Cherise Lakeside: For me, originally, when I agreed to do it, it was just a new adventure. The first effort, there were two of us and we both had really busy lives and it was just hard to make it happen. Different time zones, all of it, it just didn't quite work out. But a new adventure and I like to try new things. I don't like to get bored. And so, originally that's why I said yes. And it was also only 10 episodes, so if it totally tanked, there wasn't going to be too much blood, sweat, and tears going into it. It soon morphed into something. It very quickly morphed into something else with me because I remember I went to this particular conference geared specifically towards spec writers and it went to this con. We were really early in the game, less than 20 episodes, and easily had a large number of connections on LinkedIn. It's not Justin Bieber's level of connections, but I'm not Justin Bieber. And so I started sharing the podcast right away. It was the first day of the conference. So, the very first event was the welcome reception. We all did the welcome reception. And I walk in and I'm looking around for anybody I know because normally I can go to a conference and find people pretty quickly. Hadn't spotted anybody I knew yet. And, a stranger walked up to me and said, you host that podcast. And I was going, literally, Randy, I was going, what in the hell just happened? We just started this thing. There was no video at the time. I mean, my little profile picture was on the landing page. And I thought, wow. And there were like three people at that conference that said something to me about the podcast. And we were just getting started. We probably weren't. We may not have even been over 10 episodes yet. And that was a little bit of a wake-up call. Number one, wow, this can have a lot of reach even outside of my immediate circles. And number two, all the work I did to build up my social media presence makes a difference. Yeah, I think that really contributed to helping us take off and getting a following. Randy Wilburn: And you guys have really developed a following over the time that the podcast has been out. Cherise Lakeside: Have it open on my screen, because I thought you might ask me that. So nine days ago, I was all excited. I think you saw my post on LinkedIn. We hit 800,000 downloads and 180,000 unique listeners in 105 different countries so that was nine days ago. Today it's 840,000 downloads and 185,000 unique M listeners, and we're about a little under three years in. I think it's February, will be our third anniversary. So a little over two and a half years, which blows my mind. I don't know how architecture podcasts do. I've been told that these numbers are remarkable. I have a hard time owning that. I'm like, who is listening to me talk? I don't know what's wrong with you people, but it's just taken off, it's exploded. So, now I'm on a mission. Like, I want to have Justin Bieber-level podcast listeners, which I'll never have, but, yeah, you have to have something to work for. But it's done really well and I have received all kinds of great feedback on it. I think the key here, in my opinion, is authenticity, because there
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