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The Vision Quest Podcast
A podcast about life, sports, and life in sports! Enjoy!
The Vision Quest Podcast
#100 Joe Kania's Tale - From High School Fields to Pro Sports Media
What if your early years in sports could shape your entire professional journey? Join us as we sit down with Joe Kania, a multifaceted professional whose career spans marketing, journalism, and sports, to uncover how his roots in Westfield, New Jersey. Listen as Joe recounts his childhood experiences in football and wrestling, and how these early challenges cultivated resilience and determination that would serve him throughout his career.
Ever wondered how to balance intense high school athletics with academics? Joe takes us through his time at Bergen Catholic, navigating early mornings, long commutes, and rigorous training. He shares candid stories about overcoming stereotypes and proving himself in a competitive environment, setting the stage for his transition from athlete to journalist. From his college years at Bloomsburg University to his relentless pursuit of a role with the New York Giants, Joe's journey is filled with valuable lessons on perseverance and dedication.
Get ready to explore the creative world of sports media as Joe shares his impactful work at FloWrestling and his innovative strategies in social media marketing. Learn about the evolution of FloWrestling's platform, the challenges of managing large-scale social media, and Joe's ventures into fantasy wrestling and video games. This episode is a captivating look at Joe Kania's multifaceted career and the relentless drive that has propelled him through various professional landscapes, offering insights and inspiration for anyone looking to make their mark in the sports industry.
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Thank you, thank you so we're live, joe, hope you're ready. So we're, we're, we're here, we're, we're getting. Um, we're going to get a little more professional here as we go along, um, but I can't promise that. Uh, we are here with a very special guest. I've been following this guy for a little while on mainly twitter, but I've checked out some other things. He was on rockfin too. Um, he's done uh, marketing, uh, journalism, you name it. When it comes to, to me, it's the brain work of what this stuff is. Right, like you, you have a little more insight. I think I explained it to you. Is that, um, the way you put things is the way that I want to put things, but sometimes my, my brain gets in the way. Um, I am joined by Joe Kania. I'm thinking I got that correct, right.
Speaker 3:Kenya, Kenya.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give you something to yell at me for it, right, um, but you, you, you have joined us graciously. I, I put it out there and you're like, dude it out there and you're like, dude, just send me a message, let's, let's get this going. So I was like, yes, doing it. So, joe, you have been to places that I think a lot of us would have liked to have been flow wrestling, you know the buccaneers, things like that. So you have a really kind of diverse sports background. It's not just wrestling, um, and that's why I wanted to have you on as well, because vision quest is, it's more than just a, I guess, just a movie. It's kind of, it's kind of a state of mind, right. So I want to welcome you and I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join me. So thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Sure I was. I said I'm flattered. Anyone cares what I should say at this point?
Speaker 2:I was like oh wow, sure yeah one cares what I should say at this point I was like oh wow, sure, yeah, I got a thing to do. So let we, the way we do this, like I told you in the in the beginning, we will start off by kind of, we're going to talk, it's all about you, but we're going to start from the beginning. We want to go back to the time that you remember sports in general. Um, I don't care if it was croquet, I don't care if it was backgammon, whatever it is. What was the first sport that you remember visually in your head that you're like oh man, I love playing this. What was the first sport you were in?
Speaker 3:so the town that I'm from in new jersey is a town called westfield. Okay, so when my parents were in high school, westfield had one of the best high school football teams in the country and they also had really good wrestling program. Chris campbell was wrestling for westfield when my dad was in high school. Westfield's 1977 football team it's number one public school football team in new jersey history. Their offensive line averaged like 170 pounds, both coached by the same guy. So this guy, gary Keller. So for me, I was always this kind of next generation of people who grew up in that kind of Keller era and Westfield at that time was like friday night lights for football everyone. They had 35 000 people at their state championship game in 1977, which I think is still a record. Yeah, very roundabout way, say football, right, I was, I was always a big kid and they send me out and I hated it. Man, did I hate it? I must have, I was. I don't know, I was a big kid man. I was probably 100 pounds when I was in first grade.
Speaker 3:Wow, Holy cow, Joe these guys, I know, I know there was a point in time where I weighed almost 320 pounds in my life.
Speaker 2:How tall?
Speaker 3:are you. Yeah 5'9".
Speaker 2:Nah, you're like me, you're like, I'm like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, now I imagine right, 5'10". But so these guys, when I started playing football, started practice around a mile with full pads on Crackers. Run a mile with full pads on you know, four laps around the field. It was a mile and I get like halfway through. I'm like I don't think I can do this man. And something that was always. If we have one viewer watching tonight, it's my mom. She said you just got to let me know when you're on I'm going to watch. But something that was always good for me is, she said, sure, you can quit at the end of the year. You started it, you finish it through and always, even maybe at the end of the year, I hated it. But by the time the season ended and you kind of settled, I was like that wasn't that bad. Okay, I'll try again. But football was always really my first love.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay I believe your is your mom's name Suzanne.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she says hi here, I'll show you Hi.
Speaker 3:Yeah, see, there you go, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Hi mom, hey mom, it's awesome. So, with that being said, with this, you know, obviously, football and the transition in I'm so I coach soccer right now. Right, we know we have a lot of kids that are kind of, you know, just starting out the year School's just starting that a lot of these kids didn't play sports all summer. So it's conditioning right. So you kind of must've been one of those things where, as you went through the season, it just it just got better because you were getting better, you know, you were getting stronger and you were getting more conditioned and used to it. So I mean we know the repetition, right.
Speaker 2:So when you, when you started, when you started playing how I guess how far into it were you like I want to do something else and try a different sport. Was that your choice? Or your parents like, well, hey, check out this sport, check out wrestling. Was that cause you're? You're over in the East coast. I mean it's heavy over there, right. I mean wrestling is is kind of the gig. If it wasn't for football, I don't think basketball is big out there, is it no, wrestling.
Speaker 3:I always tell people I'm like wrestling in New Jersey is what they pretend like. Football in Florida or Texas is like, yeah, it's big there, but wrestling in this part of and as I think about it more, you say what's your first memory? My first thing is football, but I actually started wrestling before I played football. Okay, say what's my like first? I'm like, oh, football. No, I actually, because when, and it's funny and we'll get into marketing stuff, yeah, but I think I was in first grade and they came around and we'll get into marketing stuff, yeah. But I think I was in first grade and they came around and the teacher said anyone want to sign up for sports? Here's wrestling and whatever else. Pass out little flyers. Yeah, and one of my buddies was like oh, wrestling wwe, sure, oh, okay, you know I'll try that out. But when, when we talk about how do we get kids into wrestling? For me it was just they came and they passed out flyers. I brought it home and I was like this sounds cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And we talk. I gave you my football story, my wrestling story. Again, I was a big kid. I didn't win a single match that first year. I wrestled an entire year, didn't win one match, got whooped by everyone. That sounds like a good game. Well, when you're a big kid like that, they have age groups. But it's like first to fifth grade, yeah right, I was getting beat up on by fifth grade kids when I was six, six, seven years old. So, yeah, I'd love to say I was like sports, yeah, this is awesome.
Speaker 2:I don't know, man, this might not be for me so did you ever get to the point because I, like I said I read that I read that rockfin article you'd put out did you get to a point then where you kind of decided, well, I like this better, I want to branch off and just do this. Did you? Were you a multi-sport kid? Were you trying to balance both? Or were you like, well, I'm only going to do this this year and then I'm going to do football the next year? Did you? Just because they're different times of the year, right, so obviously practices aren't, but did you kind of divide them up? Or did you turn into a two-sport kid?
Speaker 3:So I was always three sports. So I went and I did football and then I wrestled and until yeah, that's funny, he says, remember the win, as do I. But uh, I played baseball in the spring and I remember there was some kid who ended up playing a stamper and got drafted in the mlb really tall, wild pitcher. I was playing baseball in fourth or fifth grade. This dude hit me right on the side with a pitch and I remember I just said I was like this isn't for me and I turned around, I walked off the plate and I was like oh, really yeah you made the decision right there.
Speaker 3:That's awesome I was like nope, but I played lacrosse in the spring, which you know. So, as we say like what gets me?
Speaker 3:I know, yeah, but you say, like, what kind of got me hooked? Well, that first year that I was playing football, our team went undefeated and we were coached by guys who played for killer, so these were like his players on these legendary teams. We all undefeated. And for going undefeated we went and we played at the halftime show of a giants jets game one year, wow, and I remember I was like little knees walking through the thing and michael stray hands like this and like so.
Speaker 3:After that I was like, well, this is, this is actually pretty cool that is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Hell, yeah, man, that's so. That's, that's a quite, that's quite an experience. I mean that's to me that's the equivalent of a kid walking in the ncaa championships for a wrestling kid, you know, I mean, and you get to walk down on the mats by where everybody's taking pictures and stuff and there goes bo nickel, you know that kind of thing, like holy cow. But so do your. I mean you, you're pretty well rounded when it comes to sports. You weren't just, uh, I did this one, in this one, I mean, you're talking about, uh, football, wrestling and and lacrosse and and baseball, and so you got, you're pretty well around it.
Speaker 2:I did, I did golf, I did soccer, I did wrestling, I did baseball. Um, I only excelled at one, but I mean I was trying everything too so good on mom and dad for that one. That's, that's pretty cool that they were able to to keep you going. And it takes a lot, you know, when a kid wants to do so much, and the money and things like that, it costs a lot for pads and all that other stuff. But so when you kind of were going through as you were, I would say going through your middle school career, we'll call it as you're kind of getting through middle school, did you start branching off and individualizing or did you try to go all the way through? Were you going through middle school and high school, trying everything you could?
Speaker 3:well. So I wasn't very obviously wasn't very, I was notably bad at everything when I started, but we come.
Speaker 2:I'm not going there, we're blue collar family right.
Speaker 3:So, like my dad was a stonemason. But over the summer, if you ever go and put a sidewalk in without a jackhammer, the way you do it is you take a pry, you put it up and you smash it with a sledgehammer. Yep, pick the rocks up, throw it on the truck, go to the dump, throw it off. My mom's dad owned a plastic manufacturing factory, so the job would be it was funny, she's going to laugh ripping papers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we would literally sit there and rip huge stacks of paper or moving huge drums of plastic pellets onto a pallet. So just through, like these types of kind of people say, like farm boy strength, I got really strong because I was doing these types of. So I go through and I kind of start picking up fifth, sixth grade, and I haven't grown since seventh grade, so I was pretty big at this point. I played football, wrestling, lacrosse all the way through middle school, football, wrestling, lacrosse all the way through middle school and coming into high school I mean I got second, I got a fun story for you, yeah. So I was going into sixth or seventh grade I was like I don't even really know that I want to wrestle anymore, right, and uh, it's funny, she's sitting there watching that's awesome I love it.
Speaker 3:He's like I don't really know that I want to wrestle anymore. It's just kind of I wasn't really that into it. And a buddy of mine, his kid brandon roll mick if anyone they probably might not, but he was number one in the country at a point in time, from Westfield Wrestled at Princeton Prep, fargo champ. He was a great wrestler. Yeah, his mom was like you want to wrestle for a schoolboy team? And I'm like so flattered. I'm like, wow, team New Jersey, that's so cool. We get these jackets and everything. Yeah, little do I know they don't even have a body at the weight. They just need anybody.
Speaker 3:So they come to me and it's funny she's next time I see her. I got a reminder at this point. Seventh grade, I'm like 250, like I was a big kid damn joe's like, but she goes.
Speaker 3:she was like the weight class is 225, though he's basically like you gotta lose to lose some weight dude. Yeah, you know cause they didn't. 250 was a weight class for the school boy team. 225 was the next one. So I remember I went down to Lakewood. I bought my little uniform from Mr and Mrs Han down in Lakewood. I still got it sitting in my. Not only do I still have it, the jacket is sitting right there in the closet.
Speaker 3:That's great so that's what kind of. So then we went out there and that was like the coolest thing ever. It's like, oh, we're new japan. David taylor was wrestling for ohio and logan stieber back then, and yeah, it was just like a really, really cool.
Speaker 3:And that's where I met dave bell, who was coach at burton catholic and he was people say like, oh, like recruiting, recruiting catholic recruited like he was just like a really good dude, like no one ever came and recruited me. He was just like a really good dude and burden Catholic wasn't very good at the time. So you know, after that school boy trip I really kind of picked it up and got more into it. I was, you know, second at kids dates and I am still sour about that.
Speaker 3:I think I might've been such a narcissist that I had them print off the state champ on the back of the hoodie at the thing he says I'm going to win, go, print it off already. And I lost. 20 years later I'm still, I know, just like a little asshole. So then that kind of led me to Bergen Catholic where I played football and I was a better football player than I was a wrestler even at that point. So I went over to burton catholic and football in the fall. Wrestling in the winter. Track and field shot put discus in the spring so it sounds like you.
Speaker 2:You kind of do the. It sounds like the wrestling helped your football right, like it would help to. I don't know, maybe help expand. I don't know if we know who Killer Hippie is here, brutal.
Speaker 3:He's a good dude. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But so, as you're going along and you're getting you know, you go to Bergen Catholic, which now we know is definitely put some kids out. You know, as far as I would say, both sports in general, but when you just when did you decide in your high school days that you wanted to do, that you were going to think about going to college to play sports? Was that ever a thought in your mind at all that this is, I love this one so much?
Speaker 3:I want to do it in college. Did you ever have that moment? You know what's funny about new jersey no one ever talked like that. No one said I want to go to iowa no one. And I never heard anyone talk. I want to be a state champ. Okay, like Like the state championships in New Jersey are I've been to the Superbowl, I've been to world championships there's no atmosphere like boardwalk hall for the state championships for wrestling. So everyone, like all of my group, no one was ever like I want to go to college and wrestle. They were like I'm going to be a state champ.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the kind of blue collar nature of new jersey is a lot of these guys don't go wrestling. I mean they do. It doesn't work right. New jersey's never been like pa in terms of college wrestlers. Sure, they're like dudes who go and they're they scrap and then they go be plumbers or electricians or something. Go work for dpw. You know that's so. It never really. I played football my freshman year and then going into oh man, you're gonna have to put a clock on me because I'll keep going into tangents that's why we're here so so I go.
Speaker 3:It was a strain on my family to be able to. Burton catholic was like 50 minutes away. There were times where like yeah, they would like I'd get up at five in the morning and I'd go up there and I'd sleep outside the building and then go in and go to school and go to. So I went there my freshman year and not like guilt, but like I appreciated the sacrifices people were making for me, right, and I didn't start my freshman year which in hindsight it's like I was a freshman heavyweight, like for a team that was top 10 and not number one top 10 team in the state. Yeah, but they, uh, they had a big football player who was like six, five, you know football player who was a junior and he beat me in my wrestle off by one point every single time. So I said all right, I said I'm gonna spend this off season and I'm gonna work like a dog this entire off season and that's what I did I'd go into school and I'd sleep outside.
Speaker 3:Before school I'd go to school, I'd go to track and field practice, I'd go run, and then they had this place called premier, which is now apex okay the original location that premier had was nicer than the olympic training center.
Speaker 3:It was an insane wrestling facility ultimately fizzled out and then they came back to be an apex. But I'd go over to premier and I'd lift and I'd wrestle. I'd get home at 10 o'clock. So I come into my sophomore year. This kid's a senior.
Speaker 3:I'm like kind of feeling some internal heat. Like you know, people are putting themselves out for me to be here, like no, and man, man, was I whooping that guy in practice? And I'll always, I'll always remember brian cushing, who played, obviously, in the nfl for years, wanted to wrestle his senior year at bergen and Pete Carroll and USC said ah, we don't want you like you know, we want you to focus on football, don't go waste your time. Yeah, so the day I was supposed to wrestle this kid off who you know was the incumbent starter I already had my singlet on, like I was ready to rock, and he came in and he was like well, you know my college, try to like pull a little bit of a cushion. It's like my con going to play college football. I don't want me to a day 30 minutes before the wrestle off.
Speaker 3:So that was how, uh that's a good story I would have I would have relished the opportunity to actually get the wrestle off Cause. Then it's like oh, you're just here, the other guy quit. You're not like the guy. It's like I wanted you know you're a competitor. Like I wanted that shot. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's, I mean, it sounds like that's how you've been, I mean for the most part. Once you, I mean going to a school, number one. You were dedicated enough as a kid because you understood what people were doing for you, but you're sleeping outside of a school, right, like just because of the advantage, or whatever it is, because you have the advantage of being able to go to a good school that your parents want to get you into, and I can attest to that. We moved, liam, I mean we moved from Oshkosh to Kaukauna, and it necessarily educational, but I mean just everything all around, like the. The schools in Oshkosh are not even close to what you know Kekona is and and what the grading system that they have for school. So we did the same thing, I mean, but we, we did what we needed to do to make sure that he was going to be successful.
Speaker 2:Now he's in sports as far as wrestling, and that's the only thing he's done. Like we tried, like I told you, we tried to get him in a bunch of little things, but you seem pretty dedicated to anything that you're doing, right? You seem like you've had, you said, blue collar family, same thing here, and when you get into something, you really dive into it and you try to put all you can into it. Being that you were a bigger kid, though, were you? Were you ever presented with challenges? Like you said, you had to drop some weight. What was that like for you, having to drop weight?
Speaker 3:being that size later in life, best thing that could have happened because you have that chip on your shoulder. Like I'd walk out on a mat and like people laugh or people like look at you funny, like look at this fat little kid, oh he's not. Like I could ball. So for me, like it was always kind of like chip on my shoulder but I struggled with that through. I mean, in high school I wrestled at like 265, 270, wow. But you know, later in life, in my early 20s, I was almost 320 pounds man.
Speaker 2:Wow. So I got up to like 240, 245. But I'm talking about a guy that was in his 40s not at a young age, Because I think I played so much soccer that I think that's how I stayed in shape. If I didn't play soccer I would have been in the same spot, because my brother always called me the fat kid. I was the guy that was running around the soccer field. That was bigger than everybody, but I also ran people over because I didn't have to worry about them blocking me out or knocking me over. When you wind up going to Bergen and you're on the football team and then wrestling team, did you I'll ask again, did you ever wind up cutting it out to just one sport, or did?
Speaker 3:you stay multi-sports all the way through high school. So after my freshman year I went through freshman football. I came into wrestling. I was not in wrestling shape so coming in I was really kind of motivated, like okay, like I want this spot. It's like I can't be. No disrespect to football, but football shape is not wrestling shape. I was like when wrestling season starts I want to be in wrestling shape.
Speaker 2:So it was at that point after my freshman year that I was like just wrestling well I, I think we see a good reason of why he probably had some hard times bringing weight down. Liam has the same thing. A lot of pasta here, a lot of pasta in this house, I'll tell you that much right now. But, um, so that? So that's, that's an awesome I.
Speaker 2:I think to to me the just the perspective that, like I said, that you already had as a kid kind of understanding that people were putting themselves out there to be able to get you to something that was a little bit better. You know something like that, I mean, and maybe it was or wasn't. Your mom can yell at me if she wants to. I can totally appreciate that. But as far as the aspect of education now, because what you do, what were you into as a high school student? I mean, we can talk about kids till we're blue in the face what they're interested in, but once you got into high school, you start to kind of mature more. You start kind of thinking about things a little bit more of like maybe what you want to do or whatever. But what were? What? Were you starting to gear towards education wise, as you're going through high school? Were you veering towards anything like writing or anything like that. What was your love?
Speaker 3:Ask me what I want to be now when I grow up. You know I had no idea. But something that always stuck with me that I always thought about was I love music, rock and roll, for the same reasons that I love sports, in that you can do something you really, really love and totally bypass all economic and social boundaries. It's like a true home run. And I always remember a story my dad told me about how the Van Halens never had a job. The only job they ever had was painting numbers on the curves. And I always thought like in the back of my head man, how cool must that be? So only ever do exactly what you want to do, like what you really love. So like in terms of school I wasn't a bad student, like I was like a B plus kind of student, but like I had to be really engaged. So I was never, you know.
Speaker 2:I was never thinking, oh, what do I want to?
Speaker 3:do for a career. What do I want to? So I'll I'll speed it up. Yeah, timeline wise is. I went to cause this kind of wraps, some of these up yeah.
Speaker 3:I went to well. I got recruited by a couple of schools. At high school I mean by the time I graduated high school I won freestyle states in Jersey a couple of times. I was always like the guy on the cadet teams and the junior dual teams like I qualified for actual regular states in new jersey and got pinned in like 30 seconds trying to lefty arm throw.
Speaker 3:But oh, we're not sour about that either, still. But so, like I was, you know I was pretty good. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't knocking on my door, but I was good enough where Division I was a possibility. So I chose Bloomsburg and I tweeted a nice story about Coach Stutz who, if people didn't see it, I went on four recruiting trips and the first one was to Division II, newberry, and this was before like flow or video or anything. So all these schools only saw me on paper. They didn't even know what I looked like. They only saw my resume. And when I got to Newberry the guy almost said like you are way fatter than we thought and just like totally blew me off the entire weekend, didn't talk to me. They were like go do your thing, goodbye. And I was like like okay, yeah, and they were good. They were number one d2 team in the country, so like that kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah and I didn't like the school anyway. But so I went to maryland and coach beckerman took me around and he was awesome, very cool, very, you know. But financially and like the size of the school I'm out of state. I was like I don't know that maryland's a good fit. Then I go to bloomsburg and I remember coach stutz was like best little man, best little big man in the country. He was like same, you're the same size as Mako. He was like we'll get this done, this, that, this. And he was like which? I'm not Mako is a little bigger than me, but he was really enthusiastic. He put my application through. He was always checking in on me and for me later in life I appreciated that. I was like, oh, they didn't need me, they weren't buttering me up because I was some blue chip recruit. It was just like a good juke. I was like, okay, bloomsburg, probably the way I committed to Bloomsburg and never wrestled.
Speaker 3:At this point I hear people talk like burnout or this, that and the third, and I think a lot of times people don't realize for me it wasn't burnout, it was just like stage of my life, like you. Know you, how many people love something when they're 12 years old and then love that same thing the same way when they're 18, 19, 20. True, like people want to attribute it to burnout, but it's like maybe you're just like an adult. You have other interests you want to have. I never had a normal life Like my life was always consumed.
Speaker 2:I was like you know what.
Speaker 3:I was like probably not, you know my thing. Fine. So I go to Bloomsburg for three semesters and I am getting crushed in debt. It's like piling up. I never even declared a major. I was doing good in school. I had good grades, dean's List. I was doing good in school because I was used to doing 50 things at once. I'm like, oh, this is a joke. Okay, cool, I'm gonna come, I'll go do my school, I'll go party with my buddies. And it's funny because if you presented that in another way of a better recruit, you'd be like this guy scumbag this, that burnout. It's like I just wanted to have a normal life for a little bit. Yeah, which, which was good for me. So I go there for three semesters and I'm like my name's a clarion major. I have no idea what I want to do. I'm getting in a ton of debt and it's funny because everything worked out. But but leaving wasn't some type of Mark Zuckerberg? I got this brilliant idea. It was like no mas. So I come back to New Jersey. I'm living in my mom's house Again, 320 pounds and I'm delivering soups and salads for a restaurant in town Driving a $500 beater.
Speaker 3:The light Saturn. It was a Saturn. The light dangled from the thing, yeah, and I'm like what am I 20 at the time and like no idea what I want to do? And eventually and this is probably like a little arrogant, but I was this is, I don't know, early 2010s and I'm like man. The people who do the wrestling rankings for the star ledger don't really do a very good job and at this point, people that were in high school were like my peers, they were like my friends, so I knew this. Like you know, the traditional journalists were doing football, baseball, wrestling they're not like. So I went and I started a google blog spot and I called it garden state wrestling. And I went and I taught myself how to build this little rinky-dink website.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I had one really strong marketing channel was a forum on njcom and that really kind of so I put out some rankings and I posted it on the forum and it got like 2000 pages the first time I ever did it, wow, which now is crazy. But then traffic on the internet was so concentrated, yeah, so, like, at that point I was like, okay, let's like do some more and yeah, some more, yeah and uh, that of. So I'm doing this for fun while I'm delivering soups to people who don't give me tips in my beat up car and uh, I come across. This is as flow. Wrestling is coming up, oh, okay. And I just remember thinking I was like this is so cool, like they were so authentic, like to me is like an actual wrestler Right Traditional newspapers. It's not really authentic. It's like Big J, but they were not even Little J. They were like out there and wearing headbands and like you know, doing crazy stuff, man, this is so cool, yeah. And like you know, doing crazy stuff, man, this is so cool, yeah.
Speaker 3:So that kind of got me into you know, making videos and okay eventually I really became interested in like live streaming stuff because I didn't know any better. I was like you know what this is? His twitter is becoming popular and I remember at the new jersey all-star match one year there was a row of I didn't know any better. So there's like a press spot where the press sits and they're all sitting there and they're like I'm gonna live tweet the thing and me, like a bozo, I take a folding table up and I put it on the corner of the mat and I put a big banner that says garden state wrestling and I take my laptop out and I duct tape my phone on the back side of my laptop and I stream the entire all-star match that year.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, through this program called you stream yeah, and again tons of viewers like got me like really excited about it and I'm not making any money here doing this at all. I'm still doing whatever. Yeah, for a kid at that point too, that's not very your friends. Or at college, or Westfield's a wealthy town, all my peers, they're getting internships in the city and I'm like the poor fat kid with his like beat up car doing you know.
Speaker 2:Meal deliveries. Gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So eventually I'm like you know what I was like. It would be really cool to crazy. In hindsight I'm like it'd be really cool to work for this dark ledger. And this is in this age of the internet. It's not easy to find people who are right, like now. You can find anyone, find them on linkedin. Send them a message takes five minutes. Yep, could not do it back then.
Speaker 3:So, like a total bozo, I show up in a full suit to the newsroom with a resume and I which, if you've ever been in a newsroom, people aren't wearing a shirt and a tie and I basically just asked I run this website called Garden State Wrestling. I can make videos. I know a lot about wrestling and, by God's good grace. They were like okay, we'll give you 500 bucks an hour, come make videos for football and then, if that works, you can do wrestling. What sparked me was their writer, who had covered wrestling, had just retired. It was like the turn of the internet and he'd been there for a long time. So I'm like and it was probably insensitive I reached out to him and was like hey, I really like this. It's kind of cringy in hindsight because I was his baby, yeah, but I just showed up and kind of begged my way into the gig and I was extremely raw, right, like I could kind of make videos, yeah.
Speaker 3:But you know, when it came for me to like actually have to write stuff, I remember they sent me to cover a high school football playoff game and I came back and I wrote a story and I had no idea what I was doing. They were, right, like a new story. It's like the inverse triangle right, you lead with the most important stuff. I just like, chronologically, this is what happened. They threw my story out. They didn't even take the editor rewrote it. Yeah, it was terrible, but credit to them is they knew I had the wrestling knowledge, so they worked me through it. Right, they were like they would read my articles and I wish we had this type of I don, we had this type of loyalty in the workplace today. But they took me and I'd go in his office and he'd read my thing and I'd watch him edit it in real time. He'd give me stuff read this, read that. Go sit with this guy, ask him questions. But really my thing was like what really got me excited was eyeballs and like you need people read my stuff and even though my work wasn't very good, it got a ton of traction because I knew how to get people to read it. So I'm, I'm going through this year at the star ledger goes really well, all is well and good. But I'm seeing the old school journalism guys there and I'll always remember one of the editors, an older guy, was kind of like I took the wrong career. You know, this isn't a good.
Speaker 3:I was working at the newspaper when the newspaper closed and they turned it into just a website like their own company. Wow, yeah, closed and they turned it into just the website like the own owned company. Wow, yeah. So at this point in time I'm so delusional that I'm like you know what would be really cool? I work for the giants. I'm like this already worked for the newspaper and like I have nothing to lose, right. I'm like, yes, it would be really cool. I grew to lose, right, it would be really cool. I grew up a giant span. Like it'd be really cool if I worked for the giants. So I find some guys email who, again, this is like kind of cringy and embarrassing and I can't believe it worked.
Speaker 3:But I send them an email and I say hey you know I work at NJcom this and that I would love to work for the Giants. And it was starting and he actually responded, which to me was like just getting the Giants to respond to me was the coolest thing ever. So I go and he says no, we're not interested right now. I say okay, so I send him an email once a month for the next year. They start to get a little eccentric. I'm like I'll mop the floors, I don't care Anything, anything you want, you don't have to pay me. And so eventually I go into the next year at the Star Ledger. I get a lot better writing. I've got my National Wrestling Media Journalist of the Year trophy sitting up here from when I was like 21. And I was doing well. But eventually I hear back from I uh trying to think of timelines here.
Speaker 3:Before my second season at the star ledger. The giants came back to me and they're like would you be interested in being a transcriptionist, someone who transcribes press conferences? Yeah, yeah, I would say less when, where. So I went and uh, I showed up like a total clown, looking like I'm ready to be on the sidelines, like a visor and a giant polo, like total goof. And uh, I I interviewed with this guy who used to work. The guy who I interviewed with is their senior writer, used to work at the star ledger and you know, interview went really well, but at this point I couldn't pick one or the other. Financially, yeah, the giants paid me 10 bucks an hour so I had to keep the newspaper, but they were inverse hours, okay, but for me it's like I've been my bar, for what's hard is like again. I go to school five in the morning, go wrestle all day and get back at 10 at night and, like I never thought about it that way, I was like that's just the way it is yep.
Speaker 3:So I went in that first season. I worked at the giants. They would make fun of me. I'd pull up in a different $500 beater. It was a late 80s Lincoln Mark VII diesel. The anti-theft on that car you had to turn the defroster on before you turned the key over to start the car. Oh my God. That's clever.
Speaker 3:It clever like fading black paint. It saved me from getting car jacked, covering high school football once but ever. So I go and I I get into the giants and I'm like here's a fun story. My first day there. I started as an intern. So there's me and 10 other interns and they start across the room. I'm the last one to go. They start with someone else. It doesn't get out of his chair. He sits there. He says my name's billy.
Speaker 3:I go to this college. My uncle knows this guy and he kind of set the structure and then everyone after that follows that because they all knew somebody, right? Next one says oh, my name's sally. I went here. My aunt knows one of the marrows, and they all go and it finally comes to me and I'm like, well, shit, I didn't really go anywhere and I don't know anybody. So I'm like what do I? So I'm like, okay, I went. I stood up and I'm like, well, I didn't really go anywhere and I don't know anybody. So I'm like what do I? So I'm like, okay, I went and I stood up and I said I'm so excited to be here and like I can't wait to learn from you all. This is dream come true, like whatever, so which, ultimately, I think they like.
Speaker 2:I think they like.
Speaker 3:How was the reception to that? I think they liked it, but I was just kind of. My takeaway from that, though, is when people talk about equal and fair opportunities, say, sure, there are spots at the table for people like me, but it's one of them. The other nine are for people like that. Yes, you can get in. Yes, you can get in. Yes, you can do it. It's much, much harder. Just from that little exchange. I go through this entire season, and I took pride that I worked at the newspaper at night. They'd ask me. They were like still at the paper. I'm like till midnight every night, 3 in the morning, 8 o'clock.
Speaker 2:I didn't know how to do anything. I just wanted to be like I'm gonna work like a dog. You were whole assing it, you weren't half assing it. That's what I like is you were in, you know come in on my day off.
Speaker 3:They were nice. They would let me take dinner. I would go straight from east east rutherford back to the office. They'd let me grab dinner at the cafeteria, take it with me, wow. So eventually and I know I'm on a full talking at you tangent, but you're fine, dude.
Speaker 3:That's why we're here, you're good so I go through my second season at the Star Ledger. It was my first season at the Giants, I win this award. People are coming up to me at events. I'm like this young kid. It was cool. And I told the Giants. I was like, please, can I come back next year? I was like, pretty, pretty, please. And at this time the Star ledger, as the newspaper, was folding and they were reorganizing as njcom, just a digital publication, and they told me they were like you can't go work for the giants again because technically the website also covers the giants. It's conflict of interest, yeah, yeah. So the giants told me they were like well, you can come back for another year, but you're not really supposed to. So just show up on the first day and we'll tell mr mayor, you're already here and what are we going to do about it?
Speaker 3:so I'm sitting here I'm like I didn't quit my job for just a little bit of roll the dice, you know?
Speaker 3:yeah, so I quit my job at the newspaper yeah, and I go back for and you know I would go into the giants on my day off. I'd stay there all day. I had nothing else to do anyway, and I slowly started to pick up responsibilities. I write blogs for their blog that was like totally dead and no one saw. But I wrote two blogs every single day, even though no one saw it, and I'd report on the data to, like you know, someone who's now one of my closest friends, who's their svp of marketing, was their head of digital.
Speaker 3:He's like, yeah, you can write the dead blog that no one sees. Hey, man, look at all the traffic, look at this, look at that. What do you think about this? Right, they'd let me work on the switchboard on their shows, screening calls, doing grunt work, mostly transcribing press conferences, which is the lowest position in the entire organization. It's lower than the ball boys. I'm not out on the field, it's literally the most lowly. But I am approaching with a lot of enthusiasm the second season's coming up. Dude, you can't, can't. They pay me 10 bucks an hour. Right, they were like you can't go back again, we don't. They were like we would love for you to. There's just not a position. People at the giant stay there. Everyone I worked with at the giant still works there.
Speaker 3:Their lifers like yeah I could sit here and spend this entire time saying nice things about how good they were to me, how good they are to everyone, what a good organization, yeah, but you can't come back right, okay, fine. So now, like the heat's kind of starting, I'm living on my own now in the ghetto and I'm like you know what am I going to do? Yeah, yeah. And in week like 14 or 15, the guy who was their director of digital, who I was writing the blogs for, was like what do you think about Tampa Bay? I was like I just I'm thinking like I want a roof over. I don't care, send me anywhere, except for like Cleveland or Washington. But uh, so I'm like Tampa that sounds pretty cool, you know. So I go down there, I interview. I didn't want to tell the giant, I didn't want to tell my boss I was going. I was like I got to take a day off, but I can do all my work, I'll be here and that.
Speaker 2:And eventually he was like dude.
Speaker 3:I know this guy. He was a former giant okay, yeah, the books, yep so I went down there and we kind of clicked and I got in a third. We're now in my third 500 car I've had since beginning this rant. I got in another $500 car and I told myself I said, if this car makes it one way to Florida, I'm in, Get me there.
Speaker 2:If it makes it and it doesn't start, they're stuck with you. You're staying there.
Speaker 3:I was like I didn't even think about it. If it doesn't start, I'm like this is the only this has got to happen. That's what.
Speaker 3:I got. Yeah, so we get down to. I drive down all the way by myself down to Tampa and increasing responsibilities, like I was. We talk about, like this is a wrestling podcast. Right, we talk about wrestling. But my perception of what's difficult was always skewed. They say, oh, you wrestle, everything is easy but it's cliche. Right, but that was true for me. It's like my perspective of what was hard. It's like we're breaking bricks in the summer and we're playing football running too much and we're wrestling.
Speaker 3:When I only was able to focus on one thing BC. So we've got you know Bucks doing well. I got there when we were the worst team in the league and QB was at the podium crying. They were on the way to the number one draft pick and we turned it around from the digital side through a lot of this data analysis and we saw that our app had a lot of engagement. We saw the types of content that our app was engaging with. I'm sitting there and it's slowly trickling responsibilities. It's like, okay, now you write articles for the site, now you make the content calendar. By the time I was there, everyone above me had left, so I was really running the whole department for the better part of the season. So how do we end up back at wrestling?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great question Yep, so everyone above me had left. I'm the lowest level position above an intern. I've been there for three years. I'm ready for a promotion right, I deserve to be promoted. Yeah, three years, I'm ready for a promotion right, like I deserve to be promoted. Yeah, the bucks now have their third or fourth chief marketing officer. The entire time I'm there it was like a revolving door told this new guy. I said you know I'm ready for a promotion. He says okay, well, we'll figure it out when we have this org restructure meeting. We have this org restructure meeting and this new guy. We have it in the auditorium of the team facility. After hours this guy comes out on the stage with this little headset like Steve Ballmer Ooh, this that Really. And the point of that meeting was that there is no org chart and there is no restart. So I leave that meeting. I walk through the team facility out back to the football field and called your buddy, joe Williamson. I said they still looking over at you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, over at the old FOW yeah okay. Thanks Joe. Thank you Joe. My guy.
Speaker 2:So how, what we're? I mean obviously being being able to, because I'm going to roll back into the the rockfin article you wrote. Okay, because that kind of died. That was back in high school. That that memory is from right because it's because I want to tie it into your writing a little bit, because reading it to me you already were a writer. You know that kind of thing. So when you were kind of going through that process of of going through high school athletics and I don't mean to rewind too far as far back- as I totally took it off the rails I don't know.
Speaker 2:You're fine because I was gonna let and we're either way, I was coming back to this. So what you sat down this article was about that. It was about an eye opening situation that you had, right um, and so I, so we don't have to discuss the entire thing. But so because you saw the things that you saw with addiction and things like that and just kind of like whole kind of a mind-blowing situation for a young man, where did that, I guess, story take? You Was that kind of the thing where you were like maybe this was too much. As far as the sports Because you talked about when you were going to be done with high school, you're kind of like sports, you're like it's not something that I really want to dedicate my life to. Did that story play a part in that?
Speaker 3:Sure, sure, well. So for whoever's listening that hasn't heard, there's a story about a buddy of mine. Opiates ravaged the part of new jersey where I'm from and it's a nice part of new jersey. They're not like people think, like junkies are like, and I think now, on the tail end, we see these are like good kids from better families than me, so I'll retell it. We were sitting in my buddy's living room and his brother came in and said you guys, brother's a serial criminal. Now he's in trouble for everything. Bad guy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And he comes and he says you guys try this, this little pill, and like I wasn't like this, like goody two-shoe kid where I was gonna be like oh no, I'm so high and mighty I would.
Speaker 3:You're a kid, you want to fit in, it's not. But I never fucked around during wrestling season. I, I didn't drink, I didn't go to parties, that was my only. When the season ends sure, this is like right after the season, going into Fargo stuff or something, he says you got to try these things. He crushes it up on his yearbook, passes it around, he passes it to my buddy who's sitting right next to me, snorts this pill which I've never seen, seen in movies or whatever. Yeah, he looked at me and he says this is the best feeling I've ever felt before and and I kind of took a minute and two of my teammates at Bourbon Catholic had just won state championship and I told you about what that atmosphere is like in New Jersey and my, there's no type of like. I knew better. My only thought in that particular moment was there is no way that can feel better than what I just saw my two buddies do, dancing on that mat and everyone going crazy like I didn't.
Speaker 3:I didn't see where it was going, I didn't have any type of it, just kind of clicked at me and I've always kind of beat on my own drum. You know I was if I don't like something, I don't like something, I'm not gonna. So I heard that and I was like, well, no, I don't want the best feeling that I ever feel. I want to be a state champ. So I was like no, it's not for me. Yeah, pass it around. And you know, I should pull the card up about five years since he died really, which is, yeah, yeah, wow. So, yeah, I need to put a reminder. I have his birthday as a reminder on my phone.
Speaker 2:I don't have the day he died as a reminder I really wanted that story to be out there because there is a lot of and it's on rockman you guys, he, if you guys are on rockman, joe does have it on there. I did want that to be told just because I think, and especially now where we see there's, especially with social media, the explosion of it and kids having so much access to it, and not just drugs itself but just social pressure, right Cause, that's that's to me, that's what I took away from that was you. You you definitely were able to again the mind, the mindfulness of exactly what was going on. You had a different idea of what good was right and you obviously pushed yourself even further into that and I think your, your mom, actually agrees. So that's one of the things that I wanted that to be out, because I think kids misinterpret a lot of the feel goods that are out there. You know there's the rushes that that are important, like, because they don't know those rushes yet they haven't felt every single rush that you could feel. So they see an easy way to feel a rush and it's accessible and they want to go to it and not work for it, whereas you don't. You didn't have to work for that Someone just handed it to you. You're like this is the best feeling, and and again in a kid's frame of mind.
Speaker 2:Not every kid wants to work right.
Speaker 2:Not every kid wants to go through the hard part of getting to something and that's the hard part for him.
Speaker 2:But I wanted that story in particular to be out there because my my wife is a good friend, that he was an addict but he didn't necessarily die from the addiction, but he got into a place in life where the addiction took him to a bad place.
Speaker 2:So I think it's important that the perspective that you had at that time especially putting the sports perspective in front of the drug perspective, thinking this is the high that I want, being out in front of that crowd, being able to win, and my friends will be around with me too, because in front of that crowd being able to win and my friends will be around with me too, because my teammates will be there, that kind of thing. I think it's important for that to be out there, for kids to realize that you can look at it and be like that's stupid, that's, that's dumb, it's, there's no point. I have greater things that I can accomplish along the road. I think the instant gratification generation is is still alive and well because they're they're kids and they want to feel things right away. But I think that having that perspective and I, if I can I don't know if that is that is that premium on on a Rockman I can't remember Is that zero subscribers.
Speaker 2:If anyone wants to be my first subscriber check me out, jump on, but I I because you'd mentioned and I think I read it uh, read something about it where you posted it up on twitter and I was like that's interesting, I'm on rock, but I'll go check that out. When I read that, it struck me entirely. So I appreciate you sharing that with the world in general. But go and read the whole thing, guys, because it's it's definitely worth the read. It's definitely worth having your kids read as well.
Speaker 2:So, all right, now we're going to fast forward a little bit, because now we're getting into the wrestling world back again, here again, where you're talking about working at Flow Wrestling, because you mentioned Joe Williamson, joe Williamson of Grow Wrestling. Formerly he was part of Grow Wrestling. He started it and then he got busy. He's doing his own thing, I think, down in missouri. So, um, joe's staying busy. But you got, uh, you got in touch with joe williamson and asking about flow wrestling. So how did that transpire? When you're you have a phone conversation with joe, and and how did everything roll out from that?
Speaker 3:well, I met joe when I was doing the garden state wrestling thing. I met him at the iron horse invitational at south plainfield. I remember like it was yesterday.
Speaker 3:He asked me to do a video about garden state wrestling and I was kind of like shy about it. I wish I did, because that would be so cool to have now. I kept in touch with talk about good people and wrestling doesn't get better than that guy yeah, all the way through, right. So I call him and they had a job posting up. I called him and I was like he would hit me up here and there asking about stuff about New Jersey and rights for something whatever. So we always kept in touch. Yeah, and I called him. I was so I'm surprised I'm not cross-eyed from how hard my eyes rolled at that last org meeting with the little heads. Tiny little thing with like a little. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:A bubble.
Speaker 3:On the end of it, yeah, I was like I can't do this anymore. That's awesome. So I say you guys, you know, I wanted a little more creative freedom, like something. That always kind of helped me is like a blissful arrogance. I can do more, I can do better. They're holding, you know, the professional sports. I learned a ton and I met some great people and I loved my time there. Yeah, but there's red tape to do stuff.
Speaker 3:So, particularly instagram which is weird now, but it was a long time ago is the idea of the dissemination of information happening on platform and quickly. Everyone had been sharing ideas at this point in time through link posts on Facebook and Twitter primarily. But if I'm a data person, it's like well, a thousand people see this article. We had this plugin called Chartbeat at the box and I could see how long and how far people got down the website. So I'm like well, a thousand people saw this article, 200 people clicked it. 75% of people don't even get past the first frame. Nobody is consuming the information that we're delivering this way. So I said Instagram is the future. I want to tell stories that you can consume in 10 seconds that are just as impactful as a story that you traditionally would have to click through and read. It's harder to write. In a newspaper industry. It's easy to write. They call it inches. In a newspaper, anyone can write a story in 30 inches. Tell that same story in four inches six inches way harder. So at the Bucks I was thinking well, I want to be able to deliver these messages in a consumable on platform way to the largest audience possible. It's hard to go through the hierarchy of a corporation like that to make such a drastic change. So I would present the Bucks flow wrestling stuff, because I was such a fan. I said they do a beautiful job in layering content. They have feature documentaries, they have goofy social posts and everything in between. It's got to be layered. Okay, I call Joe. He says yeah, you know I, we got this job up.
Speaker 3:I interviewed with Nick Belkett, who's one of the most underappreciating people in wrestling. He's the first marketing person at Flow Wrestling. He worked there for like 10 years. He's a genius and a good friend. And this guy, nick Shank, who was former Houston Texans visual staff oh, that was good for me, right, I'm coming from the NFL. He knows some people in my same circle. Yeah, and Nick said something to me and I'm not going to repeat it. Nfl. He knows some people in my same circle. Nick said something to me and I'm not going to repeat it, but he said something that was foreshadowing as to what would come On my interview. He hardly knew me. He basically told me. He said we want to shatter some norms, we want to be creative and we want to shatter some norms.
Speaker 3:I was like sign me up, say less so I've never been to texas before the first time. It's funny. The first time I ever went to texas I was driving the u-haul and they had these skyways. One lane goes over the highway. I drove straight through. I've been drinking coffee, I haven't sleep, I haven't been sleeping and I hate heights. I'm terrified of heights. So I'm driving a u-haul on this thing. It looks like I'm floating through the air. First time I ever stepped foot down in texas. I get out of the u-haul, puke everywhere. Oh so upset from no, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh man, so what were you so in, just in the conversations and because you already had been in wrestling for so long, what, when you, when you talk about shattering norms, like what in in that conversation, what, what type of norms were there already? I mean, you guys were, you guys weren't the weren't the norm? You know that was, you guys were. As far as flow wrestling, those guys were kind of it was different like no one before flow wrestling I couldn't even go out. There were forums, of course you know every state had their own forums that talked about whatever sport, but there there wasn't a whole lot of media. You know there was the olympics and you know, maybe maybe you caught your state cover in the state tournament or something like that, but it was already kind of a shattered norm. What, I guess what? What were they? What was the concept behind the shattering portion?
Speaker 3:because they're already beyond the norm already from the digital perspective, okay, not from wrestling industry or media. They basically I don't know if they wanted it or that's what I gave them, but I said I'm going to bring what I learned at the pinnacle. I spent five seasons in the NFL. I'm going to take that and just have free reign to blow up all the strategies that I didn't like, where I think things could be better, strategies that I didn't like where I think things could be better. And I got there. I say Instagram. I got there. They had 10,000 followers and the Instagram at this time was like I post once a week, like a throwback Thursday, like it had no rhyme or reason. So my first thought is well, I now understand through data analysis that the way that we're distributing information this is where the norm got shattered the way that we're distributing information isn't consumable. We had a thousand people who could have consumed this message we sold out for 200 link clicks and then only 40 people actually read the article. We're wasting our time, yeah Right. So my first kind of and I spent a lot of time just on this If you look now, I think they're close to a million. I left them a little over half a million 600,000 in like two years, from 10,000 to 600,000. Wow. But what we did and it didn't track wrestling had the same number of followers at that time. It was like neck and neck.
Speaker 3:But my strategy that I came in was I need people to be able to consume these messages in one picture and six words. How can we make people see, feel, think about a complex topic with just those types of assets and also volume? They were posting once a week. I started posting 20 times a day, no problem, and sometimes, and sometimes like as it went through, like I would post, like super goofy, I had this gimmick where I would post a picture of a random piece of fruit and I'd say name this fruit, whatever, whatever, whatever, because it seemed well, it seems goofy, but the strategy behind that is what the fuck are they talking about what? And then people would comment it was like a fun, like gimmick people. I post a banana and they did pineapple. I did oh, close, but not close.
Speaker 3:And someone would say blueberries, I think oh, almost engagement, but well, but what that also made the audience feel like is we were speaking to them and not at them, which I think is a problem in all of social media. I wanted their feed to feel like a friend. I didn't want clean, pretty graphics. I didn't want hype videos. I wanted janky, low-quality assets that made me feel like I was speaking to you, not I was speaking at you. And the fruit.
Speaker 3:It's like you stop and you take a minute and you think and you're like what, what's going on here? And then you come and you say something goofy and I say something goofy back and you feel good as the user. Oh, they acknowledge me. Oh, I'm part of the joke. Sure, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:So you know, we talk about austin de santo, yep, which for me, again, it all comes back to data. Everything that I ever did I could root in data. So the first time we say he's leaving drexel, I post a graphic and I say where's he gonna go? And I put a couple of terrible graphic. I'm not a graphic designer, it's just like logos slopped on a picture where should he go? And it got like thousands of comments for me. I'm in this data every day and I'm like people might be really interested here, yeah.
Speaker 3:So then I go back and I post a couple goofy ones. Should you go to where you know, like, just to like speak to the people and have fun? Yep, if we're not. Social media and sports is an entertainment product if I'm not having fun, you're not having fun. If none of us are having fun, we're wasting our time. So I I post a couple you know goofy graphics. We get some more, but I was able to see behind the data, like this is an opportunity. This time we had big 10 matches that weren't on tv, that we were broadcasting. We had him wrestling on the platform and, fortunately, through this hierarchy that existed at the time, they let me run crazy with nick velcat, made with a straight face. We. There was a point in time where we were putting the santo's face in random parts of unrelated pictures and like a really translucent way.
Speaker 2:I remember those. I remember those.
Speaker 3:Yeah, nick went up with the straightest face and was like our subliminal messaging marketing strategy and he has like Budweiser and Pepsi and all of these total straight face Like. But again it makes people be like, is that desanto in the back of a right? But now they're looking and now they're thinking very critically about everything that's being posted. Now they're hanging out there and they're seeing that there's a means to an end. It's not just like shit posting and goofy, it's like yeah, it is, but the strategy is I want you to think about this person. There's chess and there's checkers. If you want somebody to watch a wrestling match with someone, the last thing you want to do is say watch this person here, now Checkers. What you want to do is jab, jab, jab, hook. I want to do something goofy, I want to do a match-up, I want to do a throwback thing of his match and then I want to say watch him.
Speaker 3:So he, he had such engagement on the back end that there was a point in time where people watch his matches more than Jordan Burroughs Statistically he was the most watched wrestler and I think some of it is because of him and his personality. I think some of it is the institutional support for some of these off collar marketing strategies that kind of made them like a quasi celebrity, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean mean honestly, if, in knowing those posts because I mean I've I've been following flow for quite some time and knowing those posts like as a, as a general person I'll call myself the civilian sitting off to the side. Now I'm the one scrolling through and all of a sudden you see austin de santo's head popping up in the back seat of someone's like caravan or something like that. You're like what the hell was that austin? And you scroll back through that and, yeah, I click on that right, like that's, that's like a what now? What is it saying? They're like, are they saying he's taking a ride in a minivan somewhere? Like what's going on? Nope, then you guys are just talking about some. Hey, austin's taking a trip over to here, he's you know whatever.
Speaker 2:So it works. It works and, trust me, I'm trying to take as many notes as I can right now. I'm paying attention to what you're saying, cause it. It actually makes. Not only does it engage, but it sounds like for the person doing it. It's just as fun for the person doing it, you know, as their job, like it's. It's something that you kind of talked about before, like I want to do something that I like you know something that I want to do and you didn't get it instantly but, man, you were working your way to get to that and now you're there. And so some of the some of the other I mean there's got to have been crazier things that happened there, because now I remember watching joel williamson making weird videos of him. Uh, were they in a hotel room and they're wrestling and and some of the bits that they did.
Speaker 3:The Russians arm wrestling that was my favorite bit, I would pump that all the time. The drunk Russians are smoking cigarettes trying to arm wrestle Yep.
Speaker 2:And then they brought Greg Wasn't Greg Warren on for some of them, because he was a Missouri guy along with Joe, and they did some little skits and stuff like that. I can't remember what the couple different uh outfits they put on and they're playing characters, but so you guys were having fun. I mean, to me I want to almost paint it out as like the google of wrestling, right like you guys were having fun doing what you're doing. I mean, I'm sure there's still some structure to it, but were you guys able to just kind of, when you walked into work were you in flip-flops and in shorts and and yeah, see, that's what I'm saying, so that things must have got a little crazy at times around there just having fun in general. So that sounds like it was in the beginning and we all we all know I mean, especially if you've been in the wrestling world that flow wrestling's kind of taking some little turns here and there and doing whatever they do, but at the same point it seems like it's a pretty.
Speaker 2:It seemed like at that point it was a pretty free-flowing type of thing. Guys were having wrestlers, like you were actually seeing wrestlers that were joining the crews and having fun doing something. It made wrestling. It seemed like a little more accessible to people, not just sweaty dudes and singlets on a mat, you know, grabbing each other, like they say um, but you made it, you guys made it more engaging. You made it more, um, uh, biteable for someone like the, an outside person, like my wife, for example, who knows sports but didn't know anything about wrestling, and now she knows the place that she can go to check out wrestling news and just kind of see what's going on on twitter and things like that.
Speaker 2:But when you're, when you're there and kind of going through the process of what they do, how long before I guess things start to kind of like change a little bit. Because I, I know, obviously we all know of Rockfin, you know and we know of Float Wrestling and we know that the, the brothers, existed and things like that, that the things that happened. But when, when did when were things starting to kind of change? It was that, was that very long after you were there, was that like a year or two?
Speaker 3:so I've worked. I run a marketing business now. I work with tons of different clients yeah I lost tons of clients. In anything, anything I've ever done anywhere, I lose five times as much as everyone else. I'm just so stupid that I keep coming back for more. So I've lost clients where I didn't do as well as I should have, which isn't very many. But sometimes the product isn't viable, sometimes the startup runs out of money, sometimes right you, you lose some of those.
Speaker 3:What I found is sometimes, if you do too good of a job, what I see, what I've seen in some places where I think I've done my best work, is inter-organizational subversion. You do a really, really good job and then someone's like Ooh, I want that responsibility. Ooh, I like what's happening here. Oh, I want this, I want this voice. So I said the hierarchy is nick shank and then nick belkett and then it's myself, mhm. They were my advocates, who allowed me to perform freely, which resulted in these types of performances. If someone came and they had a problem with it or they didn't like it, and anytime you try to disrupt anything, people aren't going to like it, like you're going to have to. You know, always, anytime you do something new, you need advocates in your corner to be like oh, that's my guy, this is working. I explained the fruit and the subliminal message. Right, I could come and I could root it to like data and business KPIs while we were doing this. I was having a lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 3:So for me it started to go downhill when those guys left and I no longer had those advocates and the platform started to get really big, because now and you see it, I mean, I've run some huge social accounts in sports. I mean fan-controlled football I built from nothing to $150,000. Fan-controlled football I built from nothing to $150,000. When the platforms get too big, everyone wants their hand in the cookie jar. Everyone wants to. I want to post content this way, that way. So as it got really big and that became, why did that become the primary messaging tool and the primary messaging channel? Because of the dissemination of information and data analysis to understand how and where people consume messages, the website is no longer the primary communication tool. The website, when I say layered content, becomes middle and high.
Speaker 3:It becomes qualitative. You're not going to the website for, like, a quick news tip. You're going to the website for more in-depth things that need to be fluffed out, not something that could be explained that quickly. So that's when it started happening for me and I saw a little bit of interorganizational subversion where it's like I don't like the way this is, or maybe jealousy of like I want to be running, I could do a better job.
Speaker 2:Oh, look at how many followers I want to which ultimately was the uh, the bitter end for me there. So so you had, you had fun and flow. But there's something else that you also put out there that wasn't. It wasn't too long ago I wouldn't say maybe it was eight years ago or so but you started up. So we talk, we see in the news a lot where you know, oh man, he's going to retire. I wish I could watch him wrestle, I wish he would continue and he's not going to do the worlds or Olympics anymore. Man, I wish you were someplace you could wrestle Right. And in my mind I always kind of thought about that too. Like man, I wonder if there ever was something that these guys could like try their hand at once. They're done either collegiately or even world. Some of these guys are still in shape and they want to compete once in a while. So you decided to start up a professional wrestling type of league Correct, what year wasn't that? Your baby?
Speaker 3:so I tried the one that we're talking about. Probably now yeah, is it me. I just helped them out. I did myself and I've got a data point on professional wrestling in general. So after I left flow, I'm like I want to own the product't want to be at the mercy of departments. Move around. I have a new boss. People don't know. I want to bring in my own people. I was like I don't want that anymore. I'm going to create my own business.
Speaker 3:I called it Fantasy Fight League. Fantasy Fight League was fantasy wrestling platform where you could go. We had different events. You pick whoever, you get points, you show up on the leaderboard, you get prizes. That was cool. I myself was kind of hesitant on the legality of it. I mean, we're giving prizes. I have advisors. They say it's cool. It made me feel kind of icky. Gambling in general makes me feel a little icky. But I wanted an engagement tool Keep people involved. We didn't really give out cash. We give out cool wrestling shoes or jackets or whatever. So this goes on. For a while I tried video games with Fantasy Fight League. I'm like all right, I'm going to pivot, I'm going to make so. I still am the only person who's ever made a wrestling video game. You can play it now. I'm finished.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, what's it called?
Speaker 3:Wrestling 22. Had Yanni on the cover, I signed NIL deals with a bunch of Trent Heidly, pat Corey, ja'cory, teamer, yanni Vito. Yeah, yeah, it's like mortal combat. Play it on your computer, don't play it on your phone. I'm like a little club. Yeah, I'll give you a subscription. It's behind a paywall, but uh, yeah, it's like, it's like mortal combat. Right, it's like a computer. So I say, okay, well, maybe not fantasy. I said maybe I'll make video games. That would be cool. That didn't really work either, as is anything right. Again, I failed 10 times for everything that works. So I go back and I'm like, okay, well, I've got this fantasy software that's already built. I was like it'd be cool. Something that's standing in the way of professional wrestling is the charity structure that supports. Are you looking?
Speaker 2:at the video game. I can see laughing. No, I'm looking at your mom. It's so cool.
Speaker 3:Even I could take wrestlers down that's awesome good plug I know, but uh, yeah, so I'm like, okay, well, I've got this fantasy software. It's really important to me that wrestlers have and I don't know how it's going to work right, hopefully what they're doing, which I'm trying to help them. I'm a huge supporter of what they're doing. A problem that wrestling faces is the top wrestlers get paid through a charity structure. They win medals. They get RTC bonuses. They get USA Wrestling gets them bonuses. Yeah, they have no incentive to promote themselves. They have no incentive to wrestle anything outside of the UWW cycle. Why am I going to take a match for a couple grand? That's going to hinder my chances on winning a medal, which is how I get paid to keep my family sure. All the top guys are out. They're never going to touch that. Fine. What wrestlers believe they should be paid, I think, is disproportionate to value.
Speaker 3:We've seen people come in a awl I think it was called. Everyone got paid a lot of money. People put a lot of money into it and I think people are always surprised at the draw. Right, yeah, like jiu-jitsu guys, mma guys, they build themselves up so they become a draw, so people watch, they make money for sure. That's no part of wrestlers, no. So I said okay with fantasy fight league. Okay, I was like maybe we could just use random people who are good enough that a wrestling audience can watch and they seem legit and I'll tie in fantasy into it. So you have reason to care. These are all up on youtube.
Speaker 3:We did them last summer okay, okay and uh, I went and we had one guy flew in from mike now help me with it. We're like cursing oh yeah, having fun, right, yeah, so we, uh, we have some guy flying in from buffalo, but the rest of them were just like dudes in austin. It's like anyone who knows how to wrestle, please come. Yeah, we tried to put me, tried to put music over the because it was in a gym, but what I found so something that I'm finding is and I think cwa is doing a good job getting guys that are good enough that they're a draw. We can't get the best guys we're never going to, but they're getting really good guys. Ronnie Perry they just got. He's in NCAA finals. That's a draw.
Speaker 3:My approach was maybe I can get people who aren't a draw and I can market them into being a draw. I can layer in content in between matches to tell their story. You can tune in and not know anything about them and you have a reason to care. You're making picks, you're learning their story. Nobody cared, nobody cared. Oh man, man, I couldn't get 500 people to watch it for free. I got some clout. I had a huge email list. I did it in the summer, which was probably not a good idea, but I had an email list of 30,000 people. I was sending tons of emails, social posts, ads, the whole marketing gauntlet and stuff. Nobody cared. So I think the takeaway for me after that so now we're at three fantasy play league failures in the past 10 minutes. But my takeaway there is the guys need to be good enough, like they can't just be like random people. They need to have a draw, they need to be able to lean on their schools, they need to be from ruckers, iowa, penn state, ohio state, and we need additional marketing support from the schools to distribute to their audience. Hey, this guy lock, haven's doing a good job.
Speaker 3:Goody was tweeting about Greg Bulsack today. Rutgers media was tweeting. That's how we get it. The guys are good shouldn't say good enough. The guys are good and they're being supported by where they have their largest fan base, which is associated with the school. So I think it has a good chance. I mean those guys are working hard on that. They're smart, they have a team of people working on it. So ultimately, I mean we saw a guy tweeting about how kids should stay back, which everyone was having a good time dunking on him. Yeah, yeah, yeah this is.
Speaker 2:I talked about it a lot on here with the whole, with the whole hold hold back with, with the bassets and things like that, because I've had the best both bassets on. I've had both of them on the show a while back. So I love watching those kids wrestle, right, I love it, I. But I don't. But I don't like the fact that people are like, oh, he's a sophomore in high school. Well, yeah, because that just happens to be the grade he's in. Now.
Speaker 2:I think you made the comment. These kids are still stepping up and they're going to wrestling college guys, so it's not the takeaway from those guys at all. I think what it really is is the aspect of someone saying that the only way that you're going to be able to be successful or make it is you need to be held back a year. You should be held back a year. You should be held back. You are, you're good. You are you're good. There's a worst advice to ever give a kid ever, because not every kid needs to be held back, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, staracci was the whole focus of that discussion. He wasn't held back. You know, like there's no validity behind anything that he even put behind it. And, granted, there are people like you. You know it doesn't bother me that he said that. Well, that's fine, but if I were a parent that was in that room and I hear this guy telling my kid that I need to hold him back because that way he'll be successful at wrestling like are you saying that he's no good? Now you can't basically telling kids they're not any good unless they get held back and that that was just like you got to be kidding me.
Speaker 3:This is the worst advice I've ever heard in my entire life well the core of that problem and I understand his thought process, even though I don't agree with it. Bo, for example, should skip grades because he can compete in college now yeah, if he wants to win olympic medals. Basketball the basketball players skip grades because they have to go to college for one year. They want to get to the NBA sooner. Guys coming out of football it's hard because of the physical development. So basketball players if football players could they would skip grades because they want to get to that first pro contract quicker so they can get to the second pro contract quicker.
Speaker 3:The problem with wrestling is the pinnacle both now, especially for financial opportunity, and also for marketability. Your pinnacle is college. So guys stay back because they're trying to position themselves to get the best college opportunity because that's where the pinnacle is. So I think if we get to a point where it's world championships or Olympic titles or professional league, where the true pinnacle is post-college and someone like Bo is skipping grades so he can get through college quicker, so he can go and compete at this level, I agree. But if people are making 500 grand to wrestle season in college, I mean I can understand the thought process of I'm going to pay back because that's my payday, that's where I'm going to get paid, but that's so few and far between giving that advice at such a blanketed level.
Speaker 3:It's gonna hurt people because, like I said earlier, like that messes you, like I've seen a lot of sick savant level wrestlers and end up kind of messed up down the line. And something that'll mess you up right away is you're in seventh grade. Stay back again. That's a big difference. Six and seventh grade. Now you're with the sixth graders. Yeah, now all your friends are in high school. Yep, right. So it's like, yeah, that's weird for you, and like what's a social aspect that can wreck you exactly socially.
Speaker 3:It's like, okay, now I'm on this island where I'm like all in on wrestling and I'm 12 and it's like, well, if this doesn't work out, then like yeah, not good.
Speaker 2:How do you come back from that? You know that's we because we don't get me wrong, it's not that we didn't ever think about you know, like, okay, what, what are the benefits of doing this with, like with liam, my son? What are the benefits that he's going to get from it? And I I've always kind of looked at, in my perspective, the social aspect, more for kids in in that the school age, than the sports perspective, because you may be really good at your sport but socially there's a lot of kids are like, why are you doing that? Like why, how come you're not going and doing this? Like how come you're not going and playing? You know, with these guys, when we go do it because, well, I want to wrestle, now you got kids are like, well, that's weird, like why are you only doing that? So? And you know how the mind of a kid works and it starts rolling into more weird situations and why it's even weirder and everything like that. Then it turns into making fun and then it it rolls downhill from there. So I again and I understand your argument as well the benefits, of course, if, if they could predict that their son was going to be a freshman in high school and weigh 96 pounds and get crushed. Like you don't know that, though, either, like, as a parent, you don't know that your kids only get bows growing. Just fine, you know he's, he's maturing very well.
Speaker 2:So to the aspect of and I can't blame the kids, because the kids don't make these choices right. Like, the kids go along for the ride. They hear the reasoning from mom and dad. Maybe they bring a coach to the side and have them talk to him about it, but the kids don't make the decision. The parents are the ones that are putting these kids in these positions. Do I think the kids have a little bit of a say? I think they have a little bit of a say, but I also know how a parent runs a house, and nine chance out of 10, we're doing this for the better of your future, that's why we're doing this. They'd paint it as a benefit to the kid, and the kids then tell their friends well, I'm going to be able to do this, but those kids don't understand that. So, either way, it just seems like to me it just keeps rolling downhill socially.
Speaker 2:And then you know, sports wise, I just don't think. I don't think personally, that there's really a payoff, because now the NCAA is going to change Right, like this is all going to go completely different than what it was before, and six hundred dollar maximums on NILs unless it's approved, and you know things like that. So, knowing that, so knowing that, that, yeah, you know, maybe maybe both could cash in, but maybe by the time he's going to be going yeah, they're still going to, don't get me wrong, they're still going to have donors. These colleges aren't losing donors by any means, but they're going to have to go through different avenues to be able to make that money because of the school. If the school doesn't approve it. And there's an I think it's a another arbitrary, uh, outside entity that approves these, these, they can't just be like oh, I'm going to go do this and I want to make $500,000 with this place. It all has to get approved because they're an athlete and technically going to be getting paid by the school. They're almost going to be a school employee, so the rules that go along with it are going to change, and that's, I think, to me, is going to bring the perspective. Hopefully it changes the perspective a little bit more on that, because I know that I hey, if I were a kid and I think you mentioned it too if I were a kid out in the atmosphere right now, you think I'm not going to try and grab for 500 grand. Oh yeah, I'm gonna, you know I'm, especially if I'm carter stirachi or someone that be you, I'm going to be done with college pretty soon. I'd love to have a nice cushion sitting inside a bank account by the time I'm done. You know, pay my school off and be ready.
Speaker 2:So it's a mixed emotion for me, because I can see the benefits, but a lot of times to me it just seems like the negatives weigh down the benefits from it a lot. So it's I don't see it as really a good thing, but I guess it's all situational too. Everything's really situational really. I mean certain things work out for certain people and like, look at spencer lee. You know I mean that kid. He was an anomaly too, coming out of high school. Uh, how many, how many you know freshmen like that have we seen in ncaa history being able to come out? Now, he didn't get those nil deals, you know he didn't. He didn't, uh, he wasn't able to rate that in.
Speaker 2:It might be a different now with HWC, but I just think the perspective that we have with sports is not necessarily a bad one, but I think we're.
Speaker 2:I think even with basketball, before all this happened, I think we were trying to turn college sports too much into a lucrative business for the athlete itself.
Speaker 2:I think that they should be getting recognized and I think if the, if the college is genuinely making money off of their image, them, and I think if the college is genuinely making money off of their image them showing up at a game because they play for them, sure, I think there's some compensation that should be had.
Speaker 2:But I think just throwing 500 grand at a kid and saying here's a check, how about you put that into a school account that pays for their books and pays for their education and make it so it makes sense to them and they can be like okay, this is what I need to make sure that I'm taking care of. It gives them a sense of responsibility. Just throwing them a bag of money and it's like holy cow, these kids. They're barely even able to like. They're 17, 18, making a decision of their lives for the next four or five years. Now you're throwing money in the mix. It's like man. I hope these kids have some smart parents because this could get really hairy really quick and obviously we found out really quick with the nil what that did with sports in general.
Speaker 3:So but hopefully it's no more the wild west well, it's good for the athlete I'm always pro athlete side like it's good for the athletes, sure, but if college wrestling is going to turn into a fundraising rat race, well, how many rich people like? That just doesn't seem sustainable, and it also I know that only a couple of teams have ever won. You know, the programs are getting slashed all the time, like if, if we've got teams that are bankrolled at $ million dollars and teams that are actually playing by the scholarship. We don't have any of that. It's not good for the game. It's good for the athletes. It's not good for the game, though. Like we're not on. There's a reason. The salary cap exists in professional sports right correct right, that's right.
Speaker 3:Sure, it would be great if and I know baseball, they don't but they have the salary cap. So it's like we're competing evenly against each other and that's like strategy how you move it around. But if you've got a team that's bankrolled at $20 million competing against a team that's bankrolled by $15 grand from bake sale, you know it's not get run out of town.
Speaker 2:yeah, well, I'll tell you what I. I keep these around about an hour and a half because I think after a while we start to lose the kids attention, you know. So you know how they get a little squirrel and start looking around and not paying attention anymore.
Speaker 2:But I am glad to have had you on um. I do want to talk to you more, a little bit more more once we're done here and we hang up on the folks. But I do want to talk a little bit more about you know kind of things we've been talking about. You know, maybe we carry this on a little bit, see what, see what we can do If there's something that you're interested in doing and getting some more of your, your stuff out and maybe just kind of making this a little more dynamic. But we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2:I think, uh, I think what you're doing and I think, again, the take that you are able to have with this, the perspective that you have, is very unique and I think the way that you have been able to navigate through certain areas professional football, uh, just a local newspaper to flow wrestling. I mean, in this sport that we're you know we're talking more right now flow wrestling at one point was the be-all, end-all. Now we got all kinds of guys coming out doing their own thing, which is, I think, flow Wrestling, helped create all that. I mean, obviously it was something that was way different. Before anybody was doing it. You had track wrestling, but it was like reading articles and once in a while you see those guys post a video up with an interview with an athlete, which was great. But then Flo took it to another level and everybody's like I want to do that, and so now we have what we have, you know? So it's, it's definitely what's that?
Speaker 3:Same yeah, Same with me I was. I was one of the OG bandwagoners where it's like that's really cool, I should do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think it's. It's definitely a a unique perspective to be able to have, and especially with your. You know the social media experience and, like I said, I don't know SEOs and I don't you're some of the stuff that you'd mentioned before with with the jargon for, for social media. I don't know it, I'm just an old dude that sits in a basement doing a podcast, you know. But uh, but I love what I do, I love doing this and that's why I do it.
Speaker 2:I always want to have the interesting take on things and whether it's an athlete or, you know, or a guy that's been an athlete into I had football players on him. Now he, now he's got an extremely successful country band. So it's it's. It's one of those things where I like the different perspectives of everybody that people can bring in. Whether or not we get 5,000 likes or views or whatever it is, it's for the love of it is really what it is. And that's another reason because I can tell, just by the way that you comment on things, that you have a genuine mind, for you know things that are going on to have a not only a unique perspective but a grounded perspective, you know. So I that perspective, but a grounded perspective, you know. So I that's why I was like I'm. I think I need to get this guy on. So I appreciate your time and your.
Speaker 2:Your mom has been probably one of the most engaged people, uh, on this. She she agreed with me talking about kids, but it's been fantastic having Suzanne on the background, so I appreciate it. Mom, thank you very much. Um, we are going to end this here. Do you have any shout outs? I've been starting to do this a little more. Do you have any shout outs or any props to people who are saying hi to anybody? You said hi to your mom, so we gotta make sure we say hi again to that.
Speaker 3:But anything specifically out there you want to give a shout out to, you know you've really made it when you're on a podcast and just see comments from your mom coming through the thing the entire time. That's.
Speaker 2:I think it's awesome.
Speaker 3:I honestly I know it's great, yeah, but I I appreciate what you're doing and I appreciate everyone in this space. Something that I love is authenticity. I don't think chasing clout or chasing engagement or chasing likes I think that's a race to the bottom. So I appreciate people like you. I appreciate the majority of people who are delivering messages around wrestling are doing it because they love it and I respect the hell out of that, so shout out to all of them.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it. Well, we'll end it here and see if I can find my music here, because that's the special part, but it's been another episode of the Vision Quest podcast. Guys, go check out some of our sponsors. There's Anabolic Army, there is 920 Hat Company and then Appleton Tattoo podcast. Guys. Uh, go check out some of our sponsors. There's um anabolic army. There is nine two or nine two oh hat company and then appleton tattoo. Uh, anabolic army can be found on amazon. Um, you can also find nine two oh hat company on facebook, instagram. Anabolic armies on uh tiktok instagram, uh facebook, you name it.
Speaker 2:Um appleton tattoo. You can't buy those guys on Amazon. You actually got to go to those guys because they actually put stuff on your skin. So if you're in the Wisconsin area, go check them out. But again, I've been Joe Joe, it's been awesome, so I appreciate it. Again, we're going to let him go and we're going to let you guys go and then until next time. I think we got one next week, so we Until next time. I think we got one next week, so we'll see you guys later and then I'm going to talk to you after this, so hang out for a minute. Peace folks.
