Episode 109 - whistlekick Update Show
when you feel like quitting
whistlekick Update Show - Episode 109
There's nothing fancy or special about today's episode - but it is the first episode where we've told you what's going on at whistlekick behind the scenes. Like this episode? Hate it? Let us know. It will help us determine whether to do it again. Thanks for listening!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey what's going on everyone. Were back, its episode 109 of whistlekick martial arts radio and today were to do something pretty different. Today's going to be an update show, letting you know what's going on with whistlekick and where were headed, where we've been and is generally filling you in on some of the behind-the-scenes things that some of you been asking us about. Those of you that know your whistlekick history know that we did some of these as YouTube updates, basically was me standing in front of a wall and just going over some things were happening and honestly there just wasn't enough to keep doing them week after week so here we are episode 109 we've been doing the show for well over a year, and we really haven't talked about much of what goes on behind the scenes. Now I understand, this show may not be of interest to all of you or maybe even most of you have no idea we'll see what happens with the download numbers, but we do receive questions, we do have people out there asking us what's going on with certain things and so we do try to respond to what the audience wants so here you go. This is what's going on with whistlekick and with martial arts radio. So, episode 108 with Tony Blauer, came out Monday. It's been very well received numbers, have been great, we've talked to him a little bit since he's been sharing it out with his community and people are really liking it, they’re responding to it and were saying that because people are not just listening to part one but listening to part two and we would assume that they will listen to part two has listen to part one. So, that's a great sign, really happy to see that people are enjoying that episode and what did you think about the fact that it was a longer? We got deeper, really if you listen to it you know, Mr. Blauer got deeper, I was almost background on that episode which was fine, he just kept going and given us great stuff. So, what did you think about the length? Obviously, we've never done anything that long before that we had split the two parts so give us your feedback that would be helpful to know, because we have had guests that wanted to go longer and while we wouldn't do that with everyone, if we did have a guest like Mr. Blauer that was interested in going at that format, we want to know what you would think about it.Now some of you out there, past guests and just friends of the show have been doing a great job with making suggestions for guest that we can bring on hoping we can talk to and a lot of you have made some fantastic introductions and I can't drop names because it doesn't feel appropriate at this time but there's one guest were working on who has some Olympic hardware. Obviously, that narrows the specific martial art down a little bit and will let you guess as to who that might be but stay tuned really hoping that that one is going to come through. And the show continues to grow and that's because folks like you listen and you tell your friends about it, you tell the people in your dojo, dojangs, training halls, whatever you might call it, Academy. Lots of different words for the space that you train and we really appreciate that, personally, I really appreciate that. The fact that you would tell other people about the show is why it continues to grow its why we are the number one martial arts podcast on the web so, please help us keep that going. If you follow us on social media you may have seen they were running a contest to celebrate the third rollout color for our sparring gear line, can't tell you what is yet but if you head on over to the Facebook page, Facebook.com/whistlekick you will see a post there, you can comment on it with your guess as to what the color is, were going to randomly select from the correct answers, if there are more than one, the winner will receive some free stuff, some free gear in the new color or one of the old colors. If you try to buy gear lately there's a good chance that you've noticed some things are out of stock and this has been a really interesting challenge for us. We keep increasing the size of our production runs and dramatically so the production runs were doing now are several folds larger than they were just a year ago. We've grown tremendously quickly and that's really exciting but it's also a challenge so, we asked that those of you that are going online purchasing gear, please bear with us, were not doing back orders at this time because that gets complicated and people get bummed out, right? We don't want to take your money then not be able to send you your gear, but know that we are aware, we are working on it. Personally, drives me crazy when I see stuff get up go out of stock I get emails and reports and see you know, this is out of stock, this is out of stock again, but it's a problem for a great reason so hopefully those of you out there supporting us can feel happy for us even if it means that maybe you're not getting what you want at the most rapid of delivery times. And we are rolling out some new apparel, we’ve got a new shirt debuting at an event this coming weekend in Albany, New York and if we have any left that will likely hit the website, sometime in the next week or two and you know were just always putting out new things and a lot of them we bring to events, kinda test them out, see how they go and some of them do really well, some of them don't and the ones that do well that's usually what ends up hitting the website. If you're interested in that event it's the Northeast open, we'll be there all day, come check us out, say hello if you're in the area. A lot of you out there know we put on a tournament this year, back in April, we have a date for the 2017 event that is April 8 at Vermont technical College in Randolph Center Vermont that is all we know at this point. There is nowhere you can sign up, there is no other information, but if you're the type person likes plan ahead, now we got a date, now you have a date, hopefully we will see you there. It was a great event especially considering this the first one we'd ever done, wonderful feedback and really hoping to improve on that dramatically as we do with everything and see killer response from the community.So that's kind of where were at but where are we headed? We don't really talk about that on the show, we talk about some of the things that are important to me that are important to the ethos whistlekick around encouraging more participation in the martial arts, growing this entire industry and seeing people benefit from martial arts training. But where are we going? What's on tap? So, were gonna continue to grow the show. We've found that by putting our resources into the show making connections, it's been huge for us. It's really been the best form of marketing we've done and the great thing about is we don't have to club you over the head with sales messages. You'll notice that there isn't even a commercial at the beginning or at the end of this episode, because we’re talking about whistlekick and if you're listening you're interested in whistlekick and we'll have to tell you go by boots or go by gloves and we do that in the episodes but if you compare our show to pretty much any other commercially supported podcasts, the actual time that we spent talking about products that you can go by is dramatically lower. I listen to a lot of podcasts and there are some shows I listen to that I really like that spend the first five minutes of the show running through commercials and I never want to show to be that. But as the show grows were hoping to bring on more big-name guests and of course there are a handful of people that would just be amazing to get to talk to you know, the likes of Jet Li or Jackie Chan you know, someone like that and I hope that we can get there and as the show grows as we have more people listening, we can go to these press agents and say here are the numbers that were commanding, here are the numbers that are listening to this show and we become a more powerful force in bringing those conversations to you. So, while, yeah, more of you listening helps us grow it helps us bring you better content so, we’re all in this for hopefully similar and positive reasons. Even though we've got our third color of gear coming out we are already in plans for our fourth and fifth and even our sixth color of gear, yes. We have on tap somewhere between 10 and 14 colors that we are planning on rolling out. Of course, what colors come out depends on production and how other colors are received as they come out, you know I can’t get in the specifics but you know, different shades I guess might be a, I’ll lay for you to think about it. If we do a did red and red has done really well that makes us want to do pink, I'm not saying whether or not pink is the third color. We got some more training products as well as apparel that we’re planning on rolling out some of those training products are really innovative stuff, stuff that I think people really can respond to but it takes time there some engineering involved and some additional research and develop and honestly, money. And right now, all of our resources are focused on keeping up with production runs and making sure that the products available for people to buy and of course keeping the lights on. One of my personal goals is that everything we rollout is great, best quality you can get, and that you enjoy and love everything that you have, that everyone has that's got a whistlekick logo on it. Were never in a just take our logo and throw it on a, you know, cheap anything. Were approached all the time for some really great economic opportunities that would really be putting the logo on junk and were not doing that.And then finally, the point at which I’ve always wanted to get to, were going to continue doing more with our brand investor program. We’re going to have more sponsorships and really more relationships where we're giving back, where we are supporting the martial arts community be that financially and through other means because that's really what it's all about. Whistlekick I personally came out of martial arts, I can imagine what my life would be without martial arts and that's why we asked that question on the show for well over a year to make everyone realize that for most of us that train martial arts was, whether you want to use words fate or destiny, it was something that really had to happen for all of us. We needed it, I needed it and whistlekick and the efforts to give back to the community are really just me trying to give thanks to something that has meant so much to me for such a long time.That's really about it these shows are not going to be in any kind of regular frequency, just when it sounds like there's a few things that I want to say, things respond to feedback we'll do one. Hopefully was short enough that you're willing to tolerate listening to me ramble about what's going on behind the scenes. Yeah, that's it. Feedback go ahead should mean email jeremy@whistlekick.com or go ahead post on social media that'll make it to me as well. That's all for now so until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day.