Six Unexpected (Life) Lessons from Great Hosts to Prepare You for 2023

It’s the time of year when many of us are setting big creative goals. If you’re anything like me, you’re excited by the possibilities of a new year and you can’t wait to jump in with both feet to something new.

But if we’re smart, we look back on the last year first, to see what we learned. 

If you’ve been listening to Sound Judgment, you know I’m on a quest to define what it takes to become a beloved podcast host – to name the universal skills of hostiness. On most episodes, a magnetic host and I dissect an episode together, and then I recap those practical lessons on the episode and in other places, including our newsletter. They’re ideas you can put to work for your own show right away. 

But today, inspired by my friend Michael Osborne, host of the podcast Famous and Gravy, I’m doing something a little different. Michael urged me to ask guests, "How has hosting your podcast changed you in ways you didn’t expect?" So on this episode, I’m sharing six lessons I did not expect to learn – and that have changed me. I hope you’ll find them thought provoking. 

This is the New Year’s episode of Sound Judgment, where today's best podcast hosts unpack their magic. 

I’m Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Hook-Your-Listener Audit

Before we get started, what’s it like for you to face the blank page of your script – or that blank tape on the mic? As any writer knows, a blank page is intimidating. It can be even harder when we’re using our voice  going – because most of us know we have only 30 seconds or so to hook new listeners. That’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot that goes into starting your episode with a bang, keeping listeners enthralled throughout, and especially providing enough value that they’ll come back again and again.

 Don’t stay stuck! Get a half-price Hook Your Listener Audit now. As a veteran story and program editor, producer and host, I’ll work with you personally to improve your hostiness.

Give us a link to one episode ahead of time, and in one 45-minute session, I’ll identify several ways that you can tune up your show quickly, painlessly, and without any extra cost – so you can get critical acclaim and, most importantly, grow your show. In just one session, we’ll uncover and build on your unique strengths; you’ll tune up the sound and promise of your show. You’ll be more likely to captivate listeners. And most importantly, you’ll quickly feel – and sound – more confident! Find more details on the Hook Your Listener Audit at www.podcastallies.com. The price is good only through the end of January, so don’t wait – they’re affordable and they’re going fast. 

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OK, let’s get into it: six unexpected lessons I learned over the course of the first season of Sound Judgment that have changed me as a creator, a host, and a human being. I hope you find these unexpected lessons as thought-provoking as I do – and that you’ll apply them to your own hosting and producing. 


1. THE HOST DEFINES THE BRAND: I started Sound Judgment because I truly love great hosts. I marvel at their performances, at how varied they are; I feel about great hosts the way I do about great actors and writers and speakers. I love how avid listeners think of their hosts as best friends – and how, as Snap Judgment’s Glynn Washington told me – listeners will meet him on a street and pour our their deepest secrets to him, although they’ve never actually met before. I really do think great hosting is a certain kind of magic. But it is horribly overlooked when brands, especially, decide to start podcasts. Only the most sophisticated realize how important it is to define the sound of the show they want to create – and then to go out and find a host who can be their conduit to their listeners.

What I didn’t appreciate until I interviewed longtime producer and show developer John Barth was that, as he says, “the host defines the brand.” When I heard that, it was like a key sliding into a lock. Click. Here’s a bit of our conversation from Episode 2. John is talking about starting the public radio show Marketplace years ago. 
 

John Barth: 
"I used to joke with Jim Russell, who was the executive producer that I could hear a show in my head. And over the, I don't know, six or seven years that I produced the show, I was always trying to get closer and closer to that sound, you want to hear a show, you want to hear a story, you want to hear a voice and say, Can I get to that you don't have that audio vision in your head, it's your little, I think you're a little bit lost, then you're just putting stuff together.

Elaine: I find that so interesting. In fact, sometimes it's frustrating for me, because I can hear a story in my head, but I'm working with other people and they're hearing a different story in their head. It's like, ah, you know, I have to let go control a little bit. So at marketplace, you were hiring hosts, right, you are going out and looking for new hosts. And you found some great ones talk about that?

John Barth: Well, when I was there, we went through three different hosts. You know, when you're hiring a host, the host really does imprint their own sound voice style on the show. So it actually begins to define the brand that you're creating. It took me a while to get to a host who embodied the sound that I heard from the show."

[end of clip]

Elaine Grant: So what does your brand sound like? As a host, are you communicating not just your content, but your tone, the feelings you want to share with your listeners? How consciously do you think about this? Have you ever asked anyone else whether they hear you the way you want to be heard? 

2. HOSTING CHANGES THE HOST. The act of hosting changes people – not just as hosts, but as human beings. Here are a few Sound Judgment guests on how hosting changed or challenged them in ways they didn’t anticipate:  

This is Pabel Martinez, host of Quien tu Eres?: 

"It's made me more empathetic. I can only hold so many identities as a, as a Dominican as a, as a as a son as a straight male. There's so many instances of people hiding their identity and suppressing parts of their authenticity that I never thought about. For example, I interviewed one woman Claddagh Johnson, who said that for a long time at work, she hid the fact that she was a mom. I was like, Oh, I didn't. I didn't know people were hiding that. So stories like that have opened my eyes into what those untold stories and anonymous stories really are like, who are those people?"

And here’s Jay Baer, host of Standing Ovations, a behind-the-scenes podcast about the craft of public speaking. My conversation with Jay will air in Season 2. 

Jay Baer:
"It certainly made me rethink my own storytelling on stage. And that's probably an obvious answer to the question. But it also in a larger sense, made me be more intentional about a lot of things in my life that I formulate took for granted. Because that's really what the show is about. Yes, it's about public speaking. And yes, it's about storytelling and story choices and creative decisions. But their show is really about intentionality versus instinct. And I am someone who has led a lot of my life by instinct. And hosting that show taught me that maybe that's not always the superior approach. And so I've tried to make more purposeful decisions, in my relationships in my business in my community, as a result of the show."

Here’s another host – Laura Joyce Davis of Shelter in Place – who faced some scary truths about herself by creating her show. In this clip, she’s sharing what it was like to launch her narrative, daily show during the pandemic, and how it changed her.   

Laura Joyce Davis: 
"And what I found by about day two, or three, was that I had some very hard questions to answer for myself about how much of myself was going to get into this, you know, it was all fine. And well, on day one, when it was just sort of this like an Iron Mountain, a bike ride, and I got this idea for this podcast. And we'll do this for two weeks together, every day, six days a week, not even five days a week. That's how crazy I was. So what I realized is that I had been mostly avoiding this question for 20 years as a fiction writer.

Now I think fiction writing can be deeply personal. And some of mine has been. But I had essentially figured out how to not have to put myself in the story. And what podcasting kind of forced on me was that question of, well, why not? What are you afraid of? And I realized, I was actually quite afraid to put myself out there, I was really afraid that people wouldn't like me that maybe if they really got to know me, they would be like, no, no, thanks.

And you know, that's gonna happen, right? If you put yourself out there, I don't care for the most charismatic person on the planet. Not everybody's gonna like you. Like that's real.

So and then, you know, things beyond that, like, how much of my personal life am I willing to share publicly? Am I willing to, you know, have my kids names out in the world or their, their voices, maybe even or, you know, all of these things that come out of that, right? It just continues and continues.

And I made a decision very early on, to keep asking that question when it was needed. But also to say, You know what, I'm going to put myself out there in the way that feels true and authentic. And like the real Laura, you're going to get the real Laura in this podcast. And I'm going to try to be brave enough to say that if people don't like the real Laura, I might feel really bad about that for a little while, but I'll get over it. And it'll probably be good for me to develop a little thicker skin. And so that is what has happened for 200 episodes of shelter in place."

All of these changes – increased empathy, becoming more purposeful in relationships, uncovering and braving vulnerability – they’re deeply human issues. Which of these, or other human dilemmas, have you encountered in your own hosting? How are they changing you? 

Like Laura, I’m dealing almost daily with how much of myself to share. As a lifelong journalist, I’ve been trained to share almost nothing of myself. And as someone for whom acting on stage was a passion, I may have shared emotions, but always through someone else’s words. Podcasting is different. Depending on the format, listeners want to know who you are and what moves you. That’s pushing me on a deep level. 

Here’s one last thought-provoking idea on this subject, from Sarah Stewart Holland, co-host of Pantsuit Politics. Her comments come from our conversation in episode 3. She’s talking about a Pantsuit Politics episode in which she and her co-host, Beth Silvers, were reacting to the 2016 election of Donald Trump – and more generally about the fact that they can’t fully plan their content calendar, because they cover and react to the news. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: 
"And so I think it illustrates like how and how much we are in are in this reactive posture. And then I think it also illustrates how a lot of the news media and a lot of the political podcasters are in that same reactive posture. We just try to take a very different approach to that.

And we try to react from a place of humanity instead of a place of expertise, a place of lived experience instead of a place of sort of decided upon perspective, I guess I would say we really just try to show up as our whole selves.

And that's what we were doing that day. It was a really, really hard moment. And American history, and we're Americans. And so we were living that history in that moment." 

Here’s are some questions I’ll be asking myself – and you – in the year ahead: How am I showing up as my full self? How are you showing up as yours? What’s standing in the way? And is it always what’s called for? 

3. LIKE GREAT PUBLIC SPEAKING, GREAT HOSTING HAS FINANCIAL VALUE. 
 As you’ll hear in the next season, the format of Sound Judgment was inspired by the format of Jay Baer’s podcast, Standing Ovation. In that show, Jay and his guests – extremely successful public speakers – dissect a speaker’s signature story – which is what Sound Judgment does with podcast hosts. A signature story, by the way, is one keynote speakers use in speech after speech. As Jay says, speakers may know they’re good – but not why. They haven’t had the opportunity to deconstruct their work, and that’s a problem.  

Jay Baer:
"You know, it's not an exaggeration to say that if you have the signature story, that becomes the tentpole for your signature speech, and you give that speech 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 times a year, over a number of years, this story is worth millions and millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars, and to not know why or how it's good, or how it's gotten better over time, to me is amazing. And that's why the show has been very, very popular in the in the speaking community, of course, and also beyond that."

4. WE MUST CHALLENGE STEREOTYPES: Just as we have visual stereotypes about certain professions, we also hold unconscious biases about about what certain professions should sound like. As hosts and producers, it’s on us to challenge those biases. Sometime that means being willing to engage in conflict with leadership at stations, networks or brands. Here’s John Barth again, about advocating for the multi-talented performer Al Letson to be the voice of the investigative podcast Reveal: 

John Barth:
"I think the the challenge for us when we began reveal is that, you know, there was a lot of pressure to say, 'Oh, you need a journalist to host that show.' And well, Al's journalism chops were really strong. They weren't traditional. But first and foremost, what we needed for that show was also a voice and a host who would essentially help us redefine what investigative reporting would sound like. And that's why Al was just a real natural choice for that job."

As consumers, we tend to think about sound far less consciously than we think about who we see on video, for instance. We still have a long way to go in lifting up the voices of women podcast hosts. We are still vastly outnumbered by men, despite the fact that listeners are about evenly split between genders now. In fact, a recent Edison Research survey said women listeners would listen to more podcasts if there were more women hosts. If you’re listening to this and thinking about launching a show, know that your voice is needed.

We also need more racially and ethnically diverse hosts – and the stories you can tell. 
 

5. WE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT STORYTELLING.
As Laura Joyce Davis of Shelter in Place asks often, “Why do we create in the first place, especially when it’s hard?” That’s a question I’ll be asking myself – and my guests – a lot in the New Year. But here’s one answer, from hosts Emma Courtland of Crime Show and Glynn Washington of Snap Judgment. And that is that we cannot live without storytelling. Narrative is the way we understand and shape our lives. Here’s Emma, who, by the way, is a trained oral historian: 

Emma Courtland:
"I generally think that people are good storytellers, like narratives, the primary mode of human cognition, we are telling ourselves stories, that's how we define identity, you know, this is what it is to be human being is to live in a world of narrative and to, and to experience the world through narrative that is being revised constantly. I think that what happens is that as we revise it, we can, we can, like, sort of bend our story, like, like, we change our story, it's changes we, that story gets changed as we go through our lives." 

And Glynn Washington. Glynn is one of the few people I’ve ever met who understood that as a child, he was being fed one story of the way the world worked, and what that meant for his identity. And he decided consciously to change the ending of that story. Here’s Glynn [Washington]: 

"And what's amazing about when you go back and look at your own story. You can consciously say, no, no, no, no, I don't want to in my story here. Let me put it over here for a while. with the, with the, the power of distance, with the and perspective. And being able to tell yourself now No, I think I'm going to use some of that grace I have and say, Now, it doesn't end with me screaming in a closet, it ends with me being here, maybe at graduation, maybe a promotion may be whatever it is that I'm proud of, I'm gonna put it there.

And when you tell yourself that story about yourself in a different way, it changes you. It completely changes the person who's telling it. So not only is story magical, in that, it's the one way to get inside someone else's head. It's magical. And it's the one way that allows you to change yourself."

How have the stories you’ve heard as a host changed you? How are you using narrative to change yourself? 

6. BETTER THAN GOOD
What can you do to be better than good? This is from Jay Baer, talking about the business world. 

"Look, if you're a business speaker, your audience has heard a bunch of keynote speakers. And they've probably all been good. And it's just like podcast listeners, they've probably heard a lot of podcasts and a lot of good hosts. So what can you do to be better than good? That's the real question. You got to be asking yourself."

It is a great question. What can you do to be better than good? What can I do?

7. And finally, podcasting is a team sport. That's not new to me, but it was nice to hear, and you should hear it. 

Many of us are indie creators. We wear all the hats – writer, producer, HOST, marketer, editor, engineer. But it’s hard – and unwise – to operate alone. As a host, your work will be better if you work with a good producer or a good team. Here’s Stephanie Wittels Wachs, host of Last Day – that was episode 1 - on how working with close colleagues allows her to be emotionally and creatively courageous in ways that make Last Day such a standout. 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs: 
"I am used to collaborating very deeply and closely and trusting one another through that process. I don't know how I would do this with a team I didn't trust and feel kind of safe with the show is a real team sport. You hear my voice. But my goodness, there are four other people who are cranking away in the background, making it all happen. And that feels to me like the real magic of the show. "

Do you have any colleagues, either formally on a team with you or friendly colleagues with whom you collaborate? If not, that’s a challenge I offer you for 2023: Find someone to work with, whether that’s a friend, an employee, a fellow podcaster, or a coach. 

If you’re interested in tackling some of these bigger questions and challenges with a coach or a cohort, check out our offerings – there’s a link in the show notes – or email us at allies@podcastallies.com.  

To get a written reminder of the six unexpected lessons in this year-end reflections episode, read this week’s Sound Judgment newsletter. The lessons will be up on our blog later this week. 
 

Thanks for listening to Sound Judgment! 

Sound Judgment is produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. Sound design by Andrew Parella. Our gorgeous cover art is by Sarah Edgell. Project management and all the things by the wonderful Tina Bassir. 

That's it for Season 1. But we'll be back with the kickoff of Season 2 on January 12 with Glynn Washington. I'm so excited! 

Happy New Year. I can't wait to see -- and hear -- what you create in 2023.