After six years and 200 episodes I’m signing off.
I do want to genuinely thank everyone who has listened to the podcast, come on the show, come to any of our events and supported us in any way!
Although this is the last episode of “The GoGedders Podcast” this will not be the last episode on this feed and this is not goodbye forever.
Listen to the episode to find out why the changes and what’s next.
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Richie Burke:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the GoGedders podcast. It’s your host, Richie Burke, and if you have clicked on this episode by the title, you can probably tell that this is the final episode of the GoGedders podcast. You’re probably wondering why this is the last episode, maybe what’s happened and what is next. I will be diving into all of that in detail. Before I do, I would like to say this is not goodbye forever. There will be a new podcast on this feed that I’ll get into, so stay subscribed, we’ll be, we’ll be making some upgrades. Also, before I dive into what’s going on, I do genuinely want to say thank you for listening and thank you to the 300 guests around there that have come on the show. Thank you to everyone who showed up to the live podcasts in events we were doing pre pandemic.
Big thank you to our main media partner on Milwaukee, as well as outlets like the Journal Sentinel, the Shepherd Express, the Rotary Club, which I’ve been a member of for years. We did a lot of live podcasts there in the Milwaukee Press Club and several others that have covered the podcast over the years and helped us get more ears on these stories and to all the companies that have sponsored this podcast over the years. I hope you’ve gotten a lot out of the go-getters. I know, I know I have and I’m very grateful. It’s led to a lot of great relationships, a lot of opportunities for myself and for GGMM and it had the opportunity to present a lot of amazing Milwaukee stories to a lot of different people. I’m just grateful for what the podcast has been able to accomplish over the last five years with the overall mission of shining light on a lot of people doing great things in this area. Okay, so why the changes and what’s coming?
Well, a lot has changed since we launched the show in late 2016. The podcasting landscape and the content landscape has changed a lot. When I started the show, we had no idea what we were doing. We were recording episodes in a wide open room in our old office on KK and Bayview with a recorder. We got off Amazon for 40 bucks and shooting videos off this little camp quarter. Luckily at that point the bar was set much lower for podcasting and content and we were really the only podcast in town doing what we were doing in those mediocre videos that we were shooting. We could post on Facebook back when organic reach was really high and people actually watched a lot of the video and put 10, $20 in ad spend behind it and get 10,000 plus views. The golden age of Facebook was nice for businesses, for small businesses back then.
Then in 2018, despite the quality of the podcast, it was, it was getting a lot of attention. It had always gotten a lot of attention for our brand because it was different for the area. But in 2018, we had the realization that what we were doing wasn’t that great and that we should make some significant upgrades to get to the next level. So we upgraded our equipment and moved to a new space and created a little studio in St. Francis just south of Milwaukee where I’m sure a lot of people listening have been to either two guests on our show, guest on one of our clients shows, or come to one of the many events and parties we had pre pandemic in that warehouse type space, which was was a lot of fun. I’m very grateful for those, those memories. Um, so we, we made the move.
The show continued to do well, especially with the new content we were creating from there and the partnership with On Milwaukee and it grew very nicely through the pandemic, the GoGedders did, but it’s stagnated and even dropped down a bit over the last year or two for a number of reasons and we’ve had a lot of change within G G M M, the marketing agency, my marketing agency, if you’re not familiar, um, I do own a marketing agency, go get it. Marketing and media that produces this show. So we’ve had a lot going on there, some great things, some, some struggles that we’ve had to push through. So the podcast has been put on the back burner at Toms as well. On top of that and working with other companies and being very immersed in the podcasting world, it’s become really evident to the team and myself that the show needs some changes, needs some new life on the content.
We’ve been a little scattered in the format and its publishing has gotten inconsistent. We want to upgrade and change that. Also the name, the GoGedders, some people love it, I’ve loved it for years, but it has some apparent issues that I’ve been aware of. It’s just, you know, finally gotten to that point. I do like the name, it’s fun, it’s aspirational. We interview and highlight go-getter type people on the other side. It’s spelled incorrectly, it’s vague. I’m a big advocate that people should hear the name of your podcast and have a good idea of what it’s about, the benefit it brings to them and how to get to it or look it up or say, Hey, Google Play X podcast name, which is not the case with the go-getter spelled G O G E D D E R S. Usually when someone asks if I have a podcast, I have to tell them the name and explain what it’s about and then spell it for them or even grab their phone and type it into the podcasting app.
And we’ve probably missed out on a lot of word of mouth traffic over the years as well as the show’s done. We’ve, we’ve definitely missed out. All that being said, we’ll be renaming this podcast in switching the podcast up a little. You’ll still be stuck with me as the host and we’ll be going on a bit of a hiatus, but we’ll be back in better than ever, likely in mid to late March. That is the plan right now. So be sure to stay subscribed. If you have not subscribed but you like the episodes and and are interested in engaging Milwaukee content, please subscribe if you have not already, I’d appreciate that. Okay, so what else has happened? A lot of the issues that we’ve had with our podcast, we’ve, we’ve had some of those same issues with our business G G M M in general coincidentally, and just to backtrack, so I started G G M M as gogeddit.com as a daily deal site in 2011, going door to door, two small businesses with an iPad and a presentation on the iPad barging in trying to sit down with the owners of these businesses, trying to get the company off the ground and we were doing a lot of events and Gorilla Marketing and going to Bradford Beach and slinging go get it sunglasses with iPads to get email addresses and putting boxes in little businesses with buying a gift card and giving that gift card away.
People had to enter their, put their email in and we’d get those and in the first year we were able to build a subscriber base of 15,000 people locally and work with over a hundred small businesses who ran promos on the site, but it wasn’t profitable. It was losing some money and despite what I would say was good execution, it was just a bad business model, very high volume, low margin, very saturated. You had the Groupons and living socials of the world. Every news station had a deal site so it wasn’t gonna work. You could see the writing on the wall, which was hard because as a 23, 24 year old entrepreneur, which I was at the time, you got your whole identity very unhealthily tied up into something and it failed.
And a year seems like a long time at that age, but something good did come from it. We were working with all these small businesses, realized they needed help, needed help marketing and started running social media accounts for some of these local businesses, which was very new at the time. In 2012, our first account was Oscars on Pierce Oscar let me run his social media for free for a month, then became a paying client and then Transfer Pizzeria and Morgan’s Irish Pub became our other two for our three first official clients. By the way, big thank you to Oscar’s transfer in Morgans for giving us a shot. Very great people over there and good businesses that I will be forever. Thank you thankful too because when you start a business, it’s always like you always really appreciate those first few clients that give you a chance and it was tough to get that business off the ground.
I’ve got a lot of good stories that maybe are good for a different episode, but there was a lot of interesting hurdles that we had two overcome, but we kept going. We obviously started this podcast, the GoGedders in 2016 and then when with then with the move to St. Francis, we came out and launched a podcasting service in 2018 and I thought this was gonna blow up. I thought it was gonna get big and we did get a lot of attention out of it and we got no customers <laugh>. After launching the service, we saw what it did for our business. We thought every company should have a podcast and despite a lot of attention and interest, uh, no customers, we were taking a lot of meetings. I remember driving down to the post office several times a week in the, in the snow and the bad weather, milling out cost headphones, a handwritten thank you card, a PDF to anyone who was interested or we wanted to work with or took a meeting with us.
Finally, after six months, at six months after launching that service on Milwaukee became our first customer, that was in the fall of 2018, we started producing FoodCrush, which is still going strong today in a big thank you. Jeff Sherman who’s no longer over there, but Jeff and the team over there that is still over there at all Milwaukee for giving us a shot and becoming our first podcasting client a few years after that. If you fast forward to present day today, looking back, we’ve got to work with a lot of large brands, brands I dreamed of working with and a lot of other really cool businesses and organizations that I really wanted to work with as well because we used podcasting as a tool to spearhead our business in because the attention the GoGedders brought to our company, some of these projects have been very successful, others have not and we learned a lot for the from those.
Also, as far as podcasting goes, although that it’s what we’re mainly known for, it only accounts for about 30% of our revenue, which a lot of people are surprised by when I tell them that. So one of the weaknesses in our business is that we offer a lot of different services to a lot of different companies, which we want to simplify and we took a hard look at what we’re really good at, what clients are getting the best results from us and what we need to do to really get to the next level and improve ourselves. So we’re making some changes to our offerings and services.
So ultimately we will be coming out. We have decided to come out with new brands for both the podcast, which I just touched on, and our company as a whole, which I’m not gonna dive too deeply into today, but those will be announced in March and we are moving. So many of you maybe haven’t seen my social media posts or have any idea, but I would like to officially announce that we are moving and opening up a very, very nice new studio in Walker’s Point where we’ll be rolling out a world class experience to any guests that come in and any companies and individuals and individuals that come in and want to record video or podcast and content. We’ve done a lot of podcasting and video work ranging from social video to brand videos, sales videos, educational videos over the last year, even a full scale documentary.
So we’re leaning in on podcasting and video and amplifying those stories as well through digital media and advertising. But we’ll be doing all of that from this new space. We’ve been moving stuff over there the last couple weeks as I’m speaking, construction is finishing up and we are very excited cuz moving is a pain in the ass. Is everyone listening to this knows to finally get into that space. It’s been a a long time coming, something we’ve been trying to do for really the last year, but I feel it’s all coming together at the right time and that everything happens for a reason. So bringing it all together, number one. Number one, I’m very grateful to you and anyone who’s been a part of the GoGedders podcast, whether it’s been a guest or listener, also big thank you to all of our clients over the years for the opportunity to work with them and everyone who’s worked at G G M M.
I’m very lucky to have had this experience. Number two, the podcast is ending in its current form. This is the final episode, but it’s not over. We’ll be back on this feed. So make sure to stay subscribed and I am confident that if you are listening to this show and have enjoyed listening to the GoGedders up up to this date, you’ll like it even more. Moving forward. Three, as I said, we’re making some big changes in moving four. I just kind of did give a shameless plug about what we’re building, but if you’re a brand that’s interested in being involved with the new version of the podcast or looking for an amazing new space to record content from, let me know. You can still reach me on our website by filling out a form ggmm.io, that’s ggm.io or you can shoot me an email [email protected] And thank you so much for the last six-ish years, which is crazy to think six ish years and for tuning in to this final episode of the GoGedders podcast. I look forward to putting another one out in, in a month or two and I’m excited for what the future holds. Thank you.