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Those Crazy Damn Canadians get the spotlight in local podcast

Local podcast Crazy Damn Canadians hosted by Scott McWalter and Dave Mothus features inspiring people.
Crazy Damn Canadians podcast web
Scott McWalter and Dave Mothus host all inspiring Crazy Damn Canadians on their podcast.

The fastest growing media platform right now is podcasts and there’s a unique podcast that is taking on a life of its own that comes from right here in Prince George.

Crazy Damn Canadians is hosted by Scott McWalter and Dave Mothus and features interesting Canadians with a unique story to tell.

McWalter said he and Mothus had chatted about starting a podcast as they saw them gaining in popularity during the pandemic.

“So Dave and I decided to do something that allows us to interview people we find inspiring whether they were at the local level in Prince George or a more national scale,” McWalter said. “We started with one of Dave’s really good friends, Shirley Bond, and a local entrepreneur Selen Alpay (owner of the Prince George Canadian Tire) and it just grew from there.”

Andrew Johnson of Sonic Interactive Solutions who does web design, photography, marketing and video editing saw how popular podcasts were becoming as a media platform, invested in the technology and he now helps McWalter and Mothus with theirs.

“As soon as we mentioned it to Andrew he was on board and we did a test pilot,” McWalter explained. “It worked out well and then after that we started shooting in various locations utilizing Andrew’s expertise so Dave and I just had to line up the guests who we thought our audience might find inspiring and go from there.”

Mothus said the brunt of the cost of doing the 20 or so podcasts they’ve already done was solely taken on by McWalter.

“No one is paying us to do this, there are no advertising dollars, Scott was just passionate about doing interviews with people and we both found it really fun but that’s probably the one hard part about continuing to do it is that there is an expense to it and if you’re doing it as a hobby and you’re $5,000 in how long do we keep doing this for?” asked Mothus.

The primary reason for doing the podcast, McWalter said, is to do something of value to the listeners who are going to feel inspired.

“We want to continue to do it as long as we feel inspired and we wanted to expand so that we’re featuring people from across the country,” McWalter said. “But one thing Dave and I recognize is that 90 per cent of our audience is from Northern BC and what do we have? Northern BC guests. So organic reach is so much greater with our local community compared to say for someone out east or from another province. So if we do keep moving forward we will continue showcasing people from Northern BC because that’s where most of our listeners are from.”

The episode featuring Cam Thun has been their most popular one so far.

“The great thing about a podcast is they are less interview more of a conversation and the Cam Thun episode is a great example of that,” McWalter said. “It just felt like three friends sitting down and having a fun conversation.”

Podcasts are a huge legacy, as well, McWalter noted.

“Just like for a newspaper where people for years have cut out articles and put them on their fridge or saved a digital version, podcasting is very very similar where it’s a legacy piece where say someone were to pass away people would be looking back at things like those newspaper articles and podcasting fits into that realm,” McWalter said.

The key to success in McWalter’s opinion is longevity. He’s seen studies where people will start a podcast series and after three episodes they let it fade away.

“The number one podcast in the world is Joe Rogan’s and he’s been doing it for 10 years now,” McWalter said. “He always refers back to the rudimentary stages in those first couple of years where he said it felt like nobody was listening. He said he had no audience and the platform was very small and now he averages millions of listeners per episode.”

Crazy Damn Canadians has made the transition to television and can now be viewed on Shaw’s Spotlight channel. Because they always shot video, the added visual aspects fit nicely into Shaw’s community showcase.

“We were hoping that if we got the right people in the interviews that people would start listening to it potentially across Canada and still firmly believe that that’s a possibility if we could find the Cam Thun in every community,” Mothus said. “What that comes down to is because of the way social media now restricts your views and restricts your message it’s easy to do locally but it just comes down to dollars and cents. I think we have the right medium to have those really fun interviews to make it work and I guess it just comes down to us deciding if we’re willing to go to people and say give us money and it would have to be a pretty sizable donation. We’d need between $30,000 and $50,000 if you really want it to go across Canada. Neither of us are really looking to make this our occupation - we’ve both got occupations. So really if it wasn’t fun it’s not worth doing.”

Mothus advises to keep podcasts at an organically local level and before choosing the platform to post a podcast to do research to see how accessible it becomes on that platform before taking the leap. There is a stream to follow and Mothus gave the example of using one stream like YouTube and Google and try not to cross over into other streams that will hinder the process of getting a podcast noticed.

McWalter advises to find your niche.

“There are so many different podcasts coming out on a daily basis and you really need to find the niche you want to concentrate on and stick to it,” McWalter said. “Ours is fairly broad with Crazy Damn Canadians because we have over 38 million people in this country however it does have a theme - inspiring Canadians.”

For more information and to check out the podcasts visit Crazy Damn Canadians.