Why a podcast?
Jess and I had this crazy idea that we should start recording a podcast together about two months ago. We then immediately had the thought of "are we qualified for this?" and "Who would want to listen anyway?" Those thoughts mulled around in our talks for a couple weeks until we decided that we wanted to do this for us. We wanted to create a space where we could have a meaningful conversation between the two of us, and talk about things that interest us. So then the next natural questions were, "what do we have to say?" and "what should we call this thing?"
This is where Stuff & Things was born. We decided we wouldn't fall into some tightly constructed niche of content, we just wanted to talk about the Stuff & Things that interest us at the moment. We wanted a place to be real, to be honest, to have hard discussions about tough topics, and most of all to have fun. Thinking in retrospect, not having a niche will not help us grow organically, or be easy to find a consistent audience, but it will keep us interested and excited. We didn't want to box ourselves in to one topic or idea, because as humans our interest and opinions change over the course of time.
An Idea...
We decided early on that we wanted this podcast to accurately represent who we are, what we like/dislike, what our views and opinions are and we wanted to clearly communicate those to the world. We didn't want to hold back or sugar coat things. Because of this we discuss hard things, we provide our views from our perspective, we don't cancel out our beliefs or hide who we are from the world. We feel this kind of authenticity is lacking in the world today, especially on the internet. If we can be authentic to who we are, hopefully we can provide some value to another person in their time of need. We aren't looking to get internet famous, or become "influencers" from this podcast, (and without a dialed in niche this is probably impossible) we just want to create content that is real, true to us and hopefully fun to listen to.
We decided early on that we wanted to create multiple forms of content from our podcast to expand our reach and hopefully help more people. Because of this we started video recording and sharing to our YouTube channel on Episode 2. This has been a fun experience for me (Chase) because I have recently fallen in love with videography as a hobby. I love filmaking and I am learning so many new techniques every day. This is a fun way to experiment with lighting and editing to produce a video a week for our YouTube. It has also inspired me to want to start making short films, as well as creating more value based content for our YouTube channel (more on that in the near future).
Our entire goal with this podcast is to bring value to others. To hopefully lift them up, sometimes with an encouraging word other times with humor (more so just laughing at how awkward Jess and I are), and to help share who we are as a married couple trying to find our voice in this vast world full of noise. (We just talked about this on Episode 4)
Lets be honest...
If we get real, there is a lot of noise out there. From constant comparisons on the internet, to politics, religion, climate issues, and just how bonkers the year 2020 has been. We wanted to do something that would ground us, and also help us with some form of normalcy in our lives. We all crave consistency, we all crave normalcy and with COVID-19 and the lockdown of the world it has been a craving a lot of us have not been able to fill at all. We wanted something that would help us stay focused. This is why we want to produce an episode a week, every week. We set aside time on Saturday evenings to record our episodes together. We plan on Tuesdays to have a rough outline of what we want to talk about. I edit everything on Mondays and start to plug it on social media, and our episodes are released every Wednesday at 9am EST on all the podcast channels and our YouTube. No excuses, no skipping, no procrastination. And let me tell you guys, this small scheduling has helped me stay focused. It has helped us stay accountable. It has helped us have fun doing this, and actually looking forward to having conversations with each other every Saturday.
I know it sounds crazy, but we love sitting down and chatting for an hour about one topic! Taking time to listen and interact with each other has helped us connect as a couple on new levels. Creating content together that is for us has helped to connect us on an artistic level as well as a business type level. And we freaking love it! So thank you! Thank you to everyone who has taken their time to listen to our random thoughts. Thank you to everyone who has reached out and said they enjoy listening. Thank you for all the encouragement, and the love! We are so happy to be able to create this podcast and we hope you guys will continue to enjoy and tune in to Stuff & Things!
Check us out...
If you want to get to know Jess and I more. And you want to hear that authenticity we are talking about, please check out this episode of Stuff & Things. We share our story, all of it, up until this point in our lives where COVID-19 has completely uprooted what we thought as normal!
If you want to see more content from us, or to hear our podcast check out the links below:
Listen to Stuff & Things: www.anchor.fm/stuffnthings
-Here you can find links to all your favorite podcast platforms, and also support the podcast if you would like!
Instagram: @chase.and.jess
-Give us a follow for sneak peeks of our newest episodes and to keep up with us.
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3jEfvLF
-Like, Subscribe and ring the notification bell to see our video content. We will be releasing the video podcast, tutorials about photography/video stuff, and lifestyle/vlogs in the future