We recently connected with Tompott From PopCultPod and have shared our conversation below.

Tompott, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

For me the idea of doing a podcast was where it all started. It had been in my head for the longest time that I wanted to do something along those lines. I had the name in mind for years. However I was really crippled with anxiety and depression, I feared putting myself out there or people thinking what I was doing was cringe or what they would think if I failed.

Eventually I became a bit more confident in myself, less concerned about what people thought and went for it. However, I wasn’t fully over my fear of what people might think. I told nobody, I recorded in secret, launched in silence and it was only after a post I made on Reddit grew and caught the eyes of my friends that I realised the jig was up and I came clean and told people, which I’m very grateful for in retrospect.

Actually making it happen though was hard, at least for me it was. I had no real experience when it came to anything except writing, which was a tiny part of doing this. I had never really designed anything and I now needed logos, graphics and whatever else. I wasn’t really comfortable with speaking to a prospective audience and now I was looking at speaking for hours by myself. I had no experience in podcasting with regards to equipment, recording, editing or even the technical side of getting it listed on sites. Before I even got my bearings with that, I wanted to host the podcast (audio only) on Youtube which required a totally separate set of skills, in video editing and much more besides.

I was totally out of my depth and honestly I was trying to run before I could walk. I think we all start a new year with the idea of improving ourselves or pushing ourselves and that was why I jumped into it headfirst, rather foolishly. It was a stressful few months but an exciting one too, everything I did was a new experience and required learning a new skill. Those early days though were a baptism by fire and I think it made me the better for it but it’s funny looking back now at the things I made which took so much time and effort, that I think look amateurish and simple compared to what I do now. It’s endearing to see how far I’ve come, as mortifying as it can be to look back at some of the early stuff haha.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

PopCultPod is my channel name.

It’s pop culture centric content, mainly film but at times tv and video games as well. We’ve got a range of content from Top 10 lists, to short form and long form reviews. Video essays, retrospective reviews of older films along with plenty of other random nonsense. My goal has always been to keep it entertaining and informative but to let the channel have it’s own personality which is a sort of chaotic, weird and comedic.

Some examples of our content include;

A Series Look: Where we review a film series, entry by entry with a short comedic focus, these are aimed at being less insightful and more entertaining and have been a big success for the channel. We’ve covered the Chucky film and tv series, The Home Alone films and we’re currently working through the James Bond films.

Any Good: These are our more long-form reviews of current films, we can spend ten minutes discussing the latest releases, these often can have elaborate intros or skits to start and jokes throughout but they are more focused and critical than A Series Look.

Movies + Milk: This is one of our new additions, I see so many films and not all are suited to the Any Good videos so I’ve been doing these shorter light reviews, they’ve been fun so far and it means I get a more consistent flow of content to the channel. While also being suitable for upload on our social media platforms with the hope we can drive traffic to our social platforms and grow there to promote future long-form content on Youtube.

Watcher/ReWatcher – Originally this was started as a way of doing weekly recaps of TV series but my interest in that has waned for now, ReWatcher became a sort of spin-off that allowed for nostalgic rewatches of movie series in a more in-depth podcast style format. Some of these have done very well and I’m hoping to bring it back this Summer. I also have another series in a similiar vein that I’d like to launch this year.

There’s lots more that doesn’t fit as neatly into these headings but these are some I’m quite happy with. I think the challenge has always been trying to make these feel distinct and one of the things I’m proud of is that I think I’ve largely accomplished that.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I’m not sure I consider myself an artist, even though I guess I qualify.

The most rewarding aspect for me is putting together all the different skills I’ve built up and when it all works right, having a final product I can be proud of, although I don’t always appreciate it until long after.

For a fully formed video for me that involves getting the idea and writing. Writing can be the trickiest part. It’s rare these days that I’m watching something and I don’t have a laptop open for me taking notes. The notes become the backbone but then it’s how to slot them in and seem natural. After that it’s often adding to my notes and format with research and jokes. Sometimes it takes a lot of research. Watching interviews, reading books and articles or watching films, tv or other documentaries. There are times I watch the same film so many times, it feels forever ruined. Once that’s done, it’s filming.

Filming is normally the easiest and funnest part. If the writing is strong, it comes together quick. Often times I’ll do alternate takes with jokes I thought of in the moment or try and do different movements to accomodate what mgt or might not work on green screen. A lot of my stuff is filmed against green screen which is handy when editing cause I can put whatever behind me. The trick though with this is trying to make it not constantly feel like everything you do is green screen, so I often try to break videos up with non-green screen segments or having a few that don’t use it at all.

Then we get the edit. Editing can be a chore but also be fulfilling. If I have everything I need then editing while I have some rubbish on telly to watch is bliss. Often times you find new ways of conveying what you’re talking about, new jokes to add and ways to enhance what was already good. The battle for me is often that my content can be time sensitive. If I have a video on a movie that comes out that weekend getting the video out a week later for a modest channel like mine, is pointless. I’m often against a ticking clock, that’s where the stress kicks in.

Publishing and promoting is the hard part for me, I still need improvement on that front. Trying to get eyes on your content isn’t something I’ve always managed to do, it makes the ones that do connect and find the audience even more satisfying.

This might be long roundabout answer, but the amount of work it takes and things than can go wrong (or have gone wrong), getting a video released when it feels like every box is ticked and people check it out and see it is the most reward aspect for me. There’s so many times where I feel like we had something good but people didn’t watch it and even the inverse when something I’m less enthused by has done well. When everything hits just right though, that’s why you do this and why you keep chasing so it happens everytime.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Would it shock you if I said that the pandemic was hard haha.

I started all this in 2019. The first year was awesome, even when it was tough, there was a lot to be happy about and proud of. It felt like I’d lived up to the lofty ambitions I’d set myself, there was a near constant stream of content to the channel and podcast stream. I’d even joined a podcasting network (the short-live Phoenix Wrestling network) which also got me back involved in wrestling which I was grateful for. A part of that being possible was having a more flexible work schedule at the time.

At the start of 2020, I had a full-time job and it was tough. I was miserable and already unhappy with the amount of content I was putting out. The podcast network I was on folded and suddenly I risked losing a bigger platform than what I would have on my own and maybe losing opportunities and listeners. Then the pandemic hit. At first it meant a more relaxed schedule from work and chance to refocus. Of course, like everyone else though the strain of isolation and the uncertainty and unhappiness of what the future held was taxing. A part of me wondered what to do with the channel, it seemed a little cavalier to be putting out frothy content while the world went down the toilet, especially considering cinema looked like it could be irrevocably change and there was little films or anything going initially, so the channel just seemed like it was in limbo. Then my uncle died.

It wasn’t COVID. It was a freak accident. He went for surgery and we all expected things would be fine. They weren’t. At that point I just crumbled. All of a sudden nothing seemed very important. It wasn’t even just the fact that Iost my uncle. Just the idea that there was people that I couldn’t see because of lockdowns that might just die and I’ll never see again. That I might not be able to tell them how I feel or let them know how much they mean to me. Suddenly, wasting time on a channel seemed dumb. Why was I doing this again? Nothing mattered anymore. I quickly put together a video announcing that the “Pop Cult Pod was Dead”.

Even when I did that it felt weird. Was I being dramatic? Was I just taking a personal private meltdown and making it public. I gave myself some outs when I made that video. I put in the sound of scratching on wood. The sound of someone buried alive, someday, maybe they’ll get out and live again. Dramatic, much?

It didn’t take long for me to have second thoughts. I was still in a funk, still devastated. I realised that I’d used the podcast/channel to fight off depression before but this was just the worst I’d faced while making content. I reminded myself that nobody was doing okay right now and that was without having a bereavement.

Stopping though was a rare rest for me, I took some time to regroup. I had series I wanted to finish. Things I could leave in the past that I felt didn’t work. Fix the things I thought needed fixing. So I ‘rebooted’. Pop Cult Pod: Phase Two. New content, bigger ambitions and now a live video podcast. A lot of stuff didn’t pan out, for one it stopped being a live podcast and just became a video one (one step at a time Tom). It reignited the fire in me though, that’s still let to this day and reminded me that it was alright to slow down and compose myself. Frankly, even without a pandemic and a personal loss. I was careening towards burn out, the fact I came back at all though for me was a reminder of how much stronger I felt thanks to this journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: youtube.com/c/popcultpod
• Instagram: instagram.com/popcultpod
• Facebook: facebook.com/popcultpod
• Twitter: twitter.com/popcultpod
• Youtube: youtube.com/c/popcultpod
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@popcultpod