The Shintaro Higashi Show - Judo Podcast

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Shintaro and Peter have been podcasting for over a year now, and it's been a wild ride with many lessons learned on the way. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter look back on their experience producing this podcast, and look ahead to the future. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

hello everyone welcome back to the shintaro higashi show with peter yu today we're going to be a little bit meta and talk about podcast judo podcast what we do specifically what is it right yeah how we started what we like about a podcast you know how we do it all that yeah yeah it's so interesting how it is now now like people associate me with like podcasting which is insane. Right. When we started, we didn't think much of it. We didn't think it was going to last this long and then people would actually like it. But I guess we've gotten to the point where we can kind of talk about it.

How long have we been doing it? A little more than a year now, I think. Yeah, that's pretty cool how we were so consistent about it. I think that's pretty cool how we were yeah so consistent about it i think that's the key i think we all we when we began we agreed that we'll keep things simple so that we can be consistent because uh scalability is huge yeah that's your nba nba talk right yeah no it's got to be scalable it's got to be sustainable yeah that's the idea right there's no limit to like you don't have to be physically in a space to do a podcast right you do but limit to like you don't have to be physically in a space to do a podcast right you do but it's like not like a dojo we're teaching judo right

come to the dojo it's like anyone can listen to it from anywhere with an internet connection right right and you know on the recording side too we try to you know like we try to make it like it's it feels like a job or anything like that i guess yeah i remember how it started because you were moving to michigan and right i was like oh man that's so sad yeah anymore and you were like hey let's do something so we could stay in contact yeah yeah and you know we always do we text and call and stuff like that you know right right you're waiting for the car to warm up in the winter mornings oh yeah for your for your wife i know i could yeah that those lonely times in the morning in the yeah man you were a good husband well i yeah

i try to be i gotta do more yeah listen to this peter gets up earlier than his wife goes downstairs turns the car on waits in it while the thing heats up no i don't i don't that's uh that's a very uh very favorable view of me i don't wake up earlier than her she wakes up before me i like when she's getting ready i like stroll out of bed go down to go down to the car and then start it lock it and then come back up that's all i do nothing just in the winter yeah yeah i'll get messages then hey like you're up or whatever it is you know well like it was a good little project for us to get going and uh you know we have a nice little system now tuesdays we try to get two or three episodes in yeah that's right we have a

little bit of a bank and a cushion i know common knowledge or common uh people who podcasters say like you have to post at least three days a week or two days a week i've heard people say like you have to put out an extra day right i don't think that's very sustainable we do once a week once a week i and post it once a week and then we try to build up a bank and we both have crazy schedules so a lot of times right and then and then you know i don't put that much time editing you know it's just i i just do bare minimum you know noise canceling and all that and yeah um you know and then we use this squad cast thing it's pretty it records both video and audio i we talked about this a little bit yeah so do you have a favorite judo podcast, by the way?

I don't. Outside of ours? I've listened to, I don't listen to other judo podcasts like regularly, but I've listened to, you know, some of the stuff that you went on. What's it called? Most recently, the martial arts journey. I guess it's not strictly a judo podcast yeah but uh interesting one we could talk about that too yeah but uh not here and there

sporadically i usually listen more my podcasts of choice are more on the uh new side of things like i like the new york times dailies because i just like to keep up with things they do a good job i think i used to listen to lex friedman a lot because he he used to focus more on ai so i i wanted to listen to a lot of the you know the famous researchers but now i think he's kind of moved on to other things so i don't know he's definitely trying to be a little bit more appeal to the mainstream yeah Yeah, not just the AI community Yeah, so I kind of stopped listening to him. I'll check him out once when he has Researchers on yeah, he had like Gary Kasparov on who's the chess master. Yeah. Yeah cool and

He I don't know how he managed to do that But he got a lot of the you the yeah very famous researchers that i you know look up to yeah what what do you listen to in terms of podcasts i mean i listen like the huberman guy i listen to more plates more dates he's more plates more dates yeah you don't know yeah he's like uh he does like pharmacology and like steroid science and he does this segment of like are they you know natural or not are they juicing or not juicing and oh like bodybuilders or athletes athletes yeah athletes no he just recently did one on the trans swimmer leah thomas oh i don't know about this yeah so there's a woman was a man most of his her life and he was like 450th in the rankings in swimming and then he

decided you know what i'm gonna take two years to suppress my testosterone and compete as a female and he won the ncaa championships oh just now just recently yeah did she form she's a transgender woman yeah i see so that blew away the competition uh-huh uh-huh so he talks about that and then i'm like listening to it and i'm like all right he's making you know interesting points here and there uh-huh you know he's just like that's what he does like pharmacology and like right right testosterone and like male performance and stuff like this i see yeah because i meant this stuff like that i love lifting weights right right right what what else what else do you listen to because it was more of the joe rogan joe rogan i like it well i'm like huge fan of comedy like stand-up comedy uh-huh so when he has like good stand-up comedians

on i'll always listen to that and if he has interesting guests on all right i'll listen to that so like you know i have my youtube situation where like i watch certain clips from joe rogan right right they'll keep pushing those clips on to me and if i watch it and it's interesting then i'll watch the whole episode i see he puts up too much stuff for me to follow and listen to all of it right does he like a lot every day I think he yeah it's like five days a week or something Wow he talks to that many people yeah he puts it out there yeah now like he doesn't even have to like go hunt anybody down people want to be young people probably want to be on that yeah yeah I see maybe I should be all right yeah maybe Joe Rogan we should be on that yeah maybe joe rogan if you're

listening to this please invite us that'd be crazy and then this guy chuck jefferson had a judo podcast the judo cast that was pretty cool i listened to some of the episodes especially when i have like justin flores or uh and jacob delgado or people that I know that I competed with who were my teammates. When they're on, I'm like, oh, man, I would love to hear more about their story. And then I'll listen to them. But Judo Fanatics kind of contracted Chuck Jokic and said, hey, we're going to do a Judo Fanatics podcast. Why don't you do this for us because you're already doing it? And that was a sweet gig for him.

So now I listen to the Judo fanatics podcast sometimes if i remember to so you could you kind of have an inside look on how judo fanatics podcast is produced yeah like i was a guest on it do they do it differently do they have an actual studio or no we did it through the internet so i've done a lot of episodes for other people i've done like mental models bjj this and that i've done martin rooney's podcast i've done right judo fanatics podcast and it's in a very similar format as us oh i see oh you've been on the bjj mental models i see that around oh okay i did like a grappling station podcast there's a lot out there right There's a lot of podcasts out there because everyone's doing it because the barrier of entry is so low. Yeah, now especially now.

It's super low. What do you need? Internet? You need fast internet. Fast internet. Because I've done podcasts with people who had horrible internet because of my upspeed, downspeed, 400, 400, something like this. It's great. But like I've done podcasts with people who have

very slow up speed and it's like it gets cut off and it's not usable right right so you need fast internet speed some kind of software headphones mic that's it yeah you know well what was i gonna say um the uh i'm losing my train of thought here. Talking about podcasts. I know. I was going to ask you a question. It'll come back to me. So do they use Zoom or anything?

I'm just curious what they use, too. I've done episodes on Zoom. I've done stuff through Squadcast. Oh, they use to i've done episodes on zoom i've done stuff through squadcast i've done stuff oh they use squadcast yeah or a lot of the times it's like you could just get a link right into it and then do it right that's what that's what squadcast does yeah yeah it's a good little system i like it that we don't rely on guests yeah i think that's like yeah you know when i always think like all right it'll be nice to have this person that i know on or that person that i know on but it's hard to be consistent with that yeah hard to be consistent and adds another layer of like scheduling this and then

making sure they get on and all that stuff so this uncensored me and you talking for 20 30 minutes at a time judoo podcast, this system kind of works. Yeah, it's getting into the place and then, you know, it's all a little systemized, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, and now we're getting to a point where we have a lot of listeners. Probably have 600 people listening every episode. Right.

All around the first month, yeah. Yeah, first month the episode releases First month, the episode releases. So that's not bad. And then we have about total 60,000 downloads for the whole podcast, which is a great number to aspire to. So now we're at a place where people are reaching out to us and giving us suggestions. So if you're listening to this, you can join our Patreon and tell us what you want to hear. You could also get on our Discord and chat with us live, which I have been neglecting.

I'm sorry. I'm on there usually, and I always hound and tell her to join. Yeah. So that's pretty nice. But yeah, we're trying to really build a community of people who like this kind of stuff. Yeah. And you've been on the... Oh,'m i i remember now what i wanted to

ask so you've been on you've been a guest to a lot of these podcasts right so the uh what do you think about like what was there do you enjoy it like do you like going on? Do you think that format works better in terms of content-wise? Yeah, I think, I'll tell you this. It is very interesting to get on and field questions. And some people will give you an outline. The majority of the time, because I'm kind of used to talking in this format and then talking to the camera for YouTube. Not stuff that I'm not an expert and i can't do that at all right when it regards this kind of thing i'm pretty good at it so most people are

just like hey man here's the link just log in and then let's go and a lot of the times i like sharing my knowledge with the world about judo and gravity oh they don't usually give you a list of questions that they're gonna ask even if they do i don't really read it yeah i'll skim it like right before right right but usually they're they're softballs you know they're not complicated you know a lot of times they do want to pull out some controversial bit why does u.s judo has three branches or like why why is the united states not performing well in the international circuit? And then, you know, I always have sort of my go-to answers for that. And then depending on how I feel that day, I'll share.

But it's enjoyable because it's like I'm having a conversation with someone and you feel heard. Right, right. Oh, you feel heard. You do. It's like how, right? I mean, when we're recording this conversation this is the uniqueness about the podcast thing and i think that's why so many dudes do it i even saw a meme right i don't want to say women go to therapy but i saw a meme this is a meme this is

not my opinion i saw a meme that said women go to therapy men start podcasts snl did a skit on that yeah it's like you know men doing starting pockets and talking about stupid stuff no because it's easy to feel isolated in this world of fast-moving tech right you know you sit at the dinner table and half the people are on the freaking phone and doing yeah whatever it is this is the chance to talk to somebody for long form 30 minutes to 60 minutes yeah uninterrupted no distractions because you're also thinking about an audience that's listening on the other side right i guess so yeah that it feels right and then i get to see you that's a huge plus i guess that's like it it is different this long form conversation doesn't happen that often nowadays yeah i don't get to sit down and talk to

someone you know deep talk right right deep talk about judo yeah let me understand you talk to me i'm listening it's not just me hundreds of people out there also want to hear what you think about the stuff right right go so it's like it feels good uh-huh uh-huh you know is there any like real monetary merit at the end of the day for us no no no it's like i'm sure people do it with the intention of hey one day we're going to sell enough ads on the thing we'll get enough thing we'll have like sponsorships and all this stuff uh but you know right now we're doing it because we like it yeah and it's this uh i think that's what that's a good point it's uh you know maybe you guys should give it a go too if you're interested like and it doesn't take much to start off. And it could be therapeutic. I guess, yeah, I enjoy it.

It is therapeutic. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Maybe we could, in order to make it even more therapeutic, maybe you could branch out to other topics. You know, we always think that, right? It's like not just specific to the Grappling community. I think we could talk, you know we always think that right it's like not specific to the grappling community yeah i think we could talk uh you know about we floated that we asked the question on discord but people

geopolitical tensions in the world that's we we're not talking about my crazy views about uh you know about the city about about New City. Based on the headlines that I read today. I didn't read the whole article, but... That is a problem, huh? I feel very strongly, based on all the headlines that I've read, I think this is what's going on.

There was actually the point of the SNL skit, kind of, like as men go on and talk about stuff that they don't really know about. But I guess we at least talk about judo that we know a little bit about. You know a lot about judo. Yeah, we know something about judo. Yeah, I think the general consensus was that people generally want us to stick to judo. Could they come to us for judo? So, we've got to listen to our client to us for judo so we'll probably you know we gotta listen

to our clientele i guess but we'll see yeah that's right i mean sometimes you have to listen to your clientele right because sometimes your clientele doesn't know what they know what they want yeah there was like steve joff said that or something even sometimes like uh even you know you producing the content don't really know what you want to put in there. I'll give you an example. I was teaching Judo last night and I was like, you know what? I want to teach drop senage, marote in depth. Yeah.

And I was looking at the room. I'm like, you know, not too many people do it here. You know, it's not that advanced of a crowd today. Nobody would get it. It would be silly if I even taught it. It's just not the right night. But I wanted to teach it. Therefore, that's what they're going to get.

It's like it had nothing to do from a business standpoint. It probably wasn't the right move. And I went too in-depth. Usually, I try to cut it three to five minutes. Try it, bring it back, three to five minutes. Go, try it, bring it back three to five minutes. Traction, go try it, bring it back.

And then maybe we break off into whatever it is, right? X, Y, Z. Cause that's how it's supposed to be structured. Supposed to be. I was like,

you know what? I feel like teaching it today. I haven't really went in depth about anything. I'm just going to go ahead and teach it for me. Do they like it? They actually all got it, which is pretty surprising. Oh, nice. Nice. Got got it lots of interesting ideas sanagi kochi sode but like cutting the sand clearing

one arm clearing the other arm right setting it up angles you know all this stuff was great oh they're coming up with different ideas yeah but if i would have pulled the room yeah hey uh what do you guys want to learn beginners would have been like oh i want to learn how to throw a guy who's bigger and stronger than me in the street it's like all right you know stiff arms oh this guy's stiff so i can't freaking do anything it's like okay hey can you show me how to do gripping right versus right? It's like, we went over this like 90 million times. One time, one dude yesterday was like, hey, can you show me this move? And I'm like, you're a white belt and you're working with a black belt.

Ask that guy. Yeah, I was like, why are you asking me? Ask him. He's an expert. He's wearing a black belt. He's good. Why won't you ask him? Why are you asking me?

I'm teaching something else completely different. Right, right. Why are you... And I said it with a... More finesse, yeah. I tried to be polite about it, but there was definitely a tone there because I was a little bit aggravated by that.

That's a bit of a judo etiquette i guess dojo etiquette um yeah it's like being at work right yeah and it's like you have your boss and your boss has your boss and then the boss has the ceo above them and then you're going directly to the ceo like hey man let me ask you a question do i have to attend a 9am meeting it's like why are you asking me there's four people between us ask your direct boss why are you going

around him why are you do I sense sensei syndrome here oh big time sensei syndrome you have to check yourself even when you're

doing this stuff it's too easy to right fall into that trap be mindful so yeah on that note yeah maybe uh maybe we'll do a wild card episode um yeah well we'll think about it we'll we'll do something judo related because we want to and maybe you guys let's do this one how about this one we'll make it really really personal It'll be like a therapy session with Peter.

We'll just talk about all your problems. Oh, my God. Put it all out there in the world. All my bottled up frustration. Yeah, we'll do that. I don't know if people will find that interesting, though. It'll be interesting. Tell me about that one person you hate in your program. Oh god i don't hate anyone all right who do you like the least oh man i have to think about

that yeah no you don't what i never told anyone did i have but you do but you do not like somebody i i didn't say no comment i i didn't say anything then he's saying thing cool well let's see what else can we talk about judo podcast maybe like since you said you like going on as a guest maybe kind of like how what we talked about for your clinics and seminars how what would be the best way to reach out to you to get you on their podcast people's podcast I think if you're running a podcast

that is dependent on guests people always want guests on there so if you reach out and say hey can I get on your guest list or whatever it is I'm sure people will have me it just requires reaching out and connecting and making sure you allow time for the space. And a lot of times these guys are doing it as a side job. So what are the hours that you're available?

It's like, you know, three o'clock on a Wednesday. It's like, okay, you got to make time for that. You know, I haven't really been pushing it so much on that front. I just got to enjoy doing this. And, you know, people comment um the podcast stuff all the time people refer to hey you said this in this episode you said that in the episode so it's pretty cool and i like it that these people are reaching out to me on instagram more through the podcast oh they found out about you through the podcast yeah because i have 120 000 subscribers on youtube

and i don't check the comments there really i mean i do but i just like kind of skim it there's too many of them anyway too many of them and then on instagram i have about 30 000 followers so when they send me random messages it's kind of like ah right but if people send me a message hey i listened to this podcast and i think this and xyz i'm much more inclined to respond because they're taking the time to listen to this long form content of hey you know i think about it and they're giving a opinion right it's not like hey can you critique my tai toshi yeah which i get all the time Taiyatoshi Taiyatoshi specifically everyone wants to do that

people just send me video clips of them doing judo hey man what do you think or like a 10 minute video of them on Dory kind of thing which is okay it's not terrible I don't really mind it and if I have time I'll look at it and then talk to them about it

right right but if I don't have time I'll look at it and then talk to them about it right right uh but if i don't have time i won't i won't even respond but if it's through podcast because it is a little bit more in-depth yeah i will most likely respond to that so now i have a bunch of people that i kind of have conversations through discord and sometimes through just like a private conversation and yeah you know uh they kind of break through nice nice yeah which is pretty cool i think yeah so it's a way to connect uh another way to connect yeah all right yeah so i mean we're we're having said that we're open to have guests on you know i think we have some in pipeline we'll see it's just a matter it's just uh it's more work on our side because we have to you know schedule so it might not happen right away but

we're open to it yeah we're open to it yeah our time slot usually is tuesday yeah like 10 in the morning yeah yeah you know uh yeah we're open to it we're flexible yeah we've had some you know through your connections like jimmy yeah we had jimmy pedro yeah i kind of want to get i mean i know some champs this guy reached out to me recently you know akiyama akimoto from japan like yeah world champion yeah holy shit really yeah no he was like hey I watch your do I do been stuck I do his turnover all the time thank you for your time yeah he's starting a jujitsu slash judo geek he's

always a geek company not really company but he's starting a geek line oh ok ok yeah so you wanted to like hey can you can I send you one can you push it on your social media and stuff like that i have to get like clearance from fuji because it's like you know oh it's a conflict of interest yeah it's a little bit of a conflict here but i would love to get him on the podcast i think his english is pretty good oh nice yeah yeah maybe we'll do a podcast in

japanese i don't know could you imagine i'll it'd be hard for me to like keep up you know i speak a little bit but not to the point where the if he speaks english you're not well enough then we can do it and then you know you can kind of i don't think it's well enough to like get going yeah i see so it might be maybe then it's it's good for a YouTube video or something. Yeah That's you got some clout man like world champions reaching out to you That is actually sweet that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's very impressive champion Medalist I was like, wow wow that's i remember that match man when he pinned when he uh when he pinned uh uh wang kichun in the final that turn man that he

did that turn uh the turnover uh that's when i learned it i was like wow that because he pinned so many people with that that yeah he's good his noirs is good his sandbag is good so many people with that that yeah he's good his noaz is good his sanagi is good nice nice all right well yes so this is uh how we yeah started the podcast how we feel about it how we what how we are doing it maybe what we want to do maybe in the future uh it's kind of a rambling episode but uh yeah hopefully you guys enjoyed it yeah it's kind of on the other side of like the how the sauce sausage is made kind of thing i guess yeah anything else nope thank you very much for listening guys yeah all right guys and girls yeah thank you everyone and uh stay tuned for the next episode