053: Starting a TTRPG production company with Russell E Welch III of D20Tales

Courtney: 2:42

I am so happy to now introduce you all at to Russell E Welch the III, the DM and CEO for D20 Tales. Hello, Russell. How are you today?

Russell: 2:54

Greetings and salutations one and all. And thank you, Courtney, for having me on. It’s a pleasure and a blast. And I am as always having more fun than I’m supposed to.

Courtney: 3:06

I mean, that’s just a great way to live life, so I see nothing wrong with that.

Russell: 3:10

I mean, I don’t face the negative consequences of it, so yeah, I’m having a good time.

Courtney: 3:15

Sounds great on this lovely Thursday evening that we are recording and, you know, it’s actually nice. You are in the same time zone as me and I don’t get that very often.

Russell: 3:26

Actually, I pulled a sneaky one on you in-between the time that I booked this. And now I moved to Michigan. So. bing bang, boom. I flew the coop and fled LA and moved to Michigan.

Courtney: 3:39

Okay. I have some questions.

Russell: 3:41

Fair enough.

Courtney: 3:42

What took you to Michigan?

Russell: 3:44

For free real estate or not really, but cheaper real estate. It’s just cheaper to run the business and record and operate out of Michigan. And eventually I plan to go back to LA because the weather is nice and I love it. And it’s great. But I have family here and I have roots here and connections and the real estate is, did I mention the real estate it’s much cheaper and it’s much cheaper to, you know, run the business out of here. And the taxes are not California taxes, so Yeah. Basically, that’s the long and short of it.

Courtney: 4:15

that’s fair. My in-laws are in Michigan because my husband is from a very, very small town in Michigan. So I have spent some time there. Yeah, it is much cheaper. Yes.

Russell: 4:28

Yeah. The weather is also nice here for like three days out of the year.

Courtney: 4:31

yeah. I did go to the UP once in August, so it was in the fifties in August, and I grew up in Florida originally, so that was weird, but I at least had been living in Chicago for a couple of years at that point. So I was kind of used to the cold, but yeah. I commend you for that move.

Russell: 4:51

It was quite the Trek, packed everything in a car and drove across the countryside with a very fun and interesting secret companion that I will not disclose.

Courtney: 5:02

Well, that’s just mean.

Russell: 5:03

I know. Right. You’re welcome.

Courtney: 5:05

So how long ago did you arrive?

Russell: 5:07

I’ve been here for like not very long. I’ve just recently got here like a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago or something.

Courtney: 5:12

Okay.

Russell: 5:12

I don’t know. I’m not super good at math. That’s why the team has an accountant. Paige is our accountant. She’s very good at math so that I don’t have to be good at math because I’m bad at it.

Courtney: 5:21

I mean, that’s like the number one business tip though, is hire the people that can do the things that you either can’t do or just don’t want to.

Russell: 5:29

Right. And then tell them that they can, so that they know they’re appreciated.

Courtney: 5:32

Awesome. Well, Michigan aside, Russell. Tell us a little bit about who you are. We know that you live in Michigan now, but how you got into gaming.

Russell: 5:40

How did I get into gaming? I don’t know that there was ever a time in which I wasn’t into gaming, but I have, so I have for, for reference I’m one of 10 and I have eight brothers. So one of nine boys, and so games were always a part of our childhood. Though those began with just running outside and hitting each other with sticks when mom wasn’t looking. Things like D&D and other tabletop games and all sorts of board games came as a result of that. Not so much video games, we did play some video games, but I always enjoyed the much more active, personally involved element of playing with something physical. And I also enjoyed the much more communal aspect of playing tabletop games and the type with other people. I do enjoy video games and I can play video games, but I just have a lot more fun having fun with other people who I like. That’s the big caveat. If I don’t know if I don’t like those people, then I’m having less fun, but I feel like that’s a pretty universally shared experience for most people. So as far as that, it just spiraled into obviously D&D where I found a triumvirate, totally gray, all of, all, many of the things that I love, which is storytelling and writing and performing, and also being in general, just a whack job, crazy Kakadu who does strange off the wall things and can create things and do create strange character voices. And nobody thinks you’re crazy, or they just accept that you’re crazy and that’s okay. Or even worse, or maybe better, depending on your opinion, they embrace that. You’re crazy and think that that makes you cool. And so that’s done wonders for my ego since early adolescent.

Courtney: 7:29

Did you ever take any theater class?

Russell: 7:31

Yes. I took theater classes and I was involved in a lot of like the Shakespeare in the park type stuff. That was great. Played Hamlet and Macbeth and, and other parts. I actually won– a interesting side story for that in high school. At one point I won a lead role in a play, even though I, this seniors are always supposed to get the lead role because I went outside and I climbed up the fountain and I gave Hamlet’s soliloquy. And then I got noticed when they all came out of practice. And then I was like, that’s how it’s done, bitches.

Courtney: 8:08

Oh, my God.

Russell: 8:09

Just climb the fountain, give the soliloquy. And the thing about it that’s like that, that like sounds like super cool and bad-ass, but like the thing about it, that’s less cool. And bad-ass is that like because you’re waiting for like the director to come outside of the big double doors of the school building, and you’re standing out here and so like 12 different times somebody opens the door to the school and I launch into the middle of the soliloquy and it’s somebody else. And I’m just like committed. So I like finished the whole paragraph while they just like stare at me, walking sideways along, and then they walk out and then I stop and then wait again. And somebody pops out and it’s the wrong person. I’m like, no, I’m still committed. I’m going to finish this part of the soliloquy. And it took me like 12 attempts until he finally came out that I was like, I’m doing this.

Courtney: 8:56

I wish I could see that. Especially that year did it like 12 times. That is amazing.

Russell: 9:01

Well, a core part of my personal philosophy is that the people who win in life. And I mean, win in the sense of achieve their dreams based on their own personal priorities, because don’t let anybody else ever tell you what your personal priorities should be. But I firmly believes that the people who win the most in life who achieve their personal priorities are not the people who don’t fail, but the people who are the best at failing. And by that, I mean, they are the quickest and the fastest to get back up and learn a lesson from it.

Courtney: 9:35

It reminds me of something that I’ve learned in previous roles that were a little more sales related. I was also, I have a little bit of a background in theater. And so just in audtions, is always aim for 10 Nos a week, or aim for, you know, X number of rejections, because that means that you’re going for it. And eventually you’re going to get a yes, you’re going to get the part.

Russell: 9:56

Speaking of auditions and doing 10 a week and whatever. How do you think that doing a bunch of auditions like that affected your ego? And I don’t mean ego in like the sense of like vanity and personal pride, but just your relationship with your self image?

Courtney: 10:13

Yeah. It’s interesting because I did eventually get to a point where I realized that I liked stage management. I kind of pivoted to that, but I’ve noticed over the years that there was a little bit of a defense that you had to build up on. You walk into the audition, you walk into the job interview, whatever it is acting as though you have already received it, that you are already the expert and it’s going to be great. And you walk out believing that you didn’t get it because it was just easier to believe that you were going to get rejected because then it wasn’t a surprise and you weren’t disappointed versus if you did get it, then that’s a happy surprise. So it’s a good defense mechanism to a point, but then it also can definitely become a little unhealthy. And so that’s something that has had to be a delicate balance. I’d say, is this kind of just weird mesh of having the confidence to be like, yeah, I’m totally awesome. I got this. And then also, but I don’t as a, I don’t know. I think it kind of makes all of us in theater, a little strange.

Russell: 11:16

It definitely takes certain aspects of human acceptance and rejection and validation and accelerates them. It’s like, it’s like puts them on steroids, so to speak, like it just juices them up and makes them far more intense and concentrated a small period of time, which I think the entertainment industry in general does, which is probably a different, totally different conversation for another day, or maybe it’s a conversation today. But anyway, since I opened up Pandora’s box, I’ll just make a light reference of what I mean by that. But the whole like, acceptance or rejecting or like hating or the way people respond in mass, when you are in a space like this, when there is an audience, something that we as humans didn’t necessarily develop to be able to deal with because we’d developed under very different circumstances, but having a huge audience that all can collectively give someone feedback at the same time, whether that’s adoration or the opposite accelerates and amplifies the amount of emotions that someone goes to. And I think that it takes a very special type of person to be resilient to the immense amount of emotional turmoil and concentration of emotions that come with it. And then I think there are other, certain crazy individuals who live and thrive on it and that’s like their fuel and they kind of need to be almost on like the G-Force of emotional impact. I don’t even know if that’s necessarily the correct phrasing, but I’m committed to it and it works for me. But yeah, I think a lot of people, honestly, just, they just live for it. Oh, I’m actually one of those people. I live for it. Without it though, I’d be fine. Like it could all go away and my life could be very quiet and I could just sit in a quiet corner and read books and write books until I grew old and shriveled and grumpy. Well, maybe I’m grumpy already. But the rest of those things and be perfectly okay, but I love it. I love the amount of people you see. I love the amount of people you interact with. I love the opportunity that it gives to see the best and worst of people a lot, all the time constantly, and to see what people are capable of, to see the most talented and gifted and charismatic and kind and charming. And in many instances, not those things. People are all rolled into one in a concentrated area and the test that it puts on your character and your drive and in your enthusiasm and your mind, and your creativity is boundless and is a well that will reach as deep as you will let it.

Courtney: 14:07

No, it’s so true. It has been a very long time since I was on a stage other than, you know, my kitchen table, DM-ing Curse of Strahd, but even now, like I remember, and I have never felt more alive than any time that I was on stage. And I, I mean, I do, I miss it. Like it’s, that chapter of my life is over. Now, I get my fix by DMing a seven hour Curse of Strahd dinner where I play seven NPCs at the same time and have a blast. So that’s how I get my fix. But.

Russell: 14:38

Isn’t that basically a one woman show,

Courtney: 14:40

Exactly. I guess there’s a couple other people at the table. Fine. They can have input, but yeah. Well, so let’s get back to D&D.

Russell: 14:50

Right back to D&D.

Courtney: 14:52

So, okay. You have a couple of shows? You have something that has previously been known as Spawn of Chaos, and is now known as D20 Tales. I want to dive into this, how did this start?

Russell: 15:07

Originally Paige and I, who’s One of our talent members and also wears many other hats in the production, including being our accountant and has Ben my constant partner in crime when it comes to crazy production, shenanigans and schemes and all sorts of other things in the past. She’s edited many of my novels that I’ve written. She’s just been a great friend and a pal, and we’ve known each other for over 10 years now, which makes me feel old. I’m not that old don’t rush me. I’ll get there. But her and I were working, producing a different podcast called The Struggle for Meaning, which was actually something that I started doing as a very near and dear to my heart, as a philosophy podcasts that brought people on and basically asked them, like, what are your struggles for meaning in life? How did you find meaning? Or if you didn’t find meaning, how are you coping and what are you doing? What is it like? And we just interviewed all kinds of people from all different backgrounds: religious, philosophical, personal with all manner of experiences. And the inspiration from that was actually because my own brother when he was 14 years old, committed suicide by hanging himself. And so some of the things that he left behind, including his suicide note gave me sort of the inspiration for this podcast, because. He obviously, and for many people who do make that choice feel incredibly alone, they feel like they don’t have the answers. They don’t know what direction to go in life. They don’t think anyone’s listening. They don’t think anyone’s can. And this isn’t universal, obviously. Everybody’s experience is unique, but for many of these people, their struggle for meaning is one that they can’t find. One that they lose. And so I wanted to provide an opportunity by showcasing the voices of many different people who have many, many different experiences in their struggle with meaning so that other people who’ve been through similar struggles could see there’s someone else like me out there. There’s someone else who hears, who experiences these things, who’s suffered what I’ve suffered, who’s hurt the way I’ve hurt and has walked the same path, and I’m not alone. And there is a path to what. And so we were producing that, that being said, the only the two of us got, it was incredibly difficult to sustain as a production with only two people considering we were relatively new. We learned a lot fast. There was a lot of like previous knowledge and experience that I had had in other forms of production. Didn’t directly translate to a podcast only version. And like I said, it did, I mean, everybody on the team that I currently have is there because they covered a lot of weaknesses that I don’t have. So her and I were evaluating really hardcore. If we could continue doing this and we’re like, no, we need to take a step back from this. I always plan to come back and reproduce that podcast because I think there is a place for it. And it’s in a very important part of the conversation, but we put a pin in it and we were struggling with, okay, what’s our next production? What’s something else we’re going to do? What’s the lessons we learned, the hard lessons we learned about what to do and what not to do and what we can take into something else. We were like, we have two options. We can either scale our production back considerably and do something far less ambitious, or we can scale up our production but create a team and build a team. And so we were tossing back and forth, all the different types of things we could do. And we were like, we could do a story podcast where we write it and act the characters, or we could do all kinds of other stuff. We could do an interview podcast that’s like less ambitious with like shorter episodes, like maybe about business or something. That’s like 10 minutes long instead of like two and a half hour long episodes. We were tossing all this stuff around until finally Paige was like, Russell. You like writing. You like acting. It’s like, why don’t you just do a D&D podcast? You’re like playing games too. Like you like playing D&D just take all these things you like and roll them into one and you also like running the company. And you like entrepreneurship and everything that comes with that and all the complications and the problem solving logistics, she was like, roll all that into one, put together a team and let’s make a D&D podcast. And I was just like, You are a genius, Paige, and I’m an idiot because I should have fucking thought of this way long ago. And I didn’t, for some reason, cause like we were literally, it’s just like playing D&D and we’re just like looking at it and Paige is like we should do a D&D podcast and I’m just like, oh yeah. But like immediately at that moment, I was just like, let me think about that. And then like I thought about it and then like a month later I was like, Paige, you’re a genius. And she’s like, I know, but you took forever to tell me that. And I was like, damn. Okay. Fair. So that’s how it began. And then we posted casting calls and we posted positioning for the thing. And we were just shocked and floored by the sheer outpouring of numbers of exceptionally talented individuals. Literally all over the globe in pretty much every single time zone you can fathom who just poured in wanting to be a part of this production. And then we had like a three-week hellscape, that was an absolute joy, but also super tough, like vetting all of these people and interviewing all of these people and building our team and then Bing bang, boom. It emerged. And from there, we were originally planning to do only one show, but the reason why we have two shows is because I found too many people who I loved too much who were too charming and talented, and I really desperately wanted to bring them on. And so at one point I was just Paige, I can’t choose. There’s so many nice people. I’d like them all. I want to keep all of them. And I can’t. And she’s like, well, you can’t, you only can keep this many. And I’m like, but get this. If we do two shows, we could take twice as many. And she’s like, that’s a crazy idea. And probably shouldn’t do that. And I was like, yeah, but you know, we’re going to do. And she’s like, yep, that’s what we’re going to do. And so that’s what we did.

Courtney: 20:53

Okay. I do want to follow up on…Okay. There’s so many things I could follow up on, but what I’m going to follow up on is you said that you spent three weeks going through all of the people that applied and interviewing them and vetting them. what were you looking for? How did you decide?

Russell: 21:10

Right. Well, some of the first things we did right off the bat, I believe the first question we asked and it was a bit of a shit test. But the first question we asked when someone jumped on the video call. We started with like 10 minute video calls and we were having them like all day from like break of Dawn till night for like the first week. It was crazy. Just like meeting all the people initially and then paring it down. The first question we asked was how do you feel about inclusion? Because we found, if we gave a question that was a little bit more like, played to one side of the fence or the other, then people would tell us what they think they want us to hear, because people really wanted to be part of a D&D podcast. They really wanted to be probably part of producing this show, or really, really wanted to be part of the talent enacting the show, like who doesn’t want to like live their aspirations of following the footsteps in place of things like Adventure Zone and Critical Role and D20 Tales. And so there’s a lot of incentive for people to tell us what we wanted to hear and to not what they truly felt. So we said, how do you feel about inclusion? Because, you know, that’s definitely a hot topic word that response and elicits strong opinions of which we got from pretty much everybody, there was a few people who were smart enough to play it a little more coy, but most people gave us really strong opinions off the bat, which was really helpful because that was the first question. That was a big, big, like yay or nay. It’s like playing Tinder and it’s like, yes, no, here we go. Okay, this specific interview is going to be a little shorter because it was extremely important that people had very strong, positive opinions about inclusion. And even if they weren’t super, well-informed, it wasn’t a prerequisite that they’re specifically well-informed with like modern terminology, but that they had a willingness to learn and an open mind and open heart about it. That was exceptionally important to us. I would say overall, the overwhelming positive forward momentum and direction of a lot of the internet community these days, it, we wanted to be a part of that. We didn’t want to be a hindrance to it, or just someone who sat on the fence and didn’t take an opinion, didn’t have a voice. We wanted to help. We didn’t want to like help by preaching it from the rooftops or anything like our pushing our opinion on anybody. But we wanted to in meaningful and subtle ways, be a contributing force towards that positivity and towards inclusion in general. And so, yeah, that was the first big vetting question. The next big thing that was extremely important in vetting people was, and here’s the thing like before we screened anybody for even what they were capable of as far as like, could they fill the roles of a job responsibility or were they a good D&D player, a good talent? Cause like part of what the really fun part of screening people for a D&D show is the part where you make everybody play D&D because this makes sense to me. But yeah, even before that, even before we screened anybody for what their talents are, we went through a very rigorous process to try to establish if we felt like they were a person of high, moral caliber who shared our vision and passion for being a person who is good and enjoyable and well, like just someone who you’d want to work with for years and years. And that was more important to us than anything else. And it was very important that we put that before that, because we didn’t want people’s experiences or backgrounds or expertise or skill with something in particular to hugely influence our interpretation of those things. We wanted to establish first how someone was. And so that was that stage of the process. Then the stage of the process after that was what their relevant skills are, getting them to play D&D seeing their chemistry off of each other and how good they are testing their other skill sets. And then we had multiple waves of auditions. I think it was like four waves that we went through. It might’ve been six, honestly, those weeks or two months or whatever it was, was really a blur kind of like all rolls together in my mind, What we wanted to establish is before anything, we wanted to be giving a platform to people who are wholesome and positive and have good moral character and just likable and who we want to get along with and work with for years.

Courtney: 25:40

I think that’s a really good and important step to weed out the people that would not make the kind of community that you want to be able to form. How much D&D were you playing? How many people made it past the first round that you started to do all of these, I guess the one shots with? Were you mixing and matching groups together, that work?

Russell: 26:02

Oh yeah. I would say. Just about every single tier, we were shaving off something around 50 to 60% of people. Sometimes a little bit more, but usually around in that ratio and by, I think like the third round or so, there was like 40 people and we were doing like, we did like 10 different, like one, I ran the same, one shot, like 10 or 15. I think it was 12, like 12 days somewhere in there. You could probably ask Paige. She’d probably now, like I said, she’s the math counting person. I ran out of fingers after 10, so, you know, I can’t count. So I ran the same one shot a lot of times, like it was like a four to six hour, one shot for like all these different groups of people. A lot of times, because we were pairing people up, not just to see their skillsets. But at this stage we were trying to establish their chemistry with each other, to see who would make potential good cast mates with each other. And so a lot of D&D. I would say, unfortunately, a lot of the people who audition and a lot of people who we screened through the process probably didn’t get to play very much D&D or didn’t get to play as much D&D as they deserved, there could have shown off all of their talents. That being said, poor Paige and I were a little too overwhelmed with the volume to truly give. And that’s one of the unfortunate side effects of it is that it definitely took a toll on me personally, to get to know so many people. Get to know their hopes, their dreams, their passions, and what they want in life and how much it means to them. And then have to stare at their name on the list and say, no.

Courtney: 27:44

Yeah, that is a lot. That is a lot of people. That is a lot of repetitions of the same, one-shot. That’s a lot to just handle and deal with. And it’s, it’s interesting, like I’ve heard of others having like a casting process where they try to reach out to different people, but like, this is honestly kind of a first for me to hear about how just overwhelming, that sounds and how exhausting that must’ve been.

Russell: 28:11

Yeah, we definitely set ourselves up for it because we posted the casting calls in groups from countries all over the world and time zones from all over the world, because we were trying to get a lot of, like, we were trying to get a lot of diversity. That being said, unfortunately, when it comes to like English speaking, D&D players who are active in the community, we were struggling to get a lot of different, like diverse minorities to audition. I think it was something like, well, over 90% of everybody who auditioned was just white males, which, you know, nothing against white males. I happen to be one of them. But it would have been nice to have more opportunities to, because we did try with like the postings to have a lot more diversity. And that’s something that I would like to revisit at some point in the future. I’m never going to, I am never going to place anyone on the show just to check a box because I wouldn’t want this for myself to be the person who sits there and asks, am I just here because I fulfill a quota in not because I deserve it and these other people deserve it? Which is a really hard thing to put on somebody who’s already like a, a minority where things are tough for like, they should know that they deserve it. And I really want to be able to give that to some people, but I don’t know. I think that at some point in the future, we’ll just have to do another casting call where we have a lot more reach that we can spread that opportunity out more and hopefully get better results. But as far as like, what I’ve always wanted to do is I’ve always wanted to essentially make people’s dreams come true. That’s always been something exceptionally important to me is to make people’s dreams come true. And so that was a huge part of this and a huge, exciting thing is being able to select people and then seeing their eyes light up and knowing that their life could change forever as a result of this. But also the, the thing about it, that’s really hard is all the people who you have to reject as a result, all the people who don’t make the cut. And also not that I like, like I said before, I needed to fill a quota, but it was frustrating because of like all of the effort that I went into initially. And I think this is probably why the space in general is hurting for inclusivity and why the question is because after like all the steps we took still, like the overwhelming majority of everyone we got and really the options we had were just a bunch of white males, which really made it stand out to me of like, yes, like this space, the space should be for everybody, but obviously something is happening here where people don’t feel welcome. And people should feel welcome and then putting all this effort and then putting together a cast and then looking at my cast and being like this cast reflects to some degree and it’s nothing against them and they’re wonderful people and I love them. But to some degree, this cast reflects the space as it is, and not as it should be. And I don’t know, I’m still sorting out and maybe these, aren’t the type of things that I should say publicly. But as a general rule, I always tend to say more than I should and not less than I should, but the, the type of things that I think about a lot. And I ask myself the question of, am I doing right? Am I doing this right? Should I be doing this differently? And I don’t know. I don’t know. And if somebody else knows better, let me know. I’m down hear it.

Courtney: 31:51

Yeah. So you went through the difficult process of choosing your cast. What happened then? How did you get ready for the very first episode?

Russell: 32:03

Oh, well, we got ready for the very first episode by- we worked out, we were working out like people’s tech, we didn’t want it to be a limiting factor if people didn’t have tech. So we didn’t choose people based on whether or not they had like the green screens or the backgrounds of the microphones we needed. So like we, we left it up to people. We had like sat them down and were like, look, if you want to own your equipment, here’s the parameters of equipment that we’re expecting. And that we’ll need, if you don’t want to own the equipment, here’s a form saying that, that we own the equipment. And we’ll buy you and send you whatever equipment you needed, then when you’re done. And if you leave the show, you just send it back and we’ll use it for the next person. We had a mixture of that. Some people were like, this is a small indie production with just about no budget and y’all are fucking crazy. So I’m going to buy my equipment to help out. And some people were like, I already have equipment. Yay. And some people were like, no, please I need the equipment. And so it was just, it was, it was all over the place, but we got people, it meant they needed. And it was nice to be able to offer people those options if they needed it, but you know, if they wanted it, they could have it on their own. And then from there we sat down and recorded our session zero, which will never air and never see the light of day because it was, let’s just say we had fun and we’ll leave it at that. Unsurprisingly, we were not ready to film an airable episode: production problems, the logistics of also the show, and there’s also a really steep learning curve to the way we film episodes because specifically, what I was trying to go for– and this is no shade against any shows out there. There’s a ton of fantastic, wonderful shows out there, like Critical Role that are like four hours long or sometimes even longer. And with like all of the like table talk and rules looking up and like falafeling around in them. And that’s great, but here’s the thing: I will never be able to do or put together a show that will do what Critical Role does as well as Critical Role nor would I even attempt to. So I was like, I’m not going to try to beat them at their own game because they will kick my fucking ass. So I was like, I will do the opposite. We’re going to edit our episodes. We’re going to cut out all the stuff. We’re going to keep the story moving. We’re going to ensure that every single episode has some form of a satisfying narrative arc or as close as we can get to it. This is D&D after all and shit happens and we get off track and that combat will move along quickly and we won’t get bogged down into it for episodes and episodes, and we’ll cut out the rules lawyering, and we’ll cut out a lot of the table talk and we’ll cut out a lot of the extra stuff and we’ll add music and sound effects and it will feel much more cinematic. Like the actual sitting down and playing of the game is a lot more like what you would traditionally think of as a normal play in game, but the end result and what we end up with is far more cinematic and streamlined. And obviously that’s not for everybody. And some people like all of those other things. That being said, those people are probably watching many of the dozens of shows out there that do that excellently, and I’m not trying to compete with all of them because they’re great.

Courtney: 35:08

Honestly, I am someone that tends to prefer the shorter, more edited shows. So when I realized that your episodes were under two hours. Yeah, I was very happy and I’m able to catch up a lot faster than a four hour show that I will

Russell: 35:23

We’re right now, we work really hard to try to keep the average episode length between an hour and 20 and an hour and a half. With our recent episodes that we’ve been releasing, we’ve been pushing harder to keep them between an hour and an hour and 15, but with future seasons, I think the Goldilocks zone that eventually like to be in is 15 minutes to an hour and 10 minutes is where I’d like to be for episodes.