The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - 40-50, the magic range of numbers

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

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CBC News. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Cruikshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show.

I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines and i get schooled by a tween facebook is like a no that's what my grandma's on thank god phone a friend with jesse crookshank is not available on facebook it's out now wherever you get your podcasts a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Well, welcome to James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan

coming to you live today from the attic. I'm in in Steubenville, Ohio. I just tried to record a piece of video content to promote the podcast. Every day I'm hustling. I figure that's win-win, you know, because if it goes well and it drives a lot of people to the podcast, well, that's a big win. Cha-ching. Because now I've got all these new podcast listeners and I can monetize their having

to listen to ads to buy a boat. Thank you. And if it doesn't go well, I never have to make another piece of video content for the podcast ever again. And I can dispense with the notion and move on to more fertile avenues. I'm not. And moving on to fertile avenues. That's not the best.

Fertile avenues isn't really a good combination of words. More like fertile fields or pleasing avenues. Oh, a robin has just landed outside my window. That's so beautiful. Three red robins outside my window. There are pros to doing the show in the attic. What was I saying? Yes!

Conquering America. Trying to figure out the best way to quickly conquer America. I wrote a Word document on my way to America when I was in the airport in New Zealand. Bristling with ambition of how I would take on this fine nation. And it said, America Plan of Attack. And I quickly changed the title of that document because I was about to go through customs and I thought, what if they open up my laptop and it says, America Plan of Attack. All of a sudden there's an airport official with a hand up my ass asking me about every

Arab of my acquaintance. That's not the sort of thing I'm looking to do. Tut tut. That's not the way I thing I'm looking to do. Tut-tut. That's not the way I'm trying to extract wealth out of America. I'm trying to please America with my stand-up comedy and my podcast about boat ownership to be successful enough at that to buy a boat. It's like the Beatles.

It's like the Beatles invasion. Like the British invasion, but it's me. Catamaranapalooza. Oh. Catamaran ho. Oh, oh. Catamaran and some other word that means I'm coming. Hey, welcome to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan.

I stopped editing and recording the podcast yesterday, and now I'm listening back, and I'm doing some ad libs over the other part of it, and I notice that my voice seems to be pitched much higher. I don't know what that's about. Maybe I was sick then, and I'm less sick now. Maybe there's been a helium leak. Either way, it's great to be here with you on this podcast about me buying a boat.

Still in the attic. I did make that piece of video content and sadly it went quite well. It went well on Instagram, didn't go well on the TikTok, went just fine on the YouTube shorts. So now I guess I have to be a person who makes vertical content to drive people to the podcast. You know what, for whatever reason, vertical videos still strike me as being dumb and something

that dumb people make. You know, because horizontal content is smart. Wow. Sophisticated. Glasses. Cinema. Thinking. Vertical content is snuff videos.

What? Just doing a little dance or something? Sitting on the toilet and telling everyone how your poop's going? I'm a man of literature. Boy, I'd like to come up with a way to make the vertical video high art. I haven't... I'm nowhere close to having an idea about it, but... Maybe that's the answer to getting more people to listen to the podcast

and buying a book. I'm going to become the David Lynch of vertical. I'm going to become the William Shakespeare of sitting down with a couple of hombres, cracking a beer, and having great big subtitles over a minute of our talking. Can I just say, and the podcast will begin soon. The real podcast. This faffing will come to an end shortly.

There is something. There are a couple things that I want to talk about. But I want to apologize for the echo and the attic. I have a car now. Hot tip if you have a podcast, a car is an acoustically perfect thing. There's no echo! But I can't drive the car yet because I've got to wait to get a social security

number and an Ohio driver's license and register. Drive the car! And that should happen at some point in the coming week but boy oh boy where we it hasn't happened yet. Anyway, I will be able to record the podcast in that car but I don't want to do it at the moment because it's too cold. I don't know the amount of degrees that you would use to describe how cold it is here at the moment in America. In Australia, we'd say negative 12,

although it did get a little warmer and then it snowed. And isn't, I didn't know this. It's so wonderful that the snow actually comes when the warmth comes in. So, you know, it looks much colder visually on a snow day, but when it is snowing, it's much more lovely to go outside and play in the snow. If it was actually snowing at negative 12 degrees, you wouldn't want to be out there. You'd freeze up. But when it's like negative 2 and there's snow everywhere, it's such a joy. What is negative 2?

It's nothing. I mean, specifically, what is negative two for Americans? Again, I refuse to understand any of your units of measurement yet. I don't know really what the conversion rate is with money. I don't know how long a mile is. I don't know how to measure the temperature. People in the politics here keep saying the word democracy in a way that I don't think that there's any historical tradition of that being what democracy means. Anyway, once the temperature comes up a little bit, I'll be able to go into the car to record there and then not have as much echo and then take over America.

Two plans today to discuss about how I'm taking over, other than the video content. Put that, that's just... We'll put that to the side. I'll deal with that in my spare time. But there are two things that occupy my mind as to how to take over America. I'll give you the lay of the land at the moment. We've got something like 450 listeners to each episode in America.

Wow, such a big and powerful number. Surely a boat will soon be yours with a number as big and powerful as that. I like it very much thank you 450 american listeners america is now far and away uh the place where most of my listeners are sorry australia and dublin saskatchewan zimbabwe six other places i will say this in australia i've got enough people listening in the different cities to go there and do a show and because of the nature of how I've

got that American fan base by going on some of other people's podcasts, I don't have a localized American base anywhere. I don't have more than 10 people in any given American place. And frankly, I think I need at least 40 to make flying somewhere, doing a show, staying overnight viable. If I'm going to come and do shows and break America with my standup comedy, the magic number from doing Australia and looking at that and seeing when that becomes cost effective is 40 listeners. So the question is, how do I get up to 40 listeners in specific locations? I can keep doing things like going on podcasts.

And boy, have I been going on podcasts. Since I've been here, I've been on three podcasts. I don't mind telling you. Three big, beautiful podcasts. I went on Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast. I went on Pints with Aquinas. I went on The Crunch, which should be out by now. I recorded that earlier in the week. Rather an unhinged episode of The Crunch on my part.

Just sitting at the kitchen table after everybody had gone to bed shouting about Rory Sloan someone made me think that Rory Sloan might have done his ACL and they hadn't but it was a cruel thing to say even if they didn't know it anyhow these are all excellent ways of growing in general across the country and at some point that will reach a critical mass and I can do a national tour but for the time being I'm very poor in Steubenville, Ohio. I don't even have a bank account at the moment. I didn't manage to sell the Volvo in Adelaide and it's hard to unlock that money currently. I'm just

dead broke in Appalachia with few opportunities to do stand-up comedy. Now, the opportunities they do have are incredible. Wow. Boy, getting to do Joe Rogan's Club was great. And I'm going to get to go and do, I think, Zany's in Nashville,

and I can't wait through that. And I get to go to, I think it's, what's it? No, it's not Columbus. Hold on. Cincinnati? No. It's the third city. Cleveland.

I'm going to get to go to Cleveland. Hey, Ohio, why would you have the three major cities all start with the letter C? How about you mix it up a little bit? I'm going to Cleveland. Maybe that's something I'll talk about in Cleveland. Maybe that's something they already know is a problem. Very hard to figure out how to do observational comedy in a way that doesn't just bore the pants off of everybody in the country that you're in, I find. Now, so I'm doing that. I'm opening for Sam. Got to figure out how to get there.

Might be borrowing someone else's car. Hopefully, I'll be able to drive my car and register it in time. I'm going to go with my daddy, I think, to Cleveland to do those shows. And shortly after that, I'll be in Nashville doing comedy. And then shortly after that, I think I'll be in Pittsburgh doing comedy. I think I get to open for doing comedy. I think I get to open for Matt McCusker, which is such a, I've met Matt a couple of times and he is the nicest, like the best. You can't, I've just about never had a better hang or had like a more,

more wonderful vibe off of somebody. It's just so nice to be in the room with them. Some people are horrible. They, you know, They suck all the life out of you, and you just can't wait to jump out of a window to get away from these people. Matt McCusker is the opposite. You would jump into a burning building to get to spend some quality time with him. All of which is to say, I'm going on other people's shows, people being very nice and receptive and open to me, and I'm so grateful for that.

Simultaneously, I'm dead broke and I can't do shows anywhere on my own. And in Australia, if I'm broke, I just go, right, we're doing a tour and people are good enough to come out. Here, we're not there yet. We are not there yet, but we got to get there. So let's do it now.

With a new segment I'm calling The Leaderboard. I think the magic number for doing stand-up comedy is like a hundred. You want a hundred people there. When you have less than 50 people, it's not a show. It's a dinner party that you're hosting very loudly and potentially charismatically, but it doesn't really feel like stand-up comedy. And then under a hundred can still feel for an audience like a hostage situation. If you have less than 100 people getting up and going to the toilet, you feel like people are looking at you.

Once you're over 100, it's a big thing and you can lose yourself in it and it's collective activity. So that's what I would like to do. I would like to have 100 people and once I can get 100 people in a place, I'll go anywhere. There's just about nowhere in the world that I wouldn't go if I didn't have a hundred people who could show up at a show. Now, does that mean I need to see on the analytics a hundred people listening to the podcast before I go somewhere? No. I find the magic number is probably 50. Maybe less than that, but I think once you have 50, people bring a girlfriend, people bring a friend, people just randomly come.

So if I can get up to 50 listeners in a single place, I'll come there. I'm coming. I'll go there. I'll do stand-up comedy. We'll have a great time. That's the purpose of this segment, The Leaderboard, is to see how we're tracking on our road to having 50 people in a given place in the United States.

We're not throwing good money after bad. If there's a place that has just one person, it's going to be harder for me to turn that into 50 people than if there's, I don't know, two people. So if you would like to get your town or city on the leaderboard, go and tell people who live there about the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. Get the numbers up. And I tell you, once you've got 50 people listening to, you know, one or two episodes in a row, I'll come there. I don't care where you are. You could be in far-flung Alaska.

People keep writing to me, come to Brazil. I would like nothing more than to come to Brazil. Do you know how happy I would be if I got to go to Brazil? I'm in the snow. I've had a gutful of the cold. I'd like to come to Brazil. The snow is very beautiful. I've had a gutful.

So number one, Houston. We've got 10 listeners in Houston. That's number one on the leaderboard, and I have it on good authority that that's because there is, I think, an entire seminary who listens to me. I can't tell you how uncomfortable I am by the prospect that those undergoing religious formation in Houston are also being exposed to the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. But, fathers-to-be, it's wonderful to have you listening.

You know, if you can merely get another four people, they don't have to be religious, maybe each of you could talk to a nun. Maybe you could get some nuns listening to it. But once each of you get four more people, I can come to Houston. And you know what? I tell a lie.

I'm coming to Houston anyway because I have comedy shows in Houston. So next time I'm in Austin, I'm going to pop over to Houston. I'll let you know about it. If there are. So next time I'm in Austin, I'm going to pop over to Houston. I'll let you know about it. If there are places like that where I can do comedy, where people will book me, where I don't have a following, but they just need someone to talk on stage, I can still go to those places and do comedy. But once we've got people who will just come for me and that I can put on the show, boy, there's a security in that. So Houston, I'm coming.

That'll grow naturally. Atlanta is number two. Atlanta, Georgia. I would again love to come to Atlanta, Georgia. Gone with the Wind, I think is set in Atlanta, Georgia. Outcast from Atlanta, Georgia. Southside Atlanta. I would love so much. I don't know if you can talk like that in Atlanta or if people take it funny.

But I would again love to come to Atlanta. But I have no ideas at the moment of going to Atlanta. Chicago. I think I'm going to get to come and do the comedy club in Chicago. They've got nine. Denver. My friend Sam Talent is ingrained in Denver. I'm going to ask him to help grow the podcast in Denver.

Sacramento. There are eight listeners in Sacramento. I know nothing about Sacramento except two things. Thing number one, that is the capital of California. And thing number two, that's where Death Grips is from. I mean, I would like to come up with some ways to target these places specifically. You know, like if I get Death Grips on,

maybe they have lots of fans in Sacramento, and then maybe there are more Sacramentoians. I mean, another reason for doing the leaderboard is just to let the people know in these places, hey, you're not that far away. Spread the good word, if I may take that expression for my boat podcast. Yes, I think good words, okay. Good news would be potentially a little on the nose, especially for my boat podcast. Yes, I think good words, okay. Good news would be potentially a little on the nose, especially for our Houston listeners. But spread the good word about the podcast. And I'm not that far away from coming to see you, sweet listener, in Sacramento. Seven listeners in Austin. So great, I've got gigs in Austin. Columbus. Now, Columbus was the first

one that I stopped at. Seven. Seven listeners in Columbus. How can I make that grow? Well Columbus is not that far away of all of these. This is the only one that I could seriously drive to quite easily. So here are some fun facts about Columbus. They do have comedy clubs. They appear to have two comedy clubs. One's called the Funny Bone. That seems like a more of a clubby comedy club. And they have something called The Attic Comedy, which is sort of a more hipster, alternative, drag queen type thing. Would happily perform at either of them.

I will reach out. That's the target this week. You know, even though Columbus, you don't have the most people, I am targeting Columbus this week to try and grow there because I could just, oh, it'd be so easy once I have a car to get in that car, drive to Columbus, do a show, make money for boat ownership. Famous people from Columbus. There's not that many of them. I'm not saying Columbus is a bad place. I've never been there. I'm looking forward to it. But yes, there weren't that many names that jumped out as being i mean sometimes you look

at a place and you go my goodness all of those people are from pittsburgh andy warhol kurt angle what is in the water of the ohio river in pittsburgh chemicals but uh you know columbus you got keenan thompson keenan thompson that's pretty cool. One of my two favorite, easily in the top two of my favorite performers in Keenan and Kel. Who else? You got R2DJ. I like some of the R2DJ songs. Boy, it'd be a little easier for me if it was R2D2, who was from Columbus and we could have on the podcast. But R2DJ, there are actually some R2DJ songs that I really love. I could reach out to and try and interview R2DJ. Also, R.L. Stine is from Columbus. I was never encouraged to read Goosebumps as a child. I knew a lot of people who were. I think I was a couple years too late. The big Goosebumps push. R.L. Stine, of course, wrote Goosebumps.

You know, some of my friends read it, but they usually read it because they had an older sibling who had already collected the Goosebumps. I was never a Goosebumps reader. I would happily start reading Goosebumps if it meant I got to talk to R.L. Stine, even though that might be an overly spooky podcast. Guy Fieri. I don't watch a lot of cooking television programs but you know I would just very happily talk to Guy Fieri seems like a nice guy who else here now I thought I've looked up

other you know big historical Columbus things that Columbians Columbus by the way is in Ohio it's in the middle of Ohio it's the capital of Ohio. It's the capital of Ohio. Architecturally, from the pictures, it looks a lot like Adelaide. Looks like some of the big building projects might not have continued past the early 90s. Other things that seem to have happened, that's just me guessing, looking at one

picture of the skyline. Now, Jesse Owens, I don't think he was born in Columbus, but this is the black guy who was at Hitler's Olympics and did a good job. He spent some time in Columbus. I wonder if there would be a disproportional interest in him. And then I could, you know, if I just did an episode all about Jesse Owens, then people in Columbus would go, Oh, we love hearing about Jesse Owens, the black guy who defeated Hitler at the Olympics. And then they hear how good the podcast is, and they stick around, and I get some new listeners.

That's pretty esoteric. I mean, I wrote a song for the people of Dublin, and it managed to increase the listenership from three to seven, and that was about Dublin. So I don't know if... I mean, I'm sure other good things might happen if I did the Jesse Owens podcast, but I don't know that that's the most efficient way to target Columbus. I looked up some influences there and then I found someone from Columbus who is big on the internet, for

some reason wasn't on the Wikipedia page, does know some of the people who I know and I mean probably the most famous person currently from Columbus Ohio Matt Rife a very chiseled Matt Rife Matt Rife in trouble and strife you know always he does the jokes about the sex on the Netflix and the people who write the articles. But my friend Luke Kijal, who's been on the podcast, just opened for Matt Rife. I feel embarrassed asking Luke Kijal for that. But I will just say, you know, I've got a lot of listeners who are in the comedy world, some of whom who I think must know Matt Rife. This is my request to help me get the people of Columbus listening to the podcast so that they'll come to my comedy. Would you, if you know Matt Rife, if you have some connection with Matt Rife, would you let him know that I'd like to chat to him? He's in Australia. Here's the other thing.

He's in Australia now. If I was in Australia, I'd be... I'm not saying I'd definitely get to do it, but I'd be a better shot of getting to meet Matt Rife if I was there, as a comedian there, than I am here in America. Isn't that ironic? You try and break into Columbus, Ohio. You try and become a famous man doing comedy in Columbus, Ohio. You travel all the way to the United States to do a gig in Columbus, Ohio.

And the one man who can unlock Columbus, Ohio. You travel all the way to the United States to do a gig in Columbus, Ohio. And the one man who can unlock Columbus, Ohio for you is back where you left. Well, that pretty much brings us to the end of this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. And you know, I saw a snowflake. I've seen a lot of snowflakes this week and it's just made me, oh, it's made me so happy to see the snowflakes

and people degradate the snowflake. You know, they say, oh, he's a little snowflake. I wish they wouldn't do that because snowflakes really are so precious and wonderful. Why wouldn't you want to be a snowflake? Anyway, here's a new song just for you. Catamaran Ho, Love you, miss you, I want you, I need you. Here's a song about, I think it's called Snowflake. Yeah, I'm going to call it Snowflake. Here it is. I'm a little snowflake, kumbaya. I'm a pretty little snowflake, kumbaya. I'm a pretty little snowflake, kumbaya Snowflakes are beautiful, ha ha ha ha

Life's heavy like a crucible Hold my head, wish I was dead, dead Think about I'm thinking about snowflakes instead Kumbaya I hope that you can relate Snowflakes are really great. I'm a snowflake. Kumbaya. Kumbaya.

If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it.

Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessi Kirkshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend,

I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know what thirsty meant until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a node. That's what my grandma's on.

Thank God Phone a Friend with Jessie Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com.