Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey, it's Matt. You're back listening to the audience podcast. Today's an interesting one. It's a bit of a challenge. This is a part one digging deep for the definition of creator as it relates to not only podcasting, but an art and words and texts and paint, music, photography, videography, everywhere. We're really trying to dig deep to understand what really drives a creator. And most importantly, what tools and knowledge and training and networking and advice do you need to continue down this path of calling oneself a creator, and I've been doing a lot of research and part two, you'll hear from the rest of the Castle's team on how they all define the creator title, but I've been doing a lot of research and trying to expand beyond your traditional news, media marketing, businessy content, creator definitions, though. Those are very valuable. And I think a driving force for a lot of the creator economy, obviously content marketing podcasting, for sure. But I like to expand and go into areas of, of traditional art, film, actors, actresses, that kind of thing. And I stumbled upon this clip of an actor. His name is Ethan Hawke. The link will be in the show notes on YouTube. And I was listening to about seven minutes long for the whole video, but I pulled out this one and a half minute ish clip, and I'm gonna let you hear it first. And then we'll come
Speaker 1 00:01:45 Back. I think that most of us really want to offer the world something of quality, something that the world will consider good or important. And that's really the enemy because it's not up to us. Whether what we do is any good. And if history has taught us anything, the world is an extremely unreliable critic, right? So you have to ask yourself, do you think human creativity matters? Well? Hmm. Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live, and they're not really that concerned with Alan Ginsburg's poems or anybody's poems until their father dies. They go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart. They don't love you anymore. And all of a sudden you're desperate for making sense out of this life. And has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud or the inverse something great. You meet somebody in your heart explodes. You love them so much. You can't even see straight. You know, you're dizzy. Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me? And that's when art's not a luxury it's sustenance. We need it. Okay. Well, what is it? Human creativity is nature manifest in us.
Speaker 0 00:03:09 So let me go back to the challenge of this, defining the creator that I hope that you'll come along with us on when you hear a clip like this, it's a certainly not, you know, funneling audience listeners telling them to go rate your podcast on iTunes. Now, this is a challenge to really think deeply about the content that you create in a couple different sides of the coin here. I'm going to replay pieces of this clip and break down how I have digested each one of these and maybe help us do some critical thinking around what Ethan says in this interview. But the challenge here is to deeply think about the content you are creating in how it affects your audience. And more importantly, where as much as you care about growing an audience, getting your content out in scene, that you understand that not everyone that should not be the goal.
Speaker 0 00:04:11 It shouldn't be, how do I get this into everyone's hands? Why isn't everyone listening to this? Why isn't everyone leaving me review, but really drilling down and saying, I'm creating content specifically to a certain set of people. And even if it's a small, certain set of people, they're engaging with me, even if they're not engaging with me, they're nodding their heads. And they're saying, yes, you're giving me something that I need sustenance. As Ethan says in his, in his interview, it's lesson number one in podcasting is that this stuff takes time and it, and the benefits of podcasting are untold. It's very difficult to say for you as a creator. So let's challenge ourselves. Dig deep. Think about what a creator is to you and how that relates to the artwork that you put out in every episode. Okay? Let me break down clips from that clip of Ethan Hawke's interview.
Speaker 1 00:05:09 I think that most of us really want to offer the world something of quality. Something that the world will consider good or important.
Speaker 0 00:05:19 And this is the challenge that most of us wanted to offer the world. Something of quality, something that the world will consider good or important. And like Ethan says that is the enemy. Because what we're saying is I'm only motivated because the world will accept me and listen, listen as a podcaster. I want people, I want you to accept this episode. I want you to love it. I want you to share it. Same thing with all the podcasts that I do, but that's the enemy. Cause it's getting in the way of saying everyone in the world will want this. Well, not everyone in the world will want it until they need it. People don't need our podcasts, our generic podcasts.
Speaker 1 00:06:03 And that's really the enemy because it's not up to us. Whether what we do is any good. And if history has taught us anything, the world is an extremely unreliable critic.
Speaker 0 00:06:16 So that reinforces our last point. And that the world is an unreliable critic. Again, if we're just making it for the world 99.9 9 9, 9, 9% of the people are going to say no, that of course I don't like your podcast. I don't. This is meaningless to me is that point, oh, oh 1% that we're going after.
Speaker 1 00:06:40 They're not really that concerned with Alan Ginsburg's poems or anybody's poems until their father dies. They go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart. They don't love you anymore. And all of a sudden you're desperate for making sense out of this life. And has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud or the inverse something great. You meet somebody in your heart explodes. You love them so much. You can't even see straight. You know, you're dizzy. Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me? And that's when art's not a luxury it's actually sustenance.
Speaker 0 00:07:17 So allow me to bring it back down to some reality here. Obviously Ethan is really going to even exploring life, death, love, exploration, that kind of thing. And for many of us, our, our content isn't about that. It's a driving force for our business, our brand, our organization awareness or something that we're just enjoying life, a hobby or a sport or something like that. But within his words of, you know, the audience doesn't need it until they do. There is something in there for when you challenge yourself as I'm trying to do today. And I hope as we do throughout the series of becoming a creator, you challenge yourself to think about your content in a different way, where you are constantly pushing yourself to make that connection with your audience, make them say yes, that was great. I will want to come back for more.
Speaker 0 00:08:19 They might not come back for every episode, but you struck a cord where they said, yeah, I will download your content again. I will engage with you again. And largely, at least from my experience, you're, you're doing that by one, educating folks, entertaining folks, right? Education's easy. How to tutorials, you know how to build something, how to cook something, these things you're teaching them. And what you're doing effectively is enabling them, the listener to achieve something that they otherwise couldn't have achieved before. I don't want to say it's an easy win, but it's certainly from a strategic standpoint, you can build with that. You make somebody laugh, you make somebody cry. It's a comedic show. You know, you're a comedian, you're you have a comedy podcast, make somebody cry. You're you're literally doing poetry or telling really deep moving stories. These are wins. When it comes to a strategic standpoint, you can say, what types of shows are really going to strike a chord with my, with my audience. And those are ways. Those are easier ways to look at it. Now, if you can combine all of this stuff, it's, you've, you've hit the unicorn. So this is episode one of defining the creator, our journey on defining what the creator means to you. What the creator means to us.
Speaker 0 00:09:40 I wanted to share this clip of Ethan Hawke with you, because I thought it was very moving from I'm holding up air quotes. You can't see it, but a traditional creators standpoint, an artist, an actor, and I really liked to go to those, those boundaries of not just listening to other podcasters, telling us how to podcast and exploring how people look at creativity in other industries. So challenge yourself, thinking deeply about your show, thinking deeply about the purpose and the connection, but also not overthinking it where you're afraid to get content out. You need to continue to be creating, because that is also largely how you get better as a creator. So you think about it, but you also produce it and ship it and get it out into the world because that's how you stretch that muscle. So that's the challenge. I hope you enjoy today's episode. If you do share this episode with others, it's castles.com/audiences, the audience podcast. If you want to go a step further, listen to our three clips podcast, hosted by Jay comes up three clips, podcast.com. He's really taking creativity to the next level. I thought I'd put a little spin on it here on the audience podcast. Okay. We'll catch you in the next episode.
