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Trent: Welcome to


Trent: Storytelling in a Small Town.


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Trent: Welcome back to Storytelling in a Small Town. Oh, you knew it was coming, don't play that.


AJ: I was excited, that's all.


Trent: Yeah, it's been a while. We've been really bad at the end of this season in the past couple months. It's been like a month release versus every two weeks. It's been kind of crazy. Yeah, lots been going on.


AJ: A lot of like weird new things that kind of came out of nowhere and developmental stuff.


Trent: Are you talking about us or just in the world? It's both, it can be both. Brian's out here with us today and we're gonna wrap up this season because I think I'm getting busier, you're getting busier. A lot of projects are going on. So we wanna take a time to kind of recap, share what we've gotten out of the season, what all we've talked about, and then talk about what the off season looks like and will there be another season?


AJ: Yeah, definitely. It's been a really, I feel like this was a really cool season. We definitely dove deeper into some of the things that we talked about in the first season. One of my favorite topics I think was having the more in-depth conversation about AI and how we were using them differently than one another and the different products that we were using.


AJ: I know you were using, I think it's Cintra, right? Yeah. Are you still working with that product? Do you like it?


Trent: Oh my God, it does so much heavy lifting for me right now, especially with all the notes for this and the show notes and everything. Awesome. Yeah, I use it pretty much daily now, honestly. I wouldn't have thought to use it for show notes. I have a really great workflow working with all this because I bought DaVinci Resolve Studio. So it's one time price, I have it, but it does amazing transcripts. So then I don't have to pay anywhere else to do it. It's in a program that I already own. I can drop audio files in there, hit transcript, export the transcripts, run it through there, and it's like, bam. That's awesome.


AJ: Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna start, okay, I need to start thinking about some more ways to use some of those things, for sure. I'm still just like a chat GPT. I haven't really tried anything else. So I have another project I'm working on though where I am helping support some marketing efforts for an AI product though. So we'll see where that goes. Hopefully that turns out really cool.


Trent: And I have a connection. We have a new member in the podcast network. Her whole thing is she's AI marketing and she's worked in the AI field and startup field. So if you want someone some insight, she has some really cool ways. She also has some really cool ways to use AI to make marketing even easier.


AJ: Oh, that sounds really awesome. So I feel like that is someone that we might need to have on for a season three guest. Yeah, for sure. We could definitely go for like a part three AI episode and like have an actual person who knows it better than we do, come and talk about some ways to use it. I feel like we could do a whole season about AI. Absolutely, yeah, we could totally like, we could have a separate show that was just AI conversations, I'm sure. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, what else did we talk about during season two?


Trent: Season two, we talked a lot about kind of telling those origin stories, how to get people on board. And I think one of the common things we saw through all of these, because we also talked about how do you get your customers to kind of be your advocate for you, suppliers and all these other ways. And how do we get people to tell your story through like different ways. And I think that was the big thing of just like, you have to be you and authentic and let people know who you are, whether that's through you telling the story, having people that you work with tell that story.


Trent: Yeah, so I think that's a big one that we kind of touched on.


AJ: Yeah, we definitely spent some time talking about using customer, letting your customers be your advocate. And we talked about telling your origin story, which ways and what methodology do you use, humor and how important are the technicalities behind, making the video to get that origin story out there, working with the creator to try to put that together.


Trent: Yeah, and I was gonna say in that same vein and the same topic we talked about, who's your spokesperson? Right. Right, that was a big conversation we had too, about like if you're asking people to come in and do the stuff for you and be the spokesperson, understand there's a lot that comes with it other than just being on camera.


AJ: We had what turned out to be, I think, a trauma informed conversation about who you pick at your business to be your spokesperson for sure. That was a good chat.


Trent: Yeah, great conversation, or we think it's a great conversation. Let us know if anyone's out there listening, comment, find us in, you can find us through Snohomish Podcast Network, comment there, I run the Snohomish Podcast Network. So if we hear things like, hey, storytelling in small town, I love this, y'all made no sense during this part, let us know. Again, to us it makes sense, but we wanna make sure it's helpful for you, for these small businesses, actually help you tell your stories. So we love that feedback if you have any.


AJ: Yeah, we'd love to know what your favorite episode is. That is something I have been curious about. Now that we have two whole seasons to look through, I think it's a really interesting question. What was your favorite episode? Yeah, let us know. So what are you going to be working on here during the off season?


AJ: And we go, we're thinking we probably, we might be back around September, October, something like that.


Trent: Yeah, that's about what the timeframe was with this last, for between season one and season two. So probably about that time. I don't know. I have a lot of what I hope it will be. I'm doing a lot with the "Pish the Puget" sound. So we have a lot of recordings coming up. I'm doing a video for another local community member, community partner.


Trent: But I have some great stuff going on. So that'll be a fun project. And I don't know, I'm just trying to think about how to get out there and help people out more. So I'm really trying to look at actually putting together more classes around podcasting, storytelling, how do you get comfortable in front of this? How do you become a better guest on podcasts and things like that to just help things. So yeah, cause I'm realizing we're in a tough time right now, like economically, like I'm just like being honest, like people are pinching pennies. It's harder to get like some of these bigger contracts, especially someone like me, I work mostly in the community. I don't go after a lot of big businesses, a lot of deep pocket businesses. So I'm trying to think for my business, how can I still stay within my values of helping the community and making money for myself without feel like I'm gouging people or putting people in a hard spot by being like, hey, you one-on-one with me is this price. So it's like, okay, well, what if I did it with a class of five to 10, it's a lot cheaper. I can actually, and then I can still make some money in a living wage. So yeah, there's a lot I'm playing around with and then still feel like I'm just fighting to keep up with my to-do list. So I don't know how that's going to go, but yeah.


AJ: I didn't even think about that. We should talk about some coaching strategies that I'm privy to.


Trent: So I'm saying this and I'm probably going to try and do this and the market's already gonna be flooded because everyone's going to take this idea.


AJ: No, this is great. That's great. What are you doing this summer? So hopefully I got some folks who were interested in having me come and do a little bit of teaching with them. But hopefully that will be cool because that's one of my favorite things to do. And then I'm doing a little bit more work with the interfaith community on some video projects over there. That'll be super cool too. And I just got booked for another insurance commercial


AJ: that'll be hopefully in May, I think. And so there's a kind of a bunch of new things that we're doing this year that should give some opportunities to really kind of spread things out and try some more storytelling in a few more new locations, some new regions that we're looking at. And also hopefully this fall, the sequel to my short zombie film. Yeah. I'm excited about that.


Trent: When you say insurance commercial, you're filming it or are you acting in it?


AJ: Yeah, we shot this commercial in 2023 that for insurance company out in Wenatchee. And it's hilarious, but we're finally now getting back to the point of like where they are wanting to film more content that's related to this project. So yeah, it'll be super cool.


Trent: That's good. No, that's encouraging. I think that's good to hear just because there is so much it's a weird split right now. Cause I think because everyone realizes it's getting tighter economically, we don't have a lot of free cash lying around from an individual perspective and business perspective. But at the same time, that's when businesses are like, I need to promote and get myself out there more so that people want to spend their money with me. So it's like that weird paradox where it's.


AJ: There's the need to look at the marketing dollars that you're spending and adjust them so that they actually make sense for right now, I think. And that also means there's a ton of opportunity for people. If you are thinking about our pot, why do you use a podcast for your business episode and thinking about how you're going to change how you spend some of those dollars to build out a podcast and then promote it on social media as the means by which for people to know who you are and want to engage with you. That's a really, really important and like critical thing. I see this happening all across different industries right now, but.


Trent: Yeah, no, and why, like if people are confused like why we're talking about this or like why marketing and all that stuff matters this time. I like to think of it this way. Maybe this was only in small towns, not like B2B or in a lot of bigger things, but people want to trust who they're connecting and spending their money with. So the more you can get your story out there, let people connect with you as a person and that again, stories is how we connect through so much as humans. So getting your story out there, letting people connect through that story,


Trent: it suddenly becomes between this person that I have no idea who it is versus this person, I hear your story, I can relate to this in some sense. It's just that little thing that might send them to your side versus going to someone else.


AJ: Absolutely, I also think it's important to acknowledge, especially right now in an increasingly politically charged time in society, that telling of your story, I'm not telling your politics, I'm not saying telling your politics, but telling your story is one of the best ways I think to sort of bridge that gap in the trust of, we're confounding in some instance, are we aligned politically with, are we aligned morally, right? Those aren't always one in the same. And so when we tell our story, we have the opportunity to tell people who we are so that they can know that part and purchase from us or work with us because of those things, not because of something on the outside that's just a perception.


Trent: We're done, I can't say anything after that. That was beautiful.


Trent: Oh man, it is funny, because half of this does sound like we're just trying to justify this podcast and my flipping story in here.


AJ: Like just trying to look, there had to be a reason for this episode, right?


Trent: I think what you said is spot on, right? Like there's so much that we do and give to the power of story. And right now when you're, especially as a small business owner, I know you know, and you're thinking about money, taxes, equipment. But yeah, like there's so many things to worry about, thinking about your story and marketing and how you do marketing around it. That's one of the easiest things to forget, especially as a small business. So I think now is the time more than ever, you really have to lean into that. And I'm seeing a lot of people in downtown, it's the home of Sheardew it. And yeah, hopefully you all keep leaning into it. Yeah, absolutely.


AJ: Yeah, keep leaning


Trent: into it, it's great.


Trent: So a lot of fun stuff happening over the summer between the both of us. I know, won't be a lack of keeping us busy.


AJ: You will see us all around town, I'm sure.


AJ: So I know there's gonna be a lot of fun stuff with like "Clahia Days" and "Pride" in the summer. And oh my gosh, the car show is coming back this year. That will be at one of the farms this year with the car show. Yeah, "Clahia Days" car show, definitely making a comeback. So a lot of super cool things gonna be this summer.


Trent: Yeah, for sure. And then when we come back, what are we doing?


AJ: Oh yeah. So for season three, we wanna get some more folks in here to ask questions and really check what we're doing in terms of what we're giving you guys that's supposed to be helpful. So we can have some people sit here and say, "Hey, what about this? Does this make sense? What about my approach to this? Or what do you even think about this content?" And then that way we can really be a little bit more helpful, more specific.


Trent: Whether you have experience on the marketing side telling those stories or your business wanting to learn how to do it better, that'd be great. I also kinda wanna show other forms of podcasts and storytelling, because I think that's one of the biggest thing right now. There's too many of these kind of podcasts right now. And I'm making so much effort to create new podcasts that are different than this and actually storytelling, right? Because this is a conversation, this is more educational and helpful, but it's not true storytelling in a sense, right? That's what we're doing. Totally. We're not putting together all the things. So I think that's one thing that'll be interesting too is how can we present this, what we're talking about, and some of these other topics as we bring people in and showing actually different styles of storytelling while still being educational. I think that'll take a lot more time, but I think it'll be much more fun for people to listen to and it will kinda highlight, oh my gosh, that's a really cool way to do it. Well, at least a different way to do it. We'll see how cool it turns out. But I think that'd be something fun. I don't know, what are your thoughts on that one? Because I know I kind of threw that to you last minute.


AJ: Yeah, no, I think that's really cool. That's a great idea.


AJ: Anything I think that we can do that's gonna be more educational and in the storytelling role, it's frequently the mantra of don't tell me, show me. So if there are ways that we can reconfigure the show so that it is more demonstrative, so that it is more demonstrative of what we would like for people to experience, that would be super cool. And I think you and I are both working on some projects over the course of the summer that I think will really help take that to the next level. Yeah, definitely stay tuned for season three. I think season three is gonna be really cool. It's gonna be like AJ and Trent on the street.


AJ: We're gonna do live interviews in downtown Snohomish.


Trent: Well, I'm just thinking too, even we could do like an actual demo of like create a kind of storytelling video for a small town and kind of like integrate that into the actual like podcast itself, right? Especially if we're gonna keep going with video too, right? There's a lot coming, so who knows what it'll be like, but keep listening to our past episodes. Go check out the other episodes on Snohomish Podcast Network, the other podcasts that are out there. There's a lot of really good ones that can maybe give you some ideas. I can't list all of them right now because my brain is short circuiting, but there's a lot out there that you can go to help learn, tell your story, maybe help your small business, build new connections. And I get, you're not gonna like all of them that are there. That's fine. The podcast network is there to help you find and support these local storytellers. And let us know what you wanna hear about. Yes, let you know what you wanna hear about if you wanna be on the podcast. Yeah, challenge us. Actually, that'd be fun too. Just have challenge episodes where people give us like- Or send us questions. Yeah, any final words to wrap up season two? Have a really great summer. Hags. Hags, hags. Have a great summer. Do you remember that from middle school? Side of that in the year, folks.


AJ: I didn't know that one. That's great though. I love that. Hags, yeah.


Trent: Have a great summer. Have a great summer. We'll see you all back here. Keep telling your story. I think more than ever, telling your story is what's gonna make your business stand out and really help you. So don't stop telling that story. Follow along to how to help integrate your story with the World Cup and the big soccer tournament that's coming up. Follow from pitch to Puget Sound. There's a lot going on there and a lot of information for small businesses that you do not wanna miss.


Trent: It's gonna be crazy. So make sure you go check that out and you need to start planning for that now. So go check that out as well.


Trent: Well, we'll see you next time.


Trent: Bye.


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