Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt Tompkins: There’s something to be said for starting small, but every business wants to grow and scale to their maximum potential. So how do you build your business empire without sacrificing the very things that made your business successful in the first place? How do you stay true to yourself and your brand identity? Hello and welcome back to the Omaha podcast, where Omaha’s most successful entrepreneurs help you grow your business. I’m your host, Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative.

Now every business wants to grow into an empire, but most do not. The reason they try to be something they’re not and customers can see right through it. In this episode, we’re joined by Mike Tyler, who built the Todd and Tyler Radio Empire with Todd Brant by following the same strategy as successful businesses.

Today, we’re going to learn how to build an empire based on who you are, not who you think you should be. I had the honor of being on our guests a radio show back in the day. It was an honor not to be on the show. I mean, it was. But the big honor is that I can I can say that I. I forced Todd and Tyler to hit the dump button. And I don’t know why. I feel like that’s an achievement in and of itself.

Mike Tyler: Yeah, you probably did. It’s been a long time since we first met. A long time ago. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Tompkins: We were doing. We were doing, like, a parody of a jingle about Johnson and Johnson K-Y lubricant. Oh, my God. And you can imagine where that went.

Mike Tyler: Oh, my God. Oh, man. Was in that much. But just, you know, the whole band was in. Yeah, the whole band was. That’s right. Yeah.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah. Best part is my brother Ben was with. He was there and he was working some job, at average job at like a some place where they did blood work or something. I know, but he had the whole office tuned in. Oh really. And they’re all listening. And then I sprung this random, random jingle on them. And. But, man, I tell you what, Mike Tyler here, our guest, the Todd and Tyler Radio Empire.

Mike Tyler: Yeah, Empire.

Matt Tompkins: You guys, you guys are. Have you got your own empire?

Mike Tyler: We’re going to.

Matt Tompkins: Talk a bit about how you built that here today. But, man, I’ve always I always looked up to you guys the way that you guys carry yourself, the way that the ethic of like treating everybody with respect and and just being kind of staying true to yourself in the whole process, that’s a key.

Mike Tyler: That’s the key. Completely be true to yourself because audience can tell if you’re fake. Yeah, the first thing they can do, they can tell if you’re fake. And when we got it’s just a radio one or just the other one. We’re talking about the video. Yeah. Okay. I mean, so when we got here in 93. Shit. Yeah, we were just who we were. I mean, we was like, we had nothing to lose, you know? We’re hired from out of town.

We didn’t know Omaha and Todd knew more about the Midwest than I did. I was in the East Coast, guys. So at first I heard out to the Midwest, actually when I first got married for the interview. But yeah, we just we just were true to ourselves because, you know, I’ve never been phony about that. If you’re phony, the audience spots it right away.

Yeah, right. And granted, you exaggerate certain things in your life when you’re on the radio. You know that you’ve done radio for years, but you’re basically coming from the same point of view. You’re not faking it. And we were never told to do anything except we’re just who we are, you know?

Matt Tompkins: And you came into it, and I’ve had this experience once before where you come in after like a heritage show. Yeah. And you’ve got that backlash of people, you know, and I mean people, they just they just don’t know what they miss. The familiarity they missed.

Mike Tyler: No, that was yeah. We had, you know, you told about Otis back in the day in and actually we’re Facebook friends. Otis is a great guy but it’s been we’ve been here 2930 years now longer than than he was there. But no, there was a lot of there was backlash. But it was also we were doing something completely different. So it was like it was we reveled in the fact that we didn’t care about what would happen before.

We never we never really we never cared about slaying. I always thought we did. We didn’t we didn’t kiss the ring of anybody. We got the town we appreciate. Omaha was a cool town, I thought right away and everybody and a lot of people embraced us right away. But we didn’t have to kiss the ring because, you know, we weren’t from here.

We didn’t know anything about it. We weren’t Husker fans, We weren’t this that. We just came in with our perspective on things and people seem to enjoy it almost immediately. Hopefully. Yeah, they did, obviously so. But yeah, there was a lot of backlash. There still is backlash, you know?

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, I mean, but that’s that’s one thing that gets tossed around a lot today that, that we can hit on is that word authenticity. Right. Everybody says, oh, be authentic. And then you look on every single platform and like, that’s not nobody’s really being authentic. No, that’s true. I mean, true authenticity of just truly being revealing your raw self and your it’s almost like just being vulnerable in a way of like, you know what? I’m going to be myself and not hold back.

Mike Tyler: And no, we hate it. No, I mean, we’ve shared a lot of our personal life over the years and sometimes too much. I admit that. I think sometimes too much. But we but that makes you more human. I mean, that’s not what you are. Everybody’s got everybody goes through loss, love, kids, you know, death, all that stuff. So, I mean, everybody goes through that. So if you’re not living your life that way, at least the kind of show we do, it would have been phony. Yeah. Yeah. Because. Yeah.

Matt Tompkins: And, you know, you don’t get the respect I think that you deserve from other people in the industry. Maybe I do think that is a thing. And that always I always question that because people would bring up like well you know you guys the Tyler they’re doing this and it seems to be working really well like no, no, no, no, no. You can’t do it. That you can’t do it.

Mike Tyler: That this is this is my pet peeve because you’re exactly right. You told me before about you going to bring that up. First of all, ratings don’t lie. We’ve been number one in our demos and a lot of demos for for since 97, you know, three years after and kicking ass. So I have no problem with that. The people and they finally let us in the Nebraska Broadcast Hall of Fame.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, yeah. And that’s me. Surprisingly.

Mike Tyler: Well, that took a while, but we had some people that we knew that appreciated what we did that were in that building, whatever that organization is. So I really didn’t care about that so much. But I, but I did in a way, because you bust your ass. We’re all in the same business. Yeah.

And there should be a nod to Hey, you. Did you do really well in the ratings? There should be that way. But there has been that a lot of it’s envy, jealousy or whatever, but a lot of it just people don’t do what we do.

And a lot of people thought originally, maybe even ten years ago, well, if I could shave dirty words and hang out, I’d be number one. No, no, you wouldn’t. People. It’s not the same thing. Yeah, you have to pick your spots. But, you know, it really never bothered me. Probably bothered me more than Todd in the beginning about the respect from. But we’ve done this so long now. Yeah. You know, my respect is to keep giving me contracts. They pay me well, and I have fun every morning.

Matt Tompkins: And you’re in multiple markets.

Mike Tyler: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s.

Matt Tompkins: That’s proof there in and of itself.

Mike Tyler: But once again the audience so I really cared about well advertisers too, since they have to pay the bills but the audience aren’t really cared about. I didn’t care if a guy and it’s funny about you mentioned some I don’t mention names but some of those radio stations companies in this town wanted us to work for them. Every time a contract came up, there was a little whispers, Hey, hey, it was that kind of stuff. So that was a grain of salt to me.

Matt Tompkins: And it was funny when we used to go as we were working for a competitor at the time. Yeah. And you would, we would reach out because we were also playing in a band and you went back and you used to have the local bands on your show for performances and we would reach out and you guys were like, Hell yeah, come on over here. More than welcome. Yeah.

And I remember we would get back and we would tell like, our, our managers I hit we were just on Tyler this morning and they’re like, what you were they let you Don’t they know where you work? And I’m like, yeah they don’t really care. Like, I mean, and which is a quality I think that is, is something to admire because there’s a lot of lacking of that in every industry where it’s just this mutual respect and it’s like we’re all in this together. Like, yeah, we may compete on certain things, but I mean, we have to hate each other.

Mike Tyler: Anybody that’s been in radio has is a kindred ship and a brotherhood. I mean, party, big party shows right down the hallway. We work with those guys 15 years there, but we hang out. We say, Hey, what’s up? You know, so it’s you. Of course there’s ratings.

You don’t get ready, you don’t you don’t keep your job. But if you don’t respect people in the business and say, listen, I did what you did years ago, I know that. Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re just a dick if you’re not really, which you might not like certain people in the business for other reasons, but if you don’t respect. Listen, we’re all in this business. It’s a crazy business. Always has been. And it’s even crazier now because nobody’s working it anymore.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, no kidding. Well, now, today I want to talk a little about like, there are commonalities in what makes a great a successful radio show and what makes a successful podcast. Both of those the same things make a successful business. And I kind of discovered this in the process of like doing podcasts like we do for our company and coaching people. And I, I started looking at this and, you know, this process of like finding an ideal customer and being unique, for one thing, being known for one thing and, and, you know, knowing exactly who you’re speaking to, you’re your target listener.

Those same things apply to a business, You know, who is your ideal customer and being known for one thing. And you know, you guys, I think if you look at any radio station in our even in our market, I think in any market, the ones that are the most successful follow that formula. You know, they’re known for one thing. You know, if you think 92, you think Todd and Tyler and you think, you know cat one of three, you think country music, you know, you think 16, 20, you think sports talk. That’s what it is.

And so, like when you going through your career and looking at what made you successful and from day 1 to 30 years later. Right. I mean, are those takeaways accurate? I mean, you kind of did you apply those intentionally or have you seen those develop?

Mike Tyler: Well, it’s funny because about 97 or so, 96, I think it was, is when we our the last time we played any music in the morning was about 96, 97 and we went all talk at that point. And so we were still related to the station because we’re still at 10:00. Music would come on. So yeah, and the format is still rock, but it’s also a little younger rock now. So that aspect, but we also we know who we’re talking to. Listen, that’s why we call the station down the hallway from us, the, the middle of station or the, you know, the girl.

Well, we’re playing Chris music now. Whatever. Yeah, we, we, we have different names, different I’m going to say, I wouldn’t say on the air here. So we know who our main audience is and that’s dudes. And then we always say, and girls that can women should be women that can just are just cool and they hang out. I’m not offended by stuff they listen to. So we know who that audience is. It’s just dudes, you know, of all walks of life, you know, suits, you know, blue collar guys, all that stuff.

And I think that because that’s what we are, we’re just regular guys hanging out. So we aim at that. They sell that a lot. I’m sure that’s what they do. And, you know, every kind of aspect of just a guy’s life, basically.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what did you think when you guys were kind of figuring out your recipe? I guess the formula for like, just, just your the roles on the show interacting back in the day, what was kind of the process you went through to find out, okay, this is what we’re going to be known for. This is this is our unique thing.

Mike Tyler: That was well, Todd and I were on the air together in Pennsylvania for about six months before we moved here. And we knew each other for about a year before that. So we. We we got along really well. We’re the same age. We made each other laugh, although we have different backgrounds to the rest of our lives. Growing up, at least we had. So we made each other laugh. So that’s all that was.

That was the core. We moved here with just us too. And of course, they gave us our news guy Craig and stuff like that. But obviously over the years we’ve had a lot of different people either have been full time or part time on that show with us. And for some people left. Some people left because they had to or we replaced them, you know. Yeah. And they were all great radio. They were. Yeah, it is. It’s just the way it is. They’re all great people. And they still, you know, people we work with in the past were great and people working now are great and things change and that causes some animosity sometimes. But, you know, we’ve got to just it it’s just a it’s still a business.

Mike Tyler: It’s still a business. So we didn’t realize, I think the roles Todd and I took on were just our normal personalities, you know? I mean, I was a little more hardcore about things, although the funny thing is I get accused of stuff that Todd says because he’s hard ass. And then Todd is, you know, Todd. Todd is what he is. He’s like my best friend and he just hangs out. We make sure that, you know, really it was it was more organic, you know, you know, you know, you play music.

You’ve been you were on a radio for a long time. You know that it’s a more organic situation. You figure out people’s strengths and weaknesses and you pull on that to make the team sound good. And and it’s there’s a little click in my brain when we’re doing the show. I’m thinking, man, I could I try to lead people in a certain ways. That’s their strengths. And I think that it became so natural without we just kind of we kind of roll.

Matt Tompkins: With it and well, I mean, like from a business perspective, I think that that’s a big takeaway is that we oftentimes we put people in roles and we don’t I mean, there’s a lot of different like Myers-Briggs strengths finder test that a lot of businesses do with their employees.

But I mean, and I think those are good because you don’t want you have somebody in one position who’s like is just big vision. No, no, no organization, discipline, super creative, and you don’t want them doing your books, you know, like you don’t want them doing something that’s just analytical process driven. So we try and we put people in these roles or seats on the bus that just doesn’t fit.

And then we wonder, Well, why isn’t this working right? And maybe find out where do people naturally fit organically and kind of build off of that?

Mike Tyler: Yeah, for the live show. Exactly. Because the thing about I would know how to sell a radio station. I wouldn’t know how to run a radio station. I was a music director years ago, but that’s nothing. I’m getting spam call.

Matt Tompkins: It’s great. Todd He’s like, Hey, you’re talking about me.

Mike Tyler: And oh, I just know it’s it’s our producer. I’ll talk to him later. So yeah, you could call me probably better, I guess so, yeah. So I wouldn’t do any of that stuff. So, you know, you work in radio sales, staff, traffic, the bosses. I mean, they all do the stuff they do because they do it well and then we do what we do well. So it’s kind of a well, those guys tell dick jokes and we go sell it.

So but within the the aspect of the actual show, yeah, you have to put people in the strengths that they are better at than, than other things. Not that they can’t expand because you can expand especially more get used.

Matt Tompkins: To it, but you wouldn’t have the longevity of the success you had if you hadn’t didn’t have those people in the right.

Mike Tyler: No, not at all. We’re lucky to have.

Matt Tompkins: And I think I mean to catch you up, but I think like in radio especially, that’s what I’ve seen as a commonality of shows that don’t last go to short term is that they’re trying to be something they’re not. Right. You know and radio is an industry I think is up against that problem big time. Oh yeah. With the syndication. Oh yeah.

Mike Tyler: Everything it’s there’s less, there’s less opportunity.

Matt Tompkins: I mean like my last radio gig. Well, second to last radio gig was it was seemed like the perfect dream job. And it turned out I felt like Bob Saget playing Danny Tanner on Full House, where it’s like, This is not me. I’m not this person talking about is crunchy peanut butter better than creamy peanut butter? Let’s do a poll and take calls. That’s just not me. No. And it just didn’t fit, you know?

Mike Tyler: And you’re right. Those kind of shows, I’ve known guys over the years that had to do shows like that, and they’re not like that at all. I mean, they’re not that they’d rather blow out and just be themselves.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, just be honest.

Mike Tyler: Yeah, right, right. Yeah. And, and they get stuck in that and that becomes phony to them too. And they don’t enjoy it after a while.

Matt Tompkins: You know, It was I’ve.

Mike Tyler: Heard those kind of shows. I know those kind of shows. I know guys. They’ve done those kind of shows, though, that also are those guys. They’re so straight laced off the air and everything. Say, Well, that’s that bitch.

Matt Tompkins: You, right? I mean, some people can pull it off. Yeah, but I just for me it did. I mean, I remember sitting there and I was I was in the bathroom one day just thinking like, man, am I. Is it because I’m depressed that I don’t like my job or am I. Am I depressed because I don’t like my job? I can’t figure out which one it is. Yeah. And yeah, when I moved moved was moved over to a different station. I was by myself, could kind of do my own thing. It was, you know, it was made clear to me like what was what was wrong or what the problem was. And I think we do that with with businesses.

We do that with people who are entrepreneurs. They’re like you guys, very creative, very passionate, got a lot of energy and they know they’re good at one thing and they want to maximize that, that one thing. And you know, so making sure. You’re in the right lane, I think is a is a big thing.

And you know, you guys did a lot of things early on. And even today, I know even now that you’re in multiple markets, but like the husk going after the Huskers doing things that were like unique to you made you stand out as like one in a million to differentiate yourself. Right. And I think there’s a lot of lessons that businesses can take away from that, too. Like, how am I going to stand out from everybody else in in my field?

Mike Tyler: Yeah, early on too, especially because I think I mean, it’s things they started narrow casting to. There were less shows like ours. I mean we in the beginning there were some shows that tried to be like us or try to do their own thing, but going after the same audience and and then then it kind of filtered away everybody. Now there’s just narrow. There’s just narrow things. This is what you guys do, this what they do. So that happened a lot. But but we you know what? We didn’t really sit down.

You know, I get a great story about I always tell the story about the arena. When we built the arena, I walked in that morning and that was back before we built before they got the vote in. To what? By the way, at the time? What was the question originally? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you remember back in the day, this should have been the mid, mid, mid nineties we because I, when I first moved Omaha I thought what a great city and the Civic Center was old a piece of crap. So they needed a really cool arena here. I said I never understood why.

And then there was a big vote and there was a lot of people, old people saying, I don’t want to vote for taxes. And so I walk in the top and we’re literally about to go on the air. And I go to Todd. I go, Hey, why don’t we say we quit if they don’t vote the arena? And and he goes, Yeah, let’s go for it.

Mike Tyler: So should we turn the mikes on that morning? And we started talking about dead. Hey, listen, a vote for the arena is a vote for us to stay on the radio. We’re going to quit if we don’t. And we had no other plan, and I always did. Todd, I said, what if that arena vote didn’t happen? I said, I said, we walked in and said, we’re just kidding. We’re going to keep working. So our promotions department put a vote for the arenas to vote for Todd and Tyler. And we put we put those things.

They were like yard signs all over, all over town. And we just co-opted that whole bit. And that was huge. Although it was such a whim, you know, our promotions partner got behind it pretty quick, but it’s such a whim that we just we wanted to be, although we were anti establishment, anti Huskers, anti Nebraska politics and all that stuff, we were still for the city. Yeah. And I thought that was I think yeah.

For the people we were still, I still, I still feel that way. I still think the town is a cool town. It’s grown so much in the 30 years I’ve been here and, and the people were cool, you know? So I think that you can still be both. You can slay the slay the sacred cows because they forgive you for not liking football or that kind of stuff. If you they know you’re stand for them. You want to be just a dude, you know.

Matt Tompkins: And I think, man, making you always trying to make the news or making by the news, what that means is not necessarily like traditional news necessarily, but but just even for for businesses to do things that help them stand out as that one in a million, because you want to make that connection. There’s this argument that I know we’ve had here in the in the studio about being is it better to be best or best known? And, you know, being best known is is going to win pretty much every time.

So you have to be known for something, right? Yeah. You want to be the best, but you have to be best known. And well, you guys were best known for certain specific things were going back to that kind of formula of like, you know, you have to be known for one in a million. What makes you unique and like, Oh, those are the guys that did this. Oh, those are the guys that are make fun of the Huskers. And you know.

Mike Tyler: There’s a double edged sword, too, when it comes to that, because you still get people that like I listen to those guys. Well, I don’t listen to them because they do this well, that’s one maybe 5% of what we do. Yeah, but it becomes that thing. Politics, the Huskers, things like that. It becomes that thing in people’s brain until they turn it on and go, Well, they mentioned it there. Well, I didn’t like that, but I like the rest of this stuff. So that’s a problem too. Yeah, it’s a double edge, you know.

Matt Tompkins: It is You kind of get typecast on.

Mike Tyler: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can be And that’s and that’s just that just comes with the territory though, you know.

Matt Tompkins: And Lorne Michaels has a great I was listening to interview interview he did once he was like on Marc Maron’s podcast and he said, I was talking about how how the people who criticize his show and they say, well, it’s Saturday Night Live, it sucks. And it’s not what it used to be, Right. They’ve been saying for since it’s been on the air. And he said, it’s not my job to make a show that’s 90 minutes of great show. It’s my job to make a show where there’s one thing people take away and they talk about Monday morning at the water cooler.

Mike Tyler: And that great line.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah.

Mike Tyler: I mean that’s that’s radio true Yeah you’ve done that to but we don’t know what that is but it’s it’s that but it’s also different in radio because that’s a skit show in radio and you should do your show too. That’s the thing you did word skit I mean you put.

Matt Tompkins: On that’s what it’s called. It was a skit.

Mike Tyler: I know, but I hate that term because I’m sure there’s a lot of work for you. I know it was. Yeah. But no, I mean, the it might be certain things with certain people. Like, we’ll get those emails. Hey man, when Nick said that or push a dad or you were. Todd said that or the call that made my day. But that could be something different for somebody else. So that’s all that matters. Something sticks out.

Matt Tompkins: And that’s like that’s how I mean, radio in our market, it’s based off of diary ratings, which is all recall, which is remembering and writing it down. And but really with recall of anything, if you ask somebody, okay and this applies to businesses which I’ll I’ll get to that in a second. But like you think if I ask anybody like who’s your favorite morning show on the radio and they’ll tell you, and then you ask somebody who’s who’s your favorite late night talk show? I love Stephen Colbert. Oh, yeah. When was the last time you watched him, Right? Well, I don’t even remember. It could have been two years.

And they didn’t even watch it on television. They just watched a clip on social media. But it’s something that stuck with them and they recalled it. And for a business, that’s what we mean by you have to be known for that one thing. You have to stand out and it has to be genuine. It can’t be, you know, we’re going to be the the business that does this when we don’t really believe in that. It’s got to be something that you’re actually passionate.

Mike Tyler: Right. Right. Well, you know, we do that within the show. You know, we turn down things we don’t want to do all the time. Guest You know, just certain ways we don’t I mean, and we’ve been our boss has been very cool, especially the whole time. They’ve been pretty cool. We had some run ins back in the early days, but they never tell us what to do. They don’t book our guests for us. We do all that. They never tell us, you know, maybe little too heavy on that. We haven’t done that in years with us because they just they they trust us where we’re going with it. You know, they might not agree with everything we do, but they trust us that we’re not going to cross certain lines, lose the license, things like.

Matt Tompkins: That. So the last thing I want to ask you here is with with building the literal named Empire. So as you expand it in the markets and you are kind of looking to because you started doing this, this is quite a while. I mean, people oh.

Mike Tyler: Six we went into Wichita, Lincoln, Springfield. Yeah, originally that was. And how many.

Matt Tompkins: Markets are.

Mike Tyler: You in? Now we’re in about still about six or seven. But the here’s the thing. You know, this been everything we’ve been on a bunch of different stations and the station just changed formats so we can forget what we were on once we were on a San Francisco on an AM station for about a year, which was crazy because we would have to stay on a little late because they won another live hour we were on in Montana just so we let that to Ben’s town or syndicator now.

But I’ll tell you what’s changed and what you’re on the on the forefront is the podcasting part of it because we although we don’t do a separate podcast, they repurpose Repurpose. Yes. Yeah. And that’s and it’s changed everything in our business because nobody has to wake up at four in the morning to hear us. They can listen all day long and and a lot of people do that. And originally I thought, well, why am I waking up at five in the morning? I still think that I should I could do this any time. But that’s expanded the audience. Huge. Yeah. They listen all they listen to anytime they want with the radio. And it’s for our purposes of what we did for providing content on the show made it huge podcasting.

Matt Tompkins: Oh yeah. Yeah. And to, to circle back. I mean what made podcasting great or makes is making it great today. Same thing that make radio great. It’s personality based, right? You know, it’s podcasts. They are specific target audience. So the people that listen to your podcast, they’re the same people that listen on the radio. It’s just now there’s you can reach more of them And.

Mike Tyler: You mentioned I’m sorry, the syndication part. What was weird about that in the beginning is we were afraid and we joke about this. Now we just we just say Empire City instead of Omaha and like 0607 because we we said we don’t want to act like we’re from Omaha.

Not that we’re afraid of Omaha. We just didn’t want going into these markets, not what’s Omaha, where’s it that blah, blah, blah. But then it became too phony. It’s like, Yeah, so you can still do a show at Wichita. We’ve been kicking butt in there in Wichita for years now, and they love us. They don’t. They know we don’t live there. Yeah, they know. I mean, and you know what? And if I didn’t live in Omaha, they wouldn’t know that either. I mean, they just it doesn’t matter anymore. Yeah, it really doesn’t matter, except for if you out and into appearances and things like that.

Matt Tompkins: With the radio stations flipping formats, people don’t know how, how, how.

Mike Tyler: That went. You went through a bunch.

Matt Tompkins: Oh my God. Yeah.

Mike Tyler: You know what, By the way, I’ll give you a compliment here, because every time you were somewhere, I heard you were somewhere because people liked your humor. They really did. I never thought you were given the right platform.

Matt Tompkins: No, I don’t either. I mean, like, the closest they got was like we thought we were going to give. Get that? Because we always wanted, like, a platform similar to yours. Yeah. No, it was like that kind of rock audiences where it fit the best and we were on was 96, won the Brew and we were on for eight months and we were doing this show and I remember we had this new your typical kind of corporate manager guy who just didn’t get human beings. I don’t think.

Mike Tyler: In general there’s a lot of.

Matt Tompkins: Them. So he would every day he’d critique us on this. Why did you do that? Because it was funny. I don’t know why. Why wouldn’t we do that? And then I’ll never forget that.

Mike Tyler: Why do they do that at all? When I hear that.

Matt Tompkins: We were at the well, was that the old you guys used to do that for years to the Memorial Day?

Mike Tyler: Bash Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Tompkins: Or Labor Day. Bash Sorry. So it was like it was Labor Day. Bash We’re down there at the it was in at the it was at the Anchor Inn, I think. And it was we’re surrounded by bikers or rock CROWD. That’s it. They’re playing the rock music on the radio. We did our last call in. We get a phone call from our manager and he says, Hey, you guys just. Like, you know, we’re changing formats and we’re going to be 96 one Kiss FM now. And don’t worry, though. Big things in store. And I said, Well, are we still on the air? He said, Well, we’ll talk about it soon. We’ll talk about it soon. I’m got to call.

Mike Tyler: Things down there at that.

Matt Tompkins: Event. And then they flip the music. So we’re standing there.

Mike Tyler: Flipped it while you were live. Yes. At the end, the.

Matt Tompkins: Night after our remote finished, they flipped it and all of a sudden Justin Bieber music starts playing right away and all these people start coming up, going, What the hell is this like? And I’m like, I like, yeah, it.

Mike Tyler: Was that has got to be that guy’s around whoever he was. That’s got to be something that is bad programming.

Matt Tompkins: Oh, he was.

Mike Tyler: When you were doing a live event.

Matt Tompkins: I mean, his name was Rad. So I mean, it’s kind of self-explanatory, I think.

Mike Tyler: What a nightmare.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, it was. It was not fun. But I appreciate you coming on and sharing the insight here today. And I think there’s a lot to take away. I mean, like with the the growth that you’ve seen, the longevity, longevity that you’ve had and the success, I mean, you can’t deny any of it.

Mike Tyler: And that’s that’s the point. I mean, it’s a point and you mentioned earlier one more piggyback on what you mentioned about the best or best known. I think what you need to do, though, in any in any situation, you’re taking this to business. If somebody does have a strength and you mentioned that if you’ve got a manager pushing down and not letting that person be who they are, it’s just that’s a bad manager. Yeah, bad.

Matt Tompkins: Manager. It is. You’re right. You’re right. And there’s too many of those in any industry.

Mike Tyler: Oh, yeah.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Tyler: Thanks, Matt.

Matt Tompkins: Thanks for joining us today on the Omaha podcast. Subscribe. So you never miss an episode. You can check out all the details and resources for you in the show notes, and we’ll see you next time.

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