Stop Calling It Talent When It’s Really Practice You’re Avoiding | S4 EP113

Forget the superhero origin story. We’re getting real about talent versus skill—why one feels magical and the other does the heavy lifting—and how to stop using “natural ability” as a reason to avoid doing the work. Julius shares hard-earned lessons from podcasting without a mentor, stumbling through mic placement and camera setups, bombing on stage, and still showing up with a routine that compounds. It’s messy, honest, and a lot more useful than waiting for lightning to strike.

We start by stripping talent of its myths. Yes, some people get a head start. No, that doesn’t make mastery inevitable. Skill is built through repetition, feedback, and the kind of boring consistency that makes you better even when no one’s watching. You’ll hear practical examples from audio production, social confidence, and relationship repair—proof that systems, not vibes, create momentum. The early phase will suck. Expect it. Name it. Keep going. That’s how identity shifts from dabbling to doing.

Then we connect the dots: align what you’re naturally drawn to with focused practice and you’ll grow faster, but you still need habits to sustain it. We talk about comparison traps, the lie of “potential” without discipline, and the role of self-control in protecting your focus from distractions. Whether you’re launching a show, building improv chops, or unlearning patterns in love, the formula stays the same—small, repeatable commitments, tracked over time, with courage to get feedback in public.

If you’re ready to swap excuses for execution, hit play. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us one skill you’ll commit to practicing this week—we’ll hold you to it.

1/6/26

1/6/26

Chapters

• 1:38 Cold Open And White Claw ASMR
• 3:21 Show Updates And Podfest Reflections
• 4:27 Introducing Talent Versus Skill
• 6:01 Rant On Excuses And Hard Work
• 10:36 Defining Talent Without Myths
• 11:41 Disabilities, Grit, And Perspective
• 13:16 Learning Podcasting Through Mistakes
• 16:38 Clear Definitions: Skill And Practice
• 18:50 Sucking At First And Perseverance
• 21:12 Talent–Skill Synergy And Mastery

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:52

Hello everybody. This is HH Julius Marquise from around the Kinky Campfire. I've got another episode, another topic for you. I'm gonna talk about today. I hope y'all enjoyed the last episode where I was recapping the PodFest 2026. And today I'm going to talk about something that I recently came across. But before we get into that, let me talk about a non-sponsored drink called a Whiteclaw. I'm pretty sure uh most of you have heard of it. Not a big secret anymore. I'll just say back when I was first drinking about this, there was not a lot of hard seltzers out there. And uh white claw was pretty much the only one on the brand, and everybody just kind of caught up to them now and just kind of uh met them on an equal footing. But I'm still a white claw, basic white girl, lover of pumpkin spice and all that, and I have my white claw here back to the good old um the OG hard seltzer lemon flavor, still 100 calories and no sugars. And we're going to start our favorite ASMR five seconds. This is nice and cold, it's not even gonna be that long, it's not gonna be nice and short. Ah, here we go. One, two, three. Oh, oh, lemony flavor. Oh man. Not sponsored, white claw, nice and chilly and refreshing. Uh we will we are taking sponsors here around the kinky campfire, just letting y'all know. Hope you all enjoy the video episodes and uh on the YouTubes, as well as the audio episodes, as we uh get on into the hundreds, the triple digi episodes, learning things and implementing them. That's the theme of 2026 before the housing crash happens to us. Oh no, here we go. I rent, so it doesn't really bother me too much. Maybe? Will the rental prices go up? Anyways, we're not a real tea podcast. We're here to talk about relationships, the ones on the fringe, and uh my phone just decided to go crazier. And just go and go nuts. That was kind of interesting, and just decided to do that. Anyways, here we go. Alright, so we are talking about talent versus skill. I went, and uh I'll just spoil it a little bit. I went and listened to a couple of my friends from the pod fest. Went to listen to their episodes and earlier episodes, and this is a topic that uh one of them was talking about. Uh we'll see if I am, you know, you know, networking was a thing. If y'all have been catching up on the shorts, I was trying to be my non-introvert self, playing a character where I go out and talk to people. It's very scary, very nerve-wracking, but I did it. Made context. So you might see me on other podcasts or something, or hear me on other podcasts, or have people on here. We'll see. But there was one of them. One of these episodes I listened to. Because I got I still got more catching up to do. So I'm still doing my research, just so everybody knows. Still doing my research and trying to catch up and implement all the things. There's habits, okay? Y'all hear me talk about them, and I am not just talking, blowing smoke up your asses, unless you want to, we can negotiate that. But for now, I am not metaphorically blowing smoke up your asses. I'm trying to work on these habits. And one of the episodes had to do with talent versus skill. And I was like, ooh, you know what? That hits a chord with old Julius here because you know what, campsters, y'all already know, I like to talk about talent versus skill. Now, we're gonna break this down and I'm gonna comment on it, and we'll see how entertaining this is for everybody. Y'all let me know in the in the socials how entertaining it was for y'all. Did y'all learn something? Comments on there. Let me know if you knew there's a difference between talent and skill. Because a lot of people like to make some BS excuses. I'm just gonna go on my rant right now. Five minutes in. Well, not even five minutes in, and we're gonna go on a Julius rant right now. Because I was inspired by my friend, because they were on a rant. People like to make excuses about talent, and then they don't want to work hard to be like, oh, I was never good at blah blah blah, but blowing balloons or something, and blowing stuff up. Yeah, blowing people, anyways, didn't make any sense to me. And it was like, okay, alright, alright, okay. So I'm not the only one. Stop making these BS excuses, and I'm gonna explain to you why. Talent just gets you a head start, but skill is where the hard work comes in, and where the tried and true. Mmm, refreshing, lemony flavor, uh, where this the hard work gets you started, gets you gets you where you want to go. Alright. So, why is this so hard to understand? This is the question we are answering right now. People in general, let's just make it a generality. Okay, we'll just do it. Yeah, generality, whatever. If you know the difference, don't listen to this episode, skip it. Alright, this is just really annoying, and I'm gonna talk about it. It's talent versus skill. People understand the difference, and people like to make excuses. I'm getting I'm getting tired of it. So we're gonna go into definitions, okay? First of all, talent. Innate advantage that somebody has. So your genetics, um, your predisposition in life in general, and your past um ancestors gifted you the special abilities that made you so much better than everybody else that you're the only one that can attain this special ability. Oh, it's a superpower. I was written in radioactive material and I came out super strong and super fast and whatever, I can fly. What bullshit is this? We're not in a fucking comic book, even though I wish we were. Or in anime. Love to be anime superhero. That'd be great. But that is not how life works, okay? Now, there are people that have genetic dispositions in the other way, okay? Whatever, we're not gonna talk about that because that is a thing, okay? Medical issues are a thing, either mentally or physically. Alright, if you are one of those people, and you know what? There are Paralympics and um the other one. I can't remember the other Olympics, where yeah, mental disabilities and physical disabilities, and then people going out competing and getting gold medals, and frankly, probably running faster than I am, however you want to define that. Oh man, that white claw is just really good. Just brings me back to my old self. Anyways, they are going out there and getting medals. Why can't you? Okay? I'm just saying. Right now, barring any medical abilities, okay? We're just gonna take that out. That is a common theme out there. Now, if you are one of those people like myself that is prone to laziness, really good at mastering laziness for many, many years and sitting and actually not doing anything, not doing anything, you are purposely not doing anything, uh talent is uh something that we innately have. Does that mean you cannot work hard to get what you want, which is what Julius is doing now. Working hard, trying to do all the things. You think I got taught how to do this fucking podcasting thing, talking to a camera? This microphone! This microphone, I didn't nobody taught me to put this here. I just had to make a whole lot of mistakes, and then figure out, oh, I need to be right about here before I blow the microphone out. I went and had to learn that shit. I had to research this. I'll let y'all know right now. I didn't have like a mentor to teach me this stuff. Uh YouTube Academy, that's pretty much it, and then Googles. Alright, so I went out there and tried to do this thing, and just to let y'all know, I don't have any theater experience. I was not the kid in theater class, I took one class in college, theater 101. 102 No, it was the same class. Theater, yeah, theater 101, and that was pretty much it, okay? That's all I did. And then I, you know, for decades, did nothing. Master laziness. Disassociation is a thing. And now, after all these years, decided to start a podcast, and I went and researched it by myself, didn't have any help, unless, you know, well, peop people make YouTube videos, that's that's technically something. But not in real life, I had to go figure this out for myself. I'm not saying I'm doing it great, I'm not gonna blow my own, blow smoke up my own ass. That would be something to see. Maybe I can put that on OnlyFans. But the guy who blows smoke up their ass, the guy most of the time. Sometimes a woman. The guy that blows smoke up her ass. Um, anyways, that'd be something. You can have that, whoever wants to start that as an OnlyFans page. Anyways. So I had to learn this. I made a lot of mistakes, okay? And I'm still here over a hundred episodes later. Still not patting myself on the back. This is literal facts, okay? Now, specifically, talent is a natural aptitude, a gift you're born with that feels effortless. I want to emphasize feels effortless because you didn't have to try to get to that point. It's like, okay, you just had that ability. Some people are just over six feet. Sure, whatever. Some people just naturally put muscle on. Alright, or effortlessly put muscle on. They still have to eat, and it's not like magic. We're not in a comic book, people, we're in real life. Okay? So yeah, this is one of those things that people just say, oh, I've always wanted to try. So this is what sparks not rage, sparks my uh righteous fire, ign ign ignation, sure. Um, that just gets me going, chased my butt, grinds my gears. It's because not everybody has the same amount of talent, and there's a thing called shit life syndrome. You know, you literally could just be born in a trailer park somewhere where the poor kid syndrome is a thing, but you know what? Through hard work, you can still try to get what you want. There's plenty of stories of people being born in a trailer park, and then they go to be CEOs and billionaires. Alright, so memory card died, but we're back. Alright. I gave the definition for skills. It's talking about people becoming CAOs. Alright, skills. Definition since I got cut off. An ability learned and improved through repetition, education, and hard work. And hard work. Alright, hard work. Everybody can do it. Doesn't mean everybody wants to. Mmm, white car, lemon flavor. I said that before the thing cut when the thing cut out too. Anyways, people can do hard work. Even people with talent who have a head start. That's all they have is a head start. Have to do hard work. That's how the road to perfection, greatness, um, expertise, whatever you want to call it. Getting better at something. And guess what, people? I don't I don't even have this in my notes, but it's gonna suck at first. It sucks for everybody. You might not see how much it sucks for other people, but some of those people are sucking harder than you at some point in time, and guess what? They persevere through the sucking, and they suck harder, and then eventually the sucking gets less, and eventually it just gets better. So a lot of people are sucking, but they you know finish, and then and then it happens, and you get a big old reward at the end. Some people say it's a happy ending, and you know what? Everybody should have a happy ending after hard work and sucking a lot, okay? So that is something that happens, and you can go through it too, depending on what you want. So stop letting things sucking stop you from finishing with a happy ending. Alright, and now let me get to my next point. Alright, okay, talent in my notes, natural-born aptitude and gift, which is wild skills and ability, uh acquired and developed through dedicated practice training and experience with talent often speeding up skill acquisition, but skill being the key to mastery and impact. Like I said, expertise, happy endings, all that kind of stuff. So, skill, uh heart, you know, working hard is something that takes through routine and habits forming to get better at something. Masterful. And yeah, you can get masterful. That's a whole different uh topic right there. Mastery and experts and stuff like that. So kind of ridiculous. Alright, let's see here. Let's break this down even more. Why are we talking about talent and skill? This is why. There's a synergy there. The most powerful combination is aligning your natural talents with learned skills. The road to mastery. Everything in that image in my notes is saying that you have to take the talent and combine it with the skill, and you have a mashup together. I can't do both hands because I'm holding on to a microphone. Mashing up together, and that's where you get mastery. Nothing in here is saying that you can get to mastery without both. Now, you might have less talent than other people, but there is a combination of both that leads to mastery. Alright, so let's just stop comparing ourselves. Alright, everybody has a little some level of talent, and everybody has the ability to use skills to get better. Alright? Alright. Faster growth! Talent allows you to acquire related skills more quickly, but consistent effort is needed, or habit, or routine. Alright? So you will you will be farther along the road of growth, but guess what? You can't get there without some kind of skill. Nobody just wakes up one day and is just the master of something. That's not how that shit works. Alright? Even those little kids with the piano skills and they're doing like Mozart and shit almost perfectly, they still had to practice. They just got on board a little bit earlier. Um, I saw some kid on America's Got Talent, he was killing the drums, his whole drum set, and he's like, Yeah, he's just barely even talking and walking, and he's still just all respectful and shit. Yeah, and I'm one of those people I can't do one thing with my feet and the other thing with my hands. My body memory doesn't work that way. Now, key to mastery. Wild talent gets you notice skilled through dedicated practice is what leads to true mastery and a career advancement. Alright, that little bit was from a um job uh article about this. Now, you yes, careers are good. Careers are good, whatever your definition of career is. Take those take those career stuff that you learned and just go right up there and and and um get better at them. I don't know what I'm talking about. Career stuff. I got distracted by career stuff. Career versus job. Whole another topic that we could talk about. Alright, so I don't have much time left, and then my my time's all thrown off now because the car died. I think I was halfway through the episodes, if I go a little bit more than half, I should be good in the editing process, but we'll see. So, let's see, I'll just skip through. There's a bunch of talent and skill. Um, yeah, let me skip. Okay. So, in summary, because we only have a few minutes left, plain and simple, talent. You're born with it. Skill, you have to learn it. There's a bunch of ways to learn it. Either through uh just fucking up, making mistakes, and trying again, or you can do a little research, you know. There's like I said, YouTube University. That's a thing. That's how I learned how to make podcasts. And guess what? I still fucked up. I learned, I'm even in the tech career field, speaking of careers, I know how to work a camera, I know how to work a microphone. Doesn't mean I can put that all together and make the best podcast ever, but I'm still trying. Hopefully, y'all went and watched the old episodes and saw something. You ain't gotta go all the way back. I mean, go shit, go like six months, and you'll see hopefully a difference between then and now. I know one thing, you ain't seen my face before. That was that was one thing. And then this lovely little article likes to say talent provides potential, skill unlocks it. So you have potential. How many people how many people you know in your life? You probably went to high school with somebody, had all kinds of potential. I had I had uh the quarterbacks on uh play football. Look at me, I play football. And then you know, star star? I don't even know star. We had a losing record every year I was in the on the football team. Wasn't because of me, there's a losing record before and after I played, so it wasn't my fault. And yeah, then I don't think any of them went anywhere. A few of them was like uh coached at the school. I think, maybe. Anyways, we generic story. People have been went in in sports and they knew somebody that had all this potential to go to the leagues or whatever you want it is, and never went because they had all that talent and didn't have any hard work, didn't know how to self-control, that's part of it too. Yeah, there's a lot of vices out there that you can have. Uh that's a whole nother episode, too. But the point is you need both, literally, right here. All the all the articles I found, even AI Googling, just the first thing that came up was the whole fact that you can have a good start with talent, but it's gonna take the hard work and skills, building skills, working on skills in order to get to the level of mastery, whatever you want to call it, the people that are just really good at it, the people that are super talented, and all that kind of stuff. So I want to get on the soapbox as well of this talent and skill and the bullshit that people come up with as excuses. It's like it's gonna suck. Okay, there's gonna be a lot of sucking. I'll say this again a whole lot of sucking, alright? Sometimes you just gotta take that shit deep all the way to the back, work it real good, and hopefully you get a happy ending out of that. Alright? That's all I gotta say. This is Julius from around the kinky campfire. Thank you to everybody that uh socialized with me um during the fest. Uh still working on it, probably still talking about this for the next couple episodes because batch recording, and also like, ah man, I gotta set my skills up. Hope y'all jump onto the social medias, okay? And and subscribe. Not you ain't gotta even like you ain't gotta follow or anything. Just like the video and just comment on it. Like this guy's an idiot or something, or these edits are horrible. I don't even know, but hopefully it's somewhat entertaining. The the clipping that I'm I'm doing. I'm working on the talent because I have a natural positive personality, and I'm working on the skills, the social media skills to try to get this going. I will say too, like, this is a relationship podcast, whatever definition of relationship as you want to talk about. I fucked up a lot in relationships. I've told you all this uh plenty of times, and I would say I was somewhat talented. I mean, I wasn't, you know, let's just say on average, I was good checked there physically and mentally, above average, um, not by a whole lot, but I still fucked up. I didn't have the greatest childhood or examples when I was younger of how relationships work. So I got to a really good place in relationship. I, you know, have five partners, however you want to feel about that. I was in a good place. I enjoyed all my partners, but then it's like I didn't really know what to do when I got there, similar to when I got to college. I just was there, they told me to go, and then when I got there, it's like figure out for yourself. So I've been fucking up relationships, trying to backp not backpedal, but just like take a step back and like look at everything and then try again. So this whole entire talent and and skill thing really hit home, especially now that somebody else that I know was on their soapbox as well talking about it, and it's like, oh my god, yes. Can we get it through people's head? Stop using this bullshit excuse of talent and and actually just like try something, get out of your comfort zone and try the thing you've been talking about. This is 2026, okay? Everybody says it's like the almost official restart after quarantine. We were all stuck in the houses for years, and now we're here fucking six years later, craziness. And you know what? Time to go out there and and try to do something. I mean, how many examples? I relate queer stuff, kinky stuff, kinky stuff, not monogamous stuff, queer stuff, and now improv stuff. It's like I'm going on stage, busting my ass all the time. Yes, if you catch me at a show, you see something on there, or on the on a video or something. White club would like a sponsor, but not. And and fucking up, okay? That's what I'm doing. I am fucking shit up. And I'm still going out there. It sucks. Alright? I'm not gonna like wash over that or whatever, but that shit sucks. And there's been times when I'm on uh you know on doing a performance, people like, oh you look great up there. Oh, I was freaking almost pissed myself. That's how nervous I was, okay? So that shit happens. And once again, went to a big old social event and survived. Okay. I wasn't close to dying, but it felt like it. And I still did. I made friends and they're out there now. I have proof, okay? Alright, so this stuff really just like hits home a lot right now. This is oh my god, stop using this as an excuse, people. Anyways, that's it for now. I'm gonna put one of the links in there. Should put one of the links in the description below of this article that I was talking about. Like I said, it was more towards careers, but still hit right at home with all the stuff that was going on with the uh comparison between talent and skill, and then also the synergy of the two. Um once again, this is Julius H H Julius Marquise, or just Julius if you're feeling less fancy, and I forgot to give myself an adjective, but whatever, you'll see it next time. New episodes of Around the Kinky Campfire. That's this podcast on Thursdays, and the videos on Fridays. Thank you for watching and subscribing. And go and follow the social medias and watch me make a fool of myself with the clips and all that, and we'll see how that goes. Alright, that's all. Hello.