672 Susan Bratton:

Is your business running you… or are you running your business? All too often entrepreneurs get so stuck in …all the incessant doing – you know the phrase, our work is never done, that only a massive pattern interrupt like getting sick tells us whether we’ve created a business of true value because it can survive without our daily intervention. My guest today – Susan Bratton – is a phenomenal and innovative entrepreneur building two successful companies. Then came the game stopping suffering of Long Covid – and now the freeing epiphany that she can double down on her unique talents and desires to focus on what’s next.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we’re joined by Susan Bratton, who’s been on the podcast a couple of times before. You know her as the

“Intimacy Expert to Millions” and a champion and advocate for all those who desire intimacy and passion in their lives. Susan is the co-founder and CEO of two corporations: Personal Life Media, Inc., a publisher of heart-connected lovemaking techniques and bedroom communication skills and The20, LLC., a manufacturer of organic and botanical supplements that enhance sexual vitality. Susan is also a best-selling author and publisher of 34 books and programs including Sexual Soulmates, Relationship Magic, Revive Her Drive, Ravish Him, Steamy Sex Ed™, The Passion Patch, Hormone Balancing, and Hot To Trot.

Early in the Pandemic Susan got Covid … and it turned into debilitating “long covid” and it turned her world upside down. She’s going to share her experiences, what she learned along the way, and much more. will be here in a minute – first…

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OK so let’s get to it because there is so much to discuss with lifelong entrepreneur Susan Bratton … she’s back on Wings a third time, and her painstaking recovery from an almost 2 year bout of long covid, has got her thinking of her next inovation. Yep, Susan is a pioneer in every way … honored as a “Silicon Valley Woman of Influence” by The Business Journal and a “Top 10 Internet Pioneer” by AdAge Magazine. She was a founding executive on several tech startups acquired by AOL and Microsoft, and along the way she co-founded the Association for Downloadable Media and the Internet Advertising Bureau – and one of her companies, Personal Life Media – started out as one of the earliest podcasting companies way way back in 2006 … before moving into the extraordinarily successful e-learning business it is today.

If you listened to our previous conversations you’ll know that Susan’s two profitable businesses in the intimacy and sexual vitality space have much to do with her personal experience watching her sex life wither while she and her husband pursued dynamic careers. When their relationship hit a crisis point, Susan and her husband Tim made a fierce commitment to do whatever it took to keep their family together and revive the sex, and it inspired them both to bring their marriage-saving experiences to the world as online programs.

A self-proclaimed “Orgasmanaut…” and sexual biohacker, Susan travels to the outer reaches of human orgasmic potential to bring back the map to the territory of pleasure and connection, and with compassionate straight talk in showing how love and intimacy actually work, why we all need sensual and sexual fulfilment in our lives, and how busy women like us actually get more done when we make time to explore and enjoy our sexuality and intimacy.

Today Susan shares her battle with long covid – including the realization that her businesses could survive without her – and the existential dilemma of that epiphany – how to transform her CEO role to take innovation to the next level. We also talk about the power of podcasts – as Susan was an early pioneer in the space, and increasingly relies on podcasting to be able to talk forthrightly about sex and intimacy – topics that often run afoul of social media algorithms and prevent her from advertising.

Be sure to join Susan and me after the episode on Podopolo where you can share your perspectives and ask Susan for her advice. Now let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Susan Bratton.

Melinda Wittstock:

Susan, welcome to Wings.

Susan Bratton:

Welcome back to Wings. I’m flying with you again, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so wonderful to have you back, and there’s so much to catch up on because I know this pandemic really, really got you down. You got COVID right at the beginning, and you’ve had long COVID. What’s that been like? And what has that meant for your business?

Susan Bratton:

Well, I’ll tell you, I went through a serious existential crisis because you and I are kindred spirits in that we’re both female entrepreneurs. I’ve really been an entrepreneur my whole life. Even when I was working in the corporate world, I was working at startups. I couldn’t work for two years, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to work again. The kind of COVID that I got was the kind that… I had brain swelling. They talk about meningeal encephalitis and chronic fatigue syndrome where because COVID is a vascular virus, it can travel up the brain stem and get into your brain. And your brain, you’ve got your white matter and your gray matter, and they’re held into your cranium with this kind of substrate flooring. It looks like laminate flooring where there’s these different layers that hold all that gelatinous stuff into your head.

When that swells, it puts pressure on your brain. It makes you really exhausted. You can’t think you lose your balance. You can’t stand up. You are basically just flat-out down. There were months I didn’t even get up out of bed except to hold the wall to find my way the bathroom. Tim, my husband of now 30 years, had to feed me every meal I could eat. It was a very, very long slow recovery back. I did a lot of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I did all kinds of things, but the hyperbaric oxygen driving the oxygen deep into your brain under pressure in a big tank, you go down like 100 feet below and then they pump in pure oxygen and it can get into your head. And the oxygen is what actually brings the repair to your tissue.

But I couldn’t do anything. I’m still not back to work officially. It’s been interesting because we have an organization. My husband and I have had our company together about 15 years. Last year was our 15th anniversary of Personal Life Media. And we have another company together also called The20. We are a publisher of passionate lovemaking techniques, and we teach, essentially, how to transform having sex into making love with online home study programs, videos, audios, sex and lovemaking techniques. And then we have a supplement company that is sexual vitality supplements. We have a blood flow supplement, and we have a daily vitamin mineral that has libido botanicals built right in it. Tim and our team, essentially, had to run the business because I couldn’t even get out of bed. And I thought to myself, “What if I never am able to work again? Who will I even be if I can’t work again?”

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so hard too, Susan, yeah, so when your work defines you and suddenly it’s taken away. I mean, I think that’s so true for a lot of female founders, that it’s a vocation, it’s so much about who we are, and then when you can’t do it, I can only imagine the fear and the existential crisis around that that you must have been going through as you were trying to get better.

Susan Bratton:

Yeah. I knew I was getting better when I even could worry about having an existential crisis. [crosstalk 00:04:29]

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. Okay. So for a while, yeah, you couldn’t even do that.

Susan Bratton:

… I was good.

Melinda Wittstock:

So yeah, right. But it forced you, to take a break from it. When you look back at it in terms of where you’re at right now, how has it transformed you?

Susan Bratton:

This is how I’ve been on-ramping myself back to work. The first thing is that Tim held everything together with our team. We didn’t make any forward progress, but we didn’t lose a lot of ground. So that in and of itself is amazing, that your CEO can essentially be out of commission for a couple of years and your company can go on without you. So that’s a good thing.

The second thing is that a lot of my employees got COVID over the last two years, and they’ve been ill in and out and in and out. Not only that, but my husband and I got COVID the first time, and then we got Delta in the second wave from our daughter-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness.

Susan Bratton:

… and her boyfriend. They had taken a test and they said, “Well, we think we just have a cold because the test is negative.” Well, it was just too early to have the positive results. You have to hit testing in the right window to really get the right answers. And so, we ended up getting Delta. So now we’re really being even more careful about not getting this new wave of Omicron. Because each successive hit of COVID is doing damage in your body in ways that we still don’t know the long term effects. But what happened was that our company persisted. We went on. Everybody figured out how to do things. We dropped back to not launching any new things. We kept the ship running. Everybody pitched in and did the things I used to do.

And so, number one, the silver lining was that I could leave my company and it could run without me. So now-

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, that’s a testament to you because there are so many people that don’t create companies that can exist without them.

Susan Bratton:

It’s a testament to all of us. And the second thing is now that everyone in my organization is doing the stuff that I used to do, when I come back to my full capacity, and I don’t say if I do say when, and I’m going to tell you what I’m doing to get there, when I come back in full capacity, it won’t be doing what I used to do. So now, I am still in that crossing the existential chasm of trying to figure out what my life will be. And I also am 60 now, I turned 60. What will my life be like going forward as a dyed in the wool entrepreneurial business woman? How do I want to deliver my highest and best value gifts in the world knowing that the companies I have now can run without me though they run better when I’m there? But what does when I’m there look like going forward?

And here’s what I did to start to come back. I said, “Okay.” I was so sick I couldn’t even listen to podcasts, for example, it was too much for me. I still can’t sit down and read a book. I don’t have the concentration and focus to be able to read. I’m still struggling to learn and to take in and retain new information. I still have a lot of brain damage, so I can’t really be trusted to run my own damn company at this point, which is quite interesting. What I have noticed that I could do, the earliest thing that started to come back for me was the ability to have conversation, to talk, to articulate my thinking. And being down for a couple of years gave me the distance from the day to day. When the day to day operational things that I was on, the treadmill that I was on was gone and I had a more expansive ability to think about things in the bigger picture, what I ended up getting very good at, better than ever, the gift in the silver lining of this long haul, was that I am thinking about human sexuality, passionate lovemaking, the masculine/feminine dynamic, our anatomy systems, how to transform having sex into making love in a new way that’s much more elevated and integrated.

And so, what I ended up doing was hiring a PR firm and working on going on podcasts, because the one thing I could do was sit here and talk. And I was talking and thinking at a higher level than I’d ever done before. It was like clearing out all the stuff that was occupying my brain so I could do the big thinking. I started doing podcasts, and I probably have done 100 of them in the last, I don’t know, year or so. And being able to talk to a lot of people and everybody had interesting questions that allowed me to take my own knowledge to a new level of being able to help people. So I started doing that, and then I started thinking about, “Okay, what kind of legacy do I want to leave behind?” Because when you almost die, you think about that shit. And then when you turn 60, you think about that shit.

Melinda Wittstock:

It forces you to really think of what’s the most important thing, and moreover, what’s your unique contribution, the thing that only you, Susan, can do, and freeing you to take your company to a higher level just as you’ve been describing with new thinking around it, all of that. And realizing, “God, the liberation of it can run without me,” must feel good in a way as well. And-

Susan Bratton:

It’s interesting because one of the new levels of thinking that I did was over the summer, last summer, I did this series. I have an email newsletter. Really the core of my business is my email newsletter, and I’ve got close to a half million people who religiously read that newsletter.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. That’s such a big number for a newsletter for an email list.

Susan Bratton:

It’s a good number. I’ve got a good base.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s great.

Susan Bratton:

I did a series. I started thinking about orgasm, and I started thinking about the difference between male and female orgasm and how they’re not very different at all, and that men are actually woefully underperforming in their orgasmic capacity compared to women and women are barely scratching the surface of our orgasmic capacity. I wrote this series called Come With Me: The 20 Types of Male and Female Orgasm. And remember that there are two different sexes of human beings. There’s the XX and XY chromosome, so there’s the male and the female body, but there’s a rainbow spectrum of gender expression. But our bodies are either a penis and prostate or a clitoris, a urethra, and a vulva for the female body.

But they have orgasms exactly the same way. The equipment is just a slightly different format, but it’s all the same parts. I wrote this series called Come With Me: The 20 Kinds of Male and Female Orgasm. And every week, for 15 weeks, I compressed it into these different types of orgasms that you could have. I was really surprised that it wasn’t more popular. When I write things, I usually get hundreds of responses to stuff. As a matter of fact, I often don’t ask people to respond to things because I can’t read them all. In this case, I was like, “Wow, it’s fricking crickets in here. What is the deal?” And then I realized that actually people get overwhelmed thinking about, “Oh, God, now I’ve got performance anxiety.” or “Now I’ve got another thing I’ve got to put on my list that I have to do.”

Melinda Wittstock:

They have FOMO of some kind, like, oh yeah.

Susan Bratton:

It’s like, “Bratton, I don’t even want to hear that from you. I’m be happy with what I have. Just leave me alone with that crap.” Yet, what I found that people really want is they want ideas for how to have fun sex dates, ideas for things to do together in the bedroom, what I like to call erotic play dates. So that’s what I’m working on right now is coming up with a whole panoply of different ideas for people that are fun things they can do when they make love together. And that has been so much more popular. It’s like it’s still all the orgasm. You’re still having all the orgasm. It’s almost like I hid the vegetables in the soup or something.

Melinda Wittstock:

But it’s good though because, well, I mean, this is a great lesson for anybody, being responsive to what their customers want.

Susan Bratton:

Yeah, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Or how they want it articulated to them and really hearing that. I mean, I think the work that you do, Susan, is so important. I know you’ve been on the podcast a couple of times and we’ve talked about the challenges of marketing it because it’s hard to advertise on social media. You get-

Susan Bratton:

Get traffic, yeah. Getting traffic, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, you get caught in all the algorithms that put you in with porn or something when in actual fact it’s really helping people. I mean, how is that outside of the business going now because that was always a big challenge? And how do you get through to people? You’ve created this massive, massive list and this great following, but how do you get around that to bring new people in?

Susan Bratton:

You got to patch things and piece things together in my business. I have great affiliate part partners. I do some Google advertising. I have some social media presence. I go on a lot of podcasts and-

Melinda Wittstock:

Podcasts are great.

Susan Bratton:

… people are like, “I want to be on her list.” And then they get on my email list. I appeal to someone I call the sexual seeker, someone for whom their sexuality is important to them and they want to have good sex their whole life long. They’re personal growth mindset oriented, where they realize that sex skills are learned just like anything else. I mean, there are some people who are natural born lovers, but there are very few and far between. Orgasms are a learned skill. Lovemaking is a learned skill. Sexual communication is just practice. You have to do it. It’s use it or lose it kind of thing. You can always get it back. Your sex life is something that lasts your whole life long. But most people are very happy with a very basic situation, or they don’t even want to have sex because it’s never been good for them. They never really learned how to do it well, or their partner doesn’t want to have sex. And so it’s just not really available to them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Or deep down there’s some subconscious thing like they don’t love themselves.

Susan Bratton:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think that’s so-

Susan Bratton:

Or there’s been trauma.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, trauma or just not wanting to be seen, not really wanting to be exposed in a way. I mean, there’s so many psychological things I can imagine that stand in the way. And then just work and how to balance a really great sex life with all the demands of entrepreneurship where so many women fall into where you kind of sounds like you were before, where you’re just on this treadmill of there’s so much work, your work is never done, and how to separate what’s going on in your head about your business with getting into the zone to have really romantic fun and really wonderful sex.

Susan Bratton:

That’s why I’m a proponent of scheduling dates, but not scheduling sex. I really like the distinction of, “Okay, at two o’clock today, I’ll be done my workout. The podcast is over. We’re going to have lunch and then we’re going to have our date. We’re just going to lie down together, and we’re going to connect, and you’re going to hold me, and I’m going to be held, and we’re going to do a little kissing, and we’ll do some body massage. We’ll see where things go and how things evolve.” Removing the pressure of a having intercourse. Often for women, and I know for the Wings Podcast that the primary audience is the female entrepreneur, and for us women, when our partners, if we have male body partners, they’re hornier more consistently all the time and they’re ready to go and they’re ready for penetration way before we are.

So, we think about sex and it’s like, “That’s a big ask.” It’s like, “You’re so far ahead of me, I don’t even want to get started. I can’t even catch up to you.” I got an email from a guy the other day and he said, “I used your sex technique, and it worked like a charm.” And I said, “Which one, dude, because I’ve got hundreds of them now?” And he said, “The one where you told me to slow way down.” I was like, “Okay, I guess that’s not really a technique, but God love you for giving me credit for it.” And he said, “Yeah, when I slowed way down, she just had the most incredibly intense orgasms.”

Because for all of us who were in relationships with men, they’re so ready and so fast and rearing and to go. I always say to guys, “Turn around and come back and get us. You’re just light years beyond where we are.” And so, an offer for intercourse is way too big for us. We need many more small offers. We need a lot more seduction. We need to be held and warmed up. Our arousal ladder, we climb it more slowly. So, having these erotic play dates where instead of it being, “We’re going to have sex,” which sounds like a fricking other thing on your to-do list, right, maybe it’s more like, “We’re going to pleasure each other in whatever ways sound good in the moment. And we’re going to take our time, or we’re going to learn a new technique together.” Begin as beginners together. “We’re going to start an expanded orgasm practice.” or “We’re going to learn about female ejaculation.” or “We’re going to practice his male multiple orgasm.” or “I’m going to learn how to give her yoni massages.” or “She’s going to learn how to give me lingam massages.”

Yoni and lingham being the vulva and the penis. These are tantric sex words. Or we’re going to try a new sex position, or we going to do a lingerie fashion show, or we’re going to have sex in a different location, on the dining room table or in the back of the SUV at a ball game, or whatever. The more that you can introduce variety instead of it just being, “All right, we’re having sex,” and it’s like, okay, well that’s not enough. It gets boring. So how do we come up with fun things we can do together? How do we have erotic play dates instead of just sex? I think that’s really the trick for a lot of people to keep their interest in sex going.

Melinda Wittstock:

God, you get through the end of the day and you’re really tired. You’ve been this hero or shero. You’ve gotten everything done and yeah, you’re tired. You don’t feel sexy just in your own head, I guess. Right? So I love your suggestions. And it’s great that we’re sitting here talking about this because it wasn’t so long ago where it was rare, I guess, to be having conversations like this. I just have to say, I’m so glad that you’re doing this on podcast because podcast is just such a wonderful, intimate, personal medium.

Susan Bratton:

Well, it’s fantastic because I can go on all kinds of podcasts like, obviously, women’s health podcasts, men’s health podcasts. There’s sexuality podcasts. There’s women’s entrepreneur because I’m an entrepreneur, so I go on women’s entrepreneur podcast. I go on all kinds of shows. I go on comedy shows. This week I was on Mark Bell’s Power Project. It’s a weight lifting show with three adorable guys, Mark, Nsima, and Andrew. They had me on for two hours asking me everything from how do you seduce your wife? How do you get her to tell you what she wants? How do you give her the most pleasure? What kind of orgasms are there? How do you reverse erectile dysfunction? How do you reverse penile atrophy? What do you do about premature ejaculation? Does penis enlargement with a penis pump work? Like all kinds of stuff.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing.

Susan Bratton:

It was so much fun to be on that show. I love being able to talk on shows where I can really understand who the audience is, and on that show, it’s male weight lifters. It’s pretty much male weight lifters. And so when you know who you’re talking to, it’s a lot of fun to really get into the psychology of how they approach their life. Those guys understand how to build muscle and how to have discipline and how to have goals and objectives, and they’re dudes. It’s just fun. So I love podcasts. I don’t think there’s a better medium.

I think the world of publicity has changed so much now that the old traditional media, obviously broadcast television, the world that you come from, has really to just go downhill. The old media that came online is getting usurped by the new media. I was just covered in InsideHook, which is a new daily magazine, online magazine for men. I was excited to be included in an article on InsideHook. There’s like MEL Magazine. That’s a really interesting new magazine. There’s some real up-and-coming media and podcasts and vidcasts that are hot right now. The world of publicity has just really changed. I mean, I still think most PR firms are doing things in a very old school way and they’re not keeping up with what the hot stuff is where the audiences are going.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely true. I’ve always believed, and this has been true of all of five businesses of mine, the best content is conversation. It’s great storytelling, but it’s conversation. Do you remember how people used to gather around the radio? Well, we don’t remember it, we weren’t alive, but back in the day in the ’40s or whatever, right, we know those images, right, of people gathering around the radio and talk about what they were listening… There was a community around and a connection and a shared learning or shared laughter or whatever it was around-

Susan Bratton:

And that’s what you’re creating at Podopolo.

Melinda Wittstock:

It is totally what we’re creating. It’s interesting because I feel like the technology has finally caught up to my vision for that, where it is possible, and especially with Web 3 and blockchain, a lot of our software is blockchain at this point, that allows us to do what we do. And so, it’s really interesting how this is changing because it means that people can connect in real time and over time in a really intimate, meaningful way and in a way that’s personalized to them where the end user has a lot more choice than they ever used to have. But you’re right, PR, advertising, all that stuff’s got to catch up for sure.

Susan Bratton:

It’s really behind. Really behind. I think even just trying to figure out podcast stats, it is so hard to figure out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, that’s the other thing that Podopolo does because, Susan, we put a layer of artificial intelligence, or AI, in behind there so we really understand not only our users’ preferences so we can personalize their experience and serve them with the podcasts and the podcast playlists and little clips from episodes or whatnot that are going to be relevant to them. But also so the podcasters have insights into that so they can be more responsive to their audiences. For instance, for a podcaster, it’s really helpful to know, okay, just about everybody is stopping listening at about 13 minutes. And so, you can say, “Okay, what am I doing at 13 minutes as a podcast host that maybe we should improve as a result.” And so you’re right, because the downloads don’t tell the story, and it also makes it very difficult for advertisers to place ads on anything that doesn’t have a massive volume of downloads, because they don’t know who’s going to convert.

Susan Bratton:

I know. Well, one of the things I also like is, well, your data about when people drop off is so important. YouTube provides that on videos. For those of us that have you YouTube channels and produce video, getting those stats is super helpful to be able to see, “Oh, I need to put more graphics at the front of my video.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly, all that.

Susan Bratton:

Because graphics really hold people, when you start to show them the pictures of things, et cetera, or whatever it might be. I like that. And I also like the idea that every show is a community of people. I also like the influencer marketing meets podcasting, the sponsorship piece of things. I think that’s also something that we don’t have enough measurement tools around, but you want to buy from people you trust, who recommend products that you like.

Susan Bratton:

It was so interesting. I’m going to Beaver Creek. So one of the things that’s happening is that the way I’m recovering from COVID is that once I was able to get enough energy, I hired a trainer, and I started working out three days a week. Then I started working out four days a week, then five, then six, then seven. And right now, I work out every single day except Sunday with my trainer. Plus, I ride my bike. Bringing back my strength has brought back my brain function. My brain function is lagging my physical body function, but the stronger I get, the more I work out, the sharper I get and the more everything heals. And this year, I bought an Epic Pass, which is a ski pass from Vail Resorts that gives you access to ski at something like 20 different resorts around the world. And I’m playing what my girlfriend calls the Epic Pass monopoly game, where essentially I want to go to as many ski resources I can during ski season this year. Because being outside and skiing from 8:30 in the morning till 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon and hitting those slopes and going down and being outside and working hard is the thing that’s going to get me back to work again doing the work that I love to do. It’s-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s a fantastic. Skiing is great too because you’re in such flow state.

Susan Bratton:

You are. It’s so nice. I’m going to Beaver Creek. I was on Instagram and I saw this really cute company that has kombucha, and they’re based in Colorado. And I said, “Hey, I would be interested in trying your kombucha when I’m in Beaver Creek. Do you have a distributor in Beaver Creek? Where can I pick some up?” And they said, “We don’t. We’re not in Beaver Creek right now. But let us know where you’re staying, we’ll send you some and you can try it.” And I said, “Okay, great, send it to me.” They’re a Bozeman, Montana company. I said, “Great. Send it to me, and I’ll try it, and I’ll do an Instagram post for you.” I said, “Did you ever read the story of New Belgian Brewing Company? When they were getting started, it was a husband and wife, and it was a bootstrap startup, and one of the things they did was they would pay friends and family to deliver their beers, because they didn’t have distribution yet, anywhere in the vicinity where you needed it. They had a network of people who would bring the beer you wanted to wherever you were.”

And I said, “That is a very inspirational story that helped them, and you may enjoy reading that story about New Belgium Brewing.” It’s just so funny to see the different ways that brands can learn from the stories of other brands to grow their businesses and how being somebody on Instagram and reaching out to someone else on Instagram is like, “Hey, we’ll send you some Huckleberry Lemonade kombucha, and you can try it. And thanks if you post.” It’s just such a random world of influencer marketing right now. You never know who’s going to reply to you and what you’re going to end up with and what things you love and what you want to tell your fans about. I just love it.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, those are the sort of connections and collisions we’re creating on Podopolo. I mean, the other really interesting thing about the AI and behind here is that you could think of Podopolo like a matchmaking app actually, in fact, because we know, say for instance, what overlap audiences podcasts have. If you think of it as an expanding Venn diagram, it sets up the ability for podcasters to cross-promote on each other’s podcasts, promote each other’s products, all sorts of different things that really create value for everybody along that way and where podcasters can effectively be their own sponsors and just to boost their discoverability to the right audiences that we already know are prequalified for what their podcast is about. So, yeah, there’s a lot of really deep tech in behind here with the content, but I love that example. Because I think the economy, and it’s interesting in the context of Web 3 and metaverse and this whole how decentralized is it really going to be, but I think there is a trend towards that decentralization of people just taking matters into their own hands and creating their own experiences. And so, insofar as the technology supports that, that’s great.

Susan Bratton:

Well, I also think that one of the things that’s really good about podcasts is that there’s a lot more straight talk and frank discussion, whether we’re talking about politics… I mean, if you follow politics at all, you are very likely disgusted with mainstream media’s lack of coverage of things that are going on in politics right now. But if you subscribe to political podcasts, that’s where all the conversations are happening. And it’s like that in any category. Politics is just a very good example of how mainstream media is no longer relevant in a way. So yeah, everything is bursting into a million different points of light. Audiences are moving around and finding their people. And where we used to have this mass market mentality, now we have the beginnings of tools to target our customers. For me, it’s the sexual seeker, right? That mindset, that personal growth mindset person who wants to have ageless sexuality, who wants to have a good sex life their whole life, those are the people I try to find wherever I go.

So when I get onto a show or I get on one of these new great new media website articles, people can discover me and they can become a part of my world. You don’t have to have mass market mainstream publicity and doing all these kinds of things now. You have to understand who your market is, and you have to target them. A lot of them are hand raisers. You’ve got to be in a place where you can be like, “Oh, there’s my hand raisers. Okay, you’re with me. You’re with me. You’re with me. You’re my people. You’re my people.” And what I like about podcast is I’m not for everybody, but if I’m for you, you can find me and you can come into my world, and you can stay as long as you’d like, and you never have to buy anything, or you could buy all my programs. I don’t care either way because I give away so much free stuff that there are people who’ve been with me for over a decade, 15 years on my email list, they’ve never bought anything, but they open all my emails and they help my email delivery and they love me and they’re happy.

And that’s good enough for me too because I make enough money on the people who do buy my products. I just love the way that whole thing feels more targeted, more authentic, more connected, more caring. You get a better fit now with media than we did in the past.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely, and it totally suits your business. When I think about you, Susan, and what you’ve had to do to build up a business as you have in a really difficult space all these years, and you did it, but it wasn’t easy, like getting taken down off YouTube or Facebook or just all the things that you’ve had to go through, right? I’m going to make sure I put in the show notes all your previous episodes on Wings so people can go back and find those too because they’re so good and you added so much value on those ones as well.

Susan Bratton:

Thanks, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

But it’s great that you’ve got this whole new canvas. So I have to ask like, when’s your podcast going to happen because you would make an amazing podcast host?

Susan Bratton:

I had a podcast 15, maybe 18 years ago when Apple-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness.

Susan Bratton:

… first launched podcasts. My business, Personal Life Media, started out as a podcast network-

Melinda Wittstock:

No way.

Susan Bratton:

… in 2006.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness, that was bleeding edge.

Susan Bratton:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Do you know that Twitter was originally a podcast company?

Susan Bratton:

Well, I’m an OG Twitterer that’s for sure. Yeah, I had a podcast called the Dishy Mix. Dishy Mix was the name of it. I did hundreds of episodes. I interviewed business leaders, very similar to what you do. My first information products that I ever created were Talk Show Tips and Masterful Interviews.

Melinda Wittstock:

So ahead of your time.

Susan Bratton:

It’s funny because I did the podcast thing but I remember one day… And I monetized our podcast with advertising. We had, I think, 30 or 40 podcasts at our height at Personal Life Media in the 2006, 2007, 2008 timeframe, those couple of years. I was bringing in about a quarter of a million dollars in podcasting advertising revenue, but the problem was I didn’t have any tools to tell marketers how they were doing. And so, they couldn’t measure it. And so, it was like this leaky sieve where every dollar that went in went back out and I had to start over with another company because I never had the data that I needed to monetize the podcast.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s still an issue in podcasting, although it’s getting better. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why we also have really deep on the data so we can give advertisers a predictive and hire, I guess, accountable ROI from their ad placements. It’s been amazing because there’s more and more money going into podcasting, but here’s a stat for you, it’s going to double to about $2 billion this year in 2022 in podcast advertising. But that’s a drop in the ocean compared to something like 375 billion digital ad market, right?

Susan Bratton:

Well-

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, that equation needs to change, and so that’s part of our job.

Susan Bratton:

In 1996, with a number of other people, I started the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Melinda Wittstock:

I didn’t know you started IAB.

Susan Bratton:

Yeah, I’m one of the founders of the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Melinda Wittstock:

Are you really, Susan? I didn’t know that about you.

Susan Bratton:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. Right now, we’re all in like, okay, with all the ad networks we work with, right, the IAB sizes, how’s that going to manifest on the app, all that stuff. And here you are, you’re the founder of that.

Susan Bratton:

We literally created the IAB Banner Standards. That was one of the very first things we did, was we created ad banner standards.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my God, that was you. Oh my goodness, I had no idea.

Susan Bratton:

I didn’t work on that particular committee, but I was the very first person who ever did a video ad, I did broadband, because the company that I was with, we invented the cable modem. This is how old I am.

Melinda Wittstock:

Susan, is there nothing you haven’t done? You’re [inaudible 00:41:06] force of nature.

Susan Bratton:

Well, here’s something else that’s going to blow your mind. There’s something else that’s going to blow your mind. I also am the founder of the Association for Downloadable Media, which is the IAB for podcasting. Back when I started it, I’m going to say 2009, 2010, we started the ADM to be the IAB of podcasting. We gave up on it after a couple of years because podcasters were such a hobby-oriented [crosstalk 00:41:38]-

Melinda Wittstock:

It began that way. Yeah, for sure.

Susan Bratton:

… that they did not give a shit about monetizing their podcasts. In the early days of podcasting, it was just people who liked to fricking talk a lot. And all they wanted to do was sit in a studio and talk. They didn’t care about monetization because it wasn’t how they were building their businesses. Now people are like, “oh, I am a full-time podcasting, Instagram influencer. This is what I do and how I support myself.” Now you can actually support yourself by having a podcast. So it’s changed in the last 20 years, but yeah, I had a show. I had a podcast network. I worked with Apple quite considerably because we had 30 or 40 shows. I think we had like 38 shows or something.

The reason I ended up becoming a publisher of passionate lovemaking techniques is that I had a series of shows that I produced. The people who taught me so much about sex and saved my marriage were people who were sexual educators who led workshops. I took their workshops and it changed my life. And I thought, “Oh, if you learn how to have sex, your sex life gets better. Just like if you learn how to do anything.”

Melinda Wittstock:

When said that way, it’s just so obvious.

Susan Bratton:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. But you mentioned something too, it saved your marriage.

Susan Bratton:

And I gave my workshop hosts mics and Zooms, the little recording devices, and we started producing shows with them. I had A Taste of Sex, Expand… Oh, what was it? Expand Her Orgasm Tonight, Sex, Love, and Intimacy, Tantric Sex and Lovemaking. I don’t remember what all the different shows were, but we had about close to 40 shows. Some of them were sex shows. Some of them were music shows. Some of them were business shows. One of them was an NLP show. We had a weight loss show. We had all different kinds of shows.

Susan Bratton:

And that’s what Personal Life Media originally was, it was a podcast network of shows. My sex shows did way better than any of my other shows, but I couldn’t keep them monetized. A friend of mine said, “Hey, there’s this thing, it’s called information products. It’s where you actually create online programs and people buy them from you. And they can get audios, videos, and eBooks. Since you are struggling to monetize your podcast but you’ve got all this great content and people obviously love it, why don’t you create some information products and make some programs?” And that’s when we went from being a podcast company to being a publisher of online programs that teach you how to have hot sex. Isn’t that funny?

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s so interesting that you went from podcasting to e-products and so many people with e-products are starting podcasts now to promote their e-products. There’s a lot of crossover. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why Podopolo is giving people the opportunity to really off the back of their podcast directly on the app sell their e-courses or their merchandise or their swag or their products or premium content, that kind of thing as well, to be able to monetize in that way. But you’re right that there’s still a lot of podcasters who are like, “Oh, eek, I don’t really want to make money from my podcast.” But the fast-growing majority are like, “Hey, wow, I’m putting all this work into it,” and after a while realizing that, “Yeah, I should be paid for this.” This is the fastest growing media of all time, by the way, podcasting.

Susan Bratton:

I’m not surprised.

Melinda Wittstock:

All of a sudden.

Susan Bratton:

I love Podopolo and what you’re doing with that business. There’s so many facets of podcasting that are broken that you are fixing that need to be fixed.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I kind of came at it with a fix-it mentality. It’s so funny, Susan, though because I’m old enough, right, to look back at all the different startups and companies that I’ve built over the years and all the different things I’ve done in broadcast television, radio, and all the things, right, and I realize that I’ve proven out every little aspect of this, but nobody else, I guess, I don’t know, has really put the pieces together before, right?

Susan Bratton:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think I’m uniquely positioned to do that just by virtue of everything that I’ve done in the past, right?

Susan Bratton:

All your past experiences. Yes, all your past experiences have led you to seeing what dots can be connected that need to be done so that marketers and content creator and their audiences can all be served. And that’s what you’ve done.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that everybody wins. It’s really interesting, I was having a conversation with someone the other day about the difference between the type of business models that women tend to come up with compared to this-

Susan Bratton:

Which is a collaborative one.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So this is very collaborative, it’s very connecting the dots. It’s using existing things applied in new ways. We’re also innovating a lot of tech. We have [inaudible 00:47:01] of six proprietary, inventive technologies that are patentable, right? But it’s also applying them in a completely different way to connect the dots around a whole industry. I see men tending to more linear solutions. And women, slightly like I’m more in the matrixy realm.

Susan Bratton:

Did you go see the new Matrix movie?

Melinda Wittstock:

I haven’t seen that yet. I definitely have to go do that. Was it good?

Susan Bratton:

I double-masked with my N95 and I went to IMAX. I wanted to see it on the big screen. I also went to see Doom on the big screen. I haven’t gone to the theater and seen a movie in like one million years.

Melinda Wittstock:

I haven’t either.

Susan Bratton:

But for some reason, I really wanted that big visual experience that I got from the Matrix. I thought it was terrific. I also thought Dune was terrific. They’re really great. Movies and television production are so good right now. We are really living in a wonderful time of content creation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Susan Bratton:

It’s exciting. I love the explosion of podcasts, the vidcast, television, the new online magazines that are just carving out their niches. I’ve never been more excited about media.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, me too. I mean, it’s my world, right?

Susan Bratton:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Where media and tech collides. So yes, me as well, I think it’s a really exciting time. And so, now just going back to the beginning of the interview where you were saying, “Okay, so this almost two years now-

Susan Bratton:

It is.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, Susan, 18 months, two years?

Susan Bratton:

Yes. Yeah, closer to two.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s given you the chance to really think, “Okay, so I have in a way a new lease on life,” in the sense of what you’re going to do and how you can live your life a little bit differently. So, when you think of 2022, is your focus going to maintain there in terms of just thinking differently and taking your product to continuing to innovate or taking it in a different direction? Or what do you see yourself and your business, where do you see it going in this year?

Susan Bratton:

I think that what I’ve realized… One of my skills, one of my natural talents is leadership, strategic leadership. I’m very good at it. Early on, oh, probably when I was like late thirties, early forties I would imagine, when I was in the corporate world running a $100 million business for a large internet company, I took that Strengthsfinder survey, the Marcus Buckingham Gallup Strengthsfinder-

Melinda Wittstock:

I did that too. What are your five?

Susan Bratton:

Oh, God, I’m not sure I can remember all my five, but one of them was strategic.

Melinda Wittstock:

Me too.

Susan Bratton:

One was natural leader. One was woo. And one was netting things out in simple ways, communicating complex things simply.

Melinda Wittstock:

Nice.

Susan Bratton:

I don’t remember what the fifth one was. It really empowered me, Melinda, because I would sit in meetings and I’m the only woman in the meeting, and I’m around the table in a board meeting or at a senior executive table, and I would watch the men dick-slapping and fighting over a fixed pie, warring over resources rather than expanding the fricking pie and working together for the greater good. I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with these people?” I took the Strengthsfinder and I realized, “Oh, they don’t have a strategic bone in their body. They have to play at a lower level of fighting for resources because they can’t figure out how to make a bigger pie. You are oriented toward leading people to increase a pie. You just didn’t realize that that’s why you looked at what they were doing incredulously.”

I found that Strengthsfinder to be so empowering for me. I was able to really own my strengths when I had this external resource confirming what I noticed and felt within myself. It’s like, “All right, girl, well, you’re a natural born leader. You got a lot of courage. You’re very strategic. So fricking use your talents.” So when I think about my business and having the energy and the mental energy, it was like when you have chronic fatigue and you’re completely exhausted and you have no resources because you’ve had a horrible virus, you can’t even freaking think because you just don’t have any energy.

Now that my energy’s coming back because I’m working out every day and I’m building my strength literally and figuratively, what do I want to apply my resources to? Not the day-to-day things I used to. Now what I think I can do to help my company is actually like project management against a timeline, which is what leadership really is. Leadership is, “This is the direction we’re going. We’re going to launch this product and this technology this year by this time. Here are all the people involved. Here’s what everyone’s jobs are. This is when everyone needs to get them done. And this is the vision of what we are doing together.” If I can clearly lay that out, then everyone knows what they have to do and will get it done. And ultimately, I think that’s what I’ll be doing this year, is I’ll be launching a new… Believe it or not, I’ll be launching a new energy bar, a sexual energy bar, a vitality bar, a bar that’s peanut butter and chocolate and has mocha and cacao in it to support your sexual vitality, not just your overall vitality. It’s called the Desire Bar. I’m going to spend a shit ton of money and do a giant run of bars and launch them to the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s amazing.

Susan Bratton:

Because I already have amazing a daily supplement, a daily vitamin mineral with libido botanicals in it, and I already have a blood flow supplement and they’re a stake. They all work synergistically together. And I’ve been missing the final piece that got pushed aside when I was too sick. I couldn’t put it on the line. I couldn’t market it. I couldn’t build the pages. I couldn’t build the funnels. I couldn’t put the go-to market strategy together. So that’s what I’m going to do this year, is I’m going to launch the Desire Bar, and I’m going to launch an app that has my steamy sex ed video collection as a part of it so that you can download the app and you can do in-app purchases of over 200 advanced tantric, heart-connected, lovemaking techniques. So we’ll see how I do, but this is my plan, is to step back into my organization as the leader that I am.

Melinda Wittstock:

Susan, we could talk for hours. I want to make sure that people know how to find you and all your amazing products, sign up for your newsletter, get the dibs on the new bar when that comes out and all the things. What are the best ways?

Susan Bratton:

Well, if you just go to susanbratton.com, you can sign up for my newsletter there. Susan, S-U-S-A-N, Bratton, B-R-A-T-T-O-N, susanbratton.com. You can follow me on Instagram. And I’m everywhere, you can just google me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. That’s wonderful. Well, I’ll make sure that everything’s in the show notes.

Susan Bratton:

Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us. And, of course, this episode when it runs, I want to invite you to download Podopolo and join the conversation because we can carry on this conversation, of course, on Podopolo. So you just download it, follow Wings, and I add you and all the details of you and where to contact you on Podopolo as well and join the conversation. So if anyone has any questions for Susan, they can ask Susan questions or me, and we can have a lovely conversation and continue it over there.

Susan Bratton:

I’d love to.

Melinda Wittstock:

Thank you so much. It’s such a delight to talk to you as always.

Susan Bratton:

Yeah, you too, Melinda. Thank you for having me back again and thank you for letting me share my journey. I know there are a lot of people who have gone through a lot of things as leaders. And you know what we do? We get back. We get back, and we may not get back the way we were when we started, but we get back to who we will be going forward. That’s all you can do.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly right. There’s so many lessons of all kinds from this pandemic. We try and find the silver linings in all of that. But Susan, I’m so glad that you’re on the mend.

Susan Bratton:

[inaudible 00:56:32].

Melinda Wittstock:

You look and sound amazing. Just so much admiration and love to you for like-

Susan Bratton:

Love to you too.