 This is Startup to Storefront. The podcast will re-inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guests are, well, Diego and myself. We're in the process of opening up our brand new podcast studio, and so today we decided to break it in by recording our first episode in it. We'll be back next week with our normal content, but this week we decided to reminisce on how far we've come and where we plan on taking the podcast. We also offer up a lot of insights and tips we've learned along the way from our routine when we sit down with guests to our thoughts on how we should celebrate our upcoming 100th episode. This is just the start of the next chapter in the Startup to Storefront story, and we're thrilled to be able to share it with you all. Now, on to the episode. All right, guys, welcome to the podcast on today's show. You're talking to us about our new podcast studio in West Hollywood, California on Santa Monica Boulevard. We are live. We have cameras going. We have four microphones in the room, and this is effectively our new space and the new home here with Nick. So the building is housed by Farm Cup Coffee in the front, Startup to Storefront in the back. And Farm Cup Coffee, if you've ever seen them or their brand or our episode with them, they have this brightly colored yellow French Citrone truck, which is now residing inside of the building. And so the yellow theme plays throughout the building and into this mural behind Diego right now, still very much a work in progress. And it really makes the space pop. The more he adds to it, like we come in every day and see this beautiful thing just taking place right before our eyes. The whole concept of the podcast studio has always been to create a space where people can disconnect. And so one of the things we've learned in podcasting that's hard is you have to get the founder or whoever's coming on the podcast to stop thinking about their emails and their text messages and their investor relationships, because it's usually a daunting place. And so it's hard to get them to be vulnerable with us when they're consumed with like the realities of their day to day. And so our hope for this podcast studio is when the guests appears and they arrive outside. They see this big yellow truck. They order an amazing coffee and then we lead them into a room that they really don't know exists. It's not clear that there's something behind the coffee truck. And when they come in, they see this massive couch. It's actually a 17 foot long couch. And then they see this beautiful piece of art. And then of course our podcast table is kind of the centerpiece where we're going to have a conversation with these founders. And we just hope our goal really in this is to create a unique space where we can get deeper with a lot of the founders and get there quicker. And so the whole concept, you know, you can coin it as we have to disconnect them in order to connect them to us and what we're trying to do here on the podcast. A year ago we were doing Zoom. We launched into Zoom. So for those of you who stuck with us, thank you. Zoom wasn't very audio friendly and certainly not as good on video. It's just too relying on other people's Wi-Fi and a lot of people that we spoke to had like kids in school sometimes in the background. And so it was tough to get crisp audio and certainly crisp video. So I'm sure Nick's happy about this. Yeah, the 640p video and compressed audio. I'm not going to get too much into it, but it's frustrating, especially when you went from, we were filming everything on DSLRs with studio microphones in Diego's kitchen, essentially, his dining room. And while that wasn't like a professional studio by any means like this is, it still was so much better than Zoom. I miss the intimacy of those conversations and that's the one thing I'm looking forward to the most in getting back into the studio now that we're all fully vaccinated is the intimacy of being in the room with them and seeing someone really come alive while telling their story. And to be fair, we were able to get there for a lot of our guests over Zoom. I mean, this is a testament to them and to the space that we helped create within the podcast. It's a really genuine perspective and a look into their lives and their startups. But it was always so much easier to get to that space in person. What are you looking forward to the most like three things if you could be like, if we pull this off this year, bangers. I'd like to get someone from a Fortune 500 on the show. Biggs founder. It's hard to get them to hide behind a lot of leak legalities. Yeah. I know that from listening to other podcasts where they've been on one in particular, they always say that talking with former CEOs is always better because they're not bound by all these things that are in their head. Like, don't say this, stay on talking points given to me by my publicist. And so it would be nice to get someone like that maybe that's a little bit more open. Like, honestly, it would be great to talk with someone like Mark Cuban or Elon Musk is the type of person who is just comfortable with being open, even to the point where they get fined for being so open. Finding that person would be unicorn. I really am looking forward to like, for me, I still haven't seen the completed space. None of us have, but to see the first person come into the studio when it's completed and to see their reaction, I think would be a very cool moment. And I kind of want to be rolling cameras when that happens. I like that. That's awesome. We're also flying in our crew. Lexi and Owen will be here. Lexi and Owen for you guys who don't know. Lexi manages all things social media. So everything that you see as it relates to all the social networks is her. And then Owen is a really amazing video producer, content creator, does a lot of our YouTube stuff and he's awesome. And so they'll be coming here to check out the site too and we'll game plan. We'll try to figure out how we can activate the space and do other cool things to have deeper conversations with a lot of the founders that you guys like. What are you looking forward to? It's been amazing. I mean, since we started the process, I think one of the things that's hard about new ideas or even entrepreneurship is you have to let things flower. And as like a left brain, logical, engineering mind, that sounds crazy. That sounds really dumb. But what I've learned is like you have to do that. You have to just hit the play button and see what you start to hear and you have to put in the momentum. And once you start, things will start to develop. And so in this case, we had acquired a building and then Farm Cup calls us saying they wanted to sell the truck, Sunny. And they wanted to sell Sunny because there's only one mechanic in LA that can fix Sunny and COVID hit it. And so they have really no ability to make money since crowds are not allowed anymore. And so that, let's call that the seed, let us to say, okay, can we do this? And we asked the city and we got all the permissions and then ended up sure enough working out. And then the podcast studio on the back was a moment where can we do something interesting here? The answer is yes. And then Natalia was also a co-host on the podcast and she's a GC. She just went ham on the build out. She literally like no expenses were spared here. And she wanted to create something beautiful. And so then it was like her time to let her energy take over the space. And then I immediately was like, we need to get some amazing art in here. And we have art like in terms of pieces, but I reached out to James Peter Henry, who's a big time muralist. I'd say here in LA, he has work just about everywhere, buildings all over. And he has a residency at La Peer Hotel in West Hollywood. And I showed him the space and told him the story of everything and how even for our podcast, it's like literally start up to storefront and how for Farm Cup, it started to storefront. That was it. I was like, you do whatever you want to tell that story and however you see it. And so again, it's like letting things flower, not putting restrictions on James, on the artist, just letting him do whatever feels natural I think is important. And all that energy creates like a cool vibe. And I think we've pulled that off and so I'm excited to share that with people. And then I'm also excited to see like where this flowers because it's already so exciting and it's not even done. And I think that's the most amazing part. It like gets me going and it's like not even finished. I like that there are a couple pieces in this studio that really have been with us throughout the entirety of the podcast. We have the dining room table, this massive slab of live wood. And we've got the cabinet behind us that used to be in that same room. It's like little things here and there. I don't know. For me, it's become the vibe of the podcast. This table signifies so much more than just a kitchen table. Just about every episode of the podcast has been filmed in one way or the other. With the exception of the Boston episodes that we did, I think every episode has been at this table. So in a way, for me, it's taken on a life of its own outside of just a regular dining room table. We also plan to do events here. And so for people listening, we hope to do, I think once events are allowed, we're fully vaccinated now. It seems like that trend is moving in the right direction. But we hope to have the first Friday type events where you guys can come. We'll have shelving and all the shelves will have different products that have been on the podcast. And it'll be an opportunity for you guys to touch, feel, taste, take a look at, play with whatever products have been on. And that just again connects you to the brand. We won't sell anything. It'll just be a moment for you to interact with some of the products that have been on the podcast. And if you like them, obviously go follow the brand, like the brand, go purchase the product directly from them. But at the end of the day, it's just creating that ecosystem for us in a super cool space. And we have a cool outdoor area that we're building out now too. And so it'll be like a little garden oasis. We have two olive trees back there now. In a completely coincidental occurrence, we are opening this up right around our 100th episode. And I use markers like this to reflect on how we got here and how we can improve. I think it's better to reflect. And I think in that reflection, a lot of truth can come out. You know, I think there are plenty of times in these hundred episodes where we've really hit upon gold versus those times where it's like, you know, we've, we've not had great episodes for all 100. I think that's, that's true for any podcast. You definitely have episodes where you look back and you're like, I wasn't at my best. I mean, every episode that I forgot to record the audio, but you learn from those. And we pushed through and we're here. And so now it's like, great, 100 barrier crossed onto 200. More like onto a thousand, I think is how I look at it. I have this problem where I never cared about the celebration of anything. It's a problem I have. I've always had it because it to me, it was never like we didn't start the podcast. It hit 100. We just started it to create good discussion. And so that's always the flag. That's always the goal. And so whether it's episode 99 or 999, it doesn't do much for me personally, but that's a me thing. Other people, you know, they like to celebrate and I think it's good to celebrate milestones. I just personally have never cared. But the cool thing is that episode 100, we are doing this brand new and we've survived a pandemic and we've had a lot of amazing conversations. And to some extent we've gotten better at this. I think that's been the thing I've learned about myself. It's like, oh, I can, I know where to go now in conversations where at the beginning I think we were pretty good at it. I don't think we were terrible, but now it's like it's so much more natural and it's way easier to get deep with people than it used to be even via zoom. I noticed it in my everyday life. Like I'm talking to someone and I'm just asking them questions, but it's almost like sitting them down for a podcast. Like I tend to probably get a little bit too intimate with the questions that I ask. I don't know if you've noticed that about yourself as well. Yeah, there's parts of me. Once I have a conversation with someone, I can quickly be like, oh, I'm on the podcast. Like my brain, a part of my brain goes, oh, I'm on the podcast and they have no idea, but they like it. It's like they like it because they're sharing. It just makes you care more, right? You're asking questions that you're genuinely interested in. And so from their perspective, they don't know it feels like the podcast, but they certainly don't mind sharing. Which is pretty cool. I mean, Dale Carnegie and his book, How to Make Friends and Influence People was my first indication of how much people enjoy talking about themselves. Like finding out that that book was written in the early 1900s and it still rings true today. It's an innate human trait. People are proud of what they've done and proud of what they've accomplished. And if you can get them to talk about it in an open and honest way, it makes everyone feel better. People can come in with certain talking points that they want to hit on and it's all well and good, but it's the points that you didn't know you were carrying around with you. Those little points that maybe you've forgotten about or glossed over in your journey. Those are the moments that I love to get out of people because as we say all the time, it's like therapy. You know, you feel really euphoric after you come out of one of those sessions. The thing that always gets me is on every podcast, we'll have two types of questions. One type of questions is immediately answered with a yes. So it's like, hey, how did you go about fundraising? And then the founder will always say, yeah, so and they'll tell you how they did it. And it's like, once you hear yeah, you know that they've been asked this question a million times because they've had to for reasons of like getting investment or just sharing their story. And I think our podcast is a good job of getting the yesos because that's important to the journey and to the audiences, but then also asking questions that they have never been asked before. And I think that's that's the balance that's hard where you don't want to seem like a reporter and you're like, yeah, so how did you who was your first employee? How was your first product made? What did you do to go to market? Investors are very, very, very well rehearsed and practiced versus like, you know, what was it like getting rejected by your first 200 investors? And what did you learn? Or like, why do you do this? Or what surprised you about your customers or something different that most people don't ask? At a minimum, everyone though, we're located at 7748 Santa Monica Boulevard. You guys are going to, if you're in the West Hollywood or Los Angeles area, make sure to come check out this amazing space, get a coffee from farm cup coffee. They make really delicious ethically sourced beans farm cup coffee. People wondering, they literally spend time with the farmers and so they go out and they'll sleep in these villages on the land, eat from the land. It's not glamorous and then they buy directly from the farmers. It's called direct trade. Some of the interesting things about coffee is you can buy a bag of coffee and it's got the label that says organic on it. These farmers don't have the money to get the license. And so because of that farm cup can't legally say organic, but this is as organic as it gets as it relates to these coffee beans. And so because of that ethos, we really liked them. We wanted to partner with them and we've been able to do that. And their coffee is amazing. You guys know Good Milk, which is the almond milk company. They are being sold here too. You can get delicious almond milk latte. And then another thing that the founders of farm cup are doing is they'll have a little merch wall with candles and different apothecary. And all of those products are made by founders in the LGBTQ community. The founders of farm cup are also part of that community. And so it's just a way to create and support that community in West Hollywood, which is also, I believe, according to the latest city statistics, it's like 40% of the people who live here are part of that community. And so it's all very, it all makes sense. It's all full circle. And then we're in the back. You won't be able to get in here, but knock the door. Maybe we'll let you in if we're here. Yeah, stop by, say hi. So thanks for tuning in. And we look forward to bringing a lot more to you from this amazing space.