Episode 607 - Volunteer Opportunities at Martial Arts Radio
In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams talk about Volunteer Opportunities at Martial Arts Radio.
Volunteer Opportunities at Martial Arts Radio - Episode 607
Martial Arts Radio, or any podcasts for that matter, is not an easy task to do. While you can hear a properly produced episode twice weekly, a lot of things happen behind the scenes. In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about volunteer opportunities at Martial Arts Radio and how you can join us in bringing Traditional Martial Arts to everyone. Listen to learn how Andrew started as a volunteer before becoming the show’s co-host and more!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey! What's going on, everybody? Welcome! This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio and today, Andrew and I are going to talk about some volunteer opportunities here at whistlekick. It's gonna be an interesting conversation. You're gonna get to pick up some behind the scenes stuff and of course, you know, maybe we talk about a thing that we're looking for some help with that you might want to help out with. If you're new to this show, this is a weird episode for you to come in on. You might want to check out another one, but you don't have to. You can check out all the episodes that we do at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com and if you want to see all the things that we do, 'cause we do a lot more than just whistlekick, you can go to whistlekick.com. That's where you're gonna find all the projects, the products, things that we've got going on. If you find something in our store, which is one of the ways that we try to pay for all this because, yeah, we're small and growing but still feisty, upstart company, you can use the code podcast15 and it'll save you 15% off any of the things that we have over there.
We've also got...consult my notes here because there's too much going on for me to remember it all in the right order. We bring you two shows a week, all into the heading of connecting, educating, and entertaining martial artists throughout the world. If you want to go deeper than what we offer here on the show, you can contribute to the Patreon - patreon.com/whistlekick. I can talk, I promise. For as little as $2 a month, you get to go behind the scenes and we've got Andrew with this son. You can step it up from there. We give you exclusive content that you're not gonna get anywhere else. If you join at $25 a month tier, you can get drafts of all of our books and training programs. If you values those things and would've bought them anyway, you would actually be saving money at $25 a month because we're rolling out training. We got another training program almost ready. You wanna go deeper on the training programs? whistlekickprograms.com. We've got very simple names for all the things that we do.
Now Andrew, we do a lot of things, don't we?
Andrew Adams:
We do a lot of things.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We do a lot of things.
Andrew Adams:
More and more every day.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, you tell me about it. The thing that I think we're best known for, of course, is this show.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, this is the thing that most people end up in the whistlekick sphere, realm, whatever you want to call it. Most people come in via the podcast. It's either that they search for somewhere or somebody recommends an episode or...for a lot of people, it's their instructor or somebody that they knew participated in the show and then they listened to that episode and went, "Oh, this is kind of a cool thing."
Andrew Adams:
Yup. That was absolutely, 100% me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah? What was your story about that?
Andrew Adams:
I heard an episode that you recorded with Mike Sartwell...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh wow.
Andrew Adams:
And he's from Claremont, New Hampshire and I trained in his dojo for a month when I was transitioning and moving through the area. So, I didn't know him really well, but we were Facebook friends and you interviewed him and he posted on his Facebook, "Hey, I just got recorded for this podcast. Here's a way to listen to it." So, I listened to his episode and I was like, "Wow, this is really fun. Oh my gosh." I mean, at that time, I think he was episode somewhere in the 200 or 300. I was like, "Wow, there's a hundred of episodes. I'm gonna start listening 'cause this is really fun. " That's how I got connected.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right on. Yeah, and you and I talked shortly thereafter.
Andrew Adams:
Yup.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Your story is kind of an interesting and a little bit of a typical one because as people who listen, watch are aware of what we do, you may not realize how many people really go into this. When we talk about this show, depending on how you look at it, there's like 6 people involved. Now, some of them do very small things, but those very small things take things off of my shoulders. If you pay attention at all to what I got going on just in life and the very... you know, it's whistlekick, but how do we fund whistlekick? I have a job. I have a consulting job that takes a lot of time and so every little thing that I can take off my plate, even if it takes somebody 5 minutes a week...or I think you got started like 10 minutes a week. You were helping out.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I was helping out with the Facebook group and my sole "job" and I put "job" in quotes
cause it wasn't really a job, but my sole purpose with the Facebook group was just to welcome new members which I still do. So, every Friday, I typically will post just a welcome. You know, thanks for joining our Facebook group, which if you're listening right now and you're not in our Facebook group, you absolutely join the group. It's a great place to discuss the episodes that we record and, you know, sometimes the guest that we recorded with will come in and comment on their episode and you can get a deep dive into some things. So, that was my job. Maybe 10 minutes a week, I was sitting down on Friday and just welcome the new members. That was it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, and think about what that did for me. It was one thing that I didn't have to do. I was something that I wanted to do. Was it anywhere close from top ten from my priority list? No, and how do most of us handle our priority list? We do the most important things as we should and then at some point, you run out of steam. Once in a while, you run out of things to do, but usually you run out of steam. That welcoming of people to the group always fell off the list for me because it would... I'd get down to, you know, 4, 5 'o clock and I'm fried. I just didn't have energy left. Well, I handed it to you and now it gets done and look at what's come of it. You know, starting that small way and here you are on the show making it better.
Now, that's not to say that that's what we're looking for. What are we looking for? We're looking for a production assistant, which if you've never been involved in something like this, what does that mean? It means you're on the back end, behind the scenes. You're seeing who's getting scheduled. You're contributing to that. You are reaching out to people potentially. You are offering your feedback. "You know what, this person seems like a jerk in their emails." I don't want them on the show and we talk about that. You know also say, "Hey, I know about this person. I think they're awesome. They should be one the show." and we talk about that. And over time, people involved in production end up with a lot of say in the show. If you go back, if you look at who's come in the show in the last few months, Andrew, you've had a huge impact on that. When Leslie joined this show, she had a huge impact on that. It's not something that I think I have honestly the energy for because I haven't had to do it myself for a while, so I'm really thankful to you and Leslie for all that you've done. We're just trying to build out the team. So, if you're watching or listening, this is the first volunteer position. Now, does it start off as a volunteer? Yes. Does it mean that money may not be involved later? No, we're not taking that off the table. We have to be diligent. I wasn't gonna pay Andrew for his 10 minute a week job not because I was opposed to it, but because by the time we both processed that paperwork, it wasn't worth anybody's time. I'm gonna invoice you for $3. That would be silly.
Andrew Adams:
It doesn't make sense.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Instead, what I tried to do and if you talk to anybody who helps out with the show, you know that I give what I think is hopefully more valuable, which is my time. Anybody...and I'm not gonna throw people under the bus. I'm not gonna expose people and share their stories, but I'm thinking of two people right now who have had questions about their training. One of them runs a school and I have given them literally hours of my time to help them and that is something I feel I can do. I didn't give that time of course for free. When you're part of the team, you're part of the team and I take that incredibly seriously.
Andrew Adams:
You get access to things that you wouldn't necessarily. I mean, this is a small thing but you needed someone to help look at the drafts of your book. Because I was in the team, it was easy for us to connect, and I got to read the book a little early.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Bottomline, if you like what we do, I would encourage you to think about what you might be up for doing because we'll say this again at the end, but I'll just kinda slide it in here. I usually don't turn down help. If there's something you want to help with, I'm probably gonna say yes. So, there's the first one - production assistant. If you love this show, this is a way for you to contribute and I will promise but you would expect you will get as much value out of your time involved in the show as you're spending. Did I miss anything there before we go to the second one?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I mean, I would say if you're listening to this show, you probably believe in what we both believe in which is to connect, educate, and entertain traditional martial artists. If you believe in that mission statement, there's a place for you to help out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yup, and if you don't know what that might be, but you're willing to help, just let us know. Let me know if you're more comfortable, if you think I'm a big, scary jerk, let Andrew know.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I'm a big teddy bear.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You are. Absolutely. So, the next one is website stuff. Our website, the whistlekickmartialartsradio.com website, is monstrous. There's a page for every single episode that we've done. When we transition, when we, you know, we got hacked for the 4,000th time and had to migrate that side over, there's some things that aren't fixed. We're going back. There are people on the back end who are working on that, chipping away at it. We could use some help out there and also, if someone has some skill, we actually could use some help in making some improvements. There are a lot of little things that we could do to make the website better. For example, on the old website, we had a list of all the episodes, the locations of the guests, the styles that they trained in, and a direct link to that page. I would love to have that set up again. We've got a rough version of it. It could get fleshed out. You know, are we looking for someone who is an absolute website guru, it's their full-time job? Not necessarily. Wouldn't be a bad thing, but you know this is also an opportunity for people to learn. I'm a firm believer in tackling projects that you can just barely handle, it's kind of a flaws-free martial arts, right? Okay, you just earned this rank wherein you were introduced this brand-new form like day 2 that you are now allowed to learn. This happens in a lot of schools and half the movements in there are things that you suck at. Good luck. But you get better at tackling those challenges.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, you don't learn much by doing something that you already know how to do well all the time. You're not gonna learn as much from that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nope, completely agree. And that's part of why I think this show and this company continues to grow because I keep finding new stuff to tackle and ultimately try to hand off what I figures out to other people who can do a better job at it. There are aspects to what you do, Andrew, that you do better than I did in terms of guests and some of the other stuff in the back end that when I did, I did it in a certain way and took it to a certain point and handed it off. Other people taking it and run even further with it. I think that's awesome. So, website stuff is the second one.
Now, the third one. This is probably the one that I can't imagine anyone not being able to help on this one and that is the social media front. We put a lot into our social media not just for the show but for whistlekick in general. We're following down on it. Not on the creation part of it but the engagement part on the let's say, the editing part, the vetting part. There are aspects to what we do that we can make so much better. How do I know we can make it better? Because here's an example, people steal our stuff all the time. Crop our logo or paint over it, and we don't catch it. We don't always catch it. Now, could we? Probably. There are ways that we could be doing this. Not because we don't want people to share our stuff, but we want them to give us credit.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You take one of our posts, you let us know about it. Come on. That's the least people can do. So, if you spend time on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, I don't care what the platform is, basically we are active everywhere except TikTok and Snapchat right now just because of...Snapchat, the platform does not really line up with what we're doing. TikTok, there's a future plan forward just not there yet in terms of video creation. But actually, if somebody is really, really up on TikTok and really wanted to go there, I can lay out that strategy for you. We've got the content. It's just a question of making it happen.
Andrew Adams:
Finding the right person to help.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. That's the heart of it and every organization, in order to grow, has had to put the right people in place and we're looking for the right people. So, those are three possible things that you might be interested in helping with. The show, the website, the social media. And again, if you have other things that you look at what we're doing and say, "You know, I love to be part of this or help with that. I could assist here." Let me know - jeremy@whistlekick.com and again, if you think of a big, scary jerk, you can let Andre know - andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Did I miss anything?
Andrew Adams:
No. The only thing I would say is with the helping production with the show, it has given me the ability, not the ability that's the wrong word...given me the opportunity to connect with martial artists that I wouldn't have necessarily connected to because I was nervous. Some big name, a perfect example, Patrick McCarthy, we had on the show about a month and a half ago. In the traditional Karate world, he's a big name.
Jeremy Lesniak:
He's a big name.
Andrew Adams:
He's not someone that I would've felt comfortable sending a message to say, "Hi, we've never met, but here's who I am.". But because I'm connected to the show, I was able to say, "Hey, I'm connected to this podcast and we would love to have you on, and we got to have a really great dialogue in exchange and we're friends on Facebook now. So, that's pretty cool and just last week, I emailed a couple of other. I'm not gonna spoil it for anybody. It's gonna be a little vague post there, but some incredibly well-known martial artists that I would not have normally have enough [00:15:37:24] to connect with.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yup. I think that's a huge...I don't want to say benefit. It's a fun part of what we do.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We get to engage with some really well-known people and you know what? They're all great people. If you're not a great person, you don't end up in this show. It just doesn't happen. Yeah. There we go. Alright, well, again let me know - jeremy@whistlekick.com and other than that, you know how to find what we do. It's whislekickmartialartsradio.com. It's whistlekick.com. It's patreon.com/whistlekick.
Andrew Adams:
Oh, sorry. Sorry. I don't want to oversaturate the market.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, it's fine. I think one in the intro and the outro is fine. If you're listening to this episode, of course there's video version. It's up on YouTube and you know, if you want to help us out, you've got a lot of ways beyond what we've talked about today. Of course, your assistance would be the number one thing I would ask for, but if that's not right for you, share an episode, tell people about what we do. You know, leave a review. Maybe grab a book. In the last week, I think we've put two new books up on Amazon, The Master Hopkick Origin Story. It's been completely rewritten. It's expanded. Shoutout to Jenny for doing a killer job on that. Also, other Jenny for doing an amazing job bringing that out. I just got an email that we rolled out the Adrian Paul interview as a book on Amazon. So, you can grab that. If you're a big fan of Adrian Paul, you can grab that and put it on your bookshelf. How cool is that? And of course, whistlekickprograms.com if you want to get stronger, if you want to get faster. I you want to get better condition, the strength and speed hybrid program is almost done and there are more coming. So, check out all those things. Thank you everyone for your support. I appreciate you. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day!