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One Tiny Fish Can Fix Your Entire Podcast Process · Your Mic

• 0:00
  Let's play pretend.
• 0:01
  You're in the dark ocean, 80 feet down,
• 0:04
  and there's a perfect mandala in the sand.
• 0:07
  Six, seven feet across, radial ridges, valleys,
• 0:11
  a weird maze in the middle.
• 0:13
  Seashell confetti liked the ocean
• 0:15
  tried to throw itself a wedding.
• 0:17
  No humans live down here, no tourists, no Instagram.
• 0:22
  Sorry, and this thing took more than a week to build.
• 0:26
  Welcome to the love life
• 0:28
  of the white spotted pufferfish.
• 0:30
  And also, accidentally, your podcast.
• 0:37
  Welcome back to your mic.
• 0:39
  My name is Freddy Cruz,
• 0:41
  and there's this little fish off the coast of Japan.
• 0:45
  He's like three to five inches long,
• 0:47
  barely the size of our hands, right?
• 0:49
  But when it's time to impress a mate,
• 0:52
  he goes full bancy with fins.
• 0:54
  For seven to nine days straight,
• 0:56
  he's flapping his little body along the sea floor
• 0:58
  and carves this huge circle about two meters wide
• 1:03
  with precise mountains and grooves on the outer ring
• 1:06
  and this messy, beautiful mace pattern in the center.
• 1:11
  Then he decorates it with shells and little coral bits
• 1:13
  because apparently even fish know details matter.
• 1:18
  If a female likes the architecture,
• 1:20
  she drops into the center, lays her eggs,
• 1:22
  and he guards them until they hatch.
• 1:24
  If she doesn't, tough.
• 1:27
  All that work becomes underwater dust.
• 1:30
  He doesn't reuse the circle.
• 1:33
  Instead, he builds a new one.
• 1:35
  Here's the part that should mess with your head.
• 1:38
  Divers didn't start seeing these sand circles
• 1:41
  until recently, like 20th century recently.
• 1:45
  Imagine how long the planet has been around.
• 1:48
  All the hundreds of thousands of years of human history
• 1:51
  and we just last century discovered these things,
• 1:55
  the circles, everyone's like, what is this aliens?
• 1:58
  A secret military test, Poseidon's etch a sketch?
• 2:02
  Nobody knew who or what was making them.
• 2:06
  In fact, it took until like 2013 for researchers
• 2:09
  to finally catch the pufferfish in the act
• 2:13
  and realize, oh, this little white spotted pufferfish
• 2:17
  is working his ass off.
• 2:19
  Cool.
• 2:20
  So for years, centuries.
• 2:23
  This little fishy was down there quietly making
• 2:26
  the most elaborate thirst traps in the ocean
• 2:29
  while humans treated them like exfiles b-roll.
• 2:34
  Tell me that doesn't feel like podcasting.
• 2:36
  You sit there, obsessing over your show format.
• 2:44
  You re-record the same intro six times
• 2:47
  because take three had better energy
• 2:48
  but take five had the cleaner mic.
• 2:51
  Been there done that, especially back in my radio days.
• 2:54
  You spend an hour hunting for a clean pull quote
• 2:56
  from your guest, then 40 minutes trying to write a description
• 2:59
  that doesn't sound like chat GBT on Nyquil.
• 3:02
  Seven and nine days for one circle, one episode.
• 3:07
  And then you finally hit publish and boom,
• 3:11
  four downloads.
• 3:12
  Two of them are probably you checking the feet.
• 3:14
  I've been there and still am there sometimes.
• 3:17
  I've got a very niche show.
• 3:19
  It's a podcast about podcasting for crying out loud.
• 3:23
  In the algorithm, it does not send flowers.
• 3:27
  Trust me.
• 3:28
  Here's the question.
• 3:30
  Are you okay with being the pufferfish?
• 3:33
  Because that fish is not building for cloud.
• 3:36
  He's not thinking, yo, I hope the discovery channel
• 3:38
  finds this and David Attenborough calls me
• 3:40
  nature's greatest artist.
• 3:42
  Even though yes, David actually did say that
• 3:45
  about the pufferfish.
• 3:47
  He builds the circle because that's what he does.
• 3:50
  That is his identity when it's mating season.
• 3:53
  I am the thing that makes art in the sand
• 3:56
  or I don't exist.
• 3:59
  You as a podcaster have been sold this idea
• 4:02
  that preparation is a growth hack.
• 4:04
  Do this kind of research and you'll land bigger guests.
• 4:08
  Script this way and your retention graph will suddenly
• 4:11
  look like a plateau instead of a ski slope.
• 4:13
  Learn these five hooks and you too
• 4:17
  can be the Mr. Beast of B to B.
• 4:20
  Nope, preparation is not a gimmick.
• 4:24
  It's the circle you carve that most people
• 4:26
  will never see you carving.
• 4:28
  Think about the pufferfish.
• 4:31
  He does not know if any female is gonna swim by this week.
• 4:36
  He does not know that some diver with an underwater camera
• 4:39
  is gonna finally give him credit instead of underwater aliens.
• 4:42
  He just moves in, outward, inward, ridges, valleys,
• 4:48
  center maze, shells, repeat.
• 4:51
  You are in the same place.
• 4:54
  You don't know if the episode you're outlining
• 4:56
  at 11.45 on a Tuesday night is the one
• 4:59
  that finally lands in the ears of the exact person
• 5:02
  who changes your life.
• 5:04
  You don't know if the series you're planning right now
• 5:06
  is gonna be archived in somebody's top 10 podcasts
• 5:10
  that save my career blog post five years from now.
• 5:13
  You're just here.
• 5:15
  Well, they're technically moving sand.
• 5:18
  And I can hear the pushback already, Freddy.
• 5:21
  If nobody's listening, why bother going that hard?
• 5:23
  Why not just wing it and find my voice?
• 5:26
  All right.
• 5:28
  Okay, fine.
• 5:29
  Try this thought experiment though.
• 5:32
  Imagine the diver's notice.
• 5:33
  Perfect symmetrical circles in the sand.
• 5:35
  And then next to them,
• 5:36
  weird half circles that look like a Roomba got drunk
• 5:39
  and gave up.
• 5:40
  Who are you respecting more?
• 5:42
  The artist or the quitter?
• 5:44
  Well, I can tell you, your listeners
• 5:47
  are gonna feel the same way.
• 5:49
  They can't always articulate it,
• 5:51
  but they can feel the difference between a host
• 5:52
  who preps, sharpens, cuts, loves, sets, steaks,
• 5:55
  and a host who shows up like, yeah,
• 5:58
  let's just chat and see where it goes.
• 6:01
  One is a mating circle.
• 6:02
  The other is just sand.
• 6:09
  So what does this look like in practice?
• 6:12
  Let's land this in your world.
• 6:15
  Pick one ridge.
• 6:17
  One detail in your process.
• 6:19
  You will obsess over for seven to nine days.
• 6:22
  Maybe it's your intros.
• 6:24
  You script, punch up, and rehearse them
• 6:26
  until they actually sound like a human with an opinion.
• 6:29
  Maybe it's your questions.
• 6:31
  Your research or next guest so deeply,
• 6:33
  you know which story they told on three other shows
• 6:36
  and you deliberately do not ask about it.
• 6:40
  Maybe it's your sound.
• 6:42
  You finally stop recording next to the leaf blower
• 6:45
  and learn how to get clean, gain staging
• 6:47
  so you don't sound like a hostage on a conference call.
• 6:50
  You're not doing this because this will make me go viral.
• 6:54
  No, no, no, no, you're doing it
• 6:56
  because you were the kind of creator
• 6:57
  who leaves mandalas in the dark when nobody is watching.
• 7:01
  And when later, the right people finally
• 7:04
  connect the art to the artist.
• 7:06
  They should feel a little guilty.
• 7:07
  They didn't notice you sooner.
• 7:10
  So here's your challenge for the week.
• 7:12
  Be a pufferfish.
• 7:14
  Decide what your circle is.
• 7:16
  The thing you're making that almost no one will ever see you make
• 7:19
  and commit to seven to nine days of unreasonable effort there.
• 7:24
  No shortcuts, no good enough
• 7:27
  because the ocean doesn't clap
• 7:30
  and the algorithm certainly doesn't clap either.
• 7:33
  But when the right listener finds your circle,
• 7:35
  they're going to know exactly what kind of animal made it.
• 7:39
  If you know another podcast host who needs to hear this,
• 7:42
  please share because mom always said sharing is caring.
• 7:45
  So do it. Don't be stingy.
• 7:48
  Thanks for listening.