Todd Hancock is like the Swiss Army knife of media—radio personality, interviewer, producer, editor, promoter, and podcaster. We explore his journey from traditional radio to podcasting, and let me tell you, it’s not just a switch of platforms; it’s a full-on metamorphosis. Todd emphasizes that while technology has evolved, the foundational element of storytelling—genuine human connection—remains unchanged. He shares his philosophy that every conversation should feel like a cozy chat over coffee, with the aim to drop the guard and truly see the person behind the mic. He’s all about that one-on-one communication, bringing forth stories from musicians, athletes, and everyday heroes in a way that feels intimate and authentic.

Takeaways:

• Real connection is the heartbeat of storytelling, and engaging one-on-one is key.
• Success often hides behind years of hard work and persistence, not just luck.
• Navigating the shift from traditional media to digital requires adaptability and a deep understanding of human connection.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Ignite Voice Inc.
• BCIT
• Cfox
• System of a Down
• Weezer
• High Times
• Blue Light Studio
• Leader Regulation Lab

Your voice is your superpower. Use it. Welcome to Ignite My Voice Becoming unstoppable. Powered by Ignite Voice Inc. The podcast where voice meets purpose and stories ignite change.

Deep conversations with amazing guests, storytellers, speakers and change makers.

Oh, you got so lucky.

Yeah.

It only took me 17 years of like refining and grinding away to finally get lucky. Right? That's what you know. When you find success, people often don't think about what was the mountain before that.

Our guest has spent decades learning how to connect with people one conversation at a time. Todd Hancock is a longtime media personality,.

Podcaster, self proclaimed music spaz, educator and interviewer who successfully evolved from traditional radio into the world of podcasting and digital media.

And while the platforms may have changed, the core idea hasn't.

Real connection still cuts through.

Tod believes one to one communication is the nucleus of great storytelling. Speaking to one real person in the audience.

From musicians to athletes to everyday people. He's done hundreds of interviews by getting.

Past the surface and helping people drop their guard long enough to actually be seen.

This is a conversation about reinvention, resilience, creativity, and why finding your voice matters now more than ever.

Here's Todd Hancock.

I think they're in a particular way of seeing the world that they say the world through this lens. And they can't jump to the podcast world to see the structure through that lens.

Which is why you fascinate me, because you have managed to move between the two. But if I talk to old school radio programmers, they just don't see the world that way. They can't get out of their model of the way it functions.

Much like the music industry.

Right.

The music industry just flew into the side of a cliff because it could not see outside of the way things always worked. And it never changed. That industry died because it could not shift. And you can look at it and go, it's so stupid.

You know, it's so obvious that the world shifted and you got to move. I think people in a particular culture can't see outside of it.

Yeah, yeah.

We have so many young people who represent a new way of thinking and they're not being held as wisdom or new ideas.

And so we've got a top down that are squishing people with new ideas and are not allowing any new energy to come into the room to change where they're going. How do you help young people come in and give new ideas to the old relics who are driving this?

I think you got a clash of cultures. They're not going to communicate Right. They're not going to understand each other. And I don't think they have any against each other.

It's just, it's a different language.

It was a very different language.

Can't shift. But you did, you did make the shift. Huge pivot.

Do you see yourself in that pivot, seeing your audience differently, seeing the business structure differently? Like you did manage to move from one culture to another. How did you do it?

Just a ton of work. That's how I did it.

Yeah, we had a vision.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I had the vision for sure. Well, quite honestly, it starts at BCIT.

It starts with the skills that I learned at BCIT, applied them to radio, did the 15 or 16 years of radio or maybe more than that. Took those skills after refining over the years. Of course, it takes time to, to get to where I felt like I felt unstoppable on Seafox.

I didn't give a shit who was going against me. I was so prepared for my show every single day that.

So once I was at that point of refinement for radio and just personality driven communication, it was fairly easy to make the jump over to podcasting because I just took those skills and I literally transferred them to. If you listen to my podcast, it's very radio. There's music, there's features.

What are the skills, what are the skills that you took from radio to podcasting?

Oh, well, I mean, yeah, that's just, I mean, all the skills of, you know, engaging conversation and interactive imagery. Things that most people like.

You say, Kev, I don't think most people think of these things, but when you start to pick apart the way that you form ideas and thoughts and if you can be specific to one person, it cuts through.

We call that one to one communication.

One on one communication. Sure. You know, and that's this. That's truly like the, at the, at the nucleus of what I do, it is one person. I'm talking to one person.

It's never changed. It's always been the same guy. Even at bcit, it was my buddy Kyle. Still, today, I know Kyle. You do know Kyle. Yeah.

And when I voice my podcast, even today, he is who I picture when I do my podcast. So it, it honestly, I mean, it. I don't know if it sounds brash, but it wasn't a big jump for me because I already knew what I was doing.

I, I knew how, I knew how to formulate thoughts and engaging conversation. I was course a good interviewer from I don't know how many interviews Hundreds, probably close to thousands of interviews at Seafox over that time.

But you researched and prepared for research.

Prepare. You know, every band that came through, 90 of them would come through my show in the afternoons or the Rock Report where it was all music news and.

And any performances were through that show. So it was just a natural transition. In fact, I think it was almost. Not that radio ever held me back.

They always gave me enough rope to hang myself kind of thing. But now I didn't have to talk to anybody about what I was doing. Can I talk to this person? Can I have them on? That just went out the window.

And it went from like, talk about the album and they're playing at the Commodore Ballroom tonight. And how's the rest of the tour? Anything weird on the tour? Went from that to like, what are you binge watching?

You know, how do you feel your time when you're not on the road? Like you have a near death story where you should have. Could have died.

More connection.

It went to that to like. Yeah, went from 15 minutes max. And of course you can't run all 15 minutes on a radio station. It needs to be specific.

Maybe a minute or two here and there. And it went from that to like, I'll talk to you for as long as you want to talk to me. Which is completely foreign to a radio personality.

Yeah. So what I'm hearing is you have taken the skill set and moved it to a new medium without caring about the medium.

Like you didn't care about the old medium. You weren't in radio because you necessarily adored the medium.

You like connecting with people and you understood the skills it took to do that so you could move that skill set to a new medium.

Oh, it's different, right.

As opposed to taking the rules of the medium and trying to move it to a new medium, it's not going to work, right. Like you said, it's totally different structure, but you naturally got that. You naturally understood the skills needed.

You didn't have this religious view of the medium, knowing everything. No, see, that is the critical.

It's the communication. Like how, how am I reaching these people? What am I saying? Do they care about the people I talk to? Do they like the music that I'm playing?

It all seemed pretty easy and straightforward. You know, I was the indie music director at seafox for like nine or 10 years. So it made sense to only play indie music on the podcast.

You know, I had features throughout my time at fox. It made fe. It made sense for me to have features so there's more revenue streams. So it really, truly is.

You know, it's a 60, 65 minute radio show that's called a podcast. The cool thing. And I think this still, it almost is like. It's the. The parallels between radio and.

And what I do with the podcast with the Todd cast, they're. They're just so similar. You know, the stuff that I liked in radio were the things that.

Where we would have the whole air staff, the promo team, the marketing, the production team. Everybody's at an event, but there's like 300 people. Everyone's just so engaged and loving what they're doing.

I think that the correlation between those two are the same. Like for me now it's when I meet people at. I do a show monthly at the Blue Light Studio where I interview the band.

Actually.

Yes, you got to come. They're so. They're so much fun. So I interview the band. Bands. There's two bands. It's 45 minutes long. The audience can ask questions as well.

But I think that that's for me, like when I meet these people that are like, oh, I've never met you. I was listening at Seafox and like, so cool to finally get to meet you. Those are the things that keep me motivated to keep going.

You know, it's meeting people and, and seeing that, that I'm. Whether it's negative or positive, of course I'd rather positive. But I'm affecting their life. You can see that.

I'm affecting their day to day life and they feel.

Which is cool, you know?

You know, and just chirps on social media posts and that sort of thing. That's what keeps me driven to keep doing it.

And you've done hundreds and hundreds of interviews, so.

Hundreds.

Tell us a story. I want to know. I want to know out of all those hundreds or thousands of years, which one blew out the mo?

What one fell apart in a way you'll never forget?

Thankfully none. Yeah, thankfully none.

Anything come to mind? That nothing really crashed on you unexpectedly or.

No, I mean, nothing on the podcast side because, you know, here I'm interviewing people that I. That I either really like their stuff or I'm really engaged with their content or I'm a massive fan of their team or UFC or whatever.

But in radio, yeah, there was some interesting ones.

Serj Tankian from System of a Down was just a complete dickhead to me, to the point where I was like, dude, you know, like, we don't have to do this interview, you know, like, I Am just as not into it as you are.

Right?

Because he was like, give me one word answers and he was really short with me. I'd ask him open ended questions and it would just be like, it's just a disaster.

So what did he say when you, when you said, I don't have to do this?

Well, I'm, I'm only kidding, right? I am joking around with you and I'm like, well, but you know, I have 10 minutes with you, so you want to around for the first four minutes.

Like, you know, dude, I'm so done with this interview. Oh, let's start fresh. And of course I did because I needed, you know, I wanted to get something.

Otherwise I'm sure C Fox management would have been like, didn't you just talk to one of the biggest metal bands of the last five years? So I quickly, you know, I kept going with him another time.

There's a good lesson in that. You called him out, you were honest, you were true, and you got him converted rather than just sort of hiding it under the carpet. Right.

It would have been a different situation for the podcast. I would have told him to fuck off and hung up on him.

Yeah.

So like, for me it's like, I don't need that shit, right? But radio is a bit of a different story. Weezer singer Rivers Cuomo was crazy in studio with me one time. He just.

It's him and this guy named Brian Bell who's the bass player of Weezer. And they're thankfully both sitting, you know, having, doing the interview. And this is not on the air, thankfully.

So I'm just pre recording it, getting it ready for the rock report that night. And then suddenly Rivers just gets up and starts wandering around the room, looking at stuff, poking pictures and just kind of like just being Weir.

I kind of look at Brian and he's like, you know, guys gives me like the. I don't know what's going on. So I just, you know, answered Brian to answer questions.

And then finally Rivers comes back maybe a couple of minutes later, you know, he like dinged on my drum set in the corner. Like he was just being weird, right? Laid down on the couch. But he came back and.

And he starts answering a question that I'd asked Brian and I turned his mic off.

Oh.

And I was like, I was like, no, I think we're done. And he goes, what? And I was like, what was that, bro? Oh, I was just curious about. You're in your studio or whatever, blah, blah.

And like those are the only two that are truly come to mind, like right away.

But no, thankfully over the years, like, I find that people that, you know, when you're being like me, when you're being interviewed, you want to give good answers, good responses and, you know, be engaged in the conversation. So thankfully, I haven't had too many that go off the rails. Certainly nothing. Like search is probably the worst.

And even then, like you say cat, it's like call them out and move on.

Right?

Yeah.

But yeah, it'd be different on the podcast. I would tell them to take a hike.

And you're used to being interviewed and you're used to interviewing. How do you set people up for success? Because there are some people who are not used to being interviewed.

And so the moment you turn on a microphone, they get all stiff and, and formal. How do you get underneath that?

Good question for me. Like, you know, I have been interviewed over the years and I am thankfully just a good talker. I don't know if you can tell that or not.

Oh, we remember from your time in class, Todd.

Shout out.

Todd, you ever do radio? You should probably do. But for people that I talk to, I think that the one thing that I try to do regardless of the person.

So if they're a hockey player or they're a musician or they work for High Times magazine, I try to get them to talk about their childhood. That's the first thing that I try to do. So tell me about the music that was in your house as a kid growing up to a musician.

They're gonna go off, talk about, you know, oh yeah, James Taylor and my dad and, you know, went in the Mustang and blah, blah. Suddenly you're getting these stories, right?

And as soon as you can get people to open up about their childhood, it's very easy to get them to open up about present day. So that's what I do. Same thing for if it's a hockey player.

Tell me about, you know, as a four or five year old kid, you're playing on the, you know, on the street car. Tell me about a memory back then. Right? And as soon as they do that guard comes down and, and then you're good to go.

So tell us about a memory when you were like 5 years old.

I know I've been so guarded up until this point.

It is, it is connecting though, and getting the guard down. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely getting them involved.

A super effective way to get people to want to talk, you know, get them to talk about their childhood in any regard and then suddenly ask Them.

Anything formal, you know, pre structured questions. Because then it becomes that formal interview.

Yeah.

And that's not what you want.

No, I mean, ultimately you want, or at least I want, train of thought, conversation. Do I have questions? Sure. I have, like, you know, probably a handful, five to 10 questions, usually per guest.

But, you know, if I don't get to them, I don't get to them. You're listening more than. Yes, more than anything. I asked the first question, and it's usually, you know, childhood based, driven for the most part.

And at that point, put your game, your listening game on. Because now it's about where are they taking it to? And hopefully they take it to somewhere that you hadn't even thought of.

And I think that that's probably the.

Best interview style a lot of people get stuck on. You know, I got to have so many questions and I got to ask them and listen.

Question three.

Question. Question three.

And then I killed someone. No way. That's crazy. Question four. You're like, dude, you just. They open up a door, they kill someone. You're like, question four.

Maybe not quite that bad, but you know what I'm saying?

Well, we're all people, and you're just trying to get a story out of the person. You're just trying to connect with a real person. But it's more challenging than it sounds because people have fronts up, they're defensive.

There's so many things going on.

Yeah.

And I think maybe in Serge's case, maybe I was the fourth or fifth person on this press junket, and I asked the same question that everybody else did.

Yeah.

And he was like, done. Back to finding your voice. For me, I had found my Voice probably at 18 years old.

And I haven't changed much in terms of, you know, my person and who I am since a trip to Tofino with a good, close friend, Kyle, again, it was just life changing. You know, it was one of those trips that made it so that, you know, my core and my foundation has been the same for decades.

Was it anything in particular about that trip?

Yeah, I think it was. It was just kind of. It was meeting people, not showering for six days straight. They didn't care that I stunk.

Neither did you.

I didn't care that I stunk. And just, you know, Kyle didn't care. That revelation of like, yeah, Kyle didn't care. And he was in the same tent, obviously.

But it was that noticing that, you know, it's not necessarily the clothes that you wear or, you know, that you have nice Hair. It's who you are as a person and you know, what are you contributing to Better not only your life, but people around you.

And from that trip it, you know, prior of course, I've always been fairly open, certainly open minded, but certainly. Well, I'm sure of myself. I've always been very sure of myself. But from that one trip it's literally made it so that I took the path that I'm on.

Wow.

Yeah. And interesting to think back on that.

Yeah. Around this table we all teach 18, 19, 20 year olds. I don't think we run into that many that are as clear as you were at 18. Right.

Look at the 18 year olds you teach now.

I mean I think that we teach some students or maybe even in their early 20s and mid-20s that still aren't really sure of where they want to go or what their ambitions are or you know, don't have goals. And it's really like for somebody that has had goals, still has goals, very driven. I am self motivated, a perfectionist.

Do you think it's changed in the last few decades? Do you see the world shifting? Do you see the youth being different?

I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I think that.

Are you surprised working with younger people, the amount that don't think that way?

Yeah, I'm definitely surprised. I'm surprised that you would take something in a post secondary environment and not know where you want to go. That surprises me.

Yeah, everyone grows in a different way though. You know, everyone's had a past experience so that, yeah, they may not necessarily come to it today but they may come at it a couple years from now.

So you never know where your, your influence is going to.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I always try to be as positive as I can and I mean I certainly don't try to guide people in, in any way at all.

Like, you know, that I think is very personal. You could be like, well you know, you are really good at on air, you should go on air.

It's like two, three years later they're in like, you know, trail and like Todd. So I, I try not to influence in that regard. I'm more just like nice work on this or I liked what you did there or something.

But you know, I guess what it is, is for me when I took this course I was so I knew what the, the reason why I was getting into BCIT in the mid-90s. I knew that I wanted to be a on air personality so it wasn't foreign to me and Same for, I think for Dan, your producer.

Like, you know, eventually he wanted to get an on air but eventually got into production.

And, you know, Dan and I have remained friends over the years and of course we went to school together and all that, but I don't know that even back then, I don't know that it was much different than what it is today. I don't know that there was a ton of my classmates that were super sure of what they wanted to do.

They knew that they wanted to get into something that was, yeah, that was fairly outgoing and they're, you know, they're. They're an extrovert and they want to people, please, maybe communication. But other than that, I don't know that they were specific to.

I'm going to be on air, I'm going to be a radio producer, I'm going to make, you know, creative docs. I just don't know that it was much different. So.

So all those people you guys went to school with at that time, what do you think was the main indicator or driver for all the ones that succeeded?

Well, I mean, I think that regardless of the program or not, it's how driven are you? Do you know what you're trying to get at and how. What's your motivation level? What's your skill level? Can you make them work together?

You know, because you'd asked off the top, like, what was it about this podcast that made it work? And it's like, yeah, I was like, just hard work. And that's all it is. You know, do I have the skills? Sure, I have the skills to make stuff work.

But if I didn't have hard work in my body, if I didn't have initiative and drive, determination and all those fun words, then this podcast, I wouldn't be doing this interview with you guys because you'd be like, I probably wouldn't even be working at bcit.

Did your parents instill hard work ethic?

I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think so. My, you know, I live with my mom until I was 17. I moved out literally the day one of graduating high school.

But it was a, you know, single mom from grade 8 to 17. So what are you, grade 8, like 13, 12, 13 14? Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

So.

But she had multiple jobs. She worked at the hospital in the sterilization department for when they do, like, surgeries and stuff.

But then she would also work at like the Max convenience store at Summerland because she needed to make enough money to make ends meet eat and so we could, you know, have good shoes and, you know, all that stuff that kids think are important. So, yeah, probably. I think that it, you know, to see your parents working that hard, it probably rubbed off in some way, I would think.

Like, I, I can't imagine my kids going like, oh, yeah, like, like I, I, I'm just gonna take things for granted. They see how hard I work.

They see how often I can't make their hockey practice or, you know, I can't, sorry, guys, I can't make this North Vancouver, you know, walk today because I've got to do a couple interviews and edit them and all that. Right. So I would think that my hard work is probably going to rub off on my kids, if that's a good thing or not.

I'm not super sure because sometimes I feel obsessive. Like, honestly, I do, you know, like, it's at that. I do have a pretty good workload and a workflow, but there's so much work.

The sheer volume of work for this podcast, it follows me like a giant.

When you fail at something, some people stop and then they don't build the confidence.

Yeah, well, I think, yeah, it is repetition and I think it is a matter of just being fearless and, and being okay with wiping out and picking yourself up and that didn't work and dust off and try, try again.

Maybe it's a different angle you need to take or whatever, but I think that it's just a matter of, you know, what do they say, 10,000 hours and you're a pro at something.

Yeah.

You can't get to 10,000 hours without some repetition. So I think that that's what it is. I mean, it's just a matter of, like, first off, believing in yourself. That's how I end every podcast.

I've ended up the same way. For the 391 podcast is, you know, most of all, believe, believe in yourself. Like, it's so important.

Well, a lot of successful business people will tell you that they've failed over and over and over again. They've had 99 failures.

One time I finally. And then, oh, you got so lucky.

Yeah.

It only took me 17 years of like, refining and grinding away to finally get lucky. Right. That's what, you know, when you find success, people often don't think about, like, what was the mountain before that? What, why is there.

Because I, I get that. I get this quite a bit. Like, oh, you're so lucky to have one of like, what a, what a great podcast and what a cool social media presence.

And like, but they don't realize like, how hard it took me. The. The work and the effort. It's still today to keep things rolling is. Most people would be driven to their knees with the work that I do.

Or doubt, too. Or doubt, you know, because when you're. When you're banging against that wall, it's not working perfectly.

It's fairly easy at night to ruminate on how I just can't do it. I'm just not good enough. I'm just. I'll never get the skill.

You know, the majority of people just give up. You know, they're like, well, man, this is way harder than I thought.

All right, I'll never get the skill. Somehow I'm not good enough or I'm not good, right? Or something. Right?

That doubt.

Yeah. And that's, you know, that's. They say, you know, you have writer's block.

Well, you better sit down and write, you know, and if you have any other sort of block, you know, the only way around it is to repetition. Just keep doing it. Eventually you'll just. It'll come.

So you have to be resilient. You have to be okay with failure.

You have to be like, yes, I think that you need to, regardless of the job, podcast or not, you need to be okay with falling and failing.

Well, and it sounded like you never went, I'm not good enough. I haven't got the skill.

Well, I never thought that ever, though. I never thought that even in radio, even my first job, I was like, bring it, let's go. Because I was ready.

I was ready for, you know, like, well, your first job needs to be in small market. Small market.

My God, I'm like, I've just been two years at Seafox, opping shows for Bill Courage and Jeff o' Neill and like, all these huge broadcasters, you did the work. So, yeah, I put the time in and, you know, so by the time I got to my first job, I was so. I felt that I was so above that job that I was like this.

Like, I got to get out of here. I got to go to. I need to get to Prince George or Edmund, Edmonton or Calgary, you know, because I started in Smithers, right? So I. Yeah, great town.

I mean, I do love Smithers. I love the one bar that they have there. But, yeah, I just would. I've always believed in myself because I.

And still today, present day, I believe in myself because I know that I'm a good host. I know that I'm a good performer. So I mean that if that's Egotistical or whatever.

I mean, I believe in what, I believe in what I do because I'm a pro at what I do. So when I release things to the public, I'm never like, geez, I hope that. Fingers crossed they like this. I'm like, fucking, they're gonna dig this.

This is such a great feature. Love the clip that I used. I love the production values that I incorporated here. Like I know self, I know that stuff.

And I think a lot of people don't have that great self talk. They have negative self talk.

Oh, I have tons of negative self talk too. But I just, I have more positive. Yeah, more positive than negative.

I'm not here to say I don't self doubt myself, because I do, but I believe in myself more than I don't believe in myself.

Yeah, you managed to override the self doubt.

Yeah.

And some people really struggle with that.

Yeah, yeah. Three day, three decades in, I mean, if, if, if I can't believe in myself now, who, who's going to believe in me otherwise?

Todd's perspective is that the future of media still comes back to human connection.

Technology changes, platforms change, but people still want honesty, story and real conversation.

Todd reminds us that confidence doesn't magically appear. It's built through repetition, failure, and continuing.

Anyway, through showing up over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and until eventually the work catches up to the vision.

Todd asks us what you've contributed to your own life and the lives around you too.

Because your voice isn't just what you say.

It's the energy, honesty and humanity behind it.

Let us help your business with our leader regulation lab. Book a consultation today.

Leaderregulationlab.com.

Ignite my voice. Becoming unstoppable. Your voice is your superpower. Use it.