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Your Podcast's Audience has Not Earned Every Version of You · Your Mic

• 0:00
  I don't like to assume, but I will assume this.
• 0:03
  I will assume that every podcast host has at least three voices.
• 0:09
  One for their audience, one for the family, and one they'd never let either of them hear.
• 0:15
  And that's not a flaw in strategy.
• 0:18
  It's just how humans survive.
• 0:21
  And any podcast host bragging about having no filter, about just saying whatever's on their mind into the mic, is lying.
• 0:28
  Yeah.
• 0:29
  usually to themselves first.
• 0:32
  During this episode, we're talking about which mask actually belongs on your show and which one belongs nowhere near a Shure SM7B.
• 0:47
  Welcome back to Your Mic.
• 0:48
  My name is Freddy Cruz, founder of Speak Podcasting.
• 0:51
  And if having a show is something you've been wanting to explore, check out speakpodcasting.com slash free resources and grab the official Speak Podcasting roadmap.
• 1:03
  And here's the podcast problem we're going to try and solve today right out the gate.
• 1:08
  There's a version of authenticity going around this industry, mostly learned from a LinkedIn carousel that says the rawer and more unfiltered you are on the mic, the more your audience will trust you.
• 1:25
  Bleed on the page.
• 1:26
  Show the words.
• 1:28
  Don't just perform.
• 1:31
  Fine.
• 1:32
  Up to a point.
• 1:34
  I guess that's okay, but every host I talk to eventually asks me the same question in different words.
• 1:40
  How honest is too honest?
• 1:43
  How much of the real me actually belongs on this show?
• 1:47
  That's what we're going to answer today.
• 1:49
  And Halloween is going to help us get there.
• 2:03
  Everybody assumes the Halloween costume started at a masquerade ball.
• 2:08
  Rich people, velvet capes, that kind of thing.
• 2:13
  It didn't.
• 2:14
  It started with the Celts over 2,000 years ago during a festival.
• 2:19
  I hope I'm not butchering the name.
• 2:21
  Samhain.
• 2:23
  S-A-M-H-A-I-N. Samhain.
• 2:26
  They believed that one night a year, the wall between the living and the dead got thin enough to walk through.
• 2:33
  So people disguised themselves.
• 2:35
  Animal skins, ash on the face, anything that would make a wandering spirit
• 2:43
  not one of the living, move along.
• 2:47
  The mask was not about becoming more interesting.
• 2:50
  The mask was about hiding who you actually were from something that could actually harm you if it found you.
• 2:59
  And that's the part that matters for your show.
• 3:01
  The original mask was protective, not decorative.
• 3:05
  Now, if you know me well enough, you know that Robert Greene is one of my favorite writers.
• 3:10
  He's got a whole law on this in one of my favorite all-time books, The Laws of Human Nature.
• 3:16
  And it's called The Law of Role Playing.
• 3:20
  His argument...
• 3:21
  Everybody wears a social mask, a managed performance built to project the version of yourself other people can accept.
• 3:29
  He traces it back to the word itself.
• 3:32
  Personality comes from the Latin persona.
• 3:36
  Persona means mask.
• 3:40
  Sit with that for a second, then bring it back to your feet.
• 3:44
  Okay?
• 3:45
  The word we use for somebody actually is at its root means the thing they're hiding behind.
• 3:55
  Green is not saying masks are dishonest.
• 3:58
  He's saying pretending you don't wear one is either naive or a lie.
• 4:04
  Full unfiltered honesty all the time to everyone is definitely not a personality trait.
• 4:10
  On a podcast, it's a liability with a release schedule.
• 4:15
  And here's the question that actually matters for your next recording sesh.
• 4:19
  Are you being vulnerable or are you just being specific in ways that are going to cost you something you need?
• 4:26
  If you go on your show and describe in identifiable detail the exact internal conflict with a specific team member, that is not authenticity.
• 4:37
  That's a resignation letter you did not mean to write and now it's public, timestamped, and searchable.
• 4:44
  If you tell your audience you woke up at 5.30 with anxiety because a client deliverable wasn't done until 2 in the morning, ask who that actually serves.
• 4:54
  Does your ideal listener need that specific confession?
• 4:59
  Or do they need the lesson sitting underneath it without you handing a stranger the keys to your worst morning?
• 5:07
  And there's a real difference between showing the guts, or as Evan Carmichael would say, showing the warts and showing all the insides.
• 5:17
  Because you can be honest about struggle without narrating the autopsy.
• 5:22
  You can say the business is hard without naming who almost quit because of you.
• 5:27
  You can absolutely admit fear without handing your competitors, your team, or your future clients a transcript of your worst week.
• 5:36
  The mask used correctly on a podcast is definitely not dishonesty.
• 5:43
  We're not asking you to lie.
• 5:46
  It's called editing.
• 5:48
  It's knowing which parts of the truth serve the person listening, in which parts just serve your own need to be seen struggling in public.
• 6:06
  I'll go first because that's the deal on this show.
• 6:11
  I wear a mask.
• 6:12
  I do.
• 6:13
  Multiple ones.
• 6:15
  I wear a mask in front of my wife.
• 6:17
  I wear one in front of my daughters, a different one in front of clients, a different one in front of strangers.
• 6:23
  None of that is me being fake with any of them.
• 6:26
  It's me understanding that different relationships require different volumes of honesty delivered with different amounts of context that only certain people have earned.
• 6:38
  Have you tried talking about your business and your hardest days to somebody who is not even 21?
• 6:46
  There you go.
• 6:47
  Now, your podcast audience is one relationship among many.
• 6:53
  They have not yet earned every mask you own.
• 6:56
  They earned the one built for them.
• 6:59
  So this week, I want you to go back to your last three episodes.
• 7:02
  Find the moment where you were most raw.
• 7:07
  Ask yourself truthfully,
• 7:09
  Did that serve my listener or did it just feel good to say out loud?
• 7:15
  If the answer is the second one, fine.
• 7:18
  Just don't call it strategy.
• 7:19
  Call it what it was.
• 7:21
  Next time, decide on purpose which mask the mic needs.
• 7:25
  The way you decide anything else about your show.
• 7:29
  And if you want some help figuring out which version of your story belongs on the show, you can always hit me up.
• 7:36
  Freddie at SpeakPodcasting.com This is your mic.
• 7:40
  Keep it hot.
• 7:41
  Keep the mask on purpose and save the unfiltered version for the people who have actually earned it.
• 7:48
  Thank you so much for listening.