Jeremiah Tittle

Connect with Jeremiah and Next Chapter Podcasts at:

• Website – https://www.nextchapterpodcasts.com/
• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/ncpodcasts/
• Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ncpodcasts/

 

Jeremiah Tittle: 0:00

Relationships are everything

Announcer: 0:06

Welcome to Agency for Change, a podcast from KidGlov that brings you the stories of changemakers who are actively working to improve our communities. In every episode, we’ll meet with people who are making a lasting impact in the places we call home.

Lyn Wineman: 0:20

Hey everyone, this is Lyn Wineman, President of KidGlov. Welcome today to a very special episode of the Agency for Change podcast. Today we are doing a crossover episode with Jeremiah Tittle, CEO of Next Chapter Podcasts. He joined me from Hawaii, or I joined him from Nebraska, and we got together and talked about both of our podcasts. So enjoy the conversation.

Jeremiah Tittle: 0:35

Welcome to your Next Chapter, the podcast diving into storytelling’s impact on innovation. I’m Jeremiah Tittle, CEO of Next Chapter Podcasts, your host for conversations with creative minds reshaping their worlds through narrative. And this is another crossover episode with the Agency for Change podcast hosted by Lyn Wineman. Agency for Change brings stories of people creating positive change in the world, with a focus on their inspiration and message. Lyn, welcome to your next chapter.

Lyn Wineman: 1:06

Hey, JT, great to be in this crossover vortex with you today. I’m excited about this and I love it, because you’re in Hawaii and I’m in the Midwest. We are in some kind of time warp vortex here doing this podcast, I think.

Jeremiah Tittle: 1:24

It’s the multiverse.

Lyn Wineman: 1:25

It’s the multiverse. I love that. I love that. So, JT, before we get into today’s conversation, I think we need to introduce ourselves. Would you like to start? Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do and the podcast you host?

Jeremiah Tittle: 1:43

Absolutely yeah. So I fell in love with radio, first interned at my senior year of college, the University of Maryland, for a radio station locally in Washington DC where I’m from, and I just caught the bug. I you know audio became you know everything for me, where I kind of shunned my social life on a Friday night to go into the radio studio and work on my air check and try and impress my program director to become a DJ.

Ultimately I did become a DJ but realized how fleeting and how little control I had over my career by focusing on being this on-air talent, and so I was like I need to both make money as a producer and also kind of learn that skill, and it led me to working at Sirius XM Radio for almost a decade, where I learned how to make podcasts. Before podcasts were a thing, I was producing a lot of weekly one to two hour shows and then after that, made a couple of stops, produced a little TV in Miami and then my old boss from satellite radio was the chief content officer still is at TuneIn Internet Radio. So I moved to San Francisco, really saw podcasting’s ascent to being just in the zeitgeist of a growing medium that I no longer thumb my nose at. I became a believer after we launched a handful of podcasts there and then I launched my company Next Chapter six years ago. We did a couple of deals with Spotify and iHeart and now we’re creating this really cool Shakespeare series called Play on Podcasts and then been working with a lot of nonprofits and museums of late.

It’s been really exciting to also launch this podcast, Your Next Chapter, which is a little bit I would say a little bit more of a nerdy inside baseball, but it’s about storytelling too, which I think is accessible. You know, more than maybe just podcast for podcast sake, but it also gives me the opportunity to meet people like you who are doing really cool things in the world, and I’d love to hear a little bit more about Agency for Change and the Agency for Change podcast.

Lyn Wineman: 4:11

You know, JT, though I don’t know how I should feel about the fact that you have invited me to your nerdy podcast episode.

Jeremiah Tittle: 4:19

It’s a compliment now, okay, all right.

Lyn Wineman: 4:22

I will absolutely take it as that JT.

Lyn Wineman: 4:25

So I am the founder of KidGlov and we are a boutique full service advertising agency that has decided to specialize in the area of nonprofits, social impact and purpose-driven business and as we’ve done that, we’ve really fine-tuned our own purpose statement to be putting a megaphone in front of those who are doing good in the world.

Lyn Wineman: 4:57

And so, interestingly, during the early pandemic, KidGlov celebrated our 10th anniversary and, of course, with social distancing and being out of the office, all of our big plans for having the big party and the sparklers and the music and the streamers went out the window. And as we were remotely, you know, complaining about this situation, somebody on the team said why don’t we start a podcast? And so the podcast was our 10th anniversary celebration and really there’s nothing that better fulfills our purpose of putting a megaphone in front of those who are doing good in the world than the Agency for Change podcast, because we have just I just recorded JT, our 212th episode, which the guest on that episode knew that 212 is the temperature at which water becomes steam and it was just like this, bubbling over of enthusiasm. But we’ve gotten to interview a lot of really interesting people like yourself, who are doing good in the world, and that’s what makes me very excited about the Agency for Change.

Jeremiah Tittle: 6:21

That’s a lot of episodes. We’ve got a long way to go on this podcast for me and I’ll never catch up.

Lyn Wineman: 6:28

You know, we didn’t really know where we were going to go with it, JT. When we got started we said let’s record three and just see how it goes right. We’re not going to launch until we have three in the bag. We recorded three, the first three. I can’t tell you how nervous I was. I was so nervous and then probably at about episode 10 or 12, I stopped being so nervous and we started to get some really good feedback from people and now it’s become something that I just love. When I wake up in the morning and see a podcast recording on my schedule, it’s like all right, I’m in for it.

Jeremiah Tittle: 7:08

I love that and I think we’re both. I mean, I don’t want to. I just kind of met you when we first had our pre-call. But optimism is on the docket here for what executive producer Nick Castner put in front of me to talk about with you. This should be an easy one, but we are living through a pretty heavy period right now.

Lyn Wineman: 7:29

Are we? I didn’t notice JT, Really.

Jeremiah Tittle: 7:35

I know no two joke right now is like well, for all these news shows trying to keep up with what is happening in our world, it’s like you can’t keep up with it.

We’re living through the late 60s. I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it 1968 revisited. But what makes you optimistic about the future is the question.

Lyn Wineman: 7:59

You know what JT I am probably, and you and I we’ve met, we’ve talked a couple of times, but I would like to describe myself as an enthusiastic and optimistic person. Like I have to in order to get through the day, I have to see the good in situations and the good in people. I have this core belief that most people are trying to do the best thing they know how most of the time it doesn’t always. As a matter of fact, it rarely works out the way they think it will. But I believe people are good at heart and I am going to work very, very hard to find the positive outcomes of every situation. So, even as I think about the pandemic, yes, the pandemic sucked. That’s the understatement of the universe, right, but if there hadn’t been a pandemic, I wouldn’t have started a podcast. If there hadn’t been a pandemic, it might not have been so widely accepted for people to record podcasts and meet virtually, so that a girl in Nebraska is talking to a guy in Hawaii about things that sync up. So I’m going to take that as a positive outcome. So I just think that, yeah, you have to be realistic, but I just think it’s important to look for the good in people and situations. How about you? You seem like a pretty positive person and there’s a part of me that believes you live in Hawaii. JT, you should be positive.

Jeremiah Tittle: 9:49

I should be, I think that should is kind of the double edged sword. I’ve told people, staff members, what have you? That they have the right to smack me across the face if I start complaining because I do live in paradise. But I was optimistic long before I moved to Maui, during the pandemic, and I think sometimes that fuels opportunity. You know, because if I was always, you know, very negative or pessimistic and I understand there’s some benefits to kind of worst case scenario thinking, but it can get out of control and it happens to me, and I think staying optimistic something I, you know, maybe got from my parents and it’s just, you know, you kind of, even if things look really bleak, that if you’re like holding onto a sliver of hope, and usually, you know, things come back around, the pendulum swings back and forth, um, but if I can stay positive, if I can be optimistic then you know whether it’s you’re going through a tough time. You see, like the light at the end of the tunnel, you can kind of get through those tough times through optimism, through believing that in people as you said. I mean, I think that’s beautiful and I’ve learned, coming to Maui specifically, that you know to love myself and to take better care of myself, because, being in the media industry as long as I have, it’s filled with a lot of pessimism and competition.

Lyn Wineman: 11:35

I feel like in today’s world if you’re a public figure and I don’t really consider myself a public figure, but if you’re a public figure, you are just opening yourself up Like people, just feel like they can say whatever they want. They don’t like your eyebrows, they don’t like your voice. That was my number one fear of starting a podcast is that people were going to comment that they hated my voice, because I kind of have an unusual voice. I’m not much of a singer or anything, but I think it’s really interesting how people feel like they can shoot arrows at you and if you don’t have that self-acceptance and that self-love, then you don’t have much of a shield against those arrows. And I also think it’s hard to think well of other people if you don’t think well of yourself. So I do think optimism, success, like a lot of the good in life, starts with what’s inside of you and I think any kind of self-work you can do not being self-absorbed, but really that self-worth I think that’s so important and it just permeates everything around you.

Jeremiah Tittle: 12:52

I totally agree and I really believe in giving people a chance and just kind of being open-minded. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that I am closed minded, but I feel like if I can just take a step back, give it a beat and think about okay, you know, we’re all human, we’re going to make mistakes but it doesn’t mean that we can’t see the other side or try and walk in other people’s shoes and have some empathy for what people are going through their point of view. I was going to ask you what role do you think business plays in shaping a positive future?

Lyn Wineman: 13:38

Oh, I think it plays a huge role, and this is something I actually have done a lot of study on in the last couple of years. But, you know, since the pandemic, people are looking for purpose and belonging in their lives, right, and there’s a lot of research that says a lot of your sense of purpose comes from your work and more and more people, particularly in younger generations, are intentionally choosing to work with companies or work at companies that have some type of a positive impact or at least have core values that fit their own. I think the workforce has become that much more choosy. And then I also think, beyond creating a great culture for your team members, I think every business that has a voice has a chance to use that voice for good, and I think people are tending to be attracted to or finding more impactful the more positive messaging as well, particularly in the space that we work in with nonprofits.

There’s a great body of research that speaks to the fact that when you’re working on fundraising, people want to give to winners. They want to give to nonprofits that have an impact, and the impact is the positive part of your story. So most human service organizations are solving some of the deepest and darkest things imaginable, but yet when you’re communicating in the public, yes, you have to create awareness of that’s the problem that you’re solving, but you don’t want to go so deep on the negative aspect of it. You want to go deep on the positive outcome of that situation, and I think that’s a really important part of using a voice for good, and I think that applies to for-profits as well as nonprofits too.

Jeremiah Tittle: 16:00

I agree, I went to business school and I dropped out.

Lyn Wineman: 16:04

Oh, business school is boring. I’m sorry for my friends that went to business school, but I can understand.

Jeremiah Tittle: 16:11

I actually loved it, but I had this job opportunity. I’d never worked in TV, so I ended up moving to Miami to produce TV and I was like well, so what is the point of business school? It’s to either find a great job or give you all the tools to be able to run a business. And I found a great job that I couldn’t pass up because it was a dream of mine. But the reason I bring it up is because while at business school we looked at all sorts of different companies case studies, Harvard Business Review, you know and you’re looking at various different companies and their culture, as you brought up, kind of optimism and also having a positive impact, and I just remember how important it was to successful businesses that are having a positive impact. I interned at Discovery Channel while there and I was in the education department.

It was really cool in Silver Spring, Maryland, where the headquarters used to be, and I was scanning through the CSR budgets of big for-profit organizations. Corporate social responsibility and all sorts of giant companies have huge budgets devoted to positive impact. I love nonprofits because their mission is pretty clear and typically focused on the specific issue that they’re solving for and trying to have a positive impact on. But yeah, just to echo what you said on the for-profit like giant corporations I think are seeing more and more and I think maybe the youth is driving this more than anyone, right?

Lyn Wineman: 18:04

Yeah, I love the boldness of Gen Z really going out there right and kind of almost demanding. Like when I graduated from college and went into the work world, I went in with this attitude of I have got to pay my dues, I have to start at the bottom, I have to work my way to the top. And I love the boldness of the younger generation coming in and not having that attitude, having a different attitude. So, JT, I’m also going to backpedal a little bit for all my friends who run business schools and businesses. I don’t really think business school is boring.

I actually have a minor in economics which most people don’t find appealing. I loved economics and I love the whole entrepreneurship curriculum that most colleges are introducing right now, so JT. I have a question for you, because I know you are a storyteller and you’ve been a storyteller throughout your career. How do you see storytelling driving innovation in today’s business world?

Jeremiah Tittle: 19:18

Yeah Well, one thing I think is really important and we talk a lot about storytelling on your next chapter One thing that’s really important I think, in particular for nonprofits and those trying to have an impact, is, what’s your elevator pitch? I know it’s not these days, people have less and less of an attention span. Yeah, so can you tell a story in a short period of time that resonates with people. People get it what you do, what your mission is, um, and then there’s podcasting, where uh you have more time to be able to go deeper.

I always make the relation between podcasting and TV, where you might have like two minutes on your local TV network to really share, you know, the impact that you’re having or hoping seeking to have in the world. But in a podcast, you and I can sit here and have a great conversation for 40 minutes and really go deep and add the nuance to it all and that storytelling, the story doesn’t have to end in that short period of time. We can go deeper. That’s what I love podcasting and storytelling just for any organization, any executive trying to you know, share the vision of what they’re trying to do with their organization. A story is the best and kind of only way to get your message across.

Lyn Wineman: 20:52

Absolutely. You know it’s interesting, JT. I was talking last week to a nonprofit executive who had decided that in order to get their message out, they needed to go on the national speaker circuit. And they really didn’t want to. It’s not a person that loves standing up in front of crowds, but they just had convinced themselves that that was the only way. And they were talking about creating their presentation and getting an agent to book them into gigs and all the things, and they just they didn’t, you could just see in this conversation that this executive did not have the enthusiasm for doing that and I said have you thought about podcasting Instead of, instead of going out on that national stage and waiting six months until you give your one presentation and doing all the things, what if you find a handful of podcasts that reach your audience and go pitch yourself and do some podcasts? Because the great thing about podcasting is it’s a bit more comfortable setting. I mean you’re oftentimes at your desk or in a podcast studio. You can have some notes with you. You know a little secret that everybody probably knows If there’s a blooper, you can fix it. I think podcasting is just a great medium. And you’re right, very few executives have a forum where they can tell a 15, 20, 30 minute story and really go deep on who they are and what they do and why it matters and what kind of impact they’re having. And I love a podcast just for that purpose.

Jeremiah Tittle: 22:42

Another thing about storytelling. That well, the good thing. Just to echo what you said, like it’s kind of on your terms which is nice. It’s a beautiful thing whether you’re in your closet.

Lyn Wineman: 22:53

I did I recorded one podcast in my closet JT Just one During the pandemic, on a snowy day. We did it in the closet, All of my clothes and shoes around me. Yep, the sound quality was very good though.

Jeremiah Tittle: 23:12

Yeah, exactly, I always encourage our talent to go in the closet and record, make sure there’s a lot of fluffy clothing around. You don’t need to pay for all the soundproofing and all that. But on the storytelling front, I just wanted to note because this is on my LinkedIn, but, as I said, I believe in the power of the spoken word. And then I quoted this author, Jonathan Gutschall, who talks about evolutionary storytelling. This was on Star Talk. I used to be a big Star Talk junkie.

Lyn Wineman: 23:44

I love it yeah.

Jeremiah Tittle: 23:46

So great. But this is the quote. He says “we’ve evolved to delight in stories, actually because they are so utilitarian. Stories were humanity’s first great technology for storing vital cultural information, freezing it in the ember of the story and make it transmissible over the course of generations.”

So what was it? It was around the campfire, it was cave drawings and the story of when we escaped the lion or whatever it was you know centuries ago. Where these stories have evolved over time. But it’s kind of the way to keep our culture on record in a way.

Whether it’s the culture of our organization, if I’m running a nonprofit or if it’s just a family legends, you know those types of things that can be passed along.

Lyn Wineman: 24:43

I think you’re right. I think that sometimes, when we’re trying to use logic, we just think, hey, I’m just going to put those bullet points out there, I’m just going to put out the bullet points and be done with it. But people don’t remember bullet points. They might scan them and pick out the things that they want. People remember stories, and it’s particularly stories that touch their hearts in a certain way, or stories that they can relate to and go oh goodness, I had something similar happen to me.

Storytelling is amazing. When we think about storytelling JT, we think about it even from the very beginning. We like to start thinking about storytelling with the brand. And when I talk about branding, you know, I think about a pyramid and I think about the name of the organization at the top, and then their logo, and then their tagline, and then their elevator statement and then their visual identity and then the verbiage that they use to describe themselves. Organization starts to tell that story and anymore you know the name, like our name, KidGlov, the name doesn’t have to tell the whole story itself, but it’s an invitation to curiosity to say wait a minute, what’s that all about?

And the tagline doesn’t have to tell the whole story, and even the elevator statement doesn’t have to tell the whole story, but each of those things have to work in unison to keep you wanting more, which has to be something you learned in radio and show business, too right, like always keep them wanting more. Like each of those elements is just starting to tell the story and pique the interest of the audience.

Jeremiah Tittle: 26:47

I think that’s exactly what you achieve with KidGlov, because I’m curious. It makes me like, hmm, you know, I want to know more. Exactly.

Lyn Wineman: 26:57

Yeah Well, can I tell you, can I tell you the KidGlov story.

So KidGlov is based on that statement to treat someone with kid gloves because, at the core of our being, we treat brands and we treat people with great care, and I like to say that a lot of advertising agencies are boxing gloves. They have the tendency to come up with a great idea and pummel you into submission. Right. KidGlov, we’re going to collaborate, we’re going to button up great strategies and we’re going to work with you in a very positive and optimistic environment, bringing this full circle to where we started.

Jeremiah Tittle: 27:45

You know you brought up advertising. I was curious how you see the advertising industry evolving, maybe over the next five to ten years. Everything you just shared is like I think we’re going in a certain direction.

Lyn Wineman: 28:00

I think the advertising industry is going to evolve over the next five to ten minutes. Right, it is constantly changing because consumer behavior is constantly changing and the way people tend to receive information and engage with brands is constantly changing. So I think you know the constant is going to be technology. Technology gives us so many more opportunities to reach a more narrow audience more deeply. A broader audience, more specifically, gives us so many different ways to communicate. Now, with AI, we have tools that help us communicate and maybe help us do some of the things that are the more tedious part of the business.

But I think the industry is going to continue to change because the technology is going to give us more opportunities, but we also have to continually keep an eye on where the consumer is. How do they want to receive and consume information? Honestly, the way it’s happening today is not the same as it was two or three years ago, and that shift is happening ever, ever so much more quickly. What are you seeing on your end, because you’re in this storytelling business too, how do you see things changing JT?

Jeremiah Tittle: 29:35

I mean, we alluded to the attention spans earlier, so they’re getting shorter.

Lyn Wineman: 29:41

Can you believe it? When I first got in this business, somebody said to me you never want to make a video longer than 20 minutes. If you put a 20 minute video in front of me, I like might just climb the walls, right, but yet I’ll listen to a 20 minute podcast while I’m commuting or while I’m maybe doing yard work or something else, right? So it’s just interesting. And today, I mean today 90 seconds, a 90 second video just feels like an eternity.

Jeremiah Tittle: 30:12

Oh, it’s so true. Oh, my goodness, unless that content is primo glued to your phone content. But yeah, I mean, I think, a big wake up call for me. I’m not a big TikTok user myself, but when it was reported that TikTok had become the number one search engine in the US with two out of five Americans, Like we need to invest in this and TikToks are short.

They may not be the full you know shebang but they are the gateway drug or or what have you? You know they’re um, you know, to get you into say a podcast, say this episode, for example, we can post a short little promo clip and say listen to the whole thing here. Here’s a link. And you know, I just think that that’s emblematic of what we’re saying, as far as like where it’s going. Yes, the youth are using TikTok more, I’m sure, than someone’s grandparents. But it is absolutely revolutionizing how we’re consuming and I love the fact that I think podcasts are kind of a response to the inundation of stimuli that we have you know, if you turn on TV and you see nine talking heads and you see the crawl at the bottom, you know scrolling through news. And then there’s the time and different times like news is crazy to consume for two seconds these days and a lot of the content that I am consuming is all through my phone.

Lyn Wineman: 32:04

Absolutely all through your phone. So, with all the things that are changing JT, there is one thing that I think will always be a constant in advertising, and that is understanding your strategy right. So I think the downside of all of the opportunity with technology is it is so easy to get distracted by the shiny objects that you forget what are we trying to accomplish here, Even with KidGlov’s podcast, there are times when it’s like, oh, I’d like to go after this speaker or that speaker or do these things, and then I’m like going back to know our show is about telling the story of people who are making positive change and really staying true to that, and that’s why, to me, this crossover episode is perfect, because you, with this podcast, are in a similar space to us in speaking to positive change and changemakers and making the world a better place.

But I think always understanding who you are, why anyone should care what you’re doing, and then sticking to your strategy, I think is really important. So if TikTok helps you deliver on your strategy, you should be there, and if it doesn’t, you should be somewhere else. Because you see it all the time, marketers who stretch themselves too thin and then they can’t do anything well because they don’t have enough saturation in any particular strategy or tactic.

Jeremiah Tittle: 33:49

It’s so true and it really reminds me of we just went through a rebrand, new website and all that. This process was out of necessity because we were on this old version of Squarespace that was not optimized for mobile it was really just antiquated. So we’re like, okay, we need to make a change. Our web developer was telling us for like a year and we’re like, okay, we’re going to move forward with this thing but what the great by-product of going through that process was to look at our DNA. Who are we?

The last thing you just said actually is perfect, because when we looked at ourselves, we learned a lot that we had not been looking in the mirror. We had, you know, kind of our slogan elevating bold, authentic voices. We definitely had a mission to try, and, you know, make the world a better place to educate people. And then, you know, just going through this process, we started here which was, oh wow, this is who we are today. We kind of moved over here, we tried out, toyed with a couple of different things and we ended up going kind of right back to the center.

Lyn Wineman: 35:00

Hey, that’s good, though, because that means you were in the right place, but you tested it right. You didn’t just and maybe you tested it by you know just seeing what felt right to you, but it’s an important process to go through, at least once a decade, I would say, for every company. You know you shouldn’t be changing your name or your logo every decade, but you should be really reevaluating your core messaging, which is expressed as your tagline, your elevator statement, your foundational message. How do you answer that question about who you are in a way that gets people wanting more.

Jeremiah Tittle: 35:39

Yeah, and the person a brand strategist who had worked with before, who led this with us, did such a great job and actually was encouraging us to double down on kind of our positive impact, social justice, etc. that we wanted to invest more in as opposed to going more milquetoast.

That’s why we say with podcasters too, new podcasters, businesses looking to get into this space is like how are you different? You know what’s your niche because niche is going to trump this generalist approach, I think, nine times out of 10.

Lyn Wineman: 36:17

I agree with you. I agree with you. I mean, I think it’s better to have a differentiated strategy and describe how you’re different than it is to say we’re the best. Because when you’re saying we’re, the best or I’m going to tell you my two pet peeves. My two pet peeves are the words world class and premier, because they literally mean nothing to it. They’re just you bragging, right, and so I’m sorry if this podcast describes itself that way. I didn’t see that anywhere, though, JT.

Jeremiah Tittle: 36:50

World’s best premier podcast. Thanks for insulting me.

Lyn Wineman: 36:58

But I think that being able to differentiate is really, really important, and sometimes it’s scary for business leaders to go oh, I don’t want to close the doors right I want the opportunity to serve anybody, but the reality is you’re going to win more business. You’re going to serve that business more efficiently, more productively, if you have a point of view and a voice. I think that’s really important.

Jeremiah Tittle: 37:32

Absolutely, and I want to go back to not be the poster child for TikTok, because I actually don’t even use it that much. I think it is important for business, but I was going to say I’m spending a lot more time on LinkedIn than I ever have.

I used to have this idea that it was this place for people to only look for jobs or whenever, you know, you’re kind of out of work and open to work or whatever. But I think it’s really changed. I think LinkedIn is become yes, it’s kind of a braggy platform. I mean, I guess Instagram and all these other social media platforms share that. But yeah, I think like that’s one thing we’ve been talking to, whether it’s prospective clients or existing clients. Some they’re like we only care about LinkedIn. That’s when we are doing our business, we’re catching clients there, we’re building, you know, our story and kind of having that on display. And I think I love how that’s kind of evolved, that it’s no longer just like a looking for work location, you know.

Lyn Wineman: 38:37

I’m going to confirm my nerd status by saying that I love LinkedIn right but you know, I do have to say I get many, many, many sales, thoughtless sales solicitations on LinkedIn and you know I feel like I’m blocking those every day, but I do have some good connections and, once again, I think this kind of leans into our remote world that allows a girl from the Midwest and a guy from Hawaii to have a connection, right, I think that we’ll get to know each other on this podcast.

We’ll probably connect on LinkedIn, and over the years I’ll be like, oh, JT’s up to this, and someday I’m going to say, hey, JT, I saw you’re doing this and I’m doing this. Could we connect on this in some way that helps each other. And I think that’s what I like about LinkedIn is you can build, you can curate a community of like-minded individuals that can stay connected regardless of where they are geographically. So I do like that. Being an optimistic person, though, I do definitely curate my network to get rid of the negative voices as well. I very carefully do that yeah.

Jeremiah Tittle: 40:04

Well, the algorithms, no matter what social media platform, don’t always get it right. Like I follow thousands of people on Instagram and I’ll see kind of the same people. But I would say, if I were to differentiate and this is probably not a fair comparison but Facebook and Instagram. I try to spend the least amount of time possible on Facebook because I have just friends from high school who are espousing the craziest of ideas.

Whereas, even if we could say LinkedIn is a place where there is a lot of humble brags, at least, like you said, we understand what people are up to, what they’re building, you know, and there’s a lot less if any at all for me in that kind of political space I don’t really want to consume, I know. Which is nice you know, I don’t mind people get a new job, I hear about it

Lyn Wineman: 41:00

Yeah, it’s kind of nice to know where they are right, Like, oh, that’s cool to watch your career progress and see where you’re going and what you’re doing. Yeah, I think that’s kind of cool.

Jeremiah Tittle: 41:15

Yeah, and it is a good place for, we partnered with sales advertising network for a handful of our podcasts and so I get to see, you know, the other things that this network is doing and getting involved in. So that’s, that’s really cool and you’ve already shared kind of how you got into the business of podcasts. But I was curious, going back to the podcast conversation, how do you see it disrupting sort of marketing and communications? What do you see the value of podcasting now?

Lyn Wineman: 41:49

I think it’s a whole new channel that I kind of put under the umbrella of public relations or earned media. You know, I think now either starting a podcast or, pitching yourself or your story onto podcasts has become a whole channel that we didn’t have access to a few years ago. I think you know the day, one of the days, I was most excited about the Agency for Change podcast was a couple years ago, the first time we had somebody pitch themselves to be on our podcast. Because before that it was all us like going oh well, let’s ask this person and that person, and for the most part we ask people and they say yes and it all works out. But when we started to have people pitch themselves to us, it was like, oh hey, somebody noticed that we’re doing this. So that was pretty exciting.

And now whole, you know, podcast agencies and businesses like yourself have popped up and it’s created a whole new kind of sub industry within communications, marketing and storytelling. So that’s what I see. And then one thing I love about a podcast, too, is you can use it in the long form, but you can also slice and dice the key messages and use that content in other ways. As a matter of fact, JT. That leads me to one of the favorite things we do on the Agency for Change podcast that, if you’ll permit me, I’d love to do now on every single episode, because I get to talk with such inspiring people. I’ve asked them for their own words of wisdom to inspire our audience. So, since this will be on the Agency for Change lineup, can you give me a JT’s original quote?

Jeremiah Tittle: 43:54

My original quote is relationships are everything.

But the subtext is and this is where I learned this from my mentor the subtext is don’t burn bridges. You know, there are times, as I am getting older and maturing, I’m not mature yet. Well, that was really well played. But you know, you just never know when a connection that you make will come back into your life. The best example I have is John. I’ll name him was the head of the Chicago History Museum. We pitched them hard over many meetings, all these proposals, decks etc., and he wanted it to happen. But he was kind of on his way out from the Chicago History Museum, ended up as the interim CEO at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, north Carolina, also a history museum with a kind of a social justice angle, and when he was there he recommended in his interim role that they start a podcast and that they work with me, with us.

Lyn Wineman: 45:19

Because you started that, you planted the seed. You don’t really know when. If you never plant the seed, it will never come to fruition. But there’s a lot of seeds that we plant that you don’t know. One year, five years. I had one client that I worked for several years who said Lyn, stop calling me, I have an agency that I’m happy with. And then one day, out of the blue, she called me and said okay, I’m ready for you, come over, let’s have lunch and talk about transitioning our account. And I was just like, wow, okay, but seed was planted at some point, right.

Jeremiah Tittle: 45:56

Yeah, and you could say this is sales, but I never really wanted to think of myself as a salesperson. I’ve grown in that department and I want to keep growing in that area, but it’s about relationships when it comes down to it, and it’s not always with people that can help you that you invest in those relationships. I think I lived in LA for three years and there’s a lot of that where it’s like how can you help me? Okay, you can’t see you later.

Lyn Wineman: 46:23

I’m out, yeah.

Jeremiah Tittle: 46:24

Yeah, I am generalizing about an entire metropolis. I am generalizing about an entire metropolis.

Jeremiah Tittle: 46:47

But I will say just like, yeah, the investment in relationships, whether they are people of power or not at all, no resources at all. You just never know where it’s going to go and how later, because you were good in keeping up with that person, you said up and and you think you might be annoying, but you know, I mean, I think being persistent is not a bad thing and investing in relationships with your time. You just never know where that when and where and how all that stuff can come together later.

Lyn Wineman: 47:04

I think, too, one thing I love about your quote relationships are everything. I also think you don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life, right? As a matter of fact, one of my favorite books that I read in the last year is called Anxious People, which sounds like a self-help book, but it’s actually a comedic story about this crazy group of people that are brought together by a bank robbery and how they each, on the surface, seem very stereotypical, and then you learn about their lives and it’s like, wow, that is not what I expected, but when you come at life, from a relationship standpoint, you might be that one person, that one person during the day in somebody’s life that, because you took a minute to listen or respond positively, you maybe made a difference that you will never, ever, ever, ever realize, and I think that’s a pretty cool thing.

Jeremiah Tittle: 48:11

No, that’s a mic drop moment out of you right there. That was strong. No, it’s yeah, because it’s also like I said, it’s not just about people who can help you or wherever they are in life, but it’s also about how can you help others and to your point. You don’t know if someone’s going through depression, Whatever their personal situation is. We don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. If someone snaps at you at Starbucks or whatever it is, you don’t know what they’re going through. Don’t think it personally. And anything you can do to help and kind of see if someone’s hurting and kind of lend a helping hand, a kind word, that could go a long way and more than you may know.

Lyn Wineman: 49:00

Yeah, absolutely, JT. So I love that quote and what we’ll do, what we do with the quotes is we just keep a running tally of all the quotes. So on our website we just celebrated our 200th Agency for Change episode and we put a blog with all of these quotes and it’s so fun to run back through them and a few people slid in with quotes from their favorite authors and so forth, and that’s okay. But I just think also that most people don’t realize the greatness within them, and so one reason I like to ask you for your quote is because I see the greatness and the inspiration in you and I like I want to bring that out by having an original quote from you. So can I ask you one more question that?

Probably in the last year, we started wrapping up all of our podcasts with this question, and it ties back to branding JT, because in branding, what we’re trying to do is get to what is the one most important thing you want people to remember about you. And so, for each podcast episode, I like to ask and I’m asking you now what is the most important thing you would like people to remember about the work you’re doing?

Jeremiah Tittle: 50:33

I think the most important thing would be that nothing is static, everything is in motion, everything’s evolving, and that means that there’s an opportunity to impact people and affect systems, situations that feel like they’re just in this gridlock.

I could list just a handful of issues that the globe is facing right now and we have to believe that we can change the world. We have to believe it. Because otherwise nothing will change or it’ll change in the direction that we don’t want it to go, because people will take advantage of their power and what have you. But I think, believing that you can change and organizing and community, that’s something that we really seek to do. It may be more subversive if we’re making a scripted podcast with a history museum. It may be direct at times, but I think like we have to maintain the belief that the work that we’re doing and trying to educate people and inspire people, that they can make the world a better place through reflecting on history and then saying, hey, it doesn’t have to be this way we can evolve, we can be better, we can help people and be a positive light in the world.

Lyn Wineman: 51:59

What I love about that, too, is it says you know, I’m in advertising, you’re in podcasting and entertainment. There are some people who would maybe dismiss those professions, but what you’re doing is making a difference in the world. It makes me think of I used to have an Arthur Ashe quote on my laptop and I might mangle this a little bit, but it was something like start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. And what that means to me and the reason I think it relates back to what you just said is that you don’t have to change everything all at once. You don’t have to do it all by yourself, but also, don’t wait. Don’t wait until it’s perfect. Get started, move forward, do the next thing, do the next thing, do the next thing, and that, to me, gives me great optimism that we have the power to do the next thing.

Jeremiah Tittle: 53:08

I love that. I think that’s wonderful. We end our show with a question that I’ll post to you now. So the name of the podcast is your Next Chapter that I host, and the question for you is what is your next chapter? What’s next for you?

Lyn Wineman: 53:24

Oh, my goodness, I’m so glad that you asked. I have had a lifelong goal of writing a book and literally my next chapter is writing that book, and part of the reason I love connecting on LinkedIn with authors and interviewing authors on the podcast is I’m just seeking to learn everything I can from them. But my book and actually it’s our book at KidGlov I mean you won’t be surprised it’s about branding, but we’re going to give away our secret sauce in the book for creating a brand and we’re writing a fable to go along with it. Because you, having gone through this experience yourself, know that it can be an arduous, sometimes nerve-wracking, sometimes overwhelming process. Sometimes it could be a very expensive process, but it doesn’t have to be, and so what we’re doing is taking you through the process with some storytelling. So the first three chapters of 12 are drafted and it’s all outlined and the characters are mapped. So I’m just really excited about it.

Jeremiah Tittle: 54:47

Oh, that’s so exciting. I can’t wait to read it, and I love that you have a fable in there, because Aesop’s fables we grew up with and I still remember those like it was. Doesn’t that prove the importance of storytelling?

Lyn Wineman: 55:03

It would seem slightly ridiculous to be advocating for storytelling and then giving you a dry book full of bullet points right. There will be some bullet points, but the bullet points will come after the story. It’ll be this is the story Now. This is what you do. This is the story, this is what you do. So that’s the plan. I have been talking about this forever and finally earlier this year. It’s like you know what it’s time to get know what it’s time to get started.

Jeremiah Tittle: 55:33

This is really cool. I know you’re a devout enemy of all bullet points. You’re the premier bullet point.

Lyn Wineman: 55:56

Yes, that is my title.

Jeremiah Tittle: 55:59

Lyn, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me and having me on your show simultaneously.

Lyn Wineman: 56:06

This podcast crossover metaverse has been really fun. Thank you, JT. I can’t wait to continue listening to your show because you are doing some really good work.

Jeremiah Tittle: 56:18

Thank you for listening to this episode of your Next Chapter. Leave us a five-star review, if you would. Hosted by myself, JT Executive, produced by Nick Castner, edited by Justin Cortese, and we drop an episode every other week, so follow the feed to stay tuned for future episodes. And thank you so much, Lyn.

Lyn Wineman: 56:37

Thank you, JT, this has been a lot of fun.