Episode 477 - We're Looking For Some Help
In this episode, Jeremy talks about his thoughts about the plans and the future of whistlekick.
We're Looking For Some Help - Episode 477
The episode we're bringing to you today is an emotional one because it's about whistlekick. In this episode, Jeremy becomes emotional while talking about his plans for both the company and the creative side of whistlekick. Listen to find out more!https://youtu.be/zPLbGpw36Pw
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download it here.Jeremy Lesniak:Welcome, this is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 477. Today, I'm asking for your help. If you're new to this show, this is going to be a weird episode for you to come in on. I'm actually going to suggest that you check out some other stuff that we’ve got going on because this is not a typical episode. I'm going to skip most of the intro stuff, just let you know where you can find everything that we do at whistlekick.com and everything for this show at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com.Now, here’s what's going on. If you're listening, I should let you know that there's a video of this episode. It's an actual video and I've got my mic on and I'm sitting next to a plant and I'm coming to you from my bedroom. I needed to find a different spot to record this episode. I needed something where I wasn’t going to move around. You might be able to hear my voice, you might be able to tell just from what's going on that I'm a little bit emotional right now because I'm doing something that I'm not very good at. I'm asking for help.Over the last few years at whistlekick, I've gotten better about asking for help, both in and outside of the business and usually people have come through and that’s why I thought I would try this. I've been telling myself to do this for, at least, months, if not years and now, it's time. I'm having a really hard time keeping eye contact with the camera. It's not something I'm great at especially when I'm uncomfortable and I'm uncomfortable so let me just get to it.I have come to the realization that whistlekick will not grow without help and I don’t mean small help, I mean big help. Let me start by saying what this does not mean because long time listeners might be freaking out right now. I'm not stopping anything, I'm not closing anything down. Whistlekick is not going anywhere, the show is not going anywhere, nothing is ending.What I'm doing is I am putting out to the universe my desire for help growing this company. I think the easiest way to think about it would be a partner. I need money and I need time. I'm doing everything I can to be efficient and when I take a look at what's going on time-wise, I'm really proud of what I'm accomplishing and what I have accomplished and this is probably a good point for me to take a small detour and say, by no means do I pretend that everything that’s going on with whistlekick has been entirely of my doing. There are a wonderful group of people behind our efforts. Some of whom are paid, some of whom are not and I wouldn’t be able to get all these stuff done without them.The place that we’re at right now, we’ve accomplished a lot. There are amazing things happening, in terms of both the content that we produce and the products. When we roll out a new product, it takes forever to catch on and do well because that’s the way manufacturing works. We’re dealing with amazon, we’re dealing with our own website and we’re dealing with limited funds. When you have limited funds, you can't order as many because the cost per unit is higher which means it becomes harder to make a profit, which makes it harder to do promotion and it's tough.Take a look at the foam sparring gear. The first product we made, the thing that we made before we even had a website. It's doing really well. There were so much pent-up demand that it drives me insane because we can't afford to order the quantities that we need. By the same token, this is 2020, we need more video. What's the hardest thing about video versus audio? It requires more work. It’s about, I would say, it's 10 times more work to do video than audio because you’ve got to set it up, you’ve got to shoot it, you’ve got to edit it and all of those things take a lot more work. It's harder to do, personally. You’ve probably noticed I've looked down at the recorder, the audio recorder because I'm trying to get better quality audio for this than simply the recording on the phone does and I don’t want us to stagnate.That’s really where this comes from. Will whistlekick continue to grow? Yes, but it's growing very slowly. Some of you who pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes, maybe you watch First Cup, you know that whistlekick is not my only endeavor. Why did I start doing other things? Because whistlekick ran out of enough money to fund me and, to be honest, that was never really whistlekick’s money because I put it in but to say it another way, I have to eat, I have to pay taxes, I have to pay my car insurance and that cost money and whistlekick is not at the point yet where we can afford to do that so I've gone out and done the thing that I do really well, consulting and I'm doing a variety of consulting thing that, I don’t think the specifics matter here, but it's worth it and it means that we’re almost at the point where I can start putting more money back in and that will help and that will allow the company to continue growing and really accelerate their growth but not at the rate that it deserves.When I started whistlekick, it was with this idea that we can do things different and better and I think we’ve proven that. The products we’ve put out have, for the most part, been great and people like them and the reviews from our Amazon listing show that. If you take a look at the content we’ve put out, this show is routinely in the top tier of any list on martial arts podcast. Some list have even been gracious enough to say we are the top martial arts podcast which is incredibly humbling and continues to blow my mind.We’re knocking on episode 500. It's coming up soon and there are even more people that I want to talk to. 2 people that I wanted to have on this show just passed away and every time we lose someone in the martial arts community, I feel like we were too late. We didn’t get to capture that story and that’s a big part of what I want to do with martial arts radio and this show. I think if you take a look at what we’ve done and what we are doing, the mission speaks for itself. The goal here is to educate, entertain and inspire traditional martial artists throughout the world. The whistlekick brand stands for something and I've been very protective of compromising that. We get requests all the time for things that compromise or would compromise what we do and what we stand for and I say no.Some of those things would have made us more money and it's not strictly on principle because, long term, I believe, we don’t hold to our values, this company can't grow as much and it won’t have the impact that it could so what am I looking for? If I could design the perfect person I'm looking for, it would be a martial artist who loves martial arts. It would be someone out of this community who has been along for the ride for the last few years and sees what we’re doing and believes in it. It would be someone who is, how do you say it, independently wealthy. Has a bunch of money, doesn’t need to make a return on their investment right away. They can afford to cover their own expenses and they have a significant amount of funds to put into this company. We don’t need $10,000. We need hundreds of thousands of dollars. Doesn’t have to come from one person, but it would be easiest.I don’t need 3 hours a week of help or 5 hours a week of help. I need multiple full-time people and with a bunch of money, we can buy more product and hire more people and grow this thing in the way that it deserves to be grown. This is a point where I'm a bit emotional. If it were not video, I would press pause and work through this stuff and come back but I don’t get to do that on video. It's one of the challenges of video. If you're listening on audio, know that you're along for the ride with one continuous take. I vowed I wasn’t going to do this in multiple takes.Okay, take a breath, Jeremy.This community has blown me away with its openness and it's support and willingness to help. This is worth trying. You may not be the person to help but you might know the person to help. I don’t want to sell the company but I will be very direct in that, whistlekick and whistlekick’s growth and the goals of whistlekick are a higher priority to me than my own persona ego which should not surprise any of you.If the right person came along and they had a great team behind them and they had the funds, yes, I would absolutely sell this company. I would hope that I would get to stay on. I would hope that I would get to continue to be involved because there are so many things that I want to do within whistlekick to help the world.Whistlekick is my opportunity to have an impact in the world. We all have this chance to leave a mark. I don’t think I have a chance to leave a bigger mark than by growing, expanding the reach of martial arts and helping martial artists like I do at whistlekick so if you check any of the boxes that seem to make sense, if you have a lot of time and/or money or know people that do so that we can help this, I’d like to talk to you.If you want to get a hold of me, the easiest way, jeremy@whistlekick.com. I read every email that comes in assuming spam filters don’t get it which happen sometime and I hope that we can do something. I am plagued by ideas on a daily basis of wonderful and amazing things we could do if we reach the next level. Let me rephrase that. When we reach the next level because I'm not quitting. I'm not giving up. I have put every dollar I have into this company, I will continue to put every dollar I can find into this company and I work from about 6:15 every morning prepping for First Cup, I do First Cup and I work until my brain is not effective anymore every day and that’s when I usually go to the gym or train or something.Thank you for listening and/or watching. Feel free to share this with someone if you think that they might check some of these boxes and if you're not able to, if you don’t know anybody, if you don’t have any time or money, thanks for watching and listening and your support. I am struck every week by the impact that what we do here at whistlekick has on the traditional martial arts community. Means that we’re doing some stuff right so thank you for that support because without it, I would have fallen over and crawled into a hole and given up years ago.This is big stuff we’re working on but we’re making a difference and I don’t just mean we as in the staff at whistlekick, I mean, we as in all of you who have contributed in whatever way you have. Thank you for your time and there will be more standard episode coming to you next. Take care. Peace!