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What's Happening MoCo?
An authentic, unscripted update from County Cable Montgomery highlighting items that help residents of Montgomery County. This program will feature interviews with elected officials, employees, public servants, and residents. This program is produced by the Office of Community Engagement from the Department of Technology and Enterprise Business Services. Interviews are recorded live and presented with very few edits to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the conversations.
What's Happening MoCo?
What's Happening with Alex Tsironis? Founder of MoCo Show Shares His Story in Content Creation
From a PE teacher to a social media maven, Alex Tsironis, a.k.a. Mr. MoCo 301, joins us to chart his meteoric rise from the humble beginnings of #MoCoSnow to steering the MoCo Show platform towards millions of views. As Montgomery County's very own Community Engagement Manager, Derrick Kenny, reveals the multifaceted nature of his role, which spans far beyond communications into the realm of cable TV stations and content production. Our live audience at the Universities of Shady Grove buzzes with excitement as we unravel the tapestry of content creation and delve into the hearts behind the voices that resonate through podcasting's growing influence.
This episode is steeped in the transformative power of local expertise and personal passion as it shapes the digital landscape. We dissect the strategy behind going viral, the responsibility of factual reporting, and the dance of monetization for small news outlets in the age of user-generated content. It's an open book into the highs and lows that come with the territory, from the story of local entrepreneurs who flipped the fast-casual food scene on its head with Cava, to the precision and care needed to handle the psychological toll of online negativity.
As we wrap up, we address the critical art of managing an online presence, understanding your audience demographics, and the pure joy found in producing content that's true to who you are. Whether we're discussing the global marketplace's impact on local creators or the personal strategies for handling social media stress, this episode is packed with insights, inspiration, and the real stories of content creators shaping their own paths in Montgomery County and beyond. Guest Alex Tsironis exemplifies this journey, showing us the power of evolving a brand while staying grounded in community values. Join us for a heartfelt exploration of what it means to craft stories and build connections in today's buzzing content creation landscape.
Good day and welcome to what's Happening, MoCo, a podcast from your award-winning government television station, County Cable, Montgomery. Now here's your host, Derek Kenney. Good day and welcome to what's Happening, MoCo. This podcast is different from any other podcast I've done before. Number one we are at the universities of Shady Grove. Number two we are before a live audience Audience. Make a little bit of noise. Make a little bit of noise. Yay, All right, all right, all right, all right. Number three we're going to be focused on careers, and not only just about careers, but careers in content creation.
Speaker 1:And when you think about Montgomery County, you think about MoCo, you think about content creation. Who do you think about? I know who I think about. I think about Alex Saronis. Mr MoCo 301 is joining me today for this podcast. Give him a round of applause, Alex. Thank you so much for being here today. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me. All right, All right.
Speaker 1:And since this is a podcast about careers and we talk about government careers a lot, I'll take a quick moment to say that, in addition to being a podcast host for the Montgomery County government, I have a position called the community engagement manager. Now it may seem that that's a communications-only potential job. Okay, but it's actually a job that incorporates a lot of fun things, but a lot of other things. Business functions like procurement. Why do you need procurement? Procurement is needed to acquire services and equipment all the things needed to produce a podcast like this today.
Speaker 1:What else do I do? I provide oversight for the county's cable TV stations. Did you know that Montgomery County has nine cable TV stations dedicated to informing and engaging the public? Anybody, no, Anybody new, All right, cool. So now you know, and guess what? One of those community television stations are geared towards empowering people like yourself, students, faculty others, Alex, myself in producing content creative for your own benefit. So make sure you loop back around, look up Montgomery Community Media, come back, ask us those questions, ask the question what's happening in MoCo? Where can I go to produce my podcast? Ok, and we'll take care of that. So now let's get down to brass tacks. A long time ago, many moons ago, Alex, how long ago was it when you first developed the hashtag MoCoSnow?
Speaker 2:So MoCoSnow actually first was developed as a bulletin board in my classroom in like 2008 or 2009. I was a teacher for many years and then we went on to Twitter. I want to say the hashtag came about in 2012. And that's when we created our Moco Snow Twitter account.
Speaker 1:Now, why was that such a popular hashtag and what about it kind of got it started generating awareness and traffic towards your brand?
Speaker 2:Well, number one, it rhymed, so it was kind of easy to say and people wanted to say it. But secondly, everyone loves snow days or hates them. It depends on where you're at. But as a kid we all loved them. As teachers, we loved them because we got to stay home and get paid. It was amazing. And then parents were maybe on the other side of it. They were like oh no, I got to figure things out now. But everyone cared right. So everyone wanted to know are we going to have school? Is there going to be a delay? And that's kind of what I aim to answer with, just like fun predictions.
Speaker 1:Now let's take a quick step back. I know Alex. A lot of you guys know Alex, a lot of you guys know Mr Moco301. But what brand would people most associate you with?
Speaker 2:Currently, I would say, the Moco Show is probably the most popular brand. We have a pretty big following on social media and our website is currently getting over two million hits each month.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that's incredible. That's incredible. So now we know where he is now Two million views a month, which I will say is extraordinary. And he started rather humbly. You were a gym teacher, of course, right, and for the Montgomery County Public Schools, and so your first passion wasn't content creation, am I correct?
Speaker 2:That's correct. Yeah, I was a PE teacher and I loved sports. I loved working with children, I loved teaching sports to kids. And through that, because I was a teacher teacher and I loved sports, I loved working with children, I loved teaching sports to kids and through that, because I was a teacher that snow thing came about and I started creating. Obviously, every teacher creates content in their classroom, so you have to have engaging content to engage students. And then I just kind of turned it into something else and, by default, I had all these kids emailing me after they left my class and saying oh, we're going to have school tomorrow. I created this website and it wasn't until a 12-year-old student of mine came up to me and he wouldn't stop pestering me about creating a social media account for Moco Snow and finally I created it. Well, actually, I had him create it at lunch for me and he said here you go, and three days later we had 1,000 followers.
Speaker 2:This was over a decade ago and I was like wow, I was like there's something here, so let me kind of continue to build this and then we'll get into how MoCo Snow kind of transitioned into the MoCo show. So we'll talk about that, I guess, coming up soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, coming up soon. Yeah, coming up soon. So you have a popular platform and you're now on your first social media platform, which was what it was Twitter and I was not familiar with it at the time.
Speaker 2:So the time period Facebook was number one. At the time I had a personal Facebook account. It was post MySpace. I know a lot of people won't even remember what MySpace is, but Facebook was number one and I thought to myself no one's going to care about the weather on Twitter, why would I join this? But this 12-year-old kid kept saying trust me, trust me until I let him create it, and I've thanked him. He's got to be in his late 20s now, but I've thanked him so many times since then for helping it make happen.
Speaker 1:And that was a while ago. So now Twitter is now known as the social media app, formerly known as Twitter. Now it's X, and some people like to have fun with it and call it Twix, because it is Twitter and it is X, so it's like two things right. So you start off in this platform and you started off as a social media novice. You weren't into social media, you didn't get into the game thinking about social media or content creation, but you found that there was a need in the community and you were fulfilling that need. What was the next step, from Moco Snow and the Twitter account to the next milestone in your journey?
Speaker 2:So around the same time I decided to make a Facebook page too. At the time it was the number one social media platform I think technically still is Meta as a whole and I created a Facebook page. I was a lot more familiar with that and we created a following there too. Then a couple of years passed and winter would end and I had all these followers and every now and then I'd say like, hey, I tried out this restaurant. I thought it was great. And some people were like, oh cool, I got to check it out. And then other people were like stick to snow. So I was like, all right, let me figure this out, let me create something where I can talk about these things that I'm doing and those people who care can kind of follow along. So I had moco snow and I was like let me figure this out let's create.
Speaker 3:If I could just get your guys's. Oh wait, hold on, I don't want to be in the zoom.
Speaker 1:Okay, and, as I said before, we are live. We are live from University of Shady Grove, we're talking to Alice Rones and we just learned quite a bit about him, but I think the one thing we want to note is that there was what sometimes, when you want to go into a certain arena professionally, even as a non-professional, there are barriers. In this case, there were no barriers to entry. When you're going the social media route. All you need, basically, is what? A cell phone, a computer, a reason to be there and content. So all right.
Speaker 2:Yes, so we created the MoCo show and it's called the MoCo show because it was a podcast. It started as a podcast so it was me and a friend discussing what we were doing in Montgomery County, what we liked about how cool was this restaurant Stuff like that and we grew this following and we made a lot of connections and what kind of happened was these people that were following along? I remember one time someone said, hey, I work at the gym here in Rio and I heard we're going to close and Dave and Buster's is going to take over. So I was like, oh, that's interesting, made a few phone calls and nobody was kind of admitting to it and finally I got in touch with someone who said, yes, we're looking to take over that space. It's from Dave and Buster's had to have been 2016.
Speaker 2:And then, a year later, it was announced that Dave and Buster's was moving into Rio taking over the space in the gym and we kind of reported it first and it, you know it got shared by so many people and I was like, wow, people really care about this stuff. So let me keep talking about things that you know. We're hearing that we're able to confirm. Hey, I hear Toys R Us is closing and this other place is coming in and people were sharing that hundreds of times. So we kind of got a start doing retail and restaurant news and then kind of expanded from there.
Speaker 1:Wow. So we know that from your initial entry into the marketplace with Twitter, you were instantly viral. You went 1,000 followers in, like oh you said three days, and then you started covering news which, again, Alex, professionally and from an educational standpoint, you started off in education, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a degree in education, physical education. I have a master's degree in that same field. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I do now, but I was able to use everything I learned in school and in my career, to kind of put it into what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1:Correct, and so he was able to pivot from what he was doing and learn I would say a steep learning curve to do investigative journalism, which I will say that's what that was, where you were finding out about the Dave and Buster situation and then, instantly, you provided value to residents and you again went viral.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's you know. That's the thing. It's easy to want to go viral and it's easy it's you can go viral for kind of the wrong reasons, but you always want to go viral for, for something that's you know informative and helpful to the community, and we try to do that at all times. You know from from Wawa coming opening its first Montgomery County location. I found that out by accident when I was at the Gaithersburg Book Fair in like 2018 walking around and there was a guy from Wawa handing out pens and I said what are you doing this for? There's no Wawa in Montgomery County. And he said there will be and no one knew that.
Speaker 2:And I was like oh, all right, so I actually pulled him aside and I said tell me a little more. And he told me everything and I called Wawa Corporate. They gave me the story and we broke that news and that was huge Because Wawa was something a lot of people wanted or remembered from where they grew up. For me, I had it in College Park when I was in college. It's gone now but I might have come back.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but it was big news in the area and it's a fun way to go viral and I think this is a good opportunity to highlight for content creators a fun way to go viral and I think this is a good opportunity to highlight for content creators what does it take, in your opinion, to create content that people, that resounds with people, that people will find a value that could benefit your brand as a content creator.
Speaker 2:So I tell people all the time especially the people that kind of work for us. I say there's content everywhere. You can take a picture of something that looks interesting and that's content right and a lot of people might care about it. And then there's things we work on for multiple days, put in hours into, and it completely flops on social media. And then there's times where we take a picture of something interesting and post it and it gets shared 10,000 times and it has 5,000 to 10,000 likes and content is everywhere. So I always tell people look for a need, um and, and then kind of fill it. We're all experts in something.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, in our own way I felt like I lived in Montgomery County all my life. So I've been here 41 years and I knew a lot about it. I was moving all across the County. I lived in Rockville and Gaithersburg, but you know I was going to Greek school in Silver Spring and my church was in Bethesda and I was doing all these different things across the county. So I knew these areas, what used to be there, and I just remembered and I kind of would share it with people and I saw that people cared. So I always tell people, whatever it is you share on your personal social media or whatever it is you have. What do people like to engage in that you have to offer, and then maybe grow that and go with that. What do people like to engage in that you have to offer, and then maybe grow that and you know.
Speaker 1:Go with with that what you're an expert in.
Speaker 1:And he's the expert in Montgomery County, maryland, right, and that's for people that are listening, that are outside of Maryland and our little hyper-local area of Montgomery County, maryland, where we have over a million residents, one of the most diverse counties in the in the country, one of the healthiest counties in the country. So MoCo is an abbreviation or like a pseudonym for Montgomery County, montgomery County, moco, right, and now you are, mr MoCo and 301, for those of you that were not around for the 301 area code period. 301 was the area code for-.
Speaker 2:The only area code we had. The only area code we had. Yeah, 240 came around and now I don't know anyone with it, but 227 also exists for our area. That came out recently. I haven't met a person that has a 227 number yet, but I look forward to it. Does anyone in here have a 227 number? Yeah, Does anyone know anyone with the 227 number? All right, great, so it's, it's.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't like it, I, I'm, I'm, I'm a 301 guy and anyone else has get some breaking news from the MoCo show before anyone else. I didn't know there was a new area code for Maryland. Okay, that's good to, that's good to know. He's, he's in the know.
Speaker 2:Last summer last summer Wow.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome, awesome. Now, one of the cool things that you do is that you're able to relay to people, or echo, some of the great things about the county. What are some of the great things about the county? That, if you meet someone on the street today or someone stumbles across your website from Germany or from Texas and you want to talk about Montgomery County, what are some of the cool things that you want to share with them?
Speaker 2:So you mentioned like the cool things, like in general, like our diversity. That's awesome. But then there's like fun facts and that's kind of one of the one of the things I built the MoCo show on was sharing these fun facts. And we have all these like cool celebrities that that have these very close ties to Montgomery County from. From Sylvester Stallone we were talking about him a little bit earlier.
Speaker 2:He played Rocky, he has very many movie roles and a fun thing is one time we got a Sylvester Stallone impersonator to make a video talking about the MoCo show and then Sylvester Stallone or the account at least retweeted it and I was like oh, that's amazing. And then he unretweeted it a couple of days later. But that was cool and all these awesome connections that we have to these celebrities who have kind of made it from our area. And people are always like, well, what are they doing for our area now? And it's like I have no idea. Maybe they're doing a lot of things, maybe they're not, but they're from here or they went to school here and it's a part of who they are.
Speaker 1:And I always share that with people. I think it's one of the coolest things. Cool. So you've established your brand. You're now doing various types of content creation from pictures, investigative journalism, breaking news and then topical information, things that are current, but along the way you developed a podcast.
Speaker 1:Tell us about that experience and, for those that, anybody born after 2002? Anybody born after 2002? Well, podcasting was kind of birthed, I think at the time was a iPod. It was an iPod Before the iPhone. There was this device that only played media and at the time it was only audio media, right. So podcasts were actually a way for people to Just get this with me. Okay, not stream, but download media to this device in real time over bit rates that were very, very, very, very, very slow to listen to content.
Speaker 1:Fast forward a couple of decades and podcasting is the hottest, newest thing out, whereas not the newest thing out, but it's a valued source of information for everyone out there. I'm not sure if anyone here can say they haven't listened to a podcast in the last month or haven't heard a story about a podcast or a story that was first birthed from a podcast over the last month or two. And so podcasting is very powerful. But the reason why it's important for content creators is that. Number one it says one new thing that goes against the school of thought that was recently believed and that was people only want to hear 30 seconds of anything. Right. Podcast is long-form media. Two it happened to help to show that a lot of people I think back to Alex's point your voice is valuable but, much like social media, the barriers to creating your own podcast, trying to add some value here for you guys, if you want to start a podcast is free. You have a cell phone, you have a Wi-Fi connection at the school, a Wi-Fi connection at Starbucks, you have value to add in terms of what you like or dislike or things you want to cover, and then you can get a free account with Buzzsprout or Podbean or something like that and start your own podcast. So if you don't learn anything else from talking to us today, if you're a content creator, there's nothing stopping you from starting your own creation platform, whether it's a podcast, a Twix account, a Facebook account or even getting up ultimately to where we're getting to a website that gets over 2 million views a month, which puts it in very rare air.
Speaker 1:Now, many, many, many moons ago I worked in a bit of PR and I used to get excited when there was a radio program that had an average quarter-hour listenership of 500 people, right. So back in the day that helped me get paid was to get an interview booked on a radio show that was on AM that had 500 people. Now, everyone in this room probably has more than 5,000 friends, or 2,000 friends on Facebook. Everyone in this room probably has more than 5,000 friends, or 2,000 friends on Facebook. You may have more than 1,000 followers on TikTok, so now you do live streams on TikTok, right. So here we are. We are in this arena where we have all these great ideas, we have all these vehicles in social media and things like podcasting where we can share our voices. What was it that got you started with your podcast and what were some of the things you liked about your podcast platform?
Speaker 2:So the coolest thing about a podcast is that people hear you. They hear how you're saying something, they hear how you're talking about it. They can hear your voice. It's not. You write something and then someone takes it the wrong way and replies and you're trying to explain yourself and now you're getting in a battle of who's going to get more likes on their response to each other.
Speaker 2:A podcast is kind of first off, it's one way You're sharing your thoughts or whatever it is you have, but people can hear how you're saying it, they can tell if you're angry about something or happy about something or if know, simply just stating something, and I loved being able to do that kind of letting people know. So, like I can say something, like man, I, I, I, I really love Lake Forest and some people when, if I write it, you might think he's being sarcastic, or some somebody might say, oh he's, you know he's lying or he's wrong or whatever. But if you hear me talking about it, say, man, I really loved lake forest, like I loved everything about it. I loved that there was a mall near my house and I was able to go when you hear me talking about it, whereas if you see it written. You might you have no idea how I mean it. Um, so I love that we started from this podcast where people can hear, uh kind of my emotions in everything. So you know, as it grew and we were able to cover like all these different topics before we were big on social media, almost all feedback was positive.
Speaker 2:You know, not many people listen to a podcast and start yelling at their you know radio in the car or at their AirPods or whatever it is they're listening to them on, whereas on social media you see something and immediately you feel like you have to respond and your response has to make another response, another responder, feel dumb, or you have to prove them wrong or you have to get some likes with your response. It's not like that with a podcast. You take in the information and you hear it. You can agree or disagree. If you disagree enough that you want to reach out to the person who created it, you still can. But it's not this like instant gratification of I'm going to write this comment and I got 37 likes. I'm right, you know it's a little different.
Speaker 2:So I always say you know, podcast is one way you get your message out and I love that people can hear it and still respond if they want to, but it's not this whole thing where here's a big platform for everyone to see your response and then ends up bringing a lot of negativity. That's kind of what social media is. There's one thing about social media I don't like is the negativity that it can bring, and podcasts kind of. While you can still be negative on a podcast, usually the messages aren't negative and people can just kind of, while you can still be negative on a podcast, usually the messages aren't negative and people can just kind of take it in and oh, I'm not so angry about it an hour later or a day later, so they don't feel the need to respond with negativity.
Speaker 1:So talk about your podcast in terms of at this point, we're beyond becoming an influencer for the sake of being an influencer, or sharing content for the sake of sharing content. This is now a business, maybe a secondary business, but it's now a business. What were some of your thoughts in regards to your podcast, and how did that influence your way, moving forward from where you were at that time?
Speaker 2:So as the podcast grew, we grew to about 10,000 weekly listeners. We had one episode a week. We have just over a million people in Montgomery County and, honestly, if you're not from Montgomery County there's no real reason to listen to the podcast. The podcast does not exist anymore and we'll get into that too. But at the time, you know, those are really good numbers. But it was also very local so we weren't having national brands advertise with us, we were having some local brands advertise with us. But it was slowly becoming a business. And when we added the you know, the social media platforms, the website, we kind of opened it up to more advertisers to make it more of a business. So you know, it became a business. Initially it was not, but I think, like you know, ultimately most people's goals when they start these podcasts is to eventually hopefully get an advertiser and be able to have, you know, their creation funded. So that's kind of how it transitioned to a business. And you know, during the pandemic we were still doing the podcast. That's kind of when it ended.
Speaker 2:Once things started opening up again. But when everything closed down we had one of Governor Hogan's spokespeople on our show and I think that one got almost half a million listens Because we were asking questions like, hey, everything had just shut down and it was like is it going to open up soon? What's going on? Nobody knew answers to any of these questions and we asked questions that readers were kind of throwing in.
Speaker 2:And this was one of our most listened to podcasts and it did well and I was like, wow, a lot of people care and this is a Montgomery County based podcast. Obviously we had, you know, maryland Maryland, I think, has over 6 million residents, but we had almost half a million people tune in and I was like, wow, there's something here for sure. But we realized that kind of, for us and for what we did, social media was a little more efficient for us. So we transitioned to more of a social media platform. While I'd love to still be able to do the podcast and maybe we'll bring it back when I have a little more time right now we're a news media company, so you know I have employees to pay and.
Speaker 2:I have a business to run so it's a little more difficult for me to do this weekly podcast.
Speaker 1:So we're following the journey of Mr Moco 301. We started with social media, a Twix account. We grew from there, we started doing more Facebook, other things, incorporating investigative journalism as part of the content creation, and other timely and hyper local, um things that resonate with residents, and you got to the point where you had to get to this point where you ask the question how do I make money doing what I love? Right, um, and that's, that's monetization. Everything that you see that is free and cheap in the beginning, um, at some point, um it, the brand has to monetize. And a couple of things that people content creators maybe miss out on is what Alex spoke of just now.
Speaker 1:Advertising is what fuels you as a content creator, more so, or more often, than getting paid from the vehicle like YouTube.
Speaker 1:So, if you're on YouTube and you get past 10,000 subscribers and you have a million views a month and then you get some type of compensation from YouTube. However, if you have a popular podcast or a popular social media stream and that you've built yourself and you go out and do the due diligence to get advertisers or sponsors, then you can generate income like that. You don't have to wait until you are the Bees, knees or the next country, wayne or whomever you can start generating revenue yourself. There's other ways to generate revenue. A lot of people sell merchandise things like that, so that's something to keep in mind as you build your brand. Now you have a great network where you have people in your family that are just aching to support you in what you do. You can probably get a nice launch path in terms of generating revenue as well. But I think it's important that we share that you're moving into the business model of content creation what the different ways are to make money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so initially it was. If I went to a restaurant and I shared and to this day, if you see a post that either I put out or our Taste MoCo account puts out or the MoCo show puts out, if it's not marked as a paid partnership or if it's not clearly stated that something was provided for free, I've paid for that food. So a lot of social media content creators don't disclose that they actually have to. It's very important to do that. They all don't. We do so. If, for some reason, we got something for free, we do say this was very clearly stated, this was provided to us for free or it is marked as a paid partnership. Any ad that we post is always marked as a paid partnership. We try our best to always do it the right way.
Speaker 2:Now here's the trouble was, when I was going to these places on my own and you know say, hey, I really love this, people were always like is this an ad? Did you get it for free? Or they were supporting the place. And I would always answer no, it's not an ad, I didn't get it for free. And then they were like okay, great, I love that you're supporting businesses. And now if we post an ad. Sometimes the comments on these ads are just so negative and a lot of times I don't think people understand. They're like this is a big business, how can you support them? Well, in a way, they're actually supporting me and I feel like my business is a small business. So we're supporting, supporting each other, we're giving them some uh, some visibility and they're uh, they might be a big business that's operating locally through a local franchise. Franchisee that employs, you know, our neighbors, um, and they advertise with us and they're helping my business.
Speaker 2:But, uh, you can, you can have ads. We have ads on Facebook, we have ads on, uh, on Twitter, x, uh, whatever you want to call it. We have ads on Instagram and we have ads on our website. But one thing we've done is we've kept everything free. There's no paywall. You might be annoyed a little bit by an ad, but on Instagram you do this and then the ad just goes away, so it's not a big deal.
Speaker 2:Right On Facebook, you can scroll past it. You don't have to engage with the ad or you might see something you like. I think we had a just this morning. We had a car dealership do a very interesting ad where the start of it was a Mike Tyson fight and then it shows Mike Tyson punching someone in the face and the guy gets knocked down. And then it flips to this car salesman from Orsman and Chevy Rockville turning around and coming up and being like, hey, we have have knockout savings here and it's like okay, it was a very good ad. It's been seen by like 40,000 people in the first hour and it was effective.
Speaker 2:Usually when they post their ads, people are like man, this place is the worst, and whether it's the worst or not I don't know, but people just get mad at ads sometimes when in reality you can just scroll by them. So there are stuff that we have to deal with. We always have to have a lot more of our content than our ads. So I always say 80% content at minimum and 20% ads, but we keep everything free. So sometimes people will say you should sell shirts instead. I'm like, okay, sure, and we do. I'm like, how many have you bought? And they're like, well, none. I sell shirts instead. I'm like, okay, sure, and we do. I'm like, how many have you bought? And they're like, well, none. I'm like, exactly, right. So it's, it's not that easy to sell a certain amount of shirts, that'll, that'll, you know, be able to support me and my, my staff, so you can get creative with it.
Speaker 2:You know, and as long I always tell people, people will always say, hey, I don't follow you for ads and I'm like, okay, what do you follow for? And they go for news. I'm like, lucky for you, it didn't go away. We still do that all the time, so you're good, you can keep following and, again, you don't have to engage with the ads. Sometimes people just go really hard on these ads. They'll comment I'm not going to go just because of this ad and I'm like one now, you're hurting my business. You're hurting this business, like, what's the point of this? Why do you want, you know, do you want to do that? So keep that in mind. Once you do start to monetize, there does come a lot of negativity with it, but hopefully it's you know you can push past that. Be kind and honest in your responses and we try to do that when we respond. We try not to respond much at all anymore, but that's kind of what's going on with advertisement and content.
Speaker 1:And I think this is a good opportunity for people to benefit from your expertise as a social media subject matter expert. You mentioned a few times how you get people that are giving you negative reactions to your content. What are some of the best practices, including how to deal with negative feedback and engaging with people on social media?
Speaker 2:So it's tough. With our regular content there's not as much negativity, but there's still. Every now and then there will be like an uproar of negativity and our team always has like a thing that are like, okay, this one, there's nothing bad anyone can say about this piece of content and we're like, oh no, there is watch and someone's going to make that comment about whatever it is they want to make. And a lot of times people are just negative in nature and it is what it is. On our end, what we try to do is we try to cover as much as possible. And I tell everyone we may not ever get to something that's very important to you and we may not cover something that's very important to you for a variety of reasons. Usually it's because we can't, for whatever reason. We can't, we don't have enough information on it, so we're not just going to post something you know someone sent. A lot of times people will be like, hey, there's this car on fire on 270. Here's the picture. What they don't realize is that we now have to call Montgomery County Fire and Rescue. We have to get hey, we were told there's a car on fire here. We can't just post a picture and say here it is, as many likes and shares as it would get. We need to have information that goes with it. A lot of times people get upset with that too. They're like I sent you this picture and you didn't post it. We have no additional information. I'm really sorry. So there's that side of it. But you know, with everything we do, initially we try to respond to every comment. Now we're at a point where we're getting about a thousand notifications a minute and that's because every like, every comment, every whatever it is that comes in. On the business side of it, we have something called a business suite that we use. It's created by Meta and it has Facebook and Instagram and it kind of puts everything in one, so all of our notifications come in at once.
Speaker 2:So we don't see like 99% of comments that are made. And as much as we'd love to like if I could afford to pay someone to sit in front of it for 24 hours and make a decision nope, this comment gets deleted. This comment gets to stay. We just can't do that. But we're not able to do that. I'm unable to pay someone to do that and a lot of times people will get very upset. This person made this comment and it's still there. But what they don't realize is that comment was made on Instagram that's owned by a billionaire that has the funds to remove that comment. If they wanted to and have someone moderate the whole time, they're able to do that. We're not. I'm a very small business. I can't sit in front of my computer or phone all day. I can't pay someone to do that all day, so we don't monitor comments anymore and a lot of times that does lead to a lot of negativity and responses that are very negative and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:But I always tell our social media manager I say be very kind and very honest in any response you ever make. So if they're responding to someone's message which we were getting like a hundred messages an hour or two so we can't always do that and the messages are crazy too People will be like hey, my power's out, why? One, I have no idea where you live. We have no, you know. So they'll ask the most interesting questions. We can't respond to all of them, but you know I say let interesting questions. We can't respond to all of them, but you know I say let people know. You know, kindly and honestly. And a lot of times if we don't respond to someone, one it's likely because we don't have time to do it, but two, it's because you can tell there's no response that will satisfy that question, right? So a lot of times you're not looking for a response, you're not looking for me to tell you. Here's why You're just angry, for whatever it is and it could be very important to you and I can't tell you what to be upset or happy about. So when you send your message it's like okay, thank you, we take it in. My social media manager sends me a report at the end of every week, every piece of criticism, every piece of advice, every piece of feedback, and we look through it and we're like okay, sounds good. I appreciate that. I don't like having the name tied to it, because sometimes, you know, I'm a human being too. I can get defensive as well. If this one specific person says something that's that I consider rude or not nice or whatever, then I start to like well, I remember when that person said this, so I don't want to do that, I just want to see what the content is. I'm like all right, thank you, and we try to move forward with that. But I always say be very kind, be very honest and and be upfront. You know I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if if I was, you know, trying to do things for a certain reason and I and I always tell my staff like there's never any conspiracy behind it People will say hey, you always post about Kennedy high school.
Speaker 2:It's clear you hate Blake, I don't hate Blake. I'm not at home thinking like ah, we're not posting about Blake. Yeah, like it doesn't work that way. The way we post content is someone says hey, this happened. Uh, you know, our team won this championship. Here's a picture. You have permission to share it. It's a cool or they'll be like, hey, why didn't you post about this school winning this? And the honest truth is we had no idea they won that. So a lot of times you just got to let us know and if we get permission to post and a little more information, we'll post it.
Speaker 1:There's no, there's never any secret behind why we do it there, you go All right and so. So you've seen the journey that Mr Mocha 301, alex Saronis has taken from being and you heard in the beginning, I, I, I, and then you heard things like we, my staff, I have to pay my people. So he's grown from helping to let people know about the very important thing snow dayswork, but still love snow days right To being one of the most trusted news organizations catering to Montgomery County, maryland and I don't know what others may think of or may be aware of in terms of the news vacuum, where sometimes localities don't get enough news coverage about things that are important to people in that area. So not only is he now, of course, good at what he does, but he's also providing a valued service and resource to the residents of the county. What do you want people to know? What do you want the next Alex Saronis to know in terms of just advice to get started in the first few steps?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So whatever it is you end up pursuing, especially when it comes to content creation, I had a meeting in 2018 with a famous social media influencer and his team and he said post everything. What do you mean? He was like post everything. I was like why do you say that? He was like well, what makes you post something? Now?
Speaker 2:And I remember back in 2018, we would only post things that we thought would get a lot of likes. And he was like that doesn't matter. Do you get paid by likes? And we're like no, he was like.
Speaker 2:So then why not post everything? I was like because what, if not a lot of people care? And he goes take a look at the shares, take a look at everything you're doing. He was like you cover one little area, but there's different parts of that area. So if I post about, let's say, poolsville Springfest coming up on May 4th, 99% of the people who see it aren't going to care, but the 1% that does care is going to share that content. And now people from that specific area, or people who do care about that specific event, are going to be like oh, we have to follow, because they cover our area just as much as they cover other areas and so on and so forth. So he said post everything, and there's going to be plenty of people who care about everything you post, as long as it has to do with what we normally do. So we started doing that and our following just grew. Our like count decreased, but our following grew. Then more people started coming to our website and I was like okay, so even though so many people don't care about this one specific item, we're posting 60 times a day across all our platforms. You're going to care about something we post and unless you know, the one thing we post is so terrible that it makes you unfollow. It's all good, you're still interested in what we have. So if you do ever decide to start something, I would say throw everything out there, see what works best for you and then kind of, you know, maybe focus on what works best for you, keep up with that and then see how you grow. You know I'm growing more on TikTok than Instagram. All right, let me focus on this, or how can I repackage this for Instagram so that it works?
Speaker 2:We noticed early on that when we were posting our TikTok videos directly onto Instagram, instagram was kind of suppressing them because they had the little TikTok logo in it. So we had to repurpose it and post it right on Instagram so that Instagram can let it be seen. And then our real count views went up by like five times what it was. So you got to it's trial and error post everything you can. You know, do a little of everything. I know I knew nothing about TikTok. I now do a little bit. But you know when we started that we're up to like 17,000 followers nothing big on TikTok, but we have a following nonetheless. And TikTok may not exist in a couple months, but if it does and if they figure it out, it's for the younger generation. But those who are 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 years old today are going to be the adults of tomorrow. And if they're using TikTok to get their news, and we need to be on TikTok or you know, we're going to be the next MySpace, which half the people in here don't even remember.
Speaker 1:I'm not old enough to remember MySpace. Okay, that's a lie Interesting. You note that. So, in case you guys weren't aware, there's legislation that might require TikTok to change ownership to meet the requirements of Congress and also, conversely, there's also legislation out there talking about media platforms, am radio. There's also legislation out there to require car makers to continue to make AM radio available to cars. So I'm not sure if you mentioned remember I mentioned earlier about that station with 500 listeners. That station may be valuable to someone in their car somewhere, right? So now, what's valuable to me is always answering questions. I love to ask the question what's happening, moco? So now you get to ask the question what's happening, moco, to Mr MoCo 301. That means you guys, and I am not shy. I met some people earlier and I will point at them, and some of them have very pretty orange hair. I will pick them up and ask them to ask a question here, live, right now. All right, any questions? There are no bad questions.
Speaker 4:Yes, so I'm not from Montgomery County, I'm actually from California. I have no idea about anything in Montgomery County. So since you have so much experience with your time in Montgomery County and you're always good at recommending, what is your top recommendation for a restaurant?
Speaker 2:Yes, in moko that's all right, that's a good question. Can I ask you something really quick? Where in moko, because there's you got to give me like a little area at least oh, I was like I'll travel anywhere but um, let's say, near this area okay, so I would say you could walk to kava meze, and it's uh, it's about 1500 feet.
Speaker 2:It's a sit-down restaurant, so it's probably not a place you're going to go for like a quick lunch. This is more of like a dinner type of thing. You can still go for lunch. I think, though and it's a it's a Greek restaurant. I'm Greek, so I'm a little biased when it comes to that, but it's a modern, modern twist on Greek food, so you're not going to go in there and see traditional Greek food. You'll see like a traditional Greek food with a twist, but I like it. And their story is actually unbelievable. They all started, they grew up here in Montgomery County Three guys they worked hard started this one restaurant here. They all got loans they had no money at the time and then, five years later, they started their fast, casual version of Cava, which is like a Chipotle competitor, and now it's on the stock exchange and they're all multimillionaires, and it's amazing. So cool, so cool story, but also great food at their at their sit down restaurant.
Speaker 1:And we didn't get to that because of a time. Another brand that has grown through your efforts, and that is Taste MoCo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, taste MoCo. So, taste MoCo. We highlight food, and so we do it differently than than most other people. I don't go to places and get food for free and say, oh, we went into a Convo Messe today where we tried the gyro and it was so delicious. That's not what we do. Everyone does that. That's cool. If you do it, that's amazing. So all I do is I order my food, I'll take a picture or video of it, I put a little music behind it and I show it to you.
Speaker 2:And now people are like was it good? Now I can say yes, but does that mean you're going to think it's good? No, right, so so we show you the dish and that's kind of what we did. We it's, it's so like bare bones, we. We just say here's the blah, blah, blah from this restaurant, here it is. You look at it. If you think it's good, go try it. Will you like it? I have no idea. 50-50, right, you might, you might not, and that's kind of all we do.
Speaker 2:And people will comment on that and people will write this is disgusting. And I always wonder, like, what's the point of doing that? Like, don't eat it or scroll past it if you think it's disgusting, or people will say this is great, or people will say this was a little too expensive. We don't. We don't write the price either, and that's because sometimes, um, you know, the price can scare people off and there could be other items that are a lot less expensive that you can still go enjoy the restaurant, and we don't want to scare people from going to try a restaurant because of the price of one item. But we have everything on there. So you might see a frozen iced tea from Kenny's for 299. I don't know if anyone's ever had the frozen iced tea from Kenny's, but it's amazing. And there's Kenny's everywhere Gaithersburg, rockville, wheaton, kenny's Sub Shop and they serve a little of everything. So good Frozen iced tea. But we have that $2.99. And then I have this smoked steak from the Grove that costs $90. Now, I don't eat that every day.
Speaker 2:And it was good, but I don't know when I'm ever going to be able to go do that again. So we have a little of everything. It's not always like the full experience. Sometimes it could be like not the fries at McDonald's, but it could be something as little as that, like we'll do. Here's the quesadilla at Quapo's and it's a $12.99 item. Here it is. It's not necessarily the best thing and we try to do a variety from restaurants all across the county, um, you know, from fancy to not, and that's taste moco. On instagram and facebook, and you know we've worked hard on that for for a few years now we have like over a thousand posts from over like 800 different restaurants in the county. Some are not around anymore, but yeah, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1:Do we have other questions, other questions? Okay, there, we are all right, there are no, there are no bad questions.
Speaker 6:Yes, so, um, we actually have two questions it's me and then him. But, um, for me I was gonna ask was there a time when you experienced a difficulty in your business where you felt like, okay, I don't know if I should continue on? And then how did you overcome that?
Speaker 2:yeah, initially, when we started with the advertisements, which was, you know, the only way to monetize it, people, uh, and to me it felt like everyone turned on us. But in reality it was like three or four comments but people would be like, oh, ads, uh, time to unfollow, or something like that. And I was like, oh no, oh no. But when it comes to a business, what do you want? A follower or a business working with you? It's okay if you lose two, three followers, as long as you're still doing what you're there to do. So initially, when that was happening, I was very scared, I would panic sometimes and to this day, I don't like when people write negative things about advertising. Know, advertising in general, but there was that. And at the beginning of of any business on social media, whether it's a podcast or or you know, an account on uh on a social media network you're gonna see some negativity when you, when you start to monetize.
Speaker 1:But it is what it is all right, all right, great question, great question, good answer yes, sir so, when dealing with the whole internet, how do you preserve your mental health?
Speaker 2:that's, that's pretty good. I, I, I don't. I don't look at comments anymore, and you know when, when I do, when I get sucked into looking at comments sometimes you know that it does one I'll be pacing around. My wife will look at me and be like, oh, was it a comment? And I'm like, yeah, and, and you know, I, I dislike that.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times what people again don't realize is like with negativity, sometimes if I delete this, it's kind of like a weed, two more will grow in its place. Or someone will now comment on another post and be like, why'd you delete my comment on this one? And they don't understand that removing this negative comment is going to lead to three different accounts. All understand that. You know removing this negative comment is going to lead to three different accounts, all their friends commenting on this and be like unfollow the MoCo show. They delete comments and stuff like that and it's it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:So for me I step away. I hired a social media manager and her job is to and she still can't look at all the comments, but her job is to field any messages that come in and any serious inquiries. So I stopped looking at the comments and that was for my own mental health. I used to stress about it. It would keep me up at night. I was, you know. I was about to go to sleep and I'd look at a comment. I'd be like, oh no, now I'm up till 2am because I have to deal with this. This person's saying this. It's completely untrue and people don't care, they're just liking this comment. I'm like, oh no, now I have to handle this. So I stopped and that's how I deal with it. Personally, I know it's not, it's not the best way, but you know it's. It's the way we were able to to handle it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's valuable information. More questions? Yes, all right, we definitely going to get to you, because you're my, you're my new best friend.
Speaker 7:Okay, so just a question based off of curiosity. A few of us from the classes here we've been knowing who you were since middle school and now we're in college, so it's been a long time. But I was just curious as to do you ever look at the demographics of the people that are watching or looking at your social media? What's the biggest age group that you have?
Speaker 2:So our biggest age group is 25 to 44. And it's broken down, I think, like 25 to 34, then 35 to 44. But that's our biggest demographic. We still have a good amount from just about every demographic. Every platform is a little different too. I haven't looked at TikTok demographics, but I would assume they're a lot younger. You know Instagram. We have some younger followers as well.
Speaker 2:However, what I try to do is make sure that everything we post, even if it's a very serious topic, is written in a way that I would be comfortable with a 13-year-old reading or seeing. Now, sometimes you will see an accident scene or a crash scene that might be a little graphic, but other than that, we don't really have anything that I would be afraid of a 13-year-old seeing or reading. We're not posting fights at a high school. We're not doing these things. So I'm comfortable with any age group following. And again, on the content side, on the flip side, you will see accounts that do post these things. So I'm comfortable with any age group following. And again, on the content side, on the flip side, you will see accounts that do post these things and they'll grow in followers, but they probably won't ever make money because a business isn't going to want to advertise with someone who's posting high school fights.
Speaker 2:It's a little different, but we have a wide range. 25 to 44 is our number one demographic Well, 25 to 34, then number two is 35 to 44. Then number three I would say is 18 to 24 and a few that are under 18. All right, all right.
Speaker 1:And the young lady in orange. I think we have time for another question. Okay, let's have a question.
Speaker 3:So I know you talked about everything that goes into like your podcast and your brand, and I can imagine it can be very stressful and time consuming. So I was wondering what kind of things do you do to like de-stress, Like, do you go to like? Is there any local places that you go to Like what do you do in your free time to just relax?
Speaker 2:So the first thing I have to do in order to relax is, like this morning, our social media manager is in college and she said she's got something going on this morning. So what I did early on this morning was I scheduled everything for the day. Normally she would be doing that and because I did that, it kind of opened me up. So I've just feel relaxed already. So now I can do anything I want. When I leave here I'm like I'm good for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2:You know I'm going to choose to go home and find some content to write about, but I and for me it's so relaxing to be able to write about something you want to write about, rather than something that occurred. You know something like oh no, got to cover this now. And it's tough. And even with that again, like you know, the content itself so many things come with it, like why didn't you cover this? Or why aren't you doing this? And honestly, the answer is we can't cover everything or we can't cover it the way you want us to cover it. But I would say having everything done and being able to relax is more relaxing than doing something specific to relax and being able to relax is more relaxing than doing something specific to relax.
Speaker 1:And now it's time for a shameless plug.
Speaker 1:Make sure you subscribe to the what's Happening MoCo podcast and listen to as many episodes as possible.
Speaker 1:Other thing I want to say that sincerely that Montgomery County government is interested in seeing you successful, and there are a lot of things in place to ensure your success. Not only do we help to support the colleges and educational institutions in the area, but particularly in the realm of content creation. There are resources available to you and we're going to work with Dr Clemons to ensure that it's more easily available and that you're more easily aware of what's available to you, including some type of technical training, access to equipment, things of that nature, because we not only want to see you posting on YouTube and Twitter and TikTok, but we also have space on our cable channels. We also have space in our studios for you to produce as well. So I want to make sure that you guys reach out, ask the question how can I get my content created without going to Amazon and asking my mom for birthday and Christmas gifts to change our living room into a studio? There's ways for you to get your content out there without lifting heavy or going into your own pockets.
Speaker 2:And let me chime in too I use every video you see, and some people kind of give us some grief for it too, but every video you see will be taken with this phone, right here. You know, whether it's food, food videos, food photos, as long as it's, you know, the stuff that I've created, it's all taken with my phone. I don't have an expensive camera that I use and it's all put together. My reels. I put together a reel for a food truck that opened in Gaithersburg a couple days ago and it's up to like 180 000 views and I did it all with and that's on my personal account, mr mocha 301, if you all want to follow, but I put it all together with my phone on instagram using like the. The real tab in the instagram app didn't use anything special, so I was able to do that and it's uh, you know it works. So you don't need fancy equipment. You can.
Speaker 1:you can make it all happen and then for those of us that didn't recognize that, he has an iPhone, is that a 15 Pro?
Speaker 2:15, yeah.
Speaker 1:Even though it's not necessarily expensive for a professional camera, I write it off yeah, so it's still $1,300. So before you ask your mom for the iPhone 15 Pro with the three lenses and the portrait mode and all that, make sure you're aware of the prices of things. And to his point, though, he's able to conduct business because he was able to use it to post handle business.
Speaker 2:I write articles on it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there you go. So you don't need as much as you may think. You may have everything you need to start content creating right in your pocket. As a matter of fact, we know that most of you have just what you need in your pocket right now, with the available Wi-Fi, to start content creating. You just need that boldness, that audacity to know that your voice matters, people want to hear your voice and that there's a market out there for you. Voice matters, people want to hear your voice and that there's a market out there for you. And what's the greatest thing, to your advantage.
Speaker 1:That may be harder for Alex. You may be targeting a global audience. You may be looking at people that are interested in certain types of fashion. There may only be 100 people in Montgomery County, but there may be 20,000 people across the world. There may be a type of humor that you like to subscribe to that there's 1,500 people in Montgomery County, but there's millions of people across the world that like it, or you may be into soccer, you may be into other things. You have a global marketplace now. You can sell things globally. There's supply chains like Amazon that make it easy to deliver items to people all over the world and all over the country. So I'm going to stop there with my diatribe. Any other questions? Any other questions? Yeah, one Excellent.
Speaker 5:So one of my questions was, like you mentioned earlier, about how you used to teach. So do you think that not necessarily go back into the classroom and teach, but like, do like classroom visits or like teach like an online course on like public relations or journalism?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I've done. I've done a few career days in the last month at various high schools and middle schools. I do that all the time and, and you know, tell, tell the kids like I always pull out my phone and I say this right here that so many of you have and the ones that don't had a Chromebook in front of them. I say that is enough for you to get started on your own business. I don't have much time, but I'll share a quick story. I have a gentleman that I used to teach and he created.
Speaker 2:You mentioned soccer. His interest was soccer and he said everyone talks about soccer in Europe and Messi and Ronaldo, but no one's talking about MLS, which is Major League Soccer, the American Soccer League, and he created a Twitter and Instagram account about MLS, major League Soccer, and he now makes a good couple thousand a month extra off of that on the side and it's he figured that out and I tell students that too, when I go into classrooms, that he found a little need and he kind of went with it, and so when you use these devices responsibly, they can do a lot for you. So I do have, you know, speaking engagements where I go and I talk to groups. I was at a couple real estate agencies where I talked to them about how to pick up their social media. So I do it, you know, in a professional setting, but I also go into high schools and middle schools and talk to students about how to do it as well.
Speaker 1:And I want to take this moment to make sure that we give Alex Mr MoCo 301, a big round of applause here in the future and virtually, because he's giving of his time and talent for free. He is a business owner and still, even though they have scale, still a small business owner. So time is valuable. And I have one last question for you, because now that you are a brand and you have taste moco, how careful do you have to be when you get a question about where do you like to eat?
Speaker 2:so you know what, as long as I'm honest, I can be as reckless as I want. That's how I look at it. I'm never going to tell you a place is terrible or bad or not a good, good, uh, place to eat, and that's because my opinion is probably not going to be your opinion, so. So I kind of stay away from the negative stuff. Just because someone forgot to bring me my ketchup doesn't mean you shouldn't go eat there. You know like, and people kind of say that place. Man, when I went there it took seven minutes for me to get my drink and I'm like, oh man, like, thank you for telling us.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:It's like that. That was crazy, but like that, as long as you're honest, you can be as reckless as you want that doesn't mean be mean Right and of course, and what I'm thinking, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1:Dr Clemons and her classes in the universities at Shady Grove was a wonderful resource here, so a huge round of applause for them. I'm going to insert that later. Thank you so much. It's been an honor being here Now. I think we have what like two minutes 120 seconds. Someone may have a question and they think maybe that question shouldn't be asked. Maybe it should be. Now is the time to ask this question and maybe you want to. There's one more. Okay, there you are.
Speaker 3:You said you post everything. So I want to know, like how do you get consistent content? Do you make a grid to like schedule your post, or how do you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when I say I post everything, it's we publish everything like on our website and we'll share it somewhere. But we do have we schedule everything for oftentimes two days in advance. And then, because we do news news happens. You know, sometimes you have to figure things out. All right, this event's happening in three weeks, so we can push it a couple of days later. It's okay.
Speaker 2:And sometimes you know we make mistakes too. Sometimes we'll say we'll push this and we forget to reschedule and it never goes up and someone's like hey, how come you didn't write about that? And I'm like wait a minute, we did, but we just never published it. So I always tell people check out, you know, check the website. The website is going to have just about everything, but we do have to have a schedule. It's not always easy to keep up with that schedule.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you know things happen and we post about them a couple hours later or a couple days later, based on what happened. And again, there's no conspiracy around that, it's just. It's just when we were able to get to it. We are very small. A lot of times people will say, hey, fox wrote about this or posted this. Why didn't you? And I'm like, because Fox has 5,000 people working for them, and that's why. So, if ever there's a mistake we make, please bear with us, but we try our best, and we try our best to schedule everything so that we do come off as a very professional organization, which I think we are. We're just a very small business right now and, you know, maybe one day we'll grow.
Speaker 1:All right, Alex. Thank you so much for being here, Thanks to all of you for listening and thank you out there for listening to the podcast, for watching this on Facebook or maybe even Zoom today, Wherever you are, remember to ask the question what's happening, MoCo, because you deserve the answers. Thank you all. Thanks for listening and please subscribe.