Desert Island or Coffee Shop? Extroverts and Introverts
Episode Notes
Charlie Birney is the Co-Founder of Podville Media/Podcast Village. He is a Creativity, Podcast, & Media Consultant. Also, Charlie is the Co-Author “Podcasting Made Simple” and an accomplished Illustrator on Instagram @podcastsketchbook
1. Chinese Taoism
2. Coffee Shop meetup with friends over pandemic at the Tasty Diner
3. Introverts and Extroverts
4. Businesses that use coffee to create the meetup
5. Illustration work on Instagram
6. Podcasting, Taoism, Philosophy and the good and bad of video
7. Nuance of voice vs. video
8. S'mores, gathering around the campfire, elevating the experience and campfire coffee
9. Writing 2 books, The Tao of Podcasting, illustration
10. Meditation, silence and the use of words
11. What is your why? Simon Sinek, your purpose and passion,
12. Honoring the pause, the voice and the words. Honoring the presence.
13. Engaged listening. 'I'm going to follow, but I'm not going to force' in Taoism.
Holly Shannon's new Youtube Channel, Subscribe here!
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Transcript
Holly Shannon 0:01 Hello coffee lovers. I'm here today with my friend Charlie Birney. And he is the co founder of Podville media and Podcast village. He is a very creative consultant and co author. We're gonna get into a little bit about his eponymous book that he's got coming out. And he's also an Instagram illustrator. So hello, Charlie. Hello, Holly, Charlie Birney 0:29 thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. Holly Shannon 0:31 This is awesome. We've met a couple of times, and I wanted a chance to talk with you because you're you have so many different colors about you. So I'm really excited. We Charlie and I had met recently at a coffee shop, because I love the coffee meetup. And he had told me how, during the pandemic, pandemic, he really needed to come together with his friends with colleagues. And so I'm going to ask him to share what he built with a few friends of his. Charlie Birney 1:04 And I wanted to tell you before I get to that, that one of my earliest shows was one of my earliest interviews was in a Starbucks. And from that, excuse me idea, I did a show a series for my best friend called breakfast at the tavern the tavern in over on N Street here in Washington. And for the introduction, we went to the tavern had breakfast and recorded the noise, the clinking and clanking of the spoons in the coffee mugs. And that's the background sound for the beginning of his show. I didn't use it all through the show. But we we cultivate this because this familiar feeling. What happened to me during the pandemic that you're referring to is my two of my oldest friends who I knew from kindergarten and from fourth grade. Shortly after the quarantine began, we knew that we needed to shore up our friendships and not lose sight of the long lifelong friendships that we had. So once the silver diet, the tasty diner, in Silver Spring reopened for business, we sat outside in cold weather and hot weather. And every two weeks, we had breakfast together coffee, coffee, coffee. And it was something that kept us all together and reestablish the bond of our friendships, for sure. But we've also now had a dialog two years or more every two weeks getting together, and it's something that we can really live without, I remember my friends saying you're doing was, and I thought, No, this is something I have to do. I think you value yourself, obviously, in terms of your bank account, but more importantly, in terms of your friendships. So that was something that became extremely valuable. And we continue on to this day. Holly Shannon 2:48 I love that I I feel as though the coffee Meetup is everybody's like, mental health soft, you know, we, we get together with people for the coffee meet up. Sometimes it's for business, you know, it's a networking thing. And most of the time, it's the cue to your friends that you need to talk. I mean, I know I will reach out to a friend and sometimes I won't ask directly for help. I won't articulate that feeling down or I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'll just say, Hey, can you meet for coffee? And it's a vehicle. It's kind of our international language of I need a friend. Charlie Birney 3:34 Yep. Yeah. I just made a friend in this building in the elevator two weeks ago. And he emailed me this morning and said, Can we have coffee? And I said, Of course. Looking forward to it. Holly Shannon 3:44 I love that. I I'm so glad I have this coffee meetup show because it's used so many ways. I think a lot of people don't realize like how much they use it. It's not about the coffee. It's about the meetup could be about tea, but yes, it would be about tea. It could be but it's for me it's about coffee. But yeah, it could be about you know, I would like to since we're kind of talking about going into like the diner coffee shops now. You know, people will show up to work there we see million laptops, so open. Right? Um, you and I also had a little conversation about introverts and extroverts. You being the extrovert and your wife being the introvert. And, and how being in a coffee shop, either for coffee meetup or business meeting affects you versus her. So maybe you can share with me a little about that. Charlie Birney 4:44 I think coffee shops were the first co working environment of course, and my home pod podcast village started in a co working environment in gaithersburg where I came up with the idea I was trying to find a space to make phone calls on previous job and came up with the idea of just interviewing everyone who was different there, it's too bad, you can't go around to all the people with laptops in the coffee shop at Starbucks or whatever. And ask them what they're doing. Because that might be pretty darn interesting as well. The people who are camped out there, my editor, I usually meet her in a coffee store in Spring Valley, excuse me again, and talk about the things that we're working on together. It's always the it's a comfortable space, it's a happy space to be able to sit and have a cup of coffee or a biscuit or something with your friends. And I think that will continue. I know in the co working environments, they always complement themselves or try to with fancy coffee machine. We bought one here for pago media because it establishes a sort of a commonality when someone comes in and says, Ah, it's not just some old stale coffee, but it's a nice machine, you can have hot milk, and it creates an environment where we're comfortable and also feel received properly. So Holly Shannon 6:02 wait a minute, you play barista, and you're part time. Charlie Birney 6:05 Well, we have espresso here if you'd like. Holly Shannon 6:08 Yeah, after this, I will definitely take it. You know, it's interesting in the coffee shop, when I see a lot of people with their computers open working, I would hazard to guess that better than 95% of those people are extroverts. Because they get a certain amount of energy from being in the room with other people. And I think introverts would not plant themselves in a coffee shop intentionally around, you know, 10 to 60 people depending on how big it is to do their work, because what I know about introverts is that doesn't feed their energy, it actually depletes them Charlie Birney 6:49 think about the person who was in the coffee shop when we met last. And she said to us before we even started chatting, I'm about to get on a phone call. That's like a double extrovert not only she doing there, but she's interjecting herself into our conversation without, you know, here to for anything, just said hey, by the way, I'm about to get on a call in five minutes. And she was quite audible. When she was on her phone. She agree. Clearly an extrovert my wife who's an introvert wouldn't spend more than a minute in there. If she didn't have to period Holly Shannon 7:18 she uses the app to call for the coffee to go through drive thru and leave, right she Charlie Birney 7:25 would go and she would leave. And she works in the media center, which we used to call library at BCC. So I don't even know if she would go and hang out in the library just to sit and read she would rather not be with the hustle and bustle of people. Holly Shannon 7:39 That's so amazing to me. But it's it speaks volumes. You know, I mean, I'm I'm more of an extrovert. So I definitely enjoy the energy of others. It fills my tank. i i feel like i i get home and I'm energized and I'm inspired. But I can see that. If that's not your jam, how it would wipe you out. Charlie Birney 8:03 Well, she can talk about the books she'd like to bring the desert island and she knows I couldn't exist because I go crazy without people. So it's Holly Shannon 8:09 either coffee shop, or desert island. Yeah. Absolutely. I want to tap in a little bit with you. I learned when I met with Charlie that he is writing a book called The Tao of podcasting. And he got into that from studying the Tao philosophy for a period of time before he even embarked on writing a book about it. So I and it's available for preorder. So don't worry, all that stuff will be in the show notes. But I would love to understand how you got into studying philosophy, the Tao philosophies, specifically? That's my question number two. And question number three. How has it affected how you think about connection? Charlie Birney 9:02 Well, it has affected me a great deal. My brother started studying transcendental meditation when we were in high school, and if anybody remembers TM, but it was a pretty big movement at the time, and somehow exposed me to Chinese Taoism. When at that time and I thought it was pretty appealing. It made a lot of sense. I grew up in an Episcopalian household and we had to go to church, etc. And I went to an Episcopalian High School and then during my liberal arts degree in Virginia, I remember calling my father one day said I'm not doing business because it's not any fun and I'm not enjoying any of these classes. I ended up majoring in religion and philosophy and using my passion for Taoism as my main study. Certainly my independent study I wrote a paper called The Tao of sailing. Sailing is very easy analogy to draw for Taoism because it's often called the watercourse wage. It's to practicing naturalism living in harmony with nature and living in harmony with each other, and not in conflict, a motorboat crashing against the waves revving its engine to the max would be not in harmony with the environment. And as you know, the Grand Canyon was carved by water, but over 1000s and 1000s of years. So it's about living in harmony about not forcing actions living in harmony with nature. And so I've studied it as an amateur ever since I graduated from college and developed a large bookshelf of books about Taoism and read for years about it as an amateur study or of Taoism, then I became a podcaster, approximately 10 years ago. And as I started podcasting, I, in the middle of my very first interviews, in fact, the one with the coffee shop in the background, I remember I would set my two clients up the host and the guest, and they were talking. And there I was monitoring things, but not being an active part of that I wasn't a host or a voice on that. So I started drawing just innocently enough. And I've been drawing for 10 years, what I call what cannot be seen, of course, in the first Holley, everything was audio. And now everything is generally a mix of audio and video in some aspect. So I've added to this to my study of Tao ism, and podcasting, the drawings that I've used over the years. So there's these verses a translation or rather an interpretation of the doubt a chain, which is sort of the major work of Taoism and Chinese philosophy, and compared it instead of Chinese calligraphy with my drawing. So it kind of shows the journey of podcasting alongside these interpretations of the Taoist versus into what I call the language of podcasting. Holly Shannon 11:55 That is so interesting. I, you know, there's so much nuance and power in voice, and I find the visual, the video somewhat distracting for me. So I can see how, in its purest form, podcasting was originally just audio, I can see the through line of Taoism, with podcasting. So have you? Do you feel from a philosophical standpoint that you've hit actually a little bit of a wall introducing the video into there? Or have you does it feel like just another iteration? Charlie Birney 12:39 Well, I would say a little bit of both, I certainly think the video makes it Forgive me, everyone, but sometimes unnecessarily more complicated. Even when I started in my very first studio in Gaithersburg, I would always like to take what I called a studio selfie. Because once you and I are telling a story, and it's being heard only an audio certainly at that time, but I wanted to show up behind the microphone shot a studio selfie of us doing activity, and that would probably be the picture on the cover of that episode. So to look at two people, my father always said to me, a beautiful something Marina golf course restaurant is great, but a beautiful restaurant, etc. With people is more inspiring. So happy people having a good time is more interesting than just a landscape shot. If you're trying to promote your business, and took a picture of a static microphone, a photograph done, the lighting beautifully, is interesting, but two people talking. And you can see the microphones and you can see the wires to me that expressed a great deal of story. Just as cave paintings. I saw an actual cave painting once when I was 17. And that was part of storytelling I saw when I was 20. I went to an island off the coast of Georgia and they actually rented a storyteller. He looked like bro lives with a walking stick. And he just came and gave forth with stories. So what we're doing is sharing ideas and thoughts and business notes and stories. So I think that the video can be distracting. I will be honest with you. I generally listen. Even if it's a video and audio podcast, it's generally something that I'll be doing sketching perhaps, and I'll try to listen that's how I kind of take notes or thing to that and I call myself here at pod Bill media, the chief listening officer because I try to listen to everything that we do and I listened to your podcast and JMeter dials podcast and Rob dials podcasts to guys with the same last name and try to take in as much as I can. If I had to look at all of them. I think it would be distracting for me I can't speak for other people. We do several pop culture shows here at pod Ville media. And those are much more about seeing because they'll where they talk a lot about sneakers for example. So if you weren't able to see these amazing sneakers that they bring in, then you would miss part of the A part of the experience now they capture those clips in the Instagram reels and in the Tick Tock rails that they create, or recreate depending on the client. So it's it's a, it's a difficult line to tread for me personally, I like to listen to it because it allows me to think with my mind about what's going on. And oh, imagine a picture. But it's not the same for everyone. Does that answer your question? Holly Shannon 15:25 It does. It does. Um, I'm, I there's a purist part of me, I really love to listen, I love walking and or just being in my home, working on projects and listening. But that's also because I don't stand still. So to like, pop open the computer and watch it. Yeah, and sit for say an hour. Watching somebody's video, I just I do not have that in me. And personally, my work requires me to sit in front of a computer. building out a podcast, as you know, is a huge task in and of itself. So whenever I can get away from the screen, I'm pretty happy. Charlie Birney 16:12 Absolutely. Holly Shannon 16:13 When when we met we, we talked about smores of all things because we start talking about desserts with coffee. And somehow we veered towards I don't even know how we ended up into this more. I can't remember. But I think that I need to share it because I think of all of the campfires I sat around with where we made campfire coffee, which is like you know using a jet boil and you you you make your your instant coffee there it's it's not anything like super delicious, but like when you're camping. It's you really love it. But yeah, it tastes better. Exactly. I'm but one of the things we talked about was s'mores. And again, no clue how we got there. So I gave Charlie my little way of elevating this more hashtag elevating this more. Yes. Hashtag elevating smart and love that. So I don't use sorry, Hershey's. I don't use Hershey's chocolate because it doesn't really taste like chocolate. To me. It's just awful. And I use Ghiradelli 70% dark chocolate for making my s'mores and it sends it is like next level. But then Charlie one up to me with with his fix. So do you want to share with me what you do Charlie Birney 17:41 use regular storebought marshmallows. So my daughter Isabel is in Burlington, Vermont, and she goes to the farmers market. And I played music, amateur music and a lot of farmers markets around the Washington DC area. But in her farmer's market, there is a vendor who sells handmade marshmallows, and those they melt very quickly. But they are another level above in the smallest category. So we have to combine these two things. And I know she's coming home next Monday. And we'll be making s'mores with these amazing they're like little cubes like the size of a large dice. And they melt very quickly, but we hoard them and save them for when we're together because she likes to have s'mores. And these marshmallows make it you really don't want to go back to regular staple for whatever. Marshmallows. Ghostbusters. Yeah, I think we talked about campfires because I mentioned to you that I'm writing a book about my father's folk songs. My father died about a year and a half ago and wrote really great folk songs, which I used to sing at camp at campfire and a kid I think that's how we got to smores somehow, yes, that's it. Holly Shannon 18:51 I think you're right. You're kind of like writing two books at once, which is really fascinating, because like, I truly can't even read two books at once. But I'm, you know, I'm curious. Actually, I do want to dive back in just a tiny bit to your your tower of podcasting. And I don't want to like reveal too much because it's on preorder everybody and I do want to have like a deep dive into that book when when it's out. But, you know, throughout your your time studying philosophy, and podcasting is generally a two person endeavor because you're connecting with somebody and you're interviewing, there are moderated podcasts where it's one person but for the most part, it is a creative process. You are connecting with somebody. How Why did you decide to take your study of that practice and move it into the conversation of podcasting and is there a connection? Is it about connection Charlie Birney 20:00 Well, I do think there's a number of answers for that question. It came out in the original answers that came out of a drawing during quarantine. And I just drew a microphone with a yin yang symbol on the cover, instead of the face of the microphone. I said, aha, the Tao of podcasting. But the truth of it is, as we've gotten busier here, we've done hundreds of shows, and continued to do about 20 Shows a week that we do for other people, and produce for other clients. But it becomes very busy, Holly, we're doing lots of production, lots of post production, pre production, lots of phone calls, tracking down clients sending out contracts lines, it's a very complicated activity, but in the beginning of it, and I come in most every day of the week, and the times that are the most contemplative are on the weekend when the studio is empty. And all the microphones are there. And what I love for us to be booked on the weekends, of course I would, but as a real estate guy, you want to maximize your real estate. But as a podcaster, I think it's really wonderful to think about the silence before the sound. So the intention of the book as a as a book of philosophy is not to sit down and read it as you would read a novel page to page and find out who wins at the end. But these are, as I've said, in the foreword, these are sort of meditations on a page, which we can take back to, why did we get involved in this show, or this business in the first place. And that was to communicate stories to communicate better period. And every cave painting, every podcast, every book starts with something that didn't exist before starts with ascent, silence starts with a single idea. So to me, it made sense. There are many books about the art of podcasting, you've got 102 podcasts that I'm gonna get you to sign today. And I wrote a book with Holly Shannon 21:53 you that was a co author, Charlie Birney 21:55 Hilda Liberata gore and I wrote a book called podcasting made simple. But the truth of it is that equipment marches on and software marches on. So a lot of the things that I used to do mix minus to get the other guests the long distance guest in, in higher audio quality, aren't really relevant anymore. So some of these things aren't practiced, I wanted to write a book that talked about podcasting in a way that would last. And I think looking at it, once we're in a very busy environment where we're doing two or three or four or five shows, sometimes we do seven productions here in a day, that gets very busy. And we have to remember how it all started and sort of take a breath, relax, take a moment to meditate and think about why we're here. And that was my force for going forward with this. Holly Shannon 22:43 You know, we often talk about this. And I think maybe Simon Sinek might have been the person behind the start with why. And I'm not assuming he's the only one here. I'm sure he didn't reinvent the wheel are anything that was his own thing. But one of the key questions we are all asked in our lives, not even just as podcasters is, you know, what is your purpose? What is your why? What gets you up every day? What is your passion? And those are all really huge questions, and not ones that everybody asks every time they pick up a microphone. Yeah, right. But to be able to recognize and honor that, pause that quiet. And to acknowledge why that person's there. What they plan to speak about, you know, it's not just, you know, it's not just a Google document on the teleprompter that they're reading, it's something that is part of their heart. It's part of how they think and operate. So I think it's so interesting that you found that, that you shine a light actually, on something like that, because we don't stop and take pause. enough. Charlie Birney 24:09 Not enough. It's a busy world. So the idea part of ideas to if a listener reads the book is to sort of remember why they're listening. And I call it engaged listening. Part of it is for the host to remember to follow the story and not just the notes that they might have in front of them, but allow the story to evolve. Just as we say in Taoism, I'm going to follow but I'm not going to force. So perhaps something comes out of the content. And if you're listening as a host, to your guests to the other person behind the microphone, the interview may or may not go the exact way that you thought it would. And that's a very good thing. In my opinion, Holly Shannon 24:49 I agree. But I think as in life when you meet up at the tasty diner with your friends there, you know, that's not a podcast, but it's the same thing you have to engage and listening. You have to be there for your friends or your family or whoever you're connecting with. So, it sounds like those practices are always in play. So we can go from the Tao of podcasting into just the Tao of life with your book. I feel Charlie Birney 25:15 that's correct. Yes, you're absolutely right on the money there. Yeah. Holly Shannon 25:19 And on that note, Charlie don't want to ruin it. Yeah, I'm gonna end on that note, Charlie. I'm so glad that you took some time. Yeah. Thank you so much. Coffee Culture is better for having taken a look at the towel podcasting, and Charlie Burnie. And we'll put everything in the show notes, everybody. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming. That's a wrap.
This season is produced by pale blue Studios.