The 10k Timeline: How Long It Takes to Reach 10k dl/ep (& How to Accelerate the Process)

Episode Transcript
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Justin (00:02):
We all know people that have been doing the same thing
forever, and they're not gettingbetter. They put out a 1000
episodes, and episode a 1000 isjust as unlistenable as episode
1.

Jeremy (00:13):
When people think about consistency and compounding,
people might have this idea thatI should be creating my show 2
or 3 years before before it'sreally gonna start to grow. But
here's a lot of factors thatplay into why that happens. And
it's not just doing the samething for multiple years.
Welcome to podcast marketingtrends explained. I'm Jeremy
Enns from podcast marketingacademy.

Justin (00:33):
And I'm Justin Jackson from Transistor Datafem. And
together, we're digging into thedata behind the podcast
marketing trends 2023 report tohelp you understand what it
means for you and your show.

Jeremy (00:46):
Our goal is to help you make better informed decisions
about the way you create andmarket your show so you can
spend more time on what actuallymatters for growth and
accelerate your results.

Justin (00:55):
Let's get into it.

Jeremy (00:59):
So Justin, I want to pose a, bit of a question here
to you about Warren Buffett, ofall people. Okay. He actually
started investing in the stockmarket when he was 11 years old.
He is, as of right now, 93 yearsold, and he is currently worth a
$133,000,000,000 My question toyou is, how do you imagine the
distribution of his wealthaccumulation occurred throughout

(01:23):
his lifetime?

Justin (01:24):
I don't know. I mean, in my head, I'm just thinking it
just probably compounded at asteady rate over his whole
career. Like, it was just likehe was just putting in the
effort bit by bit, and that justgrew at the same rate up until
now. He just lasted a long

Jeremy (01:41):
time. Okay. So you mentioned that it probably
pounded over the the course ofhis career, and that is actually
correct. But this actually getsat something that we are going
to talk about in-depth in theepisode today, which is this
idea of compounding and how muchit kind of just boggles our
brains as people. And so when weactually look at the
distribution of how WarrenBuffett accumulated his

(02:02):
$133,000,000,000, we see that,actually, he accrued 99.7% of
that wealth after the time heturned 52 years old.
No way. 40 years of investingaccounted for 0.3 of his total
net worth, and then the finalseveral decades, 99.7%. Wow.

Justin (02:24):
When you put it that way, we're all just getting
started.

Jeremy (02:28):
That's right. Yeah. And so one of the things that, you
know, people talk about withWarren Buffett a lot is that one
of his advantages is that, yes,he has been a great investor,
but he actually hasn't been thatsavvy. It's that he's been
playing the game a long time andthat he's just been consistently
putting in the work and that thelonger that you stick with it,
the more the gains begin to addup in the long term. Mhmm.
And so this is something thatapplies equally to creative

(02:49):
work, and I think it's somethingthat's really frustrating. It's
kind of mystical as a creatorbecause what we hope is that,
you know, things are going togrow linearly that we put in a
certain amount of effort, andwe're going to see the similar
amount of reward for that. Andwhat we see time and time again
with many creators is you lookat them, they might put in
months, more often years, maybeeven decades of work before

(03:11):
things really start to turnupwards. And, I'm curious before
we dive into some of how thisplays out for podcasters and
creators in general, is thissomething that you have
experienced in your career? Ithink we're gonna get into some
of the specifics later, butwhat's your personal kind of
story with compounding then?

Justin (03:27):
Yeah. I talk about this a lot because we have this
software business, and peopleask me, you know, like, how'd
you do that? And they want me togive them tips as somebody who's
just starting out. And what'sdifficult to convey is that
starting that business was justbuilt on layer upon layer of

(03:48):
experience that's not easilytransferable. My experience is
not easily transferable.
And you it's not until you lookat all those layers, all that
foundation that was set beforewe founded the business that it
makes sense. Once you can startunpacking it and going, oh, wow.

(04:08):
First, it was that and then thatand then that. It adds up. It
makes sense.
But what people see from theoutside is just, oh, you started
this thing and it works. Andthat's just not the case.
There's just so many experiencesand connections and things that
came along the way that built upto that thing working.

Jeremy (04:30):
And we're gonna get into some of the nuances because I
think a lot of times when peoplethink about consistency and
compounding, people might havethis idea that, okay, I've heard
that I should be creating myshow 2 or 3 years or something
like that before it's reallygonna start to grow. But I think
there's a lot of factors thatplay into why that happens and
it's not just doing the samething for multiple years. So
we're gonna look at those in asecond. But first, I wanna start

(04:52):
off with some of the data thatcame up in the report and it
really speaks to this idea thatlongevity is a huge advantage in
podcasting. So the first thingthat I asked was just for all
the podcasters who submitted thesurvey was how long have you
been publishing your show?
Some people had been producingtheir show for a matter of
months. Some people hadn't evenlaunched yet, but were just

(05:14):
getting started. And otherpeople had been producing their
show for multiple years. And so,one of the things we saw was
that the overall average fromall the 500 plus people who
submitted the survey, onaverage, they had been producing
their shows for 4.3 years, whichI I was pretty impressed by. I
thought, woah, this is a prettyexperienced group of people who
completed the survey.

Justin (05:34):
Yeah. Especially because this is for a single show.
Right? This doesn't take it thisisn't how long they've been
podcasting total. This is justhow long have you been producing
this show.

Jeremy (05:45):
Yeah. That was what I had asked was this specific show
that you're currently kind ofsubmitting this survey for. Some
people did have multiple showsgoing at the same time, but I
think, you know, on average, wecan assume that this is, people,
submitting their experience forone show. Now it does get a
little bit more interesting whenwe start to break down the data
into these specific different,growth categories. And so in

(06:06):
this case, we were breaking downthe shows by size.
And so we broke them down toshows with more than 10,000
downloads an episode on average,shows between 1,010,000
downloads an episode, and showswith less than a 1000 downloads
an episode. And, what we sawhere was very telling, in my
mind here. Yeah. We saw theshows with more than 10,000
downloads an episode had onaverage been producing their

(06:27):
shows 7 years. Wow.
The shows between 1,010,000downloads an episode producing
their show 4 years. And theshows with less than a 1000
downloads an episode had beenproducing their shows 3 years.
So this very kind of clearindication that, you know, the
shows that made it big, therewere not a lot of shows who had
just been, you know, producingtheir show a year or 2 years

(06:49):
that made it to that size.

Justin (06:50):
That's a huge difference. So, like, that big
growth number, the people thatare getting most of the
downloads have been doing theshow for 7 years. And who does
anything for 7 years? You know?Like, even who does anything for
4 years?
You know? It it it's almost likeI would guess that most new

(07:11):
podcasts, like, you can measurethe amount of time they're
working on it in months, notyears. So this whole group is, I
would say, way above average forwhat we would see in the normal
podcasting ecosystem. Impressiveto do anything for 3 years, 4
years, or 7 years, and then tohave this clear correlation

(07:31):
between time spent and thenumber of downloads you're
getting. I guess that's thethat's the secret.
We can end the show. You wannagrow longer? Just just, keep
going. And, in 7 years, you toocan have a show that's doing
more than 10,000 downloads perepisode.

Jeremy (07:50):
That's that's probably it. And, we also looked at it
from a couple other ways heretoo. And so, of course, you
know, years being active is onefactor. That's a little bit hard
to tell. It doesn't really sayhave they been producing
consistently for that long, whatgoes on there.
Some people do have breaks,things like that. Maybe you
release 1 episode a year. Thatdoesn't really tell us much
about that. So I also looked up,using the listen notes data

(08:10):
actually for the shows that Iwas able to find that for, which
was, the majority of them. And Ilooked up how many episodes have
they released overall.
All time. And so what we sawhere was that the shows with
more than 10,000 downloads anepisode, the median number of
episodes they'd released was286. So getting close to 300.
The shows between 1,010,000 werea 127 episodes, so less than

(08:34):
half. Barely significantly lowerthan half.
And then the shows with lessthan a 1000 downloads, an
episode were just 52 episodespublished. And so this is
actually, I think, a little bitmore interesting to me because
in the the years active data,there was 3 years for the shows
less than a 1000, and 4 yearsfor the shows that were 1,000 to

(08:55):
10000. But the distinction ismuch different between number of
episodes published where 52episodes for the smallest shows,
a 127 episodes, so more thandouble for the next tier, 1,000
to 10000 downs an episode, Andthen again, more than double up
to that highest tier of morethan 10,000. And so here, we've
got years, but also the numberof reps that they've got in with

(09:15):
just producing episodes, which Ithink that that's a huge, huge
factor to to consider here aswell.

Justin (09:20):
Yeah. You know what I like about this is I can
visualize with this show. We'vebeen doing this not even a month
or 2

Jeremy (09:27):
months. I don't know. A month,

Justin (09:29):
I think. Something like that. And so and we're at, I
don't know, 300 downloads perepisode or something. And so I
can imagine a graph, you know,going out into the future, like,
oh, wow. Like, if we just keptproducing episodes every week
and did it more than a month,did it, like, a year and then 2
and then 3 and then 4, I canimagine us getting 2 thousands

(09:53):
of downloads per episode.
It's just like, oh, that thatmakes sense that that would
happen. But that's not usuallyhow people think. I think
especially in the era of thesealgorithmic feeds, I can just
pick up a piece of content andjust, like, go crazy with it.
You know, you your your firsttime posting on TikTok and you
might get a 1,000,000 views, itspoiled people and maybe misled

(10:17):
them. And Yeah.
Yeah. I I like this idea of it'sjust reps. I mean, of course,
it's more than that, but thereis a simplicity about that
that's encouraging. Because ifyou just keep putting in the
reps, you keep publishingepisodes, you can imagine the
show growing as you continue toput things out.

Jeremy (10:36):
Yeah. And I think we'll get into a little bit more of
that nuance in a minute therewith the distinction between
reps and maybe skill andpractice and the things that
kind of accrue as you you domore reps. But the one other
wrinkle that I thought wasinteresting here was we've kind
of looked at the data so farhere in terms of size of show,
but the other way that we slicethis was in terms of growth
rate. And so this is detachedfrom size of show, and actually

(11:00):
the larger shows have a kind ofnecessarily harder time growing.
So they're never going to haveas high a growth rate as the
smaller shows.

Justin (11:07):
Yeah.

Jeremy (11:07):
But I was curious to know, you know, what when it
comes to the actual growth rate,and so we looked at the shows
that doubled in size or more,the shows that outperformed the
median but didn't double. So 21to a 100% growth. The shows that
were, 0 to 21% growth, so theygrew but underperformed the
median and then there were showsthat shrank. And what we saw
here was that the shows thatgrew by any amount basically had

(11:30):
all produced the same amount ofepisodes. So there was a 105 for
the shows that grew by a littlebit.
A 105 episodes was the medianfor shows that grew kind of in
the median to above medium butdidn't quite double and then a
107 for the shows that doubled.And so it didn't seem like the
number of episodes producedactually had any impact on the
growth rate. We saw that theshows that shrank, they actually

(11:51):
produced double the number ofepisodes. And the reason here
is, again, lots of those showsare big and a lot of times, they
actually start producing moreepisodes. And so they don't get
as many per episode downloads,but they get more downloads
overall is often how that works.
And so we don't even really needto consider those shows in in
this case here. And then, again,with the years active, we see

(12:11):
the same thing where the showsthat shrank, they had been
active quite a bit longer whichmakes sense. They're probably
bigger and they're actuallyproducing more episodes, getting
fewer downloads per episode butmore downloads overall. Mhmm.
But all the other shows hadbasically been producing for the
same amount of time at anygrowth rate.
This was really interesting inthat on the one hand, it doesn't
seem like the, amount of timethat you have been active or the

(12:33):
amount of episodes that you hadpublished had any impact. But on
the other hand, all of theseshows had been active at least 3
years was the average in any ofthe growth ranges as well as
having produced at least a 100episodes. And so, again, this is
a pretty savvy dataset ofpodcasters here who submitted
this. And even with some of thisgrowth rate data, they
necessarily needed to have beenproducing for a year for me to

(12:56):
include them in this. Otherwise,it didn't really work for the
data.
And so, you know, there's somenuance here, but I think that
that is really encouraging. Ithink for most people that it's
not like you can't grow reallyquickly if you haven't produced,
you know, a certain amount ofepisodes.

Justin (13:09):
Yeah. There's another thing I would like people to
consider, which is we're talkingabout shows that have gone on
for years years years, and itjust makes sense that the
listener would wanna move on. Sonot every show can last forever.
And we have this idea inpodcasting because there are
some shows that have just beenaround forever. But I bet you

(13:31):
all a lot of those shows like,even I read a piece on, This
American Life, partly because ofthis new iOS thing where iOS is
now recording less autodownloads.
You know, their numbers aredropping. And Mhmm. With
anything that's mature, you'vegot to imagine that you're
eventually gonna hit yourceiling, and then eventually,

(13:52):
things drop off. That's howthings work. There's very few
things that grow, you know, a100% year over year forever.
That just doesn't happen. Sothere's kind of 2 lessons. It's
like, this takes a long time toget this right to build up an
audience, but then it also makessense that you can't keep that
audience forever. You, you know,you might need to start a new

(14:13):
show, a new fresh thing, andthen ask that audience to follow
you to the next show. But theidea of, you know, I'm gonna do
this one podcast forever, andit's gonna grow every single
month forever.
It's not gonna happen. Thatdoesn't happen with anything.

Jeremy (14:28):
A lot of times you think about this in, like, the tech
world where everybody kindaknows there's this s curve where
it starts off kind of slow,nothing's happening, you're
doing a lot of work, and then itstarts to turn upward. Now
things are growing reallyquickly. And then eventually,
you know that that is going toflatten out because there just
are no more people who are inyour target market. Mhmm. And
you begin to either having tokind of diversify and, like,
expand what you offer.

(14:49):
And maybe that will allow you togrow a little bit more, but it
begins to water down thecontent. Maybe the people who
originally loved the the showdon't quite like it so much
anymore and so they startleaving. Or you then kind of
diversify and say, okay. We'regonna start new shows that are
somewhat related to tap into,you know, our existing audience
or various other audiences.Yeah.
So something to keep in mindthat that ceiling exists for
every single show. And for someshows, that might be 50 people.

(15:11):
For some shows, that might be500,000 people. Mhmm. And for
most shows, it's probablysomewhere in between there.

Justin (15:16):
Yeah. And you can keep doing it for the superfans too.
Like, it growth isn'teverything.

Jeremy (15:21):
Let's get into this, this idea of compounding returns
and explore it a little bitmore. So to start off, we've
kind of talked about it a littlebit already here, but do you
just kinda wanna give yourinterpretation of how you think
about or would describe the ideaof compounding returns.

Justin (15:36):
So for me, this is multifaceted. People think about
compounding very simplistically.Like, they think about it in an
investment sense. Like, I justinvest a $100 every month no
matter what, and it gainsinterest, and then that interest
goes into the pot, and now I'mearning more interest on this
bigger amount and just grows andgrows and grows. And it's it's
overly simplistic for somethinglike podcasting because when I

(16:00):
think about compounding returns,it's like it's the accumulation
of everything you've done inyour life.
Every action that you've taken,every risk you've taken, every
experiment you've run, everyperson you've met, childhood
experiences, the family you grewup in, it it kinda covers
everything. And then all of thataccumulates into a thing, which

(16:25):
is you, that then has theability or inability to create
something that's compelling foran audience. So that's the way I
think about it. What are yourthoughts around compounding?

Jeremy (16:39):
Yeah. So to your example, and actually we use the
example earlier of WarrenBuffett, finance and investing
for retirement in the stockmarket. These are things where
compounding returns certainlyplay into. But, really, I think
about it in terms of, like,exponential growth. And so we
can think of, like, linear is ina straight line Mhmm.
Where it's, again, it's like thesteady line effort in equals
results out. Where compounding,it becomes detached from your

(17:00):
effort at some point. And so youmight put in a ton of effort
into something or you'reinvesting into your retirement
account, and it's just likeyou're not gaining that much
interest for a long time. Butthen toward the tail end, much
like Warren Buffett, all of asudden, every year, you're
earning 1,000,000 of dollars ininterest or in Warren Buffett's
case, 100 of 1,000,000 ofdollars in interest from your
investments that they're pullingin, and it's totally detached

(17:21):
from any effort that he'sputting in. It's just that the
base kind of principle in thiscase has it keeps on growing and
growing and growing, and it'saccruing more of that returns.
And I think to your point,investing's a pretty simplistic
way to look at this becausewe've essentially just got,
okay, we put money in and thatgains interest. But I think with
something like creative workwhere it gets really hard to

(17:42):
understand why this happens. Ithink we want to think about,
let's just say podcast growth,but we could use any kind of
social media email list, youknow, whatever you're trying to
grow your audience. We think,oh, I just keep doing this. And
the more effort I put in, youknow, the more it's going to
grow.

Justin (17:54):
Yeah.

Jeremy (17:55):
But really, the the some of the reasons behind that
compounding are, for 1, the morework you put out there, the more
surface area you give people todiscover your work. But then
there's all these other factorswhere your skill improves. Each
episode, hopefully, that you putout, you're getting a little bit
better. Whether or not yourealize it or not, it's really
hard to do 300 episodes and notbe better than you were at

(18:17):
episode 1. And, you know, toyour point here, like, we're,
you know, 10 episodes in at thispoint that we've released.
We've maybe recorded 15 orsomething like that. And we've
experienced already in the shortamount of time, like things have
gotten tighter, where it'sgetting, to be more natural to
record them. We don't have to doas many kind of retakes, things
like that.

Justin (18:32):
Yeah.

Jeremy (18:32):
And, you know, when you mentioned, like, being able to
look ahead over several years or300 episodes and think, oh,
yeah. I could see where thiscould go in terms of audience
growth. I was kind of thinking,I can't even imagine where this
would grow in terms of our skilldevelopment around this and how
our report would change and howwe would kind of know how to
play off each other and Yeah.All these other things. We'd
probably start to accrue otherthings as well where maybe we

(18:55):
start to get some income for theshow, and now we get to invest
that back into video productionor advertising or something else
that then amplifies the level ofthe show further so it's now a
better show which then createsthis flywheel where it grows
further.
We get more income. We get toinvest that in further. And
that's when we really start tosee some of this compounding
returns. It's like all of thesethings are coming together to

(19:15):
incrementally improve everylittle aspect of everything both
us as people and as creators aswell as the show itself. And so
it's not just about doing theshow more, the same show.
It's like, how are you actuallystacking little brick by brick
by brick that eventually adds upinto this this much better,
bigger show?

Justin (19:34):
Yeah. And the other thing that's hard to get right
from the beginning is thisunderstanding of the audience
and what resonates. You kind ofgradually build up

Jeremy (19:45):
Yeah.

Justin (19:45):
This sense of taste, but not just a general sense of
taste, but a sense of taste forthis particular audience. Like,
what resonates with this group?What drives more engagement? And
that takes time. It takes time.
It's lots of feedback. It's likewe're gonna run into people at
podcast movement, and we'regonna get feedback there. We're

(20:08):
getting feedback in, you know,our inboxes. We're getting
feedback in surveys. And we arestarting to get this intuitive
sense of what the audiencelikes.
Mhmm. And you can't do thatovernight. It that's a
compounding return. James Clearhas this metaphor of an ice cube
melting. Like, you raise thetemperature by 1 degree, nothing

(20:30):
happens.
You raise it by another degree,nothing happens. You keep
raising it by a degree. And in asense, it's like, wow. We're
putting in all this work. Wekeep raising the temperature,
and this ice cube hasn'tchanged.
And then suddenly, it crosses athreshold and starts to melt,
and it feels like it's happeningall at once. Creative endeavors
are like that. It's just likeyou're gradually increasing the

(20:51):
temperature, and the results area lagging indicator of you
increasing the temperature.Right? It takes a while for you
to see the culmination ofeverything you've been doing,
which can be frustrating, butthat's how it works.

Jeremy (21:05):
So I'm a little bit torn a lot of times when talking
about this. Because on the onehand, I want to encourage people
who have good ideas that areworth pursuing to stick with
them. And at the same time, thisis something that I think people
don't talk about enough becausethey genuinely want to be
supportive of their audiences,of people who are trying things,
and they don't want todiscourage them. But I think
about, like, I've been workingin podcasting now for 8 years. I

(21:28):
think, coming up as, next weekor something is my 8 year
anniversary of of first startingas a podcast editor.
Mhmm. I was a listener beforethat, but I think, like, in the
past year or 2, so 6 to 7 yearsin, I feel like things have
really clicked where I'm like, Ihave a pretty good sense at this
point, like, what's gonna hitand what's not going to. I know
how to talk about the problems.I can sit down and in, you know,
10 minutes write a really greatemail about something podcasting

(21:50):
related. I don't really have towork at it anymore.
Mhmm. And I feel like noweverything's gravy from here on
out, but it took me 8 years toget here. Keep in mind, like, I
avoided doing a lot of thethings that could have
accelerated that process atevery step of the way. Now,
like, I've been working fulltime in podcasting, but I did
not do a lot of, you know,customer or potential audience,
interviews or things like that.

Justin (22:10):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (22:10):
And, I actually have a friend of mine, Andrew. He had a
call with a friend of yours,Nathan Barry

Justin (22:16):
Okay. A

Jeremy (22:16):
few weeks ago. Cool. And so Andrew, had a call with
Nathan. He had actually signedup. I think he bought his
authority book, and there's oneversion of the book where Nathan
will get on a call with you,which is kind of crazy to me
because Nathan runs ConvertKit,which is a huge company now, and
I can't he's still doingcoaching calls with people who
buy his ebook.
But I think it says somethingabout who Nathan is. Yeah. And
so Andrew bought the book. Hebought the upsell to get the

(22:38):
call with Nathan. And he'sthinking about doing something
in the world of habits, which isa very difficult world,
basically, because James Clearhas taken it over now.
Mhmm. And so Andrew has a lot ofexperience in that world, but
he's kind of like, I don't knowwhat to do with this. And so he
got on a coaching call withNathan, at the end of the call.
Andrew asked Nathan. He waslike, so, you know, what could I
do that would be so impressivethat you would get on another

(23:00):
call with me?
And Nathan kinda thought for aminute, and he was like

Justin (23:03):
Great question.

Jeremy (23:04):
You would have done 40 customer interviews, and you
would come back to me withactionable insights that, what
you're gonna do next. And soAndrew took that away. I've
checked in with him a coupletimes since then, and he
immediately in the 1st week setup 30 audience interviews with
people from his newsletter.Yeah. And so not everybody
showed up.
So he's at about 25 that he'sdone so far, 30 minute calls
with each of these people, andhe's got a bunch of notes on

(23:25):
this. And he's like, yeah. Sowhat I'm gonna actually do is
I'm gonna probably get to 60because I've we've done a lot of
reading about people in, like, YCombinator, the the tech
accelerator. And one of thethings that the people who
organize that have said is,like, the people that they know
are gonna succeed, theorganizers will tell them do
this thing, and those founderswill come back, and they'll have
done double that and gone wellabove and beyond. Mhmm.
And so Andrew's like, I'm gonnado way more than Nathan

(23:46):
expected, and I'm gonna comeback to him. And he's gonna be
so impressed about what I didthat he's gonna get on another
call with me. Yeah. And soAndrew's he's probably in his
forties, I think. He's done alot of creative projects, but
he's, like, in this kind of newspace to him.
Yeah. And he's like, I'm hittingthe ground running, and I'm not
wasting any time doing this.Yeah. And I think about the 8
years that I've been inpodcasting, and I have not done

(24:07):
any of that. I've slowly it'staken me 8 years to do what he's
trying to compress into a fewmonths.
Mhmm. And I think that this issomething that everybody can do,
and I think that there arethings in this compounding that
a lot of these things can becompressed. They don't need to
take so long, but you need to goout and get them. And I think
that part of it's knowing whatsome of these assets are that

(24:28):
compound. But then it also it'sjust being kind of willing and
unafraid to go out and and startto get those in a condensed
amount of time.
And I think that once you startto build up those things, like,
that's when things actuallystart to take off really
quickly.

Justin (24:40):
This made me think of this advice my friend, Ben
Orenstein, gives, which is try10 things as fast as possible
and see what works. Just startfailing, start making mistakes,
start getting some data and seewhat happens. And the idea here
is that one way to increase therate of compounding is to

(25:03):
increase the rate at whichyou're doing things. And so
Mhmm. This has limits.
You can't just say, well, in inthat case, I'm gonna publish 10
episodes a day, and, you know,I'm just gonna totally growth
hack this whole thing. But theidea is you just start putting
in reps, and that's what yourfriend Andrew is doing. He's
like, okay. What's a a repthat's hard to do, but I'm gonna

(25:23):
just do it more frequently?Customer interviews.
That's hard to do. It's hard toget people on the phone. It's
hard to actually sit through.Like, that's a lot of calls. You
and I have a hard time gettingon this call every week.
Like, can you imagine doingthat? Like, okay, I'm gonna get
on 20 of these a week. That'sYeah. A lot of work. But by
doing those hard reps, you areincreasing the rate of

(25:47):
compounding.
As somebody in my forties,sometimes I get a little surly,
you know, when I see these youngearnest kids out there putting
in the wraps. It's it's bad. Youshouldn't get cynical about
this, because the truth is allof us can do this even if you're
forties, fifties, sixties,whatever. You can just start
putting in the reps wherever youare at right now. And the more

(26:09):
reps you put in, the betterchance those are gonna compound
and turn into somethingvaluable.

Jeremy (26:15):
Yeah. And I think the other thing that's interesting
about this specific situationfor Andrew is that it also gets
into one of these other assetsthat compounds that I know we've
talked about in basically everyepisode, which is your network
and your connections and yourrelationships.

Justin (26:28):
Yeah.

Jeremy (26:28):
And I think we talked about maybe in the non social
media marketing channels episodeabout how a lot of times when
collaborations and relationshipsreally start to pay off is when
you accrue a lot of them, andthey're not necessarily your
best friends, but there's abunch of people in your space,
in your industry who they knowyou do good work.

Justin (26:45):
And so

Jeremy (26:46):
this is something that can't be shortcut because I
think very many people can dogreat work, publish a daily, you
know, blog post or Twitterthread that's great for a week
Yeah. Or 30 days maybe.Something like that. But it's
really hard to show up for 3years at a time and continually
put out great work and this issomething when in any space I've
noticed this too and you seethis happen so often where

(27:06):
people who've been in the game along time, they'll see somebody
new come on the scene andthey'll put out great work and
it's like, oh, interesting.Okay.
But I'm like not gonna commitand put too much effort into
building a relationship yet.Mhmm. Because you have seen so
many people who start off hot.They don't get that result in
the first, you know, month or 2,and then they give up. Mhmm.
And it's the people oftentimes II have certainly felt this

(27:27):
myself where I was, like, youknow, writing blog posts or
doing whatever content that I'vedone in the past where I was,
like, man, I don't feel like Iget the the respect I deserve or
whatever.

Justin (27:34):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (27:34):
And it's like when you've been doing it for 5
years, it's almost like peoplestart to warm up to you who've
been doing it for 10 years 15years. Yeah. And you're finally
like, oh, yeah. I see I neededto earn that because now you can
also see looking back at otherpeople who are starting out and
have seen them kind of like alot of people start off really
quickly but drop off reallyquickly as well. Mhmm.
And I think that that can'treally be shortcut, but it's
something that once you get overthat hump and you built that

(27:56):
reputation, this becomes a hugeamplifier of everything that you
else that you do going forward.

Justin (28:01):
Yeah. And those relationships. You know, when I
was doing my interview podcast,almost every crucial moment in
somebody's career where theyreally elevated their career or
really elevated their businessor really elevated whatever
creative endeavor they weredoing, the pivotal moment was
almost always meeting somebody.It's like, oh, and then I met

(28:23):
Heaton Shaw, and then he showedme this, this, and this, and he
introduced me to this, or hechallenged me on this. And this
is true in my life.
I can connect the through lineof every success I've had
leading up to this moment. It'sall because of people,
connections. You know? I met mybusiness partner, John, through
Chase Reeves, who I interviewedon that first podcast. And these

(28:49):
relationships you build alongthe way, it can't again, this is
the the hard thing is it can'tbe just any relationship.
This can't just be any repsyou're putting in. You can't
just put any episode out overand over and over again. Like,
there has to be some strategy toit. You have to be trying to
connect with interesting peoplethat are doing interesting

(29:11):
things that know interestingpeople. You have to be putting
out interesting episodes and youkeep trying to improve.
But if you are continually kindof ambitiously seeking after
interesting connections, betterskills, better reps, Eventually,
that will culminate to somethingreally great. What I like about

(29:35):
it is you can just say, you knowwhat? I'm just gonna go to a
meetup. You know, there's, like,thousands of meetups around the
world all the time. Most of themare free.
Most of them are in your area.And the kind of people that go
to meetups are curious,ambitious, self starters. You're
gonna meet other people that aretrying to make a dent in the

(29:58):
world. That's how you get going.That's how you make those
connections.
So I like the the connectionpiece because it's something
that you can start doing now.

Jeremy (30:08):
And I I think the one thing that also stands out to me
with this idea of compounding,on the one hand, there's this,
like, additive growth. But onthe other hand, there's this
subtraction of friction is partof how I feel about it, where
people are more likely to make aa connection between you because
you've kinda proven yourself.You're, like, in the in crowd
now. So now it's easier to getnot only any guest on your show,
but better guests. You can getbetter interactions, and that

(30:29):
then further elevates the levelof your show.
It further proves yourcredibility, which makes it
easier to get the next guest.And so the friction across all
of these things, your skills arebetter. So it takes you less
time to do all these things usedto do. When your taste is
better, your hit rate is higheron the topics that you're
putting out there. And all thesethings, it's less about the
growth in terms of, like, I didthis thing and it got more
followers.
Mhmm. It's actually easier to dothose things as well. Yeah. And

(30:52):
I think that that's a big partof compounding. It's like a a
negative compounding almostwhere it's like it's removing
friction and making thingseasier as you keep going.
But that's part of like theskill development and a lot of
all that stuff that is hard tosee on a day to day basis. And
it's like measuring your kidgrowing on the the door frame
where it's like from day to day,you're probably not gonna see
anything, but you do that every3 months or 6 months and you
realize, oh, okay. Like, they'rethey're growing up here. The

(31:14):
same thing with skills. It'slike from one episode to the
next, probably you don't reallynotice that you're getting
better at anything.
But you look back or you listenback to a year ago and you're
like, oh, wow. Like, I haveimproved a lot and the show is
just way better. But never atany point during that process
where you're like, oh, thisepisode was just, like, 10 times
better than the previous one.

Justin (31:31):
Yeah. Hopefully. You know, the other thought I have
with all that this stuff asyou're talking is I'm just
imagining we all know peoplethat have been doing the same
thing forever, and they're notgetting better. Yeah. There's
shows that they they put out a1,000 episodes, and episode a
1,000 is just as unlistenable asepisode 1.

(31:52):
And I I just imagine, like,somebody who is, like, lifting
weights, but they just keeplifting the 1 pound weights. And
Mhmm. It's like they're doinglots of reps, but they're not
improving. They're not gettingstronger. They're not, you know,
building anything substantial.
They're just staying the same.And, you know, we review a lot

(32:13):
of podcasts. The thought thatcomes to my mind is I think some
people are not listening back totheir show. They're not
listening to it with a sense oftaste and going, is this getting
better? Could this be better?
Oh, wow. My microphone is wayquieter than my cohost. Oh, man.

(32:36):
My chair is squeaking. There'sthis one podcast I used to
listen to, and the the chairwould squeak all the time.
It's like you got if you'regonna put in the reps, like, put
some more weight on the barbellor whatever and actually improve
and look at what you've done inthe past. Like, okay. Last time
I did 20 reps of this. This timeI'm gonna improve by doing this.

(32:58):
This is one of my worries abouttalking about compounding is I
know people that they've justput in this very minimal effort
their whole life, and theyhaven't received anything of it.
But then they look back and theygo, well, I have 10 years of
this effort. And it's like,well, yeah, you kinda wasted all
that time. You gotta be pushingforward or you're not gonna make

(33:22):
progress.

Jeremy (33:23):
Yeah. This is something I have so many conversations
with people, and it always is ahuge red flag for me when they
say, my show's great. I justneed to know how to promote it.
And to me, instantly, I havenever heard a successful creator
who is satisfied with theirwork. Mhmm.
They're proud of it, but they'renot satisfied. Yeah. There's a
distinct gap between where theyare and where they want to be.
And I think about that witheverything I do. I'm like, okay.

(33:45):
I'm really proud of this showthat we're doing. I'm proud of
my newsletters. And I'm also Iknow. I'm like, I have more that
I could do. And, like, there issomething innate in me.
And I don't know if everybodyhas this. I know I certainly
feel this where I am justperpetually dissatisfied with
the quality of my work. I thinkit's good but I'm like, it's
that Ira Glass quote. It's thegap between your taste which is
up here and your currentabilities. It's the pursuit of

(34:08):
closing that gap that I thinkpropels the people who actually
grow and reach those kind of bigaudiences, the big successes
that, you know, I think a lot ofus are shooting for.
I think that's the driving forcebehind it. And so I think I I
don't wanna say people shouldn'tbe satisfied with their work,
but I think that that is a traitthat I have noticed with
basically everybody who is areally successful creator is,
like, they are always hungry formore. And they're always looking

(34:31):
for ways to push the envelopeand kind of continually to
improve their skill set, theirnetworks, their connections,
what they can invest back intotheir work. And I think that,
you know, that's something thatcertainly compounds over time.

Justin (34:41):
Yeah. I highly recommend people listen to the Ira Glass
episodes of Mike Birbiglia'spodcast, Working It Out. Mike
Birbiglia is a comedian, and IraGlass is his adviser, friend,
but they kind of critique eachother's work and try to make it
better. And just entering intothat world and seeing how people

(35:01):
who are kind of at the top oftheir game, how they try to
level up a bit of comedy or anarrative podcast is so
fascinating. And I think youwould get a sense of, oh, wow,
this is kind of what I should beaspiring to, is, work at this

(35:22):
level and self improvement atthis level.

Jeremy (35:26):
So I think that we could probably talk about compounding
returns and improvement of yourwork and all of these things for
for several hours. But there'sanother side of the idea of
compounding that I think isworth exploring. And this was
actually brought up by alistener who reached out to me
on LinkedIn. His name is NickKorte or Korte, k o r t e. So
shout out to Nick.
We've had a previousconversation a few months ago

(35:46):
around the idea of burnout andcreative burnout in particular.
So there's kind of a timeburnout, and then there's kind
of just a energetic creativityburnout that can happen. And
I've certainly experienced bothversions of that at different
times in my career. I think mostpeople who do creative work or
entrepreneurial work haveexperienced that at some point.
But it got me thinking aboutthis quote by actually bringing
it, back to Warren Buffett, hisbusiness partner, Charlie Munger

(36:07):
Mhmm.
Who has this quote, the firstrule of compounding, never
interrupt it unnecessarily.Mhmm. And this is something that
in the times when I'veexperienced burnout, it's like
you're working really hard andmomentum is going up and then
you hit this wall and you'regoing back down to square 1 and
you've interrupted thatcompounding and all that
momentum has been lost. And so Ithink that this is an

(36:27):
interesting angle to talk abouthere too is that there's
compounding and continuing toput out the work, but there's
also this you don't actuallywanna go so hard that you burn
yourself out, you hit a wall,and now you can't keep investing
into those returns.

Justin (36:40):
Yeah. For myself, I think about this in a much
longer time frame, which is overa lifetime. And Yeah. To me, my
life is just one big marathon,and the point is to keep moving.
So Mhmm.
I wanna have a pace that allowsme to keep moving. Sometimes I'm

(37:01):
sprinting, sometimes I'mwalking, but I'm always moving
if I can. And every once in awhile, you need to stop. That's
true too. Mhmm.
But the idea is that when I dostop, I'm gonna get back on the
horse and keep staying inmotion. So I've learned that you
can cultivate a life of justlike, how can I seek out

(37:26):
interesting people? How can Iseek out interesting
conversations, interestingprojects? I'm gonna have to say
yes to a few and no to many.Right?
That's part of it as well. WhenI hear Charlie's quote, I think
some people could say, well,I've gotta keep the streak
going. You know, it's like, Ican't ever take a break, and I
don't think that's what theanswer is. I think the answer is

(37:47):
you just stay in motion. Right?
Charlie didn't keep making thesame investments in things that
had gone bad. Like, he was like,oh, wait. We gotta stop. We
gotta pull back from investingin that and invest in something
else, but that you're stillmoving forward in that sense. So
don't take this to me and like,oh, I just gotta double down and

(38:09):
keep doing this podcast thatnobody's listening to, and I've
been doing it for 10 years.
But if I just keep going, it'sgonna win eventually. Maybe the
answer is well, maybe you needto stop investing in that
project and start investing insomething else. And you're
continuing the act ofcompounding, but you're cutting
off a bad investment.

Jeremy (38:29):
Yeah. And we're gonna talk more about this, to close
out the episode here, but somany of the skills that you
build in one area or one oneproject are transferable
somewhere else. And so I havehad many projects that on the
surface, it would be easy to saythat they failed where actually,
you know, maybe I didn't make asmuch money as I wanted to. Maybe
I lost money on it. Maybe Iwasted months on a project that

(38:49):
ultimately didn't do anything.
But, basically, every one ofthose projects has given me
something in terms of skills orconnections or something else
that I've been able to take tothe next project. And so one of
the things that I really think alot about now when choosing
projects is, like, how can thisbe a win even if it fails on the
surface? And so there's at least2 objectives. And so this

(39:10):
podcast, I don't think this isgoing to be a massive hit where
we get thousands of listeners oranything like that. It's gonna
be a short run show.
The world of podcasting ispretty small. But for me, one of
the big curiosities is like,I've never created a video
podcast before. Mhmm. So even ifnobody ever listened to the
show, this would be worth it tome because now I've gone through
the process of creating a videopodcast. Yeah.
And we can then talk about,like, we've got to have these

(39:32):
conversations, which we hadmaybe talked a little bit about
here before. And so there'spartly just this relational
aspect of it that, like, it'sworth talking to you every week.
Yeah. If even if nobody listens.And there's all these other
things where I like to reallythink about those early on of,
like, I don't need to killmyself over this one metric of
success because there's allthese other ways that even if
it's not really successfulthere, I'm still gonna come out

(39:53):
ahead.
And so I think that's animportant Mhmm. Context to think
about everything that you'redoing in as well. But then also,
like you said, being willing topull the plug on that project
and take those skills that youlearned and put them somewhere
else.

Justin (40:03):
Yeah. If it's no longer serving you, then get rid of it.
Start something new. I moved tosomething else. That's fine.
And this is from somebody youknow, my 2 of my shows, Build
and Launch and Mega Maker, wereboth on the premise of, like,
Mega Maker was I was gonna makea 100 things in a year. And
sometimes I've looked back onthat and gone, I wasted my time.
Like, what was I doing? That waslike a midlife crisis. I was,

(40:26):
you know, building all thisstuff.
I had this big long list of,over 200 things that people
submitted that I could do. Buton the other hand, now I look
back on it and it was like, atthat time in my life, I was
staying in motion, and I wastrying lots of different things,
meeting lots of interestingpeople, and moving on from
projects. So I would createsomething, build it, launch it,

(40:50):
and then move on. Createsomething, build something,
launch it, move on. And youcan't do that forever.

Jeremy (40:56):
Mhmm.

Justin (40:57):
But in terms of the job it was doing for me, which was
developing skills, getting toexercise my creativity, getting
to meet people, getting topractice building in public,
that experience was veryvaluable. And maybe a 100 things
is a bit too much, but one thingpeople could do every year at
the end of the year is justwrite down what are 10 projects

(41:19):
I would like to try to do thisyear. And they shouldn't all be,
like, ongoing commitments like aweekly podcast. Sometimes it
should just be, like, I'm gonnatry to pitch one idea to a
podcast I really like, or I'mgonna try to get on one show as
a guest. Those are nice littleprojects.
And if at the end of the year,you can go, oh, wow. Look at all

(41:40):
the evidence I have for ways Imoved forward this year. And
that creates momentum, and thatcompounds, you know, as you move
forward on your journey as apodcaster.

Jeremy (41:52):
Yeah. The other thing that I wanna throw in here in
terms of avoiding burnout,playing the long game, and kind
of continuing to move forwardeven if it's not in, you know,
this one specific direction,which might be podcast growth or
business growth or whatever itis. I think that a lot of times
specifically, you're pluggedinto the productivity space.
There's especially if you'replugged into, like, the bro

(42:12):
productivity space, there's thiskind of, like, just do the thing
and, like, wake up at 5 AM everymorning. And, like, you know,
and I bought into a lot of thatstuff in the past.
I mean, like, okay. I'm gonna dothis every day, and this is
gonna what's gonna make mesuccessful. And some of that
stuff can work in the short termto help you, you know, do a
sprint and make some progress.But you start listening to
interviews with any successfulpeople. Like, there are so many

(42:34):
paths to be successful.
And I think that for me, thething that has been most useful
to me is actually kind ofacknowledging, like, where I'm
at creatively and energeticallyand where my interests are and
trusting in that. Mhmm. Andthat's something that I have
cultivated over the years. Ithink it's like the more you
follow that and the more it paysoff, the more you realize, oh,
when I'm feeling a disconnect ora misalignment in some part of

(42:55):
my work, actually, the answer isprobably not to push through. I
think some of there is somediscernment.
There are some things that aregoing to be hard that you do
need to push through. And thereare other things that when you
can kind of get the sense that,like, I'm just not into this
anymore. Like my I don'tactually maybe even want the
result anymore even though Ithink that I should. It's like,
okay. Let's recognize that andlet's say, okay.
Maybe it is time to take a astep back from this. Maybe I

(43:16):
come back this project later.But for now, I'm gonna follow my
interest somewhere else and I'mgonna do something that, like,
feeds me and fuels me. Andthat's actually the thing that
allows you to to play the gamelonger and stay in it and not,
like, bash your head against thewall and quit with frustration
and just be left with a sourtaste in your mouth. And so I've
worked with so many people who,you know, 3, 5 years in totally
reinvent their shows becausethey're just like, this isn't

(43:37):
the show I wanted to createanymore.
And they'll either start new orthey'll rename that one and some
of their audience will come withthem. But I think that that's
something that we're oftenscared to do because it feels
like we've invested so much timein this thing and now we're
stuck doing that forever. Mhmm.And personally, I just have kind
of cultivated the sense ofdetachment for most of my
projects where it's like,whatever. Everything has a kind
of best before date, and I don'tknow when that's gonna come, but

(43:59):
eventually it will.
And when it does, I'm gonna besad. I'm gonna grieve it a
little bit, but I'm gonna belike, okay. Well, I'm gonna let
that go, and it's gonna make wayfor something new. And I think
most creative people, this isthe path that they're on. And so
it's being able to kind ofrecognize and own those moments
and like flow with where yourenergy is going, is a much
healthier way to kind of keep inmotion in the long term.

Justin (44:20):
Yeah. I agree with all of that. That was well said.

Jeremy (44:23):
Alright. So, to close-up the episode here, we've talked a
little bit about some of ourback stories here. So I wanna
get into some of the backstorycreative projects that you've
had that have kind of led you tonow, you know, cofounding a
podcast hosting platform

Justin (44:36):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (44:37):
Being on this podcast here. You've got a kind of got a
currently active newsletter aswell, but I know that you have a
long list of other creativeprojects that have kinda brought
you to this currentcircumstance.

Justin (44:46):
Mhmm. I mean, I think about this, and it's just when
we talk about luck, you know, Iwas lucky. I was born in 1980 in
Canada to 2 parents that reallyencouraged our creativity as
kids. You know, we got our firstcomputer in 1985, and so I had
early access to computers. Andthen I listened to a lot of talk

(45:08):
radio.
I grew up in Alberta, and sothere's just a lot of
conservative talk radio. My dadloved it. Lot of, public radio
too. The other thing about theeighties nineties is we had tape
recorders just sitting aroundeverywhere. And so as kids, we
would pretend to have radioshows all the time, because it
was, like, the funnest thing inthe house.

(45:28):
It was just like you hit recordon this thing, and you can,
like, record a little show andthen play it back and then play
it for your parents. Startedmaking movies in the nineties,
had a VHS camcorder that Ifound. It was, like, producing
all that stuff. Got Got on theInternet in probably 1990.

Jeremy (45:44):
Wow.

Justin (45:44):
Even before the web, the web came when I turned 13, and I
was there for all of that. Ialso grew up in the evangelical
church. And in church, you getso much practice, especially in
evangelical churches with publicspeaking. You just get to speak
all the time. And so there was atime where I was, like, speaking

(46:05):
at least every week publicly,and that really helped me, you
know, to be doing that fromlet's say I started doing that
when I was 15, and it was, like,almost weekly up until I left
the religion in when I was,like, 28.
Like, that's a lot of time to beputting in reps for public

(46:25):
speaking. I did local raveevents. I started a business in
college doing web design andvideo production. I started my
first podcast in 2012. Throughthat podcast, I just met lots
and lots of people.
This guy, Chase, invited me togo to the XOXO Festival in
Portland. That's where I metJohn, my business partner. Him
and I hung out every year afterthat. At this festival, we kept

(46:47):
going back. And then eventually,all of that culminates to the
point where we can launchTransistor.
And then there's, like, amillion other details that
matter. Like, I've been writinga blog since 2008. I've been
sending a newsletter since 2008.I had been building a Twitter
audience since 2012. Like, itwas just, like, every little

(47:08):
thing, every piece of Lego inthe building got put in along
the way and kinda culminates towhere I am today.

Jeremy (47:16):
So one of the things that stands out to me is that no
one of those things is probablyyou can make the argument maybe
that, you know, meeting ChaseReeves and, like, getting
invited to the festival, that isa pivotal moment. But most of
those things, it's like no onething contributed wholly
entirely to your success at anypoint. It's like it's the
accumulation of all these thingsover time. Yeah. And I think

(47:36):
that that's what's frustratingto people when they want that,
like, okay, what did you do toget this?
And you're like, you read offthat list and you're like, well,
this is what I did. I was ayouth pastor and I spoke it when
I was 15. I was speaking everyweek and led to this and this
led to this. And they're like,well, that isn't very helpful.
And it's like, but it's thetruth.
Yeah. And I think, like, that'sthe unavoidable truth for
everyone. There's never onething. And I think a lot of
people, when they find their wayto the show or creative work

(47:58):
that really clicks for them,it's kind of this clear
consolidation of all the stuffthat they've done in the past
where they actually stop doingthe thing they're supposed to be
doing that everybody else isdoing. And they're like, oh, I'm
just gonna do the thing that mywhole life experience has made
me the only person that can do.
Mhmm. And I think, like, whenyou finally own that and settle
into that and maybe even stopresisting that, that's the point

(48:19):
where it's like, oh, now we canactually make some progress

Justin (48:21):
here. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. That's that's how it
works.
And if I was gonna give someblunt kind of advice, I would
say the key really is gettingout of the house, getting out of
your comfort zone, puttingthings out into the world, going
and forcing yourself to meetpeople. The first time I went to

(48:43):
podcast movement, I'm anextroverted person. I'm a social
person. I love meeting people.But I get into my hotel room,
and every part of me isthinking, I don't wanna go out
there and just walk aroundhoping I'm gonna talk to
somebody.
Like, it's awkward. It's hard.Mhmm. But every single time I

(49:05):
pushed myself out of the hoteland I'm not gonna make any
progress in the hotel room, butI'm going to increase the
chances that something couldhappen if I'm walking around and
trying to create someconnections. Unfortunately, for
me, the first three people Itried to connect with, it was
just like they were not funexperiences.
I just felt kinda rejected. Butthat's kinda how it works. You

(49:27):
know? You gotta be willing totake some lumps. You gotta be
willing to get out into thedangerous crazy world and try
some things.
So the evidence is people whoget themselves out there.
They're doing things. They'renot staying in the metaphorical
hotel room.

Jeremy (49:42):
So for mine, I was really curious. I kinda started
writing this list a few monthsago for some workshop that I was
doing. And then I I went back toand realized, oh, there's
actually even more here. So Istarted just writing short
stories as a kid. And so I waslike a reader.
I would wake up, like, at 5 AMevery morning so that I could
get, like, 2 or 3 hours ofreading in before school. Like,
I'd wake up way more before myparents. And I would write as
well. I was back home lastsummer and, my mom pulled out,

(50:05):
like, the the memories treasuresbox. And there were all these
books that I'd never had nomemory of from when I was, like,
6 years old, 7 years old thatI'd written these really silly
little, like, generic stories.
But I was like, k. That'sinteresting. I never really
realized that my, like, love ofwriting went back that

Justin (50:19):
far. Newsletter is so good.

Jeremy (50:22):
Yeah. There's, you know, 30 years of practice almost at
this point.

Justin (50:25):
Just as an aside, I'm I'm just gonna speak to the
listener right now. Listener, Ialways read Jeremy's newsletter,
and I'm always like, how is thisso good? It makes me so jealous
every time I re and he puts themout so frequently, and everyone
is a banger. And I'm he's alwaysgot great metaphors and stories,
and it drives me nuts. Well, nowwe know how you develop that

(50:48):
over time.

Jeremy (50:50):
Yeah. And so that was really as a kid, I started doing
that. I didn't write a lot. Idon't really have that memory,
but, clearly it happened.There's the the evidence to
prove it.
Mhmm. But, in junior high, Istarted experimenting with, you
know, angsty poetry as, manyteenagers do. And so that was
something that I I leaned intothat, and that turned into
songwriting. And so then Istarted playing in, metal and
hardcore bands. And so there'sboth writing music as well as

(51:11):
writing lyrics.

Justin (51:12):
Mhmm. And,

Jeremy (51:13):
the performance aspect of it, I've probably written 7
different blogs. Many of thosewere, like, very short run. Some
of those were longer. Played inmultiple bands, released music,
and wrote music under 4different kind of personal
projects. I produced albums forother people.
So acted as a, you know, in inhindsight, being a producer,
like a record producer, is verysimilar to what I do now with

(51:34):
coaching around podcasting. AndI I only realized that recently.
I was, like, oh, this has alwaysbeen something that I've been
inclined to.

Justin (51:40):
Mhmm.

Jeremy (51:41):
And it's this is just a different manifestation of it.
So I thought that was,fascinating. I wrote a very
short lived philosophy blog,which is also, like, I take that
lens to everything that I do. Iwrote a pretty philosophical
photography blog for a while,which now has come into the
podcasting to some extent. I didseveral different travel blogs.
I was a photographer for awhile. Did, wedding photography.

(52:03):
Did travel photography. I had atravel vlog for a a time, maybe
8 or 10 episodes which, that wasmy first experience video
editing and that was doing allthe filming and b roll and
everything. That was, aninteresting experience.
Learned a lot there. Mhmm. Hada, travel Instagram account. And
so, I don't really talk aboutthis much, but I've traveled
full time for the past 8 years.And so the 1st year or 2 of

(52:24):
that, I was very much wanted tobe some kind of travel vlogger
or vlogger or Instagrammer andmoved on from that at some time.
So I had that whole experienceis also, you know, plays into my
story. And then once I get intopodcasting, I've probably
written, I don't know, 3, 4, 500blog posts on stuff related to
podcasting and marketing. Thisis, I think, the 5th podcast

(52:44):
that I posted. And, I've doneseveral other newsletters and
blogs outside of podcasting.

Justin (52:49):
You know, one thing I just wanna pause on is what's
interesting as I'm hearing you,like, bike trip blog, travel
vlog, travel Instagram. Everytime you started one of those
projects, there was the hopethat this would be the thing.

Jeremy (53:06):
Yes.

Justin (53:07):
But

Jeremy (53:08):
Every time.

Justin (53:09):
Every time. And what turns out what happened is those
weren't the thing, but they ledto the thing that became the
thing. And I think that's that'sinstructive for people is that
they everybody starts projectslike this. Of course, you do.
You're starting it hoping it'sgonna be the thing.
You know? And I've I've got newexperiments I'm trying right

(53:30):
now. I'm hoping they become athing as well. You don't know
until you start it, but they'restill worth doing because as
we'll see, you know, all ofthese things led you to where
you are today.

Jeremy (53:41):
Yeah. And, like, then on top of those things, I've had
many different product launches,and I think that that's the
exact same thing. Every singleproduct launch whenever I
launched the 1st iteration ofPodcast Marketing Academy and
then the 2nd cohort, 3rd cohort,I did 8 cohorts of the the live
cohort style course and thentransitioned it into a
membership community and thenadded on a different kind of
done with you kind of coachinglayer. And every single one of

(54:01):
these I've actually kind ofoutgrown the notion now of,
like, this is gonna be thething. But basically, for most
of my 20 year history creating,I have hoped that every single
touch point I added these up.
There's probably 50 projectshere at this point Mhmm. Of
various, you know, all differentflavors. Every single one was
like, this might be the thing.And you bring that same energy

(54:22):
to it every time. And really,like, at this point, I my
philosophy is like, basically,whatever you're working on right
now, this is not the thing.
Like, the best is yet to comefor most of us. Mhmm. I think
about where I am right now. SoI'm 33 right now. If my history
is any indication, I'm going tobe creating stuff for another
40, 50, 60 years maybe.

(54:42):
Like, what are the odds thatwhat I'm creating now could
actually be anywhere near asgood as the stuff when I have 40
more years under my belt? It'sjust like that you can't even
make that argument. And so I'mlooking ahead and I'm like, this
is all just practice at thispoint. Like, I'm going to enjoy
it. I'm going to hope it's goingto be successful, but there's
still something better that I'mgoing to be able to do in the
future.
And, like, that's really whereyou think about the compounding
returns. It's like, actually, Iwant to do one thing, but I also

(55:04):
want to do a lot of thingsbecause all of these skills kind
of intersect and they make, youknow, whatever that next thing
is even richer and better andand deeper.

Justin (55:11):
Mhmm. I love that perspective. I think I think
that's it. Like, I'm gonna bedoing this for a long time. This
is not the thing, but to enjoyit at the same time.
And it could be the thing.That's the other thing. None of
us know. None of us know whatwill become a thing for a period
of time. It could be this, butit might not.
But it's still worth doingregardless.

Jeremy (55:31):
Yeah. And I think the thing is too that you you don't
know what the thing is gonna be,but you have to almost treat
everything like it is. Like, youhave to bring your full self to
it. Mhmm. And sometimes thatstarts out that you're just
kinda dipping your toe in thewater and experimenting.
And it's like when you feel thatpull and you're like, oh, this
is actually kinda interesting.It's like actually saying like,
okay, I'm gonna give all ofmyself to this project and I'm
gonna see what happens with it.There's no guarantees but like

(55:52):
I'm going to approach it that atleast with the the mindset that
it has the possibility to becomethat thing. And if it doesn't,
that's fine. There will besomething else.
But, I think that that for mehas been really served me really
well from a mindset, perspectiveas well as just kind of continue
to stack those bricks over timewith each and every project.
Mhmm.

Justin (56:09):
Yeah. I love it. I love going through these. It's so
helpful. I think the only otherthing I'll add is I think when
we're talking about putting inthese reps, one way to
accelerate your progress is toget mentorship, is to get a
group of friends who are alsotrying to do interesting things
to critique your work, to helppush you a little bit.

(56:32):
There's many times in my lifewhere I could have gotten better
faster if I had been open tocritique from trusted people.
Yeah. And some of the best timesin my life were I think I've
spoken about this before, but Iwas on a retreat with with James
Clear, the the author of AtomicHabits. And he pulled me aside,

(56:53):
and he said, Justin, I just Ithink the thing you're working
on right now is not gonna getyou where you wanna go. And just
to have somebody be very kind ofclear and blunt with me that you
should stay keep going inmotion, you should keep moving,
but this thing is not gonna getyou where you wanna go, or this

(57:16):
thing could be better.
If you wanna get 2,000 downloadsper episode, you've gotta fix
your sound quality. If you'regonna get to 10,000 downloads
per episode, these episodes haveto be tightened up. They gotta
be more interesting. So to havepeople in your life that can do
that for you, you know, maybe aa secret WhatsApp group where

(57:37):
it's just a group of friends andyou you're just all super honest
with each other, those kinds ofgroups and relationships have
been really helpful for me.

Jeremy (57:46):
Yeah. And you just hear that time and time again
throughout history. You hearabout CS Lewis and Tolkien that
they wrote together and had awhole group that really fiercely
critiqued each other's work.Mhmm. And you hear it again.
Like, Mr. Beast, I know, hastalked about this where he had a
group of YouTubers wherebasically every day all they did
from sun up till sundown wasthey looked into the YouTube
algorithm and they dissecteddissected everything that was

(58:07):
going on. They gave each otherfeedback. They made videos for
months at a time and that wastheir whole life. And you you
just see this trend pop up againand again and again and I think,
you know, feedback for any of usis uncomfortable.
And it's always the thing,though, that is necessary to get
us to that next level. It's veryhard to get there on your own.
None of us can really see theflaws in our work, without an
outside perspective. Mhmm.

Justin (58:28):
From the right perspective. Like, just drive by
comments from people on theInternet. I'm not as interested
in those as somebody who I knowhas good taste, who's done what
I'm trying to do, who isexcellent at their craft, who
can look at me and go, okay. Isee what you're trying to do
there, but here's how toimprove. Here's what you need to
do to get to the next level.

(58:49):
That's what you want. Ignore thehaters on the Internet. So that
we're not telling you to, like,entertain them, but find a
trusted mastermind group or agang of friends who are really
focused on getting better.

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