Episode 797 - The Ethics of Sponsorships
In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams are joined by Victor Guarino to take on the Ethics of Sponsorships.
The Ethics of Sponsorships - Episode 797
Trust is essential when it comes to sponsorships. Why? Because people trust the people who market these products. Although sponsors give compensation, there’s a certain expectation on influencers that the products they endorse are working because they personally use them.
In this very special episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams are joined by Shihan Victor Guarino to take on the Ethics of Sponsorships. Shihan Guarino shares his story about selecting sponsors for that fit whistlekick.
After listening to the episode it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, and today I'm joined by Andrew and Victor, and we're gonna talk about the ethics of sponsorships. I'll be honest upfront, some of you are not gonna find this episode terribly interesting because you already trust us, but for the rest of you, this is something that we feel very strongly we need to do and put out there, and so that's what we're going to do. But before we get there, what is whistlekick? We are a company founded in traditional martial arts values, serving the traditional martial arts community of the world. We believe that by connecting, educating, entertaining all of you, it will bring you in and keep you in training and, all along the way to our very lofty goal of having everyone in the world train for at least six months because martial artists are better people, or a better way to say it, martial arts makes us better versions of ourselves. That's the way I'm starting to say it. I think it's a little bit nicer. If you wanna see all the things that we're doing to that end, go to whistlekick.com, check out all of our projects and products. And if you make a purchase in the store, use the code podcast15, save 15%. Now the show, Martial Arts Radio gets its own website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Head on over there, check out all the episodes. If you're listening to this and you're like, you know, Jeremy, I trust you guys. I don't need to listen to everything you're saying about sponsorships. Go back and find another episode. Have you been listening since episode one? They're all there. They're all there for you, so you can go check 'em out, and don't be afraid to listen to an episode again. Right Andrew, you do that, don't you? You listen to some episodes more than once.
Andrew Adams:
Occasionally, some interviews that I listen to.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Multiple times. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Some of them have a lot going on, so don't be afraid to watch or listen again. Now, if you wanna help us out, yeah, you could buy something. You could also join our Patreon patreon.com/whistlekick starts $2 a month, as well as any multitude of other things. Check out the family page, whistlekick.com/family is where we give you the whole shebang, all the stuff you can do to help us in our mission. So, Victor, welcome back. This is your…
Victor Guarino:
Second, second. Thank you. Thank you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Second time to be on the show?
Victor Guarino:
Glad to be here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, and it's, you know, the reason I have to think about that is because you and I have had so many phone calls and Zoom calls and everything that there's a very small subset of people who have been on the show and I talk too constantly. Andrew of course is one of them. Andrew and I talk every day.
Andrew Adams:
Almost.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Just about every day about something or other with all the things that we got going on. But you, Victor, hold a very specific role on this team and it relates to this topic. And so we said let's bring on and let's talk about it. So, why don't you set the stage? What is it you're doing that meant we had to bring you back?
Victor Guarino:
Yeah. So, it's actually funny. I was thinking about that today in fact, just in regards to, I mean, it's been probably over a year ago at this point that I first approached you to kind of join the team on that whim thing about the brand ambassadorship stuff. And then after working with you maybe for a couple months, you approached me with this other thing and you're like, Hey, I think you'd be great for this. I didn't believe you. But I said yes anyway, I've gotten to the habit of saying yes to things and then figuring out how to do them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes, and…
Victor Guarino:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes, and….
Victor Guarino:
And so you told me that you were looking for brands to sponsor the podcast. I had noticed I'm a huge podcast listener, like not just whistlekick, but everything.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you have your own podcasts.
Victor Guarino:
Right. Right. And I do a lot of menial tasks for my tent-building work which is what I generally refer to as how I pay my bills. You know, and I always have headphones in. I'm always listening to something, and whistlekick was one of the only podcasts that didn't have any sponsored ads in the beginning, or in the middle, or at the end. And some of the podcasts that I love have uncomfortable sponsored ads in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end. And so when you approached…
Jeremy Lesniak:
I want the audience to know this is all relevant that I'm laughing.
Victor Guarino:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But this is actually all relevant.
Victor Guarino:
Yeah. So you approached me and you said that you wanted to do, start to seek out ad sponsorships. The conversation started specifically with the podcast itself, but we discussed many a times at many different, at all the different sponsorship and ad possibilities for whistlekick and to partner with different brands, and stuff like that. And
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cause we do a lot of different stuff and it's all.
Victor Guarino:
We do a lot of different stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sponsorable?
Victor Guarino:
You told me you think, you thought I'd be good at this.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Which I did.
Victor Guarino:
And my thought, which I didn't express to you at the time was, oh, well my sister, you know, did a little advertising and marketing in college, you know, which she doesn't do now for work, so how hard could it be? So I said, yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is your sister gonna listen to this?
Victor Guarino:
Possibly, yeah, but she, I mean, listen, she, her and her husband, run two river guide companies, so they love what they do. She's glad that she doesn't work in advertising and marketing. She does it for her companies, but it's a section of a greater whole. And so I agreed and I immediately started looking at things and I discovered that there are a lot of people looking for sponsorships to basically put their ads on podcasts and the vast majority of those brands, I would not want to work with, and I know whistlekick would not want to work with. And so it presented an interesting problem in water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink type of...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, I like that. Victor, just for the listeners, for the audience that may not be able to connect the dots, the intentionally vague dots that you've just laid out to the reality, what sort of sponsorships were you bumping into that were readily available that did not line up with what we do?
Victor Guarino:
Oh, okay am I allowed to get specific?
Jeremy Lesniak:
You don't need to name brands, but you can name...
Victor Guarino:
I won't say brands, but we'll say certain adult toy stores. Lot of those. Certain narcotic and hallucinogen type of companies which are legal in the state of New Jersey, and many of the other states that I've lived in, not currently the one that I live in now so. And other podcasts, a lot of other podcasts. There was one for a, I don't even think I told you about this one. There was one that was like, Hey, we're producing a specific to a religion doll that we wanna advertise for. Like one of those talking, like talking baby dolls. But instead of being a baby doll, it was a specific religious figure and it would quote the religious texts of that section. I have seen so many weird things.
Andrew Adams:
Wow!
Jeremy Lesniak:
You went down a hole, like weird rabbit hole. Like this almost sounds like it needs to be a subreddit.
Victor Guarino:
It was, I almost contact them…
Jeremy Lesniak:
The most bizarre product sponsorships.
Victor Guarino:
I almost contacted them just cause I wanted to have the conversation. Just cause I wanted to see like, can I get a sample of the doll? Can I see it? I guarantee that it was probably not the proper ethnicity to who this person historically really was, but it was a very interesting rabbit hole. That was the weirdest one, but…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Love it. No, and go ahead Adam, please.
Andrew Adams:
Sorry. I was gonna say, I also like Victor, I listened to a lot of podcasts and I totally can relate where Victor's coming from. Some of the others I've heard would be like debt consolidation companies where like you've got basically like a loan shark company. You know, consolidate all of your debt with us, and then you can just pay us money and then there were the, you know, lots of ads for perfectly fine companies and I have no problem mentioning specifics like Casper Mattress.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's the first one I was thinking of. Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Or the post office.
Jeremy Lesniak:
stamps.com
Andrew Adams:
stamps.com, right? Like there's nothing in my personal opinion, wrong with those companies.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This episode is not sponsored by stamps.com.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. But that type of sponsorship for a whistlekick, like it doesn't…
Jeremy Lesniak:
It doesn't make sense.
Andrew Adams:
It doesn't fit like, nothing wrong with it. It just doesn't fit us.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or Audible.
Victor Guarino:
Yeah, I was gonna say, we could be the un umpteenth podcast sponsored by Audible.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We could and it's not even really a sponsorship. You gotta get people to sign up and actually buy stuff where you get any kickback. Because I looked into it a long time ago, you know. Back when I thought, oh, maybe there are actually people who haven't signed up for Audible. Cause you know, we have put out audiobooks.
Andrew Adams:
We have two of them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it just, it, like Andrew's saying, you know, it just, it something was off. It just didn't…
Andrew Adams:
It doesn't relate.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It didn't resonate. Right? You know, we've worked really hard to make sure that everything we do has value. And I couldn't imagine us slinging beds and narcotics and…
Andrew Adams:
Squarespace.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Eyeglasses and whatever else. And having the audience go, skip, skip, skip. You know, we work hard, we don't pre-record the intros in the outros. Because we're trying to make them fun and different enough and organic enough that everyone will listen, right? And so to have ads that didn't even line up just wasn't gonna fly. And so that was something that Victor, you and I talked about quite a bit, was where we might go. There was the obvious, you know, martial arts companies.
Victor Guarino:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And then there were some things that were a little less obvious that we also talked about. So how did that hunt go?
Victor Guarino:
So the hunt was interesting because like you said, you gave me a list of just, well, you gave 'em to me and I had some, and we came up with a list of, it's interesting. I like this. I like starting with, here's where we're not gonna go. Because when you start with that list, which generally tends to be a smaller list, then everything is a go, right? So we kind of started with obviously the narcotics things and or just the things that don't fit the whistlekick brand is kind of a no-brainer. And then we started with, okay, within the martial arts world, here are places we’re not gonna go. And that list was not just, we don't wanna work with these companies. It was some things like this is too style specific for us because we are style agnostic. And a company that say just sells boxing gloves and only boxing gloves exclusively. Yeah. I mean, does it work? Yes. but it's a little bit too specific.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And this is where I want to jump in because there's something, there's a part that I wanna make sure that we touch on because remember the purpose of this episode is to disclose our ethics. And so as you're talking about this, you know, where are we not going to go? You and I had a conversation. We as whistlekick do supply some physical martial arts products. We have supplied everything from belts and uniforms to, you know, we currently supply protective equipment. We've done various styles of protective equipment, we've done face shields, we've done a lot of different things like that. So I could imagine some of the audience saying, oh, so they're not going to take ads from insert companies that you know of here. And I'm not gonna name names because I don't, you know, it doesn't feel appropriate, but everybody knows the companies that I'm talking about, and there are actually quite a few of them. And our conversation was, it's not no, it's that we're not going to approach them. We would not reject having a conversation with insert one of these company names here, but for us to approach them didn't feel right for us. But if they approached us, now we're into the future, we would have a conversation with them. Because it's all about value and if there's a way that we can deliver value for them and for us and for our audience, of course, we'll do. Please continue.
Victor Guarino:
No, I like the distinction of approaching and so that's kind of where my search progressed to. It was, okay, so every martial artist, whether you train or you teach, you're in it. And the unfortunate fact of life is that we don't spend every day in the dojo. Is that, as we were talking about before, is I can't roll outta bed throw my gi pants on and have that be my everyday attire because my gi pants don't have pockets and sometimes I need to carry my wallet on me. Right? So then, we started making a list and then I started adding to that list of, well, what would be useful to a martial artist that's not necessarily thought of as a martial artist thing? And I started, you know, approaching various different companies and this is where the challenge then shifted in the fact of, now I'm going to companies that aren't looking actively for sponsorships. A lot of 'em in their mind we're already doing fairly well. You know, so that they're not thinking about it, I need to advertise on a podcast specifically geared towards traditional martial arts. So, now I just have to get people in a conversation with me which in the day and age that we live in, a lot of people don't really wanna have a conversation with. So I threw a lot of stuff at the wall to see what would stick. I got a lot of form letters back which I always replied to. I got a few, we're not looking at anything right now, but we'll keep you in mind, which, you know, at least they took the time to draft an email to me. And then I ended up in a conversation with finally one person in particular, and got 'em on the phone which we've always talked about this and the fact is to get them on the phone. And once I got in that conversation, it was great because it's a great company. I have a friend of mine who uses their products, can't say enough good things about them. I've been discovering more and more people who uses their stuff, can't say enough good things about them. His main concern aside from the no one's ever advertised on whistlekick before, so there's no metric for the value.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
Right? Fiscally wise, I would say. His main concern was the ethics of it because he also says that their company values that organic reach. If you go on their website, which I'm purposely not naming…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because you will all know soon enough, but it was important that we do this before we start that stuff, please continue.
Victor Guarino:
You'll see advertisement or not advertisements, you'll see reviews for their products. And not all the reviews that they post on their website are five-star reviews, and I appreciated that. I appreciate that transparency because when they don't do things well into excellence, they let you know. They don't cherry-pick. Like sometimes you go on some of the restaurant reviews or Google reviews and you see like, wow, all of these top reviews, most recent reviews are really negative, but they still have five stars because you scroll down and you see all the bot reviews of, you know, great experience. We did well. Always go here. And you know, it was just written by AI. But that was when I started having a conversation with him about the ethics of it. And one of the things that I said to him was, right, but remember, I came to you and I don't want you to buy an advertisement on our podcast. We could do that. I even said we could do that. I was like, you could give us money, we could talk about your product, and then we could never talk again. That kind of seems dumb to me. I said, what if it's a partnership? Because I see between your brand and our reach and our brand, that we could mutually benefit each other. You could, I was like your audience would greatly benefit from us. Because everyone could greatly benefit from martial arts, like you said at the top. But our audience most certainly would greatly benefit from you. And it was interesting in a good way to kind of have the conversation with him. And then he went back to his TPBs, his powers that be as I call them, to present the things that I presented to him. And immediately he got back to me, came back to me with excitement. And now we're in talks about how do we move forward, right? With all of this?
Andrew Adams:
That makes sense. Because we wanna have any relationship we have and I very much see this type of, any sort of sponsorship we have on the show as a relationship. It is not a one-and-done you give us money for this trans. It shouldn't be a transactional thing. Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hopefully not. Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
You know, we want it to be an ongoing relationship, but the question that I think hasn't quite been answered is why? Whydo we need, cause, and this is me stepping outside.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Jeremy, whistlekick has almost 800 episodes. Why do you need a sponsorship? Right? You must be, whistlekick must be rolling. This podcast must be making so much money.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, because South Park did a wonderful episode where they talked about internet views, the currency of internet views, and how it actually doesn't translate to dollars.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it doesn't matter what our episodes are or what they do, the engagement that comes out of it, you know, think about it, what do we sell? How do we monetize so far? You know, we have a Patreon, which, you know, shout out to everybody who supports. It's actually a much higher percentage for our show than the average show. We have wonderful, wonderful Patreon engagement and I'm very thankful to everyone who does. Because we are, you know, it's value exchange, right? And constantly hear me say that hell-bent on overwhelming value exchange. And we sell stuff, you know, we sell our events and we sell some products and we get a lot of people coming to those. But it's easy to forget that the core whistlekick team, plus the people who are producing all of these shows, it's like 20-plus people. Now, some of them are volunteering, some of them are working for very little money. Some of them are named Jeremy and work other jobs, you know, as Victor kind of talked about his tent poles, right? To keep this going because I still believe in the mission and I believe it'll pay off. But you know, our total revenue from episode one to episode 800, if we exclude Patreon from it because that would be a little bit more difficult math to do, but our total donations and people say here is money because of the podcast is $10. We had one person once donate money via PayPal, specifically said I love the podcast. Here's a one-time donation. Now the Patreon is, you know, a few hundred dollars a month. Great. Not enough for me to live on. Not enough to pay our bills.
Andrew Adams:
Not enough to pay for the show.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Right. The show itself, I don't even know how to quantify because you know, there's a lot of overlap. Somebody will work on stuff for the show and not, but there are, I mean, what's the latest count, Andrew? Seven, eight people who touch every episode on Martial Arts Radio?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. For every interview episode that comes out, at a minimum that I can think of off the top of my head, six people are involved, and I think you're right. I think it might be eight people. There's some people that I don't interact with directly. But yeah, it, there's a lot of people involved to make this show happen that people don't realize. And in a couple of weeks, we will have our episode 800 coming out, and some of those people will be spotlighted a little bit and so people will get to learn a little bit more. But as of this recording coming out, there are a lot of people behind the scenes that people don't know about. It takes a lot to make this podcast happen.
Victor Guarino:
I was actually just listening to a podcast yesterday as I was moving dog food in the morning and the two hosts talked and like you guys do a podcast. I and my cousin have started a podcast and it's just the two of us. Like, but these two guys were talking about how like people think that, oh, we're just two dudes who sit in front of microphones and hit record, boom, podcast done and uploaded. Like my cousin and I, we used to record live. We used to record and stream live our first season, and we're like, this is too much. We need a week at least to produce. And once we drop back, it got so much easier for us. And it's still hard. It's still hard. There's a lot of things that goes into this aspect of everything. And then back to my conversation about a partnership with brands, is this a singular aspect of something that is exponentially driving forward in a space that's always fluctuating. I won't say growing, I'll say fluctuating. I think it's fluctuates in the rising direction, but there are sometimes where martial arts becomes less popular and then kind of rides back up. But it's always growing and it reminded me of a conversation I had with my own instructor about our own style, where myself and one of my other dojo brothers when we talk about our style of Seigido, we talk about it as a system. Whereas when everyone else, some of the other black belts who have come up through the years talk about Seigido, they talk about the school specifically in Howell, New Jersey. You're like thinking so small and that's great, but what works in Howell, New Jersey doesn't necessarily work in Kansas, doesn't necessarily work in Florida, and all these other places that I've been trying and have run schools. And so when you think of whistlekick, now going back to making it on point as, well, yeah, this is what we need. Ad sponsorship to keep the podcast running. Right. But I don't think about whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. In my mind, I've started to delineate. I refer to Martial Arts Radio when I'm talking about the podcast. Or I'll talk about whistlekick when I'm talking about the organization, the brand as a whole in every opportunity and when I have had the opportunity to talk to, not just this one sponsor, but some of the other things that are a little out of the box that I'm working on too as well, I don't talk about Martial Arts Radio. I talk about whistlekick. Well, there's this thing going on. There's this thing going on. Let's start here because I don't want, again, I can just take your money and we can talk about how great your thing is on a radio program and then we could go ways. But if this goes really well, what if we then we, meaning their company and ours, partners here. Partners there, you know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
This branch of this organization may not have use for the international reach that Martial Arts Radio has, but their parent company might. So if we do right by you, maybe we, you know, maybe they would be interested. And that's more of how I, as we go to ethics things, one, it's not any Tom, Dick or Harry coming to us, Hey, here's money. Talk about how great we are.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
I've been trying to calm those things from this, the one company that I really in talks with this saying like, I found you. I already know your company. I already know your values line up with ours. I don't wanna just talk once, one and done. I think that we would work well together and together we could accomplish something that's greater as a whole than the sum of our parts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. Let's… go ahead, Andrew.
Andrew Adams:
I was gonna say, I think the thing for the audience to keep in mind in hearing this conversation is, any sponsor that we have at this point moving forward, you have to, you as the listener should understand that it's going to be curated. That we are not just gonna ever have, let anybody advertise like we there is, you know, we, and it has to be mutual value, and we're gonna curate to make sure that that's the case.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So let's talk about what that means you know. I think we've handled the who pretty well, but let's talk about the what. And part of the reason doing this episode was so important to me, is that probably a dozen times over the course of Martial Arts Radio's history, I have very clearly said we are not a pay-to-play podcast. And in case you folks in the audience don't know what I mean by that, there are podcasts out there that have tremendous reach and they charge their guests. And Andrew, you know this, you reach out to guests and sometimes they will say, well, how much?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How much do I have to pay?
Andrew Adams:
I'll come on your show, but how much are you gonna pay me to do?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or the other way they think that we are going to charge them.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right? And no money has ever changed hands as a result of someone coming on. But what we're doing now is gonna start to stretch that. And there was something, in fact, you know, Victor, the first draft of the contract that we put together included this person, the head, the he that you're mentioning at this organization coming on for a guest interview. And I said we need to take that out because I would've had them on anyway. Well, they're not paying for that appearance and maybe it seems like splitting hairs to some folks in audience, but it is incredibly important to me. That you know, we are going to have him on, we're, I'm gonna have a conversation with him, and if I'm remembering correctly, that's not gonna be one of the sponsored episodes. We're doing that one first.
Andrew Adams:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak: Because we are doing the best we can to keep things separate. Again, for folks in the audience who don't know how this used to work in media, you used to have editorial, meaning the content, and advertising, meaning the revenue. And the two were not supposed to talk to each other.
Victor Guarino:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that does still happen in some bigger, media outlets. But in a smaller place like ours, it's, we can't do that yet. Right? And it also, if it doesn't take much research to dig around and find that, yeah, there are plenty of places that allow advertising to dictate content. and we are not going to do that. In fact, that's something else that is not part of the contract. They don't, we're not telling them who's interview episodes or what topic episodes they're sponsored.
Andrew Adams:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They find out when it comes out.
Andrew Adams:
Right.
Victor Guarino:
And that's, you go back what you said, you said it's kind of splitting hairs. I think it's an important hair to split because after we talked about the first initial draft of the contract and I went back and changed that and removed that part of it as I was reworking it, I was thinking about it, not every brand that we come and partner with is gonna be appropriate for a guest member of the episode. This just happened to work out that way, and we don't wanna set that as a precedent, oh, well how much do I have to pay to get a whole episode devoted to me?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Victor Guarino:
Nothing because it's not for sale. That's not part of this. That just is a, like you said, he would've, if he had separately gone and filled out the information, he would've been on the episode.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It’s in a heartbeat
Victor Guarino:
He's a great candidate for it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
In a heartbeat.
Victor Guarino:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And in the coming weeks, people will understand who we're talking about and why this makes so much sense. Andrew, you're probably the best person to kind of poke at this a little bit and play moderator. What are the things that people might be concerned about not being involved in this process that Victor and I can speak to?
Andrew Adams:
So, I mean, you've already hit on, I think, the biggest one, which is, oh, if you're gonna get sponsorship from, you know, this tweezer company, you know, like they're gonna tell you what to do. You have to, you know, you're gonna maybe say things about these tweezers that are amazing when they're really, these tweezers are garbage. Like don't get these tweezers, they're horrible. But you're gonna say good things about them because they paid you to do that. And I think you both have already spoken to that, that, you know, you're curating and starting a relationship and wouldn't get involved with this tweezer company because these tweezers are garbage.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that's, you know, one of the things that Victor and I have talked about, and you've heard it, Andrew, at our team meetings as we've talked about this the last few months. There's a whole vision for this for the products that this man's company sells, that you know, it's not just going to be, here's your 10% discount code. We think these people are great. No, we are going pretty deep on this to speak to the manufacturing process.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And their ethics and be able to tell a story. I mean, we've got all these episodes, we tell stories. We are a storytelling company. We're going to tell the story of this company's product and any other company in the future product or service.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yeah. And when I listen to other sponsored podcasts with ads, they'll talk about, oh, I got my clothes from Stitch Fix and I wear them all the time and I'm thinking to myself, do you really? Like, do you really wear those clothes all the time? Like, oh, you're sponsored by MeUndies. Do you really wear that?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Prove it. Show me your undies.
Andrew Adams:
But I think in our case, people listening should understand that we are only going to have sponsors on the show that we truly really do appreciate and value their product.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes. And if we're not sure, we will vet.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We'll do whatever we've gotta do, right? And you know, Victor, you're the first line on that you're gonna be digging around and…
Victor Guarino:
Yeah, I was gonna say why I've been talking to this one person when I finally got him on the phone, gosh, it had to be, I'm not sure if it was right after Christmas or right before. It was somewhere at either the end of the last year or the beginning of this year. So it's not like, oh, one conversation. Let's already do, like we have been in multiple conversations. Both to ease their concerns and also to ease our concerns. Cuz it's one thing to have like a great product. Like I say all the time, like, whenever I have conversations with people who are like, well, I don't support this company because the owner is a terrible person. I'm like, you don't really wanna open that rabbit hole because I guarantee you that you use products every day from a company that the owner's not the best person. However, and I do too. I'm not pointing a finger and saying that that's a bad thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is all but impossible in Western society to make sure you are only dealing with companies that only employ people of above-board ethics.
Victor Guarino:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think it's impossible.
Victor Guarino:
As the person who's kind of the frontline of this thing I take charge of all of the listeners and all of the people who like you said, come to, they see the whistlekick logo on anything and they trust it. That's a very weighty thing to hold. And because of that, maybe I do a little bit too much due diligence, but I'd rather error on that side of things than on the other side of things. And if you wanna choose to buy products where there's someone who is maybe not the most ethical person, that's fine. That's a personal choice. Like you said, it's kind of hard not to. However, I'm not going to hold that product up to the vast majority of the listening audience and say, hey, you should support this thing, unless I'm confident that they're worth supporting.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
The next thing that I think people listening will be concerned or have a question about is, oh, so every episode now is gonna be sponsored by this tweezer company and you're gonna just beat me over the head, like beginning, end, and then the middle of every episode by these tweezers. I mean, that's the next thing I think people should be concerned about.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So first off, no mid-roll ads ever. We will not interrupt our episodes for an ad. Is it possible that that could change? Seems really unlikely. I'm not gonna draw like a hard black line on that one, but we all hate ads in the middle of episodes.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. The only exception I could possibly see would be Q and A episodes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It could fit in Q and A, and I'm also thinking, you know, because, and I'm gonna take a small tangent here. You know, we're also not going to prerecord episodes. I'm sorry, ads. And so that may mean that what if we are doing a topic for, you know, some Thursday episode and it happens to line up?
Andrew Adams:
With tweezers?
Jeremy Lesniak: With tweezers, right? We've mentioned the tweezers in the beginning, we're gonna mention them at the end, but maybe we throw them a bone and we take a moment, we talk about something related to them in the middle. Could I see that happening? Yes. Is it gonna happen every time? No. But it's, you know, part of us putting out this episode is we are declaring what we stand for. And I want to be really clear that if you hear some element of our conversation in the middle of an episode once in a while. I don't consider that a violation of our ethics.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
And I think, Andrew, to speak to the question itself that you're talking about, again, you listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. You can tell when the ad is pre-recorded and it very, especially those mid-episode ones, it's very jarring. Even if it's the host's voice.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
And they were the last person to talk. Then all of a sudden there's a pause. Now they have a different, like a different tone to their voice and all these like, it is very jarring and my brain just cuts out, or I double, I have iPads. So if I just double tap on the left one, it'll skip ahead 15 seconds and I'll just keep doing that until I get right back to the content. If it's a mid, you know, a mid-episode. And the fact that we say, I've specified this when I'm writing up these agreements, is that they're not pre-recorded. They're host read, not pre-recorded. Because that then allows for the authenticity that one, we are looking for and two, using the rubric of this first conversation that I think that moving forward, all of those who would want a partner with whistlekick would also be looking for. Because why do hosts pre-record their ads? Because eventually they can continuously run that same ad, and if they were reading it, they would just be phoning it in by the end. So at least if they used a pre-recording, they sound fresh every single time because it's the same thing every single time.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
As not pre-recording ads, like you said Jeremy, you're talking about things in partnerships and other brands that are coming alongside whistlekick that are working towards maybe not our specific company vision, but towards our vision for a better society as a whole, which is a weird thing to kind of think about when you're talking about brands. But come on, like who doesn't want to all work together with different companies to make the world a little bit better than the one that we currently live in? You know? So those are the types of things that we're always excited for. So to have the ads be fresh every single time, maybe there's gonna be something new that this brand is doing that, yeah, they're always a sponsor of the show, but they're running this promotion this month. Or they have a new product line that they're really excited about that allows us to keep those things fresh. Maybe they're coming to a free training day, and there's gonna be a table. Right? And so you'll have an opportunity to meet the person who we've talked about, who had the vision for this company. Those are cool opportunities as well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The other thing I wanna throw out cause I think this is important too, we work hard when we do an episode that's essentially a commercial for a new whistlekick offering. And every time we release a new program or a new event, we do an episode on it. But we also work very hard to make sure that there is value beyond the specific offering. That, you know, if we're talking about a training program on building strength or speed, we're giving you some of the elements in the program. So if you want to take that information and run with it or simply be educated, we're trying to do that. So just as the model here is connect, educate and entertain, the ads that are on most media programs, yeah, they do the connect part. Sometimes they do the entertain part, but rarely they do the educate part. And we're gunning for all three every time.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Doesn't mean it's gonna be the funniest thing or the most joyful thing you've ever heard, doesn't mean you're gonna learn a lot.
Andrew Adams:
I think…
Jeremy Lesniak:
But we're gonna try.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. I think our episode that we did when, last year, right around this time we did an episode because we were promoting All In Weekend which was an event that whistlekick sponsored and ran and taught at that people paid money to attend, but the episode we recorded was not about, Hey, you should all come to this event. The episode was one of the benefits of going to any weekend seminar and learning from other people. Like we didn't make it just us, it was still an educating, there was an educational component to that episode. Even though some could say that was just an episode for us to sponsor our own event.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, it is my goal that always, every time we do the intro and outro, that we put enough value in there for you that you will watch or listen every single time. That's why it's not pre-recorded. That's why we mix it up a little bit. That's why Andrew and I have fun. You know, we holds up and scrolls the Patreon sign and in some way, right? Like we're trying to bring some fun into it. Because if we do that part, you know, that's more value and you're more likely to listen and you're more likely to engage on whatever the thing is. And so we're trying to do that for others as well. And I think it's worth noting here that, you know, Victor kind of hinted at this, but the end goal is not that it's just martial arts radio that we're leveraging to benefit you, the audience. Because, you know, it's not just, Hey, you should buy this thing and get 2% off, right? Like, we're negotiating, we're trying to get some good discounts for you. We're trying to lift all ships here, but it's also our events. You know, we put out some cool events and if we can bring in more sponsorship for them, we can, we can do some even cooler stuff. It's martial journal and the print edition that we did that we self-funded almost to issues and I'd love to get back to that being a regular thing, but kind of don't wanna keep losing money on it.
Victor Guarino:
Right. And if I can tag onto that too, cause I said this before, I'm not sure if I said it on my episode or again, if it was just one of our many conversations that we've had to other things is I think every martial artist who spend any amount of time in the arts will agree on these two points. One that as a whole, our martial arts increases as we live in community with other martial artists. Meaning we challenge each other. We compete. I don't like the word compete because that gives the, I'm not talking about tournaments, I'm talking about, I go to my dojo with my brothers who go to other schools and they come and visit for a special black belt class, and they do a different style than me. And we work together, we choose to work together instead of the guys that I normally work with because I know how they move. I taught most of them, right? So I'll work with him because he's gonna hit me with something that I didn't know he could throw because I don't work with him every day. So in that community, we as martial artists, our martial arts increases from that. The second statement isit's antithesis, which would be as a whole, we martial artists live in islands unto ourselves. We kind of stay in our own little segregated communities. I've talked with multiple people at whistlekick. You have no idea, I've never even heard of the other martial arts organizations that I belong to. Conversely, I talk to them and they're like, what's whistlekick? Like we live in these different little communities that are in essence without realizing it, segregating us from something that would eventually, like you said, rising tide lifts all ships. It would bring all of us up. And even though we're doing it through the lens of brand ambassadorship, I have always viewed myself as an ambassador for martial arts, for my system, for my style. When I was in Florida, it's funny, my instructor talks about his first teacher and how his first dojo didn't really have a system that it taught because it was just ronin. A gathering of people who had nowhere to go, so all they did was get together and fight. And that's how he developed his system cause he would be sparing with this Shotokan guy one week, and then the next week he'd be fighting this guy who moved from China and does traditional Shaolin Kung Fu. Like, how do you adapt to something like that? Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Victor Guarino:
I can't think I, without realizing it inherited my instructor's first instructor's spirit. Because when I travel and I've moved and lived in a bunch of different places, I've always found myself with people, oh, I used to do martial arts. Oh, where do you train? I don't. You wanna get together and train? What do you mean? I was like, you wanna just fight? You wanna just spar? You wanna just move around? And we do, like I have a list of most of my martial arts friends and associates that I talk to, none of them train. None of either people. I'm their connection to possibly getting a higher rank because I know people who trade their style, who are higher ranked than them, and they don't know anyone who's above a first-degree black belt in what they do. Right? I'm like, I can't promote you. You don't do what I do, but I know this person. And how do we do that? Well, we contact other people. I mean, we talked about the podcast's number being hard to quantify its value physically. But there's so much deeper. I've worked for a lot of nonprofits and the nonprofit sector is interesting because you really can't quantify the value of something by what money it brings in. You can't. I talked to this one person who they were telling me that one of the people in their, they put on a radio station, they ran a whole radio station that was local to New Jersey, and one guy during their meeting was like, well, we should stop doing this because it makes no money.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cause it costs this much.
Victor Guarino:
Yeah, it makes no money. And then, systematically, people in that meeting started standing up. Important people in that organization started standing up and said like, I wouldn't be here because of that. And then this person's like, well, I first walked through these doors because I heard the radio station and it was literally a third. A third of the room stood up and said, no, no, no. This may not make us money, but I'm a resource in this organization. I'm a connection in this organization. And that's what I try to do when I approach these different brands is I see this thing, and again, like you said, people are gonna know, have way more of a context for everything, hopefully in a couple weeks. But even, hopefully beyond that, right? Hopefully, beyond that, there's gonna be some other brands that I approached, like, you wouldn't think as a martial artist, I need this product. But as a human who does martial arts, oh, this product would make my life easier. I never thought about that. Like tweezers, oh my gosh. My first martial arts injury was a gash down my forearm, like…
Jeremy Lesniak:
From tweezers?
Victor Guarino:
No, from someone who didn't use tweezers.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh.
Victor Guarino:
Who threw a beautiful roundhouse kick, and I double arm blocked it and shoved it outta the way, and then I looked down and I was dripping blood.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You were filleted.
Victor Guarino:
I was filleted.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You got filleted by the big toenail.
Andrew Adams:
So is now the time where we tell everybody that we're now sponsored by this tweezer company? Just kidding. Or nail clippers?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nail clippers. Yeah, I don't know if there's more that we need to say here. So let me say this and then I'll let each of you tack on if there's more that needs to be said. There's eight years of history with this show. There's 10 years of history with this company. If people can find examples of where we have compromised our integrity, I wanna see them because I wanna have a better understanding of how your brain works. Cuz it is the thing that is most important to me. It is the thing that when I talk to people, they often lead with that they appreciate that we have never compromised our integrity. And we won't start doing it now. We talked about bringing on ads four years ago? Five years ago? It was a several years ago.
Andrew Adams:
Before me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Before Andrew in the Martial Arts Radio Facebook group and I said what if, what would be important to all of you? And as may not surprise you, my standards were already drawn higher than every single comment made. Because I'm not going to put what we have at risk. We continue to grow. We continue to reach people. People do not have to do much research to figure out what we stand for, and I won't let a few dollars compromise that. I won't let any amount of money compromise that. Somebody comes up with a whole bunch of money, I might just hand 'em to keys, but I'm not gonna take money on an ongoing basis and say, yeah, you know, we have a price for that. Victor? Anything else?
Victor Guarino:
No, I think that's great. The only thing that I would add in that is if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, that's, you know, that's really cool. I like the non-compromised thing. I like the partnership thing. You know, I just wish that my fill-in-the-blank product was something martial artists could use. It could be, you don't know. I'd be willing to have a conversation with anyone and everyone. I love people. One of the many jobs that I have had involved me standing on a stage talking to a room of hundreds of people. And I was good at it, but I hated it. It's not, people who watched me, who knew me said that I looked like a tiger at the zoo cause I would pace the stage back and forth cause I hated it. I am very much the oh, that's an interesting thought. Why don't I buy you a drink and we can go talk about it one-on-one? I'll always, and when I talk to anybody, I can say, I always say this, you can ask me any question you want, but you have to be okay with whatever answer I give. And sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is you don't have access to that information. I'm not gonna give it to you. Sometimes the answer is yes. A lot of times the answer is yes. And I always like having good conversations with people. And you'd be surprised how many things a martial artist will find use for. Just simple..
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, what do people want to have that conversation?
Victor Guarino:
What if they wanna have that conversation with me? I mean, there is my email, my gmail is vguarino1@gmail.com. Go ahead and shoot me an email. I would say title it WK sponsorships or whistlekick sponsorship inquiry, something along those lines so that I can, you know, get through it and you know, I can find it and then please be patient with me. Because like I said, at the top of this, I do a lot of other jobs to pay my bills so that I can do the things that I'm passionate about. So I may not get back to you within that same day.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is not yet your full-time job, but we hope to yet make it that at some point soon. And if you're listening in a car or something, you can always just, you know, I would imagine my email address is probably more top of mind for many of you, you can get to Victor through me, just, you know, tell me what you're doing and I'll pass it on to him.
Victor Guarino:
The guy I'm currently talking with got to me through you, in fact.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. Andrew, anything we've missed and or anything to add?
Andrew Adams:
What I would add is that, I'm only speaking for myself, but I'm pretty certain that Jeremy, you would feel the same sentiment. If I am asked, if we get a sponsorship from this tweezer company, you can guarantee that I trust and believe in these tweezers. That they are really good, that I have seen them myself. I have used them and I believe that they're something that I would stand behind. There are a lot of ads from other podcasts I listen to that I do, I've said it before, I genuinely wonder, do you really use this product? You're being paid to talk about it, but do you really use it? For myself, I will not speak for a product that I do not, maybe I don't necessarily use it, but it is a product that I believe in.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yep.
Andrew Adams:
That's all.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, that was longer than I thought it was going to be, but not in a bad way. We unpacked that really well. So audience, thank you. I appreciate you listening or watching this, and I hope that in the future you will start to see these seeds that we've sort of planted here. Take root as we read ads or as you see some of these products and, you know, mentions on social media and just really our efforts to the word Victor used that I think is really important is partnership. As we partner with these brands to generate mutual value, you know, a lot of the value coming our way will be financial, but it won't be the entire value, alright? And if you ever have questions, and this isn't just about this, this is for anything and goes indefinitely. If you have questions, if you have concerns, I do want to hear them. jeremy@whistlekick.com. If you want to, I don't know, you wanna follow on social media @whistlekick. Remember that we do offer consulting for martial arts schools is the very same, incredibly clear, well thought out integrity driven actions that guide this company are what we do for martial arts schools. And we are very successful in doing it. So, you want more students, you wanna make more money, you wanna feel inspired again, you know, whatever it is, if there's something going on, don't be afraid to reach out. Everybody gets a free hour, not all at once, but everybody gets a free hour. All right. that's all for now. Do we want to try for all three? Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.