TCC Podcast #168: How to Tell a Better Story with Glynn Washington

NPR Podcaster and story teller, Glynn Washington, was generous enough with his time to visit our studio and share his thoughts about podcasting, storytelling and the hustle required to make something great for the 168th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We love this interview. Here's a few of the things we talked about with Glynn: •  how (and why) he built a career as a podcaster and radio producer •  the reaction he got when he announced his intention to be a podcaster •  what he did to help his podcasts gain traction—it took a lot of hustle •  the very “untechnical” process he used to create his first podcast •  how he came to understand the power of a good story •  what makes a great story that you can’t help but stop and listen to •  how to introduce an unbelievable story and get listeners to lean in •  the question every storyteller needs to ask before sharing their story •  the important reason Glynn never tells you what the story means •  the magician’s trick he uses to get people to talk about the supernatural •  the real impact of the stories/experiences shared on his podcasts •  the impossibility of choosing the one story he was born to tell •  the thing Glynn wishes more podcasters would do today •  3+ things to do if you want to create your own great podcast •  the power of a podcast to move markets and create best-selling products •  what’s coming next year from Snap Judgment If you want to improve your story-telling prowess, you'll want to get this episode ASAP. Click the play button below to listen online or download this episode to your podcast app. Even better subscribe so you never miss an episode. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Snap Judgment Spooked Podcast Heaven’s Gate Podcast GarageBand Mark Twain Have You Heard George’s Podcast Scott Sigler Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego March 12th through 14th, 2020. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/TCCIRL. Kira:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob:   You're invited to join the club for episode 168 as we chat with media personality and radio podcast producer, Glynn Washington, about what it takes to tell a great story, the power of podcasting to connect with an audience, what most podcasters including us should be doing differently, and what it means to be a fist-shaker, mountain hollerer, and foot stomper. Kira:   So, Glynn, welcome. Glynn:            Thank you for having me. Kira:   All right. So, Glynn knows, because I've already e-mailed him and said, ‘I'm a super fan.’ So I have listened to every episode of Spooked, all three seasons of Spooked. So this is just a delight, to be able to talk to you about what happens behind the scenes and get to know more about you. Rob:   And I want to add, I listened to all of the episodes of the Heaven’s Gate podcast, as well as several of the Spooked episodes. So- Kira:   So we're both super fans. Rob:   We're big fans of what you've done, Glynn. Glynn:            Well, I'm so glad you dug it. And I appreciate you having me on the show today. And I hope, I'm sorry, we had a bit of a flood, here, so I'm in a weird setting. So I'm hoping the sounds works for you right now. Rob:   Yeah, it's working great. It sounds really good. Kira:   All right, Glynn. So let's start with your story. How did you end up as a storyteller, podcaster, executive producer, and host of Snap Judgment and my favorite podcast, Spooked? Glynn:            Well, it was not by design. This is something that ... an organic unfolding of a lot of different things. But, to make a long story shorter, I have been a public media head for a long time, and I started listening to various shows in the podcast format early on, like, in maybe 2006, '07, '08, when I was listening to podcasts before they became, what people think about them today. And I heard an ad for something called the Public Radio Talent Quest. It was Ira Glass and Terry Gross, and I believe a few other people that were saying if you have something called hostiness, you can do this, this public radio thing. And the truth of the matter was, I just wanted to preserve my right to complain. I love public radio, but I thought that a lot of different things that happened were, they weren't necessarily getting at the communities that I knew anything about, properly. And, for an example, I remember listening to someone, and they were talking to someone who was an African American person, lower social economic status, and they asked him a question. And when he answered the question, they translated what he said into public radio-speak. And, as if the listeners couldn't understand the words coming out of this man's mouth. And I thought it was outrageous. So, that was the reason why I entered the contest and sent in my little entry. You just have to send in a little, two-minute entry of some sort. I sent it in and forgot about it. And about three months later, I got a phone call, I was eating at a Chinese restaurant in Berkeley, I got a phone call saying I was one of 10 finalists nationwide. And I thought that I knew better, I thought that was my buddy, Mark, playing a joke. So, I hung up the phone. But it turns out they were serious, and that's kind of how I got started in public radio. Rob:   So, Glynn, tell me, what was the reaction, as you told your friends and your family, ‘Hey, I'm going to do this as a career.’ Because I think a lot of people look at this and say, ‘Yeah. If you're a Tim Ferriss, or if you're a Ira Glass, maybe you can make a living as a podcasters, but I can't imagine, well, I do imagine, it's probably a lot like telling your family, ‘Hey, I'm going to be a poet. And can you support me for life?’ So what was the reaction you got from everyone? Glynn:            Initially, that's exactly right. I had a good career. I've been a non-profit director. I was running a center at the University of Berkeley in the business school. And I thought I was doing my thing. And then when I decided to leave, I remember my father came up. And he was helping me on a Saturday move some stuff out of my office, to bring it back to the house, which is where I was going to be working for a while. And he was like, ‘Son, what are you doing? You've got yourself a nice office, here. This is ... you're taking ... What are you doing? What are you doing?’ This was making kind of sense. And, yeah, that just goes with the whole territory. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It makes a lot more sense now. But back then, people didn't really know what a podcast was. I think serial, and This American Life team for popularizing it in the popular imagination, what this thing was. But, yeah, you were jumping off into the great unknown. Kira:   So, what helped Snap Judgment take off so quickly and become so successful really fast? What were some of those factors that contributed to that? Glynn:            Well, I don't know that it really did become really successful really fast. I know that, I remember reading an article in some LA paper about Snap Judgment being an overnight success. And we laughed and laughed at that, because so much work, so much effort, so much time went into making the show. And the build was actually fairly slow. I can tell you some of what went into it, but when I finally was able to launch the show, I was so happy. We got a little bit of a grant, at the time, it was a big grant from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting were going to launch the show. But podcasting was sort of secondary, at least in their minds. So, our minds, it was always primary. But we wanted to be on public radio stations. And so, we called up the public radio distributors, NPR at the time. They said no. PRI, who was distributing This American Life, they said no. And American Public Media, they distributed, at the time, was Garrison Keillor, and they said no. So, we got this show, but we don't have any distribution. And so, we ended up, I remember calling all of them back, saying the other ones were interested, and I was going to have to make a quick decision, but I wanted to give them one more chance. And NPR was the first one to bite. And we got to be distributed by NPR, which was great for us, because it added a certain type of legitimacy to what we were doing. But it wasn't like they were going to put us on station. Every single station in America makes their own decisions about their programming schedule. And NPR certainly wasn't pushing Snap. It was something that we had to do ourselves. And that meant that the podcast became extremely important, because what happened would be, we would kind of target an area, try to get the people to listen to the podcast, and they'd go ... And they'd listen, and they'd, well, and then ask their local stations, ‘Why aren't you covering this show? What aren't you playing this show?’ We called and said, ‘Hey, would you play Snap Judgment?’ They'd say no. But when a group of listeners would call, that's when things started to change and it was estimated that we'd be on like maybe 20 stations by the end of year one, and we ended up being on about 100. And then, similar for year two, and we ended up being in about 200. And that's when NPR actually started paying attention to us. And thank God, we were able to make our mistakes for that two year period without a whole lot of, sort of, oversight. It was, the show started on my kitchen table,