5 Things Learned After 100 Episodes of The Charged Life!

Hey, my friends, it's Brendan. And this is a special episode, episode number 100. Can you believe it? A hundred episodes in of the charged light. I personally can't. I know, Travis, as we're sitting here filming this, we feel so blessed, so honored, so appreciative to have had your support in this. And of course, I know many of you been with me long before the hundred episodes of the Charge Life. I think of my first video I ever put up as an example was 2005, I think, and how many courses, videos, programs, podcasts, audio programs, books that have been out since then. But I'd like to share with you in this episode the lessons learned in 100 episodes of the Charge Life, so that if you ever want to do your own show or you just have sort of a curiosity about how we've done this, I can share some insights that I hope that will serve. Boy, what a journey. You know, when we began 100 episodes ago, so 100 weeks ago, from the time at least, we're filming this now, a hundred episodes ago, no one had ever heard of the Charge Life. I'd had a New York Times bestseller and a Wall street journal bestseller, USA Today bestseller called the Activating the 10 Human Drives that make you feel alive. So I had a book out, and I thought, you know, we should just start shooting more consistently on video. And Travis was game for it. And we start, let's do YouTube more formally. Let's do a weekly show. And so we began. We also began airing that on itunes as a podcast called the Charge Life. Not all episodes exactly overlap, but we put a lot of them up there as well, too. When we began, there was literally almost nothing on YouTube for us. And now here we are, 100 episodes later, 44 million views on YouTube alone. That doesn't count the millions when I put them on Facebook as well, or on my blog as well. Just here on YouTube. 44 million views, 416,000 subscribers later. Boy, we've learned a lot. When I began 100 episodes ago, I think we also only had maybe not only, but we had, like, a million fans on Facebook. Now it's 4.66 million, if I remember right. I mean, it's unbelievable, that amount of growth. We've gone through lots of different technologies, tools, cameras, lighting systems, sounds. But at the end of the day, we did a show a week, and that's been the, I think, one of the big secrets that we've had in growing all this. I'll share with you the five big secrets here now. Number One start. I'm always saying it. No matter how small you start, start something that matters to you, something that you care about, you get excited about, that you're thrilled about. Every time I get to come and shoot videos here with my friend Travis Shields, I get soaked. I'm like, it's video day. You know, it's thrilling to me. I'm excited. When I began, I mean, I think about my first video in 2005, how difficult video online was back then. Our number one complaint was, hey, the whole video won't play because it would start and stop and start and stop and start and stop. And, you know, this is pre YouTube for me, that we were putting stuff out on the web trying to get people to watch videos. It was so hard. Now people stream this all over the world on their mobile phones. I mean, the times have changed, as you know, technologically, it's come a long way, and you can't ever anticipate that. All you can do is get over your fears and begin something that's important to you, something that you're excited about, something that matters to you, even if you don't know where it's going to go. There's no way we could have imagined 44 million people would watch this. There's no way we could have imagined that, you know, the technology would have changed that people be watching on their phones. In Africa, we hear these amazing stories of people accessing and literally walking and traveling just to be able to get to WI Fi so they can watch or listen to me. I never imagined anything. I just wanted to share my messages, my life lessons, the wisdom that I've learned throughout my life and have learned from others. Just wanted to share a good, positive message about life so you could continue the day more motivated, more charged. That was really it. There wasn't some big, huge intention, strategically. It was just like, let's get there, let's play. Let's not worry about the outcome. Very little things in my life I have began with a deep concern about the outcome. It's been more about, where can I share my message? And it's never been about, oh, 44 million views or five views. It's been about, let me share this, and let's see where it goes. So if you've thought about doing anything in your life in terms of a dream, whether it's put up your YouTube show, start your podcast on itunes, or whatever modality you want, start your blog, write that book, or just try that new job, go somewhere, move somewhere, ask that person out, whatever you wanted to do. Begin it as you've heard. You know, beginning has boldness in it. There's magic, there's power, there's pop. And it's true. No matter how small you start, start something that matters and never make your small beginnings make you small minded. I mean, I always had a vision that, you know, maybe someday we'll reach lots of people. I didn't know exactly what it was, but I just had this vision that I could help people with what I've learned about my life. That at the end of our lives, we're going to ask, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And I've stayed true to that message now for 20 years of my life. When I had a car accident 20 years ago, that taught me we're all going to evaluate our lives. At the very end, we have a moment of cognition, we're going to ask, did I live and did I love and did I matter? And I've stayed true that message. I've stayed true to this idea that we can all live a fully charged life. If we just learn to master our mind and we are dedicated to our own personal development and dedicated to service and helping people, then we can live an extraordinary quality of life. And those themes have run through all hundred episodes and they've run through the last 20 years of my life, too. That when you start something, bring in your life into it, bring your message into it. What do you really want to share? Create a common thread through your life, through your work. Find out what your values are. Communicate them consistently. Doesn't matter if you're reporting on a news thing, sharing your, you know, your personal sort of diary on video, or you pouring your heart out in an interview on a podcast. You should know what your messages are that you want to share. Not because they'll have a specific impact with somebody, but because they're important to you. Share those things, those count, and those will keep you going 100 episodes and beyond. Second thing, don't sweat the technology. You know, I remember when I first put up my very first video that got a lot of views, if you could say that, which for me at the time was a hundred. You know, I filmed it with a flip video camera, that first one that really kind of broke through, a flip video camera. I duct taped it to moving boxes. I was bankrupt, I had nothing. And I duct taped this little flip video camera. You remember flip video cameras? I had to duct tape it to a box. I'd run around, I'd push the record button. I'd run back, hi, I'm Freddie Merced. I mean, it was. It was awful. I had no idea what I was doing. It took hours and hours and hours. And the videos were so huge, it would take hours to upload, and then it take people literally sometimes hours to watch because it would. The buffering. There was no streaming, as it does today, so easily. And so I know some of you want to start something, but you think, well, I don't have a big, fancy camera. We're in the era now of your phone being more than fancy enough to start major shows. There's major people with millions of fans and followers online who shoot everything they do on their iPhone. They post it on Instagram, on Snapchat, on YouTube, wherever they can, on their blog, and it's shot with their phone. The phone is way better than the technology we began with. So don't feel like you have to have some amazing perfect lighting system or it has to look like my show or it has to look like someone else's show. Just shoot it on your phone. Get in the game. At the end of the day, all success advice sounds like that. Get in the game. Start. So don't worry about the technology. Just start filming or recording. If this is something you want to do, I would say the third thing is don't sweat the money. A lot of people say, well, Brent, you know, start a YouTube show. That sounds silly. How are you going to make money? And everyone's so concerned, how are you going to make money? How s. Sometimes you do things because it's your message, it's your art, it's your mission. It's something inside that says, I want to do this and follow that. Because by following that, by really going after your interests and your passions, I have found over and over and over and over and over again that at some point, the monetization model, you'll figure that out. It'll catch up. What's harder for people is find out what they're passionate about. And if you're passionate about shooting a show, register, recording a podcast, writing a book, doing a blog. Just begin. Just begin. Don't worry about the monetization to this day. As an example, my YouTube show and my podcast could each be earning me well over another million dollars a year each if I wanted to monetize them, meaning run ads. But if you've ever been on my YouTube channel or you're on my itunes podcast, you'll see to what I've heard at our number of views and downloads on our podcast as well that no one in history that has ever done this many views and downloads did it without ads. Chose not to do ads. I chose not to do ads. And people say, well, Brenda, how do you make money? Well, I have links in my YouTube things or I reference my books when they come out. But basically my monetization model began with I didn't want to run ads to people because I hate ads. I don't know about you, but I don't like ads. I'm tired. Every time I go to listen to a podcast, I have to, you know, grab the scroll bar and go past the first five minutes of people pitching me, you know, all sorts of stuff from, you know, weird stuff, banking or, you know, underwear or, you know, I hear things about, you know, cars and mattresses and money and all, all this weird stuff that these sponsors are like. You know, I didn't want that, by the way. I have no judgment to that. I just personally don't like listening to those ads. So I was like, I don't want mine to be monetized with ads. I will do it if it makes money or not. I will do it in service to people. I will do it in service to that thing in my heart that says share this. And so what I do is I put links in my YouTube show or in the descriptions below that takes people to any of my websites and they can go there. And if they buy my course or they buy my online courses, they buy my books, they come to my seminars, that back end stuff, that's where most of my money is made. And fortunately you guys have supported enough of my books or my courses or you come to my events that I'm able to self fund the entire thing. So think about the money I could have earned if I ran ads against all my YouTube shows. But I don't allow. Think about all the money I could have if I talked like a lot of these podcasters do. 5, 10 minutes of podcast of ads and ads and ads. I chose not to have sponsors. I did that because of my preference. So I don't have a judgment to it. You have to figure out what your preference is for the monetization. See, my preference was to stick with my real passions, my books, these types of videos, my live events, and those did enough that I didn't have to, you know, extract every dollar from every viewer download. I just don't think that's necessarily what life is about and doesn't need to be. But those are all monetization models that you can figure out later what matters first is creating the content. And I guess that leads to number four. Big lesson learned. Be consistent. If you look at any of the top YouTubers today, these folks I admire tremendously, most of them, they began a very long time ago, and they began either doing weekly or daily video. They were consistent. You look at the top podcasters, they were consistent even when they didn't have the money, even when their technology sucked. They were there, they were in the game, and they stayed consistent because they cared about it. And the truth be told, lots of them could have made more money. They'll all tell you that. We all will tell you we could have made more money along the way, but lots of times we didn't know. We were just following the passion. But those who succeeded, those who are still here, were persistent longer than most people. I can tell you that I've literally met thousands of people, came up. Friend Brendan. Well, I started a show, but, you know, I just kind of got tired of it, or, you know, I wanted to do this, but I did a couple, they didn't do so well, so I quit. And every major YouTuber will say, well, they did a couple that didn't go so well, too, but they stayed at it. I've had videos I thought were gonna have millions of views, and then they had ten thousand or a thousand. When I first began, I thought, oh, this is gonna. This one video. Ah, you know, millions of people are gonna see it. And, like, 10 people saw it, including me, refreshing it on several browsers. And I'm sure my mom, too. You know, it's like, don't sweat it. Just stay in the game. You cannot develop competency and mastery and progress at anything unless you consistently do it and track it and look and learn and ask how you can get better. You know, I think that's really, really important. Consistency. And I'll say the last thing that's really made it go is just have fun, enjoy the process. And you got to figure out a way for you to enjoy the process. I could do these videos by myself, sure. But my favorite thing is I do it with my friend Travis Shields. We have breakfast. We talk about the day and our families and life and whatever's cool going on. We come over, we set up, we have lots of conversations, we eat some sushi. Sometimes we shoot a couple episodes. It's fun. We built it so it's fun for our life. We shoot it in batches. Sometimes we'll do three, four shows during one day so that we can have more time off with our family and Our friends. And when we shoot it, there's no pressure. There's no scariness for me individually, outside of that social connection I have shooting it with you guys, I have fun seeing what your reactions are, your comments, what you say. I'm intrigued to learn from you because many of you know these episodes were inspired by you. You told me a story, you asked a question on Facebook. You sent me a message. You. You commented on YouTube. And because all those things, a lot of these episodes were inspired by you. And for me, what has kept it fun and a lot of people still don't understand is that all of these episodes, a hundred episodes, they are unscripted. I don't have a teleprompter in front of me. Usually what I do is I sit down and think, what do I want to share today? And what's three to five points I could share with people? And then I go, I don't have, you know, lists of notes in front of me. Sometimes I have a note card that has like one or two, three words on it to remind me where I might want to go with something. But literally, an unscripted show. These are all filmed in one take or I start over again. Could you imagine? I think at 100 episodes, we probably what Travis had, 3, 4, 5. There was editing in it in terms of like, oh, well, start, stop, keep going. That happens. And that's totally cool. But usually if I don't feel like I got it in one take, we do it again. So this is why this show has gotten so much, I think, popularity. Here's a show that is one take unscripted, no teleprompter, week by week, just extemporaneous speaking from the heart. And I think that made a difference for people who talk about that, and they're amazed by that. But honestly, for me, it kept it fun. I wouldn't enjoy it if I had to script. If I was just reading to you for 100 episodes, I'd be like, it's not my passion. Even though I'm a passionate about writing, to me, it wouldn't feel fun to sit down, write the whole response out, and then just read. But that's my style. Your style might be. That might be making you more comfortable, more alive, more. More whatever. More articulate. I never worry about those things. I've never been the most articulate guy in the world. I've just been alive here, present with you. And I think the 44 million views came from people saying, this guy is just talking to us. He's just Looking in the camera, he's going, it's not scripted, it's not strategic. He's answering questions and talking about life. So I made it fun for myself in that way. I found my style. What you will find, what makes it fun for you, you will find your style, but you will never find those things until you do a bunch. It's that fifth, tenth, twentieth, hundredth episode where you're finding what you really enjoy. So get in the game. And I guess I just have to share this. Probably last but certainly not least is that at the end of the day, what's gonna make your shows go, the value that the audience takes from it. And sometimes I think that the value they're taking from it is my four points. Oh, you know, these are great ideas that they can go and use, but I hear it over and over again. It's not just your points, it's your energy. You know, what are you putting out in the world? What kind of energy are you bringing to your family, your friends when you go to lunch with somebody? You know, either you're going in that situation and just allowing the energy to be, which can be okay, or you can say, I would like to leave this space with a higher energy. I would like to put some motivation or joy into these people's experiences. And that was one of my intentions. I wanted to bring the joy for you. I wanted to just maybe pep up your day a little bit. Because you know what? Sometimes it's hard and we all struggle. But what inspires me is how many people say, brendan, I don't even remember what you said, but I feel good listening to you. And I say, hey, that's a win too, because you know what? At the end of the day, people will draw value from you that you don't even know until you put yourself out there. So don't worry so much about the outcome and the monetization and all the tools and the tech and whether you're good or you're bad, because you'll get better, the technology will improve, and the monetization will be figured out. For now, you have the desire to serve. Just get in the game and do that. Never let your business or your small business or your sort of small background make you small minded. I get to be here because I've had your support. I get to be here because I've had the support of my team because of the support of Travis Shields, because of the support of every single one of you. Liking, sharing, downloading, telling the story of just some guy who's been through a lot in his life and been blessed to work with a lot of incredible people to share. Here's what I've learned and that's what the Charge Life has all been about. It will continue being about that. People keep saying, are you gonna go past 100 episodes? I'm like, yeah, this isn't like some experiment. It's like I know that this is making a difference. I've already heard from you. So I thank you again for downloading this. Thank you again for supporting my books that allow me to self fund the whole thing without running ads at you. Thank you again for telling the story of the Charge Life. I'll never be able to thank you enough other than just keep doing these for you. If you ever have any questions, post them on YouTube on my Facebook page, write us in at my email address listed on our blog. Just let me know. What would you like me to cover in future episodes? I get a lot of inspiration from you on behalf of my main man, Travis Shields, all of the team at the Burchard Group, and every one of you out out there that continue to support that. Thank you for your support. Believe that if you stay consistent and you start and you believe and you keep going, good things will come your way. They always do. That's part of living the Charge life. Hey my friend, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you would like to get ahead a little faster in life, what I'd like to do is give you my 10 steps to achieving anything 10 times faster. So if you have a big goal, a big dream, a big mission in life and you just like to achieve it faster, what would you need to do? You know, this is exactly what I keep next to my computer or next to my bed. And every time I have a big dream, a big goal, I I open it up and I kind of use this as my checklist to get ahead faster. Because you and I both know if you're going to be more effective or more productive or you are going to achieve your goals and your dreams faster, you're going to have to switch your perspective a little bit on achievement itself. You're going to have to adopt new thinking patterns and habits. You're going to have to have new daily rituals and habits and your entire approach to learning and skill development must be better. So in order to help you do that, just go ahead and click the link in this post or go to brendon.com 10x that's Brendan B R E N D O n.com 10x and you can download this guide for free. Just tell me your name and email. I'm happy to email that to you for free. The same guide I use to achieve any goal or dream faster. Thanks for tuning in until I see you next time. Go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly and make your difference today.