How a Podcast Turned Into a Global Institutional Partnership | Alpha Edge 2026

Chris Williams: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Investor Relations podcast. I am your co-host, Chris Williams, and I'm sitting here today with Josh and we're gonna talk about some really cool things that we've got going on right now. Number one since last summer, we've been working on a really cool partnership that we have with institutional Investor, and we're smack dab in the middle of all of the work that's being done for one of their premier events.

Alpha Edge it's an international event. GPS and LPs know all about it, and if you don't know about it, you definitely want to be there 'cause it's just gonna be amazing. And we also wanna talk about that and we wanna talk about some other things that we've got coming up within the network itself.

With that being said, Josh, man, how are you today, 

Joshua Wilson: man? I'm splendid. We were in meetings all day with the team in the United Kingdom from institutional investors, alpha Edge program and from the US Katerina has assembled just a phenomenal team. And we're just quarterbacking all of the conversations that are happening with our.

LPs and sponsors and it's pretty cool. I really hope people like dive into the LinkedIn. If they follow our LinkedIn, content, they'll see a a ton of ii content institutional investor content pop up. So it's really cool. And we're talking with people who are, allocators of billion dollar funds and really bright people. So I hope people dig into that and see some of the work that, II is working on. It's really cool. 

Chris Williams: Yeah, it really is. So let's go back for just quick 30 seconds. What, last summer, right? You've been having this relationship with the CEO of institutional investor res for a while, right?

And then he tells you about, Hey Josh, I want you to come to this event we got going on in October. Talk a little bit about that relationship and how that led into working on one of their premier events that they do every year around the world. 

Joshua Wilson: For sure. Yeah. Honored. People will ask, Hey, I wanna start a podcast show.

Do you think a podcast show is a good idea for me? There's a lot of podcasts out there. I don't know how to make money podcasting. I don't know. If it's worth it, is it gonna produce a good ROI? So these are questions we get from our, media network every single day. So let me just share a story that, happened over a year ago.

I'm I'm working at a investment bank, calling up companies all day long, publicly traded companies, see, and if they're. Opened to raising capital and I kept on getting blocked out by the internal IR teams at these public companies. Because I had a background in media, I started I was like, man, I could reach out to them all day long trying to get ahold of them.

I'm trying to, I'm showing up with money, through the family office work that, that we did. And I, but I kept on getting blocked out. I was like, what I did in the past is I would. Create a podcast show. So instead of reaching out to them to maybe sell or serve them, I would reach out and say, Hey, would you like to be on a podcast show?

So I started the investor relations podcast show a little over a year ago, and I started reaching out to these publicly traded companies to their IR teams and go, would you like to be on this show? So this is the show that you're listening into now, the Investor Relations podcast. I don't, I didn't have a background in investor relations.

I didn't have a, I didn't go to school for this. I didn't have the pedigree for this. In fact, I even tried to get jobs at investor relations firms, but they're like, you don't have any experience. And I'm like, how do I get experience unless you hire me? So there's this like conundrum of I couldn't get the experience and nobody was willing to give me an at bat.

So I bought. The investor relations podcast.com started up a podcast. Now it's, now you're a part of it. But also now we're co-branded with some of the, world's best brands in investing in LP relationships. But going through the process of interviewing a bunch of people, giving the platform, putting in the work investing a ton of time, energy, effort, capital.

And resources into building this. One of my friends that I met through the show was Rip Reeves, the CEO of institutional investor. I met him and the COO at the time Steve Olson, and we became friends. And we created a lot of media together and what I found out about RIP is, he had a brain for institutional investing and allocating, and he's been in that industry so long and he just had a lot to share.

And what I found is in that industry of institutional investors and. Limited partners and these allocators is, they're very bright, they're very smart, and a lot of people aren't giving them a place to share their wisdom. So I started, just having more of these conversations, rip and I built a relationship of, of friendship.

I'd open up doors for him, he would do the same for me. And he became like a friend, a mentor of mine, and then he's Josh, you gotta come up to the. A CA event at Allocator's Choice Awards. So we went up there and you came with me, I was like, Chris, I don't know what this is. Like we, we both were like we're going, we're not gonna miss this opportunity.

We both, we both took a risk on a friendship right with them. And we said, let's go. And we went and it turned into. A night to remember, like it turned into, the day before we were planning this all out and it just turned into such a wonderful event where we had a red carpet kind of event, a red carpet, styled, like Hollywood and where we were highlighting these.

LPs and these allocators and all of these just really bright people. And then it just turned into a bigger relationship and Katerina saw something in us and she's like, how about we do this for Alpha Edge? And it just, the relationship blossomed now. I didn't make money in sponsorships in on the investor relations podcast.

I didn't. I wasn't selling programs or platforms. I wasn't trying to make money doing this. I was giving all I could to the industry of investor relations because I believe in it, right? I was representing investors trying to invest capital, and I was not being received well. And then I've been on the other end where I was at a venture capital fund or other group, and we were trying to.

Get investors to have conversations with us, and it wasn't happening, so I said there should be a better platform for conversations. That's this podcast. That's the goal of this podcast is to just improve conversations between, GPS and LPs, people raising capital and people deploying capital. We need each other in this.

Yeah I'm proud to announce that, we've linked Arms with Institutional investor and with the team there, and we're part of their Alpha Edge event, which is an amazing event. We're gonna be going to London in a few months, and we're gonna be going to South Florida for their other big event.

And it's exciting, man. These people are brilliant at what they do, and it's an honor to be a part of that. So that's a huge update for us. This is really dream come true in terms of the kind of intelligent people that we're meeting with full of integrity and wisdom.

I'm just learning so much. I would fill up notepad after notepad, but I use an apple, notepad. So it stores it digitally, but we are learning so much and I'm so grateful for that. So thanks for giving me a place to talk about it, Chris. 

Chris Williams: Yeah. You know what's interesting about that conversation?

If you remember, we go to New York, interview him in the institutional investor office, and in that conversation you would never know that he's actually an interesting, fascinating person, right? His experience, he, I remember him telling us the story of he was in college and he heard about this thing called institutional investor, and that was his.

Muse, so to speak through, through learning about his world and the space that he wanted to be in. And if you remember, you asked him a very important question during the interview. You said, Hey, what, what caused you to, how did you know this is what you want to do? He said, I was sitting in class and somebody told me about this thing called institutional investor.

And in this money, he goes, that's what I want to do. He's I'm a mathematician. I like math. He's but this excited me. And he's I've known since I was in college. And I'm going, man, that's a really cool piece. But Josh, none of that would've happened if you didn't give him a space to just have a conversation.

Yeah. It's something powerful about helping someone realize that their story is just as important as the work that they do.

Joshua Wilson: That's good, man. For sure. For sure. I think people will. People will want to start a podcast because yeah, it can, it could drive business for, a business pipeline.

It can potentially create leads, it could potentially make you famous, whatever, all that, all this stuff. But I think the most important thing is. They could really build great friendships, great relationships. And I've been doing this for a long time and I've interviewed well over 2000 people and now I have a phone book a Rolodex essentially of, incredible people that now I'm tapping into asking for wisdom, asking for advice.

They're asking me for help, they're asking me for connection. And we've built a great network. And network is probably something that we should talk about next, Chris. 

Chris Williams: Yeah, man. So let's talk about this network quickly because it's been a, it's been a vision of yours, it's been something that you've looked at and we are like, look, let's build the network.

Talk a little bit about the network in itself, but give people an understanding of why this network is a resource for every person that's gonna be listening to it. 

Joshua Wilson: Yeah. I don't, to be honest, Chris, I don't know if it's for everyone. I don't know if it's for everyone.

What I do know, if it if people are interested in the world of investing, entrepreneurship, that, that kind of, that space in maybe lower to middle market. Businesses, people looking to, invest or build a company, sell a company, take a company public, maybe do a special purpose acquisition company, or do a reverse merger or, these kind of topics that are in the investment banking ecosystem or investor relations ecosystem.

Like I think that it's for this niched out community that. This network is for, what I found is it's very fragmented. There's not a lot of people that are talking with each other. There's not a lot of people talking. Because I'll tell you, going through all of the education to become an investment banker, a lot is on, like disclosure and talking to the press and talking to media.

And there's a lot of fear about people being on. Recorded line like this, I'm telling you, I, I get nervous about it, but we take the proper precautions and we talk with our attorney. We talk to, a lot of guidance in it from our advisors. But if nobody talks about things, how are we ever gonna learn?

How are we ever going to pass on wisdom or knowledge to future? Investors or future allocators or future entrepreneurs, so I'm willing to take on some of this opportunity to explore this. And we're, we've, we're, we've opened this conversation to to all sorts of different groups.

But I, I'll tell you this network, what we're building we have four programs that are currently on our platform. We have a strategic partner on our platform and we're. We're looking to actually stand out an official network where we're gonna be buying and building additional brands from people that are in this ecosystem, this lower to middle market deal maker ecosystem.

And, we wanna build it out as a resource. And as my friend Jude David says, who's one of the co-hosts of the Deal podcast, is we want to inspire the future generation of deal makers. We also wanna connect the dots. A lot of times what happens is, this happened just recently. One of the people in our network introduced us to one of their friends to interview them.

I did the interview and after the interview I. I said, you know what, we should probably all get together and do a deal. Now these, this is an introduction from someone in our network to a potential, part. And after, after the interview, we wound up connecting and now we're putting together a proposal to work together.

And both teams are. Both people are so excited and they are friends prior to me even meeting them. So the power of the network is being able to connect the dots sometimes where you don't see a.to connect, and that's the power of the network. So we're building it. We're excited about working with future brands, future hosts.

We're looking for talent. We're looking for people who have a podcast looking to maybe monetize it or grow it. We're interviewing freelancers. We're interviewing consultants. We're interviewing team members to be a part of it. We're in the process of going through the legal aspects of.

Standing it up in a proper way. We're talking to tech companies that can help support this kind of traffic and audience. Like now people will be like, oh, it's a, overnight success. No, man I've been bankrupt, been on food stamps, had to sell my truck to pay the bills and to keep this thing, moving in the past, I've sold and sacrificed a lot to, to build this out.

And this isn't a new idea. This has been going around for a long time. This idea of network power. I think that a lot of people have ignored these wonderful, powerful people, very bright people who are actually helping making the decisions that are affecting thousands and thousands of jobs. School teachers, firefighters, frontline workers.

All of these people, like we've just been ignoring them. We haven't been giving them a proper place to. Share their wisdom. So like the, this kind of space in investor relations in middle market America, middle market deal making, I think is a powerful spot. And, we're looking to strategically work with people.

So I think that network is something that will be valuable to our existing team. Existing deal partners, existing media partners, our strategic partners, right? And we look at everything. Investor relations is this, you could break down investor relations, media relations, public relations. It's all about relations.

It's all about relationships. And that comes from people to people. AI creates content, cool. People are doing all this other stuff, great. But at the end of the day, I think it's gonna be people will do business with people they know and trust. And how could they. How could you build that trust or get to know them unless you have conversations?

That's what podcasting is, that's what the power of media is. 

Chris Williams: Yeah. Stated man. I just wrote an article on LinkedIn. You guys can go out and check on it about this because what I realize is in this age of ai, in this, all the stuff that people are doing and people want more speed, but what they don't realize is that I would rather us have more speed in human connectivity.

For sure. I that I'd much rather us do that. And I think that you're building a great network. I'm glad to be a part of it. Ladies and gentlemen, listen the information that we've shared is gonna be in the show notes and the description. Please connect with us if you've got a niche of a show inside of the the deal making space, right?

You're you've got a business you own, or you've got a platform of a podcast. So you just wanting to be able to connect with people like us, please reach out, right? We'd love to be able to explore conversation and move forward and stay tuned because we got more coming. Again, we want to thank our partner, institutional investor for the work that we're gonna be doing with Alpha Edge.

That information will be in the show notes as well. But until next time, guys stick around because we've got even more coming and make sure that you're following us on LinkedIn and hey, who knows, man, reach out. We, you it may be worth a great conversation and kind of like Rick Reeves, you never know, we may go from, barely knowing each other, to building something epic and working together to build a partnership.

So thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next episode.