#227: Ralph Lazaro (INaudio) — Building the World's Audiobook Partner

Ralph Lazaro [00:00:00]:
A massive untapped market of people both in the US but also international who have not experienced audiobooks. It's an amazing format. There's so much to either learn or experience around it and and, and different emotions to feel and and it's a wonderful medium. There's also significantly more ebooks out there than there are audiobooks because it's, as you know, it's expensive to create audio. So that was one of our missions at Findaway and something we want to continue to try to achieve it in audio is how do we make it easier to produce content. Whether we do that directly specifically or find ways to bring other services and tools together to authors, we want to help the production of content.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:38]:
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host Jeffrey Stern and today I had the real pleasure of speaking with Ralph Lazzaro, Co founder and CEO of Inaudio. Ralph's journey spans more than two decades leading high performing teams and driving innovation from his early career in Fortune 500 companies to joining Findaway in 2012 and helping transform it from a physical device company into a $100 million plus digital audiobook powerhouse, which ultimately led to Spotify's acquisition of Findaway in 2022. Today, together with his co founder Blake Squires, who shared his own incredible entrepreneurial story on episode 206 of Lay of the Land, Ralph is carrying the story and audio a spin out from Spotify dedicated to powering the global audiobook ecosystem as an independent company. In our conversation today, we cover Ralph's decision to leave Charlotte, North Carolina and move to Cleveland to join Findaway and the culture that convinced him that was the right move to make the transformation of Findaway and lessons learned from Mitch Kroll, co founder and CEO of Findaway, who shared his own story on episode 128 of Lay of the Land. We covered the acquisition by Spotify, what it was like integrating into big tech and the launch of audiobooks to hundreds of millions of listeners, the an audio spin out process, ultimately buying back the very business that he helped grow inside of Spotify and what it's been like transitioning back into the founder's seat, what it's like building a new team and culture intentionally shaped by both past lessons and also Ralph's own philosophies, the state of the audiobook industry today, new competitors, new technologies and how Inaudio sees its role as the world's audiobook partner. We cover reflections on entrepreneurship, Cleveland as a place to build and what success ultimately means to Ralph. Now, RALPH brings an incredible energy, humility and earned wisdom to this conversation and I'm excited to share it with you today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:39]:
Please enjoy Lave the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance. Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio. Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders. Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation and community to be the cornerstones of progress Innovation. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per employee per year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com Roundstone Insurance built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, Committed to Cleveland so over over the.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:44]:
Past few years of Lay of the Land, we've had I think, this pretty awesome opportunity to hear the Findaway story from several vantage points. From the perspective of Mitch Kroll, from the perspective of Blake Squires, Mike Belcito. It's just touched a lot of entrepreneurs journeys here in Northeast Ohio, each kind of adding their own thread to this collective tapestry of Findaway's entrepreneurial arc. And today we get to continue the story with you, someone who, you know, not only helped write so many of Findaway's chapters, but is now carrying it forward into a brand new era. Post Spotify with with an audio and so I'm just super excited to have you on today to hear more about your journey as you've reflected on it and the exciting work ahead.

Ralph Lazaro [00:04:37]:
Yeah, I love it. Thrilled to be here. Well, those are some good names of just really amazing men. So yeah, the Findaway arc is really interesting because there's multiple arcs and then even the people. Right. I'm going to guess I'm not the last Findaway or that you're going to have on this podcast because there's a group of us that were there sort of during my period that were on my team that are just amazing men and women and entrepreneurs that are here in Cleveland that I think you're going to be telling their story here as well. And jokingly one of the guys called us. We sort of looked at like PayPal mafia.

Ralph Lazaro [00:05:10]:
Right. And what came out of that, and certainly not at that level, but we're at our Cleveland version of that. And Findaway just had an incredible team. You know, it wasn't really any one singular person or singular leader, as you've named some amazing leaders. There's others coming as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:26]:
So hopefully I'm not something in the water. Something entrepreneurial in the water.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:30]:
There.

Ralph Lazaro [00:05:30]:
There is.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:32]:
So having lived through the entire arc, when you step back and think about it as one continuous journey, would you say that there was like a through line of what drew you to the opportunity in the first place and what has inspired you to keep it going through on the other side?

Ralph Lazaro [00:05:50]:
Yeah, love that. So. And I never planned to keep it going on the other side. We thought we were. That was like the end of that branch, and then we're all going to go plant new trees. Right. But what drew me to it, so I came sort of halfway through. Right.

Ralph Lazaro [00:06:02]:
There was. There's really two core phases of Findaway. One was it's always been in digital media, digital content. But one was that physical device, play away, that Mike Belcito and. And Blake and Mitch were a part of that, you know, sort of first arc. And then I came into the second one. I was. I was actually living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Ralph Lazaro [00:06:19]:
I probably unique to many of the guests on your. On your show, I'm not from Cleveland, I'm not from the Midwest. I have no family here, But I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, work typically in kind of Fortune 500. I've been in large companies for the first, you know, 10, 15 years of my career and met Mitch Kroll along my journey. And so I came and visited Findaway because I was with a company that was sort of exploring a partnership. I walked through Findaway and I saw all these, like, core values scattered on the wall. I'm third. I'm sure you've had plenty of folks talk about that and the mashup wall and felt this culture.

Ralph Lazaro [00:06:55]:
And I remember at the end of the day, Mitch was like, what do you think of Findaway? And again, I had no intention of working with or for Findaway at that point in my life. I was happy in Charlotte, North Carolina. I had three young kids. Like, life was good. And he asked me what I thought, and I was like, this is probably one of the most authentic places I've ever been where you have those, like, these core values written on the wall, but then you meet the people and you're like, this is like, this is real. These people actually, like, live and breathe these values. And just the authenticity that I felt there was unique, and I was really drawn to it. And there's a whole story about Mitch suckered me into moving to Cleveland, and it was one of the best things he ever did for me.

Ralph Lazaro [00:07:30]:
And that was a crazy decision of itself, but, yeah, you just felt it when you walked in. I think that's what drew other people to it. I think that's. Once I got there, that drew other people in as well. The authenticity. Authenticity, the passion, the culture, it sort of drew the people in. And so now I get to sort of take those things I learned, take the things in that I did or didn't like and things that I want to make my own. And then Blake sort of being with this.

Ralph Lazaro [00:07:56]:
Blake was actually, like, this first arc of Findaway, and I'm the second arc. Right. We actually never worked out at Findaway together. We always kind of. I always heard about Blake and shook his hand in the hallway a couple times, but he was gone. But when I. When I got there, and then he had always, like, heard about me and watched me. And so then that was kind of this interesting notion, too, that, like, Mitch was there through all of it.

Ralph Lazaro [00:08:16]:
Blake is there for the first portion. I'm there for the second portion. And now Blake and I are, like, picking up the things that we gained from that experience and, like, creating our own version of it and. And continuing it forward.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:29]:
So you and Blake, I think, have ultimately made this, at least to me, feels like an unusual move. You know, spinning in audio out of Spotify, which is essentially buying back the very business that you helped grow there and just help set the stage for, you know, what we'll talk about here today. Take us through. I think what that decision kind of looked like. What convinced you that this was the right opportunity to dive back into something that you guys had exited and how you go about navigating that. That whole process.

Ralph Lazaro [00:09:03]:
Yeah, well, I. I would say it's not too uncommon that, like, a founder is acquired. Right. And then they sort of acquire back that business. It was funny when I. When I told Mitch that you were doing this, he. He was like, well, you're the date. You're doing the Dave Fortnoy.

Ralph Lazaro [00:09:16]:
And I was like, well, that's a little different if, you know, that story of barstool, but, like, it's a little different because I was not a founder of Findaway. Right. I wasn't a significant owner or anything of significance there. I was just, you know, one of the Core leaders and, and a senior executive there. So I didn't necessarily intend to do it. And we required by Spotify joined Spotify had a blast. I mean, if you're a Spotify user today, they have audiobooks now. That was us, that was the Findaway team.

Ralph Lazaro [00:09:42]:
They acquired us and we helped launch audiobooks on Spotify, which is pretty awesome, right? This small team of 70 folks that joined this massive tech organization and we've done an industry media changing thing by launching a completely new format onto the world's largest music platform. So that was a pretty amazing experience. I was there for just under three years. Took us about a year and a half to almost two years to get audiobooks launched on Spotify. And once we did that, I sort of knew like in my, in my own mind, like, what's next? Right? That was sort of this mission that I had. I never really dreamed of working in big tech or big, you know, for a big company. I'm not necessarily wired that way. And the first part of my career was in large Fortune 500 companies and experiences that I, they didn't fulfill me in the same way that Find Way did.

Ralph Lazaro [00:10:34]:
And sort of having a smaller team and sort of building something the way that we did there, I knew that. I knew there was something else that was for me, right? And so I was pretty open with my leadership at Spotify that at some point my time was going to sort of run through there and I was just out exploring what other opportunities might exist and got reconnected with Blake. And we really weren't talking about Findaway. Like we had this meeting that was just kind of like, hey, like, what are you thinking about? What am I thinking about? I had this like green book with all these ideas, like crazy ideas and things I wanted to do and was exploring the next phase of my career. And at the end of the conversation, he made this kind of like, well, what are y' all doing with Findaway? And he meant the name Findaway. But in my mind I knew we were already engaged in this process because I was still leading this portion of, of Findaway that was the investor that we acquired was this like third party distribution and self publishing platform that really didn't like fit into Spotify's core business all that. Clearly they valued it and thought it was really important. But I was already sort of going through a process at FI.

Ralph Lazaro [00:11:40]:
At Spotify, like, hey, we're leading this third party, like SaaS platform for audiobooks that you're sort of like fueling and partnering with kind of Your competitors. Right. Even though, even though we're, we're helping the, the sea rise for all ships and it's good for everybody. And so there was acknowledgement there that like, it was, you know, maybe there's an opportunity to find a partner. Right. So I had already been going through that process internally to try to find a partner and getting buy in and, and so Blake asked me that. I was like, well, actually we're kind of going through this exploration of what to do with, with audiobook distribution and SAS platform and things. And he was like, oh, I just like meant the name.

Ralph Lazaro [00:12:16]:
I was like, no. And, but he's like, that sounds interesting. What are you guys doing? Right? And, and so I said, great. Well, you know, as we go through this process, I'll, you know, we'll sign an NDA and I'll get you included in the process and let you kind of explore. And if you want to throw a team together, you can do that. And so he really took that nugget while I was, you know, making it happen, happen at Spotify to look for a partner and explore the landscape. He sort of took that nugget and ran with it and, and started like, really lean in and kept kind of calling me like, I really want this thing. I've, you know, I, I want to go back to my roots of what I did.

Ralph Lazaro [00:12:46]:
I helped build the original form of this and then left and, and I, and I want to, I, I think I can take this and rebuild the team and, and build it into something special. And so we started going through that process and he was being included through the process. And then at Spotify, I had learned about a company called Soundtrap, which was a podcast platform that Spotify had acquired and then actually sort of partnered and worked with those, the original founders to divest it back to those founders. I thought that was kind of interesting. I knew I wasn't at Spotify for the long run and so I raised my hand and said, hey, like the soundtrack thing happened. Can we follow that? Can I go jump, be a part of that? Can I join Blake? I knew I was doing that at the risk of like, they'd say no and say, by the way, like, you know, you're basically telling us you want to move on. Like, I knew there was a risk doing that, but I knew it was like the right time. And yeah, the, the stars just aligned for us in some really interesting ways.

Ralph Lazaro [00:13:37]:
We found a great tech partner. Spotify was really interested in it. We did have to compete with some other companies for that business. So it wasn't just a slam dunk. Let's give it to, you know, Ralph and Blake. And. And that was a pretty strenuous period for us of. Of sort of building a team, building funding, and going through that process.

Ralph Lazaro [00:13:57]:
But in the end, it was a win, win for Spotify as well. And that was kind of what we were. What. What our pitch to Spotify was. This is a good thing for your customers, right? It's a good thing for Spotify. It's a good thing for audiobook listeners and audiobook creators. And so Spotify got behind it, and they were a great partner for us. They continue to be a great partner.

Ralph Lazaro [00:14:16]:
And. And now here we are, Blake and I, leading. You know, we called it Findaway 2.0. We calling it. But it was probably better that we didn't. That we didn't keep the Findaway name. And now we can sort of recreate it. But those who know us know, like, it's Find a Way DNA.

Ralph Lazaro [00:14:30]:
There's a couple Findawayers that are with us, you know, on the team. And so, yeah, it's been a. It's been a fun journey. It's been a long journey. It took us well over a year to get to this, like, closing point. These things are never as easy as you think, but you always just kind of get to the next step and get to the next step, and then here we are.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:45]:
Yeah, I mean, it is a pretty amazing journey that. That you've been on here.

Ralph Lazaro [00:14:50]:
Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things. I mean, the same thing with my move from Charlotte to even Ohio is sort of a crazy journey as well, that I've always been someone that tries not to connect too many dots. Right. Steve. There's a. There's a Steve Jobs commencement, I think, at like, maybe Stanford or something, where he talks through that example of, like, don't connect the dots too much in your life. And just. So for me, it's always been like, how to create a bigger vision for my life, like, what is my broad vision of who I want to be, the kind of person and leader and father and husband that I want to be and obviously setting those goals for myself, but then trying just really hard to kind of look at the next one or two steps, maybe three, but not connect all of them together.

Ralph Lazaro [00:15:30]:
Because much like the move from Charlotte to Cleveland, you know, we. We move. Picked up my family in the middle of winter, three young kids, and moved here to Cleveland, Ohio, and. And nobody in my family or really in my network around Me said, yeah, that's a great idea. Like, leave your VP job at a billion dollar company and go to work on audiobooks in Cleveland, Ohio. And when we got to Cleveland, actually a lot of, a lot of people we met were like, why are you here? Like, why did you leave Charlotte? This, like, beautiful weather, booming town. Like, what are you doing here? Oh, you must have family, you must have gone to college, you must have. No, no, no, I'm here for Findaway.

Ralph Lazaro [00:16:06]:
Like, I'm here to have this experience. And, and then 10 years later, right, we sell to Spotify and people are like, you know, did it. This is amazing. What a journey. And I'm like, you have, you have no idea, like the risk and the chaos and what that journey was for 10 years. It's a cool story to tell, but, but it was definitely a, a, a risky venture that not a lot of people around me said like, yeah, go, go move to Cleveland. You're going to really love it. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:32]:
That's the risk.

Ralph Lazaro [00:16:33]:
And same thing, like this Findaway thing. I didn't plan on this happening. I just knew I had this broader vision. I knew I wanted to be a CEO, I wanted to be a founder and own a business. I wanted to create my own culture and to be able to sort of own and control my destiny a little bit more. Didn't really want to work for anyone else again. And, and, and so here we are, right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:54]:
So in the, the formation of Findaway 2.0, I mean, ultimately in audio.

Ralph Lazaro [00:17:00]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:02]:
What did you see as the opportunity? What was convincing enough about it to you that in contemplation of, I imagine you could have worked on almost anything you wanted. What was it about this?

Ralph Lazaro [00:17:15]:
Well, it was, it was interesting. I, I tell people there was a time in my life when, before I was leaving Spotify and people go like, well, what do you want to do? Right? And I guess it's something people always ask you, like, what do you want to do? And it's such a hard question to answer because very difficult if you knew you would just be doing it, right? If someone's asking you that question, then it's, it's, it's a hard question to answer. And generally my response, and it sounds very like genius, is I want to do like cool shit with great people, right as like the core. And that's where I sort of get to like this vision. And I knew that in audio was an opportunity to do some really cool with some really amazing people. And I, I like, knew Blake was there and we were going to create great culture. We're going to build an awesome team and. And treat them really well and.

Ralph Lazaro [00:17:58]:
And give them fulfillment in their jobs. And I knew that we had an opportunity to continue on this business that I already kind of knew, and I already knew the things that it needed and had a good sense of what it was. And again, it was a time in my life where I was like, I'm gonna go do something totally different.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:13]:
Right?

Ralph Lazaro [00:18:13]:
Like, if you and I had been meeting a year and a half ago, I would have told you, like, oh, I'm exploring this, exploring this, exploring this. And people are like, well, you want to do books or media? I'm like, no, I'm gonna go have this new adventure. Right. And something different. And it is a new adventure for me, and I'm really excited about it. But I know the business, I know the customers, I know the partners, and I feel. I feel really great about the opportunities that we have in front of us to take what we did before and take the learnings. But the landscape is very different today.

Ralph Lazaro [00:18:39]:
Right. You have more players in the audiobook space than existed before. You have Spotify Live, right? This was a market that was previously really dominated by one player in Audible for so many years. And that's what created our opportunity at Findaway is. Is I saw that there was one dominant player and we knew, like, we could. We could power everybody else, right, to then compete with that one player, and we service that, that one player as a partner. And. And then you have Spotify into the game now, and it's.

Ralph Lazaro [00:19:05]:
It's a completely different marketplace. There's so many new technologies and innovations out there today. The way people are consuming content has changed. So even we. We were acquired in. In 2021, even four years, you know, four years later now it's a completely different market. So I get to, like, take the thing I already know and do some really new and interesting things at.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:25]:
Yeah, I mean, running with that idea. If an audio picks up the journey where Findaway left off. But in this very different industry landscape, from your vantage point, what is different about it compared to when you started building? How do you describe the audiobook market today and help us paint a picture of where an audio's role within that ecosystem resides?

Ralph Lazaro [00:19:48]:
Yeah, that's good. I mean, I would say there's two. There's two areas where life is very different and. And the first is in a postco world. We work from anywhere and we use all these online tools. And so you're like, ways of working is totally different. Like, Findaway was a purely Cleveland based organization. We did not hire from outside of Cleveland.

Ralph Lazaro [00:20:07]:
That was core to us to have people being eyeball to eyeball. And we felt really strongly that innovation happened, that culture, that relationships, and we had plenty of people that would apply from, you know, other parts of the country. And we were. And this was Mitch that really drove this, right? Him being a Solen native and really feeling passionate about Cleveland, he drove that we were all going to be here. In fact, that was part of the. When I first got connected with him about joining Findaway, there was this interesting moment where he, he. I sort of knew I was going to go experience my own thing. I go on a LinkedIn.

Ralph Lazaro [00:20:42]:
It was a time where you, like, wanted LinkedIn recommendations. And I was like, who are all the C levels? I know I'm just going to ask them for recommendations. Mitch gives me one and he's like, hey, I'm actually transitioning our company into digital. You're in the digital space. Like, maybe you know somebody. I call him back. I'm like, mitch, I know exactly the right person that you should hire. And he was like, great too.

Ralph Lazaro [00:21:00]:
I'm like, it's me. And I was like, but I am not moving to Cleveland, Ohio. I had literally never been to the. Been to Cleveland. I think I'd been to the state one time in my whole life. And he, he sort of. He very quickly was like, well, then you're not the fit, right? Because we have to have the culture. The culture is built on people being here.

Ralph Lazaro [00:21:19]:
And our ability to innovate and build something special is about being here. And he was like, just come up and visit. And he knew what he was doing because I landed off the plane and he drove me to downtown Chagrin Falls and we ate lunch at Chagrin Falls. I'm looking around like, this is not what the rest of the world thinks Cleveland is. And that's a whole nother story of our. Of us falling in love with Cleveland and planting roots here and just loving this part of the country. And we. It is a hidden gem, this town.

Ralph Lazaro [00:21:43]:
And so we love being here. So the landscape has changed in that sense. Like in audio, we are. Yes, Blake and I are in Cleveland. We have a bunch of our team members in Cleveland. We use a co working space here, but we don't have an office. We probably. I don't know that we ever will really have a formal office, but I've got folks on the team in Mexico and South Carolina and Florida and all over.

Ralph Lazaro [00:22:02]:
Right. And. And we love that. We love allowing people to work from anywhere. We love the, the productivity and functionality that it creates. And that's a, that's a whole nother nugget that you can dive into. The things that we've learned of creating a dispersed organization and those were things that I learned at Spotify because Spotify has no, I mean, they do have some large home offices, but it's really a work for many organizations. So that long winded way of saying, like, the market landscape of just how you work together has dramatically changed compared to what we had at Findaway.

Ralph Lazaro [00:22:30]:
So it gives me a whole new set of challenges as it relates to culture and building strategy and creating something new. And people are not like eyeball to eyeball regularly. And then the land, the market itself has changed dramatically because you have, you know, any industry, when you have one dominant player, it's really challenging to innovate in that space to do new things because everyone is sort of, I don't want to say held hostage because no one's really being held back per se, but you're somewhat handcuffed, right, when there's one dominant player in a space in your ability to innovate because you need to make sure that one player is fueled and fed and it's, it's going well. So then Spotify being a, a dominant player and gaining the market share they have, just being live for a year creates a lot of opportunities in the industry for innovation. There's also really interesting things going on with, you know, AI and, and how to use AI for productivity and, and, and, and how can that help creators create more? And there's also some scary elements of AI that we're protecting against being in our industry, being in a creator industry, right, that we can protect authors and, and protect their work and protect publishers. But also then how do we, how do you then leverage AI still to make those authors and creators, you know, do even more and create even more. And so there's a lot of technology. There's also format evolution, right? Like podcasting looks a lot different today than it did when we were in the audiobook space.

Ralph Lazaro [00:23:51]:
Just, you know, the fact we're sitting here doing a video podcast now, like this was not a common thing, right? When, when Fidaway was really right. And so how people are consuming content has changed. The length of which people consume content has changed dramatically. Audiobooks typically are like 1012 hour books and there's a great mode for that. But then people are consuming smaller chunks of content and produced like highly, highly produced podcasts and like theatrical present, you know, productions that you're like what's the difference between that and audiobook? Right. And how do those things live together and interact? So really unique and interesting problems to solve today and opportunities that maybe didn't exist five years ago. That's why I say like it feels totally new and totally different than Findaway did. Plus having that like two to three year break at Spotify really made this feel like a completely new venture for us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:41]:
So with all that said. What, what is an audio.

Ralph Lazaro [00:24:45]:
What is an audio. We are a, we're the world's largest audiobook distribution platform and we sort of have this phrase that we use. We are the world's audiobook partner. Right. Because we work really in all different areas of, of audiobooks. We work with publishers and help get their content to more places. We work with large retailers, Apple, Google, Barnes and Noble and help them have large catalogs to offer to their audiences. And we give them, we actually give them technology.

Ralph Lazaro [00:25:15]:
So there's parts of our business that are actually a SaaS platform that our retail partners use our technology tools as well as access to our catalog. And, and, and then we also work really closely with self published authors.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:27]:
Right.

Ralph Lazaro [00:25:27]:
We really value creators and, and individual authors. And how do we help them both create more content but then get their content for sale in all these places as well as help with merchandising and promotions. So yeah, we're, we're an Audible platform. You have the world's largest open audiobook catalog, meaning non exclusive catalog. We want to get as many titles as we can and get those out to as many storefronts and surfaces as we can. And so we sort of sit in that middle and service both sides in as many ways as we can. Wherever that market needs us to, we want to be there and we try to help lead them in some ways. But in some sense we also want to know like where are you going? Where's the consumer headed? And try to meet, meet them there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:06]:
Yeah. So the, the timing of our conversation here today is not totally coincidental in that it's, it's only very recent that this is this public and live and, and you've successfully navigated the, the transition out of, of Spotify and into an audio. You mentioned just before we started recording here that you feel you're in the, in the shoe phase.

Ralph Lazaro [00:26:28]:
Yeah, yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to claim credit for that quote. Maybe it comes from somewhere else. But I CTO literally like two days after we closed we closed on a Friday, which is August 1, which is not a great day to transition all of your customers from one tech platform to another on a Friday afternoon. And the team, kudos to the team. They were working through the weekend and, and, and did great work. But we, we figured we found a way, right? We, we weathered through it, but then we're talking on Monday and, and our CTO was like, you know, we just need to wear this shoe for a bit.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:58]:
Right.

Ralph Lazaro [00:26:58]:
And that became sort of a mantra for us for the last week or two. Like, let's just wear this shoe. Let's break it in a bit. Let's see what it feels like to own and run and manage this thing. And we probably need to say that because everyone, like, literally day two is like, what's next? What are we building? What's the next feature? How do we grow this thing? Right? And we're just. We were chomping at the bit for six months of this integration with Spotify, so now it's like, hey, we own this. Let's go. Which is great.

Ralph Lazaro [00:27:20]:
We've built that into the culture that's part of the culture that Blake and I helped create is we're a high, fast paced, high growth organization, so we want to move quick always. But yeah, we're in the like, let's wear this shoe phase and see how it fits and feels. And so far it feels good, but we're getting ready really quickly to like, jump into a new pair of shoes and get going even faster. So, yeah, so it's an exciting time. It's been really fun. It's been a fun, fun two weeks or so.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:48]:
I, yeah. Have to imagine it's, it's fun to just take stock of it in this particular moment. It's not often, you know, I get to do these conversations where it's, it's as it's transpiring.

Ralph Lazaro [00:27:58]:
Yeah. Yes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:59]:
So you've had the chance to experience and build the culture at Findaway, and you've already mentioned quite a few times the intentionality with which you are approaching culture at in audio. And I'd love to understand what that looks like. What, what is that intentionality? What? You know, you mentioned what you liked about Find a Way, what maybe you wanted to do different and you actually have that clean slate to Bula Rasa, the opportunity to begin again, create a new culture. What. What does that look like to you?

Ralph Lazaro [00:28:36]:
Yeah, that's good. It's a great question. It's something I learned a lot at Findaways. Why I was Willing to move my family from Charlotte, North Carolina to Cleveland, Ohio. As I felt the culture and I saw it and I knew that we even told our friends at Charlotte, if we go up there for a year and it doesn't go well, we'll be back, right? And we actually told our friends in Charlotte we'd be back in three to five years. We'd go help build this thing and. And then move back and learn a ton. And, you know, that turned into 10 and turned to this journey that we're on, which has been amazing.

Ralph Lazaro [00:29:00]:
So, you know, at the end of the day, culture is who you are, right? You can create all the words and core values and fun, interesting phrases and things like that. But, like, culture is who you are. So we're intentional about who we are and how we treat our team and the things we do for them. And so while I wouldn't say there's this like, perfect list of those cultural values, I can say there are. There are definitely things that are more important to us than others. And. And some of them are things I learned to find a way and some of the things that I took on my own. But part of our culture is.

Ralph Lazaro [00:29:32]:
Is making sure folks are connected and have relationship. That's important to us. It's important that, like, we know each other's name, we know what we're about, we know the human side of each other is really important to me. It's something that we had at Findway and something that we, I feel like have done very well at an audio. So we take a lot of time, especially because we're not in the office together, to figure out how we create interactions and moments. We have our monthly all in which on the surface is just like, okay, it's just like you're like state of the union, coffee break, all in thing. But within that all in, for example, we work hard to make sure multiple voices are heard, that it's not just me, right, or Blake or our leadership. We try to find ways for people on the team in different roles to have a voice and speak and be seen and be heard.

Ralph Lazaro [00:30:15]:
We then we take a lot of opportunity to give each other kudos or props or I'm trying to like move this, like, let's give each other daps for. But we actually take time in our all in to. To let people like, express to each other their thankfulness and their gratitude. And I think it's one of the greatest gifts that you can give to somebody is to express to them that you're thankful for them and that you appreciate them. And it's one of the greatest things to receive that we overlook. And it's free, it's easy. Right. And we don't do it enough to each other.

Ralph Lazaro [00:30:45]:
So we take time to do that. Because on the flip side of that, the receiving side of that, I think it's really important for people to feel valued, to feel important, and I think that comes from also owning something. So ownership is a big part of our culture. Right. Like, I want everybody on our team to feel like you own something. Right. And to not be lost. And we actually have a guy on our team that.

Ralph Lazaro [00:31:08]:
It's been a chaotic six months or so. Right. We have everyone wearing a lot of hats. We have a guy.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:11]:
I can imagine. Yeah.

Ralph Lazaro [00:31:12]:
Who we were together team the other day and someone was meeting this. This guy the first time and said, like, what are you doing? He's like, well, it's really hard for me. And it was, like, hard for him to express to her what he does. Now. No one would argue he's, like, massively impactful and he's doing a million things. But I sat with him after, I was like, hey, that's a problem. Like, let's, let's. Let's work together to, like, drill this down.

Ralph Lazaro [00:31:33]:
And. And so he's been working on putting a presentation together for me that we're going to use to talk through to, like, what's your core focus areas? What do you think? What are things that you own? Right. And that you can. I certainly love that he's a Swiss army knife. And that's. I kind of entered the conversation like, who's a Swiss army knife? Like, does everything and just really impactful, you know, and. But I. But ownership is important to us.

Ralph Lazaro [00:31:53]:
We want to feel like people own things. We want to feel like they can make a decision and they can. They have the freedom to fail. Right. There was something we did at Findaway that was just like, crazy to think about in hindsight, where we have our annual kickoff every year, and we would actually list out, like, things we did great this year and successful at. And we would. We would put a slide up that would say, like, top 10 failures from this year. And we would actually sit there and talk and say, like, here are things we said we were going to do or plan to do or want to do that we failed at.

Ralph Lazaro [00:32:21]:
And it sounds, you know, it sounds really fun and interesting, like, oh, yeah, celebrating failures. Right. It's one of those, like, kind of cliche terms. But if you think about what in the actual moment of sitting in that room and there's something on the board that you owned, right. And it's, and it's listed. How do you think that makes you feel? But we created an environment of trust that. And safety that you knew that. Like, I don't need to take it personally or be offended by that.

Ralph Lazaro [00:32:47]:
I know that I'm secure and I'm safe and I'm valued here. So we can look at those failures as opportunities to learn. So every one of those failures actually also included a will be failed at this. And then therefore this. Right. Or we learned this or that changed direction or that enabled us to go do this other thing because we said stop wasting our time on this thing that's not working. So the ownership is a big one. And you can sort of feel, as I talk through these things, each one of these things like dominoes to another element of what I would call culture, which is just sort of who you are, how you operate.

Ralph Lazaro [00:33:20]:
So you hear me mention, like ownership and trust together and relationships. Right. Those are things that are critical to us. So we're, we're really intentional about that, especially as being a. Divert a dispersed workforce. Now literally this morning we're sitting planning like our next off site. Like, we're not paying for office space. So it's like, okay, how do we, how do we get people together more? And okay, if we're all dispersed everywhere, like, let's pick cool locations to send people.

Ralph Lazaro [00:33:47]:
We are actually doing our first one here in Cleveland because there's a lot of people that haven't been to Cleveland and Cleveland over is amazing. So we're going to do one here. But then maybe in the, maybe in the winter we might go like Florida or somewhere a little to eight. Yeah, that's, you know, I could talk culture and all those probably for an entire session with you. But yeah, those are some of the sort of the key points for me that matter a lot when we think about culture. Actually, one other thing I sort of quickly alluded to it, but I think it's important, is not just owning, but feeling like you have impact. And this is something I said at our all in, I think two, you know, two months or so ago, as we're leading up to this launch, I can look across our team and I can easily state for you clearly the impact that each of those people had on getting to this closing moment. And so, and I think that's unique because I've worked at large organizations and there's people that are just checking in and checking out and Just doing your job and it's not very fulfilling.

Ralph Lazaro [00:34:46]:
But when you know that your role has an impact, you get fulfillment from that. You get joy and passion. You do better work. You work for each other. A lot of our team members, they know I have to do this work because if I don't, I'm letting my peer down and I trust my peer and I care about them, so I have to do this work. So, yeah, everybody on the team being able to make an impact is important to me. And I've actually had find a way. I remember saying this a couple of times, sitting in front of the team, being like, if you don't feel like you're making an impact today on our business and the things we do, no matter what role you're in, come talk to your manager or come talk to me, come talk to me personally.

Ralph Lazaro [00:35:20]:
Like, let's. Everyone here needs to be making impact. And if you're not making impact, we got to find something else for you to do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:25]:
Yeah. Speaking of ownership and impact, agency and wearing of different hats, I mean, you've now worn at least three very different hats in kind of this journey of executive at Findaway, employee inside a Goliath like Spotify, and now founder. And I'm curious how you personally have navigated the mind shift of those different roles from being an executive in someone else's company to being in the founder seat yourself and what that evolution has been like for you as an entrepreneur.

Ralph Lazaro [00:36:05]:
Yeah, it's been very natural. I've been really fortunate to have like, good mentors or coaches in my career that helped me through those kind of journeys. And that's something that's been very important to me, even through my career journey is following great leadership. So even if you think about my journey at Findaway, I was a VP at a large company and then coming to work for Mitch, Mitch was very like, I was the chief digital officer in the end there and sort of, you know, worked very closely with him and kind of ran my own company within the company there. Right. And that was kind of by design. I mean, we literally had our own building where the digital team and the content team were operating. There was times in my career there with Mitch where he had to remind me many times like, you own this.

Ralph Lazaro [00:36:49]:
Stop looking elsewhere. Stop waiting for somebody else to do it. Stop, this is on you. And that. And it sounds so simple, but, you know, I was very fortunate to have people like reminding me of that at times and telling me along the way. In the same way you are, like being cognizant of this shift, right when I showed up there and I owned portions of it. And then I progressed and got promoted or take on new roles. And he would very much remind me, like, stop waiting for somebody else.

Ralph Lazaro [00:37:15]:
Stop looking around at me. You own this. Go. So I've had those moments in my career and then through this period, actually. Interesting. I did not have Mitch anymore, right. Like in this period of like shifting to now founder, CEO. And I had a friend suggested me last year, actually, the founder, Tim Shugal, if you know, Refinery Ventures at all.

Ralph Lazaro [00:37:38]:
That was like, you really should explore, like, business coach type thing, executive coach. And I had always kind of. I just kind of always scoffed at those things, like, I don't need a therapist. I don't need a. You know. And then I met a guy named Jed Zayner who's in Cincinnati and brought him on as a coach. And it was a game changer for me. And that really, I started meeting with him in October.

Ralph Lazaro [00:38:03]:
He really helped prepare me for not just, you know, this moment, but this journey. Even more of being thoughtful around that shift. And. And it's not to say that he. For me, the greatest value was that, like, I'm used to being the leader, right? And it is hard for people maybe to like, tell their leader, like, well, you were wrong or did this or call you out. And I remember my first meeting with Jed. I was like, I was like, you know, I'm pretty, like, I'm pretty empathetic guy. I'm pretty quick to apologize and, you know, kind of bragging to him, I guess, like, that I'm quick to say sorry to my family, my.

Ralph Lazaro [00:38:34]:
In relationships when I'm wrong. And he was like, Ralph, usually the people. I've been doing this a long time with a lot of really powerful executives and people, and usually the people that tell me that they're. That's who they are, are the least of that. And I was kind of like, what. Kind of blown away by that. But it's exactly what I needed. I need someone that was going to like, hold me accountable, call out my bs, tell me the way things really need to be.

Ralph Lazaro [00:38:57]:
And I think we all need that to some extent in our life. That's what for me. I have friends around me that are. That do that or mentors or coaches, and it can be your boss even as well. That's sort of holding you accountable to who you want to be. So he was very impactful for me, like through that process to help me, help me. I think I would have landed Here. But I.

Ralph Lazaro [00:39:16]:
He certainly, you know, accelerated and pushed me into places that I would not have thought about going even in like my family life and relationships that I had that then impacted me as a leader and CEO. He made me go to Blake one time and he went through this process where he was like, I want you to go to. We were talking about like relinquishing power, giving others power. Right. And not controlling and man managing everybody around you. And as a, as a CEO entrepreneur, like, you tend to be somewhat of an alpha. Right? You tend to be somebody. I can be that way.

Ralph Lazaro [00:39:46]:
Like, I can. I'm aware I can steamroll over you if you'll let me, because I'll just like go, go, go, go. And he. So we were having these conversations about like relinquishing power and giving others power. And. And so he made me go to like some family members and then even Blake and be like, you know, what's some feedback? What's some things I can be doing better to be your business partner. Right. And then just sit and listen or, or, you know, and what are ways that I've maybe to my family, like I've, I've hurt you or, or wronged you in some way or, or something that I can be better at.

Ralph Lazaro [00:40:15]:
How do I. How. You know what? If I was doing this, I would just be an amazing partner for you, Blake. What is that? And then like sitting and listening and not responding and not defending. Yeah, really? That was like a. Really. That was my homework assignment that took me like a week or two to do. Because it was really hard to do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:30]:
No, it's a great point.

Ralph Lazaro [00:40:31]:
I had so much growth through that with and my wife, my relationship. He made me do it to one of my kids. I have a 16 year old daughter. So think about going to your daughter and like, you know, trying to expel out like maybe ways that I've wounded her or hurt her or things that I've said that have been impactful to her. And those were like, became like these like tearful, amazing moments with my daughter where she was. She was probably the one that was the most willing to like unload on me, which is interesting. Anyway. Yeah, so.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:58]:
Yeah, well, I mean, embedded within the idea of relinquishing power is related from the company perspective to giving people that sense of ownership at the same time.

Ralph Lazaro [00:41:08]:
Exactly. Yeah. Which is hard to do. It's hard to do. You know, the, the. It's. It's. In some ways it's delegation.

Ralph Lazaro [00:41:15]:
Right. And, and we all struggle with this no matter what level of leadership or management that you're in. When you know a thing really well and you can do that thing well, like giving that to someone else, because you know that. But. And you. And you know that they won't do it as good as you. They might struggle a little bit. But when you don't delegate or linquish power, you're holding your organization back, you're holding your team back, you're holding your family back.

Ralph Lazaro [00:41:35]:
And you need to be able to trust other people and give them the opportunity to take the ownership and succeed or fail.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:41]:
What's the most impactful learning you've taken with you from your time at Spotify?

Ralph Lazaro [00:41:47]:
Man, at Spotify.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:51]:
Knowing there's a lot you want to do very differently from that, just given size and what that kind of organization entails. But what. What are you taking with you from it?

Ralph Lazaro [00:42:02]:
Well, the thing that was about Spotify, Spotify felt like findaway in a lot of ways. Just like culturally, a lot of care for people and a lot of giving and really great relationships. I jokingly had said prior to doing Spotify that I would probably never want to work in big tech. Cause I'd experienced a lot of it. Just. I just wasn't drawn to it. Right. There was not that there was anything wrong with it.

Ralph Lazaro [00:42:23]:
With Spotify though. I was working with some of the most amazing people I'd ever been around. Maybe brilliant, brilliant people. You know, the barrier to entry in an organization like that is so high. In fact, for us, for a lot of the findawayers, there was a lot of imposter syndrome when we first got there. I know, I felt it. A lot of folks in my team felt it. Because you step into this organization of just insanely educated MBAs and rock stars and experienced people that are.

Ralph Lazaro [00:42:50]:
Yeah, I was at Google for 5 years before I got here, and I was at Facebook doing this. Or I have an MBA from this place. And we're like, well, we're just 70 people from Cleveland, Ohio that like, are passionate about the work we do together and want to do cool. Like, it was interesting that they loved our culture too. Right? So part of the learnings that were there was actually this notion of like feeling imposter syndrome. Feeling like this small team from Cleveland will never be what big tech is. We're not as, you know, functional as they are. And it took a year or two for a lot of folks and even me to sort of be there and be like, wait a second, like, this is not as hard as we thought.

Ralph Lazaro [00:43:27]:
And we are better than we thought we were. And our little like, scrappy team and scrappy nature and culture driven, passion driven environment can be really effective and really powerful. And in some ways, the Spotify team was envious of us and how we worked. Right. And how we function. So there was this interesting, like, mutual learning where I learned a lot from Spotify on process and organization and, and decision making. Right. That, that are there things that, like at Findaway, we're a small team.

Ralph Lazaro [00:43:57]:
I don't have like insights, analysts. Right. And people that just go find information. A lot of it is gut driven and listening to the market. And then just even we had some like, challenges in the marketplace over the course of Spotify. We had like, PR people to help us out. And I remember, like, we had this one issue that happened last year and. And Will Degas, who was my head of voices, who was one of the core team members of Findaway and somebody.

Ralph Lazaro [00:44:20]:
You're on podcast someday because he's gonna do amazing things. I remember after this debacle happened, we're at Spotify and he's still at Spotify, doing great work there. But. And he and I got off the phone, we're like, that was crazy to have like a PR team come in and tell us what we shouldn't. Shouldn't do. Because typically it'd been like, me, which me, Mitch and Will. Like, like, what do we do? How do we handle this? What do you guys think? Okay, let's talk to legal real quick and just make sure we're good. Right.

Ralph Lazaro [00:44:43]:
And we're. And so I learned a lot about like, process and organization and they're just a machine, right? Everything they do, they don't make bad decisions because those decisions are so well thought out and so well checked. Now the downside of that is those decisions take a long time to make and the launch of things take a long time to make, but usually they're right. So there's a little bit of like, and I find a way we would like, move fast and we really prided ourselves on that and that's what helped us be effective. But there's probably somewhere between, like our insanely fast place, just make a decision and go mentality. And Spotify like, moves like, slow down, ask the question, get this feedback, bring in this expert, bring in Legal, bring in all these folks to weigh in, and you end up usually at the right decision. It just takes more time at Spotify. But the way that they're structured and organized is really cool.

Ralph Lazaro [00:45:33]:
I mean, even like Blake and I are putting together Our like, benefits package and employee handbook package. Right. Things like that. And it, you know, it's small startup. You're just kind of like it's text or a Google Doc, right. Spotify, they like, take time with like, designers to like, design this beautiful, like, employee handbook and then like your benefits package that, like, it's just, I mean, it's a Google Doc, but it was like designed, so.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:57]:
Right.

Ralph Lazaro [00:45:58]:
Blake didn't understand that. He kept wanting to get the handbook out and I'm like, no, like, this needs to be great. He's like, why do you need to be perfect? It's for a couple people. Like, let's go. And he's in startup mentality, right? He's in go, go, go, go, go. And I'm in, like, well, let's take, let's. Let me just give this star designer and let our marketing person look at this and like, let's just take a little bit more time on this to make this really nice handbook. It's only going to like, a really small number of people, but in my mind I was like, I want to do that really well.

Ralph Lazaro [00:46:23]:
And sure, it was a little extra effort that, you know, I think it was worthwhile in the end, but. And I think Blake liked it in the end too. But those are. I picked up so much at Spotify. It was. I'm really fortunate for. To be able to have had that experience as like an entrepreneur out, like kind of been in this semi entrepreneurial environment and find a way. Right.

Ralph Lazaro [00:46:41]:
Even though I wasn't like an owner, founder or whatever, but. And then go have big tech and see, like, they just kick ass at everything they do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:50]:
It like expands your quality barometer.

Ralph Lazaro [00:46:52]:
Yeah. Yes. Far more quality now too. So.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:56]:
Well, we'll run with the. Maybe wearing the shoe analogy for a bit. And as you're getting comfortable with it, you mentioned, you know, in the market for a new pair of shoes. What. What does the journey ahead look like? How are you thinking about as the world's audiobook partner? How do you get there?

Ralph Lazaro [00:47:19]:
Yeah, well, it's the interesting thing about our phase, right. We sort of acquired a business. We didn't start from scratch. So we have revenue, we have margins, we have customers. So there's this. It's a unique storyline in our sense that like, we bought a thing that exists. And so job number one for us is actually to. To look at this thing and build some efficiencies and optimize it not just for ourselves, but for our customers.

Ralph Lazaro [00:47:46]:
So there, there are ways our customers use Our platform that, and this was what led, this was sort of the impetus of like moving it out outside of Spotify as well, is like it wasn't really a core strategy for Spotify to be servicing these other, you know, partners. So it was really hard for me internally to get like significant investment in it because Spotify is doing all these like massive world changing things. Right. And so the initial step for us is like, what type of optimization can we create today to get this thing really running efficiently for us and our team, but then also for the publishers that use it, the authors that use our services and then the, and then the external partners, the retailers that use it. So we're going to spend a few months doing that while we're looking for some low hanging fruit and building features. And then we have a bunch of brainstorming that we've been doing around different features that we know can be game changers for, you know, those, those customers of ours and, and sort of listen to their needs. The great thing is, is we were very much built and we built this company in a relationship business, right? We, we know those publishers very well and have great relationships and same thing, the authors and the retailers and library providers that we work with. So we feel really comfortable asking them like, what do you need from us? What have we been doing poorly? What can we be doing better? And so they're chopping at the bit for that too.

Ralph Lazaro [00:49:10]:
They're, they're excited that we're willing to like go all in and really invest and purely be an audiobook platform for them. And so they were really excited about this change as well. And it also helped really, they're excited more from the sense of like, we're independent now. Right. You can imagine it was strange for like Apple or someone to be going to Spotify, like, well, we want this new feature. Can you do this better for us?

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:32]:
Yeah.

Ralph Lazaro [00:49:32]:
And now that I'm an independent platform and I serve all those parties, Apple or whoever it is can. Barnes and Noble is a big provider for us or big partner of ours. They can come to us and say, hey, like we really want this new feature, this thing, can you help us? Or how are you thinking about, you know, digital voice narration and AI content is a really hot topic today. And yeah. And then how do you think about, you know, international content and foreign language and then format evolution? So plenty. There's, there's no shortage of things for us to do. First and foremost is like make this thing optimized and really run efficient because we have an existing business with an existing customer. So that's different than maybe like an entrepreneur that's just purely like starting from scratch.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:08]:
No, absolutely. If, I mean, if success is, is, is simply framed as, you know, doing great with great people.

Ralph Lazaro [00:50:16]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:16]:
You have success in, in abundance already.

Ralph Lazaro [00:50:19]:
Yeah, man. For sure. I feel it. Why I'm smiling. I think the team feels it too. So. Yeah. But I, but I want to do more.

Ralph Lazaro [00:50:26]:
One of the things Mitch used to always say is, is we're happy, never satisfied. And I certainly carry that mantra forward. So I'm really happy with where we are, but not satisfied. There's tons of other really interesting things we can be doing and ways we can grow and, and so I'm a big believer. We have a high growth mindset. We're going to continue to drive growth and not just be happy with what we have today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:47]:
Yeah. I feel that really captures the spirit of Mitch. Actually, I didn't know that phrase, but I feel like every time I come away from talking with Mitch, my bar for ambition is just raised.

Ralph Lazaro [00:50:56]:
It's crazy, right? I just spending 10 years with him. Right. It's, it was a pretty amazing journey for me. I took so much away from it. Yeah. I have, I have like a book of Mitchisms, Right. That I could, that I could share just all his crazy phrases and visuals and off the wall sayings. But I'm, I, I, I'm littered with ones like that that, you know, that are just sort of things I heard Mitch say over and over that were ingrained in me and are a part of an audio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:25]:
Yeah. What's it like working with Blake again?

Ralph Lazaro [00:51:29]:
Well, I never, I didn't work with Blake actually originally. Right. I was never there with him. So there is this. It's been great. Blake and I are really, really good partners for each other because we do cancel out each other's weaknesses in a lot of ways. We are very similar in our like, belief system and values and, and the importance of culture and things. And that was what really drew us together.

Ralph Lazaro [00:51:51]:
It's like, oh, wait, we both believe this. And it was funny. I was not there with Blake previous at Findaway, so a lot of Findaways culture, in my view was like Mitch driven and created and certainly that was a big part of it. And then my, I had my version of like Findaway and our senior management team, which was also very different than what it was when Blake was there. And so I had my version. And then getting to know him more was like, oh my gosh, you have this like totally other version of Findaway that you know that was guys like Belcido and, and just this, this, you know, Christopher and these other, this other group of senior leaders still similar values and so many things align in the culture that we're saying but also very different because we were a different environment. We really. My period there was really more about this transfer transformation to become a tech company.

Ralph Lazaro [00:52:35]:
Right. And it was about building the tech team and downloadable and streaming and we went all in early on aws. We were really early on that was one of the big decisions that we made. Had a gentleman, Rob Tandy, another brilliant find weigher who came to me kind of early on in cloud storage and was like we went to Amazon re invent, there's this thing and we could stop using local servers in Cleveland Heights and we can move this whole thing to the cloud and then we could power everybody. And it sort of steamrolled and that was one of those decision points that helped us get to where we were. So. But Blake's a great partner. We very complimentary to each other and I didn't dream.

Ralph Lazaro [00:53:16]:
It's another thing I never dreamed about having a partner really. I never intended to have a partner. I felt strongly that like I'm a pretty strong personality. I know what I want and I want to just go do it and. But that's been a great. You know, it's been great for me. We do have two other partners in the business with us who are kind of own our tech piece of our organization and they're, they're a Midwest company, Minnesota based in Minnesota kind of global but company called Tarmac and the two founders of that are, are along with Blake and I. So there's.

Ralph Lazaro [00:53:46]:
There's really four of us. There's really Blake and I that are kind of the more the face and kind of founders of this thing and then. But we brought them on as partners as well and, and yeah they, they've. They've been so massively impactful. Their team has been amazing. We really like took their team and kind of folded it into our in audio team which has been awesome. So they're kind of a part of our core team and, and part of the culture.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:08]:
Yeah. So if, if audio is able to achieve everything that you envisioned for it, both you know, short term optimization, long term growth, what does the audiobook industry look like and what is in audio's.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:22]:
Role that at that future state?

Ralph Lazaro [00:54:25]:
Yeah, that's good. Well, there is so many people that have still not listened to an audiobook or are not consuming audiobooks. And Spotify has definitely been changing that, which has been great. I don't, I, I, I don't usually, so I'm a product guy at my heart and I, I don't love when people use like personal antidotes like my, my, my mother in law listen to this or my, you know, my grand, you know, my aunt did this. But I, my example is my wife who never listened to audiobooks. We launch it on Spotify and she's like, oh, I'll do it for you, you're listening, you know, and I got it. She got an email about it and then she was like hooked on audiobooks. And then all her friends were listening to audiobooks, all on Spotify.

Ralph Lazaro [00:55:02]:
And she's someone that's predominantly listening to music, didn't even really listen to podcasts, saw it on Spotify, obviously felt an affinity to me. Launching it was like, oh, let me just try this out. Next thing I know, like her and her friends are like hooked on all unlike audiobooks that they're constantly listening to. And I think that story is really common. That's not an anomaly. And I think there is a massive untapped market of people, both in the US but also international who have not experienced audiobooks. It's an amazing format. There's so much to either learn or experience around it and, and different emotions to feel and, and it's a wonderful medium.

Ralph Lazaro [00:55:40]:
So I, I, I feel really great about there being more listeners out there. There's also significantly more ebooks out there than there are audiobooks. Because as you know, it's expensive to create audio, right? It's expensive to create an audio book and audiobooks to be a value like they really should be produced, right. And, and have either an actor, right, and, and someone, and a producer. And so it can be fairly expensive. So that was one of our missions at Findway. And something we want to continue to try to achieve it in audio is how do we make it easier to produce content. Whether we do that directly specifically or find ways to, you know, bring other services and tools together to authors, we want to help the production of content.

Ralph Lazaro [00:56:20]:
We also think there's a, there's a format evolution that will continue to take place that would be interesting as well. I mean, I'm not sure if you remember a time where there was like abridged and unabridged audiobooks and, and they made shorter versions of audiobooks on DVDs, right? If you didn't want to have like 20 DVDs, there was like this like shorter version that was like seven or eight and it'd be interesting. You know, that's one of the things we look at like, is that, you know. Yeah, that come back around. Right. Could that this notion of like condensed books and storytelling or chapterized content. So we'll see. I think there's no shortage of opportunities.

Ralph Lazaro [00:56:55]:
I still think there's tons of growth opportunity in, in audiobooks and obviously we believe that we're leaning in heavy on it. And we opted. There was a decision that Blake and I had to make when we called ourselves in audio. It was like, all right, buddy, like we are going all in on audiobooks and, and that means we're not doing ebooks. Right. We're not doing this other thing. We're not, you know, there's. We're an audiobook company.

Ralph Lazaro [00:57:15]:
Are we good? And we're like, yeah, let's go. Like, let's go all in.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:19]:
It must be pretty exciting to be working towards that end at a period of time when the barriers to production of audio at that quality are just falling as precipitously as they are when you think about like synthetic narration and.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:35]:
All the AI stuff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:37]:
I mean the, the, the barrier is just getting very low.

Ralph Lazaro [00:57:40]:
Yes. Which is great. And more content is better. More people to be able to, being able to express their creativity. You look at how podcasts have grown and how easy it's become to be able to create a podcast and share your story. And I think everybody has something meaningful that they can share, whether that's through art form and sort of storytelling or whether that's from even just sharing your own story and experiences. And we do that already all day in social media and so that's evolved in a podcast. And now I'm, I'm really hoping that will continue to evolve into audibooks.

Ralph Lazaro [00:58:11]:
It already has in book form. Right. There's the number of self published authors and the ease of writing a book and creating an epub. Again, that barrier is so low. It's very inexpensive if not free in some, some places to be able to create an epub. And I don't think audio will be free. Well, maybe who knows where it's going to go. But yeah, the barrier to entry is lowering and that's only good for us because it helps create more content and then it's really about helping consumers get exposed to it, which is really the, the role of our partners.

Ralph Lazaro [00:58:40]:
But we want to find ways that we can help them do that as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:43]:
I want to reintroduce here the, the topic of, of Cleveland and what the significance of place has meant to you as someone who is not from here.

Ralph Lazaro [00:58:55]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:55]:
Like myself. Who's kind of here on their own volition, who gets it from both sides. Like, you know, what. What are you doing here? Talk to us a little bit about, you know, the. The what. What it's been to. To build this here.

Ralph Lazaro [00:59:08]:
Yeah. Cleveland has wrapped his round. Its arms around us and we've wrapped our arms around Cleveland. We have just loved being here. It was very unexpected. We sort of came here reluctantly, as I said. Like, Mitch convinced me to come up and I was like, we'll give it a year. Like, what's a year? We'll just.

Ralph Lazaro [00:59:25]:
And then thankfully, I have a wife who's an adventurer and kind of down for anything as well. And. And she's my partner. There's no just decision that I make. We made this decision together to come up here. And we had three kids under the age of four when we made that move. And there was two feet of snow on the ground in January 2013. And I think when we got here, it was not like below 20 for like our first month or month.

Ralph Lazaro [00:59:46]:
Month or so here. And we were like, what did we do right. And, and leaving Charlotte. And. And we learned quickly that, like, people in Cleveland don't really, like, go outside right. When the weather's not great and you're sort of like, inside. And we didn't know where to go and what to do. And then May came around and the sun came out and then all of a sudden, like, there's people everywhere and, and people in Cleveland, like, really, when the weather's nice, we get out and get into it.

Ralph Lazaro [01:00:07]:
So Cleveland has been a wonderful surprise for us. So much so we chose to plant roots and, and stay here. Right. When, when Findaway sold to Spotify, there was a moment where we. We had always dreamed of living in the mountains. My. Our family had land in Montana and. And you know, we wanted to be in Utah or Colorado.

Ralph Lazaro [01:00:26]:
Like, early on in our marriage, we always said that we wanted to be out. Out west or, you know, closer to mountains or western North Carolina even, or something. And I remember sitting with my wife, like, okay, we're owned by Spotify. I can live wherever. Like, where do we want to go or do we want to stay here? Like, just let's consciously choose to be in Cleveland because previously it was really Find a Way Driven that brought us here. Yeah, right. And we wanted to be a part. A part of Findaway, so we chose to be here.

Ralph Lazaro [01:00:48]:
But it was this moment of like, we're here because we want to be here, and we choose to be here. And it was a really quick and easy decision for us. Like, we want to be in this town. While the weather is challenging during the winter and the gray periods, I challenge you to find a better place for weather in the summer and fall than Cleveland, Ohio. I think this is a really special place to be. And. And those that come here know. And when we moved here, we had people from Charlotte come visit us.

Ralph Lazaro [01:01:13]:
And I remember in that first couple years, they'd visit us, and they'd look around like, wait, you're not leaving Cleveland, are you? I'm like, we really like it. And then professionally, there's this interesting notion here that I really like. I. I feel like it's a competitive environment professionally here, but I think there's also this, like, rallying cry that, like, Clevelanders and Midwesterners were kind of in this together and want to support each other. And I had not seen that type of, like, the type of rallying around a city and a region that I feel here in Cleveland, that I grew up in Washington, D.C. my wife was from Atlanta. I spent a lot of time in New York and San Francisco. Right.

Ralph Lazaro [01:01:48]:
And. And there was a while with Mitch, I was always telling him, like, all right, once we get big enough, we're gonna have a Palo Alto office, and we're gonna be out here. And then I would spend time out there and see, like, how competitive and combative and cutthroat things were.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:01]:
Yeah.

Ralph Lazaro [01:02:01]:
And again, it's competitive here. So I don't want. This isn't just this, like, wonderful rainbows and sunshines feel good type place, but it felt like there was more support here and connectivity here. I also feel like there was easier access to things here. Right. That are harder to gain access to in this large city where everyone's competing for a thing. You can meet business leaders here. You can meet folks with capital here.

Ralph Lazaro [01:02:26]:
Right. And it's. Things are just more accessible. And the cost of living here is great. I mean, I. I'm thrilled with being here in the Midwest and love it. Another thing I never would have dreamed. I never.

Ralph Lazaro [01:02:36]:
This is. Goes back to, like, the connecting dots. I would never have predicted to be in this moment and say what I just said to you about the city of Cleveland and the Midwest, but it's how I feel. Right. And it's how I feel today, and I'm so thankful for the journey.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:50]:
Yeah. Well, it certainly resonates. We'll work to, I think, bookend the conversation from here. Before we get to our closing question, I just kind of wanted to ask, in reflection on the whole journey kind of writ large, is there something that feels particularly important that we didn't talk about yet that you want to bring up?

Ralph Lazaro [01:03:15]:
Man, we've hit a lot of great topics today. There's a lot of on and on about culture and such. No, I mean, I would say one of the things that I sort of quickly referenced you that I think is. Is really important. And I know a lot of your audience is entrepreneurs or people that are trying to find their journey or figure out what's next for them. And I get asked a lot, like, what is your career path? What do I need to do to, like, follow your career and get to where you did? And. And, you know, should I go to this school or should I go work for a large company or small company? And for me, it was really clear. My journey is littered with great leadership.

Ralph Lazaro [01:03:51]:
Right. So I always chose to follow leadership over money and. And in this case, over location because I was not dreaming of moving to the Midwest. But I met Mitch. I saw the culture he built. I wanted to learn from that. And I'm somebody. There's sort of two pieces of that.

Ralph Lazaro [01:04:07]:
The first is, like, following great leadership marked my career. I can go all the way back to my first boss. And I've always had great leaders who cared about me, who wanted to invest in me, who to wanted. Who wanted me to be successful. I wasn't like, competing with them or trying to overstep them or playing political games because I knew they had my back. So I work really hard to do that for people around me. And. And really, as I tell other folks, like, if you're struggling with your career trying to figure out what to do next, like, find a great leader to follow and do whatever it takes to follow that person, because I have taken massive pay cuts throughout my career a couple times over to follow great leadership.

Ralph Lazaro [01:04:40]:
And. And that had a big impact on me and. And how I got to where I was. So.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:46]:
Hmm. That also resonates quite a lot.

Ralph Lazaro [01:04:49]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:51]:
Well, I'll austin our traditional closing question, which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland.

Ralph Lazaro [01:04:57]:
Hidden gem in what way?

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:59]:
Something that other folks should know about that maybe they don't. And you mentioned Cleveland overall as kind of a pleasantly surprising place, maybe because a lot of people don't know. People's perception of what it is is pretty far removed from your lived experience here.

Ralph Lazaro [01:05:14]:
Yeah, probably the hidden gem for me. And one of the reasons we love it here is Just the natural. The landscape, the parks, the hills. I live up towards like Chesterland area and I moved to Balls when we got here and just the. I'm drawn to kind of that small town, cozy feel kind of out in the country, kind of in the hills. And I live up in Chesterton, a hilly area, and we go hiking and go through the woods and. And I just never thought that Cleveland looked this way or Ohio did. My kids go down.

Ralph Lazaro [01:05:45]:
Go to school down in Cuyahoga Falls, and we go down there and go to the parks. And so I don't know if that's a hidden gem because I think people are. That are here know about that. But I would say if you're not here especially, you just probably had no idea that the gem of a place. This is like the natural beauty, the views, the hills, the forests here. It is a really special and amazing place. And it's what draws. Drew us here.

Ralph Lazaro [01:06:11]:
One of the things that drew us here is just the natural landscape and beauty that exists. And because you're, you know, you're just. Cleveland is known as this. You know, I won't repeat all the things that we know have happened here previously, right on the rivers and downtown and things like that. But it's the. It's outside of here. It's known for things that are different. I think that's changing, though.

Ralph Lazaro [01:06:30]:
I don't know if you've heard the. The Jameis Winston interview that he did last year where he talked about. He said sort of what I had echoed as well, that this is one of those beautiful places on the planet from May to October. And he actually references in his quote, driving through Chagrin Falls.

Jeffrey Stern [01:06:46]:
Oh, wow. No, I'll have to check that out.

Ralph Lazaro [01:06:48]:
Oh, yeah, I'll send it to you after. It's a great, great quote from him of talking about the landscape here. And it's something that I didn't expect is how we've drew, you know, brought our friends here and family to visit and everybody loves coming to be here and be a part of it. So.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:00]:
Yeah, right on. Love that.

Ralph Lazaro [01:07:01]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:03]:
Or off. I just want to thank you for taking the time to reflect here on the journey. Congratulations on the launch officially of an audio and very excited to follow along on your journey and where you take it.

Ralph Lazaro [01:07:18]:
Thanks for having me. Happy to have been here, been part of this. I actually do have a thank you to give you because we. Most of our team, interestingly, has been found with referrals. As I look back on like the 30 or so folks which has been I think kind of interesting. It speaks to what we were talking about earlier about like culture and talent and people being drawn to people. We certainly have jobs posted and people that have jo that that are applying and such. But it's been interesting how many people we found on our team that were, you know, job opened up and someone on our team, like, I, I know somebody that can do that.

Ralph Lazaro [01:07:49]:
And, and you got to hire this person or even like people at Spotify that knew us that said, hey, I have a friend, you know, living here. She'd be great for this. You have to hire her.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:00]:
Right.

Ralph Lazaro [01:08:00]:
And that happened. One of our, one of our key employees came in that way. But we do have one person who's one of the few non referrals. And he heard Blake on your podcast a few months ago, was intrigued by Blake, love listening to his story, started following him on LinkedIn. Blake announces the deal this on. On LinkedIn and this guy immediately applies and we hire him for the team. On the team.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:23]:
Wow.

Ralph Lazaro [01:08:23]:
Which was awesome. And he was a total rock star, just in a great place in his career to kind of come be a part of the team. But yeah, we only found him because he heard Blake on your podcast, started following along with Blake and then applied to our, our company. And he's been very impactful, big part of our team.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:38]:
So I, I appreciate you sharing that. That brings me a lot of joy to hear.

Ralph Lazaro [01:08:43]:
Yeah, yeah, it's the network you've created. I mean, I've, I've, I'm friends with various folks you've had on your. On the podcast. And I love what you're doing and how you've sort of built this, this, you know, expanding network in Cleveland and sort of connecting people together. I mean, Fred DeSantis, one of our son, TJ, which is really fun to have, this like, father, son duo. They're sort of part of our network and are an investor in what we're doing. And so, yeah, I know you've had him on here before, but yeah, that's been fun about sort of realizing here in Cleveland the network that's created and people want to help each other. Right.

Ralph Lazaro [01:09:16]:
And that's been great. They certainly do have been a huge part of what we do.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:21]:
Well, thank you for sharing that. It means a lot.

Ralph Lazaro [01:09:24]:
Yeah. So you're making an impact. Right. In your own way, you're impacting all of us. So it's great.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:31]:
Appreciate it. If people had anything they wanted to follow up with you about, learn more, use the product, where would you point them?

Ralph Lazaro [01:09:40]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:40]:
Love it.

Ralph Lazaro [01:09:40]:
You can go to our website if you're, you know, an author. If you're an author, you can go to Voices by an Audio and actually upload your book. And we have all kinds of tools there to help you create an audio book and get your content for sale more places. If you're a publisher, retailer or want to do business with us, just go to inaudio.com if you're interested in connecting with me. I mean LinkedIn, socials and all that kind of stuff, I'm right there and happy to connect, happy to help help folks out there. That's been a big, big part of my journey. And actually something I heard Fred talk about on your podcast as well is this notion of just like connecting people, connecting. One of the things that he talked about that really resonated with me as well is I get, I find joy and just like connecting people and connecting opportunities and knowing that those things kind of come around and come circle.

Ralph Lazaro [01:10:25]:
But like if we're all just kind of connecting and helping each other, good things are going to happen along the way from us and in various ways. And, and he echoed that and that was one of the. I really resonate, that really resonates with me. So yeah, anything I can do to help you help your audience, you know, happy to do that and, and love being able to like help facilitate and play that role for people.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:46]:
Yeah, no, it, it is, it is interesting you brought that up because it is something that I, I specifically carry with me from that conversation with Fred because you, you never know. Like it maybe comes back two years, three years, four years, but people find jobs, people find funding, people make friends.

Ralph Lazaro [01:11:01]:
Yep. I'm trying to teach this lesson. I have a 14 year old son and, and he wants to be an entrepreneur and it's a lesson I'm trying to teach him at 14 because I've been very fortunate. Like he's met some very powerful, influential, successful people and he's a 14 year old boy. Like he doesn't know any different. He doesn't care that this person that he's interacting with and he has no clue like some of the people that he's been able to interact with that like entrepreneurs or business people like dream of, of being able to connect with. And so I'm trying to help him learn that as well. We can learn that at any age.

Ralph Lazaro [01:11:29]:
It was something that I learned, you know, I, I'm, you know, read, was given the book how to Win Friends and Influence People when I was a kid. It's one of those books that like probably had a, one of the most impactful books on my life in that sense. And it was all about, you know, relationships and how you treat people and how you get to know them. I'm trying to even just help my 14 year old son realize that like these people you're interacting with, like it doesn't mean anything to you now because you don't need anything. But you never know, you might need something later or there might be something they know about you that they saw in you later and they need you. Right. And so yeah, it's a big part of, and it's, I think it's again, it speaks to kind of the Cleveland Midwest vibe that, that exists here and sort of what you're helping to create as well.

Jeffrey Stern [01:12:10]:
What's your favorite audiobook?

Ralph Lazaro [01:12:13]:
I get asked that question like way too often and it's, that's not a fair question.

Jeffrey Stern [01:12:19]:
I know it's not a fair question, but I, I felt like remiss to not ask at all.

Ralph Lazaro [01:12:24]:
I know, I, I, I should have told you. Don't ask me that because people. No, no, I'm kidding. There's so many good ones. I tend to listen a little bit more like business inspiration. I like out of books that I can kind of listen to over and over again. There's a book called Obstacles Away by Ryan Holiday. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Ralph Lazaro [01:12:42]:
It's part of the whole like stoicism. Stoic, yeah. Movement. I love books like that because I can just kind of play it over and over and it doesn't matter where I put it. And it's kind of thing that can get me, you know, hyped up and in a good, in a good place. And it's sort of short tidbits. So that's probably one of my favorites. How to win friends and influence people is like you should sit and read that book because that was just so like impactful to me.

Ralph Lazaro [01:13:08]:
But yeah, obstacles the way Ryan Holiday is probably, probably one of the ones high on my list that like you have to listen to. It's a great audiobook. So.

Jeffrey Stern [01:13:16]:
Yeah, right on.

Ralph Lazaro [01:13:17]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:13:18]:
Well, well, we'll wrap it there. Thanks, Ralph.

Ralph Lazaro [01:13:21]:
Yeah, man, it was awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [01:13:24]:
Absolutely. That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffreyoftheland FM or find us on Twitter oddlayoftheland or sternfa J E F E if you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on itunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

Jeffrey Stern [01:14:04]:
The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration collaboration with the UpCompany LLC at the time of this recording. Unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on this show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next week.

Ralph Lazaro [01:14:33]:
Sam.