Jeff Revilla, Poduty Live

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the creator space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

[00:00:21] On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, How can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.

[00:00:43] These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

[00:00:54] Today's guest is Jeff Ravilla, the founder of Poduty Live, a live podcast studio and community theater based in Tarentum, Pennsylvania. Jeff, welcome to the show.

[00:01:06] Jeff Revilla: Thank you so much, Sanjay, for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun. I can tell already.

[00:01:11] Sanjay Parekh: I think you're right. I think there's a lot of interesting intersections in kind of the things that you like and I like and we might end up just talking trivia here in a little bit, but before we get into all of that, give us a couple of minutes about your background and what got you to where you are today.

[00:01:26] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, back in early 2000s, I started this mail order online skateboard shop. We ship skateboards all over the world. And about 2005, 2006, I really got into connecting people online. And I had a video portal where you could upload and watch videos of local skateboarders. We had message boards, and we had a little social media network.

[00:01:47] And all this idea of this little skate shop in a town called Natrona could connect to Italy and Canada and California was very empowering for me. And as that developed, I started to fall in love with podcasts towards 2008, 2009, and I dipped my toe in the water in 2011. I wasn't real successful. But in 2015, a platform emerged called Blab and Blab was this first four in the box live stream, where it had this great social element where it could bring you 30 to 60 people whenever you went live will be watching your show all of a sudden.

[00:02:23] And so I started a trivia show. I'd connect people from Italy, Canada, California. We'd play live trivia. And this little tiny box opened my eyes to what was possible connecting people to the world. I've always wanted to do these interactive shows. I wanted to bring guests on stage. I wanted to have a stage where I could feature people and just have this full interactivity working in real time.

[00:02:48] And, and that's kind of what I've been working on. My last seven years have been bringing what we'll probably talk about a little bit—bringing it to life.

[00:02:56] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, for the trivia show, were you giving away prizes or was this just for the laughs? What was the deal there?

[00:03:04] Jeff Revilla: Just for glory, bragging rights.

[00:03:07] We've done 160 episodes. Now the last 60 now air on local television. So, if you're living in the Western Pennsylvania area, you can watch it on channel 100 if you have Armstrong cable. But there's never been a prize. I did try to do like win stuff in my basement once where, like the old Wheel of Fortune, I would pan the camera and like I had like a bottle opener or, you know, an old pair of mittens. I would ship them like stuff from my basement instead of having a flea market but then I realized shipping was like $10 a box and I wasn't going to just ship my junk for $10.

[00:03:41] Sanjay Parekh: That sounds like more like Let's Make A Deal than Wheel of Fortune, but there you go. So, was this, is this your first time doing something entrepreneurial or did you have entrepreneurial endeavors when you were younger, maybe when you were a kid?

[00:03:55] Jeff Revilla: Well in 8th grade I wrote a paper, and 8th grade for me was roughly ‘89, ‘90.

[00:04:04] I wrote a paper about owning a skate shop with a skate park, and I just said that's what I want to do. I'm going to do that, and then I'll sell it and I'll retire. That was my goal. And about 2001, I brought that to life. I was able to open a skate shop and a skate park, and I always, like, everything in my mind is a business.

[00:04:19] It's just, like, How do I make that profitable? Even if I just see like somebody carrying a case of oranges across the street, I wonder what the markup is on that, how much he's making per step. Like I'm trying to always calculate the business angle of everything. So for me, it's like owning a skate park and skate shop was a great 10-year run.

[00:04:36] And then I went into the professional world. I've been a digital, I've been a marketing director for the last 14 years. But the whole time I'm like, what's my next adventure? How do I get back on my own and do my own thing again? And I've been piecing together this theater concept for the last seven years now.

[00:04:55] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So what ended up happening with the skate shop?

[00:04:58] Did you end up like selling it or what ended up happening?

[00:05:02] Jeff Revilla: I can't tell for sure. But I do know that there was a thing called a housing crisis and I was like 27, 28 and I had no idea you know in 2008 what a housing crisis was. Right about six months before then I went all in on opening my own manufacturing facility.

[00:05:20] So I tore out the skate park, and I started producing skateboards. But as I started to produce skateboards, I watched my sales drop 30 percent a month, month after month, for six consecutive months, till like, I was like, I had taken on this massive expansion, but I couldn't even sell the boards I was making.

[00:05:39] So it kind of got wrapped up, and on April 17th, I put the key in the door, and, and walked away. I shut it down. It wiped me out. That was it. Yeah, it's bad timing. But you know, a lot of great lessons, right?

[00:05:52] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I'm sure we'll talk about those lessons here in a little bit. That's, you know, I say a lot of times like you learn a lot more from the failures than you do the successes.

[00:06:02] And so I'm sure that's kind of carried forward with you now into the new thing. So, let's talk about the new thing. So why did you decide to go into a space like this, and how big of a space are we talking about?

[00:06:16] Jeff Revilla: It's about 2,000 square foot. And the reason for this is, I really believe this is the next evolution of independent media.

[00:06:27] Most people podcasting, I'm in an office at my house right now, and there's really nothing between me or somebody in their basement. Or they're running a space at a local co-op or something. And some of these big podcasters that are filling arenas, and they're filling stadiums and theaters, and there's nothing in between.

[00:06:48] Like, who's serving the podcaster that maybe pulls 20 to 100 people? And with this idea of connecting the world and this infinite seat theater that I presented one time at, at PodFest, like four years ago, that we could take something that you're passionate about in your local area, and the internet's great at finding people who are also passionate about those things.

[00:07:11] We could build this little box, this little theater studio, get great quality recording and audio and video, and have 40 to 60 people in the theater. and thousands of people watching. So, we're not limited by the size of, or the capacity of the theater, and we can draw virtual people in and really help that middle section grow to become a theater act or a, you know, a stadium act or an opening act for some of these tours.

[00:07:39] So I really envisioned what I'm building is like kind of like the new Hollywood for independent media. So, I want to groom and cultivate and help these people become the next level podcasters.

[00:07:52] Sanjay Parekh: So, okay. So, you decide to do this. Your first step is to what? Go out and find a space or, or was the first step to go out and make sure there were other people that were interested in doing a podcast from a space like this?

[00:08:05] Jeff Revilla: Well, I've been piecing together components over two years. I've had a stage in my garage for a year and a half. I bought chairs to fill the theater from a Catholic school that went out of business. I got chairs for $2 a piece. There's a, a store near us called MAC.BID. Some people have it around the country, but it's all Amazon returns and they do auctions.

[00:08:27] I've probably furnished $4,000 worth of stuff in my theater for about $700 because of MAC.BID. The lighting, the pip and drape, the chairs, the tables all that I bought at auction for like 20 cents on the dollar. So, I started piecing it together and it took about two years to find the right building and the right space.

[00:08:51] So it took some time to put it all together.

[00:08:54] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, finding the space then, did you already have other folks that were like, once you have the space, we're in, we want to use the space. Or was that a process of figuring that out after you've got the space?

[00:09:07] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, that's, that's a process of figuring out after the space.

[00:09:09] Most of what I was doing, because I was in my home office recording a trivia show. All my connections are virtual. All my connections are all over the place. They're not local to me at all. Which was something I should have calculated a little better. But I've been doing open houses. I've been doing so many tours that I'm starting to get booking acts now locally for the theater.

[00:09:31] We have a great fundraiser coming up for local animal shelters. I have a guy from Florida actually going to be in town in November. He's going to stop by and do a show. So, these things, these little seeds I've been planting are starting to take root locally. But my miscalculation was, I don't know anybody in the Pittsburgh area.

[00:09:50] Everybody I know through hosting, I've hosted International Podcast Day, Indie Pods United. We've done over 200 hours of live streaming with hundreds of different podcasters, but none of them are local to me in Pittsburgh, right? That's an issue. That's something I got over. That's a hurdle I need to overcome.

[00:10:08] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. But it sounds like you've got a lot of people coming from out of town that happened to be there and we'll do an episode or two or whatever. So, what's the makeup now of the usage of the space in terms of local versus not local?

[00:10:21] Jeff Revilla: Well, we just, we just completed the final stage of the setup which was something I was pushing till winter months.

[00:10:28] Cause I figured it's going to be a pain. First we were a stage where you could perform and we could live stream and that was it. So, you could come in, there'd be an audience, and you could live stream. Now what we've added is I can be on stage and now pull up a guest from anywhere in the world on the stage.

[00:10:46] They can actually interact with the audience. And other people watching the live stream can interact with everybody. So now the stage is really like a portal to the world. It's fully connected everywhere. And what I've been doing recently is all virtual. So, I'm still doing virtual events. The two that I mentioned previously are coming up.

[00:11:05] Those will be on stage events. But when I, now when I say virtual, I'm not just doing a virtual event in my office. I'm doing virtual events from the stage. So, I'm the one mostly doing all the performing on the stage right now and live streaming that out to the world.

[00:11:22] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, gotcha.

[00:11:24] So when you were starting this, was there, and how long has it remind me again, how long has it been since you actually opened up the space?

[00:11:30] Jeff Revilla: We just opened June 13th. So, we're only just over two months now.

[00:11:34] Sanjay Parekh: Okay.

[00:11:35] Jeff Revilla: This is a new space here.

[00:11:36] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Okay. So, you've been open for a few months. And how has it been?

[00:11:43] Like, has there been anything that has made you nervous about doing this? Like what's kept you up at night?

[00:11:48] Jeff Revilla: No, nothing's keeping me up in that. I knew I had a six-month runway. Like I knew that there's going to be a period of time where I'm even going to start booking acts where I'm going to start finding people.

[00:11:59] I need that runway. So I build a structure. I have low overhead. I have low rent. I've already acquired all the pieces over the last couple years, so I don't need maintenance, or I don't need to replace any equipment. I have everything. My most expensive thing is my rent and it's not substantial. The people wouldn't believe me if I told you what a 2000 Square foot building in a downtown area cost.

[00:12:25] I'm comfortable with what we built and why we've expanded. The revenue I make from the television show, that helps finance a good portion of my expenses. So, I'm just kind of cruising and I'm introducing new people to this concept. Because it was about a month ago, it dawned on me that while I was thinking about this whole concept for seven years, and I know all the intricacies and how to set things up, nobody else has.

[00:12:53] Nobody in the Pittsburgh area was thinking about a live podcast theater. It just wasn't a concept that, to most people, it's foreign to them. And, when they come in and they see it and they turn that corner and they see the stage, then we start talking about what they do and how they can adapt that to the stage.

[00:13:11] You start to see these light bulbs going off. So, part of my plan is — we’re still in that six month ramp up window. I’m just educating and showing people what's possible with this multimedia stage.

[00:13:23] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, so, you touched upon revenue. Let's talk about revenue a little bit. So you've got revenue from the TV show like how does that work? How does that come in in terms of that?

[00:13:33] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, it's the best deal for a podcaster. What I do is because it's a trivia show and it's produced by the Armstrong neighborhood channel, we record the episode and then I hand it off to them. They edit the TV version. They give me back the audio version and a paycheck.

[00:13:49] So, my hands are off after that period. And it's been a great relationship and we've done, you know, 60 some episodes.

[00:13:59] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, so talk to me about scale. Like how much money are we talking about? Is it a lot? Is it a little? Is it covering the cost of the theater? Like how does this all work for you?

[00:14:09] Jeff Revilla: It's a cost cover for me for sure. It takes all the risk out of this. And you mentioned like, why did I do this now? I'm 48, and I said, I've been thinking about this since I was 41, I said, I'm going to give myself till I'm 50 to try this. And then because of the positioning of the television station, because I've been acquiring little bits and pieces, my risk is now so low and minimal.

[00:14:32] I'm going to give myself two years, and by the time I'm 50, I'll either know, is this the right thing to do, or am I the biggest buffoon on the planet, you know? Ha ha ha!

[00:14:44] Sanjay Parekh: So super interesting to me. I want to dig into the trivia show a little bit. How did you connect those pieces? How did you get the TV station to buy in?

[00:14:55] You know, why are they paying you? Is it because they're doing advertising against it? Where's the money coming from in terms of that?

[00:15:02] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, great connections and great networking. You know, people you meet through the years. Somebody I knew took a position and knew that I was already creating content.

[00:15:13] And what they have to do, they have to come up with, like, I don't know how many hours they have to produce per week, maybe 20, 20 plus hours a week of new content. And so they do interviews. It's a neighborhood channel, so they kind of focus on their local area. And the goal was to take the show into local places around town and, you know, bring on the mayor or the controller, somebody in the area, the business owner, and bring them on as guests and promote them.

[00:15:40] And, you know, have them on the show and it would be the symbiotic relationship. And COVID hit, right? So, we couldn't really we couldn't really book anything. So, we've been doing it virtual and it's been working out great. We bring on podcasters and different talent from around the area. And it's one of the, it fluctuates from like the, the fifth most popular show transcribed in the whole network.

[00:16:04] So there's actually different networks that are part of this channel. And like, we're like fifth overall, sometimes just in the last quarter, we were the fifth overall around the whole entire network.

[00:16:15] Sanjay Parekh: Oh, wow. Okay. So, I got to ask you like, who's been the best and who's been the worst at answering trivia questions on the show?

[00:16:24] You don't have to name names if you don't want to.

[00:16:27] Jeff Revilla: The worst people to me are the best. The show is called ‘Stuff I Never Knew.’ So it's a guy, he's kind of a dingbat, you know, the host, that's me. And I'm trying to get people to give me that deer in the headlights look. So, I usually don't have trivia experts on the show.

[00:16:44] I have fellow podcasters. I have people who are authors or, you know, mostly doing public appearances. They're not used to sitting in the hot seat. We put them in the hot seat, and then I ask questions in a way that builds tension, that, you know, like, even, what is the color of orange?

[00:17:03] You know, and they're like, what? What? It's not even a question. So, something so simple. Like we'll do real or fake Oreo flavors, and I'll read you a list of Oreos. You have to tell me, is that a real or fake flavor? And they all seem plausible. Like, oh yeah, I could see like a green tea in, you know, made over in China or something, like a green tea Oreo with a white wafer.

[00:17:23] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:17:24] Jeff Revilla: That could be a thing. I think that actually was a real one.

[00:17:27] Sanjay Parekh: I get it. KitKat flavors is another one. There are crazy flavors of KitKats in Japan. I really don't understand it. We did a taste test once, of those flavors and some are not good.

[00:17:41] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901.

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[00:18:02] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. So, I mean, it sounds like the show is a lot of fun. Like I would have a lot of fun running a show like that because that's just wacky and crazy and a lot of fun, but there's still this stress side of owning a business and a side hustle like this. You know, hopefully it's going to become a full-time hustle.

[00:18:23] So how do you manage that for yourself?

[00:18:25] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, it's tough. I will tell you I go, within the hour. I will go from, I'm the smartest man alive, I can't believe I accomplished this, to, what the heck am I doing? I can't believe I'm doing this. It is intense. And the stress is real. It's like, you will second guess yourself.

[00:18:42] You will be amazed at what you accomplish. So, there'll be things like we get things hooked up a certain way and we're able to route audio a certain way so we don't get echoes or feedback and the home audience can interact. Like, that's a big deal to get that working. And when it all came together, you're like, Ahhhh!

[00:19:01] You know, you're like, this is amazing.

[00:19:02] Sanjay Parekh: Just magic.

[00:19:03] Jeff Revilla: But then like I went in the other day, and I had a humming sound in the speakers and I turned off everything and you know, now I'm chasing, you start chasing wires. And the maintenance. There's just a never ending battle with audio. Even today for me to get on here, I couldn't even connect because there was updates available and then my audio wasn't connecting.

[00:19:24] So there's always these little headaches that pop up when you're trying to do any kind of production. You know cables. So what the problem I had was actually a loose cable I had to go through and my subwoofer had a little bit of a loose cable causing a hum.

[00:19:40] Sanjay Parekh: It's always the craziest things and you're not alone in this I've had those same issues and hum and all kinds of things. What's funny is, for most people, they would never notice it. But you and I, because we listen to audio all day long, you notice every little thing.

[00:19:56] And when things are not right, you're just, it's so irritating.

[00:20:00] Jeff Revilla: And the hum, in an arena environment, not a big deal. But when there's 40 people and it's only three rows kind of horseshoe shaped around the stage and everything's dark, but the person on stage, I want that place to be dead silent.

[00:20:19] I don't want to hear it. ‘Cause the way that I've designed this is, the only thing you can do is be drawn into this stage. Just like when you listen to a podcast. It's an experience between you and the host, right? They're in your ear. I don't want, intimate's not the right word, but it is a very personal experience where it's just you and another person.

[00:20:41] And I'm trying to recreate that in the theater environment. I don't need any distractions. I don't need like a light flickering or a little bit of a buzz in the speaker. It's got to be dead silent and your focus is on that presenter and you're just pulled in. It's, it's pretty intense when you sit in the audience.

[00:20:58] I've watched a few shows. I'm like, oh my goodness, this is way more intense than I thought it would be. So, which is what I wanted.

[00:21:05] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. You know, most people, like I said, don't really realize everything that goes into it, but there is a lot, not just when you're recording, but even after the fact.

[00:21:18] Let's talk about kind of, you know, you've been doing this for a little while. You've been thinking about it for a long while. Is there anything already that you identify and be like, man, if I could do this differently, this is how I would do it. You did talk about one about not knowing people locally, but what else.

[00:21:36] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, the better connections would have been definitely a stepping stone. I would have taken a lot differently. And I think using everything I've been doing, here's another lesson that I've learned that everything I've done up to this point has been with a paid ticket behind a paywall.

[00:21:54] So if you want to watch it, you have to go, you have to go to get your, you know, 5, 10, 20 bucks to get a ticket. Then go to the link that I give you to access the live stream what I'm what I've been missing out on is that doesn't showcase the capabilities of this theater at all to anyone except for the 20, 30 people that are buying a ticket and coming to the live show. So what I'm going to be doing in August and September is just more generic live streams and trying to find a stage sponsor so that I can just produce free live events and actually do live streams publicly on Facebook, on YouTube, just so people can see like, okay, here's the full capabilities of the stage.

[00:22:40] And I haven't, I haven't been doing that. That one caught me off guard, too. I thought, oh, this will just spread by word of mouth. People will come and really enjoy it. But I think I can ramp that up by producing live shows on the stage and live streaming them to public places like Facebook or YouTube.

[00:22:57] Sanjay Parekh: Ah, interesting. Good insight and good that you're able to be nimble and, and kind of take advantage of that. Okay. So let's change kind of tactics or, kind of areas that we're talking about here. And, think about like, you know, somebody else that might be thinking about taking that leap like you did, and not necessarily into podcasting, but just into anything and launching a side hustle or a small business like you. What kind of advice do you have for somebody like that?

[00:23:30] Jeff Revilla: Yeah, a plan. You know, I was lucky enough to get into, there was a local organization that helps small businesses. I spent a year, you know, while I was looking for the building, during all that, I spent a year doing a business plan. Really mapping out all the different types of events. I can have the different types of revenue streams.

[00:23:48] I looked at that and then I looked at what my expense structure would be. And for me, what I had to do was find that one was the right time to find that balance. Am I making enough that it's not a huge risk? I'm not going to lose the house if this goes belly up. So really know your numbers. That's, you have to know what you're bringing in, what's going to go out, and what are you comfortable with if this makes zero dollars, right?

[00:24:12] So, what's, what's your kind of range of safety? Like, where do you feel comfortable at? If you're like, if you're like me, and you feel like you're established enough, and you have a house and a family, and you don't want to ruin everything, for me, that having some sort of safety visualization What made it right for me, so making sure I could cover everything in the event that this actually made zero dollars.

[00:24:36] Sanjay Parekh: Right, yeah. In thinking about the, the plan that you've built there and the ways that you thought about generating revenue and the expense side of it, was there anything that, that ended up not connecting or was a surprise to you, good or bad? I mean, obviously there's always when you're, when you are developing, no matter what you do to set up a space, you're going to be 30 to 40 percent wrong in your budgets.

[00:25:06] Jeff Revilla: There's going to be permits you didn't know about. There's going to be updates that need to happen to the building that you didn't anticipate or expect. You know, different things are going to pop up. When you are setting up your business, if you're going into physical space, if you're able to run your business out of your house and just, you know, you’re appointment based and that's your structure. The more appointments I make the more deals I close, great You don't have to worry about those. But when you take on a second location like I'm moving out I moved out of my home studio into this podcast studio.

[00:25:37] Now, I have a second event place. I have different things. There you might need deposits for different utilities and there will be carpeting, you might not like the carpeting. And you’re like, holy heck, carpeting is like four thousand dollars now. Carpeting is out of control. It's ridiculous.

[00:25:56] So you'll all these little things no matter and I was down to the penny I knew all the equipment I needed. I knew the trust that I needed, I knew everything that I knew that I needed down to the penny, but I was still off by about 30%. And this isn't a huge endeavor. Because of all these little things that creep up, the different paints, and then you got to see the wall has a couple holes in it.

[00:26:20] So now you're patching and plastering and all these little things that you have to get when just to get it up and running, you know, definitely budget for that.

[00:26:28] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, but budget for the contingency of things you didn't know about. Yeah. Okay. Last question for you, Jeff. Are there any apps or systems or technology that you've implemented that help you run the business of, of the studio that you'd recommend on the technology side?

[00:26:50] Jeff Revilla: Certainly, a very similar platform to what you're using here. Streamyard is a great platform. I use Cast Magic almost as an assistant to GPT. I'm a huge proponent of never create stuff from scratch using AI, but if you can utilize AI as an assistant, you will 10x what you're capable of doing.

[00:27:15] It'll proofread all your emails, it'll punch up. If you write a memo to somebody or a press release or a blog post, let it punch it up. Be the same thing if you had an editor. On, on staff, chat GPT can do all of that for you. So, I brought a lot of AI stuff in to minimize some of my expenses and to make me look way better, way smarter than I really am.

[00:27:37] The streaming is a great tool and I use stream deck. I'm a big El Gato. So I have the Wave XLR that you see here. I have the stream deck that would normally play sound effects, and I'd have people laughing at me whenever I told a funny joke. Obviously QuickBooks is a great tool for me and we have a little bit of Clover for point of sale stuff for the concession stands.

[00:28:07] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Awesome. Jeff, this has been fantastic. How can our listeners find and connect with you online?

[00:28:14] Jeff Revilla: Yeah. If you're interested in any of these live shows or if you'd like to run a live show from our stage, it's poduty.com. Dates and Deets at poduty.com. We have all kinds of different events.

[00:28:24] We're always looking for people who would like to take a chance and go up on the main stage. So, reach out to me. I'm the one that answers the emails there. P O D U T Y dot com. It's only six letters. You don't have an excuse to not type it in. poduty.com. Poduty!

[00:28:40] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks so much for coming on today.

[00:28:42] Jeff Revilla: Thank you, Sanjay.

[00:28:47] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.