not be one that that I would not enjoy being at that school. But that doesn't mean it's...
Paul Wilson:
And yeah, and so the kind of the thrust of Karate Cafe, you know, back in the day when it was started, and whatnot was kind of like, you know, that was the sort of linchpin is like, no matter what school you're in, we all have, you know, that guy, right? You know, we all have that guy, or we all have the person that does blah, and it doesn't matter what system you're in, what style you're in, what school nothing at, we all have that guy, we all have that student, we all have that instructor we've all met.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Everybody has somebody who doesn't wash their uniform often, right?
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, exactly. And that's what you're talking about, you know, that's one of the conversations is like, you know, and then once we all understand that we all have that guy or gal, you know, that or that them, whatever, then that brings us together. There's the division point gone, because, hey, we all have, you know, the person never watches TV, you know, and when we have that story, and or, you know, whatever your uniform of choices, but that's what brings us together and then then that cascades with, like, you know, we all do a middle block of some kind, who cares about the nuances or whatever the application, and that will bring us back together as a whole. So, with a podcast, it's the same thing. It's like, you know, if you want something specific, if you want the, you know, everyone else sucks martial arts, everyone else martial arts sucks podcast, you know, then that podcast is no doubt out there. Somewhere.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If we wanted to show called that a guarantee would be bigger than both of ours would be combined in five episodes, it would be here and I'm getting that domain right now.
Dan Williams:
Because I fairly believe that most of the internet is designed just so you can tell other people they're wrong.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We recently, I shouldn't say we because it's not a ‘we’. It's a ‘me’ experimenting with TikTok. And I spent a few weeks on TikTok just kind of digging around. And what I loved about it is fastest way to consume funny animal videos. It's even better than YouTube. It's great. And I started checking out the martial arts content, and it is exactly what you're saying, Dan, it's just, it's so negative. And literally, you'll see someone demonstrate, you know, a 60 or 92nd video of a concept, a broad concept. And the number of people just say, wrong. They don't, they won't even elaborate. They won't even say how they're wrong. They won't they won't say you know what, you really suck. You're doing this poorly. Not even the cliches of my instructor told me or that would never work on the street, which there are plenty of those. But just wrong. And I actually responded to somebody once it was like, if you're going to essentially attack someone in that way. Have the courtesy to at least explain your perspective event. Give them the opportunity to respond or possibly learn from what you're saying instead of only making it a negative statement.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, and you know, it's funny one of the ones I've seen like that hurts my heart the most is If you go out to YouTube and type in black belt test, right, you're going to see some of the most horrific and ugly martial arts.
Paul Wilson:
We all know what he's talking about. Yeah. And I mean, it's...
Dan Williams:
Yeah. And the unfortunate part is that if you scroll down to the comments, you will really see the ugly side of the internet and martial arts. Right? And because it's, it's one thing to say, “Oh, this person shouldn't be a black belt, and they don't have any skill and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”. I have to think to myself, how were you thinking that comment? Improve the world? Oh, it's just like, are you trying to inform? Are you trying to educate? Or you're just being a dick? Yeah. And that's about it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's modern bullying. It's modern adult bullying. It's I want to feel better about who I am by throwing someone else under the bus.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, you're right. Because if you did that, I feel right. Yeah, if I can feel right, by telling you that you're wrong, then I feel good about myself. Even though I just put a comment that says wrong.
Paul Wilson:
If your technique is so much better than mine, you must be really good at what you're doing. Well done. Good job training, so much. And you know, I'm just trying to keep up with it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, and I feel like a lot of that comes from this this misunderstanding that a black belt or anything within the martial arts is equitable. Well, yeah, you know, I have black belts in under three different instructors. Three different styles. And I'm not saying that to brag, I'm saying that merely to lay the context that all three, the pursuit of which the testing for the requirements of the responsibilities, of dramatically different, totally different. Yeah. And so am I going to say, well, that's not a black belt, because the thing that I did first is a black belt. Why does that symbol, why is that the right one? Why is that other one, not the right one? Why is it that over there is a black belt, and what I got, what I earned the first time was a higher caliber black belt or equivalent of, you know, a second or third degree and this other system. Now, why do you want to be the negative perspective?
Dan Williams:
Yeah, and you're absolutely right, because I think one of the things that you learn in your martial journey is that as I'm using it, it is the...cliched as it is. The belt doesn't mean anything, it's there to hold up your pants, right? And it doesn't even do that. Right. Even do that stuff together. Right. Paul and I have talked about matches, for sure. It means something within the context of that style. And more so in the context of that particular school. Exactly. And that's about all you can attribute to everything is okay, you can get some kind of judgment within that style. And then you can, you know, you walk into that school, and that's the black belt, you got that school. That's the school, you got that black belt from right, then you should be seen with a bit of respect in that school. Right? Because if you didn't, you would, you shouldn't be there. But like that bell is really just within that context. It doesn't mean anything, like a black belt in Wing Chun? Is system complete, and you get it after five years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Does anybody think anybody in the world think that if I go to my local community college, and earn a bachelor's degree, that is equivalent to me attending Harvard and earning gallery's degree? Does anybody walk around saying you didn't go to Harvard? You didn't go to Yale? It's not Cornell. It's not a bachelor's degree. We don't do that. You know, we are the snake eating its tail. We are incredibly good at that. Yeah, you're absolutely right is one of the things that I will... I have and will continue to rail against louder and louder as our platform grows, because it does not serve our industry.
Dan Williams:
No, oh, yeah. It really doesn't. I think it's a disservice really. And I think it's a populist kind of confusion where most just normies see a black belt is all the same thing. Right. And, it's been so popularized in culture, that it has some it has some kind of, you know, “Oh, right. Yeah, there's some woo woo to it kind of thing”.
Paul Wilson:
Come with like little lights that shine up on your belt. That would be cool. [00:49:55-00:50:00] he was to switch schools and he had like a brown belt one style. And he had a black belt and some other style shotokan or something. And then his instructor, like, let him wear his black belt. And then after a while, he like gave him a black belt. So that way, it was just like kind of a plain black belt. I know some guy. I don't know, some true. But he said... And Andrew, it’s what I'm talking about.
Andrew Adams:
I got it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There's actually a piece of my journey. That is almost exactly what you just said.
Paul Wilson:
And, he, you know, because in my mind my dojo, when people start with me when I started with white belt, I mean, it's not because it's like, oh, you're a black belt? [00:50:42-00:50:43].
Jeremy Lesniak:
When I go to someone else's dojo, I put on a white belt.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, you know, and, like I was training is a black belt and a Kyo Kushin. School. And, you know, we were doing basically, we're counting off and they got down to me. And, you know, so I started counting, and I got done counting, you know, and the head instructor goes like, well, I guess we can all agree that he's probably not really a white belt. Like, for those of you who are wondering what rank he was, you can tell he's done a white belt. And, but then we did something, but I have them wear their white belt, because within the system I want, you know, write them to kind of get an idea of where they are relative to the system. I don't know what but after listening to that episode, I was like, well, you know, because other people in our Federation just kind of let them where their black belt is, I think I'm probably going to do something like that, like, switch and go like, okay, here's not your cheesy black belt, you know, from whatever system you are. But people should know that when they're training with you, they're training with somebody at a black belt level, you know, so, you know, just for context when you walk in, which is the whole reason why the rank system was really created, you know, depending on which story you want to play,
Jeremy Lesniak:
There are so many ways we could get more creative to do that. But again, it comes back to, here we go. Yet again, its ego. You know, I've done both I've stepped in, I've kept my black belt, I've stepped in and put on a white belt, and I learned so much more as white belt. And it's true, right? And it is so much fun to stand in the back of the room and have nobody watching you. Nobody cares if you get it right. There's no pressure. It is amazing that first day black belt...
Paul Wilson:
What I like is when I go to a dojo, and I put on a white belt, and I used to have when I went on my road shows just a plain white guy, and I didn't have like my Federation or anything on it, and stuff like that, and appointed a white belt and to see what happens in the class, like who like, you know, like yellow belts, or green belts or whatever, step up and go like, Oh, no, no, you do it like this. I've got training and whatnot. But you know, that generally doesn't float down to the rest of the class, really. And so, who is open enough to go like, “Oh, you know, this is the way we do our mental block”. This is the way we do okay, well, okay, cool. You know, and it's not I don't look at it as like, you know, who are you to be talking to me, dude is like, “Oh, well, this is someone who's trying to impart their system”, trying to perpetuate their system kind of the way you know, I think it should be. And I find that really interesting.
Andrew Adams:
Well, and I think it's very much a case-by-case basis. I attended a seminar with Iain Abernethy, a number of years ago, he was here in the States. And obviously, that was a seminar. So, it didn't really matter, right? Everybody wear their black belt was fine. But I traveled to Scotland that next summer, and was only a couple hours away from his dojo. So, I'm like, I'm here. I contacted him ahead of time. He's like, “Yeah, come on down”. So, I brought a white belt, because that's what I also do. And, you know, I'm getting ready. I come out of the changing room, and I've got my web belt on. And Iain Abernethy was like, “Andrew, why do you have white belt on your black belt?” I'm like, ‘Well, yeah, but I'm visiting and I thought it would be appropriate”. Like, it's totally up to you, it's fine. If you want to wear a black belt, you know, you earned it. I also was only there for one class, right? I wasn't going to be long term. But he's like, “No, no, no, wear your black belts totally fine. I don't care”. You know, so it definitely depends on the instructor as well. You know, and what they feel comfortable and what you know what the scenario is that what your intention is in your training?
Paul Wilson:
I went to go to school. And I asked, I said that the head instructor wasn't there. It was one of the senior students and I said, you know, don't read a white belt or black belt and he goes, “Well, are you a black belt and dojo?” And I was like, “Okay, fair enough”. All right. It was a little like, I was like, okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And there again, it's a symbol. And that symbol means different things. You know, in that school, wearing a black belt in those four walls meant you were a black belt of that system. Yeah, I get it. You know, when in Rome. When in Scotland, right. I'm sure if you... Andrew, if you had remained at in school and kept training, there would have been a longer conversation and likely you would have worn a white belt indefinitely, being that it was one class. So, it becomes different things. Because in that context, your black belt, you were a visiting black belt on a visiting New Student to remain in learn.
Paul Wilson:
I visited a dojo once and I was watching, I watched a class. And the head instructor was like, a seventh degree and whatever. And, you know, don't talk to us and like, I'm just in town for like, a month or whatever, we were just staying there. And I said, so I just like to come and train. And they were like, “Well, you know, you'll have to join”. And so, you can't wear your black belt, you got to wear a white belt. And I'm like, and the way they said it was kind of like, I could tell they did not want me to come train. That's cool, you know, for whatever reason, and I was like, “Okay, no problem”. And I reached my bag, and I pulled out a white belt. And they were so like, you know, okay. And then and they, you know, did some type of Bach and whatnot. And they waited, they did not end up training that dojo, but I'm surprised he was trying to use that as the linchpin to keep me from that. I was going to have to go wear a white belt. And I don't know why.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why did you think they didn't want you to train there? I would theory, but I wasn't there.
Paul Wilson:
What would you do you honestly want me to say? Or do you want me to...?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I do.
Paul Wilson:
Because while they were a seventh degree, they were mostly teaching, like, kids or whatever. And technically, they weren't very good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you were going to show them off. You were going to undermine their...
Paul Wilson:
A friend of mine that's in the town that he studies into. And it's known this instructor for a long time. They're like, yeah, they didn't want you on the floor because they also did weapons. And this is a “No, Andrew, I don't agree”. You said both [00:56:48-00:56:49]
Andrew Adams:
I did say both staff once. You're right, yes.
Paul Wilson:
And that is wrong.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And we'll have a staff stick.
Paul Wilson:
Well, and that we'll talk about that again in the greenroom. They said and this is a totally out of context for anyone who's not in Okinawa and but they said they were getting ready to sit. Okay, [00:57:06-00:57:13]. And so, I was like, but because they were a Japanese system that had trained with some other guy to do, you know, whatever, and I was like, okay, and I watched it and whatever technique I mean, I'm not a Kobudo master by any stretch of the imagination or anything, but I was like, “Oh”, so when I talked to my buddy across town, he was like, “Yeah, they didn't want you on the floor”. There were actually three different dojos that all train with the same guy from a Kobudo standpoint. And then I messaged them all and none of them wanted me to come train. They said they don't want you on their floor. Because they're all sixes and sevens. And they don't want someone else coming in. And I mean, as I wasn't, wouldn't have done that.
Dan Williams:
Well, although, I mean, I think there's a there's kind of an ancient culture of dojo boss thing, right. And I understand an initial hesitation from an instructor.
Paul Wilson:
When I started going on the road, I stopped emailing from my dojo address, because even though my dojo address as my signature, they go on the website, they see the instructor you know, and then I started doing it from the Karate Cafe address going like, “Hey, I'm in town, I do martial arts, let's, you know, get together and train” and I started getting more response from that, rather than from my dojo address, because at that point, it was kind of, you know, I was threatening or whatever because...
Dan Williams:
Yeah, dojo busting, I don't know if it is still a thing but it used to be a thing for sure. where people would just come and challenge your instructor and say, I'm going to beat you up if you don't defend yourself using your martial arts and then I'm going to show to all your students that that your techniques are bunk, kind of it's a thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's a thing now, I've seen and heard of nothing not to say it doesn't happen. But I've seen and heard of nothing of that happening in the last, at least 10 probably 20 years in a traditional.
Paul Wilson:
See now, these guys are all podcast busting because you're all coming out with your high episode count. And they always credit cafe guys just got that janky headset thing going on. Right?
Dan Williams:
They don't even have a real microphone.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Your audio levels are consistent. Julius is going to love editing your track because you're going to be the same across. Yep, that's right. If I turn around over here, you know changes are happening.
Dan Williams:
Me too.
Paul Wilson:
But I am still going to get a cool [00:59:30-00:59:31] mic at some point.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, we got to wind down because we didn't... We should have put Andrew. We should have left like four hours for this because I bet, I could have talked to these guys all day. And I've got another one coming in 20 minutes that I got to go prep for. Oh, geez. We didn't stack this and that's on me. So, my bad if people want to find you, I mean, you know, we've mentioned the name of the show a few times, but let's mention a few more social media websites. You know, if you guys do a Patreon or tip jar or anything like that, throw it off there.
Dan Williams:
We have a Patreon Paul, remember that?
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, no, I didn't. Well, ever since that and I have to spell it, Jeremy because you make sure to spell it every time.
Andrew Adams:
We've got this.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, great. He's been waiting though all time to do that.
Paul Wilson:
That's old school.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I had a listener write to me and say, it took me hours to find it. Because I was misspelling it, I didn't realize I was doing patron.com. Oh, right. And, I went, you know, it's just you don't know what you don't know.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, you know, and that's a whole other thing, like with the zoom thing was like, now Patreon is kind of a thing, you know? I mean, you think people would know it, but apparently people don't. You know, by now, I was trying to figure out a reason to have a Patreon account. And Dan even did a Bitcoin thing for us. They needed Bitcoin, you know, Karate Cafe You know, that's that's where we’ve been for these, what? 15 years. And you can go on there we have it. We have a donate, we actually got a donation the other day, randomly. And we have an Amazon link for people who are shopping on Amazon. It's all right there on the on the page karatecafe@gmail.com. We have a Twitter @karatecafe where like, yeah, like you say, like, at crying cafe everywhere else. But, it's only Twitter. Someone asked me the other day is like, you know, once you have an Instagram account, I'm like, what am I going to put on there? I don't know what the kids use that for. So, pictures, pictures of faces. Just me recording to show. There's Dan.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, my personal Instagram is.
Dan Williams:
I think between a full-time job and all kinds of other stuff like the show recording is pretty much all and I can manage to squeeze in.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, pretty much Yes. Down. Because of the massive Karate Cafe studio is pretty, pretty empty. Yeah. And yeah, we have the Facebook page, Karate Cafe. And, you know, where we encourage people to come in and talk and post stuff and do whatever and start. Start the conversation. Keep the conversation going. And you know, it just...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, we'll make sure we link all that stuff. You know, from our from our show notes, and when we post on social and all that, all that good stuff. Yeah, this was fun. We have to do this again. Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, I just checked YouTube and you guys have 2.37k subscribers. We have 20.
Jeremy Lesniak:
20,000?
Dan Williams:
20.
Paul Wilson:
We really just started doing that again.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Don't compare, you know, industrial. Where people can find you, you know?
Paul Wilson:
No, I'm going to go back and start posting like all the old audio episodes and like trying to hang it up. But I just again, you know, the tech team here at the studio is over.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Do you use Libsyn?
Paul Wilson:
No, as far as... We use blueberry.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don't know how to do with that. If it was Libsyn, I could show you how to do it. You could dump all the old episodes back to YouTube pretty quickly. Oh, I can't handle that. I bet they have a way if there's a way for to dump that out from Bulgaria, then you could probably do it.
Paul Wilson:
I guess probably also one of the challenges of the podcasting is like trying to stay on the, you know, the most convenient, like, I'll hear people like, you know, “I'm on Stitcher”. I'm like, “What is that?” I forgot; you don't have to go? Do I need to be on that too? You know, at Spotify, we just recently got on Spotify and you know, but yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You got to be everywhere you got to make it easy for people because you know, as we talked, it's everybody's attention is so pulled in so many different ways. You know, and we're talking about it from the context of shows, but it's something you know, we have a lot of martial arts school owners and instructors that are listening right now and they're experiencing the same thing you know, the world is trying to pull attention away and if what you deliver whether it's classes or you know, some non-martial arts job content, if it's not so compelling that it bubbles to the top they're out, they're going to put their attention somewhere else. The actions that we take are based on value and worth it most.
Paul Wilson:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to do this again especially one of the martial geekery episodes. I'd love to do it to get in there. I'm not waiting. I'm going to listen to the how to fight Dalton here pretty soon.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Curious, what you think we're recording a third one today. I can't tell you what it is on air. You know, we can tell you, all right.
Paul Wilson:
One of my students he does that we have a blog in a blog sweep and then you know jab at that and he always... That's his whole thing and so or I don't know lay in Japan, bad Japanese or whatever. So nice.
Andrew Adams:
Well, I want to thank you guys both for coming on the show this was a lot of fun.
Dan Williams:
Yeah, a ton.
Andrew Adams:
I look forward.
Paul Wilson:
Thank you very much.
Dan Williams:
I'm glad you guys thought to do this.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This is considered as worthy enough to waste your time. It's appreciated whatever.