After Journalism: The Bobby Warren Story

Todd:  Hey, this is Todd with the Storyteller cafe and today I have my friend bobby warren on and bobby’s like me, he kind of does a little bit of everything in the visual world and we’re going to get into the story of how he got to where he is now, but before we do that bobby, if you wouldn’t mind, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’re drinking today

Bobby:  uh as well, I’m originally from the Boston area home of Dunkin donuts, Dunkin as it is now because they sell more beverages than they do donuts, but I’m just drinking your standard iced coffee with sugar and cream. I like my coffee, creamy and sweet, I’m not that big bold coffee guy. So uh a little bit about me, I grew up outside Boston at a town called Revere, Massachusetts. We called it Severe Revere, it was an Italian neighborhood when I lived there. Uh my great grandparents were from Italy and emigrated here. So I’m third uh you know, even though my last name’s Warren, my dad is like England was English and Heinz 57, a little bit of everything. I claim my heritage as Italian because my mom’s all Italian right, so uh so anyway, I come from severe Revere, which is not bad, not as bad as lin lin, the city of sin, you never come out the way you go in um and that near

Todd:  Severe Revere.

Bobby:  Yeah, yeah it is indeed, it is, but Revere incidentally is the first public beach in the United States, and uh and we had like kind of amusements that I think I think was the forerunner for what coney Island became. But all the amusements and rides and arcades, they’re all gone. But I grew up uh and then you know my dad, my dad was a chef and I say we used to move around more than uh military families. I lived in, let’s see. Jacksonville, Florida, Columbia, South Carolina. Uh, Little rock Arkansas sooie pig.

Todd:  Huh? I got my shirt on today

Bobby:  too. So yeah, so I lived in Little Rock when Bill Clinton became the youngest attorney general. Uh Lou Holtz had just taken over the Razorback program from Frank Broyles. He took him to the orange ball where He suspended like three players, 3 starters. 31 6 31 to 6, yep. Never did. So anyway I was like I was a young teen right?

Todd:  Uh my cousin and her husband now, but we were in her teens at that time as well. We were at their house, we lived in Jacksonville Arkansas at the time and we went over for the game and I just remember they won, it was upset and I was a kid, you know he gets in his car and drives around the neighborhood honking the horn yelling, woo pig sooie, he’s a nut

Bobby:  So so I’m like I don’t know 13 years old or something like that at the time. And my friend down the street uh they were from Oklahoma, right? And that’s so that’s where the boy. So that’s, that’s

Todd:  Who Arkansas beat in that. Orange Bowl. Yeah,

Bobby:  so I, I I call upright, ed the guys, my friend’s dad answers, I think it’s him and let’s just say I have some salty language just putting down the, you know, the Oklahoma Sooners, oh man, I was like, oh no, that’s his dad on the phone. Uh,

Todd:  needless to say the next time Arkansas played Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, they definitely more than made up for the loss that they had that night. They put a weapon on. It’s pretty good.

Bobby:  Then I ultimately, so after Arkansas, like I ended up in Daytona Beach Florida, then I ended up in Cincinnati Ohio, Hillsboro Ohio and now I’m in Wooster Ohio. Which incidentally there, I guess there’s a Worcester Arkansas, there is

Todd:  Just up the road. In fact, a young lady from this area one uh, silver medal at the Olympics and the trap shoot, I believe it was and she was born in which for Arkansas, But she lives in Greenbrier now went to high school in Greenbrier High School, which is just up the road from Conway went to college at the University of Central Arkansas, which is in Conway. So yeah, Rooster Arkansas has a claim to fame now, Kayleigh Browning silver medalists and trap shoot in the 2021 Olympics. So we’re pretty excited about that.

Bobby:  Uh, so uh, so I ended up here in Wooster Ohio. Uh, because it was, um, you know, I kind of got into journalism in Daytona Beach and then I eventually moved up here to Wooster Ohio to work for what was then a family-owned newspaper. And uh, yeah, I’m not sure how many are left, but we were gobbled up by a $1.2 billion dollar corporation, which was meeting which one was Gatehouse. And then gatehouse eventually acquired Ganette kept the Gannett name.

Todd:  They have the paper here in Conway as well.

Bobby:  Yeah, Which also

Todd:  used to be locally

Bobby:  owned. Right? So anyway, uh, you know, I wanted to get paid to write and so interestingly, what are you drinking? I told you what I’m drinking.

Todd:  I was drinking, just finished it in my respect. The beard mug. I was drinking some pinnacle roast from round mountain coffee and now I’ve switched to coke zero from jimmy john’s leftover lunch.

Bobby:  So, uh, here’s so, uh, I wanted to get paid to write, and initially I wanted to be a screenwriter. You know, I want to write movies. When I was living in Florida, I had applied to the University of Central Florida, they started a film program. Okay. And I messed up my application, which I didn’t realize. And so I never got accepted into film school, but I wanted to be a screenwriter and I thought, you know, if I were to become a successful screenwriter, how many screenplays would I sell in my life? Maybe too? Right. And so I’m thinking what do I do the rest of the time. So well if you want to get paid to write, become a journalist. 

Todd: Right. Is this what is this

Bobby:  About the mid, the late 80s?

Todd:  When you’re talking about this? Did you go to college for journalism? What did you go to college for?

Bobby:  Uh I went to college for a lot of things I want. First started the

Todd:  party not the extracurricular stuff but

Bobby:  uh I never really big into that too much even though it was in Daytona Beach spring break capital of the world. Uh What colleges uh we called it Harvard by the highway or a Southern Halifax Institute of Technology aka Daytona Beach Community College now which is now Daytona State University. So that’s where I started and we call the D. B. C. C. Back in the day.

Todd:  What was the academic program you were in?

Bobby:  Um Well I started off studying computer programming. Okay, let you know how long ago it was uh actually did some COBOL programming on IBM punch cards. You know it’s like you had to back then uh I did some, I started studying FORTRAN and basic Because I like back in 1979 I was working at a restaurant as like a busboy. And there was a waiter there who went to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. And as a student, he was working with a professor creating a helicopter simulation program and he kinda took me under his belt and would teach me programming, but like I never really pursued programming. Uh I’ve I ended up in a place where I just want to get paid to write. So uh then I switched, you know, I would start and stop college a number of times that you uh I ended up going back studying journalism. 

Um I would eventually transfer to the University of Central Florida where I was working in Orlando, I drove from Daytona to Orlando couple of days a week studying journalism. I was major, it was a double major, I was working on journalism and history because like journalism students at the University of Central Florida had a minor in something else because they wanted you to have an area of expertise because when you got into journalism you’re not going to write about journalism, you’re going to write about something else, you know, they wanted you to have another area study and I fell in love with my history professor, he was like he was just an incredible professor that he just wanted to learn from him, you know, and he just did such a great job that I became like a history major for a little bit and like I didn’t like I really wasn’t like into dates and all that, but he was a really good professor and uh just incredible and then ended up becoming a Christian. I left there to go study bible and journalism at the late great Cincinnati bible college right? So it eventually became Cincinnati Christian university. So I got my, so everybody there at the school is now gone. You’re right. Unfortunately, I loved it, I love the school, but everybody was a double major, they majored in Bible and something else. So I was basically a bible major liberal arts major with a minor in journalism, that my master’s degree was in Biblical Studies with a concentration in the new testament. So, but so I ended up studying, I learned more about grammar and language studying Greek which uh large, which large portion of the new testament was written in. So I learned so much about grammar and language from greek. It really, really helped my writing once. You know, I was working for newspapers.

Todd:  Yeah, Greeks one of those languages that it’s an Entomology for multiple languages, you know, you’ll see a Spanish Spanish where you’re like, oh yeah, that’s just like this word in greek, you’ll see a Latin where you’re like, oh yeah, there’s an anyway, I did Greek to in college, so

Bobby:  nice, Yep, Koine Greek one, I agree,

Todd:  yeah, that’s right, I had a semester a year and a half and somehow I tried the Hebrew and I just

Bobby:  have a good grasp. Hebrew. I just didn’t even take any Hebrew classes. I had Hebrew, Hebrew tools so you can understand the alphabet.

Todd:  Yeah it would you know now we had some people to excel that’s great and just why wouldn’t one of them? So

Bobby:  I wasn’t either brother.

Todd:  Yeah I just like I couldn’t do it. I tried it there at college and I tried it in seminary and I just you know, now I like my seminary professor for Hebrew. I did. He was a really nice guy that didn’t make a difference. I still struggled. So

Bobby:  yeah. So uh so anyway I got into newspapers and like you know um it’s it’s hard like when you work for a family-owned newspaper it’s you know you make decent money but not great money. And so like I was always trying to figure out how can I make more, how can I make more And you know you talk about storytelling. I have an incredible story of how I started you know Wooster Media group. 

Todd: Let’s hear it. 

Bobby: Okay so my wife is a pretty good writer right? And uh I would always tell her I said you need to start a blog, you need to start a blog. And uh she was like she really didn’t know you know what it is, she wanted to do with it. Right? So it’s the same here. So we ended up going, we were so we were watching um diners drive-ins and dives, right? Guy Fieri’s diners drive- ins and dives on the food network. And there was a restaurant near Buffalo. Either Buffalo or maybe Rochester New York I forget but like and it served like cheeseburger soup. So I had like you know ground hamburger. Uh It was like a cheese-based soup and it had like uh lettuce and tomato and I think Pickles too right? 

And so Wendy’s like hey that’s by Niagara Falls, why don’t we go there? Right so we ended up going there and I think I think it was like a 47 hour trip and we packed a lot into those 47 hours and we got back. And uh sometime after we got back she had the idea for her blog Wendy’s weekend Trips and what not. Right. So her website is Wendy warren dot com and it’s Wendy with an I. W.E. N. D. I. W. A. R. R. E. N. Dot com now since the pandemic. You know, she’s virtually done no writing because we’re not really traveling and going places. But anyway she has this idea for a blog, right? 

And so she starts it and I’m trying to help her with her blog. And this might be going back to like 2015. Like she actually started as a subdomain on an old website I had called Z section. Which isn’t around anymore. It was kind of a play on you know sections of the newspaper Z. six Z section. You know because you know, your main section is a region is usually sports might see business will be D. E. will be classified back in the day when they actually had uh back in the day when they actually had sections. Uh huh. 

And so I figured the Z section will be like kind of anything that really didn’t fit into my reporting. You know, I would just throw it out there because you go out and you meet with somebody, you talked for an hour and you can’t get all that information into a story. So there’s a lot of neat information that goes unreported just because it doesn’t fit into how your story unfolded. And uh so she started out as a subdomain. 

We eventually got her own uh website. And then as I’m trying to help her, I’m starting to read about this thing called S. E. O. Search engine optimization. Right? 

So, so anyway, I’m, I stopped, so I’m in Wayne County Ohio. Right. I’m in Wooster Ohio, which is in Wayne County, you know where the county seat, and I stop into the Wayne County Convention and Visitors Bureau. And I’m saying, you know, I said my wife starting a blog and the project coordinators are there says, oh you know what? She needs to attend this blogging conference up in Sandusky, Ohio. And that’s where Cedar Point is, which uh roller coaster enthusiasts will know uh cedar point. And so she says she’s got to go. So it turns out it’s like a blog mom conference, right? 

And I’m not gonna make her go by herself. So I go up with her. And it was great, it was a great conference. I really loved it. I went back like the first two years and I think the pandemic happened uh and then like this year I’m not able to go this year but they’re bringing it back. So we get there and Wendy says, hey they have a session on SEO oh I’m like well I’m gonna go. 

So I go to the S. E. O. Session and I meet Claudia Pennington and she has an online course on how to conduct an S. E. O. Audit. Right? And so with an S. E. O. Audit, you analyze a website. See you know, are there any factors that are hampering that website from ranking higher in Google? So I took the course and then uh I, you know Claudia said, hey, you know because of your background in journalism, you know, I can really use some help, you know, So I started doing some work for her and I was getting ready to launch my business which I had titled at the time navigate S. E. O. Right? 

And so um I was going to launch the business in the first quarter of 2017. Lo and behold first quarter of 2017 our newspaper gets sold. Right? And so Gannett buys, I mean Gatehouse buys the newspaper and you have to read the employee handbook and the employee handbook says you cannot compete against the company. The company had a digital marketing agency so I couldn’t do my S. E. O. Deal so I put it on the back burner. Mhm. By September that year I realized that things were not what I wanted to be. So I ended up leaving to start my own business. But it all goes back to watching that episode of diners drive-ins and dives. So I’m in business today because of diner drive-ins and dives.

Todd:  That is pretty interesting. It’s an interesting connection back to something like that 

Todd:  I think it’s a lot of these companies like Gatehouse did to you and I’ve heard so many people say this, you know, they won’t let you compete even though what you would have done, probably wouldn’t have competed to really compete directly. I mean it had been technically it did but realistically you wouldn’t be getting the same clients as they were getting. I mean they, you know, but larger companies do that. I don’t know if they do that to weed out people. I mean I know the gatehouse, in particular, tends to lay people off after maybe a few months of having, you know what the paper so you decided to leave, just saved them, you know, having to lay you off

Bobby:  Well, you know, so here’s the interesting thing is that, um, they didn’t want me to leave and mhm and so, you know, they’re saying, no, look, there will be an opportunity in a year for you. We’re gonna try to do sponsored content and things like that. And uh, I am not a very confrontational person, you know, I kind of avoid it. But somehow, someway I had the strength to tell the publisher, you know, who came in from, you know, he was a Gannett guy that Gatehouse hired. Right? 

And uh, I said, look, I said the horse has left the barn. I said, yeah, because right, one of the turning points for me was that when they come in, right, The family that owned the newspaper, they were, they ran a financially sound operation. They weren’t in debt, Right? So there was like, you know, they, they sold to what they believed was the best deal for the employees, right? Because uh, you know, they didn’t, it was just a fiscally sound company and uh, so like when they come in, you know, they’re trying to cut expenses and all that. And, but one and raise cut expenses and raise revenue, right? 

Two things because the publisher’s job was to pay off that acquisition, I think they paid, I don’t know, $22 million, for the small chain of family-owned newspapers. Right? So the publisher has to come in and figure out how he’s going to pay off that 22 million. So one of the ways you do it is you increase ad revenue, you increase the subscription price and you cut your expenses, right? 

And so, uh, they raised the price of a subscription by about 50%. And we all had to go into a meeting. And basically, when people, you know, complained about it, it was like, well, you tell them that we believe that the newspaper is a great value. We haven’t had a price increase in 10 years. It’s the only place to get, you know, it’s the best source for local news. 

Right? So all that, all that stuff is true, right? But what bothered me was what makes the newspaper a great value, Not the newsprint, right? Not the ink. It’s the people, it’s, it’s the receptionist at the front door or answering the phone, responding. It’s the circulation department trying to appease customers who didn’t get their newspapers that day. There are the reporters are going out for stories. It’s the paginators who put the newspaper together. It’s the editors and the copy editors, sportswriters. You know, it’s the salespeople that are generating revenue. So it’s the people that make the newspaper of value and they weren’t talking about raises for anybody. 

So, apparently, the value was just for them, not for us.

Todd:  Yeah, the assets, that’s what we’re looking at the assets and, you know, I’ve heard people say something similar in different places like, you know, take care of yourself. If you don’t think that you know you are valuable, but if you died tomorrow, they would replace you, you know, the next day. So you need to pay attention to yourself, take care of yourself, you

Bobby:  know, uh, if you, if you die on the job, make sure you punch out first. Yeah. When I paying you overtime, exactly.

Todd:  I mean, you know, it’s the, it’s the never-ending tension between, you know, you see it play out everywhere. I mean,

Bobby:  even

Todd:  professional sports, when you have, you know, the athletes especially, you know, you see it in NFL, you see in other areas as well, you know, the owners want their billions and athletes want their millions and, you know, it’s a, and, and the rest of us are just trying to get by and we’re watching them battle over that. But at the same time, I might relate with the athletes just a little bit more because I’m more like the athlete than I am the owner. You know, so, and if they’re, if they’re responsible for selling more merchandise and putting more points on the board, you know, you gotta think there’s something there to it, but it’s always a, 

I mean, the name of the game for businesses actually, you know spending less and making more, man, it’s just the name of the game, we all tend to outsource something, and when you outsource something you’re not doing it because they’re gonna charge you know more you’re doing because you’re getting it for less. I mean it’s just kind of it’s a bouncing act, right? 

And then when you’re a bigger business and you actually have employees and there’s all another, it’s a whole nother you know, dynamic that I’m not, I don’t have any experience except for as an employee, so but that’s how business works, you know you uh the owner um spends less and you know as much as as as much as you can and because that’s how you make revenue, right, you cut expenses and you make more um profit,

Bobby:  you know, so

Todd:  It’s never-ending. Yeah, but how long ago was that when they bought the Gatehouse spot?

Bobby:  So Gatehouse bought it in February 2017. Mhm. I knew in like September or October I was leaving, uh I ended up leaving in January and I launched my business January 2018 and it’s it was a good decision I made like that first year I made about 75% of my income. 

Todd:  Where’d you, where’d you find your customers? I mean you are brand new and you managed to make 75% of your income.

Bobby:  right? So um what I did was I did all warm calls, I reached out to people and let them know that I was going to be starting my own business. So I ended up ironically talking to uh talked to a business in an organization in town. Mhm. 

And it sounded like I had about maybe 17 $25,000 business booked before I left. Ironically it didn’t turn out that way, it turned and turned into about $1,000 worth of business. But I ended up like I met with the local chamber of commerce president, he’s Bobby with this. What we need is someone who can produce um some simple basic websites at an affordable cost. I did that for a little while but businesses

Todd:  in town or.

Bobby:  Yeah and as you know that’s you know it’s not the most profitable thing because even with you know, themes and templates, page builders, it’s still labor-intensive especially producing the content, photos, videos, and things like that. So uh but anyway I did that, I hooked up with a business That had two locations and it’s so I started off with one and it says okay we want you to do the same thing for another one, what kind of business

Todd:  Are you doing it for them? Content or?

Bobby:  Uh built websites are actually uh yeah redesigned their website, Saturday had websites but I redesigned their website, created content, do social media management for them and uh then that ended up leading to me doing work for another company because uh the company did business with one of the locations and like, hey who does your Facebook page. And so they called me up and say hey we want you to do that for us. 

So, I ended up doing that for them and then, you know, I was doing um work for Claudia who has since left the industry, but you know, she brought work my way, she referred me to other companies and Claudia was absolutely pivotal to my success, right? And uh she just helped me expand my world, introduced me to people, got me to go to this conference, which opened up a whole new world for me. 

And so like I’m in Ohio and I do business like what maybe four, three or four local companies. Like most of the work I do, companies are in like Indiana, Washington State, and California. So I’m doing more work out of state than I’m doing here in the state. But uh yeah, so the first year I did about 75% of what I earned the second year. Uh I think trying to think maybe I made like 20% more than what I made as a journalist. and then year three things were taken off. I was like, I was hitting my stride, I was making more money than I ever made in February hits and then there’s a and everything thing called a pandemic. Um and then like I actually during the first uh first five months I was still growing then September comes around business falls off a cliff and then I just I’ve been building back ever since but like year three, even though things dropped off at the end of the year, the first half was incredible and I made nearly three times what I made as a journalist I well for the entire year but it was on the strength of what I did the first half of the year. But then you know then it was like I was back to year one money and I’ve been slowly growing back so but it’s it’s I wouldn’t change it for the world, it was great.

Todd:  Yeah. So you know we talked about this before the recording started, you do a little bit of everything, but when I look at your website the language is more about content and S. E. O.

Bobby:  Yeah that’s that’s what I’m where I’m trying to drive the business especially um like what I really want to focus on is content optimization. Um And so I need to, you know, I’ve been telling myself about the last six months that I need to redesign my website like you know, you know the cobbler’s kids need new shoes, right? Um So I really need to redesign my website. I have like you look at the back end and it is just a mess. I got Genesis framework. I got a mentor I have, uh I think temp lately, Astra theme and stuff, and so like, I just want to just strip down and go just use genesis framework and not these page builders and stuff. I want to just a more streamlined website that focuses on content because that’s where I want to spend my time. Uh and you know, I created a course for content optimization, which

Todd:  That went great for Frase or something like that.

Bobby:  Well, that’s where most of my customers came from, people who are using Frase, F R A S E dot io, 

Todd:  Yeah, I don’t use that.

Bobby:  Yeah, and so that was uh man, that was an incredible investment phrase. And so um so I, I sold a lot of those courses for a while, sales have slowed down every once in a while, somebody will buy it, but like, I’m not really focusing on that right now, it’s just been kind of trying to optimize content, create content. And so, so yeah, so so I’m glad that when you look at the website, you came away thinking that I was focusing on content, that’s where I want to, that’s what I want to do.

Todd:  But I think that’s it’s a journey, it’s part of a story for all of this plot of us, is that, you know, whenever I meet somebody is able to niche down and scale, I’m always just like, hey good for you man, or you just didn’t work for me. And, and you know, I’m just trying to put money in my bank account so I can pay next month whatever I gotta pay for ran on this office or whatever my coffee and those are, you know, I’m just, and so if somebody wants me to, you know, I have a project now with the nonprofit in Arkansas um Black Mayors Association, Arkansas Black Players Association and one of the ladies who volunteers or somebody I’ve done work with here at the university in town. And so they wanted, she was trying to get them to do more with their online because a lot of them, they do have some younger mayors, but some of the leadership are maybe you don’t understand digital as much as well. And so, so she wanted a website. 

Okay. I thought first falls are nonprofit. So I just got her to get a WordPress dot com count, you know, and that was something I could pay off. Then I had to pay me a consulting fee and I set him up a site, um, using some theme that she chose, which is Gutenberg um enabled. And I thought, well, it’s a good chance for me to learn better about Gutenberg.

Bobby:  Yeah. Well,

Todd:  um, get you a demo site and start playing with it and watch some of Joe Casabona’s videos every time I watch, you might learn something anyway. Um, and I was going to recommend it. Um, asked her plus redneck coffee snob dot com is Astra Plus Gutenberg, that’s what it is. And I did that on purpose. Um, so anyway, I set him up a site, um, paid to charge them a consulting fee. It’s like it WordPress to update everything for you. I don’t even have to go there every month. She came back to me this summer and said, Hey, we need some, we’re gonna need some work. You know, the, what they had done kind of fell through and they needed basically an expert on hand to do stuff. Okay. So it’s this very small retainer. Um, I like helping them. Um, so it’s not, you know, it’s stuff I can do relatively simply. Um, it’s not really what I want to hang my hat on, but I’m helping somebody and helping them do a better job and they get a little bit of money for it. So

Bobby:  That works. You know, it’s kind of, you’re talking about, you know, it’s like not something that you want to hang your hat on or whatever. Like it’s amazing that like the clients that have come and gone and I say that in a positive sense. So I was doing work for a nonprofit organization, right? Uh, ended up having to make some investments, needed, I needed a new car because the headquarters was an hour and a half-hour away and I had, you know, like, um, I had an older vehicle, the air conditioning wasn’t working, this was broken, but it got me around, right. And so I ended up buying a new car and all that. And so I think I worked with them for like six or 7 months and so the seventh month Rosell long and the president says, yeah, hey Bobby, we’re not gonna be able to use you anymore. Uh says, you know, the industry is changing, we’re having to lay off people and if we’re laying off, you know, employees, we cannot justify keeping a contractor on board. 

And I said, look, I totally understand it and I said, but I really appreciate uh you giving me the opportunity and you were, you came along at a great time. So it was just like the organization was just such a wonderful bridge client because I got it as I started growing right, right? And, and then by the time they left, you know, I had picked up other clients, you know, and their accounts, you know, we’re paying me more and like I would never drop a client because somebody else would pay me more and that’s just not how we do business. 

But it was, it was such a wonderful bridge client that really kind of kept me going until the business was taken off. So it was, it was a wonderful experience and I, you know, that’s how I view all my clients, you know, some of them you worked with for just a few months, maybe a year or whatever, but I’m just so grateful at that time that we spent together. You know, if I had to put

Todd:  together with with a content agency, I would probably make it somewhere a cross between Foundation, Inc. and Grow and Convert.

Todd: I like those two companies a lot in the content marketing space and I know you and I have a mutual connection with ross, Simons over foundation and learn a lot from ross. He’s always dropping value bombs on Twitter and LinkedIn,

Bobby:  Unbelievable,

Todd:  does good videos and he’s a little more uh open, online than the guys are Grow and Convert, they tend to stay behind the scenes a little more in terms of being on the video and that kind of thing. So, and he’s very, but all of them are really, but ross is very accessible fellow and so I know you’ve carried on conversations with them on Twitter and I have as well,

Bobby:  so you have to I know

Todd:  yeah, so this podcast is about storytelling, so, you know, what about your story? Any of the stories you told is did you learn impactful for you or something that you learn from that story?

Bobby:  Well, I’m not sure if I’ll answer it the way you want, but let me know, but I, I think kind of a kind of like an overarching message. It’s kind of like, it’s like this Woody Allen quote, Right? What does he say that you know, Life is 80% showing up, Right? Mhm. So I mean you got to get out there and do stuff, you know, you’ve got to plan your work, work, your plan. And one of my mentor is um he was a vice president at a local Merrill Lynch office years ago. And uh he would notice that you know, some of the guys would make a good sale in the morning, make a nice commission and they would take the afternoon off, right? 

And he told me he says Bobby you can make as much money in the afternoon as you can make in the morning, right? So like just one of the things I’ve learned is just to keep plugging away, you know, just beat this idea of being persistent. You know, my like I have a physical office and I have a home office, right? Most of my work is done in my home office, right? Uh I do very little so I do very little at my business office, right? But uh but I keep business hours every day. If you do, if you do a search for uh western media group, you’ll see that my hours are eight a.m. To five p.m. Every day now because I have clients on the west coast, you know that five PM that’s into 678 PM. Right? Uh You worked when they were but uh but I have posted business hours, right? 

You can get in touch with me during these, these hours. Uh and so I make an effort to show up every day Now. The fortunate thing about, you know, having your own company is that you have a little bit more control over your time over your schedule. And there are some days where I am just worn out, right? Yeah. Like last night I, well I worked till two in the morning because I I invoice once a month, right? I’m trying to knock out these last-minute projects so that I could invoice for them today. So I was just till two a.m. So I was tired. I was like still groggy-eyed uh like an hour before our interview. Like I was like, man, I, I need to wake up. So that’s when I got the Dunkin’s. Yeah,

Todd:  Yeah. Capri caffeine, whatever you can do, right?

Bobby:  Yeah. So, what I learned is like, you know, show up, be persistent. I like that saying that luck is when uh hard work meets opportunity, right? Because uh one of the things that I’m doing and like, you know that, you know, I have a virtual background behind me, that’s not my office, that’s not my office. Uh But uh, you know, I’ve, I’ve been working on this project after journalism dot com, right? It’s kind of a side, a little bit of a side hustle. It’s an entity that I created under Wooster Media Group, LLC. And so I started, you know, launched a Youtube channel recently that I’m really trying to promote, you know, after journalism. And um, so I’ve been following like, like some of these creators on Youtube, I’ve gravitated towards some attorneys who kind of reflect on cases and politics and things like that that I found fascinating and interesting. And you hear their stories, right? It’s like, they never really started out to be a Youtube creator. They ended up doing some videos. one of them ends up going viral, right? 

And the next thing, you know, they got all these subscribers now, you know, when you get more than 1000 subscribers on Youtube, you can monetize your channel, right? And as I’m starting, as I’m kind of listening to these creators and watching them look at their subscriptions, it’s easy to sit back and say, well, yeah, it’s easy for them because they ended up getting a viral video. Right, Well, how do you end up getting a viral video? And my thinking is by showing up in producing those videos and eventually one of them will hit. So,

Todd:  And it’s never the one you predictable hit either.

Bobby:  Right? So it’s like, I know it’s going to take maybe two years to get close to having the channel monetized. Right? And so, you know, I’m telling myself, you know, do I have the commitment to stick around for two years and do this. Well after the first month I’m like, yeah, we’ll see what happens a month to

Todd:  I would think that you could do some training for people entering life after journalism. You already have the perfect name for it. You already have a video channel, uh, which you can like to begin a private audience with. And I would say once that, you know, you wouldn’t even have to wait two years, you just have, you can start off, you know, we had this conversation, you can start off selling it on gum road like you did the other one, you know, kind of verify validated if you will and go from there, right? You know, and you can even do it like a little workshop and then you can put together 2345 videos and um, and you can, you can serve it right from gum wrong. I mean, it’s just Gumroad has become an incredible platform.

Bobby:  Yeah, I like it. You know, it’s nice and easy. You can always add elements to it. You can change your price if you want to, you can offer discounts. It’s nice and clean and easy. Right? So I like it. This is true. Yeah. 

Todd:  But what is the future story for Bobby Warren

Bobby:  Uh, the future for me is really trying to develop that Youtube channel, um, you know, um, listening to people who have done it, listening to people who teach others to do it. You know, they say, you know, just put out one video a week, you know, answer a specific question. Um and they said what you’ll discover is that, you know, when you, after you finish a year you’re gonna look back and you’re gonna say, man, that stuff I was putting out early on was garbage, right? And so what’s funny is that um you know, I perform magic, right? Uh I’ve performed in front of 900 people I’ve spoken to, you know, groups of hundreds of people, right? So I have no problem, even though I’m an introvert, I don’t know if you know that I’m naturally an introvert, people think I’m a snob because they say, well bob you want to talk to me, it’s like Bobby shy, Bobby doesn’t want to bother you, right? And uh so uh so anyway, so

Todd:  sometimes introverts perform better, that’s basically what you’re saying, you know, I don’t have a problem performing well, you’re an introvert and introverts perform better because I think introverts have a tendency to not be consumed by the people they’re looking at and just enter their own world and do their thing and when you do that, you perform better if you will, I mean, I’m saying performance for any situation, whether it’s speaking or doing videos or presentations or whatever. Extroverts tend to get extroverts can work the room at a party there the life of the party, but when you put them on stage, many of them, not all will freeze and it’s I don’t know, I’m with you, I’m kinda like you in that regard, Bobby on a little bit of an introvert as well.

Bobby:  So um but so I have a lot of experience in front of people, right? So like shooting a video, like no problem for me whatsoever. Uh But the funny thing is I shot a video, you’re going back to training about whether ai writers were worth it. And it The raw footage was 41 minutes. I cut it down to about 34 and I said this is garbage. I cut it down to about 7.5 minutes and I still don’t like it, but it’s published, right? Uh There was a poet used a writer that I used to read. Richard brought again and he had a poem that went something like this. Uh I so desperately want to write a poem. Any poem. This poem, right? That was about in a nutshell that was a poem. And so I needed to create content. I didn’t like it. I worked it down to something I thought was manageable, but I still don’t like it. But you know what? You got it done, throw it out there and 

Todd:  That’s what roster of, that’s what Ross (Ross Simmonds) tells us that just get it done and get it out, you know?

Todd:  Uh Yeah, so Something is better than nothing.

Bobby:  Yeah, so I’ll be revisiting that and uh probably reshooting it, I took out all the examples and but do you do

Todd:  a presentation when you do that or you just look at the camera

Bobby:  And speak? So I just look at the camera, you know, I got a new external camera because I thought it would be better but I’m like I’m torn. I got like a lodge a tech I think cr 92 you know like the computers I have, I don’t know, it could handle 4K. My and they you know, I can’t edit 4K. I don’t have enough power so I just do the 10 80 P. Actually I converted to you know uh 7 20. And to me, it’s good enough for the web.

Todd:  Yeah. You’ve inspired me to consider picking back up the copy chat show. Um But do it more solo rather than interviews. I did interviews last year and they were fine. But I put a lot of pressure on myself and all. I gotta do this,

Todd:  instead. Just uh you know just do a Uh you know, 7-12 minute video and be done with it. I can answer some questions that way. So maybe I’ll consider doing that. Um

Bobby:  Yeah because you know, for us, you know it’s important that we do two things. Mr Right, that monthly recurring revenue and to have multiple streams of income and so today youtube’s not making me any money, it’s demanding my time and I don’t have much of it. But if I don’t do it today, two years from now, it’s not going to be a viable option where by being willing to invest that time, you know, it will, you know, it should pay off at some point. We’ll see, you know, we’ll see if I do, you know, hit that topic, because I plan to do three Things With It. You know? One is talk about how journalists who want to leave the industry or have left the industry, how they can make money, how they can start their business, what they can do, where they can look for opportunities, then uh show them how to use some of these tools, You know, what you talked about the training, like, okay, here’s here’s how I use these ai writers, you know, they’re not going to replace your writing, but they can help you and then offer media criticism. Leo, just my take on how the media is handling things in which, you know, I’m just, you know, I, you know, uh Tip O’neill former the late speaker of the House said all politics is local and I think journalism is better, the more local it is. I don’t know what, I don’t know what the deal is when these journalists get to Washington, but that’s like, it’s a whole different beast because, you know, they you’ll see that they all tend to start using the same buzz words, you know, and they start copying each other’s headlines and it’s almost like they’re all reading from the same hymn. Know whether it’s a statement that’s released or uh, you know, press conference or whatever. And so

Todd:  They copy each other’s headlines, whether or not the information the headline is correct or not.

Bobby:  Yeah, so, uh, so anyway, so there will be some media criticism as well.

Todd:  I’ll have to tune in just for that.

Bobby:  Yeah, so uh do a search for after journalism bobby warren on youtube. Remember to subscribe to the channel like that video and when you subscribe, hit the notification bell. So you never miss this content. You got that down really

Todd:  Well, I need to figure out what I need to get that script down to myself. Yeah. To add to mine, Well Bobbi, I appreciate you coming on today.

Bobby:  Thanks so much man. I always enjoy talking to you man. I love your attitude, your uh your easy-going nature. You’re, you’re just like an all-around good guy. So I always enjoy when we’re, I try to communicate on Twitter. You know, most of our communications on Twitter, but you know, we should we

Todd:  should get on zoom more often.

Todd:  I appreciate you coming on and telling your story and uh being a part of the story telling a Storyteller Cafe and uh so if you’re listening to this podcast, make sure to subscribe. I do have an email newsletter that I’m going that by the time this show comes out, should be going in full mode now, and you can get emails to your inbox letting you know in the latest uh podcast comes out and be sure to visit us at the Redneck coffee snob dot com, and you can click on the storyteller cafe in the link in the menu and you’ll be able to see the latest podcast. So, for now, so long.