Unleash Your Inner Motivation: Mastering The Psychology Of Podcasting For Success With Dr. Robert Heath Meeks Of TherapyBites A.R.T. LAB

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

I had the pleasure of being on the other side of the microphone with this podcaster a couple of weeks before I recorded this episode and I had to invite him back here because he has some of the most original formatting I've ever seen and her. And he also has the most fabulous outro. I can't tell you how many people I've shared it with. So you're gonna wanna go check out the blog post for this episode and definitely go check out a show so you can listen for it yourself. But you're gonna wanna link to that and take a listen to some of the unique things that he's doing. So today I have Therapy Bites Art Lab A R T L A B because that's how he does it. Dr. Robert Heath Meeks Doc Heath is amazing. He's got 38 years of behavioral health with a dual PhD in neuropsychology and Forensic psychology. And in Therapy Bites Art Lab they talk about the psychology everyday life while serving up some big baseball related metaphors and farm animal projective assessments. And they've got these really interesting and fun bits and puppets and all kinds of things that you're going to want to check out. I was analyzed by one of their Sigmund Freud knot, so it's really interesting and fun the way that they play with the show. And he's fabulous and amazing here talking about how he built his show with with his team, what they think about how they go through it and you're really going to get a sense of the creative vision that he's got going on here and how you might want to play more with your show. So let's talk to the host of Therapy Bites Art Lab Docketh.

I am so glad to have you on that side of the mic and not me not being grilled and having some fun today and enjoying talking about Therapy Bites Art Lab. Art Lab. Now it's an interesting name because your show, it sounds like it's going to be short Therapy Bites, but it's not. And I think that's such an interesting contrast.

No one's ever brought that up before. You're actually the. Of all the people that have read the podcast, no one's ever picked that out. And yes, I guess it's meant to be a bit ironic, but the operative term is bites because we're actually challenging our own field of psychology because we think that we have kind of gone off the rails as a profession. I think that we've got more complex and who wants that? I guess some folks are into that. I'm at a nerdy complex stuff, but it may not be helpful to people. I actually just had a patient and I was sharing with them that the definition we've come to use for psychology is telling you things that you already know in words you do not understand.

Oh, I love that I'm going to have to share that with my psychology friends. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think that that's so something that my daughter says this to me all the time. She's like, every time I ask Alexa to define something, she gives me a word that I need to define again. She's like, this is not helpful.

Our big motivation really got to be when we started paying more attention to social media. And I have a friend, his name is Richard and Richard's in the concrete business. And Richard said, you know what, doc? You said in the summertime, everybody with a brother in law, a wheelbarrow and a shovel thinks they're a concrete guy. Well, it's the same way in psychology. Everybody with a mic who's been through a difficult situation thinks that they can do psychology and or life coaching. And I have a very different he's a life coach, but he has lots and lots of training. But it's no well joke that the graduated from the same place I graduated from is one of. I don't know if he created or he produces it, but Roseanne, which is now known as the Conners. Jackie, who runs a diner, is a former life coach. And Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live was a life coach that lived in a rundown trailer beside the river. And so the thing is, I also have banker buddies that say they call me he's my middle name. And they say it really amazes us that somebody will be out cooking a burger and the family will say, man, you cook great burgers. You should open a burger joint. And my banker buddy says, that's always a mistake because there's got to be more to it. You really need to dig into the science of the burger or, or the science of concrete or in my field, if you're going to put yourself out there. Don't get your education from social media memes because that's just low hanging clickbait.

It's so true.

Yeah. We have lots of folks that come into the clinic and I'm going to step on some toes here, but these are our high value targets. I'll be a bit more serious though. We're kind of whimsical in the art lab, which stands for accurate realistic thoughts, life affirming beliefs. Art lab we study accurate realistic thoughts and life affirming beliefs. We have a little character named Artie and then we have another little demon like character named Iute Iute Y that stands for inaccurate unrealistic thoughts, of course. And we see so many people come in and they'll say, oh, my relationship is toxic. Is it really? Well, you need a radiation suit.

Yeah. Our terminology is a little interesting.

So the terminology that you see on social media gets in the way of what's really going on in the brain. And the purpose of the art lab is to really tackle that. And we're taking a bite out of psychology, but sometimes it's a elephant sized bite and we're doing some things to kind of break it down and doing some shorts. And we do a thing now called Q IQ. The question in question, the psychologically nutritious YouTube game show. And we take a really brief concept that someone has asked a question about and we give the answer. Here's the answer. And of course the audience comes up with the question. Sounds a lot like Jeopardy. Because we copy Jeopardy. And we do that every Tuesday and Thursday as kind of a, I don't know, I guess you call it a lead magnet, but it's really educational. Lead magnet. And we've had folks that'll say that was really very much needed because the longer form sometimes is too long for my attention span. And doing the short stuff is really helpful. And I think if there's a weak point in what we do and we have lots of them, we try to tackle them one at a time. We don't mind having weak points. We just look at weak points as opportunities for improving our stuff. And that was a weak point that we even us, we toss out some things and people think, gosh, what's arty and what's iudin?

Yeah.

And we have this whole zoo of critters, emotional reasoning, that catastrophizing ant and underthinking ant and we have all these creatures to explain these concepts and we're going to use those, by the way, to Write a children's book. We had someone asked us for a children's book of all our creatures and we're going to do that. Maybe chatgpt.

Maybe you should have somebody else. Right?

There you go. Maybe ChatGPT can help.

Well, you know, it's not like you don't have your voice and you don't have your content and you've got now all those videos. So putting them in is going to be an even better solution because at least it's not going to be some generic answer. It's going to be your answer.

Yeah, yeah.

You can force the AI to at least use that. As we were talking about, it's not a bite sized show in terms of a small bite. It's like an elephant sized bite. But you have a lot of character segments and complexity to the show. But it's not overly confusing to watch or listen to.

Oh, great. We were hoping it wasn't.

Yeah, it just kind of flow. It's an entertainment mode. Right. I think sometimes we don't disrupt enough to get the thought process in and I think that's what your show does really well in psychoanalyzing your show and looking for the binge factor of it. That's what I think it really is. You've allowed me to buy this sort of disruptive segmenting model of interrupting me with occasional characters or bits or other things that you do allow the concept to sink in. So now I'm getting something out of each episode that I might not otherwise. And I of course then want to come back and listen to more because I gained something from that. I gained knowledge or I gained perspective.

Yeah. And we're really hoping to make it kind of like a buffet that we don't come into it with the expectation that every person is going to be a super fan and just say, oh my gosh, I just love everything. Because what are the chances? Maybe if you love everything, you do need therapy. But there's going to be things that you're not going to like and that's okay. We're okay with that because we don't started trying to appeal to everybody and we know we won't appeal to everybody. I mean, what are the chances? There are now literally a lot of people on the planet. Eight billion people. That's a lot of freaking people. I think we can safely maybe slow down on making people. We have lots of people.

Not according to China and not according to Elon Musk, but otherwise the.

I like to talk to him about that.

We need to have a Chat about that?

I think so, yeah. I think that's something else going on there with Elon that he believes he needs to.

We maybe need to redeploy.

Yeah. He needs to spread his genes around.

But with 8 billion people, what are the chances? One of my favorite stories is actually from a minister. And the minister said that he was going to preach a sermon, and it was a wintry day, and only one person showed up, and it was a farmer. And the minister said to the farmer, he said, gosh, no one showed up. I guess I should just cancel the service. You're the only one here. And the farmer said, preacher, let me tell you something. I got a lot of cattle, but if I go out to feed my hay to my cattle and only one cow shows up, I go ahead and feed that cow.

I think it's a sign. Yeah.

And we look at it that way with our podcasting, is that literally, I tell my team, and there are four of us, I'm just one of four clinicians, that there is one person out there that really, really is going to benefit from our message. And my question for you guys, my team, is that enough? Because if that's not enough for you, then we should just go ahead and quit. But if changing the life of one person is enough, then, well, let's do that. And then we decided that one person can find value in some things, and then we'll engineer some other things, more like a buffet that maybe other people can chime in with. And it's interesting you should talk about your. It's called the. No offense. It's called the PMS analysis. It's psycho malarkey scale. Making fun of her own stuff.

So what Doc Heath is referring to is that they sent me because I was on his show, and they sent me my analysis, which is one of the features on the show, and they sent it to me so I could hear it, because that episode hasn't quite aired yet. And so that way, I got the full effect of what the episode was going to be like. And it was so entertaining, it made me smile. And I think that that's really, really a gift that you have, is that even if maybe I. My takeaway of something wasn't, like, it didn't totally hit home. You still make me smile. Like, there's still a lot of humor in everything that's done. The characters make you kind of laugh, the little puppets. Right. It makes you smile and laugh. So even if it wasn't a complete that landed for me, there still is an impression that you're leaving. And I think that that's really important.

We're not trying to hit a home run. We're trying to get a base hit. That's it.

Very, very good, per se.

That sounds weird, as I say it to you. We're just trying to get on base with Tracy. We're just trying to get the first base with Tracy.

It's a good thing we're friends now, right?

My wife, your husband, might take offense at that. With our listeners. We're just trying to get on base. We really don't expect to hit a home run. It's interesting, your comment about our outro, which. Thank you so much. That's so very kind and we glad you guys enjoy it. But I had a listener tell me the other day because they called me and they said this to me. They said, I like what you're doing. But I got to that Dr. Immer Freud knot thing and I just couldn't hardly listen to it. It just drove me nuts because it's a friend of mine that does it. We have two guys, both friends of mine, and one does Dr. I'm a Freudnot. Is this your diagnosis? I'm a Freud knot. And then we have another guy and he does Dr. Jung. J O O, N G. A tart.

Jung tart. From Carl Jung, of course. And we just think it's fun and funny and we're kind of poking fun because our field puts too much stock in psychological assessments. We put too much stock in the WAIS 5 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the WISC Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. We put too much stock in all these pieces of paper. Instead of putting stock in our patients and seeing our patients as having individual experiences and being unique humans, and this is my patient or my client having their own uniquely human experience. That may not. And for your listeners, I'm doing kind of a bell curve thing here. You can look it up. You know what a bell curve is shaped like a bell that we think that everybody's got to be at the very center of the bell curve. And I think that is the problem a lot in podcasting. I kind of lurk on Reddit, and it seems like people think to be successful, you have to be like everybody else. And that's just a huge mistake because think about this, guys. If you are like everybody else, then either you or everyone else is redundant and unnecessary. If two people, if two podcasts are just alike, then one of the two are redundant. Find your own thing. Do your own thing.

Bring your own personality to it, which is really what you're doing here, even though those happen to be two other people doing those personalities. But it's still your humor. It's your direction that's guiding that. What I love about the outro and what I share to people is that too often there's this coaching advice out there, right? These podcast coaches pop up like life coaches, as you put that. They pop up and everyone and their brother thinks they're a podcast coach. And the problem with that is they have anecdotal experience, right? They have their own experience, and that's about it. And they don't have the data, they don't have the years of experience, they don't have touching multiple personalities, multiple different types of people to understand what was really working. And so their advice becomes cookie cutter. That's what you're saying here, is that it's this podcast that looks like everybody else's, that looks just like mine. And that's not the right answer for your show, perhaps. Right. Maybe some parts are. But one of the coaches, the podcast coaches advice is this long outro where you sell them stuff. It's like you've delivered during the episode and now you get a long outro and you take two minutes or longer, whatever it is, to sell them on your stuff. And we fly in the face of that. And our advice at our company, because what we've seen is that that just encourages someone to not play through your episode. We see a different playthrough when you have a long outro. However, yours is so humorous that I keep listening to it because of the humor drawn into it, that I didn't want to shut it off. And I think that that's such a. If you're going to do something like that, you have to do it right. If you're gonna deviate from conventional wisdom, do it right. Do it humorous, make people laugh. Then they will buy and they will listen. Right? That's kind of the rules.

You kind of have to get over yourself. And I won't call names because I respect these people. But I do watch podcasts and Instagram posts and other social media posts from other people in the field. I really do. And people may not like what we do, but at least I hope they're not going to do.

And go to sleep. Because what we really did is took a relatively famous podcast teacher person's advice and googled and looked at what everybody else was doing and then did the opposite.

That's right. Which I think is so brilliant for what you're trying to do, though, and that's why it's working so well, is because it is unconventional, but unconventional in a really effective way. Not unconventional just to be different. Right. That's the problem. It's unconventionally you. That's why it's working. And it's sustainable.

I hope so. What really gets me out of bed in the morning? You know, we do this whole thing on motivation. And there's guys out there, and I respect these guys. I think these guys are great. David Goggins has a big following. Gosh, what's the other guy's name? Jacques Wenlich has big following. Jocko, if you listen, love you, but you're wrong on motivation. That is psychologically, motivation simply does not. Stop teaching that, because that's not how motivation works. Jocko teaches. Forget about motivation. Get into this one. Well, I got news for you. Motivation is built on the back of cognitions. Discipline is built on the back of motivation. You organize your thinking. And how do you do that? Well, by what you decide to find purpose in. It doesn't matter if anybody else finds purpose in it. Don't Google it to find out how many people find purpose in this. You find purpose in it, and then because you found purpose in it, that gets you out of bed as it does me. I get up every day thinking. I don't mean to sound. What's it called? Pollyannish. But literally, I get out of bed because I really want to help at least just one person. If just one person gets it, that's great. That's fantastic. And I get out of bed thinking that. And that motivation then becomes habit. And habit is discipline. Because you can look at discipline as ruts in the gravel road of your brain. And the more you.

That's an interesting way to think about it.

Yeah. Well, grew up on gravel roads in Arkansas. And if you drive on those ruts enough, well, that's discipline. Because why would you drive anywhere else? The thing is, also I wanted to add is I tell my team, hey, if you think something we're doing is not working, critique it. Let me know. Because although I love being creative, we creatives can also get into the mindset that our ideas are so wonderful they shouldn't be questioned. And that is a mistake.

I so agree.

Right.

Because continual learning is a part of everything that we need to do. Right. But I want to touch on something you said before. We kind of head into this creative side of it. It is important. But the motivation issue is the number one thing I tell my clients. I can't record for you. So if you're not going to be motivated to record, this is not something I can physically do for you. It's not going to happen. So we got to figure out what that is for you. And I think that's the conventional wisdom that we hear from the coaches out there, are you just have to do it. You just have to schedule a time and do it.

Yeah.

You and I both know that that is a recipe for disaster. Right. It's just never going to work that way. And everyone has their own internal motivations and if we can tap into that and figure out what is going to work for you. So for me, my motivation is I love to have these conversations. Right. It is way harder for me to do a topic lesson kind of episode where I'm going to teach you something than it is for me to have a conversation with someone. I learned something from every single person I talk to and that's getting used to. It's also getting filtered. It's getting turned into something that's the creative part for me and that's what energizes me, taking other ideas and putting them together into something that's workable. So that's what gets me out of bed in the morning, as you put it. Right. That works for me. So I had to really come up with a motivation that would be similar for me to be able to do the educational coaching pieces that are required in my company. So you gotta figure out how you can do that. So for me, I will show up for one person. If one person's depending on me, I'm going to show up. So we had to force our topic episodes into a live stream situation so that I show up on time. I show up for whoever's going to be there. I don't know, they'll show up. And the more people that show up, the more energized I am and the easier it is to keep going and make sure that you do the next week and the next week. But I had to come up with that, what is it for you, that motivation piece besides helping one person, what is it for you?

I like to be a good example to my team. I like to, as they say, practice what I preach. And I don't want to be selfish. And I think I struggle with selfishness because I want to have my way. Because I think, well, why not? I mean, the world would work so much easier if all you guys just gimme my way. I mean, we just all get along better.

If you get that flies in the Face of having team.

Right.

So you invited the team in, which kind of pushes you out of that totally selfish view.

But the other selfish thing is this. And I've told my team this. We've had this discussion a few times. And I also tell my team, I'm not like people on social media that say, hey, I love all you guys. How could you do that? There's 8 billion you guys in the world. You've not met them all. You might not love them at all if you met them. So I will tell my team and select people, I love them. And I tell my team, I love you guys, but to do what we're doing, you have to get over yourself. Because they were so and still are to some extent, so camera shy. And what is camera shyness? Camera shyness. And you guys think about this. Send me letters, dirty letters, whatever is selfishness. Camera shyness is selfishness. Because here's what's going on. You are deciding, I am not going to serve my public because it is uncomfortable for me. I'm not going to serve you guys because it's uncomfortable for me. And that is selfish. And I tell my team, nobody cares if you're uncomfortable. They just need help. Nobody cares if you don't think you're pretty on camera. They just need help. Nobody cares if you sound like a country bumpkin from Arkansas because they just need help. And I had somebody actually tell me, a guest of mine, he said, you know, doc, he said, we just thought it was so amazing that some dude from Arkansas is doing this. And I thought, I'm not sure how to take that, actually.

I think it was a compliment. I'm going to take it that way.

I remember doing clinical work out on the all over the US but on the east coast. And I was in a facility in Boston and somebody actually looked at my feet and said, man, you're wearing shoes. I thought you were from Arkansas. Yeah, we just wear them when we leave the state. Come to Arkansas. No one has shoes.

I love that. But you know what? I think you're so right because I say this to people all the time. It's like the world deserves your message. So it's on you to get it out there.

Yeah. And it's not really about building it and they'll come. It's not about finding your audience and then doing it. It is finding a gap in human experience that needs to be served and serving. I saw a thing on Reddit, some kid talking about it. He may not be serious. I don't know. Starting a Podcast called the Fuzzy Tuba Podcast. And I thought, the Fuzzy Tuba Podcast. I don't know.

Fun name.

Fun name. Is it Maybe it's not about tubas, I don't know. But there's somebody out there that needs to hear that, and then the market takes care of the rest. I mean, really, it does. If I heard somebody say, if you put out a podcast and the people that are the audience for that podcast are a thousand people, and you get, I don't know, 30% of that audience. That is a huge number. 30% of an audience is a huge number. Now, we're not talking about 30% of a billion. Nobody has that, even Dwayne Johnson. But 30% of an audience on a certain niche topic. 30%. 25%. 20%. That's a huge number.

That's way more than open rates on emails, guys, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. But this is. You're right. We've been talking about this recently. It's like we get. Some people come in and say, well, if I don't have a hundred thousand downloads a month, and then it's not worth doing for me. And I said, how many times do you speak to 100,000 people on a stage? Right. Are you happy if there's 50 people in your audience? What if you can do that from the comfort of your home every single week?

Yeah.

And talk to 50 people, like.

Well, I think that. That I was years ago now. This is. I got a trophy behind me. I was in amateur bodybuilding, and there's a guru in amateur bodybuilding that trained bodybuilders who would be so particular about what they ate before the show that they did not brush their teeth because they were afraid that the toothpaste had calories. Oh, God, I'm not even making this up.

No, I. I've heard of this kind of stuff. Yeah.

And Dan the trainer, he's now passed away, but he was cool guy. He said, that is not a physiological problem. That is a psychological problem. And I think he's right. And it's the same with what you just said. Somebody that says, I've got to get 100,000 downloads, that's not a podcasting problem. That is a psychological or at the very least, a mindset problem. Because you ask, what gets me out of bed? And my definition of success in recording a podcast episode is quite simple. Has nothing to do with downloads. It has nothing to do with reviews or ratings. It has to do with making and keeping a commitment to myself. That's it. If I record, if I Planned to record a podcast episode. And I indeed recorded a podcast episode. Then that is a success. And some of that I get from the Green Mile, by the way, the Stephen King movie.

That movie, yeah, it's great.

They horribly executed the guy. And Tom Hanks, using Stephen King's voice, said, well, Edward Delacroix is dead. The execution. Not that I believe in excuse, but execution was a success. If I execute a podcast episode, bam, that is my success. I'm not looking for downloads. As a matter of fact, I'm not a podcast trainer. But I don't even really look. People say, what's your downloads? I don't know. Well, you should look. Why should I look? Isn't that something? Yeah. People ask Johnny Depp, which I love Johnny Depp, as everybody did in Pirates of the Caribbean. He's not watched every one of them. Never.

We hear a lot of creatives, a lot of actors, a lot of people who write and do other things once it's published or once it's aired, they never see it because it was the act of doing it that was more critically important to them. And they don't want the end result to. I don't know if it's ruin it or adjust that view for themselves because they want to keep in what that felt like. And I think that's a really interesting model. That's how I always. I mean, my team, they'll say, don't you want to listen to it? I was like, no, no. I trust that you edited it, right? I mean, you didn't make a mistake. So I trust that that's there. But I lived it. I was here. I was in the moment. And that is way more important to me than how it sounds on the other side, technically. Right?

And even if you do listen to it, you're not listening to it with the ears of your audience. You're listening to it with all the jungle of thoughts in your own brain. And an example I would use was one used by famous psychotherapist Irving Yalam. Lots of great books out there by Yalam. And Yalam did an experiment where he did a psychotherapy session and he wrote down his perception of how well it went, and he asked his patient to write down how well they thought it went. And here's the results of his little anecdotal study. Is that the sessions that he thought he was psychotherapy Superman, the patient thought they sucked.

I love that. The perception.

And the sessions that he thought sucked, the patients thought were the best sessions ever.

That is so imperception. I always say, this is that brand. We put our brand out there, we put our message out there, but it means nothing because it only means what it's perceived as.

That's right.

We don't get that enough. Right.

I use this with patients sometimes when in relationship therapy. Therapy, you do not know what ice cream tastes like in the mouth of your spouse.

Even if you do the whole French kissing thing, you don't know. You can never know their experience. Their experience is their experience. We're actually engineered that way. The creator universe made it so that we are unable to know the experience of another person without communicating about it. Which is why I look forward to developing community. And we're already hearing from people that are saying, hey, I've tried everything. I've done all the psychobabble stuff. I've gone to Woo Woo clinicians, and none of that works. I'd like for you to share with me what episode can I start on? And I'll never see them for therapy, but this episode, which is absolutely free, might change their life depending on how. What they choose to make of it.

Yeah, so, so, so important. Well, because you have an interesting show. As I pointed out, it's very complex and it's different in the way that it's structured and you have a team. So tell us about kind of the preparation process and how a show comes together.

Well, I don't have hypergraphia, which is a disorder where someone keeps grease pencils in their shower and then they write down ideas in the shower. But I'm close. I have Apple Notes on my phone. And I also have a really, really expansive, healthy. What I might call a Zeigarnic radar. And the Zeigarnic effect, in case you guys haven't heard of it, is I left the house and the toaster oven's on. Oh, my gosh, did I leave the toaster oven on? Did I lock the doors? That's the zygonic effect. And so ideas will add weight to my brain until I write them down, which I will do.

I didn't know that that had a term, but that's me too. So we're now in my company here, we're addicted to Dropbox paper, which is our collaboration tool, which is like Apple Notes, but we use it as a company here.

I've never heard of that.

And it's like a brainstorming document, and you just like, type into it and you can assign things and yeah, the team is loving it, and it works for the creatives. And the to do list People. So it's covering both at the same time, which is important.

I have a really weird thought about this that I shared with my team very hesitantly, because I too do not want to be fitted for a straightjacket. But I shared it with them and they seem to do okay with it. But I don't believe that these ideas belong to me. I believe that these ideas, for whatever reason, I get them. And I'm doing a disservice by not writing them down. So I don't self censor.

I'm so glad you said that because I've actually said that places before and I honestly thought someone was going to say, oh, that's a little crazy. Like I really.

If they tell me I crazy, I.

Say it's like a dream.

You may be right. Yeah, I may just be the lunatic you're looking for. I'm channeling Billy Joel, of course.

That's right. One of my favorite songs, actually.

That's my response. You're crazy. You may be right. I may be crazy. It might just be the lunatic tick you're looking for. But no. One of the biggest enemies of creativity is self centering. And we really do have a filter. It's not a bad thing because some ideas will drive a car off a cliff and that's never a good idea. But I think you just have to be open to any. It's kind of brainstorming. I tell my team, you cannot write and edit simultaneously. You got to pick one. You write first and then you can edit later. Yes. I'm not a writing coach. Some of you writer coaches can disagree with, that's okay. But you write first because you're actually doing that through a different mental network than editing. Then you can engage your editor and. And cut out all the good stuff. I would say that. I don't know, 98.6% of stuff I come up with is crap. But then I watch Jack Nicholson, who is Sunglass Jack, by the way, on Instagram. You guys, if you're not on Sunglass Jack, just follow Sunglass Jack. You know, really, it's just amazing. Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson. But one of his early things he said, and I can't do a Jack Nicholson. He said, I write things and then I read them and then I wad them up and I throw them in the trash. And then I go in the trash and I pull them back out because it's really good stuff.

So that's such an interesting idea, the way that we do it and have always done it, because I'm a Designer first. Like a product designer first. And so we always called it like a card discard pile. You would be putting ideas in your hand like playing cards, and sometimes you have to discard them, but that doesn't mean you don't reshuffle the deck and bring them back. You're not actually trashing the idea. You're just discarding it for now. And it might come up to a better time.

Well, I just want to take the cream of the crop. I have a whole vessel of, I don't know, milk or whatever your metaphor wants to be. But then the cream, we try to skim that off and actually I did have a writing coach for a while. Very wonderful lady, Martha Alderson. You guys look for a writing coach, Martha Alderson. Wonderful gal. And I asked Martha one time, I said, gosh, I had this really great idea, but I think I might want to save it for later. Martha said, never do that. Use your best ideas. Save nothing. Put your best ideas out there, because then that leaves room for new best ideas and it gets back to the self centering.

That's really good. Important point.

Yeah, I think I paid her big money for that.

Yeah, I bet you did. The other thing is, with the team, though, as we were talking about ideas and perception, right? When you're collaborating with your team and putting your ideas out there for them to view, when they come back, they read it to you. So I never edit mine. We edit it as a team so that their perception of what I wrote down might be, oh, I hadn't thought of talking about that topic in that way. But now that I hear that, you think that's a need. Oh, that's really. I'm glad my idea triggered that. And so it morphs into something new sometimes when you leave it there and let that team perception help you refine it. Because I'm not the audience, right. I'm not the listener, as you pointed out.

Yeah, we have a couple different types of shows. We're about to do a bit of a psychological thriller show in a serialized fashion from our own quirky, whimsical, psychological side of things. But that's coming up next month. But for now, we do an interview show, which is what Tracy was on. And I encourage them to look at the person's bio and come up with questions they think will be interesting. And then I make a list of questions, and if I get to them, I get to them. If I don't get to them, I don't get to them. They're just almost kind of a backup. And if they're all there, which we all have full clinical schedules, we always can't be there. They can all be there. We just kind of do round robin. And since they're kind of camera shy, I'm sitting there under the camera kind of, you take number four and you take number five or six when I'm not on camera. And then they kind of make it their own and ask the question. Now, if it's just a art lab team show where it's just us, which we're going to start doing more of.

Those, I'm glad because they're fun.

Well, that's because just people ask for them. You know, I had people complain and I love complaining because it's just information. By the way, you podcasters out there that are so sensitive that you don't think you can suffer complaints, get over it. It's this. Here's a new word for complainers. It's a $4 word. My dad would say it's a four syllable word. Information. That's it. That's all it is. Somebody complains, it's information. It you didn't have. Ignorance is not bliss. You're better off just knowing. If somebody doesn't like it, what's wrong with knowing? So we had a complaint that, hey, I thought we were going to hear you. And we heard some person from Timbuktu and we have no idea who they are. We'd rather hear you. So we're going to do one week an interview, one week a team show, which is really, we just take a topic and they kind of prepare on their own about their take on it. I encourage them to challenge me. I encourage them to be devil's advocate. Because if I think I know what I think I know, I ought to be able to put my money where my mouth is.

Yeah.

And if I can't do that, then I rethink my thinking. But that's our two different types of shows we create individually on our own and then we get together and have a conversation.

And this is something that just I think is so critical. I. I'm hearing this again and again from a lot of podcasters that they're doing more what we call topic based shows or shows that are themselves speaking and it's resonating more with their audience. They're finding a playthrough is almost complete. They're finding that those episodes have a higher listen rate so they're binged on more often. So I think that's really interesting that you want to bring Both in. And I think it's going to be really good for you.

I hope so. We're going to leave the interviews as a longer format, about an hour. If it gets over an hour, we tend to split it into two episodes. We had a couple of shows that were. I don't know, it just. They had the time, I had the time. It wound up being an hour and a half. And we're not Joe Rogan. Not trying to be Joe Rogan. And so it chopped it in half and made it a two parter just mainly as an experiment, but most be an hour. And then the art lab shows with just the team are going to be more like 20, 25 minutes or something.

Yeah, no, I think that's ideal for you. But the other thing is that we touched on this before. You were saying like there's so much of social media, there's so much of the stuff that's just out there leaving an impression. And if we're not brave enough to put our thoughts out there, our actual thoughts out there, our ideas, our analysis of things, our perspectives. Right. If we're not confident enough to do that, then the ChatGPT of the world is only going to have one sided information.

Well, yeah, that's the thing. ChatGPT, oh my goodness, a lot of misunderstanding in that. And chatgpt has human brains behind it and it's only as good as its input. And the term that I heard way back when in the 80s when I was going to be a systems analyst for computer systems was gigo G I G O garbage in, garbage out. And that's CHAT GPT. It's only as good as what you program into it and so we will probably use that, but we will also make it our own. I don't know as much about as I should, but I think it may be a starting point for those have trouble generating ideas. I could start podcasting now with an episode a week or two episodes a week of everything that's in Apple notes and not get it done. If I live to be 300 years.

Old, that's my list too. So I totally get you there. Like I don't need it to make ideas for me. I'm good.

Yeah, I mean it sounds crazy but I sometimes want the ideas to stop just so I can go to sleep. Because if I have an idea and it's 2:30 in the morning, I just think I might as well write it down because I'm not going to go to sleep till I write it down. If you guys are wondering about how to kind of stimulate creativity. A couple of quick ways. One is cardiovascular exercise. I get more ideas when I'm doing my thrice weekly 5K, which by the way, I can now do in 20 minutes and 29 seconds.

Woo hoo.

My thrice weekly. Thank you. I've been working at that for a long time because it just stimulates such blood flow to the brain. I'm not trying to do a few different things at once. I'm just making my feet move and I'm just focusing on my breathing. Because if I don't breathe, I pass out. No one wants that. And so do cardio. The other thing is learn some mindfulness meditation. The other thing is to stop self censoring. Another thing is, and I know this sounds crazy and if it's not your thing, it's not your thing, that's okay. But there's actually some research out there that science fiction can stimulate creativity in your own segment, your own field. Sci fi, of course. I'm a big Trekkie, big Star wars fan. And then also quirky quotes. Quirky quotes. If you'll just sign up for a quirky quote, I don't know, feed or whatever, quirky quotes you'll find are the kindling of continuous creativity. They may mean nothing to you in the beginning, but they can stimulate creativity and you'll never run out of ideas. But once you start self censoring, your brain listens to the self censoring and it feeds you less data. You're literally telling your brain, don't give me more stuff because you keep telling it. It's not good stuff. I'm open to everything.

I so agree. I think that self censoring is something that we do too often. I have learned on the mic here, there's editing. I don't need to self censor now. Right. Like let me ask that question. If it turns out to be a dud, we'll fix it on post.

That's right.

But not going there is one of the worst choices you can make.

Yeah.

Because your audience would be sitting there going like, why didn't she ask that question? As a follow up, they're yelling at you. And so that's not a good thing when you stop yourself.

I think the important thing is have a vision and be genuine to that vision. And then when finding your audience, they're really looking for the same thing. You're really putting a vision out there as a bit of a vision magnet for others that may see things the way that you do. Or they think, wow, why Would somebody look at it that way? And they want to try to see things the way that you do. And you're really becoming a vision magnet. But by the way, there's a shock jock host who's passed away now. Maybe not everybody's favorites. Once upon a time, he was my favorite. I just thought he had a cool voice. Rush Limbaugh from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, of all places, his hometown.

I'm surprised at that. I thought he was from the South. I don't know why.

Well, Cape is kind of the South. Yeah, it's not too far from here. I used to do clinical work up there. But Rush would say my word's not his. Don't be a milquetoast. Don't straddle the fence. He said, no one wants that. Either be all this way or be all this way. And that's kind of. People are just looking for that extreme opinion these days. But having done that, what I believe just for myself, is that I need to welcome disagreement. And I'll get on social media to stir stuff up. And I call it social media smackdown. And I will take head on some of this low hanging, clickbait, psycho, mallogical mumbo jumbo that's put out there, and then people come on there and tell me I'm nuts, I'm crazy, and I should read some books and get updated in psychology. And I'll say, fantastic, come on the podcast, we'll put a camera in your face and a mic at your mouth and we'll have a live debate. And I won't edit anything you say. I promise I won't. No one's ever taken me up on that, by the way.

I've only had one.

Have you really?

I've only had one in all the time where I disagreed with him wholeheartedly. And I said, I will have you on my show and I will not edit it and I will keep you on. And only one person took me up on that.

How'd it go?

I think it was really one of my better episodes, to be honest with you. I mean, I think I still think his viewpoint is really off, but I think it was the contrast of seeing the two of us talking about it from those perspectives that really highlighted why I think he's so off in what it is. And so I think it's good.

I don't know. It really amazes me, not going to get political, but in our country that we have have devolved in such of a vanilla type of conversation that if I say something that doesn't agree with your beliefs, I'm toxic. Or if I say something that challenges what you're saying, I'm gaslighting. And that is just the death of free speech. That is just the opposite of the Bill of Rights. Now, I believe in being courteous. I was raised that way. But if I don't have the right to speak my opinion, eventually you won't have the right to speak your opinion. So I want you to speak your opinion because you're doing it is protective of me having that freedom also that so many countries don't have. One of my favorite quote comes from, I think it was World War II, where a man was writing. I can't quote it exactly, but it said that they came for the Jews. And since I wasn't Jewish, I kept my silence. I didn't speak up. And then when they came for this group, since I was not part of that group, I did not speak up. And then finally when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up. And so I think even if I have a show and I have our own opinions and things like that, I am fully welcoming of other people coming on the show and even doing stuff, which I think is just some of the weirdest stuff I've seen. Bless their heart. I'm sitting there being courteous, but I find value in that because that is their human experience. And the highest calling as a human is to be a human and to be a fully present, genuine human in your space of humanity. I think that's the great thing about podcasting, is it gives so many people a really, really economical way to just experience their humanity.

I'm going to leave it right there because that is, I think, exactly what your show is providing and exactly what you're bringing to the world. So, Docieth, thank you for bringing Therapy Bites to the world. Thank you for airing your voice every single week and the voices of others.

And thank you for all the work you do. It's been a pleasure.

So I almost felt a little like weird psychoanalyzing a psychoanalyst. Right, Exactly. But it was a lot of fun to really talk about the show from different perspectives, from how you're building it to how you're creating it, to how the vision for it to how it's feeling and being received by people. Right. The psychology of that as well. But I really am so pleased that the direction that this episode took was really mostly about motivation, because at the end of the day, that's the one thing I can't make you do. I can get you all excited about the world of podcasting. I can give you all these fabulous podcasters who you want to model and and build your shows like or learn from. Add a tactic that they've given you. I can give you every tip under the sun in my other podcast, feed your brand. I can even do production services and all kinds of things in my company monetized for you. But I can't make you record. I can't make you sit down to this microphone and give us your message. I can't make you interview great people and bring us your connections if you're not willing to reach out there and ask them to be on your show. That motivation has to come from you. And Doc Heath found a motivation for himself. He is passionate about this. You can see it lights him up. He loves it. And that makes all the difference in the fun and the effectiveness of this show. So I told you, don't forget to go listen to the show. Check it out. Go all the way through and listen to that full outro because you're going to laugh out loud and have a lot of fun. And be sure to link back to thebingefactor.com check it out. And I'm going to link back and forth between the episode where I was on his show and he was on mine. So you could see what it looks like when you do a podcast swap and how effective and interesting the two pieces can be. Because I knew more about him as I'm interviewing him here. I think it makes for an effective interview between the two of us. So be thinking about that as one of your strategies doing one of these podcast swaps and check out how effective that was. So thank you all for being here on the Bitch Factor, for listening to my great guests, and for checking out and being curious and intrigued by the podcasting industry. Thanks, everyone. I'll be back next week with another Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.

Sam.