How To Dad's Jordan Watson: 'Cheap and cheerful is what's worked for me'

Back in 2015, wearing stubbies and a bush shirt, Jordan Watson (Tainui) made a joke video for a friend from work who was about to become a father.

Two years later, he went full-time making social media videos as How To DAD. Keeping it real and ignoring the Instagram fashion for "everything so polished and shot in 4K with amazing drones and colour grading" has been key to Watson's success on social media, he says.

"The cheap and cheerful is what's worked for me, and that's how we just keep it … I just wake up, and if I have a funny idea while I'm in the shower or making breakfast, I'll write it down, I'll shoot it and post it," Watson tells RNZ's Music 101.

"Imagine if there was an 'average Joe' lane at the Olympics. Every sport plays as it is, but there's a lane there [where] it's just a regular person," is how Watson describes Out of My League - the new RNZ show where he puts himself to the test against New Zealand sports stars.

"It's a fun way to hear some insights from our athletes, not your classic, boring Sky TV interview ... You never fathom how impressive these people are - their drive, how stoic and mentally focused they are in their training."

In the show, Watson jumps on a bike with Olympic gold medallist Ellesse Andrews at a velodrome - "extremely terrifying" - paddles with world champion freestyler Erika Fairweather, attempts a kayak sprint with Dame Lisa Carrington, and despite being "not great with heights" samples the new Olympic sport of speed climbing.

It's an "unhealthy amount of self-confidence" for someone who didn't make the First 15 at high school, Watson says.

But while he loved rugby growing up, there was always "some kind of flair" for performing, too, and teasing by his mates for the "weird group dances" he liked making up with female friends.

On his last day of school, with no plan, Watson took up his school career advisor's suggestion of studying radio at the Bay of Plenty polytech.

On the first day there, he met the young woman who became his wife, Jody. After dating for two months, "head over heels in love" for the first time, he followed her to Auckland.

At 18, living with Jody and trying to get into the TV industry, Watson did "a massive mix of the most random things".

Eventually, he got regular work on Eating Media Lunch and The Unauthorised History of New Zealand

Later, he fell into the "wonderful set-up" of the kids' show Let's Get Inventin' before "jumping on the coattails" of comedians Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce and their satirical show Jono and Ben.

Now lives in Papamoa with Jody and their three daughters, Watson went full-time as How To DAD in 2017.

As someone who likes to give things a go, even when it means "slightly putting his life at risk", he says social media success has delivered him some awesome opportunities in the years since.

"[If someone said] 'Hey, Jordan, you want to go try and hike Kilimanjaro in a month? I'd be like, 'Yeah, if you're inviting me, let's give it a go.' Why not? That's my big thing."

Now a "koro" amongst New Zealand content creators, Watson says there's still no guide or manual for becoming a social media person.

Although every video he posts as How To DAD gets "bounced off" his wife Jody, a TV production manager who's on Instagram as How to MUM.

Although Jody sometimes "cringes" at the lucrative offers he turns down - "She's like, that would really help the bank account, right?" - Watson says he has to choose carefully which brands to align himself with.

Committing to his comedic style and asserting that he knows his audience better than anyone else has been key to success and longevity as a content creator, he says.

"I have been hard to work with because of that… especially because comedy is such a fine line… You're fighting. I have fought for ten years. It ages you. It's way more work than what people think."

"This is basically my dad's taste of music, it's Bob Marley, it's a lot of UB40.

"We lived five minutes out of town on a little lifestyle block - had like a sheep and a cow and a paddock. My dad's an eel fisherman, and the record player would always have UB40 or Bob Marley going

"This one just takes me straight back to sitting in the lounge listening to dad's music."

"My mum is British, and she was a Rod Stewart fanatic. He's one of those singers that his voice just hasn't faded. He can go right now and sing acapella and sound very similar to what he did back in the day.

"My mum passed away five years ago, six years ago coming up. And yeah, this one... it definitely gets you in the stomach each time.

"This is one of his more sad ones, but it also just takes me back, and this is Mum all over."

"This is Morrinsville Primary. I would have been nine or ten with Backstreet Boys pinned up on the wall.

"Me and four other guys at primary school formed our own Backstreet Boys. We could all sing back then Can't sing as good these days.

"We were allowed to leave class and go around the junior classes. They'd get told the Backstreet Boys are coming, and we would come in. We were all one of the characters, and we would sing Backstreet Boys songs."

"My dad grew up in Te Kauwhata, and we went there a lot... Every school holidays, we were just there constantly…

"Now he has a permanent spot there. So, we're there every long weekend. My sisters and brothers bring their kids, all the cousins hang out. And it's the coldest spot. I got married there. 

"Scribe takes me back to when [my dad] had the batch with his ex-wife, my old stepmum. Heaps of us out in the backyard.

"I remember having the Scribe CD, and just being like, 'Oh my gosh, who's Eminem? Throw the Eminem away. We have our own Eminem. He was a game-changer."

When he and Jody got married in Port Waikato in 2012, this was their cool, funky little walk down the aisle song.

"We paid $50 for the gardens. We paid $100 for the reception hall, and my dad took some whitebait fritters. Great night."

"We have songs that sweep through our house and just stick, and this is one of them. I feel sorry for our neighbours, everyone is singing at the top of their voices. We're all trying to sound like the guys singing it.

"It is amazing, and then you watch the video and see who the people are behind the song. You're like, 'That can't be coming out of these people.' It's very cool."