Episode 855 - Open Call for Podcast Contributions

In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew discuss how you might be able to get involved with doing your own whistlekick episodes.

Open Call for Podcast Contributions - Episode 855

Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio is now opening the doors to others who wish to be "field reporters" so to speak. Do you have an idea for an episode you would like to do? Maybe you are going to an event that you wish to cover for us. Maybe you have some other content that you wish to reach a wider audience.

Listen to today's episode and see if your idea is one we might be able to help you with!

Show Transcript

Jeremy (00:12.043)

What's going on everybody? Welcome this is Whistlekick, martial arts radio. And on today's episode, Andrew and I are going to talk about something we're changing with martial arts radio. We are opening the door to let you in, not just as part of the audience, but as basically part of the team. You can sit in that very seat. Well, maybe.

Andrew (00:35.306)

You can sit in the seat. I mean, not literally. I mean, if you wanna come to my house, maybe.

Jeremy (00:43.843)

Hang tight, we'll get there. If you're new, well, you lucked out. Martial Arts Radio is the number one traditional martial arts podcast in the world, and we're very proud of that. We work really hard on it. And it's not just Andrew and I, we've got a whole team that do a whole bunch of things on this, and I'm very thankful to each and every one of them. We bring you two episodes a week because, well, we're looking to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world, and Whistlekick's goal, overarchingly,

is to get everyone in the world to train for six months because we believe it makes people better versions of themselves. If you want to support us in our missions, if you believe as we do that traditional martial arts makes people better, consider sharing this episode or telling people about what we do, grabbing something at whistlekick.com with the Code Podcast 105, joining the Patreon for as little as $2 a month. It's all good. Whatever you're going to do that helps us help you is appreciated.

So Andrew, this episode kind of marks a big shift, or a big potential shift for us because we don't know what's gonna happen and it could be a really big deal.

Andrew (01:50.934)

It does. And I... Yeah. It could. I do want to start by saying I'm not a fan of calling you a liar.

But I'm gonna have to call you a liar, because you said we bring you two episodes a week, but just a few weeks ago, we released three episodes that week.

Jeremy (02:06.72)

I'm a liar. What did I lie about?

Jeremy (02:15.235)

It's true.

Andrew (02:16.138)

because we released that bonus episode that Jared Wilson did when he interviewed Sensei Ando-

Jeremy (02:26.711)

And it is because of that episode that we have ended up at this format of this conversation today. And we set it in the title, Open Call for Podcast Contributions. In short, we are opening the door for martial arts radio submissions.

episodes. If you have something that you want to share with this audience, that is possible. Now Andrew and I are going to talk about what that might look like. We're going to talk about some of the history. We're going to talk about some of the precedent within the company. But hang tight because, well, this is what we're going to do. So if we go way back, and long-standing audience members may remember this, I never intended to...

have a podcast. We were going to advertise on other people's podcasts. And that didn't work out. So as I often say, fine, I'll do it myself. And it wasn't even supposed to be me, but it ended up being me. Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be me. Because I didn't have the skills to do it back then. But I figured it out because I had to, like many things in my life. And I realized

Andrew (03:27.904)

Yeah. Yep.

Andrew (03:38.078)

Yeah, you were the host.

Jeremy (03:54.795)

as we got going, that there were a lot of people who had a lot of great things to say. And that's why we don't have these super picky rules about what kind of guests come on the show or what kind of subjects we talk about. We keep it really wide open because there are things that people, I want people to be able to say and people that I want to be able to be heard. And our platform.

of martial arts radio gives them that opportunity.

Andrew (04:30.57)

Yeah, I would agree. And we've talked about, privately, about some of the stuff that we have done for episodes. And it's a wide range of stuff.

Jeremy (04:41.707)

It is. And that will continue.

But a few weeks ago, you and I had a meeting. We meet most weeks, and we're talking about a bunch of things. And one of the things I said was, what if every episode doesn't have me? And you pointed out a few that had not had me, and they went very well. And this is not, you know, we talked about it. It wasn't because I didn't want to do the show, or because...

of any reason other than it felt like a...

Jeremy (05:20.351)

A rule that had never been made. That Jeremy's gotta be on every show.

Andrew (05:24.392)

Yeah, and it wasn't that I'm trying to like oust you out of the way, you know? Like, it just, there were a couple of episodes that, I mean, let's be honest, there were a couple of episodes you weren't available. You, you know, you were away and we had to do some recordings and, okay, well, I could do them. Yeah.

Jeremy (05:28.025)

Yeah.

Jeremy (05:41.943)

And it went great. And so.

We know as martial artists that having some versatility is an asset. So if we say, okay, Jeremy doesn't have to be on every episode, that gives us some versatility. It means that, you know, what if, what if you're traveling and you meet up with somebody on the other side of the country and I don't happen to be there? Do we not get that episode?

Andrew (06:09.994)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely

Jeremy (06:11.131)

Of course we do, right? And then, you know, you and I had kind of established this, and then Jared's episode came out. You know, he had reached out, actually before you and I had that conversation and said, you know, I'm not doing Marshall Thoughts anymore, but there was an episode that I wanted to bring forward. What if it went on the Marshall Arts Radio feed? I think as long as it's good. And he wrote back, you know, what does that mean? I was like, I don't know.

Andrew (06:22.818)

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy (06:39.759)

you know, or figuring this out.

But the idea of using this platform to deliver more content to people sounded great to me. You know, I've always talked about value and over-delivering, and I thought, what better way to over-deliver than to add more episodes that we don't have to make? Or at least that I don't have to be part of? Because I don't want to, I don't have to, right? And Jared's episode came out, and it went great.

And it really got us thinking, OK, how do we do more of this? And the first step is today and it is inviting.

Andrew (07:17.846)

Yep. And this is not the first time that we, Whistlekick, the royal we, have started something and asked for outside people to help be a part of. You know, I'm taking a martial journal.

Jeremy (07:31.031)

Yeah. And Marshall Journal was that from day one. You know, I still remember the conversation. Interestingly enough, Jared was part of that conversation. Shout out to Jared Wilson, who's been a supporter and a friend for a very long time. And shout out to Daniel, who is not around anymore, but was part of that conversation as well, as we came up, you know, what is, what's the name gonna be? What's the structure going to be?

And what we found with Marshall Journal was if we create some guidelines for what submissions need to be in terms of length and, you know, some technical things, we end up with a pretty solid website. In fact, spoiler alert, Marshall Journal of all the websites that we have gets the most traffic. And three quarters of it is from search engines.

Like it's a great site. If you've never been to MarshallJournal.com, you should. And please consider writing, truly. It is what it is because so many people contribute to it. And shout out to Mark for all your hard work in administering that website right now.

And I'm not saying that martial arts radio becomes that, where it's anything and everything. Because one of the beauties of a blog, which martial journal is essentially a blog, is it is infinite. The space is infinite. If we throw seven episodes at you every day, it's too much. You're going to go crazy. Right? We know that. Even, even forgetting any of our backend concerns on that. Even if they were all wonderful.

It's too much. We're going to continue to...

Jeremy (09:22.959)

Curate is the best word. Curate what happens on this podcast feed. But it doesn't mean that we can't have more episodes. Doesn't mean we can't have two one week and four the next week. We don't know what it's gonna look like.

Andrew (09:34.231)

Mm-hmm.

The thing that won't change is Monday's episode will be an interview and Thursday's episode will be a topic. On something.

Jeremy (09:45.723)

Most likely, right? Like those things, I mean, they're those things could deviate a little bit. You know, they're not, those are also habits that are, I don't think are, are hard and fast rules. You know, if, here's a great example. If Chuck Norris wants to submit something,

Andrew (09:46.785)

Yeah.

Jeremy (10:07.351)

we might put that on Monday, even if it's just him talking. Right? Wouldn't necessarily need to be an interview.

Andrew (10:10.346)

Mm-hmm. Fair. Okay. Yeah.

Jeremy (10:16.739)

But I think the other piece we need is to let people know what and how and everything, you know? Because it's so simple to generate decent content today.

Andrew (10:32.01)

Yeah. I mean, the first, the first thing is that we are releasing it for those that are only listening to the podcast feed. Uh, obviously you're listening to this and so it needs to be audio, but we are releasing everything now on YouTube as a video as well.

Jeremy (10:48.835)

Yeah, and I think that that's step number one is there's got to be a video. Um, could we make an exception on that? Yes, I could imagine some things where capturing the audio is straightforward. Capturing decent video is really complicated. And so I'm not going to say that's a hundred percent rule, but it's pretty darn close. We're going to want video.

Andrew (10:53.879)

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy (11:19.075)

uh, length. I think it has to be long enough to get the job done, whatever it is. You know, we have episodes that are two hours long. We have episodes that are 15 minutes long.

Andrew (11:29.534)

Yeah, yeah. I would say as a general rule, putting this in air quotes, about an hour is usually the max that we tend to go.

Jeremy (11:40.027)

Yeah, I would say 30 to 60 minutes is a good guideline. Not because we so much because we need it to be that, but because if it's only eight minutes long, it's probably there's probably not enough substance there to be broadly interesting to the audience. If it's eight hours long.

Andrew (11:55.859)

Yep.

Jeremy (12:01.288)

either.

Jeremy (12:05.879)

Your name is Ken Burns and you recently discovered martial arts.

Andrew (12:11.228)

Who lives locally, by the way, to me? I don't know if you, oh yeah, Kent Brink lives in Walpole.

Jeremy (12:11.487)

Or... does he really? Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, well, maybe Ken Burns will do a documentary on karate, martial arts, taekwondo, something. Oh, fun. Oh, that's cool. Nice guy.

Andrew (12:21.26)

I've seen him, I've met him. I've met him multiple times.

Andrew (12:26.765)

Yeah.

Jeremy (12:29.362)

Okay. Uh. But on the longer side

Jeremy (12:37.475)

Less can often be more. Right, there's a reason that we generally attend martial arts classes that are 60 to 90 minutes. You know, not four hours.

And if you watch Monday episodes, you see that for most of our guests, at right about the hour mark, they lose some energy. There's something that happens for people around that time. And so that's something we're aware of.

Andrew (13:05.046)

Yep, yep, unless your name is Hachi Patrick McCarthy. He has endless amounts of energy.

Jeremy (13:14.723)

He does, he does. He still holds the record. Three and a half hours. Shout out to Anshu McCarthy.

Jeremy (13:23.743)

Audio quality is imperative. You know, it doesn't need to be perfect. You don't need high quality professional mics, but you need to be looking at the camera. You need to be talking to the microphone. I can't do this and just wander away, let my audio drift out and come back. I don't know if it drifted out, but I turned completely away.

There's gotta be some effort towards the quality because we're not gonna put out stuff just to put it out.

Andrew (13:53.278)

Yeah, yeah. Although this is not a hard and fast rule, we try to keep things family friendly on the podcast. Have we released episodes that have been a little bit more explicit? Yes, we have. But as a general rule, we try not to do that.

Jeremy (14:01.433)

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy (14:06.573)

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy (14:11.959)

One of the things that I do, and you know this, and the audience has probably seen me take notes when I'm talking to someone. And for me, the decision around whether or not we release an episode with an explicit mark is, does editing that, this kind of censoring that language change the power of what they're saying? Usually not, right? If you know me in day-to-day life, I...

throw some colorful words around, they rarely make an impact on the gravity of what I'm saying. But sometimes they do. And sometimes it's true with the guest that what they're saying needs to be said in a certain way with certain language. And that's when we don't censor that.

Andrew (14:59.618)

So again, not a hard and fast rule, but in general, we try to keep you family friendly.

Jeremy (15:04.651)

What about the content? What, how do we, because I think that's gonna be the most relevant thing. I mean, there are some things we can say right off the bat, we're not going to accept. We're not going to accept commercials.

Andrew (15:11.863)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew (15:17.674)

No, we're not.

Jeremy (15:19.019)

We turn down commercials all the time.

Andrew (15:22.11)

Yep, we are not going to release stuff that pits a school or a style versus another.

Jeremy (15:30.572)

If you go back to our six freedoms, we're not going to do anything that violates the six freedoms.

Andrew (15:33.706)

That's a great, yeah. Yeah, that's a great point actually.

Jeremy (15:40.803)

doesn't mean we might not have a guest on who does not believe in one of those, or, heck, six of them. As long as they're willing to have a fair conversation. About things.

Andrew (15:47.446)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew (15:50.782)

Yeah, yeah. At first, my head went to, we're not gonna, I'm gonna change it, but at first my thought was, we're not gonna release an episode on something we've already done. But I actually, I disagree with myself thinking that, because someone else, if we did a, for example, I don't know why this jumped into my head right now, but we did an episode on guns.

And if someone else wants to do an episode on guns, their viewpoint may be very different. So just because we already did an episode on it, doesn't mean that we wouldn't release another one. Because it would be different because of the people involved.

Jeremy (16:30.543)

We are not going to accept submissions from people where the content is or will be placed elsewhere.

Everything that goes on our feed needs to be exclusive.

Jeremy (16:46.387)

And if you notice, you know, if you dig in, we have very simple usage rights for our episodes. You can share it with whoever you want, but if you're gonna do something with it, other than take it in its entirety and put it over here, you need to talk to us. If you're gonna start cutting out clips, we need to know about it. And...

The reason, and this is the same role that we have at Marshall Journal. If content is going to go over there, it needs to be exclusive to that site. And the reason being is this is not meant to be a, um, a collection of stuff that exists elsewhere. It has to be new and original. You know, we don't re-release episodes. A lot of podcasts will do that when they run out of stuff, you know, the host is taking a vacation or something. And, you know, here's a throwback to five years ago. We don't do that.

And if we find that, you know, if somebody were to submit something and then it starts going elsewhere, we're probably not going to take it down, but you're not going to be able to submit again. You know, that's the major thing that you would lose is that opportunity.

Andrew (17:54.95)

Yep.

Andrew (17:59.85)

Yeah, yeah. And you know, intros need to mention that this is Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, because it will only be released on Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio.

Jeremy (18:11.055)

So let's talk about that for a second because I can imagine there are people out there who have an idea and they don't want to go through the effort of doing a whole episode and then submitting it only to have it rejected. Shoot us an outline. Shoot us an outline. Go ahead.

Andrew (18:28.187)

Um, yep, yeah, exactly, of what you want to do.

Jeremy (18:33.655)

Yeah, this is what I want to do. This is what I'm going to do it. This is how I'm going to do it. Tell us, you know, tell us the stuff. Tell us what's going to happen. And we can offer our feedback. We might say, you know, this isn't something we're going to do, but good luck. We might say this isn't something we're going to do, but you might also talk to this person. Remember, we are the company that not only do we have the podcast that we have, but we also have martial arts podcast dot com because we have tried to help others.

Andrew (18:46.262)

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy (19:02.627)

We continue to try to help others. That is not going to change.

Andrew (19:06.214)

Exactly, yeah. There are a handful of different types of episodes you could do. Jared's episode was, one would say, exactly what we already do. He sat down with one person and interviewed him on one-on-one interview. The interview was, those that listened would know that it was geared a little more towards the book that this author wrote, but they delved in, they ended up

Jeremy (19:21.862)

one-on-one interview.

Andrew (19:34.806)

Meandering into all sorts of history of Japanese feudal culture and stuff. It was great. So You could do an interview with someone if you wanted You could do a rebuttal on an episode that you and I did Jeremy if somebody wants to not I mean if they wanted to refute or just give their thoughts on something that we already did that would be fine or

Jeremy (19:59.563)

As long as it's respectful, right? Go back to the six freedoms. You know, we've always welcomed disagreement. We've always welcomed criticism and feedback, but we'll never accept disrespect as the tone. If you have to be disrespectful to make your point, it's not a very good point.

Andrew (20:19.454)

Yep, exactly.

Jeremy (20:21.591)

So what I would imagine would happen is you would reach out to us and to one of us and the two of us will probably chat about it, especially as this gets going. Hey, here's what I wanna do. And we say, yeah, here's our thoughts, go ahead. And the next step would depend on what it is. If it's an interview, maybe you send over the raw interview and we check it out. And then we say, yeah, that looks good. Do X, Y and Z, record an intro and an outro.

We're looking to you to do the work. Right? This is not you send us a bunch of raw video clips and we do all the editing. And no, not going to happen. Uh, for at least now, no commercials, no sponsorship, no paid inclusion. Um, don't try to sneak things in by wearing, you know, uh,

a brand hat with a brand shirt in front of a brand banner.

Andrew (21:17.842)

Yeah. And I think it goes without saying. I hate that saying. I hate that it goes without saying because then you're going to say the thing. So obviously it doesn't go without saying.

Jeremy (21:30.883)

The one I, there's one I like even less. And I think I've told you, what I was going to say was.

Andrew (21:36.478)

Oh, yeah, yeah. We recently released an episode, well, recently, it was a couple months ago now, on why we don't pay for guests. If you submit something and the person is expecting to be paid or you yourself are being paid and we find out about it, that's going to be a hard stop pretty quick.

Jeremy (21:59.683)

Yeah, let me say that another way. No money will change hands for whatever you submit. Between you and companies, you and interviewees. I suppose if you have a team and you hire someone to do the editing, that's fine. But this is not pay to play and we're not opening the door to some indirect pay to play way. Now, as...

Andrew (22:12.524)

Yep.

Jeremy (22:26.655)

I think we've been very clear about how advertising is going. And as we grow into that, which is a complicated process for us to do right, we absolutely will open the doors on that to others. We're just not there yet. So we can't say what it will and will not entail. But if the only reason you would do this is to make money, you're probably not the person to do this.

Jeremy (22:59.919)

Podcasting is a great way to make very little money.

Andrew (23:00.019)

Yeah.

Andrew (23:03.943)

and lose a whole lot of time.

Jeremy (23:06.083)

Yes, this is a labor of love. What if we missed?

Andrew (23:10.014)

Yeah, I don't, I can't think of anything else that we missed. If we did, people will certainly let us know.

Jeremy (23:16.147)

Yeah, yeah. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You know what, Andrew, once this is up, let's remember to kind of summarize all this stuff and make a page at the podcast website. That whistlekickmarshortradio.com so people can, you know, submit a guest, submit a topic, submit a full episode.

Andrew (23:29.299)

Okay, that's a great idea.

Andrew (23:39.074)

Love it.

Jeremy (23:40.655)

Okay. And I think just before we close, the thing I wanna remind everyone, why are we doing this? It would be simpler for us to not do this.

Andrew (23:51.846)

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm, as it is, for those that don't know, I've taken over more responsibility with releasing of these episodes. It would certainly be great for me to not have even more work on top of it. Um, so why are we doing it?

Jeremy (24:12.339)

I believe, and this goes back to the very beginning, I believe that if you have a platform, if you have reach, that platform should be available when appropriate to further the mission. Our mission has been very clear. Our mission is not to sell things. We sell things on the road to getting everyone in the world to train. We have Marshall Journal because...

We want people to feel like they have a voice in writing. This is to give people a literal voice. And I believe that some of you out there have some great things to say that would be better said without Andrew or I in the mix. To give you more time, I can completely see that there are people out there who might turn in an episode a year and they might spend six months tweaking it, editing it, getting transitions, you know.

or writing a script or whatever it is. And I hope that you do. Because now that what we have is working so well.

It's time to turn our experience and give opportunity to others.

Anything else before we wrap, Andrew? All right. Well, thank you everyone. I appreciate when you hang out for these episodes where we talk about what's going on with the company and the ways that we're continuing to try to serve you out there, the traditional martial artists of the world. If you have thoughts, feedback, criticism, or questions, the best place to ask them is in the Facebook group, Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio.

Andrew (25:30.774)

No, I think that's great.

Jeremy (25:55.119)

Sorry, it's a page, the Martial Arts Radio page, not the behind the scenes Facebook group. We have retired that group. So go join that page. If you haven't joined that page, go join that page, because that's where the best conversation is. But maybe you have a question after the fact or something that you want to ask more privately. You can email either of us, Andrew at whistlekick.com, Jeremy at whistlekick.com, and we will happily talk to you about this.

Let's end it. That's it. Until next time.

Andrew (26:25.678)

Train hard.

Jeremy (26:27.618)

Smile.

Andrew (26:28.526)

and have a great day.