The real Webster Pond and our company have something in common: Both started by accident.
Webster Pond is a real place. It's in Syracuse, New York, near where Jeff grew up.
Before it was a pond, it was a farm with livestock and land and a creek running through it. One afternoon, Jeff's dad and some of his friends found the dam on that creek and knocked it down with sticks and rocks. The farm flooded. The water rose. Webster's Farm became Webster Pond.
What had been a working farm became something else entirely. A fishing destination. A neighborhood gathering place. A migratory stopover for hundreds of ducks and geese. The Anglers Association rented it from the city. Kids grew up around it. It didn't just change, It became more than it was.
Our company started the same way.
In 2019, Jeff and Callie Dauler launched The Upside with Callie and Jeff. It shot to the top of the podcast charts, made over $1,000,000 in ad revenue, and soon after, people started asking for help with their own shows. When their first client was ready to write a check, they realized they needed a name, fast. They chose tentwentytwo, their wedding anniversary, October 22, because it seemed personal and unique and memorable.
Six years later, a branding expert delivered the verdict: the name was impossible to recall, impossible to spell, and didn't mean anything to anyone but them. They'd heard it mangled enough times (10-2 Podcasts, Twenty-Two Something, 1020 Podcasters) to know she was right.
So they started looking for a new name. The answer came from a client call.
Jeff was walking a client through their philosophy, when he said something he'd said dozens of times before. About lily pads.
The idea is simple.
If you're a frog trying to cross a pond
You attempt one giant leap, you end up in the water
You swim back to shore and start over, wet and messy.
But if you find a lily pad to hop to, and then the next one, and the next ... you make it across.
The key is being intentional with every single hop. That's how we approach every show we build.
Start with the destination. Reverse engineer the journey. Map the hops.
The client stopped the meeting.
“That's the greatest thing I've ever heard.
I've never heard a growth philosophy explained like that.”
When they got off the call, Callie said: maybe the whole business should be pond-centric. Maybe there's something there.
Jeff remembered a domain name he'd registered more than a decade earlier and never used. Webster Pond. He'd held onto it for years without knowing why.
The why became crystal clear.
The name Webster Pond connects everything. The lily pad philosophy. The idea that you can take something that already exists — expertise, ideas, relationships, a point of view — and reshape it into something that serves a completely different and more powerful purpose. Just like a farm that became a pond. Just like a podcast company that started by accident.
Webster Pond exists at the intersection of art and strategy. We design podcasts as shows. They are built with purpose, structure, and the kind of storytelling craft that only comes from decades spent performing for, and earning the attention of, real audiences.
Not every podcast needs Webster Pond. But if yours does, you'll know.
