How to Not Look Stupid While Podcasting (Trust Me)

It was July 4th, and I had walked to the end of my street where I could see fireworks, except I also felt the first raindrop, and I thought, oh, no, I'm not standing in the rain to see fireworks.

And I ended up doing something very stupid.

And I'm going to tie that into podcasting for you.

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So we're gonna talk about looking stupid today.

But to finish my story, I was kind of walking fast, and I did what most people do these days, which is really stupid.

I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through stuff as I was walking up.

I'd only walked about a block and a half, so it wasn't that far up.

And the next thing I know, I'm seeing my phone go flying out of my hand, and my brain is telling me, you're falling, and this is a concrete sidewalk.

And what had happened was the different blocks were uneven, and my left foot had just stopped.

And so I was falling, and I had some momentum behind me, and luckily, I let go of my phone and went to brace myself and skinned my.

You know, the butts of your hands.

But I also completely wrecked my knees.

And I get up while everybody is standing in their front yard, because, again, you can see fireworks from my street, and they're all like, are you okay?

Are you okay?

And of course, I'm a guy, and I go, yeah, yeah, I'm just a little embarrassed.

I'm fine.

And I keep walking, and I can feel the pain in my knees, but I'm trying to look cool.

And I stumble on home, and I get inside and my knees are wrecked.

And actually, a couple years later, my knees still have the scars from that.

I should have probably gone and got some stitches or something, but it's the 4th of July, nothing was open, etc.

Well, Dave, what does this have to do with podcasting?

I look stupid.

I was doing something stupid.

That's why I looked stupid.

So here's how you don't look stupid.

Don't do stupid stuff.

Thank you.

Good night.

Thank you.

But here's my point.

I live in Cleveland, Ohio.

Well, near it, not really Akron, but you get the point.

And if I go to a room full of friends, let's say we got 30 people in a room, and I scream out, here we go, Brownies.

Here we go, there's going to be people in that room that will bark like a dog.

They will literally go.

Grown adults will bark like a dog.

Since we live in Ohio, there's the whole Louie Louie song.

And when you get to the one part, everybody goes, oh, H I o.

Apparently we're really into spelling in Ohio.

But again, okay, but here's the ultimate one.

If you're at a wedding and you go to the reception, probably after dinner, one of the first things they're going to play is na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na.

You know that?

And everybody stands up and you remember.

Do you remember it now?

You, you kind of, you make your hand, you do your little hand puppet, and then you do.

Then you flap your arms under your armpits, and then as you crouch down, you kind of do a little twist.

And then as you stand up, you go.

That is known as the chicken dance.

And there aren't too many other things on the planet that make you look that stupid.

But because it's a wedding and because everybody else is doing it, we are willing to join in the fun to look stupid together.

So with this said, people are worried about doing a podcast because they don't want to look stupid and they feel like the audience is listing.

And I always like to remind people when you first start out, you're going to be lucky if you get, you know, how many cousins do you have?

Okay.

I always say if you get more than 30, that's impressive.

It's probably closer to 10 to 20.

And so if you're going to look stupid, this would be the time to do it.

When I was a musician, I played for years, and when we finally were good enough to play in public, we didn't go to the biggest clubs and say, let's get on the big stage.

No, no, no.

We started, I remember our very first gig for one of the last bands I was in.

We played a cancer benefit at a high school where the band was in the middle of the football field and everybody was walking around earning money for that.

And the great part of that was our lead singer was a chain smoker who chain smoked through the whole thing, had a cancer benefit, and.

But it got our chops in, it got our reps in.

And eventually when we were pretty seasoned and we had kind of figured out what we were going to be when we were on stage, then we started going for the bigger things.

We worked our way up.

Now, did we occasionally look stupid?

Yes.

Even after we'd done that.

One of our favorite clubs we want, we really like.

When we started, we said, someday we're going to play Fat Fish Blue in Cleveland, Ohio.

And we finally sent them a demo tape and did everything, and they said yes.

We had a running gag that at the end of the night when we're getting ready to pack everything up and we're almost done, the bass player would look at the keyboard player and go, hey, Ben, this place sucks.

I'm going home.

And we would all giggle and grab the last things and go out.

So we are at Fat Fish Blue, which is no more.

It was a bar that was previously a concrete parking lot deck.

So the acoustics were not exactly premier, but we were happy.

We had played the premier blues club in Cleveland, and we're almost done, but we haven't.

They have their own PA system.

And so the bass player, not realizing that he was, I don't know, four inches from a microphone, turned to the keyboard player and said, hey, Ben, this place sucks.

I'm going home.

And it went out over the PA system.

And while we had been booked for most of the year there, we then lost all of our gigs.

And we learned a valuable lesson there.

You know, some.

Some things we maybe should wait till we're out in the parking lot to do the running gag.

The bottom line is we did something stupid and we learned.

And so the easiest way to not look stupid is to not do stupid things.

And so they always say, you know, it's smart to learn from your mistakes.

And that's true.

It's even better to learn from someone else's mistakes.

And so that's one of the things that I help people do.

I understand what podcasting best practices are, and that's what I teach at the school of podcasting.

So don't try to do this, and don't try to do this.

Now, I always explain that you may be different, but in the end, that's why there's editing.

And you can make yourself sound as smart as you want right now.

This evening, I was recording an interview I did, and it was myself and another person that I've known for years, but we just could not get a decent rhythm going.

And so what do you do with that?

You edit out the boring parts.

You edit out the parts where we're talking over each other.

You can make yourself sound brilliant.

So don't worry about it, because you've looked stupid in the past, and you will probably look stupid in the future.

And I always say this, and it's kind of a joke, but it's kind of a not.

And that is when you go to start a podcast, you're going to have one of two things.

You're going to end up with a great podcast, especially if you keep going.

Or you're going to have a great story about that time when you started a podcast.

If you need help with this, don't hesitate to reach out.

You know where to find me.

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I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do and I want to be your podcast consultant.