Molly Ruland:

All right, all right, all right. We are coming in hot with another episode of Camp Content, and today we have Dusty Weis s on the show, who is the president and founder of Podcamp Media, which is also a branded podcast production agency, when you might be thinking, well, that’s crazy, Molly, because you’re a branded podcast production agency. But you know what? There’s room for everybody in the industry. And Dusty is super awesome. So we’re excited to have him here today. He’s a true pioneer in the industry. He’s got a passion for storytelling and a client focused work ethic that stems from his Midwestern upbringing. You heard it here, folks. With over Twenty two years of media production experience, dusty has honed his expertise in audio production and storytelling to help businesses establish themselves as thought leaders in their respective fields. He’s got an award winning podcast called the Lead Balloon Podcast and was recognized as Adweek’s Marketing Podcast of the Year. And Dusty understands the power of podcasting and driving meaningful conversations and building strong connections with audiences. I would say so. Before founding Podcast Media, dusty was also the strategic Communications Manager at the association of Equipment Manufacturers, where he oversaw content marketing, wrote features and podcasts, and engaged with over one thousand member companies worldwide. So I say all that to say that Dusty understands marketing and content creation and branded podcasting.

Dusty Weis:

I’ll take one of the oh, go ahead. No, sure. Okay. Yeah, you could say that I understand those things, or I just really like to tell stories. I don’t know, six to one, half dozen or the other, Molly, but thank you for the invite.

Molly Ruland:

Listen, that’s one hell of a resume, Dusty. And if you did all those things with all those people, then you definitely understand this.

Matt Billman:

But I’ll take a little different approach to the resume there. I’ll start with some of the cool things about Dusty, probably second to the selfie he sent me. Were you in an F or a Blue Angel?

Dusty Weis:

1. F. Blue Angels F.

Matt Billman:

Sitting in the back like Goose or something. Just like, here’s my pick.

Dusty Weis:

Thankfully, it ended a little bit better for me than it did for Goose.

Matt Billman:

Did you pass out?

Dusty Weis:

No, I did not. I managed to keep my cookies down, but only just barely. It was a near thing.

Matt Billman:

Excellent. And I’ll just pop one or two more things in here. So, as a proud owner, proud part owner of the Thirteenth time world champion Green Bay Packers football team, you could say Dusty brings a deep rooted passion and commitment to excellence in everything he does.

Dusty Weis:

Me and my best Wisconsin. That’s what I like to hear. All right, Matt.

Matt Billman:

Yeah, I got one of the kids on one of my teams. They go up to her sister who lives in Wisconsin. They went and bought me one of the actual legit cheese heads when they went up to see her and brought it back, and you flip it over, it’s got the three holes in it to put beers in. It’s fantastic.

Dusty Weis:

They really put their thoughts into that.

Molly Ruland:

Excellent product design, for sure, back in.

Dusty Weis:

 when the packers were making their Super Bowl run , which they eventually won. Aaron Rogers. Clay Matthews. Great team that year. I was working in the newsroom at WTDY in Madison, Wisconsin, at the time, and it was big news that year because the manufacturers of those foam cheeseheads that you put on your head or you put beers in, as you noted, also a great spot in the middle of there for a plate of nachos. But those manufacturers actually announced that year that they were going to do a limited-edition cheese fedora in honor of Vince Lombardi and the Packers run to the Super Bowl  as well. That’s the kind of news stories that we get to cover up here in Wisconsin. It all ties back to the packers.

Molly Ruland:

Man well, listen, Dusty, I’m excited to have you on the show here today because, well, you’re super cool. I like you a lot, and we do a lot of the same stuff, so I always like talking to people who are also in the trenches. So, tell me, what was the inspiration behind forming Podville Media? Right?

Matt Billman:

Podcamp Media, podcast media, podcast content, podcamp.

Dusty Weis:

Yeah, it was a natural collaboration between a lot of us, actually. And I like how you set up this conversation, Molly, talking about how well, yeah, technically we’re competitors, but it’s not like we have to be enemies. I had this conversation with another branded podcast producer here in Milwaukee a couple of years ago after I had launched my company, and he was building his up as well. And we went out and we grabbed beers, as good Wisconsinites do, and I said to him, Look, I don’t think this is one of those, like, old west saloon things where there’s only room in this town for one of us branded podcast producers.

Matt Billman:

No, it’s two shure microphones instead of guns.

Dusty Weis:

Yeah, there’s a lot of great opportunities for collaboration in this business, and I think that’s kind of what drew me to podcasting eventually, is the fact that it’s the Wild West in a lot of ways still, but it’s a friendly Wild West. Podcamp Media is really sort of for me, I like to tell people I’m a reluctant entrepreneur, right. I don’t really like running a business. I didn’t really want to run a business. But I’ve got a background in radio and audio production. I worked in radio for ten years, and then I made the transition over to public relations and marketing. And one day, as I was doing content marketing for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, as you had mentioned, we launched a podcast on their behalf. We did it all in house based on my background there, and we kind of just ten Xed our goals, like, right out the gate four to five months into the thing. And I’m like, wow, this is working really well. And I had this sort of light bulb moment where I’m like, if I take all this stuff that I know about audio production and all this stuff that I know about communicating strategically, doing content marketing, put it together, there’s this great little middle of a Venn diagram there where people are going to want to pay for these services. And there wasn’t anybody around here that was really doing that at the time. So figured, well, I’d just do it myself. Pod Camp. The name comes from our Northwoods storytelling heritage. Everything that I learned about storytelling, I really learned as a kid. Going out camping with my dad and my grandpa, going out, sitting around the fire ring with the Boy Scouts, going out fishing. And then after you get back from fishing, you tell these ridiculous fish tales. And I just wanted to channel that sort of tradition of Northwood storytelling into something that our clients, our customers, could use on behalf of their brands. Because brands and companies, I think, are very, very good at communicating their strategic objectives. What they lose so often in the process is the thread of the story. They lose the ability to connect with an audience when it becomes all about selling all the time. And so we help our clients find the story, find that connection point that their members or customers can really identify with, and help them tell their story via podcasting and online video.

Molly Ruland:

Right on. It reminds me of Donald Miller. I just read his newer book, how to Grow a Small Business over the weekend, and he touches on the six principles of story brand and how it really is about storytelling at its core, and that the customer is the hero of the journey and not the company.

Dusty Weis:

Right.

Molly Ruland:

And we lose track of that, right? We do this, we do that. We’ve got this experience. Cool. Well, I’m not here for you. I’m here for me. I’m here for my business. I’m here for my transformation. And yeah, storytelling is a great way to do that. It’s interesting. We definitely have very similar backgrounds because I spent a lot of time in audio and I spent a lot of time in marketing. It was a very natural transition for me as well, to put all that together. It is a unique niche. There’s a lot of podcast companies, there’s a lot of true crime podcast companies, which I like. Isn’t the world depressing enough, people? This is where we spend our spare time.

Dusty Weis:

Time too, but if you want to.

Matt Billman:

Stay on the topic of depressing so did you guys open the studio, what was it, in May , like, when you guys started the company?

Dusty Weis:

No, thank goodness I launched the company. It was just a one person operation when I launched it. And was working out of my basement. And we grew pretty quickly over that first year there to the point where in February of  , I started touring commercial spaces around the Milwaukee area and had a line on a place that I really liked. And I was already to sign on the dotted line. But I had a business trip. I had to go out to DC to tape on Capitol Hill with our clients at the National Corn Growers Association. And the week of that taping, it was March , March , . It was the last couple of days. We were actually in the Longworth Building on Capitol Hill when they closed it down to the public and we hadn’t taped the episode yet. We were waiting on two members of Congress, one Republican, one Democrat to come and sit down with us and talk. And I looked at the congressional aides who are sitting there with us as they were announcing over the intercom, all nonessential personnel have to leave the building right now. And I looked and I went, we’re already here. And they’re like, yeah, we’ll bring them in. We’ll tape the episode. But thankfully I was able to get back to Milwaukee. Getting out of DC was like something out of a zombie film on that day, a ghost town with tumbleweeds, but got back to Milwaukee and hadn’t signed a commercial lease yet. And so we wrote out that first year of COVID without having to make payment on a lease. But then we opened up the studio here in downtown Milwaukee. Then it would have been summer . Got you.

Matt Billman:

Yeah, because that’s what I was going to ask if you had opened it beforehand because we were in a studio in the middle of DC. And then everything hit and we had a couple of clients that were just like, dude, I’ll still come. Like, I’ll meet you there. So I’d get on the Metro and go down and just be the only.

Dusty Weis:

Anything to get out of the house.

Matt Billman:

Like I’m in a scene of Walking Dead and the only guy in the city and then our client walking down the street with me. But yeah, I was just going to ask when you figured out the best time that finally opened and all that stuff. Good stuff. But yeah, I’m glad it’s opened up and I’m sure you guys are getting plenty of people coming through and yeah, like I said, we switched all virtual and that probably is the one thing I missed. It was like, it was nice being like clients coming in, you get to hang out with them for a little bit, shoot the crap a little bit and then boom, get down to work and all that good stuff.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah, it’s not the same, but it really opened a lot of doors. Is all your business in studio or are you doing remote work as well?

Dusty Weis:

Actually, I’d say we’re probably about 90 % remote still, even though we have the studio here. And I’d love to find more clients who are local to the Milwaukee area, but my clients are based in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, st. Louis, Denver area, saskatoon, Columbus, Ohio. And so we’ve had them make the trip out here to do like a quick, let’s bust out four or five episodes while you’re in town, sort of a thing. But primarily having the studio here is a benefit to me because I have at my house a five year old and a three year old and a ten month old, and recording anywhere within a city block of where they are has gotten to be virtually impossible over the last couple of years here. This is my office away from home, but it gives us the opportunity to spread out. And we’ve actually got something pretty exciting going on this afternoon. One of my favorite podcasts, in fact, I’m not sure I’m allowed to disclose, so I’ll just say it’s a top five podcast in the world, one that I’ve listened to for years and years and years, reached out to us last week and said, we’ve got someone we want to interview. They’re in the Milwaukee area. Can we rent your studio? And the answer was absolutely. You’re going to pay me money for this? Absolutely. Get on down here. So that’s happening this afternoon at .

Molly Ruland:

That’s super exciting. Tell me, Dusty, can you give me an example of a client that you’ve worked with and how you’ve helped them craft their branded podcast plan, if you will?

Dusty Weis:

Absolutely. One of the more interesting projects that we’ve done here was for a client called Shore Payroll. Shore Payroll is a leading online payroll service provider for small and micro businesses. They essentially take a lot of the headache out of doing payroll for small business owners and put the whole process online. They’re a division of Paychecks, which is the umbrella company and all that, but they approached us in case it would have fallen off , and wanted to launch a branded podcast as sort of a top of funnel, marketing opportunity, and lead generator. And they came at us and we worked them through the strategic process from the beginning. A lot of times people come to you and they say they want a branded podcast, and they’ve already got an idea of what they think that should sound like. Sometimes they’ve got a great idea and sometimes you kind of need to massage it a little bit. But with Payroll, they came in really sort of blank slate. Let’s ideate, let’s brainstorm a little bit. And so we came up with this idea of telling sort of these superhero origin stories for small business owners. My background as a small business owner was actually perfect there because you talk to enough small business owners and you realize that everybody has this sort of Peter Parker bit by a spider origin story where one day the light bulb came on, and they’re like, oh, that would be a great idea for a business. And then they went out and we did it. And so we interviewed small business owners across North America about that light bulb moment. It was called sure Payrolls Back of the Napkin, because that’s where so many small business ideas get started, of course, on the back of the napkin. And then we really help transform those stories via good audio storytelling into something that small business owners wanted to listen to and small business owners wanted to talk about. And so we worked with sure Payroll for a couple of years there. That project was recognized as a nominee for, I believe it was, Best Podcast by the Rag and PR Daily Awards. And it was a heck of a lot of fun to work on because ultimately, at the end of the day, hearing from folks like me and helping a company like Payroll tell their story, that was a lot of fun.

Molly Ruland:

What kind of companies work best having branded podcasts? Like, is there a specific niche of companies that you work with, or are you open to everybody?

Dusty Weis:

We’re kind of all over the place. Based on my background coming from Wisconsin and having worked in the industries that I have, we have a number of agriculture stakeholders in our client portfolio, but that’s certainly not something that we’re limited to. I mentioned the National Corn Growers Association. Nutrient AG Solutions has a podcast that they do that is all about sustainable agriculture, and that’s been a super cool project to work on. But we also work with a company called Provide. They’re a fintech, a financial services provider. And you talk about the importance of having a niche in podcasting. They are a fintech for veterinary and dental practice owners, and it doesn’t get much more niche than veterinarians and dentists. And so you ask me, well, what’s the type of company that needs a podcast? I would argue the best branded podcasts are the ones for companies that have such a clearly defined niche that it doesn’t necessarily need to be something that appeals to the masses, because then you’re competing with every other podcast that’s out there. If you can get a podcast out into a space where there’s this blue ocean, nobody else is out there kind of a thing, you can catch that lightning in a jar and really just own the niche right from the bat. And so those, I think, are the companies that are best positioned to thrive in the podcast space.

Matt Billman:

I feel like it’s kind of where you’re located because you guys being out in Milwaukee, you’re getting that type of niche and everything. And us being here in DC, it’s like the majority of our clients are law.

Dusty Weis:

Firms, department of Health.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah, the part of the office is very DC. Well, it’s funny. It sounds like a joke, right? Like a veterinarian and a dentist walk into a bar and then they get fintech solutions. But that’s really insightful commentary, like people who are very clear because a lot of times, especially with Passion Project podcasts and brand podcasts as well. But people are like, well, I’m gonna have a podcast about sports and culture and, and, and music. And I’m like, cool, no one’s going to listen to it.

Dusty Weis:

What are you going to do differently from everybody else?

Matt Billman:

Read the top five topics of the day that all other  shows everybody else talk about.

Molly Ruland:

Or a lot of businesses are like, we’re going to do entrepreneur stories, but what’s the thread? That example you gave was great, but there was a thread, you know what I mean? It wasn’t just any random person on the show to talk about their story or how they failed, but what does that actually have to do with your business? And then how are you amplifying that? Whether it’s with the client or with the audience? How does that really dial back into who you’re working with? Do you have any Passion Project podcasts on your roster at all?

Dusty Weis:

Well, I certainly have Lead Balloon, which is my passion project. And we talk about staking out a blue ocean area to do a podcast. When I was launching Podcamp as a company, I knew that I needed to have a podcast of my own, right? If I’m preaching that, oh my God, you have got to have a podcast as a top of Funnel marketing Lead Generator or a Thought leadership opportunity or something like that. If I didn’t have a podcast myself to grow my business, that would make me something of a hypocrite. And so I knew that the people who I wanted to be my customers were marketing and public relations professionals, right? Guess what? The marketing podcast space is pretty full. There are a lot of marketing podcasts out there. And so that I knew if I wanted to make waves in that space, I needed to do something totally different from what was already happening in the marketing podcast space. And so Lead Balloon is a podcast where we don’t just have people on to talk about the topic of the day through leadership. Tell us about your organization instead. I tell people it’s like this American Life for strategic communicators. We have people on and I essentially ask them to tell these. I call them happy hour stories. Anybody that’s worked in strategic communications knows that when you get together with colleagues or at a PRSA event or for drinks after work, everybody that’s worked in the business has these old war stories that they go back to and tell about the hardest campaign that they ever worked on. Or the time that a press conference went to hell and the wheels fell off of everything. Or just the most intense environment that they ever worked in. And so I wanted to recreate those stories not in a one to one conversation, but in sort of an immersive narrative style of podcasting where we talk to multiple people, we cut between multiple perspectives throughout the course of the episode. We use archival audio, mix that in a lot, soundtrack, everything. It’s way too much work. But it was ultimately the only way that we’ve been able to stand out in a very crowded field of marketing and public relations podcasts. And so go ahead, Matt.

Matt Billman:

I was going to say, yeah, it’s a lot of work, but it’s well worth it at the end because I went through and watched that full hour long one on the Blue Angels, one that, like you said you’re going around. You are talking to different people. I’m doing this and that. And you’re just telling a story for that full hour throughout the YouTube video. And I definitely recommend going to watch it. It’s sick. And then obviously you got your parts in there where you’re flying in the back of it and everything, but that’s a great video.

Dusty Weis:

That was a fun assignment. It really was. And I chased that for more than two years as you’re sitting down and making an editorial calendar and you’re like, what would be the coolest thing that we could do with a podcast like Lead Balloon? And I’m like, I got to go for that jet ride. I’ve been wanting to go for one of those jet rides since I was a news reporter starting out  years ago. And so when the opportunity came to actually get in there, I jumped at it. But it was, boy, you think you’ve got to go through some red tape to get your business license renewed or something like that. The US Navy does not give those.

Matt Billman:

Rides out lightly, but just the storytelling. Like I said in that episode, obviously, it’s obviously well planned out, well thought out, and it’s a good narrative. And that’s the differentiator right there. It’s good stuff.

Dusty Weis:

Thanks, man. They have an incredible story to tell. I wanted to profile the Blue Angels public affairs team because I suspected and later confirmed that nobody in the field of strategic communications has a job that is as physically demanding and grueling as those men and women do, because they’re literally being strapped into the back of these fourth generation, state of the art fighter jets. And then they not only have to stay conscious as they’re being subjected to these six, seven, seven and a half G stunt show maneuvers, but they have to be able to operate a DSLR camera under those conditions. They have to be able to coordinate and essentially bark out orders to six other airplanes and tell them where to go and position themselves to get the footage that they need to tell the Navy’s story. ,ft above the planet, moving at  miles an hour. It’s insane. After my flight in the back of that fighter jet, I was as beat up as if I had been in a car crash. It literally felt like I had been in a car crash. And those guys and gals do that every day in the course of doing their job as professional storytellers. And so it was humbling, and it was truly an honor to get to tell their story, but then to get to experience a day in the life of one of the most elite public affairs units in the world.

Molly Ruland:

I’m never going to complain about how hard days work again because I’m not hitting zero G at my desk, no matter how many hours I spend at it.

Dusty Weis:

Feels like it sometimes, but not as much as we were. They kind of put you through the paces. My pilot, Lieutenant Commander Griffin Stangel, by the way, also from Wisconsin. Fun little coincidence that we discovered at ,ft,  miles an hour there. But they start you off with they call it the G warm up, right? And they go through and they do a bank turn where they’re like, all right, this is what three G’s feels like. And then they do another bank turn the other direction. It’s like, this is what four G’s feels like. And every time they add a G, essentially what that means is you’re feeling three or four times your own body weight because of the maneuver that they’re doing. And so by the time we got up to that seven G, they call it the minimum radius turn, which is essentially they put the plane into a sideways skid through the air as fast as it can turn without bending the airframe, without breaking the wings off, right?

Matt Billman:

Spines, compressing and everything.

Dusty Weis:

I’m a pretty lightweight guy. I weigh in at about  pounds. And so a seven G turn meant that it felt like I was getting pressed down on by  pounds of sandbags. And the blood literally tries to rush out of your brain and pool in your toes. And so you’re using all of the muscles in your legs, your calves, your thighs, your core. You’re flexing those muscles, trying to push the blood back up into your brain and doing these breathing exercises that they teach you like that. And you’re trying to remember to do all of these things while at the same time just tiptoeing right up to the edge of unconsciousness. And throughout all of this, Lieutenant Commander Stangel lieutenant Commander Stangel is sitting in the front of the plane, flying the plane and being like, so how are you doing back there? Boy? Sure it is a nice day up here in the sky. Few clouds, a little bit of blue sky. It’s like, completely unused. By this, I am fighting for my life on the verge of tears. And he’s like, oh, yeah, no, this is great. Yeah. One time I took a football coach up and he passed out. One time I took a UFC fighter out and he passed out. It was a truly unique experience.

Matt Billman:

So I think we need to start planning the next obviously, you’re doing these to tell the story, but just got a little personal benefit in them, too. And this one shouldn’t take two years since you’re a part owner, but you’re going to go do a story on, like, the Packers PR media relations team, get some field passes, sit in the press box all day, see how they tell the stories of the players and whatnot.

Dusty Weis:

That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world now.

Matt Billman:

Not at all.

Dusty Weis:

I got to tell you, though, with the offseason transition from Aaron Rogers to Jordan Love as quarterback here, I don’t necessarily envy that public relations team right now. They are going to have a busy, busy year ahead of them there with all the speculative stories that they’re going to be fielding.

Matt Billman:

But pretty interesting because I used to do PR before I got to this with Molly. So I did PR out in Vegas with the UFC, working with fighters, and I did it for the Washington football team now as well.

Dusty Weis:

Oh, yeah, that’s outstanding, man.

Matt Billman:

Interesting.

Dusty Weis:

Yeah, that’s a cool field. My old man gets on me once in a while, and before I started at : A.m., I did some public relations at Milwaukee City Hall for a minute, and by the time I started looking for a new job after City Hall, my dad was like, hey, why don’t you go see if the packers are hiring? My dad’s a born and bred packers fan, same as, I think it’d be really cool if you went and worked at the packers. I said, dad, I would hate that. I would have to work every game day. I wouldn’t be able to go to the game. I wouldn’t be able to party in the parking lot. I wouldn’t be able to do everything that I love about being a Green Bay Packers fan. My passion would become my work. And that sounds terrible. Like, everybody’s like, oh, make your passion your work. Maybe not your top passion. Something about which you are passionate, definitely.

Matt Billman:

Because it’s like your friends are at the game. I’m in the press box doing this and this. It’s just like but it’s kind of fun being the PR instead of the media side in terms of that. Because especially when I was with UFC, it’s like, all right, I’m on the fighter side. I’m not the annoying guy from whatever news network being like, I want to ask you these crazy questions and then pissing everybody off. I’m talking to everything. I’m the good guy here. I’m the middleman.

Dusty Weis:

No, that’s a different level, man. Working in public relations and professional sports like that UFC and Washington football team, they had their own little public relations struggles over the last  years.

Matt Billman:

I got it before then. Yeah, I tried to get out well before then. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I’m out of here. That lasted about a season there. I was like, I don’t like this place. This is going to get messy.

Molly Ruland:

Such as life. Well, Desi, thank you for coming on the show today. I’m a fan ever since our conversation last week, and I loved our parallel lives, even though we’re in very different places. And I would say for anybody who’s in the area, especially if you’re looking for an in studio option, go hit up my buddy Dusty at Podcast Media. Look at that beautiful space. Those boom arms alone cost a pretty penny. I already know you got the real studio in the building. But seriously, I’m a big fan of collaboration. I’m a big fan of relationships, strategic relationships and personal ones. So I would say if you are in the States and you’re looking for an in studio situation or even remote, hit up Dusty. I think he offers a great product and can really help you dive into where you need to go and the strategy of it all and then producing a great product. Anybody that can create a narrative audio like that and that level of storytelling is an excellent producer. So if you’re listening to this and you are compelled, hit up Dusty. And on that note, what’s the best place for people to find you if they want to work with you, talk.

Dusty Weis:

To you, whatever, they could check out the website. It’s Podcampmedia.com. But honestly, check out the Lead Balloon podcast. We have a lot of fun on that one. We tell some really interesting stories and they’re not all about fighter jets, but they’re all spectacular in their own ways, one way or the other. And Lead Balloon, of course, is available on all of your favorite podcast apps. So just find us there.

Molly Ruland:

I definitely will. I’ll be checking it out. I love some good sonic landscaping. I’m all here for it. And anytime I get to use those words, I’m also interested. On that note, Dusty, thank you so much for joining us today on Camp content. And we’ll see you around. I’m sure I’ll see you at the next podcast convention, if not sooner. And thank you for tuning in today to the show. And please, like, comment, subscribe to all the good things. But more importantly, hit us up on LinkedIn. And if you enjoy the content, please consider sharing it with your friends. And don’t forget to hit up Dusty at Podcamp Media for all of your brand branded podcast needs in the great state of anywhere in the United States. Actually, just not Washington, DC.

Dusty Weis:

Just not DC.

Matt Billman:

No, we’re not a state, so it’s all good.

Molly Ruland:

That’s right. We’re not even a state. There you go. On that note, we’ll catch you on the next one. Thanks, guys.

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