Mike Adrams - Stereo Mix
===

Vince: [00:00:00] We will just do a cold open. We gotta talk about Pacers. I mean, that's why I'm here. Right. That's why we're live, that's why we're doing this. We're live. This isn't a podcast about digital marketing. It's about the NBA finals and the Yes, sir. 

Mike: I had to, I had to make it to one. I went to all of the finals games 25 years ago.

Okay. When I lived here and I was Were you like five years old then? No, I was, uh, was it been two? It was 2000, so I would've been 13. 

Vince: Okay. All right. 

Mike: So, yeah, and I went to, I went to all those games and I mean, I grew up going to every game basically. Yeah. Um, I went to, I would say we went to 35 of the 40, uh, one home games at least.

Really? Yeah. Nice. It's like whenever we weren't outta town, we went to every single game. Yeah. Uh, and then I moved to New York and realized tickets are really expensive when you don't get them from the team. And so, uh, so yeah, I, I go to a couple, but I, you know, last year with New York, it was actually cheaper for me to fly home.

To games two and three. For that weekend and go here. Even buying tickets here for 

Vince: last [00:01:00] year's series. For last year's series. Against the next, yeah. 

Mike: Than it was for me to go in the garden for any of the games. Holy crap. That was a lot 

Joe: of the big 

Mike: talk with this year's series. 

Joe: Same thing this year. New Yorker's like, it's cheaper for us to fly to Indy, significantly.

Stay the weekend, or even just if it was one night, go to the game. I mean, so much secondary market here is, I mean, it's just a 

Mike: different world, 

Joe: right? So 

Mike: my ticket I got, I went to game one last year against the, the Knicks, um, courtesy of the training staff of the Pacers. 'cause they had one ticket. They texted me at like four o'clock being like, we have one extra.

And I'm like, I'm in, I'm there. I'm, I'm, I'm at the office. I'll go, um, I'm 

Joe: standing outside Bill call right now. And I 

Mike: looked and you're like, they, their, their tickets, like they're lower bowl. They're in the corner, they're kinda behind the basket. They're great seats. They're, they're amazing. I think it was going for like.

Four or $5,000 something, three or $4,000, and it's like, this is just a, you know, it's not even the conference finals at that point. I can't even imagine what this year's were. Right? Oh yeah. I was here for most of this year 'cause it was the, uh, 500 week Yeah. Right. Racers and pacers. Yeah. 

Joe: It's just, it's always a fun time in Indy when you get racers and pacers.

I did, I did the whole day. It was a lot, but it was fun. It's a long day. A long day. [00:02:00] So, I 

Vince: mean, you're repping your pacer gear today as you should. As the, tonight is game five, right? No Six game Six. Game six. The NBA finals, you're either 

Mike: extending it or we're watching a trophy. Either way's. It's gonna be an interesting night.

Vince: Yeah. I'm not gonna talk about the prognostication on, on tonight. 'cause game four we kind of botched, in my opinion, we should have won that game. I agree. I feel like 

Mike: the series was tied to game 

Vince: four. That was a Scott 

Mike: Foster game though. Yeah. Fair. That was that, that game should have been a 35 point lead in the fourth quarter.

Yes. But yeah, they, they lost it at the end. They butchered the end. Yeah, yeah, 

Vince: yeah. But would you walk around? You live in Brooklyn? Um, would you walk around Brooklyn in that now, now I gave 

Mike: him about a, about a week and a half after. I did not wear anything for the first couple days after the series I, I let, I like let it breathe or I put the shirts on under.

The other thing too is I now have some kind of aggressive shirts, so the home field, amazing stuff. If you're not familiar, their stuff, they're an Indiana company, I think. Yes, they did four game three. Boomer climbing [00:03:00] the Empire State Building as a T-shirt. 

Vince: That's awesome. And so I 

Mike: got that shirt, and then I wouldn't buy it until after the series, but I have a I and then instead of a heart, it's Reggie Miller's choke sign, NY.

Oh, that's shirt that I have now. That's great. That's when I'm like, I showed it to one of my New York friends and I was like, uh, am I okay wearing this? And they're like, probably not. So yeah, that might be an under a sweatshirt type of shirt, right? Yeah. Say when 

Joe: Halle threw out the choke sign in game one.

Uh, be, you know, before we knew the three was really a long two. Yeah. I was like, no, not yet. Yeah. You gonna jinx us from the rest of the series? Game one, two. I know a little early, but, and then it was like, oh shit, it was only at two overtime. Two. I was like, oh, we see there's the, there's the karma right there.

Yeah. And thankfully we pulled out overtime, pulled out and won the series. Yeah. I 

Vince: love what that series is turning into. And in, in true form, you can go back to high school or college days and, and look at opposing teams and say, God, that player, I can't stand that player. But man, I would love to have him on our team.

That's Jalen Brunson. Yeah, I How that dude, it's [00:04:00] harder for me now though, like growing up. Just some of that stuff to gone, to go in and I'm like. I can't stand that guy, but damn, I'd love to have him in a Pacer's uniform. 

Mike: Growing up though, there were Knicks players, I'm like, I don't even want him in a Pacer's uniform.

That's like, I, I couldn't, I still can't stand Starks this day. I was like, John Stark, strike nuts. He runs the foundation, so every time they say his name at the Knicks game, I'm like, ready to boo. And it's like cheering for, you know, a kids kid's hospital or something. And so like I have to always hold back when I'm at the games.

But this team, I think this Knicks team's fairly likable. Like, they seem like good dudes. They seem like they're good for the community. Yeah, they. They seem like, you know, I don't love the style they play, I don't like the falba and some of that stuff. Right. Um, but it's a little harder to dislike them.

Like there has been some other series and some other stuff. I think Di Vincenzo was the one, one guy like that. Yeah. He was like, he's now gone. Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah. That's fair. I would say you mentioned Fal and you know, Brunson was like the master at the push off What drove me nuts. But my God, SGA, like. He's takes the cake in terms of, yeah, the, not just the one like call of [00:05:00] push off travel, whatever, like that guy pushes off every scene.

I mean, he's got an amazing step back, little jumper, little fade away. He does not miss it, but clearing out space. And they don't call it ever. No. Which is part of the reason why. I'm not a huge NBA basketball fan. It's because of that stuff that they just let 'em do. Yeah. It's kind of hard enough. Hard did 

Mike: it.

And, and they, they gotta fix it. 'cause they, they've got some issues right now and they're losing fans, I think because it gets hard to watch when it's just like, run at a guy and then bounce off. And throw the ball up in the air and hope you shoot like it's a foul by definition. But yeah, it's not really basketball.

And so I think they'll probably make some changes next year, in the next two years. 'cause it got so much attention. This playoffs. 

Vince: Mm-hmm. 

Mike: Um, it's not gonna help tonight probably. Right? But we'll see. I haven't seen the, the referees get announced at 9:00 AM so I was like, if we got, we might, we should get the calls tonight.

Right? Like the NBA wants us to go game to seven. They want us to go to seven. Yeah. So I'm 

Vince: glad you said that. Uh, we were talking about this last game 'cause there was a lot of debate. Like, oh, it's two small market teams, blah, blah. Like, yeah. Guaranteed. They want this to go seven games for sure. To milk the [00:06:00] hell out of this.

Yeah. Um, I mean, other than 

Joe: game two, every game has been a really entertaining game to watch. Extremely correct. If you like basketball, I'll be like NBA basketball at all. Anyone in the country should be watching it. Yeah. Yeah. If Halliburton, 

Vince: he'll play tonight for sure. He won't be a hundred percent 

Mike: no.

Vince: Who's gonna step up in his, in his place? I think it's gotta be Mhar. You got like, 

Mike: and he did that last year when they were injured. Um, and Halburn didn't play. He played out of his mind. I. Can he do that while he defends the MVP is the question, right? I mean, everyone's saying tj, but TJ's gonna do TJ's thing.

Like, I don't think you're gonna get. Uh, double of that. He's still gonna do his thing, but that's a limit of Right. How long you can kind of play with that energy. So it's gotta be mhar and then Miles hopefully plays better. He's been sick, so that's kind of an interesting, he's just gotta overcome, he just gotta hit some threes.

Yeah, just give us a few threes and then I'm hoping today's math's, birthday and sore. Talking about that. He's a whopping 

Vince: 23 years old. 23. Yeah. I was like, 

Mike: oh God, he's the guy that could, you know, could score in bunches. Um, but you [00:07:00] know, AKA's gonna be the one that does it. Yeah. Like he's the, he's the.

Champion. 

Vince: Yeah, I think math, excuse me. I think math's an, an enigma, uh, one, one game. He, he can fill it up and, and shows his athleticism in the next game. He's, um, maybe got a little bit something loose and, and doing some stuff he probably shouldn't be doing. And 

Mike: yeah, he seems growing into his role the most, um, the most impacted by bad officiating.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's some bad officiating in the NBA, like it's not good every night. WNB has gotten even worse. So I think his, he's the type of guy that when he doesn't get that call, it seems to impact him more than others. Um. But because he's such a, you know, he's a flamethrower. Like if he gets it going, he's right.

Yeah. He's gonna score 20 in 10 minutes, and that's what we need tonight. 

Vince: Yeah. Agreed. All right. Well, enough of the pacer stuff. Let's get rolling into the episode. Yeah. Okay. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Industrious Podcast. Thank you all for joining us from wherever you get your podcast, or if you're tuning into the Access a YouTube channel.

Thank you for tuning in. While you're there, if you hadn't hit the subscribe button, hit it. Click on that little notification bell icon so you can be alerted when [00:08:00] new episodes drop. We greatly appreciate it. Um, no bad officiating if you do that. Um, alright. Today we're gonna. Lower the average age in the room a bit.

You're welcome, Mike. Or maybe I should say thanks to me, so I'm now the mean. Perfect. Yeah. There you go. Uh, Mr. Mike Abrams. Mike, welcome to the Indu Podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. You're welcome. Decided to 

Mike: do this in person too. Yeah, 

Vince: exactly. Um, I'm glad the Pacers extended the series. You can come back into town.

Mike: Yeah. That once they, um, after they won game three, I basically texted being like, I'm, I'm booking a flight. Like, we're, we're not winning in five, so. Right. So there's gonna be a game six. 

Vince: Yeah. 

Mike: Well, Mike, why don't 

Vince: you do a little, little intro on yourself for the folks. 

Mike: Yeah. Born and raised, suer, um, grew up here.

Uh, I always joke that I went to all the schools in the system. I went to a north central El Elementary school and then I went to Carmel, and then in eighth grade I played hockey for Buff. And so I was not looking at Buff, but all of a sudden ended up going to Buff. Um, and so yeah, I covered, I covered everything in Indiana, has to offer, and then went to Indiana for [00:09:00] undergrad.

Actually got my grad degree there too. So I was saying before I listened to, to our buddy Dave Neff. But, but he's now Purdue guy, so, uh, you know, still, still love a guy, but talk slower to him a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I have to, you know, you gotta, sorry. Days. He's, he's slowly going to, you know, Purdue's slowly ruining him.

Um, but yeah, I graduated and I, I lived here for actually a while. Um, and then I got recruited and picked up and moved almost exactly nine years ago. I moved the day after the Indy 500, so I can always keep track. Okay. Um, to New York. What'd you do straight out of iu? So I did a couple things. It was two, it was 2009, so really great time to graduate.

Oh, yeah. It feels like a lot of people now dealing with the same thing. Right. Um, so I helped start, uh, a company that my dad and I were operating. He's an eye doctor. Um, hopefully a lot of people listen to this, go to him or my sister or somebody go to Abrams Eyecare. We give him a shameless plug. That's right.

Um, but he does, um, he was doing legal consulting. So essentially someone has an eye injury and the attorney needs either, a lot of times an off the record like [00:10:00] opinion of can I win this or not. Um, and they need a doctor's advice. And so there's not a lot of doctors that do that. And so what we did is we actually just formalized the process and so I kind of helped start that.

Took about six months, got the company off the ground. I got in front of all of the right workers' comp docs and medical malpractice docs and all the different people in basically the, you know, the Midwest. Um, and now it still runs. So I kind of got it going and then now he handles a couple cases every, um, probably about one, one or two a month, which is a great little side kind of hustle.

Vince: Right. 

Mike: Um, then I was doing some consulting and then I ended up actually at Angie's List. Okay. Which is where I really feel like I started my career. And so I was at Angie's List with. A lot of buff people, a lot of, um, a lot of, uh, Indiana natives. 'cause at that time, I think I was in the employee number six or 700.

It was right around when they were going public. So it was, I think, I think right before they went public. Um, and yeah, it was a great job. I mean, just a super fun atmosphere, very young. Uh, great place to kinda learn. I was [00:11:00] doing. The equivalent is, is probably called customer success. I forget exactly what they did it, but it was people that were, you know, it's, it's working with contractors that are advertising on the platform.

They have their annual contract that's ending, and our job was to. Get them to re renew that contract. But also, Angie's List was growing so rapidly that the amount of customers and homes that they were advertising to was doubling and tripling in these markets. So it was like, get 'em to sign a new contract and raise their price seven x, you know, or like, and so it was a, it kinda became a negotiation and really good, like that was a really interesting job because you kind of learned a lot about business, but you also had to be really savvy in understanding where you can kind of push and pull with, um, a contractor base that's all over the country.

I. 

Vince: Okay, 

Mike: and we were doing it as a, here's your desktop computer and a phone and a headset, and just. Bang out and call those guys and figure out what's going on in their world and Right. And help them out. And it's such a rapidly growing company and did such amazing work too. 'cause you were talking like to the elite contractors, like the best of the best roofers, the best of the best [00:12:00] in heating, AC and um, yeah.

And they a lot of times, like they were making so much money off of Angie's List because the referral base was huge. Mm-hmm. So they were, they were getting so much jobs that it was, um, it was a cool job to work for. Um, so I did that for a couple years, started doing national partnerships with them. So we'd partner with the manufacturers.

And at that point it was probably the coolest job. I was just basically traveling around to conferences, speaking. Okay. And I would go, and I'm not a public speaker. I didn't start, you know, now I do a lot of it now. I've kind of done a ton of stuff since this, I thought was what broke me into it. Very first one I ever did was 700 people at the Connecticut Suns, uh, arena, the Mohegan Sun.

And I had a 45 minute presentation. And it was a little polarizing 'cause he walked in and Angie's List. They either loved Angie's List or hated Angie's List. Okay. There was no middle. And it's usually they hated us 'cause it was like one bad review that they just could not get over. And so I'd walk in and be at my Angie's List Polo and I'd be on stage and I'd kinda look around being like, all right, I think this guy likes this.

I think this guy might wants to hit me. Um, but I'd have to go up there and speak for 45 [00:13:00] minutes about our partnership programs and what we were doing. And I was traveling around the country doing that for probably a year and a half. 

Vince: Nice. Um. That would certainly develop a lot of skill sets from sales, which I've talked about recently with someone else that, uh, I don't care what your major is.

You gotta have some sales skills. Yep. 'cause we're always selling. Um, that would've developed that for sure. And I think the public speaking part's probably not a bad deal. I mean, some people are deathly afraid of it, but I think the more you do it then it's just, it's not that big of a deal. 

Mike: It's, I think you think about it more than anybody else's.

Yeah. In the audience. And then the, the couple things that always. I, I always have two, um, tips. I tell people when they're starting to do it the first time, especially if they're speaking, I think if you're doing like moderating or interview, it's a little different. Just like be prepped and be ready to follow the path.

Um, but if you're speaking, I always say two things. One is, you know the content, like you are up there as the expert. They've invited you to speak on something you know more about than they do. So lean into that like. You can say the stuff that you [00:14:00] should be confident in and you should own that. And then two, it's find whatever it's gonna take to beat the nerves a little bit.

And that can be different. I know everyone says like, oh, think about people in their underwear. That's crazy. I was, the first time someone said that to me, I'm like, I'm looking out at a bunch of roofers and yeah, I don't like, I don't not wanna think about these guys and their underwear. So what I did is I wore, I was in dress pants always.

So I would wear dress socks, but I'd wear something that was a little quirky and right as I walked up, I'd think about the socks. And so a lot of times they were like Wu-Tang socks that you couldn't see the logo, but they were just black socks otherwise. And right as I'm walking up, I'm like, you got Wu-Tang socks on.

It's not that serious. And like something like that just to get your mind off of the nerves. 'cause it is nerve wracking no matter how many times you do it. Yeah. It's really nerve wracking to go up on stage with that many people. 

Joe: Yeah, for sure. I like my kids as they've grown up and done things, whether it be like a musical or a play or.

You know, a part in a school presentation, I always say, like, I always say what you just said. You know what you're saying? The audience doesn't know what you're [00:15:00] about to say. Yeah. So if a mistake is made, they have no idea. Yep. Like you just roll through it, just keep going. Yeah. If you keep going because they're not gonna know 

Mike: if you say it with confidence.

Um, I remember my, uh. My Bar mitzvah. So, um, the, the, the rabbi told me, they go, there's only two people in the whole place even following you. There's the one person that's there every week that's following along. And I had to chant it, you know, like sing, like basically sing it. Mm-hmm. And I messed up the same part every single time.

And finally I were just like, just sing it that way. Like, just, just go with it that way. Like, you're clearly not gonna fix this in the next week. And they were like, just don't stop. 'cause I, every time I caught it, I would stop. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm just gonna, it's gonna be wrong, but it's gonna be confidently wrong.

For this one section, and then we moved on and nobody noticed. I mean, they're really not listening to your words. They're really just listen to your, like, you know, precent voice crackling up and down. Did you, did you say it with any confidence, like, or did you stop, did they notice when you stop or when you like, you know, pause and you have to like really think where you are and just like, just keep going.

Roll. 

Vince: Cool. So, um, you were doing that with AngelList then, then what happened? 

Mike: [00:16:00] So I ended up, um, in a very funny way, but a friend of mine from Buf was living out west and I was speaking in Vegas and he convinced me to come to LA and San Francisco with a very good sales pitch for me. He goes, Pacers are playing the Warriors, and then we can go to a Sharks game.

I have a place for us to stay. You're already halfway here, like sold come. And I was like, that sounds great. So we ended up, I ended up going on that trip, but we had a day to kill. And so I was like, I'd never been to the Valley. I'd only been to downtown San Francisco. Yeah. So I'd never been to the Silicon Valley, I'd never been to Stanford.

So like we toured it all and as we were touring it and we stopped at Facebook and we stopped at. Google. He was like, oh yeah, I, they just 

Joe: let you right in. 

Mike: Well, just like you, you drive around the camping. Yeah. Yeah. So like you stop at the sign and Google, both of 'em usually have like the big, um, merchandising store so you can walk into.

Yeah. And so it was just kind of a cool thing to see at that time. 

Vince: Mm-hmm. 

Mike: And, and what year 

Vince: was this roughly? 

Mike: This would've been the. End of 15 or the beginning of 2016. Okay. Yeah. And it actually had been the beginning, it would probably been like [00:17:00] February of 2016. Okay. And he all of a sudden where Google goes, oh yeah, my um, sister's friend is hiring.

It's kind of what you do. You should do this. And then I didn't think anything of it. And just, you know, we just kept on our day, we went to the game and it's the game. Pacers beat the, the Warriors. I remember Curry hit three buzzer beaters at the end of every quarter. Damn. Um, it was like one of those kind of crazy games that we won.

Um, and so I get home, don't think about it at all, and I'm about to go to my next conference. I'm about to fly down to Orlando and I'm in the car and I get a call and it's essentially the recruiter and it's the person saying like, Hey, we were giving your information. We're hiring for this role we want you to interview.

And so it was kinda like the worst time to do it. I just started my MBA at Butler. Mm-hmm. I was probably like three weeks into classes at Butler. Um, I had just bought a home in Zionsville. Like you were like I was settled. Yeah. I was pretty settled here and um, I got the call, I took the first interview and then [00:18:00] it was basically seven interviews.

Um, they flew me out to New York for a couple interviews at that, the point I hadn't told anybody until they flew me out to New York and then I had to like, tell my parents being like, Hey, I am gonna get on a plane for 24 hours and yeah, I'm gonna be there. Yeah. And I got the job. I had three weeks to move.

Um, I remember when I quit, nobody believed me. 'cause it's like, I'm, I'm as Indian as you can get. Like, and I'm not a New Yorker, I guess now I am, I've picked up some New York tendencies, but, um. I, I just, yeah. I was like, I have three weeks. So we went and I started looking at apartments. They put me in temporary housing, and I went to the 500 and I flew the next day and I started the day after.

Vince: Wow. 

Mike: Yeah. Crazy experience. 

Vince: That is wild. So, um, if you would tell us about what it is that you, why were you hired and, and what does it you do at, at Google? Google? 

Mike: Yeah. So we, um, we have a team that basically Google has a bunch of people that advertise with us. 'cause we own so much. You know, we own 15 platforms with a half a billion users.

I think it's, uh, six platforms with 2 billion users only half a billion. Yeah, half a billion. We have six platforms with. 2 billion. So it's like we're, you know, we just have huge scale [00:19:00] and what we have is we have teams that basically work with the companies that advertise and help them with strategy. So it's a little bit of sales, but it's much more consulting.

And so it's much more of how are you doing what you're doing with us? How does it work with what you're doing with all the other. Social media platforms or what you're doing with TV or just anything in general to try to combine all your marketing together and understand the impact of it, knowing that we're a pretty big section of that investment and where a lot of the platforms that people are buying from.

So I worked with a team, we worked, I, I started with lead generation clients, so it was a lot of the home improvement. It was a lot of like attorneys, it was a lot of, um, B2B. Finance and stuff. And then I now work on commerce and so I was, I started directly working with the companies and helping with the strategy.

Now I'm a manager. I've been a manager for about five years. My team does the same thing that I was doing just again, with giant scale. 

Joe: Okay. That's why, 

Mike: I apologize 

Joe: if this is a stupid question, but how would you sort of describe the difference between, [00:20:00] um, digital marketing through Google versus a more. Uh, for lack of better term, traditional social media outlet.

Mike: So honestly, it's, it's very similar because we own one of the largest social media platforms that you can have on YouTube. Mm-hmm. And so you add that, you add all the different components, it all combines. And so I think like we're. People think of Google as search. Search is evolving in itself, but there's search, there's YouTubes, there's everything that's on maps.

There's um, stuff in your email. I mean, there's just so many different places that there are ad inserts and you're seeing that with not just us, but every social media platform. WhatsApp is getting at ads I saw. Um, and so it's how those are working and the impact of 'em. So when you're advertising there, what are you getting out of it and are you actually profitable with what you're doing?

Joe: Yeah. Okay. Interesting. It's just a whole new world. I mean, I shouldn't say new, new to us, uh, that we're, we're really like barely putting our toe into, but just in that moment that we've, or that amount of, that we've done on a [00:21:00] limited basis. The learning has been 

Mike: unbelievable. Yeah, and it's evolving. I mean, from what I started, I remember when I started, everything was about how are you gonna advertise on a mobile device?

Everything was so desktop oriented or tablet oriented. And we're shifting everybody into how's your webpage faster? How are you doing things to improve the experience? And now it's, I mean, completely changed. It's how's AI impacting it? Everything's on mobile. There's a lot more happening on TV screens. So yeah, evolution's huge.

Vince: So kind alluding to my next question, which is. You know, what is hot right now and, and, and more importantly, maybe what's not, 

Mike: it's all ai. Yeah. And everyone's talking about, it's a buzzword, but it's also the reality. And, and you know, we've talked about. The biggest shifts, it's, it was the internet, it's mobile phones, and now this is the third one.

But we're in the early stages of it. Like, I think it's like the, I had a palm PRI or whatever in college, or it's like the Blackberry version. Like, like we're not at the stage where we are today. Yeah. Where like you have a super computer in your, your pocket. And so I think AI's in that same moment, like we're, we're at the, we, we kinda had that pivotal point where.

If you didn't adapt last [00:22:00] year, or at least start to adapt, you're behind. Um, but now it's still like, it changes every day. And so even things that we're testing and things that's happening at Google, you, I, I was, I will see a change and then five days later it'll be different and it'll be evolving and it's so personalized that you kind of have to really start to embrace it.

Um, but I always warn people of like, embrace it now. Kind of play with it, test with it. Be mindful what you get out of it. Some of it's great, some of it's still a little choppy. It's gonna change. Like I, I can't predict what the next three years is gonna look like, but it's gonna be different than what it's today.

Vince: Yeah, yeah. I've learned that recently in that when I first started playing around with like cha, BT or whatever, I would just give basic searches. Like I would if I would put Google. Yeah. And then I said, I can't remember what I was doing, but. I just kept peppering it with more and more questions about the same topic and it didn't create a whole new search.

Yeah. It just kept refining what it had already provided to me until I got something I was like, holy shit, this is actually pretty damn 

Mike: good. Yeah. We're seeing that. Um, so we have within Google search [00:23:00] is now an AI kind of mode mm-hmm. That they're testing in the US especially, and we're seeing that people are searching more often in it.

Because there's follow up questions and, but it's different than what you used to have to do to market towards, like, you used to have to market towards like, all right, I'm looking for X, so if someone's searching for that, I'm gonna show them an ad and I can track back that it's profitable for me. Now it's like, well that, that third question might not be super detailed, but in the scheme of it, it is really important.

And so there's that, that it's all shifting right 

Joe: now. Yeah. The um. It's sort of like the data analytics or the people behind the scenes that are really the, like the coders and the people that are kind of laying out not only how do we handle today, but what is tomorrow and beyond the way their brains have to work.

And, and to get almost like the, the way the, the brain, the human brain thinks and, and sort of categorizes that process and putting that into, well, I mean, obviously what AI is, but yeah, it's just pretty incredible. 

Mike: Yeah. There's some cool [00:24:00] applications too. I mean like there's some early stuff that's working really well.

The predictive stuff has been happening since like 2016 or 17, like our model that Google uses for advertisers that's essentially trying to understand, if you say like. Gimme a dollar and I want $3 back. That model's been using AI for a while and it's been around for a long time, and so it understands where to put the ad, when to serve it, when not to serve it.

It can track that information back, but there's some really cool other things like, you know, we're here on the podcast. I have my own podcast. AI does all the editing for me. There's no, uh, I don't have to do any audio engineering anymore. It just. Couple, couple clicks of the button about 10 minutes later, audio's perfect.

Then you just edit the parts. You wanna edit, it drafts the description, it pulls in information, and if you train it, well, I used one the other day, like, um, I was going to speak, I went to speak at an event in Leone, France, and it was the US company that invited me at the global headquarters. And I, it's, I knew nothing about the French market and so I put into Gemini's research assistant and I said, [00:25:00] you know.

Uh, this is where you need a good prompt, but right. Imagine you're an analyst. Give me the trends. I gave it like a bunch of things I wanted to think about. About six minutes later, I had a 21 page document with sites. Everything I needed, like had all the resources in there, had all the information. From that, threw it in a notebook.

Lm my favorite of our AI tools. It turned it into a podcast so I didn't have to read 21 pages. It gave me about a six minute summary of the 21 pages with two cliff notes, fake hosts, like reading it to me like a podcast. Then I could ask it questions, um, from that. So it's like my own kind of, um, Gemini or, or chat GPT.

And then from there it created a quiz for me to make sure I was ready to actually talk about it and created some infographics for me. And these are all clicks of the button. Yeah. You know, these are, the whole thing took probably 15 minutes. 

Joe: And the thing is, you, you obviously have to go through the process of proofing and understanding Sure.

What you're gonna be presenting or what you're reading, or if it's a paper you're turning in, if you're a student, whatever. But the amount of time that got cut down on the. [00:26:00] Sort of call it non-productive research, just to get to that point completely so you can focus your time and energy on the productive part of learning and preparing.

That's where I, it just blows my mind. I, I think I, maybe I told this story on a previous episode. My son, who just graduated from her buffet actually, um, was doing a big research paper and he had to do a, um. You know, interviews and polling with college students who had done study abroad programs. Okay. And to gain access to those kids was challenging.

'cause a lot of schools don't want to give out the names. Yeah. People and they don't wanna 'cause it's privacy or whatnot. Mm-hmm. And, but they have, but he was sent someone, someone down at IU said, Hey, use this as a resource. And it was all of these, like q and a things that he, they had done with students that they either were public facing or that they had done internally.

And so he used AI to go in and just scour all of that information, turned it into to video so he could watch it, so that he could get a better summary and understanding versus reading through all that content. And then it [00:27:00] basically filled out the survey for him or created it and created the answers based on, you know, did you enjoy your time in Italy?

And it went through all the answers that people, these people put in a completely related but different. Q and a session and scored it out and put sources. I was like, dude, that, that's amazing. The, 

Mike: the most interesting one I have right now. And it's, it's, it's silly. And so, um, I have my own podcast. It's parody.

It's in the theater space. It's very, yeah, we're gonna ask about that. I've already noted it. Well then maybe I'll, I'll, I'll come back to it then, because I, I set up my own basically language model off of all of my episode transcripts. And so anytime someone's referenced anything in any episode I've recorded, I can out.

I can ask and it'll pull all of it and it'll tell me exactly when they said it, exactly who said it for all these characters, and it'll pull it all in. And I can go back and say, all right, I'm talking to someone who's playing this character. Gimme all the theories anyone's ever referenced. And I have that as my starting point.

Joe: So any past episode, if someone says, my favorite character from [00:28:00] Kaz, 'cause he was the party Cat rum, tugger. Um. Yeah, I've seen cats a few times. It's been a long time, but I've, uh, so if they ref, if you pulled that, it would go to all episodes, any basically whatever question 

Mike: I ask it, so I could say, tell me any, uh, relationship that anyone's referenced for the Rom to Tucker, like any of the different characters, it's like, this is their brother, this is their lover.

This is something else. Like, this might be mom. It'll pull me every single different one and it'll show me exactly where in the episode it was set. That's pretty cool. 

Vince: Wow. 

Mike: It saves you a lot of time to going back and, well, and you know, I have 220 something episodes. Like I, I'm like, somebody mentioned this.

I, I remember some of them, some of 'em like really stick out and other times I'm like, I don't remember. And then half what's funny is a lot of the theories are things I've made up. So it's like, someone said this, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I said that one. And I go back and sure enough, it's me making 

Joe: up a theory.

Okay. So, so delving into the podcast, the, the wrong cat died. Yeah. Um, like and subscribe. I was, I was going through the episode list and I've gotta say like. Y [00:29:00] first thing, that first impression I had besides this person has a podcast dedicated to the musical cats. Mm-hmm. But then I'm going through the episodes, I'm like, oh my God.

It's not like just a Broadway or like just off Broadway performance or a Broadway series. Yeah. It's like granular to a high school doing something. Yeah. I have, I have like 30 different productions 

Mike: I think I've talked to. Um, 

Joe: yeah. And you are like almost militantly disciplined on. A weekly release of this.

Like, it's impressive. It was an accident and here we 

Mike: are. 

Joe: It was an accident. 

Mike: Yeah. I, uh, I feel like a lot of 

Joe: companies were born that way. 

Mike: Yeah. I mean, I, so when I moved to New York, a big thing for me was, is I wanted to explore a lot of things that, like either I didn't get in New York or in Indiana, or just things that, like, I would've probably said no beyond.

I'm probably not gonna enjoy that. Um, and I love theater. My mom's a music teacher. Like I, we went to the five shows that come here every year. Um, and so I lived in. In the theater district basically. And so when you live in New York and it's Tuesday and you can get a $25 ticket to see like the elite of the elite [00:30:00] doing what they do best, it's pretty cool.

And so I went to a lot in the beginning 'cause I would be, again, $20 tickets, free tickets, different things. And I got offered free tickets to cats and I'd never seen it, didn't know much about it. I knew memory. That was it. I knew the one song, couldn't tell, couldn't have told you one cat name. At that point was supposed to go with a friend from iu.

They got sick the morning of, they said, just take the two tickets for free. Call whoever you want. I knew like three people in the city at that point, none of which I was comfortable being like, you want to drop what you're doing and in an hour go see cats with me. So I was like, I'm just, I'm just going by myself.

Um, and I went and at the time. When I moved again, so many people weren't expecting me to move. So after my first day at Google, I had a bunch of people ask me how it went, and I offered to write a blog. I did a lot of college. I did um, columns at the IDS in Indiana. So I liked humor writing, so I said, let's, let me blog home.

And I just kind of threw it out there being like, if enough people will read this, I'll write you a weekly thing of like, what's happening in New York because New York's crazy. Like if you're an observant [00:31:00] person and you walk around New York for a week, you'll see some wild stuff. And so it's really fun to write about if you like, like the humor part of it.

And you can like, you know, you get desensitize to it. Yeah. Um, so I threw it out on social media and I think I had like f. 350, 400 people send me their emails saying I'll subscribe to this. So I had enough people, there were pretty much everybody from Indiana and like five coworkers, and I was writing a weekly blog that was essentially like, here's what happened at work.

Here's the cool thing. Here's some crazy New York thing I went to. Here's the comedy seller. I saw, you know, Dave Chappelle at the Comedy Cellar today just randomly popped up and I, that week I saw Katz. I wrote every Sunday night and it was Saturday I saw cats and I was just like, I'm not writing about anything else.

I'm just writing about cats. 'cause it's crazy, like it's such a wild story. So I wrote that story and then in 2019 that bad movie was about to come out and the trailer for it came out and I had, I like was at work and I probably had 25 text messages about that trailer. And so I made a joke. I just said, the [00:32:00] wrong cat dies.

The movie's gonna set the record straight. Welcome to my TED Talk, and I threw it on social media. And at the time, a coworker and friend of mine had started this podcast network and they had probably 30 or 40 shows, and he was like, that's your podcast. You should make one call. The wrong cat died and I'll produce it.

I'll edit it. Like, they're like, we'll do everything for you. The network will cover everything. Just give me, write me 10 episodes of why each character's more. Worthy than the other one. I'm like, I couldn't name you the 10, the 10 characters like, but I started researching and there's, I mean, the lure of the show is insane.

There's so much content out there, there's so many theories. It's not written or spoken. So you have a lot of freedom to say, like every production kind of treats it differently within the confines of the, the space. And so I found so much content to make parody out of. And so I started, I said I'd do 10 episodes, only 10.

I was like, I'm gonna do 10. And then. I'm not gonna think about cats ever again in my life. And I started writing about 10 and about five episodes in somebody from the revival. They did a revival in 2016, which is what I saw. [00:33:00] I basically was like, I can answer some of these questions for you. Like the questions I was posing about the theories and I interviewed him and it was way more fun to just like ask, here's how I'm thinking about it.

What are you told? 

Vince: Right? What's 

Mike: the plot? What's the theory? And that snowballed into, because it's been around for 46, 7 years, whatever, it's, it's currently, this is how bad it is. I can tell you where it just finished in Aurora, uh, Illinois. So it just finished a regional production in Chicago. There's one happening in, uh, New Jersey right now that starts this weekend.

There's one that just started last weekend, Lancaster, Pennsylvania that I went to. It's on an international tour somewhere in Germany right now. It's in Australia right now, and it's on a Royal Caribbean cruise. So those are all happening. Yeah. Currently for cats. And probably there's, uh, oh, sorry. There was one in Fort Worth, Texas that just finished cowboy cats.

Um, 

Vince: no. Are these all different variations? 

Mike: Cowboy cats? Oh God, that sounds like a bad. Uh, the, the Chicago one was circus cats. They did it like Cirque Soleil. Uh, the Lancaster is amusement park cats. Um, [00:34:00] cowboy cats. They literally, the one, say 

Vince: the Lancaster one was like Amish cats. I know. It's Amish country.

We went, it was really cool. A 

Mike: great farmer's market on, uh, right next to the theater. Um. But yeah, so it's like when you think about that, each one of those shows has, uh, Lancaster has 36 different people in that production. Okay. The World Caribbean crew has gone on for 15 years. There's 30 something that rotate in and out.

I have endless amounts of people to talk to. 

Vince: Yeah. And 

Mike: so I just am constantly like, who should I talk to next? And I always, I finish an episode and I get three or four more names. And that's how I've talked to so many different people from it over the years, but I'm over 200 episodes in, 'cause after I started doing the interviews, I'm just doing Tendo.

It's like this is just, yeah, exactly. And it's cool 'cause I get to, now I get to combine it with new shows. Mm-hmm. So it's like somebody. I open up a cast list for a brand new Broadway show, and I would say 60 50. 60% have somebody that did cats. Oh, yeah. Professionally at some point. Most of 'em probably did it regionally and I can't even find it, but professionally, and so then I can talk to the PR team and say.

Let's talk about cats and your new [00:35:00] show, which is fun 'cause you can kind of combine the world. Sure. Cross promote. They send me to the show for free, which is nice. Nice little perk. Um, and yeah, so I'm still going. Awesome. Recording to tomorrow. There you go. 

Vince: But back in New York. Right here. Back in New York.

Back in New York. Okay. 

Mike: Those are the Pennsylvania cats. Uh, so how do you balance that work with your cult day job? I think everything I, I get asked this a lot on, um, one of my pet peeves when I was like. Right after school. I used to say this a lot as I'm too busy and I'm just like a firm believer of like, that's not the case.

It's that you're prioritizing something else over something else, and that's fine, but you're not too busy for something else. You're just choosing something else over that time. And I've told a lot of students that, especially like the college students, where they're always like, I'm way too busy. I'm like, you're really, you're really not.

So trust me, um, you're in college kid, you got a lot of time. You're really, really not wait, just wait. Um, but it's like, what are you gonna choose and prioritize time over? And so I do that trade off all the time of like, what am I. Gonna give up. And when I did the, when I agreed to the 10 episodes, that was part of the conversation is like, what am I gonna give up to write these, to [00:36:00] record these, to promote it, versus other things I could do in New York or other things you could do with your time.

And like, you know, it's like, do I want to, I play hockey still. Like do I wanna play more games in New York, which I could, or do I want to go to more stuff or do I want to do this? And so now you're not Canadian, right? No. No. I played, I played, uh, two nights ago though. No, I played last night. No, two nights ago.

I flew here last night. Um. But I, I, I think about that constantly and I always like, encourage people on our team of like, no, you're not, you're not too busy. You're just choosing to sleep nine hours maybe. You know? I was like, you, you can make that call. And so now I kind of am constantly looking at that battle 'cause there's nothing from, I could stop the show tomorrow and it's fine.

Like there's no, like, I have a fan base, but it's just me. It's, I'm a one person production now with a. Quote, unquote producer, but the the time it takes me to do, it's so minimal now because of my AI platform, I can, the questions are basically pre-written for me. I can just ask it a quick question. I've got the stuff to prep, so I see you all have your notes.

I don't need those notes anymore. I, I just, I've done enough of them and I've got the thing in [00:37:00] front of me that's done. I record virtually. I can do it at home. I'm gonna record two. It'll be probably, I would say two hours total. And then with the AI editing platform. It's all done in probably 25, 30 minutes.

Vince: Mm-hmm. 

Mike: And so it's like a full episode is probably an hour and a half of time. And that's not bad when you're only talking about one or two. You know, I, I usually do usually three to four a month. So it's not, that's not a huge time commitment. Right. And you, when you really break it down like that, um, and I travel a lot, so it's like.

Edit one on a plane when you're stuck. Anyways, pretty easy. Um, do some stuff like that to make it more and then automate as much as you can. Social media, it, pre-draft the, the caption for me schedules it out, graphics the template, throw it up. It goes out on Tuesdays when the episode goes out. Like a lot of it can be really simplified.

Joe: Yeah. So is there, do you have any motivator for, for doing it today other than a. Hobby and, and enjoyment. 

Mike: Hobby. I've met some really fun people. Um, I've made some good friends out of it that I like, [00:38:00] again, in the theater space, I would've never expected. Um, I do get a lot of free tickets and that's like, it's in a lot of, it's a huge savings in broaden process.

Yeah. The Kelsey Brothers don't get free tickets. They get a lot of other free stuff though, or 

Vince: or triple figure of what, a nine figure contract or whatever. 

Mike: Um, and it's, it's fun. Like they're fun conversations. It's like, I, I've always said once I get bored of the recording. I'm gonna be done, but every time I talk to somebody different, it's an entertaining conversation for me.

And so I'm gonna keep going until, until I run out. But you know, at the beginning of this year, I was super busy at the beginning of the year. I was traveling a lot and I think I did, I was doing basically one a week and I went to like every other, or now I have enough that I can pull old episodes back and be like, from the vault and then just like record a 32nd intro and pull someone that's now.

Even more famous because I, I had a few people that did it on tour that are now like in big Broadway shows that they were, I caught them kind of early on, so it's like, Hey, let's bring that one back. They're, they're doing really well now. 

Vince: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah. That's cool. That's pretty cool. 

Vince: Well, I've [00:39:00] known you since you and James were kids.

Yeah. Um, this, speaking of hockey, all the, the smelly hockey bags at 5:00 AM those were, those were nice. Um, two things going on the hockey, we were not hockey guys. Um. I saw it and it's been a little while, but you posted that you did some hockey tournament clearly somewhere up north on our frozen lake.

Yeah. Pond hockey. Is that what they call 

Mike: it? Yeah. There's a, there's like a Pon Hashi na National Championship that they play at Eagle River, uh, Wisconsin. 

Vince: Okay. That, I think that's, it's a long 

Mike: ways from here. I've actually only played with guys from Indiana. 

Vince: Okay. And 

Mike: so, even when I was in New York, I think I've done it twice since, but the first year I went up, it's, it's, it's fun in chaotic at the same time.

Um, but I've gone with guys from here, you know, and they still go, it's hard to get a, a team in there 'cause it's like, okay, the thing opens up and sold out immediately sells out. And so I've, I've played it probably four or five years. Okay. But you play on the river if it's cold enough and it's, it's a very different style of hockey.

Pond hockey is different. Like, you know, the, the net's only [00:40:00] like this tall, so Really? And so there's not like a real net. You, you just, the puck can't go. If it goes above the waist, they blow a whistle. Um, and it's four on four and there's not really a goalie. Usually someone's standing in front of it, but you can't like, lay down or anything.

It's like, and so it's a totally different game, but it's fun. It's also. Can be a little miserable. You play a lot of games and the first game I, first year I went up there, our first game was at 7:00 AM Sounds cool. On a Friday. And it was like negative five. And so it's like you're wearing just like all your, your ski gear basically.

You got your helmet. I had like a full like hat under my helmet. And then you get off and it, it's just, can be rough, but it's a really fun trip. I think you 

Vince: posted an aerial photo, maybe it was from a drone, but it basically had all the, you know, it showed the, the lake or the river and, and it had all the different, uh, you know.

Rinks, I guess, or whatever. Yeah. It's bunch of 

Mike: different rinks next to each other, 

Vince: but the snow pushed, pushed to the side was, it looked pretty cool for, it's 

Mike: a cool experience. It's like a very unique thing that you don't, and it's the, the town population is like 2000 [00:41:00] and I think like 4,000 people come to this thing.

Okay. So it's like, it, it triples the, the population size. And so it's just, they know, I think they do a snowmobile thing every year and they do the pond hockey every year and they're prepared for it. Yeah. So they do all these different things for just. And it's only dudes. Basically it's just a bunch of guys coming to town for this, um, this tournament.

Yeah. And so we can, we've driven every year from here, it's about nine hours. Okay. So it's a, it's up you out there. 

Vince: It's pretty, pretty tough. A lot of spotted of crowd drinking I'm sure. Yeah. A lot of, lot of drinking. Uh, 

Mike: yeah. You basically drink and play. Yeah. And that's, it. Sounds perfect. And if you're, if you lose your first game, you drink more.

'cause you basically can't make it to the finals if you lose your first game. Okay. So if you lose right away, it just becomes a drinking trip. 

Joe: Yeah. I mean, if you're going to Northern Wisconsin and the dead ass a winner. Yeah. February to a town of 2000 people. Not a whole lot else to do, but hang out and just, they play, 

Mike: they play a minor league game there.

Or some like, I don't even know how to describe it, but the stadium seats like. 3000 and it's, it's filled standing room only they, you know, it's just, it's chaotic. [00:42:00] It's really, it's fun, but you gotta know what you're getting yourself into. 

Vince: Right? 

Mike: Cheese cos and beer, cheese, cos and beer. Yeah. There you go with that.

What else is there? 

Vince: Well, Mike, you've done a variety of things since graduated from iu. Um, it's been, it's been cool to hear about this kind of maturation or, um, progression of, of jobs and careers and, and kind of all the different insights you've gained from it. What would advice, would you give the 20 something Mike Abrams graduate from IU just as past May?

Mike: Ooh. Um. So there's the work answer, then there's a personal answer. I think the personal answer, I did this when I was in New York and it, it led to a lot of really cool experiences. Mm-hmm. I don't know if it's easier in New York versus Indiana or other places, but, um, I, I, I said yes to a bunch of things right when I moved there, even if I knew I wasn't like.

I, at that point I was, you know, I was in my late twenties. I think I, I knew I wasn't gonna like some of these things, but I still said yes. And I think that that's a really powerful thing early on in like, graduating in life [00:43:00] is like, don't get set in a way. Like if you try new things, do a bunch of new things, and, and like, even if you, you know, like, all right, that's not my main type of stuff.

Go, go try it, go do it once. Go do more of those things early on. Yeah. Um, 'cause I really enjoyed that in New York. It led me to some really. Fun. So it was like, it was half of it was great blog content. 'cause at the time it was like, that was a, like we did, um, I remember I had a, a good friend who had a very similar mindset and it was one random, I think it was like a Wednesday or Thursday, and we were like, we're gonna go to Queens to this like, this like little popup comedy show that we saw.

And we were, there was probably eight people in the crowd and we were two of 'em. And I just so vividly remember the first comedian was kind of okay, and then there was a mentalist. And a magician. And it was the worst thing I've ever seen. Like every single person could tell the trick. And I remember being like, this was so dumb.

Why did we take a 45 minute train out here to the middle of nowhere that we don't know anything about? But then we still talk about that all the time of like, like remember that guy who's there? So it's, it can lead to some really fun moments. Yeah. [00:44:00] Um, so I would say do that. I think on the professional side, um, focus on skills.

I think everybody who focuses on the job, like, I want this job, or I wanna be in this industry, or I wanna do this. And you know, like if you would've told me I was gonna. Love working in home improvement. Like Angie's was fun. Like it was a good cool place, great people, and it built a ton of communication skills, negotiation skills, and all of that led to the other stuff.

So I'd say if you focus on like, what can I learn from this and what can you challenge myself on, um, that will lead you more places than like, I want to, like, I, we ask my first interview question. This is, I'm not even supposed to ask it, but I ask everybody why do they wanna this job? And. If they say, well, I really wanna come to Google.

I'm like, you're probably not gonna answer the rest of the questions well. Mm-hmm. Because that's not the reason you want this role. Like we have a lot of open roles. Why this one? And so I'm constantly thinking like, don't worry about the company, don't worry about the industry. Worry about what you're gonna get to do and how you can make the most of that, and where you stretch [00:45:00] those different opportunities.

Because there's a lot of ways to, especially big corporate, like there's a lot of ways to do really fun stuff that's like do your core job and all this other cool stuff and you build all kinds of great skills doing that. 

Vince: Yep. Well said. Sound advice. Yep. Alright, Mike, we've taken off your time. Thank you for coming in this morning.

Thanks for having me. Super fun. You're 

Mike: welcome. Fun to be 

Vince: on it. Go 

Mike: Pacers. 

Vince: Yes, exactly. And thank all you guys for joining us on this episode of the Indu podcast. We appreciate you guys joining us from wherever you get your podcast. So if you're tuning in the access of YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in as Mike said, go Pacers tonight.

Game six NBA finals 2025. Um, dunno when this will be get dropped. It'll be after the fact, but hopefully we'll be in a good mood regardless. And at the end of the day, don't forget folks. Be industrious.