Latest / Your Mic / Build the Podcast Nobody Asked For

Transcript

Build the Podcast Nobody Asked For · Your Mic

• 0:00
  A record label handed a band $1 million, straight cash, homie, late 80s money, and they said,
• 0:10
  start over. The band said, no. The album was kick, six times platinum, four monster singles,
• 0:19
  and a permanent place in the soundtrack of the late 80s playlist. My name is Freddie Cruz,
• 0:24
  this is your mic. And this is not a story about playing it safe for your audience. This is a story
• 0:31
  about what happens when you believe in your work more than the people holding the checkbook.
• 0:42
  Let's rewind. I was a suburban Houston kid the first time in excess hit me.
• 0:47
  I don't remember what the commercial was selling. I just remember Michael Hutchins voice
• 0:51
  cutting through whatever I was doing. New sensation. I loved that song. I love the whole album kick.
• 0:58
  It really is a classic sports promos movie trailers. New sensation was the kind of song that makes
• 1:05
  the entire room feel taller for three and a half minutes. And then, oh man, never tear us apart.
• 1:11
  Remember that one? It showed up with that saxophone line and my entire nervous system was like,
• 1:17
  Michael Hutchins never knew I existed, but he rewired me. Sadly, he died at 37.
• 1:24
  November 22nd, 1997. We'll never know what the next 37 years of songs would have sounded like,
• 1:30
  but here's the part that really, really messes with me. Kick almost didn't happen the way we know it.
• 1:39
  They finished the record. They were sure of it. Their manager, Chris Murphy. He flew to New York.
• 1:45
  He sat down with Atlantic records. He played the whole thing front to back. The label listened.
• 1:50
  They nodded. They took it all in. And then what did those guys do? They rejected it.
• 1:56
  Too funky for rock. Too rock for pop. They didn't know where to put it. So they did what execs do.
• 2:05
  They offered money to sand the edges off. A million dollar do over. Here's a check.
• 2:13
  Make something more marketable. In excess, they said no. No disrespect. No tantrum just
• 2:20
  we know what this is and we're not rebuilding it from scratch because you're nervous.
• 2:24
  And that's the part that has a 50 year old really lodged in my brain and would not leave.
• 2:30
  How do you say no to a million dollars? Not out of ego, not out of delusion, but out of a very
• 2:37
  specific, very rare kind of knowing. Not I hope. Not I have a good feeling. I know.
• 2:49
  Now a quick disclaimer before this turns into something it isn't. I'm not a motivational speaker.
• 2:55
  There's no fog machine in here. It's Saturday afternoon at the time of this recording.
• 3:00
  I am alone in my office evolution studio. I am not your guru. I'm just a clumsy business
• 3:07
  builder who grew up in the corporate world. Learn how to play nice in meetings and then decided
• 3:11
  late in the game. 46 to be exact that he'd rather be in the garage stack and bricks wrong
• 3:17
  that in the boardroom stacking decks right. I spent 25 plus years inside institutional media.
• 3:24
  Two times my previous employer won Marconia Awards. 17,000 plus hours on the radio mid days
• 3:31
  afternoons, overnight shifts when the only people listening were insomniacs and bartenders
• 3:36
  on their way home from work. I hosted a Sunday morning public affairs show I loved way more than
• 3:41
  the people down the hallway did. I did the whole company man thing and I learned exactly how fast
• 3:47
  your voice can disappear when somebody in a glass office decides the format needs to change.
• 3:54
  Speak podcasting. The company I run now was never supposed to exist. On paper it still doesn't
• 4:03
  make sense. It just doesn't. It's like a long never ending dream. I walked away from the machine
• 4:10
  and started a podcast shop in a city full of bigger agencies with bigger teams nicer conferences
• 4:15
  and even bigger and nicer budgets. And here's the part nobody puts on their website. They're basically
• 4:22
  no metrics. None. This is not the part of the story where I tell you I went out on my own
• 4:28
  and immediately crushed it. This is the zero view to download chapter. The one where you post
• 4:37
  a clip you bled over and the only engagement is a comment from a spam account promising to
• 4:41
  grow your podcast to 10k a month bro. I'm ignore the numbers not because I'm above them
• 4:50
  but because there aren't any. There's no satisfying graph training up into the right. There's
• 4:56
  just me a mic some clients I love working with and a blank board that doesn't care how accomplished
• 5:04
  my resume used to be. People talk about not chasing metrics after they've gone viral.
• 5:14
  I'm not chasing metrics because well there's not really anything to chase yet. At least not in the
• 5:21
  life of this podcast it's a small dedicated audience so I had to decide what I'm actually doing here
• 5:29
  and this is the sentence that keeps coming back to me. I'm not serving a market. I'm building a
• 5:35
  body of work. One that exists even if there were no metrics conveniently they're kind of sort of
• 5:44
  been not really metrics so this is like the perfect lab because I love talking about this kind
• 5:50
  of stuff. That's my million dollar offer on the table not from a label but from that voice in my
• 5:55
  head that sounds like every cautious executive I've ever worked for. Hey Freddie maybe wait the
• 6:01
  part of me that picked up a sax because a stranger's voice on TV made the room tilt. He has
• 6:07
  zero interest in market research. That kid doesn't know the word niche. He just knows I need to play
• 6:16
  that. That is who's running the show now. You see in excess had Atlantic charts history and
• 6:25
  expertise stacked in front of them and they walked away with one asset. We know what this is.
• 6:32
  That's the only asset I have that actually matters right now in this part of my journey. I know
• 6:38
  why I'm doing this. I know what it feels like to rely on institutional media to hand you a mic. I
• 6:43
  know what it feels like to have 20 plus years and two Marconis behind you and still feel like a
• 6:48
  tip. 120% pay cut away from irrelevant. Speak podcasting in your mic. Well they my friend are my
• 6:58
  quiet little act of revenge. Not against specific people against the entire idea that you and me
• 7:10
  that I have to wait for permission to talk. So I run my company like this. If I've got clients
• 7:15
  that release twice a week and I do shout out to the rows. Then at the very least I should be
• 7:22
  releasing two episodes of your mic every week. No exceptions. If they are in their 12 download
• 7:28
  era and still showing up. I don't get to vanish because my ego doesn't like being at the bottom
• 7:32
  of the chart. If I'm going to be asking other people to treat podcasting as an infinite game,
• 7:38
  I too have to play an infinite game even when it's not fun because anything less is malpractice.
• 7:49
  Not business malpractice. Soul malpractice. And I don't say that as a coach. I'm not a coach.
• 7:59
  I'm not a guru. I'm not a motivational speaker. I already won over this. I say it as a guy who knows
• 8:05
  exactly how tempting it is to cash the metaphorical million dollar check and start sanding off
• 8:12
  anything that might make somebody upstairs or down the hall nervous. Sometimes it doesn't feel heroic.
• 8:20
  It feels like work, especially when you look at the dashboard,
• 8:24
  outline, record, stumble, edit, second guess, everything I've done, upload, reluctantly.
• 8:32
  Watch the stats do very little rinse, repeat. Some days it's a burn to the ego.
• 8:43
  Some days I question whether anybody needs another middle aged dude with a mic and strong
• 8:47
  opinions about podcasting. But underneath the noise is that same stubborn slightly unhinged
• 8:53
  conviction. I would be making this even if nobody showed up. Because for 26 years,
• 9:03
  I lived in a world where the answer to, can I say this? Depended on ad buyers and ratings books
• 9:09
  and format clocks. This, this right here is the first time in my adult life where the only person
• 9:17
  who can pull the plug on my voice is me. And to me, that is worth so much. The answer is no.
• 9:27
  I'm not serving a market. I mean, you could say I am. I tell you no. I'm not. I am building a
• 9:33
  library of work so far well over 100 episodes that would exist. Even if there were no analytics
• 9:40
  dashboards, no charts, no viral clips, no bot farms offering me fake listeners, I am making
• 9:47
  the record I can live with. Not the one that tests well in a conference room or that you see
• 9:52
  LinkedIn bros post about. And if you're somewhere in your own zero view to download era,
• 9:59
  quietly certain that what you're making is real enough, though the world isn't clapping yet,
• 10:04
  then maybe this episode was for you. Or maybe like me, you just needed to say it out loud,
• 10:12
  so you couldn't weasel out later. Hey, look, if you're a clumsy business builder like me or
• 10:19
  an executive with a nonprofit or what have you, and you're trying to make something that would
• 10:23
  still be worth doing with no metrics and no applause, I see you. Even if the charts don't yet,
• 10:31
  and if you want to chant podcasting, please reach out. Freddie at speakpodcasting.com. That's
• 10:38
  Freddie with a Y at S P E K E podcasting dot com. The gates are not closed anymore. You don't need
• 10:46
  a million dollar permission slip. All you need is your mic. So use it already.