Podcasts! A year ago I knew basically no one that listened to them. Then the cultural phenomenon known as Serial started and suddenly podcasts were a thing again. Now I listen to at least four per week and I genuinely wonder what I used to listen to in the car.
Amidst this new podcast craze, my longtime friend Shawn K. Small reached out to me about an idea he had for starting one of his own. I’m not a podcast expert by any means, although I did dabble in video podcasts way back in 2008 before promptly forgetting about them and never trying again. But I do possess expertise in audio recording which I am told is a rather significant factor in creating a podcast.
One week later I found myself sitting down over the most delicious burgers in DFW (Papi’s Red Hots for you uninformed) with Shawn. His idea was simple – create a podcast aimed at encouraging men to pursue God and His purpose for their lives. He would call it The Fearless Man Project.
Though I may not have told Shawn, when we met up I was a little skeptical that he would get this project off the ground. Every couple months I get an email from someone wanting to create a video blog, email newsletter, Facebook page, or some other medium where they are creating content. They know that I’ve been making videos and blog posts for years and want advice about how to go about doing it well.
Usually they don’t make it past the first post, video, or article. There are thousands of blogs out there like this, and you may have started one yourself. It’s a great idea, but once you start you realize how much work goes into creating things. You have to give up hours that you could be spending working etc. to write, record, and edit whatever it is you are making. The rest of life can easily get in the way. This is why I was skeptical of Shawn’s podcast idea. The odds of him creating a weekly podcast consisting of interviews and sticking with it for more than one or two interviews were low.
Shawn proved me wrong.
Within two weeks of our meeting he had his first podcast up, and more than that he had a schedule to post one every Monday for the foreseeable future. He had interviews lined up with many of his contacts, and he was recording his podcast episodes weeks in advance of releasing them. I was completely blown away by what he had made.
Then in late April he asked me if he could interview me to be on the podcast. I was excited and a bit nervous. Was my story good enough to share? Am I a fearless man? Should I just hangout behind the scenes and listen? The answer to those questions was yes, not quite, and no. Because of God my story is good enough, His perfect love has removed my fear, and I enjoy helping make things. So I prayed and a week later in early May I found myself being interviewed for The Fearless Man Project, a podcast that I originally wasn’t sure was going to happen, and was then proved wrong about.
Yesterday episode 011 of The Fearless Man Project was released on iTunes with the title “Matt Johnson: God is cultivating us to be great!“. I would encourage you to give it a listen, write a review on iTunes, and share your story with Shawn on The Fearless Man Project’s site. Shawn is making something great, and I think everyone should be a part of it.
