Conversations with Mike Pearce Tony Dollar

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Pearce Tony Dollar.

Hi Mike Pearce, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. You can include as little or as much detail as you’d like.

In 2014, Mike Pearce and Tony Dollar worked together in education and had known each other for about 4-5 years before that. Tony decided to start a conversational podcast for fun and to help promote his music, but he knew he needed someone really likable who loved to talk (You can’t have a conversation by yourself unless you’re Bill Burr!) Honestly, in 2014 this was a hard sell as conversational podcasts were not as popular as they are now and most people are not that comfortable with a mic and camera in their face. Mike Pearce is not “most people” though. Mike was the perfect person for the job and he agreed immediately!

Tony mapped out a 2 month plan to “properly” launch the podcast, while Mike said, “We should just turn on the mics and see what happens.” This moment really sums up their opposite personalities. Tony is wound a little too tight, and Mike flies by the seat of his pants. Long story short, they accidentally released their first recording which was about 30 minutes long and had no intro or outro music. To their surprise, it got well over a hundred listens in the first few hours. They pulled it down, and then immediately officially recorded the first episode of The Mike and Tony Show, which, at the time, was called A-Chording to Mike and Tony.

Mike grew up in Denver and is extremely well connected — like abnormally connected in general. You can’t go anywhere without this dude being recognized by someone! Mike has been the primary booker for the show and has landed us some incredible guests simply because he knows everyone. Mostly thanks to his connections, we’ve had countless guests, including body builders, strongmen, musicians, songwriters, comedians, artisans, house-flippers, gym owners, authors, poets, DJs, bouncers, fitness experts, fashion designers, influencers, and lots of personal friends and regulars like Mark the Couch Guy! We’ve had the honor of interviewing guests like the 2018 Mr. Universe natural bodybuilding champion, Francisco Espinosa. We also welcomed Denver Local legend DJ Chonz from KS 107.5, who we all grew up listening to, into our humble studio for an absolutely excellent conversation with lots of laughs.

From the beginning we both decided this would always just be for fun. We just love talking, we love Denver and Colorado, and we love supporting the local community. We will never stop interviewing people most of our audience has never heard of. We are just two regular dudes who love good long-form conversation, and believe deeply that every person has amazing stories to tell.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. We were completely self-taught so we made a lot of mistakes along the way. At one point, we allowed the ownership of our website to lapse, and lost our main website url. This turned out to be an extremely tough lesson for us as we eventually had to change the name of the show and start a completely new RSS feed. We had to re-upload all of our previous episodes one at a time and start from scratch with zero listeners.

Another big misstep was not capitalizing when we had access to an enormous audience. At one point, we were picked up by a digital radio station based out of Detroit known as WROM Radio. They put us into regular rotation as a radio program, and we were averaging around 90,000 streams per episode. Looking back now, we missed a huge opportunity to capitalize on that large audience and when the radio station suddenly went under in a matter of days, we had done nothing to retain those listeners. We naively assumed that listeners were fans and that they would just come find us since we have always been available on all podcast platforms.

Live and learn! All that being said, I don’t think either of us have any regrets or would change a thing.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We are known for completely authentic, unedited conversations that average people relate to and enjoy. We are also known for supporting all things Denver! Here are a couple of things we are most proud of:

1. Sticking to our guns and always treating this podcast as a passion project — we do it because we love doing it. Period.
2. Leaving every conversation completely unedited. It has to be real.
3. Lifting up so many Denver voices and giving them a platform, even if it is a modest platform.

How do you define success?
Finding joy and pride in what we create.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://themikeandtonyshow.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themikeandtonyshow
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/themikeandtonyshow
• Twitter: https://x.com/MikeAndTonyShow
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMikeTonyShow

Image Credits
Tony Dollar & Mike Pearce