100: Ten Lessons Learned in 3+ Years of Podcasting

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the Only Move that Matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hi friends. Jenny here. I cannot believe it, but this marks episode 100 of the Pivot Podcast. So for today, I wanted to share 10 lessons learned in the three years that I've been doing this show. Now, of course, I've learned thousands of priceless nuggets of wisdom from all of my incredible guests, but I wanted to take a step further back and share more behind the scenes about what I've learned in 100 episodes of hosting this podcast podcast. I'll just start by saying that I was nervous even to record this intro. I kept having to rerecord, which doesn't usually happen, but I realized there's a lot to share and this is a big moment in the podcast history. When I first started, right around the time I got the book deal for pivot in 2014 is when I got the idea. I had no clue how long this was going to last. You know, you never think when starting something like a blog or a podcast, why don't I just sign onto this thing indefinitely for the rest of my life or for the rest of my career? It starts, at least for me, on more of a whim, hey, this seems like a good idea. Why don't I try it out? And that's how this podcast started. When I got the book deal for Pivot, I knew that I was going to be interviewing experts for the book. So I figured, why don't I at least hit record on those interviews and release them as I'm working on the book, and then similarly give people this really three dimensional, or at least audio companion to Pivot so that readers who enjoyed the book could go listen in greater depth to the guests on the show and then vice versa. Listeners to the podcast could go dive into Pivot. Well, what started as a side project quickly became the love of my business life. I just love doing this podcast so much and I really didn't see that coming. There have been so many priceless benefits of podcasting, connecting with my author heroes. And by the way, it still blows my mind that I get to read a book and then if that author says yes to be on the show, I get to ask them my personal questions. When does this ever happen? That I get to connect with all of you who are here listening and make friends? You know, the podcast is such a great format. It's such an intimate format to get to know people and I learn from every single guest and then I learn skills that relate to interviewing and podcasting and all the technical pre and post production. What I love about podcasting is that it really does create this unique win, win, win. I get to share the work with all of you. You hopefully get to listen to interesting content and then I get to be in the middle and get to have my personal questions answered and even say thank you to some of my author heroes, which is really exciting. As I've often said about blogging, which I did for 10 years before switching to the podcast, what you see now is really the result of a thousand tiny iterations over time. One last thing before we dive in. Inspired by this episode, as I was reflecting on all the lessons learned, I it would be really fun to do another mini course. Five days, super simple, just like I did with Delegation Ninja. And this one's going to be called the Heart of Podcasting. Although I'm not the super expert on the technical side of audio engineering, I do aim to run my podcast with heart and soul and curiosity and intuition. And so the course will be divided over five days. Five topics. Podcast setup and systems, practical tools for bootstrapping, interview preparation and post production, powerful questions and presence, sponsorship and Patreon pros and cons of monetization and why I don't currently have sponsors, but I do have Patreon and then Q and A where you can submit questions in advance and I'll answer in a Q and A free for all. So I'm really excited to help you figure out if you want to do something like a podcast, whether it's a full ongoing thing like I have or even just a short 10 episode album and to do that from a place that's authentic and intuitive and full of your heart and soul and passion. So if you want to learn more about that and find out when it launches go to pivotmethod.com heart and enter your email address right now. We're aiming for an end of summer or early fall launch, so again, if you want to be notified once the course is created and even get an early bird discount, go to pivotmethod.com heart. You can also listen to every episode of the show@pivotmethod.com podcastarchive.com okay, let's do this. Lesson number one put yourself in the path of Pivot. The power of public original thinking. Anyone who's in my private Momentum community knows that I hate the term personal branding, and instead I often talk about the power of public original thinking. What does that mean? It just means thinking out loud. And when I say put yourself in the path of pivot, you can back into your next ideas by committing to public original thinking, even if you don't know exactly where it's taking you. My friend and fellow Pivot coach Lisa Lewis said to me the other day, if you want to get hit by the luck truck, you have to put yourself in the middle of the road. I love this quote. I love the idea of putting yourself in the middle of the road. When I say put yourself in the path of pivotal. We don't always know what's next, and that's the whole point of the book, which is that the only move that matters is your next one. And sometimes that next move isn't even a big decision. It isn't even the clarity of exactly where you're going next. It might just be that I'm going to commit to doing something out loud, like podcasting that allows you to explore your curiosity, allows you to meet new people, and most importantly, allows you to get feedback from friends, community members, and the people that you're hoping to work with. That relates to lesson number two. Don't worry about niching down too early now. Niching down is another annoying term from the marketing industry, but I'll explain what I mean by that. In the beginning of a lot of creative projects, I we tend to put pressure on ourselves to have our exact niche figured out, because this is common business advice and it's good advice. Now, we have so many podcasts out in the world and books and articles and the Internet features feels like it's so saturated, so it makes sense to try and choose a very specific topic and a very specific audience. In fact, when pitching a book to publishers, it's good to answer the question, why you? Why now? And why this book? Or in this case, why this podcast? However, trying to do that too early can sometimes be a futile effort. I really like Gary V's perspective on this. He says, document, don't create. Instead of trying to create the most perfect show and description and everything right up front, document. So just like public, original thinking, commit to sharing your process and sharing your journey and letting people see your evolution out loud, rather than trying to get so specific early on that you don't create anything at all. Now I'll give you an example of this. When I first started podcasting, I had what I now feel is an extremely annoying description for my show, but I couldn't have known at the time. It only, you know, my podcast evolved and it showed me what it was wanting to be, and so I edited my description to fit me better. But that only happened years in. So what were those descriptions? Okay, at the beginning. It makes me cringe to even read this. At the beginning I said it was interviews with experts and peak performers on navigating career change in a rapidly evolving economy. The second part's okay, but peak performers? That language really started to irritate me, and I was seeing it everywhere on so many podcasts in the business and career space. Why are we obsessed with peak performers? It annoys me. So eventually, like I said, only a couple years in, probably closer to this episode 100 than even in the beginning, I changed it to the question what's next for your career and creative projects? Learn how to embrace fear, insecurity, imperfection, and intuition as the superpowers they are while navigating the pivot process better. At least for me, I was leading with what I was finding most interesting in my interviews, which was talking to experts not about how they peak perform and how amazing they are, but their counterintuitive wisdom on being invisible. The upside of stress, dealing with adversity, pivoting post prisoners. These were the topics that captured my heart and captured my interest, but it only became obvious to me as I went. By the way, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode, because I'm going to link to my favorite shows for each of these top 10 lessons in the show notes. It'll be chock full of additional resources that I can't all point to in this recording itself. So go to pivotmethod.com podcast100 to get all the link goodies sprinkled throughout. Now on to lesson three. Get scrappy. Teach yo self. That's a nod to Parks and Rec. Shout out. All right. Get scrappy. This is something I talk about in Pivot. It is a mantra we had during my time at Google and it's something that has stayed with me ever since. I think I was born scrappy. I like this notion that we now I have this corpse speak kind of ingrained in my brain. But at Google we also called it launch and iterate meaning again, just like Gary Vee said, do not wait for things to be perfect. So when it came to me getting this podcast going, I did not wait until I knew everything about how to podcast before I started recording interviews and publishing them again. Public original thinking. You can see how each of these lessons are building on the ones previous. In the beginning I remember I recorded with my crappy iPhones headphones. I just dialed into a conference phone line with my guest and then I would release those episodes on SoundCloud. I hadn't yet figured out itunes and I would say at the beginning, sorry guys, I don't have any fancy intro and outro music, but here's today's guest. And then it was only a year in that I realized how much I was enjoying podcasting that I started to teach myself. So I started to teach myself GarageBand. I found intro and outro music. You can buy it pretty inexpensively on pond5.com and I started to just teach myself how to loosely edit shows. Now when I have more more complex editing I do send it out to a third party person, James Eade Shout Out. He's amazing. He's in the uk.

But for the most part I was doing it myself in the beginning. And as my friend in our interview, Neil Passericha on his book the Happiness Equation, as he asked, he said, what's your Saturday morning test? What do you do for fun on Saturdays? And my answer was editing this podcast. So I found that I really enjoyed teaching myself the technical skills and the intro and outro music you hear now on the show. I created it. It's nothing fancy, you can hear little mistakes in there, but it's good enough. And another adage that I try to live by is good enough is good enough. And not always. Of course it's good to have high standards for yourself and big dreams. But there's another adage done is better than perfect. And in this case I do think that that's true. You know there are a lot of podcasts now and some of them are very well produced. Certainly shows like Radiolab are right at the top of that list. But startup by gimlet, there are shows that have entire production teams of 5, 10, 15 full time employees and that is certainly not Pivot Podcast. Okay, So I am recording in my closet. This is one of many aspects of my business. It takes the most time and produces the least direct income. But I don't care. I really enjoy teaching myself and being scrappy about it. And for me, scrappy allows me to make it happen. Even this episode, it's just, it's not going to be perfect. And we'll come to that in a future lesson, and that's okay. So by accepting some amount of scrappiness and teaching yourself, I think it's really rewarding. You know, I wrote Pivot for people I call high net growth individuals, and ultimately your high net growth and impact, especially if you're taking time to listen to a show like this one. So for those of us impactors, we enjoy teaching ourselves. We enjoy the satisfaction that comes from sweat equity of our creative projects. And I certainly do too. So don't be afraid to get scrappy. And what can you teach yourself? What are you excited to learn and invite people? If we build on our lessons that came earlier, invite people into that journey. People have even made comments to me about listening to the show that, wow, you sound so much happier now that you're dating someone. So it's so funny. It's like in some cases, listeners know me better than I know myself and that's really a gift. And I find that people, at least the right people, my people, are patient and I appreciate that. And anyone who is looking for a super well produced bells and whistles show with a million cuts and just really high production, you're probably not going to like Pivot Podcast. But if you're interested in the types of conversations that I'm having and the types of topics that I'm coming out with, then great. That's probably why you're still here. Let's get to lesson number four. Pivot on your strengths. I realized that I wasn't starting the podcast from scratch in terms of my prior strengths and interests. So I actually grew up studying journalism. I started a family newspaper called the Monthly Dig up when I was 10 years old in my living room, and I produced it monthly until I graduated high school. I was the high school editor in chief of our newspaper and I wrote for the Daily Ruin at UCLA for a year. So being a journalist was all about being curious and asking interesting questions, asking questions that would invite conversation and reveal new information. And then I stopped journalism. As I started to study political science, I went to work at a startup company. Then I pivoted over to Google and during my time there, I became really interested in coaching. And I completed coach training through the Coaches Training Institute in 2008. So 10 years ago now. Well, looking back, as I started the podcast, I realized, oh, here again, coaching built on my skills as a journalist. And then one on one, coaching is all about being present, being curious, and asking powerful questions. So by the time it got to podcasting, although I was teaching myself the technical skills and I didn't know the first thing about audio editing, I was able to build on my strengths. So as you think about doing your own show or your next creative project, identify what strengths you already have. See how you're not starting from scratch, and that can help provide fuel for your fire. And then in my case, it also helped me reverse engineer. Well, why do I like podcasting so much? And then I realized that in addition to connecting with such interesting people and having deep, rich conversations, which I also love, especially as a closet introvert. And it's funny because I'm in the closet right now, but it's also that it built upon skills I'd been honing for many, many years, if not since I was a little kid. Lesson number five, perfectly imperfect embrace awkwardness. I did a whole episode on this two, actually. One of them was called Book Rx. It's a grab bag. We'll put it in the show notes. And then I did one on perfectionism. And in both, I shared how I am so nervous still, before recording this episode, I was nervous before interviewing authors that I just adore, I get very nervous. And in fact, part of the way that I can tell that I'm interviewing the right type of person is that I'm awkward. I'm either fangirling or my heart's pounding out of my chest as I'm introducing them. And. And I now take it as a good thing. Again, if I put pressure on this show to be perfect, it just would never come out. And I will say that because podcasting is such an intimate medium, as I mentioned earlier, there's really nowhere to hide. Even with blogging and writing a book, you have the chance to edit and refine and get a second pair of eyes. And I would say a book, you have way more time to do that blogging. Also, I once wrote a blog for post called blogging will beat the perfectionism right out of you. Because blogging is also meant to be in the moment, and you're just kind of releasing a sea of thoughts over time. Podcasting is very similar, but I feel like even more, there's just no hiding your innate personality that is coming through whether you like it or not. And because of that I think it's actually quite a good self selection mechanism for who you resonate with. As a listener I love listening to podcasts and then as a host I can't. For me at least there's no way to fake it. You are getting who I am because you can just hear. I think we can pick up so much information from tone of voice. Even though you can't see me, there are still so many non verbals that come through the microphone and into your earbuds that you don't really get in a written post. So that's a good thing and a scary thing for content creators, but ultimately it's really rewarding. And I also make a point not to over edit these episodes. All of my episodes I tried to. In general I cut out if there's a major mistake and we have to like, you know, someone was on mute and they didn't realize it and we have to fix that. Or just at the beginning when I'm hitting record and at the end I'll kind of clip the files at the start and finish. But I I make it a point not to edit out little imperfections in my speech and in fact I use it as a challenge to just try and get better and better at not using filler words and getting straight to the point and asking powerful questions. So when you hear an episode of the Pivot podcast, I'm not cutting out questions that make me feel silly or make me look stupid or where I mess up my words. I just leave it at because as my good friend, my dear friend Derek Shanahan said to me long ago, people respect perfection, but they fall in love with imperfection. And it's not that, oh, I'm trying to get everyone to fall in love with me, but it makes me remember that the goal here isn't to be perfect. It's to build a relationship with my guests and with all of you. At least that's why I'm here. Lesson number six Curiosity and authentic excitement are paramount now this is similar to the one I just said. Of course you want to be curious and authentic in the moment. But I also learned only about a year or year and a half in that curiosity and authentic excitement were absolutely crucial to who I invited on the show. That whenever I invited a guest, because I should, maybe it was to return a favor for a friend who helped me launch Pivot. Or maybe there was a topic that I felt should be A good fit. And then let's say I didn't read the book before saying yes to have them on the show. There were some cases where I would start reading the person's book to prepare for our interview. And I just realized I cannot in good faith recommend this to my audience. It just doesn't resonate or it doesn't resonate enough, or it doesn't spark anything special within me that I feel that I'm bringing you something new. So I started to give myself permission to say no more and to drop the shoulds, even in terms of who I was bringing on the show. Someone recently pitched a guest to me and she said, but they don't have a large audience yet, but it's small and mighty. And I was almost surprised to read it because I forgot that some people book guests based on how large the guests platform is. As in they want to get more listeners for their podcast. So it's important to them how many followers each guest has. Well, I wrote back to this person and I said, just so you know, I don't care at all how many followers. I don't care if the guest has zero followers. That is not why I'm in this and that is not how I choose people. So for example, when I reached out to Dr. Thomas Andrew, the forensic scientist who pivoted from the morgue to the ministry, I read about him in a New York Times article. Well, he's not some big shot author, blogger, podcaster with a mega platform. I'm sure he has a very loyal community and people who are even interested in him from that article. But he's a forensic scientist now, going to divinity school to pursue a degree in ministry. So he is not. There was just nothing about that, that was about sharing, having him blast the link out to everybody, it just plays zero role in who I book on the show. My number one priority is my curiosity and your interest. Like I hold a very. This is where I will hold a very, very high bar for the show, that there's no shoulds and there's no people where I think, oh yeah, it's okay and I'll recommend it anyway as much as I possibly can. I try to bring you only the best and only what I feel is unique and soulful and interesting and that has heart and purpose beyond the work itself. So you may have noticed that recent episodes are so much more about what's inside of a person, what's in their heart, what's in their soul, what are their spiritual practices, rather than just, I would say more surface level business principles now every now and then. I do love sprinkling those in as well, but it's no longer the main vehicle. So Pivot Podcast could easily be a podcast on straight up career and business advice, but very quickly after the book came out stopped interesting me as much as who is behind the work and what drives them and how do they keep going and how do they handle adversity and who has a really interesting story that you might not otherwise be exposed to. And then as far as growing the show, I figure you know, if you like the show enough, you'll tell a friend. And that's always my mark for marketing. I'm the tortoise marketer for sure because I just firmly believe that it's the quality of the product that that inspires people to tell a friend and that why try to promote any of my work based on muscle and kind of like asking for favors? It's just not how I roll. But of course if you do like the show and you want to share it with a friend, that is ultimately how I prefer that it grows. That brings us to lesson number seven. Curate powerful perspectives. Think of yourself like a Chief Curation officer or as a thought listener. Not just a thought. As I'm thinking about the next book, I really have no clue what it's going to be. Yet I can tell you the two Venn diagrams so far include spirituality and work, but that's all I know. So what the podcast has allowed me to do is to be a thought listener and a curation off a Chief Curation officer. Someone asked me recently, by the way, what my official title is, and I even put this on a resume. I've never haven't had to do a resume in over 10 years, but recently for something I did and I put Chief Amazingness. Well, one facet of being a Chief Amazingness Officer is Chief Curation officer. So as I mentioned in the previous lesson about how I choose guests and I only go with people that genuinely spark joy, as Marie Kondo would say, I also now see myself as a thought listener. It's less important to me to always be coming up with my own frameworks and models and more so, or at least in between my major books and major pieces of my own thought leadership, to be a thought listener, to get curious again, to bring you interesting perspectives and people. So as I read books on social justice, let's say, and criminal justice reform, well, I can bring you someone like Jason Wang and to expose you to his story. So as I meet interesting people who have powerful perspectives. That's one of the biggest benefits and lessons learned of this show and it's something I want to continue to do. And I think as we have so much information out there, people are looking toward others and like minded people to curate. Of course there are tons of lists. There are lists on lists on lists out there online. And I subscribe to so many newsletters with tons of links, I can't possibly read all of them. But there are certain people who, when they send a newsletter out, like, I can think right now of the what list? Jocelyn Gly, Tim Ferriss 5 Bullet Friday where I do check their links and I do learn all kinds of things and get tools and products and really interesting things. So think about how you could curate resources and people and questions and content based on one of your hats as chief Curation officer. Lesson number eight, take breaks when needed. It's a marathon, not a sprint. What I'm finding with the podcast is that this is about creating a body of work. And if we look at 100 episodes times one hour each, that's a lot. And I remember in the beginning I was feeling guilty if I missed a week to publish the show, and then it became one month and then that became the whole summer. But I made it okay because I realized that I was committed to this for the long haul and that, you know, my suspicion was that you were not gonna just unsubscribe the second you saw that I missed a week, but rather most listeners probably wouldn't even notice and that I would rather only release episodes when my heart was in it and when I could be present, then try and force myself to get things out in a way that wasn't healthy for me, as in just that forcing mechanism that we often do when we put too much pressure on ourselves. So when I zoomed out and instead of obsessing over the weekend, I missed and I said, you know what? I'm in this for the long haul. And I'm just not feeling inspired right now. So I need to pause and recalibrate and take a break. And I'm so glad that I did that that summer that I PA and a few people here and there wrote to me and reached out to say, where's the show? I've been missing your episodes, but not too many did. And by the time I was back, hopefully I was still showing up in everyone's cue. And as with any creative project, you know you're gonna gain new people and others will go, but for me, it's just so crucial that the show be aligned and be authentic, as I've said many times. And, and part of that has to do with just honoring the creative journey and creative schedule of work and sprinting and then recovery. Now sometimes when I'm really thinking ahead, like for the holidays or this summer, I'm gonna go to Beirut for a month with Michael and go stay there and visit his family. I will schedule those episodes in advance. And that's a little different. That just requires planning and systems and getting a jump on things. But if I were feeling creatively flat, or if my energy battery was on empty or the topics and direction that I had been heading were no longer resonating, then I would take another break. And I think it's ideal when you can let people know what you're up to. But sometimes, at least for me, I don't see it coming. So I am not always announcing, hello, everybody, I'm going to take a three month break. Sometimes I don't even know how long that break is going to be. And similar to put yourself in the path of pivot, it, well, sometimes put yourself in the path of rest. It's almost like rest will choose me. And this is one of the things that I let up on. Now I know people who are bloggers and they're like, I've never missed a Tuesday or a Thursday in 15 years of blogging. And they're just so committed to their deadlines and their schedule. And I think that's beautiful too. There's a certain personal accountability with like never missing your schedule. But I find that it's more humane for me to let it be. Okay. Okay. And that anyone who reads my newsletter or listens to the podcast knows, yeah, you know, it's. That's why on my website I call the Pivot List newsletter weekly. Ish. For the most part it's weekly, but every now and then I'm gonna miss one and I hope that's okay. And again, I find that people aren't usually paying quite as much attention to our creative projects as we think. So my newsletter, my podcast is probably one in a queue I of dozens that you've got coming in this week.

Lesson number nine, forget about competition and saturation. Think about it like making friends instead. This came up on a recent momentum call. Someone asked about should they start a podcast because there is so much competition out there now and it seems like the podcasting market is very saturated. Although that is true that it's growing and there is more and more competition. And as more media outlets and celebrities get in the mix. There's a ton of money being thrown at very highly produced podcasts. So what's the role for something scrappy like what we're talking about on this one? Well, in momentum, we had the conversation that instead of seeing it as a competition, what if you saw it like making friends? There's no. The friend market doesn't get saturated. You know, if you live in a big city like me, York City, yes, there's always stuff going on, but I'm always excited to meet a new person. And we change. So sometimes the shows that we listen to, we evolve, we maybe grow out of something or we feel we've heard enough from that person. But I know I'm always excited to learn about a new show that fits exactly what I'm interested in right now. So for anything you're creating, whether it's a podcast or a book or anything else, if you feel like making friends, trust that by you being you and doing your curation and your public original thinking and documenting as you go, that you are going to attract your perfect people, that they will be so excited to hear from you. And you're not going for quantity here. I mean, I know some people the temptation is to go for quantity, but for me, I'm really excited to have a group of listeners who will resonate with the show and really like it. And. And I'm hoping, you know, that for a small group, you look forward to this one every week, even though you have many shows in your list. So I try even there, of course, there are times where I might look at my podcast listener stats and I see, oh, they're not really growing, they're staying the same, or how could I get it to the next level? And I'm not sure. I really try to forget about competition, numbers and saturation. I will say that podcasting has brought me so many priceless benefits. As I mentioned at the in the introduction, friends, mentors, interesting conversations, all of you who are here listening and send the most wonderful notes. It's just so rewarding. I learned so much and I gained so much that it would be too bad for any of us to over obsess about numbers, or worse yet, yet to not start simply because you're worried about competition or saturation. Even if you only record 10 episodes and call it an album, you will learn something in that process and you will have a very valuable body of work that exists in the internetosphere that people who search for you or want to learn more about you can learn about you in that format if they so choose. And I think that's a beautiful thing. Thing I can't end without lesson number 10 on one of my favorite subjects systems number 10 is refine systems to reduce friction and hire help as needed. So although I've bootstrapped, although I'm scrappy, I definitely have help with this podcast and creating systems. I've refined my systems little bit by little bit over these last three years. Any of you who took delegation ninja know that I am obsessed with systems and that I live by the adage from agile development that each time you repeat a task, take one step toward automating it. So I've gotten much better at how I prepare for interviews, how I stay present during and then what happens after the interview ends. So AKA the Life of a Podcast Episode There are so many facets to running a podcast, from finding guests, reading their book, emailing them to invite them to the show, having a handy tool like Calendly to get them to schedule, preparing for the interview, conducting the interview, editing the interview, preparing show notes, sharing the interview on social media and with the guest. The list goes on. So at each stage along the way I've worked on refining my systems. Now I am someone I do read every book, if not multiple of the guests books before they come on the show, and I tend to do mostly authors with a few exceptions, and that's really important to me. But I've even gotten better at how I read, how I take notes while I read a book so that on the day of the interview I can quickly go back and write down the most salient topics. I've improved my templates in evernote of how I prepare for the guest. I've even improved how I take a few light notes during the show to make it easier for Marisol to help out with show notes notes afterward. So if you want to learn more about these systems and how I've bootstrapped and get all of my templates related to podcasting, as well as my philosophy on things like sponsorship and monetization. As many of you know, I have a Patreon page and I would love for you to join it. Patreon.com pivot I've been very intentional about not having sponsors for the show, as many podcasts do. So if you want to learn all about this, come join Join for the Heart of Podcasting course that's gonna be later this summer. If you liked what I shared in this episode, I know you'll love the course. As I mentioned, it's gonna be really casual. Five days, five calls with all kinds of resources. Let me know that you're interested, and I'll tell you more about when it launches. That's@pivotmethod.com heart and I would be remiss not to also invite you to Momentum. This is my favorite place online. It's where I keep in regular, ongoing contact with some of my favorite Pivoters, and we exchange feedback and ideas and information and links. And I do a Q and A call every two weeks where you can submit a question on anything you're wondering about. It's full of other solopreneurs and side hustlers and creatives working on interesting projects, and we get into a lot of the things that I shared in this episode. So if you want to join, it's just $125 every three months. You have access to every course I've ever created, including Delegation Ninja, which is normally $300. So for that alone, if all you did was join for a quarter, you can get some really valuable stuff, as well as three years of Q&A. Call archives. That is@pivotmethod.com momentum okay, so that wraps up 10 lessons learned in 100 episodes. But it strikes me as I finish this recording that I bet you can probably come up with some lessons learned of your own that I feel like so often. Even with a podcast, I'm sure there are blind spots. I'm sure there are things I have learned that I don't realize or things I have yet to learn, but that's what makes it so exciting. I love the journey of it. I love connecting with people, and I've come to love the awkwardness and this, the public original thinking of, you know. You know, some people in Momentum say, oh, we can see your next direction so clearly, and it's as if they can see it more clearly than me. And I appreciate that. It's so rewarding to get to share this space with all of you and to feel that we have a collaborative community, that even though I can't see you, I know you're out there, I know you're listening. It motivates me to think about what you might want to hear. And every time someone replies to the Pivot List newsletter to say they loved an episode or more like it, or I can really, it just makes my day. It just makes it all worth it. One of my mentors once said that he gets paid in nice emails, and I genuinely feel that way that you are the sponsor of this show. I don't get paid in dollars, but I get paid in a community that I love. And that if you've stuck around till this point, I was worried that getting into the subject of spirituality and intuition and consciousness and all that kind of stuff would scare people away. But, and I guess this is a bonus lesson number 11 I just decided that I didn't care. That I would rather be myself and follow my heart and follow my soul and my creativity and the topics that really interest me than worry about whether it was going to scare people away. So if you're still here, it means that that and you don't have to agree with everything that I share and every guest that I have on. But it means that you're open minded and that you are curious and you are compassionate and open. And at least that's my hope. And I would assume that if you weren't those things, you would have been long gone by now. So with that, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for being here and listening and making this possible. It's a total joy and an honor to be your Pivot Podcast host.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.