Creating Content that Resonates with Jay Acunzo

Hector: 00:00:00

MYP fam what's going on.

Hector: 00:00:02

My name is Hector Santistevan.

Hector: 00:00:04

I am your host and I get way too geeked up about creating amazing podcasts that

Hector: 00:00:09

can fuel your lifestyle and your business.

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And I've been producing and promoting podcasts for almost a half decade now.

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And this show is to help you learn the things that do and

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do not work when it comes to marketing and monetizing your post.

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And my guest today is Jay Kenzo.

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And he's the host of unthinkable and a creator who has done exactly

Hector: 00:00:27

what we were just talking about.

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He spent the last several years, creating amazing podcasts, living in

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an awesome lifestyle and building a successful business all alongside it.

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And this interview talks about some of the realities that come along with

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being a creator and how he's been able to navigate some of the challenges

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that a ton of podcasters face.

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And I think that you're going to be surprised when you hear what his best

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tip for growing his show is, but enough rambling for me, let's get into today's

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interview with Jay Kenzo host of one.

Hector: 00:01:02

All right.

Hector: 00:01:03

MYP fam.

Hector: 00:01:04

Welcome Jay Kenzo to the show, Jay.

Hector: 00:01:06

Thanks for joining us..

Jay: 00:01:07

Thanks for having me.

Hector: 00:01:08

Jay, your show is the unthinkable show.

Hector: 00:01:10

And I'd love for you to give us the Well, first off, I love that it's a

Hector: 00:01:14

show and a lot of people, I think, think of their podcast is just a

Hector: 00:01:17

podcast, but I love that you put that in the title, that it is a show.

Hector: 00:01:21

And so I'd love to hear eventually, if that's a part of it, if you think of it

Hector: 00:01:24

as something more than just a podcast, catch us up on the show, how it got

Hector: 00:01:27

here, you can share whatever you think is relevant, but you're killing it.

Hector: 00:01:31

You're crushing it.

Hector: 00:01:32

So, give us the backstory.

Jay: 00:01:33

Thanks.

Jay: 00:01:34

Every day is a struggle.

Jay: 00:01:35

So let's, we can dive into the crushing and killing part cause I I'm here now

Jay: 00:01:39

and I thought once I got here where I'm at, it would be a lot easier.

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It turns out.

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Nope, I'm just here now.

Jay: 00:01:43

Cool.

Jay: 00:01:43

What's next?

Jay: 00:01:43

A lot of hard.

Jay: 00:01:44

So let's just pause there.

Jay: 00:01:45

Yeah.

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The name of the show is just unthinkable and the Twitter handles

Jay: 00:01:48

on thinkable show, but started in 2016, I was working for a venture

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capital firm as their VP of content, running a show for their brand too.

Jay: 00:01:55

And I just wanted my own personal laboratory for creativity.

Jay: 00:01:59

And at the time being in marketing specifically content marketing, there

Jay: 00:02:03

was a lot of commodity stuff because it's going to sound a lot like today.

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Honestly, there's just a lot of junk content being published in high

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volumes from brands and individuals.

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And, I always wished that this phrase, content marketing, word content never

Jay: 00:02:16

got its to, it was always about the marketing of content, not creating

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something worth marketing, right?

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The goal is not to grow followers.

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It's to create something worth following

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it's like it's actually, that's not the goal.

Jay: 00:02:25

The goal is to serve people better and out pops, whatever metric you're looking at.

Jay: 00:02:30

I wanted to create a show which questioned best practices specific then to marketing.

Jay: 00:02:35

And so I started telling all these stories and doing these like high

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production, narrative style episodes with multiple voices and sound design

Jay: 00:02:42

and music, again, trying to treat it like my personal laboratory.

Jay: 00:02:46

And over the years, as I talked to my audience, it kind of moved around.

Jay: 00:02:49

It was like, well, you're an accountant.

Jay: 00:02:51

Why are you listening to a show?

Jay: 00:02:52

That's about marketing.

Jay: 00:02:53

Oh, because you're, disillusioned by best practices.

Jay: 00:02:55

Okay.

Jay: 00:02:55

I see.

Jay: 00:02:56

Maybe that is truly the thrust of the show, but not applied to

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marketing, applied to the business world, applied to our careers.

Jay: 00:03:01

Two and a half years later, I wrote a book called break the wheel using

Jay: 00:03:04

a lot of the material from the show.

Jay: 00:03:06

And a lot of what I learned that was about questioning best practices

Jay: 00:03:09

and all the problems there.

Jay: 00:03:11

Uh, The problems with best practices that is.

Jay: 00:03:12

And so that's been the show for quite a while.

Jay: 00:03:14

We sorta take a problem, take a big theme or big question that Google

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can't answer and launch like a year's long investigation publicly.

Jay: 00:03:21

And instead of having it be really tactical, how to it's very story-driven

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show as a way of sort of being a Trojan horse, where in the moments where

Jay: 00:03:29

you need inspiration or you feel like listening to something interesting

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or uplifting or a story that helps you think critically about the world.

Jay: 00:03:35

You know, I like to say I'm doing my best Anthony Bordain impression and my world

Jay: 00:03:38

and my style when you need nuance and to weight into the messiness of your work.

Jay: 00:03:43

And you'd like to elevate that.

Jay: 00:03:45

Well, a tip, a trick, a hack, a cheat.

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That's not going to cut it anymore.

Jay: 00:03:48

So let me use this story as a Trojan horse, where you feel entertained, you

Jay: 00:03:51

feel inspired, you feel your fields, but buried in that are important

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insights or moments or space that lets you think critically about

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what you're doing with your work.

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That you can maybe shift your perspective and see the world better, which means

Jay: 00:04:02

the next time you go to ship anything, you're going to show up better.

Jay: 00:04:05

And so that's currently how the show runs.

Jay: 00:04:07

I mentioned questioning best practices today.

Jay: 00:04:08

We're exploring something else which is resonance.

Jay: 00:04:11

Everyone's obsessed with reach.

Jay: 00:04:12

I get it.

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But residents is it.

Jay: 00:04:14

Resonance is what matters.

Jay: 00:04:16

Reaches a proxy, reaches a first step.

Jay: 00:04:18

It doesn't matter how many people know you exist.

Jay: 00:04:19

If they don't care, how do you create things people care about

Jay: 00:04:22

and also that you care about?

Jay: 00:04:23

I have no idea.

Jay: 00:04:24

Let's go exploring.

Jay: 00:04:25

Let's go exploring residents and maybe a book comes out of that too.

Hector: 00:04:28

Yeah, what's interesting is the more that I've done this show, and I

Hector: 00:04:31

started out being a tactics driven show.

Hector: 00:04:34

I've realized that the real way to grow a show is just to create a better show.

Hector: 00:04:38

unfortunately, I've just had to find lots of ways to say that and make that sexy.

Hector: 00:04:42

So I want to come back to this resonance thing, but what I really enjoyed

Hector: 00:04:44

about your show is you mentioned the high production of it, and

Hector: 00:04:47

it is an audio experience and it's an hour long audio experience.

Hector: 00:04:51

You do some shorter kind of, rants that are, more akin to what most

Hector: 00:04:55

people from the business world might put together for their podcasts.

Hector: 00:04:58

But I'd love for you to take us back to why you decided to put all of this

Hector: 00:05:03

focus on the production aspect of it.

Hector: 00:05:05

And, how you handled that?

Hector: 00:05:06

Did you learn the sound design and kind of figure out how to do all this editing?

Hector: 00:05:10

Was it an outsourcing thing why did you decide to do that?

Hector: 00:05:13

And then how did you actually make that happen?

Jay: 00:05:15

The show is really a Testament to what I think most of the creative world

Jay: 00:05:19

needs to hear in many ways, which is it's a practice it's trial and error.

Jay: 00:05:23

You know, You talk to some of the world's best and Some of them have

Jay: 00:05:25

formal training, but none of them have formal training and no practice.

Jay: 00:05:30

And they're successful.

Jay: 00:05:31

At some point you've got to muck around, you got to make mistakes,

Jay: 00:05:33

you've got to learn on your own.

Jay: 00:05:34

And so I think I'm fortunate in that.

Jay: 00:05:37

A lot of privilege in my life.

Jay: 00:05:38

And a lot of supporting people in my life who gave me the confidence to say

Jay: 00:05:42

that thing I love from someone I admire.

Jay: 00:05:44

Yeah.

Jay: 00:05:44

I want to make that instead of, oh, I could never write that's delusional, but

Jay: 00:05:48

I think it's a useful form of delusion that, that creative people can harness

Jay: 00:05:52

to say, I understand what great work.

Jay: 00:05:54

But my skills do not allow me to bring it forth quite yet.

Jay: 00:05:57

At least not to match what's in my head.

Jay: 00:05:59

I read glass famously called this the gap.

Jay: 00:06:01

There's a gap between your taste and your skills.

Jay: 00:06:04

And the only way to close that gap is to do a lot of work.

Jay: 00:06:06

So like the sound design.

Jay: 00:06:08

it's still pretty crude in some instances.

Jay: 00:06:10

And I look back and I cringe at recent episodes, but for the most

Jay: 00:06:12

part, when I go way back in the catalog, I'm like this Was a blunt

Jay: 00:06:16

instrument approach to adding music.

Jay: 00:06:18

It was like me trying to prove to the world, look, we have

Jay: 00:06:20

music, I have sound design.

Jay: 00:06:21

I have production value.

Jay: 00:06:22

It wasn't a tactful artful enhancing

Jay: 00:06:25

well, Form of using music or sound.

Jay: 00:06:28

And so how do you get better game tape?

Jay: 00:06:30

You do a thing, you consume it as your audience might.

Jay: 00:06:33

I love going for a walk and in equal ways, celebrating the fact that I

Jay: 00:06:36

made a thing and I wanted it to exist.

Jay: 00:06:38

And now it does.

Jay: 00:06:39

And also critiquing that thing and figuring out where do I get

Jay: 00:06:41

bored or what sounded too cringy?

Jay: 00:06:44

Where did I hit somebody over the nose?

Jay: 00:06:45

A little bit too much.

Jay: 00:06:46

It's like somebody said something sad and I played somber music.

Jay: 00:06:49

Was that appropriate or not?

Jay: 00:06:50

So it's just.

Jay: 00:06:52

Extrapolated out over a long period of time.

Jay: 00:06:54

So I think it's those two things.

Jay: 00:06:55

And I think we need to embrace that tiny little incremental

Jay: 00:06:58

improvements, episode to episode or rep to rep whatever you're creating

Jay: 00:07:02

extrapolated out over lots of time.

Jay: 00:07:04

That to me is how creative people get better.

Jay: 00:07:07

And I have miles to go.

Jay: 00:07:09

I mean, I am not even in the territory I want to be in, but I am definitely

Jay: 00:07:13

not in the territory I started in.

Jay: 00:07:15

And it's just one step after another.

Jay: 00:07:16

That's it?

Jay: 00:07:17

There's no.

Hector: 00:07:18

Was there a moment where you realized that it could go anyway, either

Hector: 00:07:23

where you realize that you had come a long way with regards to sound design

Hector: 00:07:27

so many people they interview someone, maybe they do some basic leveling with

Hector: 00:07:31

audio and they throw it up on there.

Hector: 00:07:33

But.

Hector: 00:07:33

Adding sound effects or adding these different things.

Hector: 00:07:36

Was there a moment where you go like, oh, this is kind of cool or, wow.

Hector: 00:07:39

I really have to learn, because I'm not where I need to be.

Jay: 00:07:42

I think it's when I started thinking in sound or thinking in aural, I mean,

Jay: 00:07:47

a U R a L moments instead of voice.

Jay: 00:07:51

I'll give you an example.

Jay: 00:07:51

We did an episode called gravy, which is about actually a beer brewery in

Jay: 00:07:56

Vermont called the Alchemist brewery.

Jay: 00:07:57

And they have a very famous IPA called heady topper.

Jay: 00:08:00

At least if you're in new England, like I am, it's very famous here, heady

Jay: 00:08:03

topper, and they experienced quite a bit of tragedy as a business . Their brew

Jay: 00:08:06

pub totally flooded in a freak storm.

Jay: 00:08:09

There's no floods in their area of Vermont and it happened to them.

Jay: 00:08:11

And I thought to myself, like if this were a movie or a TV show, like it'd be kind

Jay: 00:08:16

of cool to have a black screen for a time.

Jay: 00:08:18

And you hear the sounds of the storm.

Jay: 00:08:21

Then you hear sounds of like things crashing and breaking, and then you hear

Jay: 00:08:25

like some music kind of come in and it starts ominous and then it fades out.

Jay: 00:08:29

And what you start hearing before you see any visuals are birds chirping,

Jay: 00:08:33

almost like to suggest, the dawning of a new day and the sun coming out.

Jay: 00:08:37

And my first words I remember as a narrator were something

Jay: 00:08:39

like it's weird, isn't it?

Jay: 00:08:41

The morning after a bad storm can seem really nice.

Jay: 00:08:45

Like last night, a portal to another time, just opened up and dumped out a bunch

Jay: 00:08:49

of debris and broken branches and stuff.

Jay: 00:08:52

And it doesn't quite match the feeling you have walking out into that sunny day.

Jay: 00:08:56

Like the destruction.

Jay: 00:08:57

Yeah.

Jay: 00:08:57

Because I wanted to create that dichotomy of like this isn't a revered brand in

Jay: 00:09:01

their space and they have passionate fans.

Jay: 00:09:03

It seems like it's going well.

Jay: 00:09:04

They had such a terrible moment and like, let me mess with that tension a

Jay: 00:09:08

little bit, but through sound instead of just my voice and my voice will come up.

Jay: 00:09:11

And that episode was years ago and I've repurposed it so people can

Jay: 00:09:14

find it not too buried in the feed.

Jay: 00:09:16

And it was that moment.

Jay: 00:09:17

I feel like that kind of defines the difference between me being like

Jay: 00:09:20

a soundboard operator on a morning show with like the cheap sound

Jay: 00:09:23

effects, like a car horn beeping or something, or a duck quacking.

Jay: 00:09:27

And me trying to actually like use sound and music to help tell the story.

Hector: 00:09:32

Yeah, it seems that I'm drawn to podcasts and audio because I never had

Hector: 00:09:37

the face of the good looks for Instagram.

Hector: 00:09:39

So always eliminated a medium or an obstacle.

Hector: 00:09:43

Right?

Hector: 00:09:43

I think one of the guys from Radiolab, he said at podcast movement

Hector: 00:09:46

the other day that like, that's your job to put that together.

Hector: 00:09:49

The listener's job is to create that image.

Hector: 00:09:51

But what you're saying, and what I'm hearing is that outside of voice.

Hector: 00:09:54

That's one tool.

Hector: 00:09:55

That's one element that you can use, but within sound, you can use

Hector: 00:09:58

music, you can use sound effects, you can use these different things

Hector: 00:10:01

to heighten or enhance the experience that you're trying to give to your.

Jay: 00:10:05

Yeah.

Jay: 00:10:05

A lot of people, they take sound and music and they treat it like chocolate drizzled

Jay: 00:10:10

onto whatever it is they're making.

Jay: 00:10:12

And sometimes chocolate does not add anything to this other times.

Jay: 00:10:16

It's a great addition, but if what you're drizzling onto Is crap.

Jay: 00:10:20

You just have some chocolate he crap, and this is what I did early on.

Jay: 00:10:23

It's like, I wanted you to know unlike all the business shows that I compete

Jay: 00:10:26

with, or you might categorize me like people understand genre, right?

Jay: 00:10:29

So it's like, unlike the genre that I occupy expect something different,

Jay: 00:10:32

hopefully that means better to the listeners I'm trying to serve.

Jay: 00:10:34

And I was trying to just basically tell them that, albeit I didn't

Jay: 00:10:37

say It out loud, but that's really what's coming through.

Jay: 00:10:40

When I listened back to like early sound designer.

Jay: 00:10:42

But also what was coming through was like the intention was

Jay: 00:10:44

to get to where I'm at today.

Jay: 00:10:46

But my current intention is to get to where I want to

Jay: 00:10:48

be, in six years from now.

Jay: 00:10:49

So it's a constant process.

Jay: 00:10:51

And I've had the good fortune of interviewing and chatting with some

Jay: 00:10:54

really, really good sound designers, like folks that have done stuff for like 99%

Jay: 00:10:58

invisible and, shows of that caliber.

Jay: 00:11:00

They have some heuristics.

Jay: 00:11:02

A lot of it is just going to made up.

Jay: 00:11:03

Like I talked to James T.

Jay: 00:11:04

Green recently, and they have something called muxture muxture.

Jay: 00:11:07

Mux is the shorthand for music and production, mux and texture.

Jay: 00:11:12

So it's like a mixture music, texture.

Jay: 00:11:14

And they were explaining to me like some heuristics that have guided

Jay: 00:11:17

them through this sound design experiences over the years, but even

Jay: 00:11:21

James is it's profoundly feel and listening back and trying things on.

Jay: 00:11:25

It's like trying to get the right fit of clothing onto your body.

Jay: 00:11:28

The body is what you need to start with an understanding of what are you

Jay: 00:11:31

saying and why, what's the content?

Jay: 00:11:34

And then what you're trying on with the clothes.

Jay: 00:11:35

It has to fit somehow.

Jay: 00:11:37

And sometimes you've got to try on a bunch of shirts before you nail it.

Jay: 00:11:39

And sometimes you have an idea of your style and sometimes you don't.

Jay: 00:11:42

Right?

Jay: 00:11:42

So there's like a little bit that you can do before.

Jay: 00:11:43

But a lot of it is you got to put on the clothes and people do is they wear

Jay: 00:11:46

cartoonish, outlandish Hawaiian shirts when it's not appropriate to do so.

Jay: 00:11:50

Like that's the addition of music and sound when maybe the

Jay: 00:11:53

story itself didn't warrant it, you don't necessarily know what.

Hector: 00:11:56

Yeah.

Hector: 00:11:57

It sound your main tool to effect that resonance that you're talking about.

Jay: 00:12:02

No.

Jay: 00:12:02

And I'm fascinated by the fact that we started this way

Jay: 00:12:04

and spent so much time on it.

Jay: 00:12:05

Cause I almost never talk about this publicly I mean, maybe

Jay: 00:12:07

it's a big piece of the show and the way people latch onto it.

Jay: 00:12:09

That's great.

Jay: 00:12:10

grateful . For me It's it's narration it's story.

Jay: 00:12:13

It's.

Jay: 00:12:14

And so the, like my shows are written.

Jay: 00:12:16

And a lot of the moments you're hearing me hopefully sound improv.

Jay: 00:12:19

There's some moments you're like, Jay's reading a script here, but there's some

Jay: 00:12:21

moments where I'm riffing and I'm either riffing off the script or the words

Jay: 00:12:24

themselves are being delivered like an actor would off, taking the script

Jay: 00:12:29

off the page and putting it publicly.

Jay: 00:12:31

So yeah, I think a lot of this is truly the story.

Jay: 00:12:33

It's actually the combination or interplay, I should say, between the.

Jay: 00:12:36

Not just the topics I'm exploring, but how like the hook, the Y the

Jay: 00:12:40

premise of the show, and then the story structure, like how I'm actually

Jay: 00:12:44

increasing tension or adding questions on your mind, and then resolving them.

Jay: 00:12:48

And then the undulation, the movement up and down of that tension, spiking tension

Jay: 00:12:52

relieving, simple stories revolve around one question or one moment of tension.

Jay: 00:12:56

No story means there is no tension, but complicated

Jay: 00:12:59

production has a lot of moments.

Hector: 00:13:00

I'd love to drill down into that because I found that.

Hector: 00:13:03

I do a lot of work in interview shows.

Hector: 00:13:05

And a lot of times, obviously mine is an interview show, but

Hector: 00:13:07

a lot of the production that I do is for interview shows and

Hector: 00:13:10

there hardest shows to both edit.

Hector: 00:13:12

And I would imagine listen to, are the ones that lack that story.

Hector: 00:13:16

And they lack that arc and they go all over.

Hector: 00:13:18

I've been working with our hosts to incorporate, or to at least

Hector: 00:13:21

have a sense of the story arc when they are doing interviewing.

Hector: 00:13:24

But how, can podcasters, who are maybe, they're doing interviews or they're using.

Hector: 00:13:30

How do they blend a story or, give this kind of arc that you talked about

Hector: 00:13:34

with a lot of times the conversation.

Jay: 00:13:35

Think of the most gripping conversations you've ever had.

Jay: 00:13:38

I mean, think of the most gripping interviews you've ever heard,

Jay: 00:13:40

like you're so immersed in it.

Jay: 00:13:41

And I think what people don't understand is like the structure to a great interview

Jay: 00:13:44

is not intro 40 minute interview outro.

Jay: 00:13:47

That's not a plan.

Jay: 00:13:48

That's not a structure.

Jay: 00:13:49

Nor is it walking into that 40 minutes with research.

Jay: 00:13:52

That's.

Jay: 00:13:52

Plan either.

Jay: 00:13:53

What is the arc?

Jay: 00:13:54

What is the flow?

Jay: 00:13:55

You'll hear great interviewers every so often say we're going

Jay: 00:13:57

to get to that in a little bit.

Jay: 00:13:58

It's like, oh, they have a plan where you hear them.

Jay: 00:14:01

Like, say like, that's the next section?

Jay: 00:14:02

Like, oh, they have sections.

Jay: 00:14:03

You don't know what's there every storyteller, whether it's implicit

Jay: 00:14:06

and by gut feel because they've done it or they're great at it.

Jay: 00:14:09

Or they've planted out every storyteller, interviewer, et cetera.

Jay: 00:14:12

Communicator has good structure and it's on us to get better

Jay: 00:14:15

too steal that structure.

Jay: 00:14:17

I call this performing an extraction, go to your favorite thing in the world.

Jay: 00:14:20

Doesn't matter if it's there or not.

Jay: 00:14:22

If it's segmented, like it's on the screen, like a sports talk

Jay: 00:14:25

show, they say, show you the segments, or it's hidden from view.

Jay: 00:14:28

It's one end to end interview or one end to end episode or story.

Jay: 00:14:31

Try to jot down in your notebook.

Jay: 00:14:33

Here's the timestamp of that moment.

Jay: 00:14:35

Here's what they do.

Jay: 00:14:37

And let me guess it, why that advanced the story?

Jay: 00:14:39

Why did that grip me?

Jay: 00:14:40

What service did this do to the audience?

Jay: 00:14:43

And so when I needed to find a structure for unthinkable, I took a notebook.

Jay: 00:14:45

I sat down with my favorite storyteller.

Jay: 00:14:47

I've mentioned him already, Anthony Bordain.

Jay: 00:14:48

If you follow me around in different interviews, I can't stop talking

Jay: 00:14:51

about the guy because I think he does these gray areas, stories really well,

Jay: 00:14:55

and probably didn't have a recurring structure, but I needed one to guide me.

Jay: 00:14:59

So I just stole what I thought was a structure under one

Jay: 00:15:01

of my favorite episodes.

Jay: 00:15:02

And so when you have that plan, You now know in the interview, even

Jay: 00:15:06

if you're not telling kind of a narrative story, but in the interview,

Jay: 00:15:10

you're going to ask questions that raise or resolve that tension.

Jay: 00:15:13

Right.

Jay: 00:15:14

And it could be the dramatic performance or lead up to the question, which is

Jay: 00:15:18

something that is under utilized by a lot of interviewers, or it could

Jay: 00:15:20

be the ordering of your questions because you have a purpose and you

Jay: 00:15:23

have a plan, but without that, you're completely exposed to the guests.

Jay: 00:15:29

Not performing, not showing up.

Jay: 00:15:30

And when the guest does that, when they're not telling stories, they're not

Jay: 00:15:33

gripping or when the flow of the interview is bland, that is not the subjects

Jay: 00:15:37

fault as a host and an interviewer.

Jay: 00:15:39

That is your fault.

Jay: 00:15:41

It's your show.

Jay: 00:15:42

So you have to guide the experience.

Jay: 00:15:44

So how are you guiding it?

Jay: 00:15:45

If you can't tell me that you have work to do before you head to the next.

Hector: 00:15:48

Yeah, this is great stuff.

Hector: 00:15:49

In affirms my research here.

Hector: 00:15:51

I think you're just telling me how great of a host I am with my plan here,

Hector: 00:15:54

Jay, the next section that I wanted get into is you're coming up on, maybe

Hector: 00:15:58

a thousand episodes, maybe more over all the shows that you've worked on.

Hector: 00:16:01

What are some, what I would call the non-negotiables or, the things that

Hector: 00:16:05

you have systematize or, the things that are kind of in the ethos of that

Hector: 00:16:09

are built into all of your episodes that you make sure that you just make sure.

Jay: 00:16:14

I think what you're getting at is like, what are the elements necessary to

Jay: 00:16:17

bring that episode to life, but better.

Hector: 00:16:19

Well, There's standards that you have.

Hector: 00:16:21

There's standards whether it's through storytelling or in production that you

Hector: 00:16:25

have in your head that, we're gonna make sure that we do this because

Hector: 00:16:28

this is what leads to creating.

Jay: 00:16:30

right.

Hector: 00:16:31

A show that creates resonance.

Hector: 00:16:32

what do you feel are those elements that you kind of, make sure in

Hector: 00:16:36

there to create that residence?

Jay: 00:16:37

Sure.

Jay: 00:16:38

I always said that the best interviewers you could just

Jay: 00:16:40

tell them the premise of the.

Jay: 00:16:42

Literally no other content necessary or context or research, they could

Jay: 00:16:46

deliver something amazing because they could figure it out on the fly and

Jay: 00:16:49

the missing piece for so many folks, especially folks who are building

Jay: 00:16:51

shows to support their careers, or, maybe they're an independent creator.

Jay: 00:16:54

Like I am, or they work in house as a marketer, so many

Jay: 00:16:57

people don't have a premise.

Jay: 00:16:58

They just talk topics with experts.

Jay: 00:17:00

The premise is that hook.

Jay: 00:17:01

It's that angle it's that arc right?

Jay: 00:17:03

X, Y pitch it, this is a show about.

Jay: 00:17:05

Unlike other shows about X and admit there are some, or at least

Jay: 00:17:09

some content about your topics.

Jay: 00:17:10

You don't own those topics.

Jay: 00:17:12

Unlike other shows about X only, we Y like this is a show about

Jay: 00:17:16

creativity in the workplace.

Jay: 00:17:17

Unlike other shows about creativity in the workplace, only we explore

Jay: 00:17:20

how resonance actually works so we can create more resonant work, too.

Jay: 00:17:25

Right.

Jay: 00:17:25

That's a crude kind of not planned out X, Y pitch for my show.

Jay: 00:17:29

So that's the first part you're not going to head into an interview and

Jay: 00:17:32

elevate that interview unless you know what the premise of the show is.

Jay: 00:17:34

If I white labeled it, how will I know it's your show?

Jay: 00:17:37

Because everyone's trying to talk topics with experts.

Jay: 00:17:39

And even if you niche down, even if it's like, this is about servant leadership

Jay: 00:17:42

for B2B SAS executives, with more than 20 years of experience in Toronto,

Jay: 00:17:47

the next person that comes along and says, I just want to do that show.

Jay: 00:17:50

There goes your differentiation.

Jay: 00:17:51

It's a very thin moat that someone can just step over.

Jay: 00:17:54

So it's gotta be this perspective you have on what are we talking about, but

Jay: 00:17:58

how are we approaching those subjects?

Jay: 00:17:59

What's our angle into it?

Jay: 00:18:00

What is our hook?

Jay: 00:18:01

Our style, our belief we're interrogating our hypothesis that we have.

Jay: 00:18:05

And then on the episode level, you get to walk into that as a very

Jay: 00:18:08

informed producer or editor or host because you're pressing that person

Jay: 00:18:12

or those topics through the lens.

Jay: 00:18:14

That premise.

Jay: 00:18:14

So it pops out something original because unlike that appearance

Jay: 00:18:17

of that famous person elsewhere, they appeared on your show.

Jay: 00:18:20

Your show explores something very specific and different in a different way.

Jay: 00:18:23

How are you going to create an original that's, how don't concoct a gimmick, press

Jay: 00:18:27

them through your unique lens, your unique premise and out pop something original.

Jay: 00:18:31

So before you go into any episode, that's a non-negotiable is like,

Jay: 00:18:34

is this actually developed.

Jay: 00:18:37

Cause if it's not, that's the work people think it's about booking

Jay: 00:18:39

better guests or technical setup that stuff's actually really easy.

Jay: 00:18:43

The best, most important thing you can do is develop your idea, develop an

Jay: 00:18:45

actual premise into IP intellectual property that can drive and support

Jay: 00:18:49

a whole show and create something that quite frankly could grow.

Jay: 00:18:53

It's a lot easier to grow something that's growable than

Jay: 00:18:55

try to like get a dud missile.

Hector: 00:18:58

Yeah, the show is unthinkable with J Kenzo and your 157 episodes in You

Hector: 00:19:04

can find it everywhere, but I'm actually excited to have this conversation now

Hector: 00:19:07

because I believe it was recently launched a program or an offering to kind of help

Hector: 00:19:11

people go a little deeper with this.

Hector: 00:19:14

Do you want to talk a little about that?

Jay: 00:19:15

Yeah, I have two things on offer.

Jay: 00:19:16

I have podcast course called global shows, which is on the navbar my website.

Jay: 00:19:20

And I also am starting small working groups of no more than nine creative

Jay: 00:19:25

people focused on B2B marketers and B2B creators who are working with me

Jay: 00:19:29

getting one-on-one support and one to few support over an eight week span

Jay: 00:19:33

to work on their actual projects.

Jay: 00:19:34

So it's not like video course.

Jay: 00:19:36

That's what my course is.

Jay: 00:19:37

That's not what this elevate group is.

Jay: 00:19:39

The small working groups is an accountability experience, I guess, where

Jay: 00:19:42

I'm working with them live to elevate their work not specific to podcasting,

Jay: 00:19:46

but of course I get a lot of podcasts.

Hector: 00:19:48

Jay, this has been a fantastic interview.

Hector: 00:19:50

We'll link all that up in the show notes here.

Hector: 00:19:52

Is there anything else that you feel should be said that we didn't.

Jay: 00:19:55

No, for us, I thank you for letting me talk about my projects.

Jay: 00:19:58

Don't go hiding in a course or like sign up for my accountability group.

Jay: 00:20:02

Cause you're like, well, this will solve my problems.

Jay: 00:20:03

Like the most important thing you can do is establish a practice, like

Jay: 00:20:06

the way you serve yourself better.

Jay: 00:20:08

And also me and you, Hector is like, after listening to them, Take the

Jay: 00:20:12

energy that hopefully you have right now, don't make something and make it just a

Jay: 00:20:15

little bit better than the last thing.

Jay: 00:20:17

Like the momentum problem is most creators problems.

Jay: 00:20:20

So solve that actual problem.

Jay: 00:20:22

Stop hiding by following another expert or listening to another

Jay: 00:20:24

show or buying another book.

Jay: 00:20:26

Even if it's mine go make better stuff.

Jay: 00:20:28

And if you're doing that consistently and you run into a blocker, unbelievable, we

Jay: 00:20:32

have so much information, knowledge, and people available to us at our fingertips

Jay: 00:20:36

to get you unstuck, but unless you're constantly and consistently shifting.

Jay: 00:20:39

The only real problem you have is to consistently ship.

Jay: 00:20:43

So start there

Hector: 00:20:44

Yeah, go make what matters.

Hector: 00:20:45

I think Jay said that somewhere on his website or something.

Hector: 00:20:48

I wrote it down.

Hector: 00:20:48

It was brilliant

Hector: 00:20:49

thanks for hanging out with us.