How A Philosopher-Musician Built A Lasting Podcast Without Chasing Ads with Joel Bouchard

A teenage band with no instruments, a DIY studio built on curiosity, and a philosophy show that grew for six years without chasing ad money—Joel Bouchard’s story is a masterclass in building something meaningful and letting it compound. We sit down with Joel, a doctoral student in psychology, multi-instrumentalist producer, author, painter, veteran, and host of From Nowhere To Nothing, to unpack why so many podcasts fade and how to design one that lasts.

We trace Joel’s path from learning music the hard way to launching a philosophy podcast with his former professor, and we get real about expectations. Joel explains why purpose must come before monetization, how to know when a sponsorship fits, and why he turned down early ad offers to protect the show’s flow. He shares a simple structure that balances familiarity and novelty—start with foundations, explore the core tensions, then ask what it means for our lives—so listeners feel guided, not lectured.

Along the way, we explore the mindset that sustains long projects: be a beginner often, fail in public, and keep your early episodes as proof of growth. We talk psychology, language, and attention; audience-first guesting; and practical ways to launch, avoid podfade, and stay consistent without burning out. Joel’s filter is refreshingly clear: passion plus knowledge plus responsibility. If your work helps people think better and feel braver, keep going. The audience will come.

Listen for straight talk on purpose, structure, and craft—and leave with a calm plan for the long game. If this conversation sparks something, follow, share with a friend, and drop a review to tell us what you’ll try next.

Chapters

• 0:04 Opening And Show Purpose
• 0:41 Meet Joel Bouchard
• 1:07 Teen Band To Solo Studio
• 3:07 Lifelong Learning And Meaning
• 5:11 Degrees, Psychology, And Curiosity
• 5:59 Why Start A Philosophy Podcast
• 6:45 Podfade, Purpose, And Expectations
• 8:25 Vision Before Monetization
• 10:41 Ads, Integrity, And Audience Fit
• 12:09 Monetization Paths That Make Sense
• 13:36 Host Vs Guest: Serve The Audience
• 15:12 Structure, Novelty, And Craft
• 17:04 Differentiation And Programming Mindset
• 18:44 Passion, Packaging, And Philosophy’s Image
• 20:46 Lessons From Early Episodes
• 22:16 Launch Strategy And Breaking The Dip
• 24:06 Keep The Back Catalogue
• 25:54 Should You Start A Podcast
• 27:13 Purpose, Responsibility, And Value
• 28:41 Have Fun And Build Resilience
• 30:02 How To Reach Joel
• 31:17 Final Takeaways And Closing

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. It's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. Joel Bouchard is a doctoral student in psychology, a multi-instrumentalist record producer, author, painter, army veteran, business leader, local government official, and host of the philosophy podcast from Nowhere to Nothing. And we're here today to talk about, I'm sure we'll cover a number of things, but certainly Joel's journey into podcasting. Joel, welcome to the podcast.

Joel: 1:04

Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm so thrilled that you're here.

Carl: 1:07

So music. Let's just get it out of the way. Let's talk about music. Your love of music, where does that come from?

Joel: 1:14

Uh yeah, I've kind of a weird path uh with music. Um, I didn't really like music when I was a kid. Like I didn't listen to it, just really was a real weirdo. And then when I was a teenager, three of my friends, we did the most teenage boy thing ever. We go, hey, what's cool? Hey, a band's cool. Let's start a band. And none of us knew how to play any instruments. So they go, Well, I'll play drums and you play bass and you play guitar. So I got guitar. We all taught ourselves how to play instruments. We formed a band, uh, did some battles of the bands, did some recordings on cassette when those were a thing. Then my drummer got married real young, and my bass player moved out of state to go to college. And I thought, man, you know, like I'm I'm just starting to get into music, and now everybody's gone. So um, I spent my life savings at 19 years old going to guitar center, buying all the instruments, buying all the recording equipment, and uh came home and just taught myself how to do this stuff. I learned how to build a computer, uh, learned how to, you know, do the mixing and mastering and the recording and playing all the instruments. And so that's kind of my my journey into music. I started really late. I'm still not any good, but I have a lot of fun.

Carl: 2:23

Yeah, it's funny because my journey was uh I think it started in, well, I grew up in a family that was very musical. All of my family members played an instrument of some kind at some point in their journey, and we all sang in church choirs and what have you. So it was a very interesting experience. And then in grade six, experienced or had the opportunity rather to pick up the trumpet and played that all through the end of elementary school, all through high school. A little bit of a different journey. Didn't have a bunch of friends that said, hey, let's start a band, but did have friends in highschool who essentially did that and have gone on to some great things, non-band related, but still uh in the arts world. So great experience, great, great story there. Give me a little bit of your uh your backstory. What brought you, other than the music, what brought you to where you are today?

Joel: 3:13

Uh yeah. Um, I guess, you know, like everybody else, uh, you know, the whole story is is pretty idiosyncratic and different, you know, from each person's. But long story short is I'm just somebody that loves to learn stuff, you know. So I'm always doing something new, you know, like you mentioned through my bio, I do a lot of different things. All of them are still active, right? And I've got a wife, I have friends and a social life, and I sleep eight and a half hours a night. I do everything else, and you know, so I stay very busy. Um, but part of it is I'm always trying to learn, learn something new. I think that's the key to to staying sort of engaged with life in some ways, is you know, always being a newbie at something and always failing at some stuff, and uh, you know, just figuring out how different dots connect and can kind of uh everything ties together, which uh in a nutshell is philosophical in a big way, which is what my podcast is about, is a philosophy podcast, you know. So it's this this overview, you know, with the big philosophical question, what is the meaning of life, right? You know, I've we try to answer that not just in the podcast, but I try to answer that in the way that I live, right? What sort of things give your life meaning and kind of going out and chasing them?

Carl: 4:22

And when that list of things that you do, you said you still manage to sleep eight and a half hours, you're happily married, and you still have all of those activities. And it sounds like you're a lifelong learner. If something piques your interest, you're more than on top of wanting to go and find out more about that.

Joel: 4:37

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I've got my Associate's Degree is in Criminal Justice and my Bachelor's Degrees in interdisciplinary studies and my Master's Degrees in Education. I'm working on a PhD in Psychology, and uh lots of people like to ask me, what are you gonna do with your degree? And I go, probably go back to school. I'm thinking for a Bachelor's Degree in Physics, you know, like I'm not gonna do, you know, I don't have grand plans to be a Psychologist. Um, it's just something that interests me, right? You know, how how the human brain works, how we think, how we learn, how we pay attention, what role language has in forming our sort of conception of reality. Again, psychology, very philosophical topic, right? So yeah, I'm just somebody who if something catches my attention, I pursue it.

Carl: 5:19

And podcasting. What led you to podcasting? Was it exactly what we're talking about? It was there was a curiosity that was piqued.

Joel: 5:27

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of it's sort of a combination of all the things we talked about so far. So really it started with music, right? After I'd put out a few albums, uh I kind of looked around. I go, hey, I've got a studio, I've got a recording set up. Doing a podcast would be pretty easy, you know? And uh the next question is, what would I do a podcast about? And the obvious answer is philosophy, um, because that's sort of my overarching drive in life. I just reached out to my old philosophy professor, the guy who got me interested in philosophy back way back in community college. And uh, we hadn't talked in 10 years. And I said, Hey, you want to do a philosophy podcast? And he goes, Yeah, sure. So six years later, 200 episodes, we're still doing it.

Carl: 6:09

Wow, congratulations on the success of that.

Joel: 6:12

Yeah, the you know, just a combination of the musical background, so having all of the equipment and then uh, you know, the interest in philosophy that was sort of piqued by my professor and you know, my resident expert on the show, as well as uh yeah, the curiosity and what is podcasting and what what kind of road does it lead you down?

Carl: 6:30

I wish more people getting into podcasting asked those questions. Yeah. As opposed to just saying, hey, I'm going to do a podcast without having that curiosity, more just more just along the lines of jumping on the bandwagon because it seems like the thing to do. And I think what we're experiencing in the podcast world is a lot of pod fade. People who come to the space, throw out a few episodes, and maybe they did it during the pandemic just to keep from going stir crazy, or maybe they actually had some really good intentions, but it didn't stick with it for whatever reason. So I think the curiosity piece really helps people want to not only explore the format, but dive deeper into how podcasts can not only have impact on their own lives, but impact on the lives of their listeners.

Joel: 7:16

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So um, you and I connected via PodMatch, right? So I had the uh good fortune of being a guest on the founder of Podmatch's podcast, uh Podcasting Made Simple. Um, and so the piece that I did for him was um how to be a better podcast guest by questioning yourself, right? What questions can you ask yourself in order to make you a better podcast guest? And really I highlighted in that episode, you know, the importance of philosophy. Because philosophy is essentially metacognition, right? It's thinking about your thinking. It's not just related to being a podcast guest, but also a podcast host, right? Like you're saying, instead of just jumping into a podcast and making it, it's always good to ask, why am I doing this? What's my purpose, right? And I think that that is the reason for a lot of pod fade, right? Is because people go, okay, well, you know, you get five episodes in or six episodes in, you go, oh man, you know, the production works a lot more work than I thought, and it's not the quality isn't as good as I thought, and I don't have as many followers as I thought. And, you know, I can't make any money yet. So what's the point? I'm done. So that's why I don't know, you hear various statistics. I don't know what's real and what's not, but 90% of podcasts don't make it to 10 episodes or whatever. I believe it. You know, it seems very likely. It's hard for somebody to have a successful podcast if you don't have a driving vision in mind to start, and if that drive and vision doesn't revolve around something other than having followers and making money, right? That stuff only comes with consistently expressing your vision in a way that draws in an audience. And so to do that, you have to do it for a while without those things.

Carl: 8:59

Are you in my head right now reading the script that's somewhere rolling around in my brain? Because that's exactly what I share with individuals in my programs that I run, on the talks that I give, on stages or on during virtual events. And it's also what I share with clients when they're starting out, when they come to me and say, I'd like to do a podcast. Some of the questions are, okay, well, why do you want to do a podcast? What's it going to be about? What's the goal? What are the results you're hoping to achieve? And if anywhere in there, if it's somewhere along the lines of, well, I'd like 10 million listeners in my first five episodes and I'd like to make 110 billion dollars, then we need to have a conversation about firstly reality, but then also the expectation. And I think that's sometimes what happens too is the expectation that it's going to be not necessarily bigger, but it's going to take less time because we look at the likes of Joe Rogan, we look at the successes of, for example, somebody like Alex San Filippo. Every time I mention his name, by the way, and my guest mentioned his name, there's a royalty. Oh, really? I'm kidding. I wish there was. We could both retire. Uh, but no, seriously, uh, great guy, and he's been on my show, and his messaging and his whole background is phenomenal. But the point I was making there was the fact that you know, here's a guy that's been in the podcasting world for a while, and we know he didn't start out with a huge following, a huge audience. He he had some experiences that allowed him to build to get to where he is today. But when you're at the starting gate, it's going to take some time, number one, and it's going to take some commitment and dedication, realizing that you have to stay the course.

Joel: 10:41

Yeah. And so, you know, when I look at the analytics for my podcast, right, over six years, you know, it looks like the Wi-Fi bars, right? It's like a perfect, you know, upward trend. So me being a business person, right? I know like it couldn't go any better than that, right? But still, if I wanted to make money, I think my first offer to like start advertising on my show wasn't until a couple of years ago. So I had to go for three or four years, um, releasing episodes weekly before anybody was interested in giving me money of any kind. Now I turned them down, right? I do not make any money off my podcast. I'm not interested in making any money off my podcast. It's not my my full-time gig. And it's important to me to have the conversation intact for the audience, right? To have from beginning to end that whole hour you can stay engaged, you don't have to worry about anything um else popping in. I'm not against advertising and podcasting. I think that that's completely fine if you have things that that appeal to um an audience. Uh, it can definitely be helpful for them, right? You know, if you can pitch them a product that they're that would be interesting and and useful for them based off of you know your show. But for a philosophy podcast, it's like, what sort of product would you offer somebody? You know, it doesn't really make much sense. So, you know, three or four years releasing episodes weekly with analytics that couldn't go any better, right? Before I could have made a dime. So, yeah, those are the expectations you need. Not everybody is going to have that fortune. Now, if I look at the map, right, my podcast has been listened to everywhere that people have electricity, right? There's only a couple of countries in the middle of Africa that haven't listened to the podcast. So very successful from a listening standpoint. But that's not why I got into it. And the money aspect of it obviously isn't why I got into it. So, yeah, you have to have an initial drive, um, an initial vision, something that is going to keep you doing it when those other things aren't there. And then if you do it long enough, eventually those things will fall into line if you're offering something that is worth listening to.

Carl: 12:41

Absolutely, uh, 100%. And you have to understand, too, that there are many different ways to look at monetization. Monetization can come in the form of ads or sponsorships, as you've indicated. But then there's also joint ventures, there's also co-op type podcasts that allow people to pool their resources to generate revenue and offer programs and resources. So there's many different ways to do it. And you're right, with a philosophy podcast, what would you offer? A crystal ball of some kind? Like what kind of company would you want to partner with? Because that's the other challenge that sometimes happens in this space, is the sponsorships or ad dollars that connect to podcasts? Sometimes they don't make sense. So, for example, if for my podcast, if it was connected to gardening, it wouldn't necessarily make sense because my podcast has nothing to do with having a green thumb or two for that matter. So I like the way you know you're thinking about that. What have been some of the things that we've talked about, obviously, this part of the journey, but what are some of the other things that you've learned having the six years' experience as a podcast host and now as a podcast guest?

Joel: 13:48

They're definitely two very different realms, um, right? And not everybody's cut out to do both. And that's part of what my talk was about on podcasting made simple, is um there's no greater disservice you can do to somebody than to come on their show as a guest uh when you're not a good fit. You know, that sometimes that's a little bit difficult, right? Because I have a lot of interests. So I like to go on people's shows. I like to talk about a bunch of different things, but sometimes I have to rein it in. I have to go, okay, you know, I'm interested in this, but I'm not qualified to talk about this on a technical level for an hour, right? So you really have to listen to the show beforehand. You have to know what the sort of layout is, what they're expecting of you, because ultimately you're coming on the show to serve the audience, right? Not even the host, really. Um, you know, obviously you want to help the host out, you want to get along, um, you want to sort of serve their vision, but ultimately the audience is who the podcast is for. So you always have to keep that in mind. And nothing makes me more mad on my own podcast, right? When somebody reaches out to me and says, Yeah, I want to be on your podcast, and then they pitch me something and I go, You've obviously never listened to the show. This is obviously something that's not related to what we do. And, you know, it's wouldn't be a good message for my listeners, you know. So being a guest, that stuff is all important. Is um, you know, when you're being a guest, you're the least important part of the show. The show will go on without you. So, you know, keep that in mind when you're being a guest. You know, as far as being a host, the biggest thing I've learned over the past six years is sort of the importance of having structure. This is the same thing with music, right? And any art, right? So I paint and I write books and I write music and I podcast, and they all share this in common, right? I think this is good across art. People want to be given something they expect in an unexpected way. And that's why it's so hard to make good art, right? Is because if people are listening to a song, they want verse chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus out. But if you give them uh predictable chord progression or predictable melody or predictable rhythm, then you have a boring song. If you have a really out there chord progression, then you lose them completely. So you have to find that balance between structure and also something that's novel, right? Podcasting's the same way. Um, you know, in my show, over time I we've worked into this structure of looking at foundational aspects of philosophical questions so that listeners have a background, and then sort of hashing out the essence of philosophical aspects, so giving them an idea of what the big issues and problems and you know confusion are regarding a term. And then at the back half of the episode, looking at speculative aspects of it, right? So asking questions about based off of what we've talked about, what does it mean for humanity, right? What does it mean for us and what are sort of our feelings about it? So in that way, there's a structure and a flow to the show, but each one has something unique and novel and insightful uh that that sort of ties things together, but adds something new.

Carl: 16:50

Great insights. And I like how you've shared that there is a structure to it, just like with music. Music, there is a structure, and there are some rules. You can bend the rules, you know, but there are still things that you're going to be limited to X number of flats and sharps, and X number of, you know, 88 keys on a keyboard. There's not too many variations that can't have 146 keys on a keyboard. Maybe you can, but I'm pretty sure you can't. But there's things within music, just like there's things within podcasting, that if you want to have an audience that'll listen to your show, here's some things you need to think about. You need to think about your content, you need to think about your messaging, you need to think about who you are speaking to, number one. Uh, but you also need to think about okay, well, how do I not make the sound formalaic? That's one of the nice things I like about this format is you can do that. Like we've grown up with radio and television, we're not bound by those rules that say the six o'clock news is always at six o'clock. Or this appointment tuning after the news to win a contest is always at this time. Because I spent years in broadcasting, there was a methodology or science around programming music. It was not art, it was a science, and it was based on numbers and like so. I was actually floored when I found that out. I thought it was oh, it was more somebody actually hand picking. No, it was a science, it was totally a science. So, anyways, to this point, you become more sought after, shall we say, when you're not just following or towing the line of what every other podcaster is doing because there's an interest to that. I want to listen to Joel's podcast because it's different every time. He's talking about different things as opposed to, hey, here's a guest, here's the seven questions I'm going to ask them. It's different. It's something that is unique that sets you apart from other podcasters.

Joel: 18:43

Yeah, and I really think that um if you have a passion behind what you're saying and you're well versed in it and you present it well, you know, you package it as a product well, you'll always have an audience, right? Because when I went to start a philosophy podcast, right, philosophy, you want to talk about bad marketing. Philosophy has the worst marketing, right? Like I didn't really know what it was until I was a college student. And then I assumed that it was something with dusty books and guys with big beards that are mad at the world, you know. Like there's this really bad conception about it that it's just it's all stuff in the past and it's all kind of boring. And I couldn't be further from the truth. Knowing that, you know, I had a passion for the fact that anybody can be a philosopher and anything can be philosophical. And I want to sort of demonstrate that with the help of my resident expert, who's a philosophy professor, you know, so we have the knowledge and the know-how to do it. And then with some of my audio um post-production skills, we were able to sort of tie all those three things together and the audience came. And who knows who it was? Maybe it's people who have a passion for philosophy, but maybe it's just somebody who happened to stumble upon the show and listen to an episode and go, hey, this is cooler than what I thought. Because the whole point behind the podcast was to recreate these conversations that I had in my philosophy classes from college, you know, because that's the way that I felt. I took this class because I needed a couple credits. I didn't know what it was. And then it became a life-changing experience and my favorite topic, right? And so the highest thing that I could hope is that's what's happening to listeners out there, you know. And I feel like if that's your sort of view, regardless of what the topic is, whether it's sports or podcasting itself or whatever, you know, matchmaking or celebrity gossip, whatever it is, right? If you're passionate about it and you're knowledgeable about it and you can put together a decent product, the audience will come eventually.

Carl: 20:39

If you had to go back to the beginning again, let's take you back to 2018, 2019, this idea of doing a podcast. If you had to go back, or if you had to do it again, what would you do differently?

Joel: 20:52

I think a lot of it revolves around technical skills for the most part. And it's funny because a lot of that, you know, I might change that answer now, actually, because a lot of that doesn't matter anymore. You know, I'm discovering tools that I'm I'm actually going back to the beginning and re-mixing a lot of my podcast from the beginning through with pretty good results. So I guess a lot of the technical stuff didn't end up mattering in the end. It just caused me a little bit more work now, you know, a little bit more work in the back end now that I've learned all the things that I've learned. But so with that aside, with the technical stuff aside, um probably a little bit more forethought, you know, being a busy guy and being somebody who likes to do something new. I've never really been too afraid of making mistakes. I just kind of jump into stuff and figure it out. And you catch some of that in the early episodes, right? You catch some of this. Oh, this is a guy who's never podcasted before. And so you get 10 or 15 episodes in, then you go, okay, now they're starting to settle in. And then, you know, 25, 30 episodes in, you go, okay, now this is really something. You know, going back and remixing the old episodes and listening to them, like it makes me cringe. It's like, oh, this is hard to listen to. But I think there's some value in keeping it up there, right? For new podcasters. Okay, well, this is where it started, and it's still going today, and it's going much more successfully today than it was. So you can see the growth trend. You know, so I'm a big believer in letting people see the whole journey. Uh, you know, I don't, I don't edit the podcast for clarity or anything. You'll hear us take some long pauses, you'll hear us trip over our words, you'll hear us change our mind mid-episode based off of an argument that somebody else presented. That's all an important insight into how philosophy is done, how human thinking is done, right? We all make mistakes, we all change our mind. We should, right? At least I think that's a big problem with a sort of social discourse that we have is this need for everybody to know exactly what they believe and to be right all the time. But yeah, just looking at the whole journey, you go, okay, I as much as I appreciate passing those lessons on to the audience, it's rough for me to listen to in retrospect. Go, ah, you should have prepared a little bit better in the beginning.

Carl: 23:00

Those first 10 episodes or 15 episodes are always a little rough. And I always share with people, and we will launch our clients with 10 episodes. We'll say we're going into launch with 10 episodes if for no other reason. So we could also focus on marketing and take a deep breath after those 10 and go, oh, okay, I have a podcast now. Yay! And then you also um break the stat that says most podcasts don't get to 10 episodes because you've already gotten to 10 episodes, right?

Joel: 23:26

You've done the hard part, yeah.

Carl: 23:27

You've done the hard part. And it, but to your point, those 10 episodes, that's the early stages. It's like I attune it to my handwriting is absolutely horrible, but I attune it to going back to grade one and how I used to print then. My printing and writing is not so great now, but it was even worse then, right? Big sloppy letters and over-emphasized E's and A's and things like that. But the more I did it, it's the same as music. I mean, you must remember the first time you picked up an instrument and how horrible it sounded, right? So, same thing, it's not going to sound perfect, even if you do go back and do what you're doing, which I mean, I personally wouldn't recommend it. But some people go back and do what you're doing. Well, they'll remix or tweak things and they'll listen to it and they'll cringe. But you're not supposed to go back to where you are and judge based on where you are today. And I'm not saying you're doing that, but a lot of people will. They'll say, Oh, I sounded horrible. I should get rid of this. No, it's your back catalog. Keep it there because there's still some value in that content. If it was valuable then, there's a good chance it's still valuable now.

Joel: 24:32

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And um, you know, everybody is always their own worst critic. So, you know, yeah, a lot of other people, I mentioned this to them and I go, they go, no, those first episodes are some of my favorite, right? You're right, it's the same thing with music. You know, I listened back to my first album, and I think that I'm starting to learn that lesson with podcasting now because I used to listen to my first album and cringe pretty hard. But I noticed in the recent, in recent years, if I go back and listen to it, I go, you know what? I kind of like this because it's a snapshot of my life at that time. If I did it differently, it would just be me now, but in the past. Whereas now I listen to it and I go, no, you know what, that's 22-year-old me. You know, I remember what I was feeling, what I was doing, what I was thinking when I made that album. It's the same thing with podcasts. You know, I can listen back and I can go, okay, yeah, I remember what I was thinking then, and I know how it's changed based off of other conversations. You know, I can hear the EQ mistakes that I was making, and I know how I fix them now. So yeah, it's all sort of a snapshot. It's that recording of your journey through the whole process.

Carl: 25:36

So for individuals out there who are maybe thinking of starting a podcast, but maybe there's some trepidation or they're not sure the starting point, just from your experience, what would you say to somebody who's in that spot where they're on the fence, should I or shouldn't I start a podcast? What would you say to them?

Joel: 25:55

Yeah, I think we've talked about it a little bit, right? I think if you have a passion for something, right, and you have some knowledge about it, go ahead. Because even the technology, even six years ago when I started, right? The technology for post-production, especially with AI and stuff, is so good that the technical side of it, it'll take care of itself. You'll be able to deliver something that's listenable regardless of your equipment. So go ahead. If you're on the fence because you don't know what you're gonna podcast about, right? You just kind of want to hear yourself talk or you know, whatever it is, you probably shouldn't do it. It's not for you. So yeah, that's basically it, right? If you have something that you're really passionate about, know that passion's not enough. You do have to know what you're talking about, otherwise, you know, we all know of podcasters, right? I won't name any names, but we all know podcasters. We go, that guy is off the rails, right? Because that's the thing, is anybody can have their own podcast. So passion shouldn't be enough. You have to realize that you have a responsibility now. There are people listening to you. So being accurate and presenting a message that makes the world a better place is important as well. So being passionate's great, but being knowledgeable and being able to provide some value to people that that goes beyond just an opinion piece is is also an important part in my estimation. Take that moment and really pause and think to yourself if this goes where I want to, right? And there's thousands of people out there across the world listening to me every week and following my advice, what I'm saying, doesn't make the world a better place. I think that's a big consideration, you know, if you're on the fence.

Carl: 27:41

100%. And you're right when you say that anybody can do a podcast, but not everybody should do a podcast, and not everyone's experience will be the same. So I like the attitude of do it, but do it with purpose for the right reasons. And I always I'll throw this into have some fun with it. It should be fun, even if it's for business, you should still be having some fun with it. Again, I worked in radio, people were envious of me that I could go to work and talk into a stick and play tunes all day long. You know what? There were days where it was work, but it was still one heck of a lot better an experience than going to work and digging a ditch or working on an assembly line or doing something that was just not creative, which is the kind of person I am. But certainly have fun with it, because you should have fun with it.

Joel: 28:34

Yeah, it comes across a little bit technical for some people, right? We're both academics. We'll use some language sometimes, it's a little bit out there, we'll we'll go someplace, but we're always having fun, right? We're always laughing, we're always cracking jokes. You know, it's always a good time. That goes with everything in life, right? You can't take it too seriously. And that's part of the reason I like doing new things, right? It's kind of like you were talking about learning your letters in first grade. If you make your life all about podcasting, you become really good at it, it's easy to think that, like, oh, well, I'm just really good. And you're not, you're really good at podcasting, right? So it's always good to be doing something new and just failing miserably at it and having it be really hard, because that shows you that you're good at some things, but there's always gonna be things out there that are hard. And it's your attitude towards those that determines how successful you are in life. If your attitude when you fail or when things get hard is to give up or to get angry or to get depressed or anxious or whatever it is, then you're gonna have a hard time in life, no matter how good you are at one thing. But if everything you approach, you know, you're approaching to have fun, right? Hey, I'm just here to have fun, then it doesn't matter how many times you fail, it doesn't matter how hard it is. You'll be able to stick with it. And anything that you stick with, right? There's a quote You haven't failed until you stop failing. So just have fun, you know, just approach it, have fun, eventually you'll get there.

Carl: 29:58

I love it. I love it. Joel, it's been an amazing conversation. For the listeners who want to reach out to you and find out more about you and follow you and listen to the podcast, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Joel: 30:10

Yeah, you and I talked about a little bit before the show. I'm the world's worst marketer. So like it's one of those things that I don't enjoy, so I don't do it. But podcast is From Nowhere to Nothing. Uh you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you want to contact us, suggest a topic even, it's that very thing, from nowhere to nothing podcast at gmail.com. You can contact me there. If you want to listen to any of my music, just look up Joel Bouchard. Anywhere you listen to music, you can find my stuff there. And uh yeah, that's about it.

Carl: 30:40

Joel, it's been an amazing conversation. Joel Bouchard has been my guest today. Before I turn you loose to either do something new or record another podcast episode, which I guess would be new too. A new episode. I'll leave you with the final thought.

Joel: 30:54

Yeah. I mean, we covered it right there at the end, right? Have fun. Don't think take things too seriously. And just be willing to try, right? I think that the big thing is there's a lot of people, you know, they don't do things because they don't think they'll be able to. And I've got news for you. I'm not any smarter or more talented than any of you guys listening. So I just went out and actually did stuff. Go out and actually do stuff. Don't think about it. Don't think about it too much. Go out and actually try something, and it'll work out if you stick with it.

Carl: 31:26

Great place to leave it, Joel Bouchard. Thank you so much for being my guest today.

Joel: 31:30

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Carl: 31:32

And hey, thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you could join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer Dom Carillo, our Sonic Branding genius Kenton Dolborowski, and the person who works the arms, all of our arms actually, our project manager and my trusty assistant Julovell Tiongco, known to us here simply as July. If you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or review or even send us a voice note. And if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share with your enemies. And if you know of someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there, including the links to our website, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcasts, or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple. Catch again next time!