Celebrating 300 episodes!! (and the lessons I've learned along the way)

🎉 Episode 300 is here! 🎉 This episode dives deep into overcoming fear, trusting yourself, and taking bold action before you feel ready.

If you’ve ever doubted yourself, hesitated to put your work out there, or struggled with perfectionism, this one’s for you.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

🔥 The biggest lie holding you back from starting your thing (and how to crush it)
🔥 Why I killed guest episodes in the past—and what made me bring them back
🔥 The “7 Unstoppable Questions” framework that changed everything
🔥 How to create conversations that keep people hooked
🔥 What Kevin Smith and a $27,000 film can teach you about success
🔥 The secret power of showing up before you're polished or ready
🔥 Why imperfection connects you to people more than perfection ever will
🔥 The truth about why I don’t edit my podcast (and why you might not need to either)
🔥 A direct challenge for you—are you finally ready to start?

👉 Know someone who would be an incredible guest? Or think you have a story worth sharing? Hit me up—let’s make it happen.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

🎬 Slacker (Film by Richard Linklater)
🎬 Clerks (Film by Kevin Smith)

Hashtags:

#EntrepreneurMindset #OvercomingFear #PodcastGrowth #SuccessMindset #AuthenticConversations #FearlessAction #KevinSmithInspo #StartBeforeYoureReady #UnstoppableJourney #RealTalk

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Get on the ELEVATE waitlist right here to be the first to know when enrollment opens AND get exclusive bonuses and offer for waitlist members only!
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Transcript

Hello, Hello! And welcome back to the show all right. This one really is a very, very special show we've got here today. Today is the 300th episode of the podcast Whoa.

oh, hell, yeah. Now that being said, it's not been without its starts. It stops its detours, its evolutions, its changes. But I do want to take a second here to celebrate the fact that we have hit 300 episodes

because I believe the national average for people who started a podcast is about 10 to 15 episodes. It's a very, very sad little number. When you really look at the statistics of how many people start podcasts, and how few episodes they actually release over the course of the lifetime of that particular show.

So I want to celebrate the fact that we've got 300 of them banked so far, and many, many more to come. I feel like I'm just hitting my stride with this really finally settling into who I am, what I want to do with it, how the show is going to grow, and really allowing it to become what I really always wanted it to be from the Get go, which was.

you know, a source of inspiration, source of motivation, a place that you can come into and really connect with like minded people like myself.

and, you know, celebrate life, celebrate the possibility of what we have in front of us and what is available to us, even when we think you know, the world might sometimes be out to get us, even though sometimes we feel like things just aren't stacked in our favor, that's all bullshit, that's all the story. And so that's what I want to compile here in this particular

show. That we do is opportunities for you to see a different perspective in life, an opportunity for you to see that this world is set up design and set up and designed to help you become the best version of yourself, if we allow it to do that for us and not resist it, not fight it, open our minds to the possibilities of what's there and just accept that greatness is here for all of us.

So today, what I want to do is I want to just go back through the history of the show a little bit, and share some of the lessons that I've learned along the way. As I said, I mean 300 episodes. That's a lot. And there's been a lot of variation in that. So I've learned a lot of lessons from that very, very 1st episode up until this one right now. And even like, say, as you know, I'm building for the future. I've learned a lot of things.

not just in terms of recording podcasts. But I'm going to share some of the life lessons I've learned through the podcast that you can apply in so many other areas of your life.

and you know so the very, very 1st one that

I can share. Well, Nope, I'm not even going to go do that yet. I'm not going to jump into that yet I almost skipped ahead.

Let me back up here and

share with you where the idea of the podcast came from.

If you know I've been around for a while. You may have heard me share some of this story. You probably even heard me share some of these stories I'm going to share here in the podcast over the evolution of the show, but never in this grouping and not in this particular format. So but if you have been around for a while. You know. I'm a huge Kevin Smith. Fan, he's my. He's my favorite writer, director. He wrote movies like dogma chasing Amy clerks is, you know, one of his most popular ones.

but many, many movies that I just loved back in the nineties early, 2 thousands, some of the stuff later. Now, kind of mixed reviews on. But I still love the dude. He's still an awesome, amazing, inspirational guy for me. He shows me what's possible sometimes, if you just go out there and you try

but I've always been a big fan of his. And what he did was he he got into podcasting way way back the very, very early, early stages of podcasting, he actually started his podcast back in 2,007. So long before podcasting was famous. He was one of the first, st probably 5 or 10 people to even have a podcast, if my understanding of the the format is correct. But I know he was way, way, early adopter. And

he has just loved this format. He's loved, you know podcasting. He shared the his love for it for for many, many years. And I've listened to his podcast for quite a long time. Or did you know, when he was really active with it.

his specific. Podcast this is modcast, I think, is what it's called. But him and Scott Mosher. They used to get on there every week and just have conversations, you know. Talk about what's going on in life, and it was hilarious. It was fun. I really enjoyed it, and he used to talk on there all the time about everybody should have a podcast because what he was able to do was build a business outside of his.

You know, film career. He was able to build a business around, sitting around talking to his friends because he had that particular, podcast you know, podcast with Scott, Mosher, then he had podcasts with his other friends, and he had some of his friends, you know, had their own, podcast, that he was kind of supporting and helping to produce. And so he built a major business just off of podcasts.

and it was just again amazing opportunity for him and his friends just to hang out and talk and share the things that they loved and really enjoyed, and record those conversations for history, and connect with people all across the world, through those conversations, and sharing the things that they loved.

So he talked often. You should have a podcast everybody should have a podcast it's cheap. It doesn't cost hardly anything to do. You can upload it. And again you've got these conversations forever. And a 1 specific conversation he talked about was interviewing his mom. He's like, you know, after she's long dead and gone.

I'll have this conversation with her recorded that I can go back and listen to, and just hear her voice and hear that connection that she and I had, and he got to interview her and ask her a lot of things that he never would have brought up necessarily just in a regular sit down. Dinner conversation necessarily, but really had an amazing conversation with her, and had an amazing connection with her that he'll be able to cherish forever.

So I love the idea. I love the concept of having a podcast but

I myself just was not able to really come up with what I. Thought was a novel idea, something that was going to be a little different than everybody else, and something that made me stand apart from all the other podcasts that are already out there. By the time that I was really leaning into the possibility of doing it.

And what happened was

lots of podcasts out there. And I became a regular consumer of podcast listening to multiple podcasts a day not just Kevin's podcasts, but other podcasts that help. You know me understand different ideas and concepts. You know, I was doing entertainment podcasts, but also a lot of business con, you know, business podcasts, a lot of podcasts that really helped me grow and evolve. As a person. You know my personal development journey and the things that I was leaning into, and possibly looking towards

in terms of a business. So I was listening to these every day. And what I realized after a while was, I was consuming too much. I was consuming 2, 3 podcasts a day.

sometimes double, speeding them, you know, to get through them and just get more and more and more information. I was treating it like I was fucking neo in the matrix, you know, where they just like download shit into his brain, and instantly he knows it. I thought. That's I thought I could absorb information that way, and turns out I can't. I can listen to it all, but it doesn't actually sink in. I'm not able to actually hold on to it and apply it in the world by consuming that much information.

And what I realized

what was going to be a better way for me to consume, you know, podcast was to go through and listen to a podcast and if I got to a point where I heard a very specific

nugget. If I heard one certain idea or one concept that really jumped out at me. I was like, man. That is really good. That's something that's really important for me to hold on to and really apply into my life. I would stop the podcast and stop listening, and then just try and

repeat that, repeat that concept over and over and over in my brain. Talk about that! That thought over and over my brain. Just hold on to that thought as long as I could. And in my mind, how can I apply this? Where can I apply this today? What can I do to use this this concept today, and just keep stopping every time like, say, I would get to that one concept a day.

What happened as is after a while, I was like, you know what. Wait a minute. This could be a great concept for a podcast

instead of all the other people out there that, you know, are doing like me and going through and listening to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. However, many podcasts wasn't that many. But you know listening to multiple podcasts a day, or trying to consume a ton of information every single day and get something out of it. How about I do that you know to a certain degree, or, as I am picking up each one of these nuggets every day that I'm listening to these podcasts, how about I just share that nugget in a more condensed form, or spend more time

sharing this singular piece of information and digging a little bit deeper into that specific idea, because not only does that help the person that I'm sharing this information with, you know, by

siphoning down all this information into just one specific nugget they can take. But it's also helping me to understand. It's helping me to apply it and learn it on a much deeper level, because now I'm turning around and teaching somebody else, and they say that is one of the best ways. To learn something is to teach it to somebody else. So that was a beautiful benefit for me, and that is where the podcast was born.

I decided, this is my calling. This is what I want to do. And so what I did all the way back. On February 13, th 2020, I launched the very 1st episode of what was then called the Daily Dose with James Dunn. The episode was called no excuses, and what that particular episode was

was me just diving right into the idea. Once I locked onto the idea of this is what I want to do. This is how I want to do it. This is the idea that I feel really, really good about. I didn't want to waste a bunch of time. I didn't want to

hold off and try and talk myself out of it, you know. Start doing the big questions that we always run into when we start something. There's like Whoa! Who am I to do this? What makes me think I'm smart enough to do this? And people are going to listen to it, and they think I'm stupid. And all these thoughts that you know would generally run through our heads when we try and do something new. I didn't want to waste any time and allow any of that bullshit to creep in. So what I did was went on to Google.

searched out, you know, searched up, you know. Hey, how do you start a podcast how do you record a, podcast how do you this whatever did some quick research got just the basic information that I needed and recorded an episode almost immediately. I didn't have a I didn't have a microphone like, you know, if you, you watch some of the video clips. Or you see the video version of this episode. I didn't have a microphone like I do today.

I didn't have a professional professional microphone. That is what I did have, though, was a phone.

And you know what I learned when you're researching how to record a podcast all you need is some kind of a microphone to record. You doesn't have to be professional, anything like that. But I had a phone that had a memos app. I had a I think that's where I recorded it. But anyway, I was able to record the 1st episode on my phone, and I even talked about that in the episode because I was like, I don't need to wait for an idea for a podcast I'm just saying, hey, this is me. I'm starting a podcast. It's going to.

I'm going to fuck things up. I'm going to confuse things. I'm going to say some things are pretty dumb. You're probably going to think I'm pretty silly about certain things. The sound quality has not been great. But I'm going to learn. I'm going to grow from this. I'm going to experience this along with you, and you can kind of come along on my journey as we learn things. And as we grow

through this particular experience. And that's what the episode was about. I just got my phone out, took the microphone like, you know, the little headphones that you get with your phone, put those in. Just so I had a specific microphone and not just talking at the block. You know of my phone, whatever you want to call it. But I just took it and started recording, you know. And so that is the 1st lesson that I want to share with you like. The 1st major lesson I really want to point out is.

don't wait till things are perfect. Don't wait for the exact right time. Once you've got a great idea. Once you feel really good about something, just dive into it. You know, I could have waited until I got

the thumbnail, you know, created for the podcast I don't know for sure if I had a name for the podcast at the time. But I could have, you know, could have waited until I created a thumbnail for the, podcast you know, the the cover graphic of the podcast I could have waited until I got a name for the podcast I could have waited until I had the perfect sound system set up, and the perfect microphone and all these other things. I could have waited for all that bullshit, but I would not have had that momentum. I would not have been able to just ride into that

wave, you know, of emotion that would have gotten things started, I would have been pushing things off, and when you push things off, the longer you push things off the less likely are to happen.

So when you get that sense of inspiration, when you get that that feeling like yes, this is it. Just go for it, as I said in the very 1st episode, the title of it was no excuses. When you get that feeling, just start, just go for it.

and that's what I did. As I said, I started that very 1st episode, the very 1st one was February the 13, th 2020. I did not realize it was just a little over 5 years ago, when that very 1st episode happened, but started recording and releasing episodes every single day.

So, as I said, that was my concept, I'm going to do a daily podcast every single day. I'm going to put an episode out. I'm not going to make them super long. I'm looking at some of these 1st episodes. 1, st one was 7 min, 6 min, 11 min, 6 min, 7 8, you know. So less than 10 min long. It really was just one simple little nugget, and that actually includes intro and outro, which is probably a minute of itself, but just just simple, simple little ideas, simple little nuggets that people could easily absorb. It didn't have to be. This big, long drawn out

conversation didn't have to be this really deep dive into anything. It was just a very simple concept that you, the listener, could take and

and try and apply into your life, you know, because I as much as I love

some longer form conversations like Joe Rogan. The dude has 2 and a half, 3 h. Long conversations with people I love those.

but we don't all have 2, 3 h to sit and listen to. Some people talk. And you know a lot of the podcasts that I listen to that were informative. They were even hour long podcasts. And we don't necessarily even have an hour to sit down sometimes and listen to these things, at least not with our full attention.

You know we can listen to things in the background. But are you really getting the basis of the information? Are you really getting the true depth of what people are trying to share. If you're having to sit for an hour, or if you're listening for an hour in the background of you know your world and not

actually focused on it, not truly listening to it, focused intently on that specific piece of information. So that was the benefit of the really short episodes was you could really hone in you? Could you could sit down for 10 min, listen to what these things were and go with it. So that's that's what I did. I went and did those for for quite a while. I'm actually kind of scrolling through here as I'm recording this episode, just to see

you know how things were going.

What I did realize, though very, very quickly. Looks like a maybe just like a month and a half into that that

a daily episode was going to be a lot, you know, because again, I was consuming a lot of podcasts, but trying to consume all that and come up with new fresh ideas like, how am I going to do this man? This is going to be something that's gonna be pretty challenging.

And so what I ended up doing was about a month and a half in on. Looks like March the 30.th I started rolling in some guest episodes.

So again, my initial foray into the podcast space was, I'm just going to share these specific pieces of information that I've come up with, share these nuggets for you. But realizing that I needed to expand, you know my my reach, expand. What I was sharing on the on the podcast I had been going through. This was all

as we're going through the pandemic. Obviously.

But I created a pod, not a. Podcast I created a Facebook group

called turning the outbreak into opportunity. And what I did inside of that Facebook group was, I put together a community of people who were coaches and fitness instructors and things like that, because at the beginning of the pandemics, you know, we can look back and laugh or be frustrated, pissed off about it either way. But what happened at the beginning of the pandemic. As you will remember, we were told it was going to be a 2 week, you know. Everybody's gonna shut everything down for 2 weeks, and then we're going to go back to our normal lives. Everything's gonna be wonderful.

So I immediately almost probably was able to recognize very, very, very quickly, either way, that this was an amazing opportunity for people to step back, take a look at their lives and reevaluate. Say, Hey, am I on the path that I want to be on? Do I need to reevaluate where things are going? Do I need to pivot? Do I need to shift. You know. How often in life do we get 2 full weeks to sit at home, think about our lives.

and you know, without the holidays, without everything else, without all the craziness going on. We were all like locked in our homes alone. Basically. So how often do you have that chance to just sit back and review your life and see if you want to do something different. See if maybe there's a change that you need to make when things restart.

So what I did was I put together a Facebook group, as I said, turning that break into opportunity. And I had coaches come on every single day for that 2 weeks in the morning I had fitness coaches coming on, taking people through live trainings

or not live trainings like, but live workouts, and, you know, like different styles of workouts. So if you didn't like Yoga, that's okay, because tomorrow I've got somebody's gonna do a Kettlebell work out. If you don't like Kettlebell workout. That's okay, because I got somebody else doing something else. And I had it just all kinds of different people doing those every morning, and then every afternoon. What I did is I brought in a coach to talk to you about

different opportunities like either in your business or your mindset or your relationships, or something. But just

what I wanted to do was give people an hour every single day, roughly 45 min to an hour, every single day of something good, to listen to, something positive, something to help them grow and focus on what was possible and what the potential was in their life, instead of

feeling they were trapped and like they were stuck and like, Oh, this is terrible! And oh, my God! People are dying, and we don't know what's going on. I I wanted to give people that information on a daily basis, and obviously, as we know, after the 2 weeks was over. We rolled on much, much further than that. So I ended up expanding that group

and took it for I think probably almost 2 months. Maybe. I don't remember exactly, but it'll pop up in here anyway. I say all that, because what happened was, I started taking some of those conversations from that group and then sharing them in the podcast.

and so maybe that's another lesson. Here is.

things will evolve. They're going to grow. They're going to change a little bit, and you don't have to stick with exactly

what you started with. You know, I started with this idea of. I'm going to give you just this one single daily Nugget, small, tiny little nugget. But I realized in a very short period of time that man this is gonna be a lot more challenging than I realized it was going to be. And that's okay. Let's evolve it. Let's change it. Let's let's add something different. And so I started peppering in. These conversations looks like, I started doing them every other. Yeah, I think it was a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That's what I would do for the

for the podcast I would drop those in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you know. So every every couple of days, I would drop in those longer conversations.

and, you know, just allowing the podcast to evolve.

It's 1 of those things that as you get into anything, you're going to, learn, you're going to grow, you're going to recognize that things don't work out exactly how you always plan them. And that's okay. You can change, you can grow, you can evolve.

And so we ran with the podcast

scrolling up here. Now see how far we got.

Where did we go? Okay? Looks like, I made it all the way to June.

June of 2020. So it looks like it made it a little over 2 months.

Before I before I went fishing, and that's an inside joke here. What I did on June 26th of 2020 was, I put the put the podcast on pause.

I realized again, as I said, that that daily concept was gonna be a lot more than what I was expecting. It was gonna be a lot more work than I thought it was going to be.

And even with, you know, filtering in, you know. Yeah, filtering in those

long conversations that I had over my Facebook group once that shut down

at the time. I can look back now and see. See. At the time I wasn't really feeling comfortable with doing interviews with people. I was really nervous about that. What I had liked about the longer conversations that I had been filtering in was, it was a little more. Hey! Let me turn this over to you and kind of let them run. And they kind of did their things. They shared some information.

but I didn't really feel comfortable doing a lot of deep interviews like I had seen or listened to. And so I just decided in June of 2020, to put the podcast on pause.

there's another lesson we can say right. There is as things grow and as things evolve as you see things going along, if they don't turn out to be the way that you want to be. It's okay to step back. It's okay to say, you know what. Maybe this isn't working for me. Maybe this isn't what I wanted it to be

because I was enjoying it. But it wasn't what I originally thought it was going to be.

It was much, much more work, as I said, it was much, much more work. I wasn't having quite as much fun with it. My life wasn't in a situation where

I was making it a priority where I was making sure to set aside time to do this.

And so it just became overwhelming, became too much. I wasn't having fun with it. And too often what happens is, once we've started something we're afraid to stop, because then we're afraid people are going to judge us. They're going to say, oh, he failed at this. He didn't do that. But I mean honestly, if I don't think I knew what the statistics were for podcast way back then, because then I could have still been pretty happy. I don't know what the number of episodes up to that point was because they don't list the numbers

specifically here on the titles anymore, apple and all those people got rid of those.

But it was well past that 10 numbers well past that 20 number. It was a pretty solid number. When you look at it almost daily podcasts for 3 months, I mean, we had to be at least 90, almost maybe 100 episodes by that point, and I was getting a lot of downloads. I was getting some great feedback on it. So it wasn't a situation where people weren't enjoying it. It was just simply a situation of it felt overwhelming to me at the time.

So don't fear, don't fear stopping something that's not working for you.

you know I could. As I said, I could have worried about what people were going to think, and I'm sure there was a part of me that did wonder what people are going to think like. Oh, my God! But I told myself, I knew that at some point I would want to bring the podcast back wasn't sure when, wasn't sure how, wasn't sure what it would look like. But I had a pretty strong feeling that I would want to bring it back at some point I just knew at that point I needed to take a break, and that's what I did. I took a nice little break, and, to be exact, almost

3 years to the day I took a break. I didn't expect it to be that long of a break, but that's what it turned out to be

somewhere early, ish 2023.

I had a friend, you know, who was listening to some of the old episodes of the podcast they had discovered it long after the fact, and they were listening to the episodes of the podcast really digging them, really loving them. I'm like James, man. When you bring that podcast back. Man, I love them. These are awesome digging them.

I was like, I don't know man. Eventually, maybe I'll get it back to it. I keep thinking about it and like, Oh, man, it's cool, it's cool. It's got to do it. And then, you know, over and over and over and over, they kept asking like man, when are you going to do the podcast, again, when you do the podcast, again, so it just it kept sticking to my head like maybe I should. Maybe I should, because I was feeling a little bit more called back to it feeling a little better about the idea of doing it. And so I did again, on June 11, th 2023,

I relaunched the podcast the episode. I actually called it the perfectly imperfect relaunch, and I don't remember specifically what I put on there, but probably very similar to the very 1st episode, you know, saying that, hey? Things aren't going to be perfect.

Obviously I had better equipment at the time, but

I'm sure that more than likely I just got on there and said, Hey, you know this has changed. It's evolved.

I know by I maybe even at that point

had called it the James Dunn show. I know it wasn't the daily dose anymore. I'm sure I talked about that that was going to change, that. It wasn't going to be a daily show anymore. It looks like, yeah, we started going once a week, episodes on there.

but

not being afraid to change things, not being afraid to pivot and shift and do what I felt more called to do.

That's what we want to lean into is just trusting your gut and doing what you got to do to what maybe works best for you.

and that's what I went through. Is that perfectly imperfect relaunch I called it the I'm pretty sure I call it the James Dunn show, because it it updates things as as we move forward. So I'm just kind of scrolling through and seeing things here. Oh, wait. Maybe I even 7, 2, 7, 16. Yeah, I don't know, because then I got a new beginning on 7, 16,

so maybe I was just kind of teasing some of these episodes, you know, there's still 1415 min.

anyway. Anyway.

it all came back. It all started going again. And so yeah, I got back into the podcast but, as I can see here.

I was a little. No, I think I'm pretty good with it. For a little while I got a little sporadic sort of missing a couple of spots in here. So again, apparently wasn't quite fully there.

But let's see, how do we get up to all right, cruising, cruising, cruising, and ending in June

23. Okay, okay, so it looks like I rolled it up through the end of 2023, and then added another little shift in here, another little tweak to this.

And so what I did was I was doing the regular episodes, and then I tweaked it again. We're evolving. We're learning, we're growing. We're trying things. And what I wanted to do, I remember now is I wanted to boost the downloads on the podcast I wanted to see what I could do to maybe get a spike in the downloads and really ramp those up. And so what I started doing was at the beginning of 2024 on January 1, st 2024, to be exact.

I started recording the daily dose episodes again. This one. I actually came up with the idea of what I called a micro episode. So these episodes, I mean, you're going to. Maybe even laugh is, some of these episodes were

20 seconds long, 26 seconds long, 27 seconds long. So they were the

the tiniest little bit of inspiration. These didn't even really go deep into

concepts, and I guess maybe they did. It was more almost like an inspirational quote, a motivational quote, something just to start your day. So when you woke up and you were feeling kind of blah, or you just wanted to start today off of something positive. I had these daily dose quotes basically is what I was releasing every single day. And then I would also kind of filter in once a week. Oh, no, I didn't. No, I didn't. Okay, I take that back. I thought I was doing me.

yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah, I did. Okay, there it is. I couldn't read the minutes or seconds.

But yeah, I was doing the daily dose episodes.

And then also, I was once a week having the regular episodes. That's what I was okay. See, I was doing daily dose episodes and the weekly episodes of either the James Dunn show. I think that's what I was calling it. I don't think I was unsure to unstoppable just yet. Maybe I did. Who knows?

Anyway.

I saw that there was an opportunity for something different. I tested something different. So there's another lesson we can take from this is again, as we talk about growing and evolving, trying different things, seeing what works I tossed in these daily dose episodes because I wanted to boost the downloads as I shared with you, I wanted to try something different, like, Hey, what can I do

to boost the number of episodes. And this is something that I could have looked and said, Man, nobody out there is recording 20 fucking one second long podcast episodes. What the fuck stupid shit is this, I could have thought that I could have felt that I could have worried about what people were thinking about that kind of stuff, I said, no man, I I personally thought it was a great idea. I still think it's a great fucking idea. It's 1 of those things that

I love to have a nice, positive comment, a nice, positive quote, something to start my day with. Just some little, you know. It's almost like a daily quote calendar kind of thing, but instead of reading it off of a

lifeless piece of paper, you got to hear my beautiful sexy voice

share these beautiful pieces of inspiration, and I didn't stutter in them, and I didn't fuck them all up. But you got to hear my voice sharing these pieces of information sharing these pieces of inspiration to you each and every morning, and if you maybe needed a bigger boost, you could just, you know, run through 4 or 5 of these in a, you know, back to back format. You could go back and listen to multiples, but I was recording them for every single day of the week, so the people could have that.

and again, didn't worry about what people thought. So let go of what other people might think, because I you know, I got a lot of people really enjoyed those. They really dug those

thanks

and scrolling here through some more. And so we're cruising up through February 24, March 24. 0, did I drop the

Nope still going? 1 min, 25. So yeah. But still cruising on, still doing these. Still.

you know, keep them plugging away, doing the thing, enjoying it

daily. Dose. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What do we got here? Scrolling on up through April.

Yeah, we're coalition. Now, one thing I did not do.

Guess I can go ahead and kind of talk about it here as well while I'm still doing these is.

I did not do interview episodes, because again, man, I was still just not really feeling myself in terms of being a great interviewer in terms of being somebody that not that I couldn't have a conversation with somebody, but just my particular background, and my experience in life had been a lot more of. I am fantastic, I believe, when I'm in a room with somebody, when I'm a conversation with somebody and somebody else is kind of leading that conversation

on a certain level, because what happened in my youth I've shared in the past. You know, my dad being an alcoholic one of the things that I grew up dealing with was him and his alcoholic tantrums, and how I learned to manage that particular situation and manage the energy of that situation was I just shut up and let him ramble.

because the more he talked, the more tired he got, and the sooner he would pass out more often than not. So I learned that if somebody talks to me and I respond, then it's going to draw that out. And then I'm gonna have to sit there and deal with bullshit.

so that that kind of fucked with me on a certain level

in terms of my belief, and in terms of trying to carry conversations.

And so that that rolled over. You know we don't. We don't realize a lot of these things carry over into the daily folds of our life.

But yeah, they do talk about these things from childhood and my teenage years, things like that. But I wasn't doing any of the interview episodes, and that was something that I really really had wanted to be a part of this show. I had always wanted the interview episodes to be a part of the show, because

another one of the things that I wanted to share, not just the nuggets was, you know, as I evolved with this was, I want to share stories of what people were doing in their lives, the challenges they had gone through and what they had overcome. And and maybe that's where

maybe that's where.

this thing evolved. Because I'm not sure exactly when we switched to the unsure, to unstoppable. Podcast I'm reading. But somewhere around April it looks like April 30th of 2024, I put the podcast on pause again. What! The fuck man? Oh, my God! How dare I? What the fuck am I thinking, how dare I pause something again? What are people going to think about me?

I chose again, not to worry about that. This is my podcast? I get to run it. However, the fuck I want to do it. I get to start and stop it anytime. I want to do it, and not that I want to leave you hanging. Not that I want to leave you just dangling out there wondering what the fuck's going on, but

in today's day and age. We realize that mental health is a massive priority. And if we need to stop things, we need to stop things. You know, there is this debate and kind of go back and forth on. Well, should I keep working? Should I keep doing it? And there are times when you should push through? You should keep going through

and I can look back now at the daily dose way back when and there's a part of me that wished to God that I kept going because the spike that I had in terms of the downloads at that time.

you know, and how they kind of tapered off, obviously for quite a while for a couple of years, because I I left but just wondering where the podcast would be if I had kept that initial momentum and not stopped it. Not just once, but now twice as I'm sharing here with you on April 3, rd the 2024, you know. If I hadn't stopped it twice, you know. Where would I fucking be if I had kept it going from that whole? Get go 5 years ago? What's the number of downloads. What's the number of impact I could have had? What would life look like with this podcast if I had not stopped it? But

I knew in my heart of hearts at that time. That's what felt right for me, and you can't go back. You can't change that. You can't do anything different about it. I can just look at it and say, Okay, moving forward, what do I want to do? What do I want to learn from that particular experience. And that is that I enjoy doing the podcast I love doing the podcast. I've just got to figure out a system that works for me, a pattern of time, blocking, of generating content, of what to put together, to really have an impact

on the messages that I'm sharing with you that will help you to be the best that you can be, and to maybe get some great value out of these episodes. And that's really what happened again back in April of 2024, you know, last year was falling into that traps like fuck man again. I'm just not. I'm not setting myself up to succeed in this process. I'm not.

I didn't learn my lesson from the 1st time I I'm

I can be pretty fucking. Pig headed about things I can take a few times to learn things. And if there's 1 1 challenge in my life that I really want to continue to work on, it's learning the lesson the 1st time, not having to do things the second time, the 3rd time, the 4th time before I'm like, Oh, that's the fucking lesson I needed to learn from this. It's really grabbing those lessons much, much earlier. So

when you have a situation where things don't go the way that you want them to go, or that you would hope that they would go really, take some time to evaluate that, and ask yourself, why why did this not go the way that I wanted to go. What could I learn from this? What is a better outcome that I could have gotten or could get in the future if I try something differently, give yourself that time.

There's there's a great saying that I've heard now, and it's called the postmortem. So anytime you do anything, really give yourself that postmortem. So when the event is over, when that specific situation is done, take the time to sit down and evaluate. How did it go? What went? Well, what didn't go? Well, what could we do better?

What do we want to keep doing, you know, and really figure that out? Because then that will help you shorten that learning curve that I unfortunately, you know, drug out over and over, and over and over again. But you can shorten that to almost nothing. If you take that time to evaluate both how things went well, how they didn't go! Well, what you can continue to do to make sure they continue to go well, and what you could do differently, to make sure they don't go as poorly, maybe, as they did in the past, or didn't go the way that you wanted them to in the past.

But if you keep jumping from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing without stopping and looking and figuring those things out. That's when you fall into the trap of what I did, which was repeating the same issues over and over and over and over, not learning a lesson because you're never taking the time to figure out what the fuck happened. You're never saying, oh, this is why this succeeded. This is why this thing failed. This is why it didn't work the way that I wanted it to. This is why I, fucking, blew things up in an amazing way. You know.

you've got to take the time to look at those on a very

minute scale, really get deep down into this, and really try to figure out as much as you can from it, and then apply that moving forward. That is the best and the fastest way to grow your life. To do the things that you want to do

in a much happier, easier way is by taking that time to learn from the past.

So

then, what we got here? November 25, th 24, I'm back, I've relaunched the podcast for the 3rd time.

So maybe there's another lesson here is I don't give a fuck what people think about me again. As I said, how many times I stop this, how many times I start this.

I know what I want to do. I know what my goal is with this, and so I brought it back again. I didn't worry about. Are people going to come back, you know? Are people going to think, man, why does this guy keep stopping? Starting? Chances are there's a ton of fucking people out there that don't even know I, fucking stopped it. If I hadn't told you right now, you may not even know that I'd started it and stopped it twice.

But that's okay. You can start things. You can stop them. You can do whatever you want to do. Will you lose momentum. Yes. Will you lose followers? Yes. Will things not maybe be as big as you want them to be? Because you have started and stopped it and started and stopped and all that fuck. Yeah, but that's okay. Again, you've got to do what you feel is right for you just learn.

Don't stop just because it gets hard. That's not the reason to stop. Just stop it if it's not living up to what you want it to. And you feel like it's just not working for you trying to figure out the best way to express this.

But it's really understanding that things aren't always going to be easy. Things are going to be challenging sometimes. And that's okay. That's where the growth comes from. That's where we learn if we take the time to stop and learn. But that's where we learn if we again take that time to stop and look at things.

But if we just give up every time everything gets hard. We're never going to learn anything, so trust yourself. Trust your gut, know when it's time to actually quit something, move on to something different, and know when it's time to take a break, and know when it's time to restart, know when it's time to step back up to the plate and do the thing.

So, as I said, November no, September brought brought the podcast. Back, and we have been rolling pretty much consistently ever since then I'm pretty excited. I'm pretty excited about. You know where things are going, you know, as I shared just a few minutes ago.

I didn't

bring in interview episodes, and that was something that actually, I did do. And I think about back about after I did the second launch, I did bring in a couple of interview episodes, because I knew that's something that I wanted to do.

But I didn't stay consistent with it. I didn't again set up a system that was going to make it very easy to get guests on the show, even though I know a ton of fucking amazing people that would love to be on the show that I would love to have on the show that I would have great conversations with. I didn't trust myself. I didn't believe in myself, and my ability to do that on a really great scale, on you know how to do that and make it really entertaining, really worthwhile.

So I didn't. I stopped it. I dropped them, and I started doing just the singular episodes again. But what I'm here to announce right here right now. I've teased it a little bit over some episodes here in the last couple of months is that you know I'm going to be bringing you back some guest episodes, and I am currently recording them right now. Fuck, yeah, what

they are being recorded as we speak, I'm getting episodes lined up. I've got guests lined up and reaching out to a lot of people and making this happen. And so I'll just share with you how I kind of finally overcame this idea of not wanting to have guest episodes

again. The fear in me was, I don't know what I'm going to ask him. I don't know where the conversation is going to go, and maybe that's some of the beauty of it. Maybe some of the benefit of it is not knowing where it's going to go, because again, I can have a great conversation with these people that I bring on the show. There's 0 question about that anytime. I hop onto a 15 min connection. Call with somebody. What we what we say is going to be a 15 min call. It ends up, turning out to be an hour long conversation, but my fear was always.

Would that conversation be worthy of somebody wanting to sit down and listen to? So what I did to help my help me overcome my fear of what can I bring to this interview? Style is? I created a list

of my 7 unstoppable questions, and these are very specific questions that I think you the I almost said the reader. You, the listener of this, podcast. Would really like to know about people who have been through challenges, who've been through struggles who have overcome them and become very successful in their in their world. You know whether that be successful as a stay at home parent, whether that be successful as a business person, whether it be successful in a relationship, whatever success looks like to them.

They've gone through their challenges. They've gone through their struggles, and they've come out better on the other side for those challenges and struggles. And so I created a list of specific questions that I wanted to ask these people

and share those answers with you. Let them tell their story to you through those answers, and having those 7 questions as that starting framework allows me then to pivot, to shift and to take off on little tangents

so we can tell stories, and I can ask other deeper questions beyond those immediate questions, but that was the framework that I was missing in the beginning was my fear of. Well, what if I I don't? I don't want it to be feeling static. I don't want to feel stale. I don't want it to feel like it's the same shit over and over and over again, but each person who comes into this conversation is going to have a different story. It's going to be very unique to them. And again, I have the ability to to flow this conversation any way that I want it to go.

So I'm really excited about those episodes. I'm really looking forward to getting those out there. They're going to start here very soon. I haven't picked a specific date to drop the 1st one yet. I did at least want to wait for this particular episode to be recorded to hit the 300. This is Sparta. Oh, sorry got distracted, but I wanted to hit this episode for sure before I started dropping the interview episode. But you will see those coming up here very, very soon. We're very excited for that.

and if you know somebody who you think you'd be a great fit for the show man? Reach out and let me know, or if you think you might be a great fit reach out. Let me know. I love hearing people's stories. I love hearing again the challenges, the struggles they've gone through, not because I want to hear your challenges and struggles

that you had to go through that. But I look at those again as beautiful blessings. I know my challenges, my struggles, even though I wouldn't wish them on. Anybody have been some of the greatest blessings that I've ever had in my life, and so I love to hear those stories from people. So if you know somebody, send them my way. Let me know if you are somebody. Hop on over, drop me a DM. Let me know about it. I would love to hear your story and see what kind of lessons we can share with the world, and how you can impact them on my platform. I would love that opportunity.

so I hope you got some lessons that you can take yourself. I hope you have some great nuggets out of this longer conversation than I used to do on the daily dose episode. But through my trials and tribulations and my ups and downs and my struggles and challenges with the podcast I hope you were able to pull some things out of that story and those challenges that you can utilize in your life. That's again, what I want to share about is, that's what this podcast. Is all about. I just want to share stories.

share pieces of information, to help you grow, to be the become help, you become the very best that you can be, and, as you see, right there, I don't edit these episodes. Some of you probably wish I would edit these episodes, but I don't edit them because I feel it's more natural for me when I'm a lazy. I'm not gonna say I'm lazy.

I don't want to spend the fucking time editing the episodes. I don't want to fucking. Pay somebody time to spend the episodes. That's why I don't edit these fucking episodes, but also because I know if I don't edit these episodes, and you hear me stomp, if you hear me stutter, if you hear me get tongue tied, or get completely fucking lost on an idea or something I'm trying to say.

Then you yourself you can be like man, this this Yahoo! He's he's out here doing his thing. I I can do that fuck. That's easy. And if I want to bring this back full circle to

Kevin Smith. That's

part of his inspiration, you know. He started his film career after watching the movie slacker. So he was a huge movie fan just like myself. He'd been watching movies, loved them. And then he went to see this movie slacker by Richard Linklatter.

And it was A. It was an Indie movie, and it was pretty much just dialogue. It was just people talking. There was no real action to it, just people talking through the whole movie. And when Kevin

watched that movie. He's like, Wait, this is a movie fuck. I can do that. And so that's what he did. He went on to make clerks, which was shot in the convenience store that he was working in at the time. He did it after hours, just him and his buddies, and it was pretty much the talking film, you know, just conversations back and forth, and they talked about some of the things they that he loved, you know. He peppered that into the storylines, but just created this little world right there. And

so so many other filmmakers have done something very similar. They've seen his movie and said, well, fuck man, he can make that if that's a movie. And it went on to be extremely successful, I can do the same thing. So this is why it's so important to put yourself out there before you're polished before you're looking

perfect, and everybody thinks you've got all your shit together. When you have flubs. When you have flaws in what it is that you're putting out there. People see that you are real and it inspires them. It motivates them. It helps them to feel like they have an opportunity. They have a chance to do the same things that you were doing. So

don't wait until everything's perfect. Get started. Get your shit out there right now. Allow people to see the flawed version of you because they're going to connect with you even more.

We have such a hard time. At least I do. I imagine you might as well, when I see somebody who's got the perfect lighting in their videos, or if they've got the perfect sounding intro to their podcast or whatever. If I see them just looking perfect in everything that they're doing, I can't connect with that shit, man. That's not my fucking life. My life is a shit show some days

as much as I try for it not to be, and as much as I can control 90% of it. There are days. I'm like what the fuck is going on. Holy Jesus.

and not that I want to share that

day of my life with you. But when you see some of these flaws, when you see some of those imperfections in people again, we can resonate with those people so much more. We can understand them so much more. And we can feel like, Hey, I can do this shit, too, if they can do it.

So, with all that being said, get out there. Have an amazing fucking day, and I'll see you next time.