Hey guys, it's your host Blaine here. And today we've got some great news. We're launching a brand new private community for uploading and it's all about building your personal brand the right way. The community will feature access to some of the world's best content creators, some of who you've heard on uploading and more to come. The best news, this community is absolutely free to join, but there will be a vetting process to make sure that you're serious about your content and personal brand and you're ready to support others. So if you want to scale your content, boost focus, stay consistent, grow your personal brand and connect with other top creators, make sure to apply at castmagic IO/pledging community. We'll drop the link in the show notes and hope to see you there. All right, it looks like we're live.

So, Chris, super excited for this. Like we said, this is our first live podcast of uploading and the reason I'm super excited for this is because in the show we bring on some of the best content creators and the biggest figures in content in the world. We kind of break down content strategy and, you know, trends, everything that's going on with them. And we'd been doing it in the podcast, which we send out as a newsletter. But today, the live, the live recording, super exciting because now we can actually open it up to, you know, to a live audience. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a quick little interview, we're going to chat through a lot of different things. We've got the chat. I can already see Ashley, Ramon, Nick, Shin and Kim, you know, saying what's up in the chat? But, you know, as you guys have questions throughout the conversation, you'll be able to drop those in the chat and we'll also be able to open this up towards the end for kind of a private little Q and A.

So without further ado, let's, let's go ahead and kick it off. So today we are chatting with Chris Savage, who is the co founder and CEO of Wistia, a video marketing application that makes it really easy to host, customize, promote and track your videos. If you guys haven't noticed that, we're watching this recording in Wistia right now. And Chris has been a key figure in the video content space and an expert in building authentic personal brands in the era of infinite content. So in today's episode, we're going to cover why text based platforms like LinkedIn and X are shifting focus towards Video content. How creators can maximize their impact with both long form and short form videos. Secrets behind crafting a successful personal brand that stands out in a world of AI generated content. And where Chris sees the future of content creation headed from AI to AR to podcasts and beyond.

So we're going to cover a lot. But Chris, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you first tell us a little bit about your background in the creative space and how you got started building Wistia. Yeah.

So first of all, thank you for having me excited to be here. Um, and yeah, I've been in this space for a long time. So when I went to college I focused on film and video. Um, and that was the first time I really admitted to myself that that's what I wanted to do, which was like to tell stories. Um, and that looked at the time like making short films and working on documentaries and stuff like that. And then my co founder and I, my best friend from, from Brown, his name is Brendan Schwartz. Brendan and I, we're always scheming on ideas and we're just like, man, it would be so cool if we had this business that did like XYZ thing. I remember being jealous because there was some, we'd heard a story of some other guy who had patented a shark proof scuba suit and this kid had like come with this idea and like sold it for like $300,000 or like, see, here's a coffee.

Why can't he do, why does he get to do that? We can't do it. And this like passion for building stuff turned into Wistia about a year after we graduated. And it was really just seeing this huge shift in how people are using online video. It's like the earliest days of YouTube. YouTube launched in 2005, we graduated in 2005. We saw it, clocked it and said this is the beginning of something new. And when we dug into it, they were using a lot of the open source tools to do encoding the video, which meant that basically you didn't have to be an expert anymore. So we started in 2006 thinking that we would do this for six months and we had no money.

And we thought that within six months we would sell the business and be rich or we thought we would just fail in obscurity. That was kind of our strategy and that's not what happened at all. It turns out things took much longer than we thought. And along the way we became a video marketing platform and do this huge broad set of things to try to make it easy for marketers to use video. But as a company, we really built a brand around making video, teaching people how to make video, educating and enabling how to make video. And that's been at the heart of. Of what we do.

And so you guys have been at it for a while. I'd love to know how you think about and how you guys have seen kind of the evolution of video. Right. Because like we said, you know, YouTube putting videos on the Internet 2005. But like, we've come a long way and we've seen all different sorts of content formats develop really rapidly. Right. So what does that evolution sort of look like? How have you. You've seen it from your perspective?

From my perspective, basically what keeps happening is that new technology comes out that makes it tremendously cheaper and easier to make video. And then the uses of video magnify and the expectations magnify. So the first big one I saw was the dslr adding video so DSLR cameras, you could now record video that looked really amazing with great lenses. And it took the average price of creating a video from tens of thousands to thousands of dollars. And so suddenly we used to talk to companies and say, hey, are you going to make a video to launch this product? I'd be like, that sounds great, but I don't have an extra 30 grand to suddenly all we're doing it. And then the next big shift I saw was the iPhone supporting video. And that had a very similar effect, which went from like thousands of dollars probably to hundreds for someone to be able to make a video. And it started to change expectations.

And then the next big shift after that was actually really in 2020, when people started to see their computer as a camera. And so now the thing you work on every day, like, especially if you're about. You're. You're on camera all the time. Everyone's constantly saying, like, can we make a video so we don't have to have a meeting? Or I can't meet this person in person anymore. I have to create a video. And I think this has been maybe the biggest change that we've seen just in that, again, it's much cheaper, it's much easier, it's sitting right there with you. And it also makes it easy to show off stuff that's on your screen.

And the one that we're at the beginning of is obviously AI creation, where you're almost decoupling the human being from the number of assets you can create.

Yeah. And I'd love to kind of double click on the new One like we're seeing in terms of AI, I think it's something that a lot of people think about and I think you're spot on in terms of how technology has sort of like shaped how easy it's been to create video. And then the market sort of shifts. And in this new world of AI, I think some of the questions are right, like there's. And we've started to see it across platforms like TikTok Instagram, you've almost got like unlimited video now, right? So like, what is this? What does this new world look like for creators who in the beginning, right, going back to your supply, demand, sort of thinking about. And I remember this, even for us, when we first started our podcast, we would make video clips because it was like, it was easy. And we're like, oh, we make video clips. No one else is making video clips.

We're going to grow. Then what we started to see was as we make video clips, if we're not like being strategic and thoughtful about how we make them, they're just going to flop. Because if you just cut out a random part of the video, post it, well, guess what? You're competing with a lot of people and a lot of video sort of talented editors who have, you know, pushed the envelope a little bit further and use the tools in that they've got to improve on what you've got. So where do you see it going in the world of AI? Is it something that just gets absolutely flooded or do the best people still stand out? Like, how do you see this evolving?

Well, first, I think the best people will continue to stand out. I think if you can do world class things, that usually works. And it's hard to do world class things. And it requires people who are world class, who have an environment of trust, I think, to really push back and to be really creative. And so I think the best people will be fine. I do think it creates a situation which is much more difficult, which we kind of saw with text. You know, if I were to go back to text at the beginning, it was like, hey, if you write a blog, you're going to get traffic because there's so few people writing about anything. So you could write bad stuff and you get a bunch of traffic to your website.

Then as more people start to figure that out, it's like, okay, like it's harder. The stuff I make has to be better. And I think, you know, flash forward to where we are now. What we see is the social platforms have tuned their algorithms so that they encourage like Unique opinions, unique research, unique perspectives that are related to a human being. And so I think that's good. And same exact thing to be true with video. Has to be unique, has to have a unique perspective, has to be authentically real. I think in a world with unlimited, infinite content, it changes what's important.

And so where today we don't have all these, like, there's AI avatar content, but it's not the majority of the content. If that's the majority of the content, and you have a sense that that is the case, it's going to be hard to figure out who to trust. I think a lot of trust, who do you trust? Who's your friend whose recommendation actually matters? And I have a feeling that, like, already in a world that's busy with infinite choice, we rely on our friends and we rely on tastemakers and experts to guide us and decisions. I don't see why that isn't going to continue to be true, if not much more true. So I think while you should be using AI to aid in your content creation, you need to find ways to make sure that human beings that you can connect with are still really there. And obviously they're like. I mean, this is actually a perfect example. We're doing a live event.

People ask questions. We can answer them. You can tell it's like, really you and me. And then if you see us posting a lot of other stuff later and you're like, following Blaine, you see all the content that Blaine posts. If you asked a question in this session, he answered it. You're probably going to feel even more like that answer that Blaine gives you is real. And I just think that trust that you're connected with a real person is going to become a lot more important. And then the other thing I would say is if someone can tell that you're making AI content, they inherently know that the work to create it was easier.

And so it's often devalued, which I think is why, again, it comes down to making great stuff. Like Cast Magic makes it very easy to make a ton of content that could be abused or it could be a superpower. And I think it's like, if you get in there and you're a great writer and you have a lot of options to edit, you find the things that are right, things, you make that really funny, engaging post, it's still going to perform great, but it requires pushing it to get to that level where it, like, really stands out.

Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. That's What I tell everyone, it's like the goal isn't just putting content out for the sake of it. Like, when you're working with AI, you should. Anything that you're publishing, you should be like, you should feel proud to publish it. Right? So whether that AI draft got you to 99% or 90% and you had to put in some work, it's still got to clear your bar. And you're kind of the curator in that sense. You're the curator and the writer. But I think that's spot on in terms of, like, how audiences are going to continue to resonate with content and where things are going to go.

My next question, as it pertains to the future of content is going to be about Liz, what else does the future hold? Right. We've got AR coming out VR. You know, I actually had the Apple Vision Pros for a little bit and.

Your turn.

I did, I did. It was just a little heavy on my head and my eyes hurt, but I was like, I'm going to go back for the next one. But, you know, we've got live streams that are new. I mean, we're basically doing a live stream. So, like, we kind of talked about. There's so many different formats. Is there anything else that you guys are thinking about in terms of the future where. Where this sort of goes that, you know, is going to be really exciting for video?

I mean, you are touching on the biggest things. Like, I think. I think on the. I think there's a lot of time that you want a story to be told to you, and that's where video is going to work. And the question is, like, when you're searching for answers to things or searching for explanations or searching for entertainment, is there video in those places? And it could be on a website, it could be on your phone, it could be in Apple Vision Pro, it could be in some future AR glasses thing. I just think that the. I think the biggest thing is that expectations continue to shift, that some people want to watch and some people want to listen and some people want to read. And so you have to give everyone those options.

And the longer we go, the further into this shift we get and the further we get into this expectation change, where you kind of can't just sit on the sideline and not make video. And so that's kind of how I think about it. I think all the places where people can watch, like, we'll make sure that it's easy to make stuff in all those places. The thing that's going to Stay the same is like telling a great story and explaining something simply and making something entertaining matters. And so that's gonna be true no matter what the medium.

Chris, now I want to talk to you about you as a content creator and your personal brand. Right. You run a massive company and, you know, you guys are. You guys obviously do a pretty good job with video. But talk to me a little bit about how you think about personal brand, why you create content. I know, like, there's a lot of people who run companies, but, like, maybe don't create content. Like, I think a good example is actually we were just chatting about, like, Descript, right? Like, the founder of Descript. I remember they had him, like, put out a little bit of content for a little bit, and it was, like, kind of really weird.

And I don't think I've seen much content from him since. But, like, you, like, really lean into it. Like, we really lean into it. Like, we're putting content out. So, like, how do you think about, like, being a content creator yourself? What is your content strategy? What, you know, why do you create content?

Yeah. So, I mean, thanks to the layup, I think, basically first on this. But, you know, it's. It's funny. So we've been around for 18 years. Years, like three to eight. I made a lot of content. I didn't call it that.

Like, I was posting on Twitter basically all the time, and I was like, oh, today we did this and today we did that, and here's what I had for lunch, you know, and it was, like, actually very easy, and I was very naive about what I was sharing, and I didn't really understand the impact it was having until I stopped doing that. And I stopped doing. I'm like, hey, I don't need to be in the details as much. Like, this isn't as rewarding or this isn't. I'm not getting enough leverage out of my time, is kind of what I thought. And then a few years ago, I was like, I think there's a good question every founder should ask themselves, which is like, really? Everyone should ask them this. But in particular, founders have to ask themselves this question, which is like, what's the thing that I can uniquely do that is going to add value? And when you are growing, you have to ask yourself that question a lot because you hire people and you delegate whole opportunities and parts of the business and stuff. And I asked myself that question.

I was like, well, there's a part of telling the company story that I'm. That isn't Being told, you know, we're trying to tell it through journalists, we're trying to tell it through pr, but I think I could just go direct and try to tell this story myself. And so it started pretty simply as like I asked myself that question and then I started posting on LinkedIn like twice a week or something. And a few of the things that I did post worked and I like, oh, this is cool. And then over time it became easier and more fun to do and I realized not only am I like telling the story, but I'm actually engaging with the community that cares the most. The people who are like tapped in the most and have the most opinions, the most feedback the most questions. Um, and so now the way I look at it is like, are that, oh, so that's me very specifically telling the company story. There's also just a higher level trend in terms of how we make decisions.

And you know, you look B2C, it's like it's all influencers, it's all social, it's all basically connections to people who are the experts or person in your life who recommend different things. And I had a bet though, like this is going to happen at B2B too. And also it isn't really yet and who would this person be? So it made sense that I could like take on that role and try that. And so now what I do is I post about Wistia maybe 10 to 15% of the time. I post about a lot of the stuff like I've learned from the journey of building the company and am actively learning. And then I talk a lot about what we do on the marketing and video side and that that seems to be the right balance so far and it doesn't hurt that also like if you know this when you do podcasts and stuff, like you get to talk to really interesting people and it's actually fun. And so it's gone from something like, I don't know if it'll work, like something I genuinely love doing. And we can see in the data that it has like a real impact.

And so it's really nice because like I love doing it and it gets. And it has an impact. And so those things are the best because you get to keep doing them.

So if you had to break down your like personal content funnel or whatever it looks like right now, what is it? What does exactly it look like? I know I remember we, when we met at HubSpot's inbound conference, you were at your guys booth and you were just like ripping content. The Entire time, video, content, interviews, like, everything, while you guys had this massive conference going on. So, like, if you just had to break down today.

What?

Yeah, your content funnel. Like, you know, I do video. Yeah.

Yeah. So LinkedIn is kind of top of the funnel, and the LinkedIn is like a lot of text posts. Eventually I figured out that the newsletter that's native to LinkedIn is a really good thing because people don't see all your posts. Um, the only way that even if they subscribe, they only see all the posts if they subscribe to the native newsletter. So I do that once a month. I do the posts at least once a day. Um, I do now vertical videos usually once a day on LinkedIn. And I kind of think of it as, like, the content's gonna attract an audience on there and then the content that's gonna retain it.

So a lot of the vertical video posts, a lot of the, like, entrepreneurial kind of like leadership, mindset, growth mindset stuff is like, very broadly applicable. That's kind of top of the funnel. And then the stuff that's, like, closer in on the ground, learnings into marketing and stuff is like, longer form retained posts. And then I have a podcast called Talking Too Loud that I've been doing for four years, and we do that. We do an episode every other week, and we take a lot of clips from the show and Those go on LinkedIn and they also go on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, and those are really good for if we can get the right clips. We've had a lot of stuff, like, really take off there. That brings people into the podcast. And so the podcast is the hardest thing to grow by far, but it is the one that if you can get people in there, they tend to stick around.

I know this is, like, not new. And then I think the other piece of the puzzle that we've realized is that when you can get this long form content, not only should you break it down into one clip, but like many clips and newsletters and many social posts. And so now I have this thing, this kind of engine humming where we have tons of stuff from Talking Too Loud. We have a reason to talk to really interesting people. And that fuels, like, LinkedIn and then LinkedIn fuels talking to them. So the two work really well together.

Awesome. And what advice would you have for, you know, other people who want to create content? And maybe it's. Maybe it's tough to be consistent. Maybe it's tough to identify, like, their core pillar. It seems like right now you guys have A really good, solid thing with, you know, your, your long format pillar content in talking too loud. And you're able to then take that and kind of distribute. Distribute it across all your different properties. If you're just getting started, that's like very over.

It's a little bit overwhelming, right? Because you're like, oh my God, I have to be doing all these things. Like, how would you approach it if you were just starting out?

If I was just starting. I think the most important thing is picking what, which channel is your main channel. If you're B2B, I think it is LinkedIn. If you're not B2B, I think it IS like YouTube or it IS like Instagram or TikTok. But the key thing I'm saying or. And the reason I'm saying or is that they're all different. They have very different incentives, very different things in the details as to what works and what doesn't. And that is pretty surprising, actually.

I, you know, you. Because the format of it's all text is basically the same in terms of go. And now the video formats are like, it's all vertical or it's the same everywhere. You can take the same file and put it in five places. And it's really tempting to do that. Rarely that will work, but most of the time I found that you just have to be zeroed in on. On one channel. And I think the other piece is like, most of us never get far enough in one channel to understand, like, the impact it can really have, you know?

Yeah, 100%. And that's something that we've been seeing a lot of. And actually it was on our last episode of uploading, we were chatting with a YouTube strategist who was basically like, you know, we were like, do you just put your podcast on YouTube? And he was like, put content on YouTube that, you know, you think is going to do good on YouTube, like make a good YouTube video. Don't just think about repurposing things for the sake of it, but like, have a strategy there. And that's kind of goes back to what you're saying about, like, pick the one thing that like, you're good at, whether it's the LinkedIn, whether it's X, whether it's YouTube, whatever, that you start with one channel and then from there you can start optimizing for all your different things, making sure that it's like really platform native and, and speaks to the audience that's going to be living on that channel. The other question that I had for You. That kind of ties into the business and the branding side that a lot of people see is, like, how do you draw that line between, you know, the. The messaging of the company and your own personal branding messaging? Right.

Like, how did those two live together?

That's a. That's a good question. We. They're very separate. So there is, like, you know, if you were to look at, like, our messaging documentation for Wistia, you'd be like, oh, my God. Like, there's a lot thought out here. And there is, like, our product marketing team is looking at, like, every feature, what the messaging for the feature should be, what messaging should the. For that area of the product should be, how that should interplay with other areas of product, how what that means for competition, what that means for, like, the problems that people have for different areas and stuff.

And on the personal side, it is, like, it is more ephemeral. You know, it's there. We do have some clear areas that we play in and clear audiences that we're talking to. And the overlap when you hit Twistia is like, Chris's perspective on Wistia, and. But people know it's my perspective, and actually, I think it's been really helpful to be free on that and, like, give myself the freedom to talk about it the way that I want to talk about it and. And trust that people are, like, smart enough to realize, like, what Chris says over here is his perspective on this versus just, like, the company. So, like, where Wistia is not going to say, like, I'm super excited to. Wistia is not going to personally talk about the feelings that went into, like, making a thing.

I might. And that might be what you expect from me. And so I think that's, like, the interesting part that's a little bit different, but has. Yeah, it's been very freeing and I think really nice to have both those. Those different things work at the same time.

Yeah. And I think it's kind of one of those things that you just have to start doing, because if you're like, a CEO of a company and you haven't been putting anything out, then, like, all of a sudden you're like, oh, my God, this is, like, so weird. And it feels like, you know, a lot to think through, whereas once you've kind of got that rhythm going, like, you're kind of good, your company's doing your own. Its own thing, and then you're doing. Yeah, your thing. Right.

I. I think it's kind of like, I try to remind myself if I was In a conversation with someone in person, they asked me a question about w what would I say? And I don't censor myself. Like I just say what I really think and I share what I'm excited about. I share this new thing that's coming up that we just did or something we're about to do. And that's what people like. Like we just want to have connections with other human beings. So I think if you come out as the founder and you make a bunch of content that sounds just like the brand, it's probably not going to perform super great. And if you make a bunch of content that sounds like you as a normal person, it has a real shot of sounding right.

And talk to me a little bit about content workflow stuff. You know, you mentioned you've got your newsletter, you've got your clips, you've got all of this. Clearly, you know, anyone at that scale works with other people, whether it's videographers, editors, producers to some sort. So just from an operations perspective, walk me through it. What is it? What does it look like to be able to create content at your scale?

Yeah, so I have about one the two different people helping me with like a lot of the content that we're writing helping me. Like we basically meet twice a week and it's like, hey, what worked last week? Let's talk about it. What do we think we should do this week? And so it's kind of the beginning of the week into the end of the week. That's worked extremely well. That's probably about one full time person, I would say. And then I'm an amazing producer of the podcast. And so she and I are on the podcast together, asking questions of guests together and she goes through and does like paper edits on the actual episodes themselves. And she also helps source information on like the guests that are going to be coming on.

So that when we're talking to someone that we're actually like well researched enough that we really know what we're talking about and are getting to the meat of the good conversations. And then we have some editors that help us both editing the full length versions of the podcast, the video version and the audio version and also making clips. And so it's like that's kind of the scrappy team that does it. And I think the cool thing is because we're this scrappy team and we've also been on the problems of that were challenges, opportunities, whatever words you want to call it of like growing this thing for a while, you know, when you do that, you start to build up enough trust, you take risks, and suddenly you, you know, you get a breakthrough, you figure out why you get the breakthrough, you get to keep. Keep going. But it's a, it's a small and mighty team.

Love that. And then, you know, one of my last questions as we sort of wrap up here was going to be about, you know, how do you, how do you think about podcasting in general? Right. It's. It's something like you had mentioned before, podcasting, it's one of the hardest channels to grow.

Yeah.

You know, it's tough to retain sometimes it's tough because you don't get the feedback. So I'm super excited for this format because now we're going to have some live audience feedback and then we'll be able to, like, obviously publish the, you know, the fully produced episode. But just in terms of strategy, right, you know, how do you guys think about it? Is it fully guest driven? I know you said you have a couple people who help out in terms of, like, crafting and, you know, doing some research around the conversations. But, like, you know, how. How do you think of it? How do you not burn out? How do you make sure it continues to grow? Like, what's your podcast strategy?

So the first part, I'll go in reverse. Like, how do you have burnout? I. I think a lot of things are. That is actually the question because, like, we don't stay on problems long enough to actually understand them and actually break through. And, you know, usually it takes like a small group of smart people who are staying on something to figure their way through it. This is true with content, this truth bully product. Like, this is true with marketing. This is true with sales.

It's true with everything in my opinion. It's like small, team, smart, committed on it breaks through. So you want to not burn out. So the way to not burn out is to have the actual work be fun. That's like, I believe that you look for people who actually like the work itself and that adds up so that you don't burn out. And then the other way is, like, it's not bad to be stressed. Like, you want to get big in the gym, guess what? You're going to be stressing your muscles a lot. The issue is you need to recover.

And if you don't recover, you don't make progress. And like, modern athletic science, like, knows this now, right? Like, if you don't recover, you will, you will not make progress. You will get injured. And that's the same. I See, as work. So, like, you could. You're going to be stress work. You have to take breaks.

So that's just the. On that piece in terms of, like, the podcast itself, like, I think that one of the most important things I've seen is, like, you need. You need to have a base of data to understand what's actually working and what's not. So examples of things to look at are, like, how quickly episodes take off, the first 30 days. So is there any difference? Like, we did a lot of different types of episodes because of that stuff I did inbound. So normally we record remotely. We've done maybe like five episodes. We've shot in person, a little more than that, 10 or something.

And then this last inbound, we shot 15 in two days in person, and we titled them differently. And so when you can go in, you can see that the titles are having an impact on takeoff. It's actually. Some of the titles were not as good, but we changed the beginning structure of the show. So we look at engagement, and it turns out Engagement, which is like people staying with the podcast much higher in this new structure. So you look at these two things together, and you're like, okay, the titling is really mattering here. Like, we need to have the titling be better. You look at the engagement at the beginning like, okay, if I can get someone to the interview, they basically stay.

So how do I get them to stay in that first three minutes? Like, that seems like the most important thing. And then the other question on the upside is if you have a thing that people are sticking with, even if your numbers are flat, I think that's pretty good in the sense of you've gotten an audience that likes what you have. They might be sharing enough yet, but they at least like. Like some of the things that you have. Then the question is how to get more people into the audience. And the best way seems to be to make content that is explicitly for the purpose of showing off, like, some of the things that you can learn. And that might be like an actual clip that's highly edited for the channel you're putting it on. It might be a trailer that you record.

It might be a newsletter. Whatever it is, you have to give people a sense of. It's like any product, like, yeah, I need to tell you in 15 seconds why it's worth you spending 35 minutes with this. And if I can and it delivers, you got another audience member. And if you can deliver consistently, then it starts to grow. And so that's how that's how I think about it.

One other thing, slightly different than the podcast, but actually I guess sort of relevant because I heard you say this on a podcast was about how a lot of times things take longer in business than you would think. And sometimes, yeah, you may reject things that you don't think are getting traction but are actually, in fact working. Could you explain a little bit what you mean by that, how you've seen that phenomenon manifest itself in Wistia and what that, you know, how you other people who might be tuning in can apply that to their own personal journeys, whether it's content related or business related.

Yeah. So I would say most people underestimate how long it will take to find traction on something new. It's often harder than you think to make a thing that people actually want to use or like consume. But if they ever get there, they also underestimate how far they can take that thing. And so what I mean by that is, like, you have a product, you have your browser say Wistia. So early days of Wistia, we make this product. It's hosting for the videos on your site. It's a player that looks good, it's analytics, and there's no related videos and there's no ads.

That's the most basic version of what this is. Right. It's like you're going to use Wistia at that time to like, put a video on your website and have it look great and not have to worry that there's like competitors videos showing up because it's on YouTube and that's their business model or ad structure. Business model. You're not going to worry about SEO. And we got to that place and then we started making this, like, really creative content. And it was not about our product at all. It was like about all the things around our product.

It was like delivering on our mission, but not about the product. And so it would be like, hey, this is how to look good on camera. This is how to light a conference room so that it looks like a studio. Or like my backdrop is from a show we have called Fix My Setup, which is like a continuation of this, where we take people's setups and fix them. But there's all this other stuff. And it was really fun, irreverent, there's jokes in the middle of there, it's useful and it was working great. And then we start thinking, okay, this is working great. Like, we need to try more stuff because this is working.

What other things can we do? So we try many, many, many other Things, some of them work, but they're basically a distraction from going bigger on the original stuff that was working. And we had to learn the lesson the hard way that, like, hey, we took that one thing, it kind of diversified our distribution. It didn't give us 10x more, you know, it gave us like 50% more. And when we went back to the original, like, just make the really creative, really engaging, brand centric content about all these other things, we grew much more easily with the same thing. And I think we just underestimate. Like, to get anyone to pay attention to anything is hard. And it is. And then to get someone to feel something is hard.

And so we had actually done those things and didn't understand that there was a different way to scale them. And then I think in terms of the kind of like, false positive, false negative thing, we had a moment where we had a side product, side project that was another product called Soapbox, which was a tool that you could use to record your webcam and screen. It launched like, three months after Loom. We had the same idea. Loom launched like, oh, my God, these people launched this thing. We should do this. We don't build it into Wistia, make it a separate product. And then maybe after six months, we're like, all right, let's make a version of this so you can pay for.

And the version was like, you could download the videos and remove branding. That's it. Well, we're at like 10,000amonth in revenue for Soapbox, and we set a goal that year to go from 10,000amonth to 100,000amonth by the end of the year. We should 10x it and we can 10x. Say we can 10x it. Wistia @ this point is like, I can't read the exact numbers, but, like, 20 million in revenue. So, Wistia, 20 million in revenue. Soapbox, 10,000amonth.

It's more just like, so confident, cocky. We're like, let's just kind of take off. So put a bunch of effort into it. And that year, soapbox goes from 10,000amonth to 40,000. So 4x's the run rate. But because we had this 10x goal basically from like, month three, every conversation is like, we're behind, we're behind, we're behind, we're behind. Like, why are we so far behind? We're behind, we're behind. And everyone is, like, stressed, basically.

And so when it gets to the end of the year, we're looking at, like, how should we divide up resources for the next year, we don't know. Like, we have one product team on soapbox. We had two product teams on Wistia. Again, Soapbox at 40,000amonth, Wistia is like 24 million or 25. I can't remember the numbers. Like, it seems insane to have two proxies on Wistia, one on Soapbox. And so we kind of like let it by itself. It keeps growing with nobody on it.

And then eventually we just didn't have a team on it. We just put all our resources back in Oistia. And so you would think we set good goals, yada, yada, but what actually happened is that we just set a target that was too high. And so the target framed our own evaluation. Because when we later got the data on Loom's revenue, we were bigger than Loom the whole time until we truly stopped investing in it at all. So we thought we sucked. We were the leader in the market from a revenue perspective. And it was just one of those lessons of, like, it's so easy to get, like, trapped by the market expectations and think like, oh, everyone's tedxing, everyone's tedxing.

Like, that's what I'm supposed to do. And in the same way, like, we. We underestimated that we actually had traction, how far we could have taken it. And the simple structure of the goals is what mattered. And so I just really encourage folks, like, if you're building something and it's early to give yourself some grace and understand that these things don't just go up in a line. Like, they go like this. That is how it works. Like, you're going to have some weeks, you're like, oh, like, if it keeps going down like this forever, we're out of business.

Usually doesn't happen. And you have some weeks where it goes. If it keeps going up like this, like, I'm going to just be so rich. Next week also usually doesn't happen. And it's just the framing of the goals really matters. And that's the place where it's like, really easy to make a mistake.

I love that. I think that's so helpful in terms of context. I know it's something that I've seen, and it's almost like an imposter syndrome sort of thing where, like, you think everyone's doing so much better than they are because you can only see, you know, something that's facing outwards in a certain way. So I think that's something everyone can resonate with a little bit. And, you know, hopefully that's a learning that we can carry forward, that you guys can carry forward. And also everyone that's tuning in. And Chris, as we wrap up here, why don't you just shout out your socials? We are going to get into Q and A, but we're going to do the Q and A after we kind of wrap things out, just because, you know, so people will come and show up for the live ones in the future. So why don't you shout out your socials where we can connect with you, where we can learn more about Whiskey and follow along.

Absolutely.

Your, your, your, your content journey. Yeah.

So you can find me many places on LinkedIn. Chris, I was on LinkedIn. The podcast is talking too loud. So just search the Talking to Loud podcast wherever you look for podcasts. And you can check us out@wistia.com w.com.