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

Jordan Watson (aka How To DAD) can run 10km in jandals and carry three kids at once. In the RNZ series Out of My League, he puts his powers to the test against some of New Zealand's finest athletes. Photo / George Novak

By Music 101 of RNZ

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 fulltime 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.

Jordan Watson with Portia Woodman-Wickliffe in an episode of Out of My League. Photo / RNZ

It’s an “unhealthy amount of self-confidence” for someone who didn’t make the First XV 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 adviser’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 living in Pāpāmoa with Jody and their three daughters, Watson went fulltime 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” among 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 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 10 years. It ages you. It’s way more work than people think.”

Jordan Watson played:

Three Little Birds by Bob Marley

“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.”

Sailing by Rod Stewart:

“My mum is British, and she was a Rod Stewart fanatic. He’s one of those singers... 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 died 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.”

Everybody by The Backstreet Boys:

“This is Morrinsville Primary. I would have been 9 or 10 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.”

Not Many by Scribe

“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 coolest spot. I got married there.

“Scribe takes me back to when [my dad] had the bach 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.”

All I Want Is You by Barry Louis Polisar

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.”

Tom’s Diner by AnnenMayKantereit and Giant Rooks:

“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.”

– RNZ