 |
It's Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over CoffeeHelping business owners explode their business growth Author: The Complete Approach
The mission of It's Not Rocket Science! is to bring a new idea for building business to growth-hungry business leaders and owners who want to do more with less time and so increase their business and influence. We deliver actionable ideas using our five questions over coffee. thecompleteapproach.substack.com Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Five Questions Over Coffee with Royce Blake (ep. 144)
Episode 144
Thursday, 9 April, 2026
Who is Royce?Royce Blake is a seasoned professional in the radio industry, known for his deep expertise in audience engagement. Drawing on years of experience, Royce specializes in helping podcast hosts and guests connect meaningfully with listeners. Through his insights and practical advice, he teaches how to make each guest feel valued and every audience member feel special. On this appearance on “It’s Not Rocket Science: Five Questions Over Coffee,” he shares his proven strategies for keeping listeners captivated, making him a trusted figure for anyone looking to elevate their podcasting game.Key Takeaways* Ever felt awkward hearing your own recorded voice? Royce Blake explains: it’s normal! The key is getting comfortable with your true sound—crucial for building real connection, whether you’re on air or in the boardroom.* Struggling to keep your audience engaged? Royce Blake says: Be natural. Ditch the “radio voice” and just be yourself. Recording and reviewing yourself honestly will transform your confidence and presence.* Silence feels uncomfortable, but pausing can be powerful. Let moments land. Pauses give your audience space to process and make your next words even stronger, says Royce Blake.* Great podcasts start with research. Asking guests questions they’ve never heard lets them shine and keeps things authentic. Dig deep—don’t settle for surface-level!* Facing trolls? Royce Blake shares: No one more successful than you will ever put you down. Focus on being your authentic self and let the hate go. Keep showing up, every day.Don’t forget: If you want to connect, ask questions, or get notified about upcoming guests like Royce, subscribe to the Systemise.Me newsletter here. You only need your first name and email—easy as (coffee) pie!Thanks for sharing a cup with us this week. Here’s to strong coffee, smart hiring, and believing in the dreams you’re just starting to imagine.And don’t forget: keep an eye out for next guest. To submit your own questions, subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation!P.S. Loved this episode? Hit reply and let us know what resonated most_________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at www.systemise.me/subscribeFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Do You Need a P.A.T.H. to Scale?We help established business owners with small but growing teams:go from feeling stuck, sceptical, and tired of wasting time and money on false promises,to running a confident, purpose-driven business where their team delivers results, customers are happy, and they can finally enjoy more time with their family -with a results-based refund guarantee: if you follow the process and it doesn’t work, we refund what you paid.This is THE P.A.T.H. to scale your business.————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast.SUMMARY KEYWORDSpodcasting, podcast hosts, podcast guests, audience engagement, radio industry, public speaking, event hosts, speaker training, business leaders, microphone confidence, voice recording, self-assessment, filler words, affectation, natural speaking, pause technique, research, interview preparation, guest questions, press junket, celebrity interviews, social profiles, hobby discussion, body language, hand gestures, listener retention, overcoming nerves, handling trolls, negative comments, authentic communication, podcast improvementSPEAKERRoyce Blake, Stuart WebbStuart Webb [00:00:00]:Hi, and welcome back to It’s Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. I’m really pleased that I’m here today with Royce Blake. Now, Royce has got a huge amount of experience in the radio industry, and I think he’s going to really help us to understand, as podcast host, potential podcast guests, exactly how you can engage your audience, make sure that you keep hold of them, and do the intelligent thing of making them feel like the special person on your show. So I’m hoping that Royce can do that for me. Royce, welcome to It’s Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. I know we’re gonna have a great time, and I really appreciate you spending a few minutes with us, making time in your busy day.Royce Blake [00:01:13]:It’s my pleasure. Stuart. Got my coffee. I’m ready to go. So let’s do this.Stuart Webb [00:01:19]:Terrific. Okay, let’s start with. I mean, you’ve got an absolutely enormous amount of history. Who is your ideal audience at the moment? Who are you trying to help understand how to better engage their audience and keep them held?Royce Blake [00:01:35]:Right now, it’s mainly podcasters, but I also help event hosts, speakers, even business leaders that do a lot of speaking before even their employees. Anybody that needs to keep an audience, that’s who I help.Stuart Webb [00:01:53]:And tell me, Royce, I mean, you’re obviously doing this from a radio perspective, but it’s not just radio, is it? You. You. You help people who understand how to appear in front of an audience and. And in. And interact in that way.Royce Blake [00:02:04]:I like to call it mike shy to camera confident, because that’s. That’s what it is, really, because we’re all. It’s. It’s normal. Do you remember the first time you heard your. Your voice recorded?Stuart Webb [00:02:22]:Never heard it. Royce, don’t. Never, never, never. It’s never been possible.Royce Blake [00:02:26]:It’s human. We all. We all go through the same thing because we hear our voice through bone, and people and microphones are hearing our voice through air, and that’s the big difference. That’s why it sounds weird.Stuart Webb [00:02:44]:Yes, yes. And unfortunately, that weird makes us all very nervous. Makes us feel somehow as though things are wrong. And that is the. The root of all the problems you get, isn’t it?Royce Blake [00:02:58]:Oh, absolutely. And, you know, even, like when I was first on the air, on the radio, you know, you put headphones on, right? And so you’re hearing your voice as it appears to other people live in your ears. And that usually causes, in radio, what we call affectation, because you put those headphones on and you say, hey, there, and all of A sudden it sounds weird, right? It sounds. And you say, hey there. And wow, that sounds even better, you know, so pretty soon you’re talking like this, and eventually affectation leads to what we call in the radio world, puking. Because you get down to there, how are you? And it sounds like you’re really trying to vomit. So we try to avoid that. And luckily these days, especially in the podcast world, people.Royce Blake [00:03:52]:People are kind of swinging back to real, so they appreciate people that are just real. You don’t have to have a radio voice. It’s be natural. And that’s what I help people do.Stuart Webb [00:04:06]:So tell me, Royce, what people, what have people tried to do before they reach out to an expert such as yourself? You know, we’ve all recorded ourselves. We’ve all tried to avoid listening to it. Again, what are the things they’ve done and how have they made that affectation worse?Royce Blake [00:04:25]:Well, see, this is the biggest challenge for me because asking someone to admit they need help when it comes to talking is a big mountain to climb, ego wise, right? So you’re like, oh, man, I think I talk good. And, you know, you can get so much better. And if you like, I can jump right into one of the techniques that anybody can do at home.Stuart Webb [00:04:50]:Okay, yeah, why don’t we look into that? Because this is. This is the valuable free advice that you are. That you’re going to offer us, isn’t it?Royce Blake [00:04:58]:Absolutely. All you need is one of these. Use your cell phone, right, and record yourself a lot, and it’s going to be very uncomfortable at first. It doesn’t matter what you’re recording, but you need to record for five whole minutes, because we can all start off, you know, reiterating our elevator pitch or your sales presentation or whatever. And that goes great for a couple of minutes, but after that, you’re starting to stress out on what to say, and that’s when the magic happens. The real you starts coming out, and that’s what we’re looking for. So five minutes. It can be about your grocery list.Royce Blake [00:05:45]:One of my favorite topics to help people is talk about a hobby you love and why you got into it and why it’s so awesome, or why someone is your best friend, whatever it is. Talk for five minutes. And remember, you can always delete this stuff, right? You don’t have to keep it. No one else has to see it. But the key is how you watch it when you record yourself. First time you watch it, I want you to do it with the phone facing down. Don’t watch it. Just Listen to it, crank up the volume, and just listen to yourself.Royce Blake [00:06:24]:That’s when you’ll start to discover little things. In radio, we call them crutches. Things you say that you’re not even realizing. Realizing that you’re saying the ums, the likes, you know what I mean? Those are all filler words or phrases, and that’s when they start to stick out. Secondly, watch it back again, but this time with the sound off. So you’re just watching yourself. Do you sway all the time? Are you playing a statue? Do you never move? You know, things like that that you had no idea you were doing? Do you use too many hand gestures? Are you flailing all over the place? That’s going to start submitting in your subconscious mind exactly what you’re doing, and then watch it entirely. Watch it full screen and rinse and repeat.Royce Blake [00:07:22]:You keep doing that, after five times, you’ll be at least 50% better. Maybe. I’ve seen some people go 90% better because they had no idea what they were doing. And once again, it’s a crutch. It’s one of those things that personally we’re not aware of. But that’s what the audience is seeing, and that’s the way you get used to you. That’s the bottom line right there, is getting used to yourself. And nothing helps more than watching.Royce Blake [00:07:56]:And, you know, it can. It can go away. No one else has to see it, but you’re going to start seeing things a lot differently.Stuart Webb [00:08:07]:So, Royce, this is. This is really interesting stuff. Tell me, when you. I mean, you obviously help people a lot with this sort of thing. You help them with those filler words. And I know how embarrassing it was. For the first time, somebody. Somebody did that with me, and I found it intensely embarrassing.Stuart Webb [00:08:26]:How do you get people to understand that? That’s just what natural is?Royce Blake [00:08:31]:Because humans. It’s a great question, Stuart. Humans abhors silence.Stuart Webb [00:08:38]:Yes, we think.Royce Blake [00:08:40]:We think that if there’s silence, oh, man, people are freaking out. Let me tell you something. First of all, an overall view of audiences. People are so afraid of what people are thinking, and that’s the real fear. We’re not really worried about our voice or even what we’re saying. We’re worried about being judged. And that’s part of. That’s part of human nature.Royce Blake [00:09:04]:And so when you abhor a vacuum, right? Silence, you try to fill it with, no matter what. You know what I mean? Do you get that? You guys understand where I’m coming from, Things that mean nothing. One of the Big secrets that most great speakers use is something I did right there, and that is the pause. When you take a pause even for three seconds, it doesn’t even have. You don’t have to count to three seconds, but if you can just pause and say the letters and A, B, C in your head, that’s a perfect pause. And see, I threw in another one right there. Did that feel weird to you?Stuart Webb [00:09:53]:Yeah. The thing is, Royce, it kind of you, you feel, you feel as though you should be saying something, and yet sometimes the audience needs that pause to process what you’ve just said. And you’re being kind to them by actually pausing long enough for them to have that revelation or whatever it is you’re trying to give them.Royce Blake [00:10:12]:Right. It lets them ponder it, especially if it’s an important point. The other awesome thing about pauses is it makes what you say next much more powerful.Stuart Webb [00:10:25]:Love that.Royce Blake [00:10:26]:So once again, the pause, it’s hard to do in your brain. It sounds totally natural to any, any audience, really.Stuart Webb [00:10:38]:Let me just put a link on the bottom because we have got some fabulous stuff that Royce is going to make available to the listeners and to the audience here. If you go to www.systemize.me, free hyphen stuff, Royce, I’ve already got some of this stuff. The five day course, things like that, where you are going to be taking people from a world, from amateur to professional.Royce Blake [00:11:06]:Right, right. And in, in the course brilliance.Stuart Webb [00:11:12]:Just, just, I just. Thank you so much for making some of that stuff available.Royce Blake [00:11:17]:Absolutely. In the course, I go into all these.Stuart Webb [00:11:20]:Hide that again for a second so that people can focus on what you’re saying.Royce Blake [00:11:26]:There you go. Well, in the course, I also go over all this in much more depth. And each, each day it’s just a five day email course. Each email also has a video included. So you can see me explaining this more. Are you still there, Stuart? I’ll just keep talking. I used to get a. I used to get a lot of money on that for that.Royce Blake [00:11:59]:You know, the other awesome thing that I really want to help podcasters with is research. And if anybody asked me what’s the secret to a great podcast or a great radio show? It’s research. Figure out something you want to get to, a question a guest has never been asked. And that’s the secret. And when you get to research, I’m not talking about like on the radio, for instance, especially when we had a celebrities. The reason that celebrities even appear on, on radio stations or TV stations is they usually have a book to promote. Right. Or, you know, a movie, a brand new movie coming out.Royce Blake [00:12:49]:Well, they’re on a press junket. And a press junket is where they sit in one studio and then they do a TV hit in Cincinnati and then a radio show in Cleveland and then off to another radio show in Dallas. And so when you’re doing these things, you have no idea. If you’re a radio host and you’re about to interview a celebrity guest, you don’t have any idea what number you are. You could be station number nine for all. For all. All things considered. So, and odds are, whoever it is, they’ve been asked the same types or sometimes the same exact question nine times in a row.Royce Blake [00:13:33]:And so you don’t want to be that host, whether it’s on a podcast, an event, or, you know, on radio or tv, you want to be someone that asked them a question they’ve never heard before. I. I always recall one with boxer Mike Tyson, who was awesome. Obviously, this was at really the height of his popularity. And for those of you that remember the ear biting incident, well, I’m sure he’d been asked that a thousand times at that point. Instead, I had done deep research, and once again, yes, you can look at their social profiles. You can, you know, check into any, any, anything they posted and see where they’re coming from. Check their hobbies and all that stuff, but go much, much deeper.Royce Blake [00:14:26]:Anything you can find, even if it’s a business owner you’re talking to, go back and look at their ads, See what kind of ads they had running. If they had a weird ad or maybe a weird job. Before they, you know, got into the car business, they used to, you know, build porcelain dolls or something, something weird like that. For me and Mike Tyson, it was pigeon racing. Now, I have no idea how you race pigeons, but I knew that Mike Tyson was into pigeon racing. And so what did I do? While everybody else was asking him about the ear biting incident, I asked him about pigeon racing. Hey, champ, how’s the pigeon racing environment this year? Everything. You got a shot, and he lit up like a Christmas tree.Royce Blake [00:15:20]:It was amazing. So that’s the type of research I’m talking about. Go deep. If I didn’t. If I finished an interview and I didn’t have at least two pages of questions I didn’t get to, then I hadn’t done my job. So once again, it’s all about research.Stuart Webb [00:15:42]:Brilliant, brilliant stuff, Royce. Thank you so much for that. Royce. There must be one question that you’re currently thinking that I haven’t in the process of this interview or discussion, asked you what is the question that you think I should have asked? And obviously now you know what that question is, you need to answer it for us as well.Royce Blake [00:16:07]:Well, you know, once again, I, I think, by the way, just talking about. Here’s. Here’s one for you. We were talking about. I know we’re having tech problems here, Stuart, but, you know, if I had a, you know, a question for you to give you an idea of what kind of research, and it doesn’t take long, this took me probably.Stuart Webb [00:16:27]:Oh, no.Royce Blake [00:16:29]:I would say, hey, Stuart, I know that. Well, how did you go from like, killing viruses to helping businesses scale? You know, you were in the, in the bio.Stuart Webb [00:16:46]:Do you know the reason. The reason that I did that, Royce, Tell me the reason. The reason I did that, Royce, was because I wasn’t very. I. I was. I was actually not a very good practical scientist. I was a very good thinker. A lot of people kept telling me I had brilliant thoughts, but I was very poor at putting them down into an experiment.Stuart Webb [00:17:12]:And so I had to find something where I was able to use my brain to solve big problems, but not necessarily always. Always sort of make those experiments very successful. So it’s about finding that thing which you are passionate about, but at the same time, you can actually turn into something people will pay you to do.Royce Blake [00:17:35]:Absolutely. Have you been asked that before?Stuart Webb [00:17:42]:That is not what I have been asked. And I’m going to remember how good you are at turning the. The. The question and answer into a discussion, because you find that way. And that’s how you make an engaging podcast guest or host out of people, isn’t it? By getting to open up and explore things with an intelligent research question.Royce Blake [00:18:08]:And listen and listen intently. Don’t worry about getting to question seven when your guest has just spun gold on your podcast. You know, let them expand, let them go with the flow there. You know, as. As far as questions that, that you didn’t ask me, I get this from a lot of podcasters. Well, a lot of people in general is. How do you handle trolls? How do you handle negative comments? Right. People, you know, all this.Royce Blake [00:18:38]:I was lucky, I guess, because I was trained. I. You’re. You’re old enough to remember. I’m not sure if they have this on the BBC or any of the, you know, any other. But the request line, this radio station request line where you can call in and request a song, right?Stuart Webb [00:18:57]:Yes.Royce Blake [00:18:58]:Well, this is. You got to think about it. This is the only time for free you can reach another human being and say anything you want, because 95 weren’t there to request a song. A lot were there to give their opinion. And. And, you know, a lot of times it always amazed me, someone would sit on the request line on hold for a half an hour just to tell me, hey, you suck. So, you know, after you get that a few thousand times, you start. You start losing the nerve that, you know, so.Royce Blake [00:19:34]:But I want people to remember, no one more successful than you will ever put you down. They don’t have the time. They don’t have the inclination.Stuart Webb [00:19:45]:Brilliant.Royce Blake [00:19:45]:So ignore them. I know it’s easy to say and hard to do, but trust me, something’s wrong with them, not you, so just let it go.Stuart Webb [00:19:56]:Brilliant, Royce. I love that. And I want to end it there, because I think that is the best advice that you can give anybody. I mean, if I want to take away two things, and I know there have been a couple of technical difficulties, but there are two things I want to take away, one. One of which is, you know, you have just got to get used to the fact that you need to sound natural and need to get over yourself and start behaving like you are just a normal human being. And we all have that problem. And. And the haters.Stuart Webb [00:20:26]:Well, the haters are going to hate, and you just got to let them do it and get away from them and move forward being your positive self.Royce Blake [00:20:33]:I’ve got a great phrase. You can. You can write down everybody. And it’s something I learned from an old radio pro. He said, royce, I don’t care if they hate me as long as they hate me every day.Stuart Webb [00:20:49]:I love that one. I love it. Listen, people, I’m gonna. I’m just gonna thank Royce for spending a few minutes with us. If you would like to get an email from me where you can actually just find out who is going to be on the show and listen to the brilliant advice like people like Royce Lake bring to us. Go to Systemize Me, subscribe. That’s systemized me. Forward slash, subscribe.Stuart Webb [00:21:20]:Just go there. Simple form, name, email address. We don’t ask you for any more than that. Once a week, you get an email from me saying who’s coming up? And you really should listen to some of the people that are coming up on this show. Royce, I want to thank you so much for being here and telling us a little bit about this, and I appreciate you keeping going when I know there have been a one or two technical difficulties, but I just think what you’ve told us is absolute gold about how to engage people and keep them engaged, and I just love it. And thank you so much for spending a few minutes.Royce Blake [00:21:47]:It’s been a pleasure, Stuart. Thank you so much. And, you know, once again, this has been awesome. Get full access to It's Not Rocket Science! at thecompleteapproach.substack.com/subscribe
