The Josh Innes Show - Listener Emails and Inspiration

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

I'm inspired after listening to podcasts about pit masters. I've got some very nice emails from listeners. This leads me to a discussion about life and taking chances. Why am I afraid to take chances? Why are people in general afraid to take chances. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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we are your local dignity memorial provider find us at dignity memorial.ca the dignity memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of service corporation international hello jamokes what's going on it's josh tuesday morning about 9 50 gonna hit the road tomorrow going to memphis where i will spend Thanksgiving. Me and Jilly are gonna spend Thanksgiving with Dad and Cindy and some of these other folks

that apparently spend Thanksgiving with my dad every year and he talks like I should know who they are. He's like, oh yeah, the Smithsons or whatever and I'm like, okay, I don't know them. But he talks as if I should. So we're gonna be at the Peabody Hotel which is the hotel with the ducks and everything in should. So we're going to be at the Peabody Hotel, which is the hotel with the ducks and everything in Memphis. So we're going to be there tomorrow night. Going to go see

the Grizzlies tomorrow night. We're Grizzlies fans. Thursday, Thanksgiving, Tennessee. It is legal to sports bets. So we will be live betting to our hearts content for Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. So it should be good. That will be exciting. Then we will return back to St. Louis on Saturday where we will watch the final regular season LSU game against Oklahoma and see where all this college football craziness ends up going. So we're looking forward to that.

Memphis is like a four hour drive from St. Louis, so it's not too bad. Jilly's got a lot of work she's going to be doing today and tomorrow, so we'll be able to leave tomorrow early afternoon, hopefully. Maybe late morning. I don't know. But we're ready to rock and roll. Now, I want to read a couple emails and messages I've gotten from people because people have been sending very nice things, and people are just awesome.

Let me see here. Some of them I haven't gotten a chance to respond to yet. And what am I saying? Like I haven't had a chance to. I literally have nothing but time to respond to people. So if I haven't responded to your email yet, honestly, it's me being a dick, but I am going to respond to the emails I get. Sometimes I just forget. Sometimes I'm lazy. I apologize, but it doesn't mean I don't love you. So if you've emailed me something or you've sent me a DM and I haven't responded, just know that I will because I truly do appreciate your nice words and you listening to the podcast and you telling your friends about it. So thank you very much. I got this one from Brendan. This email came

in after I did the pod last week where I'm just like, I don't know what the fuck to do sometimes. You know what I'm saying? Because I'm tired of having to beg people I have no respect for to give me a job. And I understand that a lot of you understand this. It is a pain in the ass. age when you have to go and try to tell people and explain to people why you're worthy of a job only to have them basically tell you to go fuck yourself because they have no clue like it sucks it sucks to move to a city where you think you're going to live for the next 10 years and then get that laid off 15 months into it and be looking for a job like it's it sucks so a lot

of you can relate like I've gotten multiple emails from people telling me that they're not radio people, but they've had similar things happen. I got this email from Brendan. In November of last year, I left a horrible company in Houston, got a new job in December and got fired two weeks before Christmas, started door dashing and delivering pizza. At 30, I was doing that and living with my parents and had no savings. Today, I've been at a company for seven months that appreciates me and I've built up my savings all while getting to live in Chicago for two months and now Colorado. Things will get better, brother. It's a bad day, not a bad life. Go Tigers and sending love to you and Jillian.

No matter how you feel, just remember Luther is always proud of you. That's very nice. I appreciate that. Brendan, speaking of Luther, so we got this new TV because there was a Prime Day deal and Hisense, everything I've read is that Hisense makes kind of the best mid-quality price range TV, right? It's not like one of these badass Sonys or like a $3,000 TV, but the high sense TV gets great marks on all these websites that I read about TVs. Now I know nothing about TVs. So when I read shit, these people could be speaking Swahili and it, I wouldn't know.

But, um, I'm like, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to do this because the TV was normally like 1500 bucks and it was on sale for like 600 on Amazon I'm like screw it I'll get it thing arrives on Sunday afternoon it's as big as a fucking house outside like this box was impossible to get in the house but I got it got it set up nice TV I enjoy it so but speaking of Luther the reason I bring up the TV is our TV before was smaller. So I had this picture, this, this sketch of Luther that one of Jilly's friends had made for us where it's Luther and he's got a little halo. It's a very nice picture, but we had to move it because there was no room on the TV stand anymore. So now it hangs on the wall in the bedroom. I've taken everything off the walls in this house. The day I got fired, I came home and started taking shit off the wall because I'm like, listen, whenever the call comes that, hey, there's a job that I need to go to, then guess what, motherfucker? I'm going to be ready to go or at least closer to ready to go than I would be had I not taken all the shit off the wall. Now, it's important to note that I took all that shit off the wall on August 1st when I got fired. It is currently November 26th. Still don't have a

job, but I at least have all the pictures on the wall packed up and ready to go. And, uh, and some glass, then talk about a dipshit. I started packing up all of our dishes and shit too. I'm like, Oh, something's going to happen quick. Now I've got boxes taped up full of cups and plates and shit. We don't even have any cups and plates. We eat off of paper plates because I'm a dipshit. But you know what? It's fine because something's going to happen. But you know what else is interesting?

It's like I sit here and, like, again, I want to get a radio job because it's what I'm good at. It's what I've been doing my whole life. But it's also not like I'm super driven by the idea of doing it anymore because I'm kind of jaded by it and me and PK talked about that when we were drunk doing this podcast I know we've talked about this on here before as well but like like there's a part of me that feels like a fuck boy like a cuck sitting here like oh someone's gonna call and they're gonna want to hire me on radio when what I should be doing is just saying they can go fuck themselves and I'm gonna do something else and if they happen to call they on radio when what I should be doing is just saying they can go fuck themselves and I'm going to do something else. And if they happen to call, they happen to

call, but I'm like an addict for doing radio shit. Like it's what I want to do. But as I said before, what my ass really should do is put my fucking mind to doing a goddamn podcast and really push it and give it a true, honest effort. And maybe if I did that, maybe it would blow up and be something successful that I could live off of, but I don't have the guts to do it like that's the part that eats at me like I just like I've always been kind of bold and always kind of pushed being bold and always took risks on the radio and all that shit but deep down I'm just a fucking coward when it comes to that stuff especially now like I feel like I have this block in my mind now where I can't really say the things I really mean because I'm concerned that it's going to impact me getting

the job. Like there's so many of these things and I'm sure many of you deal with it because it's just this era that we're in. And I know I've talked about this before, but this is the thing that eats at me more than anything is just like, Josh, why are you a fucking coward? Stop being a coward. And then I make the mistake of listening to podcasts of successful people telling their stories. Then I'm like, well, shit, I'm a super coward now. You listen to people tell you how they went from nothing and created. Like I was listening to a great podcast, which I think you should listen to.

It's about barbecue. It's my friend John Lopez from six 10 in Houston. And John does a podcast about barbecue, which is something I'm really into. Like I enjoy the, the, the process of meat smoking and like I've gotten into it in the last year plus, um, you know, I'm a, I'm a poon that uses a pellet grill, but I enjoy it. I couldn't tell you how to light a, you know, a, the light the wood for an offset smoker or something, but I'm fascinated by it. And I watch tons of videos on YouTube. And my friend John has a podcast called the Bite Meat Podcast. He has a fishing podcast that's called the Bite Me Podcast, which I have no interest in because hunting, fishing, all that shit doesn't do anything for me.

But the Bite Meat podcast, he interviews pitmasters and different people, people that have amazing stories. Like my friend Grant Pinkerton, who runs Pinkerton's in Houston, which is one of the best barbecue joints in the fucking country. His story is amazing. You talk about a nothing to something story.

Guy was addicted to substances, living with his parents after college, and was working at, I think, a gym. And then one day, started making barbecue for the people at the gym, and they liked it. And he buys a truck. And before you know it, he's got a shop in Houston that's huge. He's got a shop in San Antonio that's huge. He's opening up another barbecue joint, another Pinkerton's, and the old 59 diner off of 59 and like the Kirby-ish area, you know, where the 59 diner was over there by McElroy's and all that shit off of, I guess technically it would be off of Shepherd.

But his story is amazing. And I listened to those kind of stories and I'm like, Josh, what the fuck are you doing? You actually had a head start. You were a successful guy out of the gate. You got a big job when you were 23. You got to Philadelphia when you were 26. You know, you've done all this shit. You actually did it in reverse.

You started out hot and now you fizzled out. You're like goddamn Gary Coleman or something. You were a child prodigy that's now working security at the shopping mall, you know? And like, I listen to those stories and they fascinate me. So really, if you want to hear stories about good inspirational stories, all centered around smoking meat,

John Lopez's podcast, The Bite Meat Podcast, is actually very good. Another guy who I love very much is a friend of mine who runs a barbecue joint in Nashville called Shotgun Willie's. Shotgun Willie is a dude,

his name's Bill. Bill is from Houston. You know, like if you walk into his shop, you'll see bumper stickers from the old 610 KILT, Houston Oilers, Astros, Willie Nelson, ZZ Top. The dude is tried and true Texas all the way through. Big Texas guy, big Houston guy. And I met him by chance. I went to his shop because they said they had Texas barbecue, which you can't really find in Nashville. Barbecue, for the most part, in Tennessee, particularly Nashville, not very good, although we are going to Memphis tomorrow,

and the rendezvous is great in downtown Memphis. Tony Pollard, we've never been here before, but Tony Pollard's family, he of the Tennessee Titans, formerly of the University of Memphis and formerly of the Dallas Cowboys. Tony Pollard, the running back, his family's got a barbecue joint in Memphis that we're going to go hit up. They've had it for a long time. But Bill, Shotgun Willie, this dude, he was doing a desk job that he hated. He and his wife decided to open up a kolache shop in Nashville. He and

his wife ended up getting divorced. Then he decides to open up a barbecue joint in a truck. The truck's not doing the kind of business he thought it would. So he buys a brick and mortar in Nashville. Just so happens he buys it like in February and opens it February, March, April of 2020 during the pandemic, which everyone's dying at that point, literally and figuratively, business-wise especially. A lot of small businesses are dying. But that dude persevered through that and now is super successful, just moved from a small shop to a gigantic, awesome shop in Nashville. And he's got a success story. And when I hear people like that, I'm inspired by it. I'm inspired by what these people are and who they are. But then I'm like, why are you a coward? Why are you afraid to take chances? Why can't you just say, you know what? Fuck it. Go do some the message i try to get across to people here is like

like like it's cool to say you have the guts and guts to do it but what if you fail but that's kind of the fun of it that's the pressure right all right let me play a couple of these commercials because i need to make four dollars for doing this episode today so here's a couple of commercials and i'll read some more emails right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you've got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition, including prize picks. It's a very simple concept.

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And I'm going to launch my podcast. And I'm going to give it a shot, an honest shot, and see what happens. I appreciate people who have guts. You know, my dad has tried a lot of things that have failed. He's tried a lot of things that have succeeded as well. But like in the mid-2000s, my dad opened up a chain of ice cream shops in Louisiana. Called them Scoop and Dews was the name of the ice cream shop. Opened like four or five of them in Baton Rouge and the whole Baton Rouge area.

And ultimately, it cost him a lot of money and it flopped. It just wasn't a very successful thing and he lost a lot of money doing that. But he took a chance. Then he was like, hey, I'm going to flip houses. So my dad would buy houses and try to flip them. Some of them made money, some didn't. But the guy took chances. I admire people who are gutsy and take chances.

Of course, it's easy to listen to a person tell their success story because that means they made it. So when you hear like Todd Graves of Raising Cane's is one of the great entrepreneurs to come out of Louisiana, particularly Baton Rouge, someone who Baton Rouge people like myself are proud of because he's built an awesome empire. Although, if we're being fair, Cane's chicken ain't as good as it used to be. I think the quality control, once you start opening more and more shops, the quality control

isn't as good as it should be. And I say this as someone who loves Canes, someone who, you know, LSU would play a basketball game and if they hit six threes in a game, you could take your ticket stub to Canes and you can get a free box combo. So look, I've lived that life. Buy one, get one free box combos with your ticket stub. Hey, for the kids who don't know, a ticket stub is what you used to have

when you'd go to a sporting event. Not just on your phone, you'd have a ticket stub. So me and my buddy, after LSU, would hit six, seven, I forgot how many threes it was. It was either six or seven. If LSU made seven threes in a game, and talk about a weird world where seven threes was considered a lot of threes in a game, or six threes,

you would go and you would buy one, get one box. And this is back when the box had like five tenders in it. Before the box became four and the snack became three and the Caniac had six and the Caniac's 15 goddamn dollars and the tenders are too goddamn small. Really, you talk about the great disappointments in my life. One of the greatest is that Cane's has really gone backwards in terms of quality. The chicken tendies used to be huge, man. At the original location, when you'd go to Canes outside the North Gates of LSU, that's where the Mecca is, the original Canes right there in that strip.

And like, it's Mecca, like it is the place. And when you go in there and you get these big, juicy, beautiful tendies, and now like they're just little dinky ass tenders, mostly breading, not a lot of chicken on them. Sometimes they're just little dinky ass tenders mostly breading not a lot of chicken on them sometimes they're cold the fries tend to be cold often and the toast isn't hot and I never get the slaw because what kind of monster gets the slaw you got into say no slaw extra toast that's the way of canes that's no knock on Todd Graves but once you start expanding to the point that you're in every city seemingly quality control isn't as strong as it should be then

you don't get as good of workers because of the way the world is now as well i mean go watch the mcdonald's movie watch the the ray crock movie the founder you know you open up the first mcdonald's uh the first mcdonald's um chain location and it does well then he starts looking at other ones and they're serving like fried chicken and shit and he's like don't serve fucking fried chicken. That's not on the goddamn menu. You serve what we serve. You do the speedy service.

Anyway, let's read some more emails. I'm all over the place here. So thank you to Brendan for your email. Let's see. This is from Gonzo. Josh, I enjoy the show slash pod. I heard you fill in for McKccernan on 101 espn shit we got someone that listened in saint louis and liked it this person like he's on

this person should get an award i was all this dude is entertaining fuck ass yeah then binge the josh with scott show on kashi pods and i look forward to your show every day at two on 94.7 you guys laughing the next gen spin and the motherfucking shakedown cruise was badass. I texted in as Gonzo from Dittmer. Gonzo was my baby boy German shepherd, RIP. RIP. Rest in power, Gonzo.

I look forward to you guys at 2pm every day. I'm a 50-year-old man. I listen to tons of talk, radio, podcast news. I know what is good and what is shit. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for 15 years. He was the funniest mofo ever. Keep up the good work, Josh. I know what is good and what is shit. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for 15 years. He was the funniest mofo ever. Keep up the good work, Josh. I enjoy listening to you. By the way, I enjoy Jilly as well. God bless Luther the puppy. Rest in peace. That's from Tim in Dittmer, Missouri. Goes by Gonzo because his dog is German Shepherd. Rest in power, Gonzo. That was his dog's

name. I appreciate that. I do think there were a lot more people in St. Louis that actually listened than we give credit for. Like, we would do events with the radio station, and tons of people would come out. Now, tons of people showed up for all of the radio stations' remotes because most of them are old people that didn't have jobs anymore. So they just had all day to sit around and go watch a live broadcast, which fascinates me that anybody would go watch a live broadcast for like people who talk 30 seconds in four hours. Like at least we were doing a radio show like and that's again, looking back on it may not have been the best move, but we gave it a shot. I thought the show was actually really fucking good when it was really fucking good. But like, I can't imagine spending my afternoon watching a live radio show where the disc jockey talks for 14 seconds at a time twice an hour. Like, well, here's my 30 seconds of talk time.

Now back to cheap trick. Like, just listen to it on your fucking phone. But whatever. It is what it is. But maybe that's why I don't have a job there anymore. Because I would literally tell people, like, if you want to hear fucking songs, if you don't like what we play, go listen to something else. Listen, maybe I'm not the smartest guy. Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am. Let me go through some of these other messages. So thank you, Gonzo.

Let's see here. I actually had a nice conversation, and I won't tell you who it was with, but I was talking with a program director of a talk radio station and had a two-hour conversation with this person about radios, a very good conversation. I actually liked the guy a lot. I seriously doubt they have any sort of job for me there, but it was a good conversation. I just enjoy talking about the business of radio with people who are on the business of radio and people I respect, not people I have no respect for. And it's hard to find people that I have a ton of respect for anymore because most of them have been phased out, fired, or they've just decided this industry fucking sucks. Like I respect people who were in it when radio was kicking ass and they were smart programmers. The Andy Blooms, the Gavins who I worked for in Houston, who I love very much. My program director in Nashville,

Jonathan, very smart guy. Like I respect people like that because they know what they're doing. The problem is there just aren't a ton of those type of people anymore because they're getting out of this business. Let me see here. Here's a message from Matt. Why didn't you keep building up the podcast while you're doing rock radio stuff? Steady paycheck while working on your passion project I feel like you'll end up hating whatever traditional radio job you could get because you'll always have to answer to a PD and not every listener will like you but if you were on air at least it pays the bills and you can do the podcast where you can be what you want I'm probably oversimplifying it here no I think that's fair um but what's interesting is once I got the job in St. Louis,

I thought, well, shit, this is just the gig like this. I don't like I thought I didn't really need to do a pod, although the plan was to eventually start potting again. But I gave ownership of the show and the RSS feed and all that to the company. So I was just never really compelled to do a pod at the time because I was trying to build the radio show, get that to be successful and do some sports stuff here and then try to build the pod from there and kind of relaunch it. I probably should have kept it going the whole time because when we first started it, it had a really big following. And then like is naturally the case.

If you start, um, kind of ignoring it, people are going to find other shit to listen to. What's amazing is the second I brought it back, a whole large core of people kept coming back with me. So in a way, I'm not trying to be an asshole. I'm not trying to be a dickhead, right? That is exploiting people or anything like that or expecting you to always come back after I abandon you. I don't consider it abandoning. That's just, I have a job and that was my focus. And now this is what I'm doing to kill time until another job comes up. But once I get that other job, my hope is to really start getting back into this in earnest and get the cameras back up and get everything moving in that way. But I think that's a myth about me, about having to answer to a program director.

I like having to answer to people if I think they're smart and they have a plan. I was telling that to this person I was talking to yesterday. People have this perception that, oh, Josh hates program directors. Does he? I love Andy Bloom. I love Gavin. I love Jonathan. Now, on the air, I'll bitch some, but that's kind of part of it. That's the give and take of having a boss. But I'd much rather someone who has a plan and wants me to execute the plan than have somebody who's just like, go figure it out. Because when I'm left to my own devices is when I do the really dumb shit. If you give me kind of a blueprint and say, this is what our goal is, go kind of bored and I'm like, what am I doing this for? And that kind of happened to me in a couple of places, but that didn't happen in Houston. It didn't happen in Philadelphia because I worked for a guy that I respected and had a plan. I love when you work with people who give you feedback, people who they make their ideas sound like you came up with them. You know, like people like that, that know how to work. Like I'm a mental case. I'm aware I'm a mental case. So it's

interesting working with me. And I know people I've every person I've ever worked for says you need to go to a therapist. I'm like, Nope, you're my fucking therapist. Every boss that I've liked and had, I've literally laid on their couch in their office and had therapy sessions with these people, but that's how I am. And maybe that's part of my downfall as I look at bosses that I like as kind of father type figures and psychiatrist figures. And that's our relationship. And then the ones I don't like, things go really bad. Like things went bad at 790 because I just didn't have a good relationship with those people. When I have a good relationship with bosses, I actually thrive and excel. Doesn't mean I don't

get in trouble. Doesn't mean I don't fight with them, but it's good and productive shit. And I think that's what you need in life. Like, like Jilly says that it might be to my detriment that I'm too close to people in management. Like, I don't know that that's true. You know, like I, I, I like having close relationships with people that are in management or people who are my bosses. Like, I think that's a good thing to do. Like if you have a coach, don't you like, like you hear stories about guys who have great relationships and love their coach. Why is it any different? You know? Uh, she's like, well, some people probably view you as a kiss ass. I'm like, well, I fucking am. Is that a problem? Like I kiss a lot of ass of these people, but I like them. You know, if I like you, I like you

now, maybe I should keep more of a distance than I had before in some cases, maybe, but, uh, still anyway, uh, I appreciate all the people who email again. You can always email Josh and a show. You can send me a DM on Instagram, or you can send me one on, um, on Twitter. That's fine as well. Um, let's see here. I got one from Raul Garcia. Uh, uh, by the way, love the show. Keep putting them out. I've put my brothers on to your pod. Thanks for the entertainment and keeping it 100. Well, thank you, Raul.

I appreciate that. So some people are sending some cool stuff my way. Chad says, back to a discussion we had last week, you don't want to be a UPS driver. You wouldn't start out driving a truck. You'd start out loading the trucks and or taking the packages to the a UPS driver. You wouldn't start out driving a truck. You'd start out loading the trucks and or taking the packages to the door for the drivers. It's actually a decent gig for this time of year because the drivers work long hours this time of year because of Christmas. You should

move. Oh, actually, I misread this. You should move back to Texas and do it. Been a fan since the 610 days. Love the show. Well, thank you, Chad. I did get a message from someone else who was like, don't work for UPS. I think that might've been Brad Hall who said that. So anyway, appreciate you guys. You're awesome. We'll pump out some more stuff today.