The Right Questions with James Victore
The Right Questions is designed to help you get paid to do what you love and stay sane in the process.
The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 62: One Year, One Honest Voice
If you are a stuck or frustrated creative and want to get paid to do what you love, let's talk. https://yourworkisagift.com/coaching
A year on the mic reveals a simple truth: audiences don’t want polish for its own sake, they want a real voice with a real opinion.
I look back at twelve months of The Right Questions and unpack the habits, mindsets, and small decisions that made weekly publishing possible. From capturing ideas in the car to writing six to ten pages before I record, I share the practical scaffolding that keeps me clear and the human moments—flubs and all—that keep it honest.
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All right, let's do this thing. Howdy, it is I, the beautiful disembodied voice of James Victoria. And this is, check this out, this is one year of the right questions. One year of doing a podcast. If you had asked me when I was starting, if I was going to be able to sustain a year, I would say, well, let's start and see what happens. But secretly I'd be thinking, no freaking way. You'd have to be one committed mofo to keep that energy up for a year. Every week. Well, maybe I was sick once, but every week. So OMG to me and to you for being here. Thank you. And I think it fitting that uh today I talk about doing a podcast. And of course, because one thing that is gonna lay thick throughout this podcast is the idea of in the particular lies the universal. If I'm talking about doing a podcast and committing to doing a podcast, you may learn some things about doing your work. Because in the things that I love and the things that it takes for me to do this is what it takes for you to do that. So I'm gonna talk about some of the ideas that come up to me when you say, hey James, talk about running a podcast for a year. So this is the meta, baby. This is the meta. This is talking about the right questions on a program called The Right Questions, a podcast about a podcast. Um, and if you want to start your own, you know, um, here are a few tips. Um, I think it's probably helpful if you're gonna start a podcast to have a damn opinion. Right? Have something to say. That's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. Have a real, honest, open opinion about something. Or maybe I would call it this way: give your heart away. Give your heart away. That's what people are dying to hear. That's what people are dying to hear. Anytime I've worked in advertising or done marketing work for anybody besides myself, I say, hey, listen, what people want is they want to hear an honest frickin' voice speak to them plainly. That's pretty much it. So give your heart away. You don't want to have a podcast about rehashed quotes or the same conversations over and over again. But something about your opinion. Because again, in the particular lies the universal. The things that you love and the things that you fear are the things that other people love and other people fear. Your concerns, stated plainly, honestly, really, will make sense to other people. And listen, any starting place will do. And this goes in line with the thing I talk about all the time that you can pretty much make a living doing anything. Doing anything. Doodles, you know, uh goofing around, uh, farts. I can show you how to make a living doing farts. I can. I can show, I can map it out for you, right? So you can make a living doing anything. You can have a podcast about anything. Any starting place will do, as long as you love it, as long as it's interesting to you. I mean, you could start a podcast today or tomorrow. You know, just start. Just go in a closet and record something. Let's say about like old cars, like, oh, I've always loved old cars, you know? So you just go and start talking about old cars. And on each episode, you could talk about the process of loving old cars. Just from going from loving them to like, um, oh, I got some tools. Next episode could be like fixing them or finding a particular radiator, right? Buying one. All the way through to fixing it, getting it out on the road, taking it to car shows, racing it if that's the thing, or demo derby if you really love that. But if you're just done with honesty and humor, you can find an audience. Might even be a large audience. It probably will not even be people interested in cars, but just folks who want to hear you wax on lovingly about something you care about. You know, people don't people don't didn't particularly care about police crime dramas, but they will listen to podcasts about police crime dramas, right? You will listen to somebody talk about their love of old dolls if it's done well. So in the particular lies the universal, something straight out of feck perfection. Actually, most of these ideas about how to do a podcast for a year actually come out of feck perfection because there's feck perfection. See, I can't even say it right, because my best-selling book, Feck Perfunction, is about humanity. It's about what it takes to be human and creative. So also, if you're going to have a podcast, you might want to have fun. Don't try to be too professional or worry about what people will think. Professional will come. Professional will come as you go along because, first of all, your audience is going to say, hey, your audio sucks. Fix your audio. Or people are going to say, hey, it should be available here and here. So you're going to have like a whole bunch of people giving your their you their professional opinion. That's what Paul Rand said about focus groups. He says it's when professionals employ non-professionals to form a professional opinion, right? So people are going to tell you how what it takes to be professional, whether you like it or not. But you can't worry about that, and you can't worry about what people will think. If I let my worry control me, I'd never get anything done, let alone a year of podcasts. I remember my very first exhibition. My very first poster exhibition was when I was 12. No, I was a little bit older than that, but I was in my 20s. And it was because I had started creating posters, and I was, I had talked to my mom, and my mother worked in the reference department of the university library where I grew up. And she talked to somebody there and said, Hey, my son is making posters. Can we have a show? I shit you not. This is how this is my first show. And it was in the State University Library at Plattsburgh, New York. And I had a show of I don't know how many, I don't know how many pieces. It was posters and probably some other stuff. And I remember after the show, my mother came up to me and she said, she said, Don't you do anything nice? Because I don't know what she expected. She did, she knows her son didn't paint flowers. Um, and even if they were flowers, they would be opinionated. They would have some macabre to them, they would have some edge to them, something to say, flowers that have an opinion. So if I listened to somebody else, particularly my mom, I'd never get anything done. I wouldn't be James Victory. I'd be who's that guy? Right? A guy who never made a living doing something that he loves. So here's some thoughts about how to how to do a podcast, what it takes for me to do this podcast. And this next idea is something that I talk about a lot because it's extremely, extremely important if you want to get things done. And the word is consistency. Consistency is so important. Unless it's not important to you. You know, if you go, if you go asking people about consistency, asking professionals about consistency, um, um, I know Oscar Wilde hated consistency. He said it was, he said it was um uncreative, right? But the rarest of all human qualities is consistency. And that's a quote by Jeremy Bentham like the late 1800s. He was a philosopher and a reformer, and I've always loved that aspect of consistency, because consistency is so hard for us to do. Even Oscar Wilde was lying because his work, his writing, his humor was so incredibly consistent with who he was. So that's where the consistency is. But consistency in getting something out the door, consistency in your work schedule and your discipline is extremely important. And the lack of consistency is the killer, is the killer of any venture. So it's extremely important to maintain the energy, your energy and your interest to a project through consistency. And that's just for you, let alone an audience. So an audience kind of knows what to expect. Because if you keep changing things up for them, they're not going to be able to follow you. They want to follow you, but they won't be able to, because it's like, whoa, what? I thought this was about old cars, and all of a sudden he's talking about pictures of flowers. I don't get it. So consistency is hard, especially if you don't have the discipline for it, and the discipline for scheduling. And for me, I know what kind of discipline and consistency it takes for me to write six to eight pages of text, because that's what the average podcast takes. Me sitting down for a minimum of a day, possibly two, maybe more, keeping a log of uh all the ideas that I have. Oh, I've oh, I've got to talk about this. Oh, I'm driving, I'm driving to the quickie mart, and I'm like, oh, well, I gotta talk about this, this, this, this aspect of uh driving to the quickie mart and what it takes to, or talk about, you know, being an alcoholic and like having to pass by the liquor store. Maybe there's a podcast in that, right? So there's a consistency of keeping up with the ideas, logging them in, and then sitting down and one morning sitting down and going, okay, I gotta write. And usually, usually, what inspires me to write is what inspires me to create anything really. And it's called the deadline. Because it'll be Monday morning and I don't have anything, and I'm like, I look at the calendar, I'm like, oh, I usually record on Wednesdays. Uh-oh. Get to it, Johnny. Right? Right now, you're thinking, oh man, I wish James Victory could be my mentor, my guru. Hell, I wish he was my coach. Well, you can make that happen. Go to your work is a gift.com. There's a questionnaire that will probably help you out, but it'll also give you access to a free call. So let's talk. Let's free you from overwhelm and creative frustration. Let's build your business and help you get paid to do what you love. Again, go to yourworkisagift.com. Let's talk. So consistency and discipline helps with that. And one of the things I just mentioned was the idea of um uh keeping the schedule and going, uh-oh, you know, shit, I gotta perform, I gotta write, I gotta be ready because I gotta record on Wednesday. And the idea of being ready is another idea that's super important to be able to create this, or for you guys to be able to create, right? You know, we don't want perfect, we want done. Done is better than perfect. But part of that is the starting, and starting is hard. Starting is always hard because you're never ready, you're never really ready, right? So the longtime producer of the Saturday Night Live TV show, Lauren Michaels, was quoted years ago. He said, the show doesn't start because it's ready. It starts because it's 11:30. Right? You're never ready. You will never be ready. Not really. So you might as well just start, just go. I'm never really ready, mainly because on any one subject, like this, like what it takes. I I, you know, I could I could write a few books on content, about about consistency alone. But I need to stick to the subject, and I need to I need to have it um make sense, and I can't have it um go off in a bunch of directions, and I gotta get to the point. So I try to stick to the subject, write and talk about what I know, and then add my particular flair and let it rip when it's time to record. So you'll never be ready. You'll never be ready, but you do gotta start. Trust. Trust is another idea that we talk about a lot. And trust is a big thing here. I've got to trust my gut. I've got to trust what I'm thinking about. I've got to trust that you'll be there, right? And they say there's a fine line for the arts, right? There's always, you always hear people say, well, you know, there's a fine line between, right? There's a fine line. And I know, for example, comedy. Comedy is a really great example. There's a fine line between what Jim Carrey does or did on stage, right? Or does in a movie, between that and idiocy. Right? It's the same for acting, when an actor really goes out on a limb. There's a fine line between them being a jerk and not pulling it off and being brilliant. And I guess there's that fine line is there for a trial lawyer, too. Right? It all comes down to, you know, if you if you don't believe them, if they don't believe themselves, they don't trust themselves and trust that the audience is gonna receive them in the way they want, then it will fall apart. You have to trust that everyone's gonna come along. I gotta trust that you're gonna be there. I gotta trust that what I'm saying is quality. I gotta trust that I gotta, even if I'm just lying to myself, I gotta say, James, it's good stuff, people want to hear from you. Right? And you've gotta get into that too. That's your headspace for making anything. Trust and know that everyone will come along, even if they won't. Also on trust is this idea. Know this. Everything is a test. And what I mean is this podcast, whether it's perfect or not, whether it's good or not, whether it needs to be fixed or not, is a test for something next. Every piece that you make, or write, or sew, is a test for the next one. And every day you live is a test for tomorrow. To do better. So just know, everything is a test. And I have to believe that what I'm doing here will come across as meaningful or memorable. That's important to me. Here's some here's some here's some uh ideas about the the the nutty bolts. I was gonna say the nitty-gritty, or I was gonna say the nuts and bolts, and it ends up as the nutty bolts. So uh um I have to trust that I have a backlog of content, right? You know, if I want to separate myself from the crowd, I need to be me. And I can talk about consistency if somebody else has. I just have to do it my way, right? And that means kind of spoken like a stern, funny dad or or badass or the hard truth, right? So that's just more of a um um an attitude adjustment that I need to make or that you need to make, you know, especially when you're working and you're you're you're making paintings of portraits, and you're like, I need to know that people will be there for me. I need to know that I'm doing good work and that I'm speaking my truth. Another bit of the nuts and bolts um is uh I mentioned a script. I mentioned eight, six, eight pages, sometimes it's ten. Doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter. It's just whatever flows and whatever I can fit into the the the time I've allotted to write. So I I write a script. Because if this was just me in a conversation, I could stick to a prompter's questions, if this was just kind of a back and forth. I would have someone else keep me on target. But if I didn't write it out, this would be very hard for you to follow. And part of it is just that my mind goes very fast. Sometimes I might seem um in real life as if I'm absent-minded or if I um I stutter. But that's just me because there's always so many ideas flying through my head. There are so many tangenital, wait, is that the word tangenital? Is it tangenitals? I don't I don't understand that. Tangenal, tangenti, I think that's the word. Phew. There are so many tangential stories that I would share within any sentence that I'm speaking, that it would be hard for me to stay on target. Therefore, hard for you to understand. And also, I need to make it easy for uh Shannon because she edits this. And if she has to put this jigsaw puzzle together, it adds to the work and it adds to the effort, and we want to keep this thing flowing and we want to keep it fun and we want to keep it easy for each other. And generally, as you know, if you're a longtime listener, there are flubs. And some of them we choose to keep in because I want to be honest. And I want to even come across that way, come across in some honest way. And if we're going to be really honest, my recording booth is a closet. Because that's what recording booths basically are: padded, darkened rooms. They work well for that. Plus, it's away from everything else. It's away from barking dogs or or kids in the house or kids in the bathtub screaming, right? So so we use what we can. We don't, we don't, we don't not start because we don't have proper equipment. We just start and we know the equipment will show up when we're ready. I would love a studio just for this operation, right? Wouldn't that be fantastic? And I'd also love a home gym. And an indoor sauna and a jacuzzi, and an observatory, and a helipad on the roof. But you can't have everything, and you can't have it right now. So we're working on those things. But do you really want to know the right question here? Because the right question about doing a podcast and doing it for a year is the why. That's the important question. And why I do this is to share. Because I have learned and gained and gathered so much information over the years. I have failed so fucking hard so many times. I don't want you to. Or I do want you to, and I want you to go through it with the right attitude. So I've learned so much in this process called life, and I see you, and I see the effect. And I get to be involved in your progress and your life. I get to watch your bright careers, maybe from afar, but I can still witness you. And I can I can, in a, in a, in an odd way, kind of feel a little akin to you. Feel like, hey, I have a little part of that. They're awesome. And a little part of that is me. Listen, I'm proud of myself. And I'm proud that we could follow through with this project for this long. But I'm really proud of you, and you guys are the ones that keep it going. I wish I could go through this list of all of your names and thank you all individually. But you know who you are. You do. You do, because you're listening now. And I want to thank you for being here, and thank you for being a part of this process. And it is called The Right Questions. If you have questions, draw me a line. Let me know. I'm happy to be there for you. I'm happy to be there in your corner. I want to thank you all for being here. And I want to tell you, like I always tell you, because it's the truth, I love ya. Adios. I'm James Victoria. And I'll see you later.