How They Made It is an interview series that focuses on indie creators, exploring how they got their start and how their shows and practices have evolved since then. We hope you find inspiration in them for your own creative projects.

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Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp first started working together more than 20 years ago, when Jake interned at a Dallas-based AM radio station where Dan was an on-air host. Jake was quickly hired on full-time, but he stayed behind the scenes until 2020, when the pair began hosting a midday show called The Hang Zone. Then in 2023, contract negotiations with the station fell apart, and they decided to strike out on their own with a podcast called The Dumb Zone.

There was a lawsuit over their non-compete clause—more on that here—but it was recently settled, which means Dan and Jake are now free to speak (and podcast) with abandon. We spoke with them via Zoom about the pros and cons of following a strict format, learning how to do some self-promotion, and how to deal with people telling you that you suck at your job.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

What was it about podcasting that made you guys think, okay, this is where we go next? 

Jake: I've always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial bent to me. We were definitely not under some sort of iron thumb, content-wise, at our previous employer, but it is still nice to be able to say, “Today we're going to do what we want to do.”

It comes with a large, heavily onerous amount of responsibility. But if we're going to make this work, we're going to make it work on our own. And if we believe in ourselves, then we can go do this on our own. 

We gave up a ton of money. They were offering us decent contracts. But at some point it just became like—there’s this Anthony Jezelnik quote that’s like, “I got hired for the Kimmel show, and I would write all these jokes, and they would say, ‘That sounds like a great idea for the Anthony Jezelnik show. You should just go do the Anthony Jezelnik show.’” That always stuck in the back of my mind.

What was the technical transition like, going from a radio station to having to provide your own gear?

Dan: We had a little bit of a leg up on that. A guy that we worked with, Blake Jones—during COVID, he set up a lot of cool equipment above my garage, in my house.  That's where I am now, this studio apartment-type thing above a garage. He does high school play-by-play and things, so he owns his own equipment. It was able to be set up through a Comrex, which is something you hook up and it sounds like you're in the studio. I thought, that's great to have at your house, and I invested in it myself. I had to spend $1,000 or $2,000.

So when we left the station, we could say, “Okay, we have great equipment right here.” We can just fire up and record. 

And you also do video stuff?

Jake: I've thought for many years that the radio station where we previously worked should have been doing video every day, for no other reason than it helps promotionally. The cost is pretty low, and you can sell it.

That's coming from someone who is not entirely comfortable on video.  But I feel like if it brings in a profit, you would forget about it pretty quickly. You just get used to it.

There's just something about the brain where video clips hit harder than an audio clip, for promotional purposes, especially.

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How did you start promoting the show? Obviously you had a following from radio, but how did you let them know, hey, we’re over here now?

Dan: I would say it's largely Twitter, if not all Twitter, and then word of mouth. Some of our ardent followers started a Reddit page for us. Those people will also post on the Reddit page from our old station, so the hardcore online people know where we are.  And now we're trying to figure out, how do we grow the audience bigger? How do the older audience members, who maybe don't even listen to podcasts, find us? 

Jake: The radio audience that they care about is 25 to 54 year old males. Now that we're in the podcast game, we can monetize anybody, whereas in the sports radio game, you can really only monetize 25 to 54, male.  

I think our podcast would have done pretty well either way, just because we had a highly rated show on a very good radio station with legacy appeal. But what really helped us was getting sued.  

‎Say more about that.  

Jake: I mean, we were in the headlines every day for two or three weeks. We didn't want to be; we just wanted to do our show together. But I'd be lying if I told you that getting sued did not help.That was like the best free advertising ever. 

Dan: When we got sued and there'd be an article out, you would get 50 new subscribers a day. As headlines are happening it's like, hey, let's go support these guys who are under the oppressive thumb of the man. 

Jake: I said free advertising, but it ain't free. We're still paying that off. We did have some lawyers who were kind enough to work for us for free, but not all of them did. We're hoping that in another four or five months, it will be done. So from the beginning of the lawsuit, that's a year of hefty monthly payments. So did that even out? They probably still came out ahead, or we came out behind, let's say. 

It’s not a strategy we recommend to other podcasters, that’s for sure. So how much time do you guys spend on social media, promoting the podcast?

Jake: We're like, two of the least self-promotional people that worked at our previous radio station. At some point in the last couple years I decided to recede from it a little bit; I just felt like it was better for me not to. Dan has just always been a very centered person; it doesn't seem to deeply affect him one way or the other, which I admire.

But when you get into this game, you have to do it a little bit more. The way that we’ve bridged that gap is from the show account. We have a show account that our producer runs, and then we hype that up.

That’s one thing about when you work at a radio station: you don't really have to do that. The promotional arm is already there for you, so you just do your job, and they turn it into whatever it's going to turn into on social. And then your social can be just you screwing around. 

I don't want to turn anybody off. I'm way more sensitive to that now than I was before.  So the best answer for me to not turn anybody off is to not engage. Because the second I do, I'm probably gonna upset multiple people, including myself.

Yeah, this is a big challenge of going the indie route. Because like you were saying, you have so much more control. All the money comes to you. But also, you have to do everything. And in a very different way, you are the brand. 

Dan: We hope that we can keep the focus on the content. And if we're putting something good out there, then that will find its audience. It might take a little longer because we aren't happy with promoting ourselves that much, but I do think there are some people that lose sight of that with all of the promotion that they're doing. 

Maybe our YouTube page doesn't look that good yet. We're hoping to get that. We do think that stuff could be better. But it would take away from the time we spend trying to put together a show. 

And we're trying to do something that's not as conventional. A lot of podcasts are like,  we put out one show a week, or maybe one a week paywalled, one a week outside of the paywall. We've been trying to churn out four two-hour shows a week.  

The original thought was, that's kind of what our audience is used to. As our audience morphs and changes along with us, who knows what our show will look like in a year.  

Have you made other format changes as you’ve moved from radio to podcasting?  

Jake: We had an interview yesterday that was 70 minutes long. That would have  absolutely never been possible [at the station]. In fact, I tried to book the same guest on our radio show multiple times, and he was like, “I don't want to talk for 15 minutes. That's not something I'm interested in.” And then when I reached back out and told him, we can do whatever you want, he was much more interested in that. 

A radio format is highly time constricted. What we're doing now, I feel the ability to let things breathe, and to pursue different threads in a conversation. It just sounds more like life. 

Dan and I have always shared the idea that the radio show or the podcast should just sound like life. You don't go to the bar and sit down with somebody and say, boom, 12 minutes clock; we gotta find a high, we gotta find a middle, we gotta find a low. I think that's what people like about the audio medium: it sounds like you're with friends.  

What we're doing now definitely is much more fulfilling for me. It works a lot better, I think. The difference is, I don't have insurance. So there's definitely downsides to not doing it the old way. 

You started publishing on Patreon for legal reasons—are you thinking about monetizing it in other ways, now that the lawsuit is settled?

We only became available to do ads like six days ago, so we have not gotten there yet. I think our model is going to be two free, ad-supported episodes a week, and then two Patreon. And then we do stuff like, on Sundays, we do some Cowboys football stream type things that are just on YouTube, which get huge numbers. Up until now we haven’t been allowed to monetize them. So we’ll start doing that. 

Do you guys have any advice for beginning podcasters?

Jake: I actually started doing a podcast with the guy that I worked with at The Ticket in 2010. And we still do it, so we’re over a thousand episodes in.  

The one thing I would say is—and nobody wants to hear this—you should record several episodes that no one ever hears. You just need to develop a flow and a feel and a chemistry and a dynamic. 

I think a big part of the issue that people run into today—we see this at our former radio station. It’s like, all right, I have a big following because I work at this radio station. So should I not just get a podcast right now, and pump it out to as many people as I can?

A lot of times, you're only going to get one chance with the audience. I know everybody wants to have an audience because it feels good, but I think for the most part, people should take their time. 

Dan: I did my own show for, two to three years, outside of the Dallas market, in Dayton and Youngstown, Ohio. And still, most people thought I was terrible for the first four or five years in Dallas.

It was great to have this guest on yesterday. We could go 70 minutes because that felt right. But that open prairie of a format can also be a big detriment. Because we worked in the confines of radio, we still have a feeling of, is what we're talking about interesting to someone else? We really had to focus and make sure: all right, we got 12 minutes. It helps you funnel into the best stuff. 

You said that most people thought you were terrible for years. How did you deal with all of those people telling you that you sucked? 

Dan: Back then, there was no Twitter, so that was a big benefit. I hate you emails are a lot better than 70 tweets a day. While the show is going on, you're staring at them. That can affect people.

It’s also that, well, I have this cool job, and they're just somebody emailing me that hates me. 

Jake: The weird thing for me was, I grew up here; I grew up listening to the radio station. My dad listened. 

And it’s such an incredibly hard place to break into. When I first started being on the air, I was like the young kid; I was in my early twenties and everybody was like, abso-f*cking-lutely not.  

This is going to sound really arrogant, and I promise you, generally, I am a person with very little self confidence. But when I used to do stuff during that time and people would be like, “We hate you…” I would leave feeling like, I think I just did a good job. 

Because you got a reaction? 

Jake: It was just the feeling I had, as a kid who grew up listening to radio of all sorts, whether it was conservative talk radio, sports talk radio. I just felt like, I'm not bad at this.  

For me the biggest thing is, how do you feel about what you did? If you feel pretty good about it, then it was probably pretty good. I think you probably are the best judge of yourself. 

Though sometimes people say, “Oh, I'm my own worst critic.” No. Anyone who says they're their own worst critic, go put out your stuff, and then look at Twitter. You're not.