Why You Should Unsubscribe from Your Business Podcasts

Hey, guys, Matt Paulson here. In this video, I'm going to make a compelling case that you should unsubscribe from all of the business podcasts that you've been listening to. So if you've been listening to Entrepreneur on Fire, Entree Leadership Startup, Chat Startup for the rest of us, this week in Startups, Marketing Over Coffee, Tropical mba, or any of the big kind of business podcasts that a lot of people listen to. And if you've been listening to them for, say, more than a year, it is time for you to unsubscribe from them. So open up your podcast app, go through all of your podcasts that you subscribe to, swipe right, hold down on a podcast, do a long press, do whatever you need to do, and just unsubscribe from them. Unsubscribe from each and every business podcast that you've been listening to for at least a year or longer. So why am I telling you to do this? It's probably not going to be the reason that you think initially. You might think that I'm telling you this to unsubscribe from all of your business podcasts because of the issue of information overload. Some people consume way too many business books and podcasts and audiobooks, and they do all these things that feel good and make you feel like you're learning something without actually starting their business. In fact, one of my good friends, Jamie Tardy from Eventual Millionaire, she tells her students to go on an information diet and and only learn about the exact topics that you're working on right now. Like, if you're going to build a Facebook ads campaign this week, go ahead and learn about Facebook ads, but don't go and read about company culture or organizational leadership or search optimization or whatever else that you're not working on today. I do think there is some merit to this idea of going on an information diet, especially if you're consuming a lot of content and not making a lot of progress in your business. But that is actually not the reason why I think you should unsubscribe from all of your business podcasts, especially those you have been listening to for a long period of time. The reason I want you to unsubscribe is that you can only learn so much from one person. Every business expert, whether it's Seth Godin or Dave Ramsey or Tim Ferriss or anyone else, really. They only have a handful of core messages that they teach to their audience. They just take the same message and they repackage it in a Bunch of different ways. Maybe they'll write a book, they'll do podcasts, radio shows, courses, DVDs, websites, newsletters, you name it. But the message doesn't really change from medium to medium. Typically, an expert, whether podcast or whatever else, they have a few handful of core messages, and then they just repeat them over and over and over. And eventually you have a pretty good understanding of the of that expert's core message. And there's just not a lot else that you can learn from them once you kind of understand what their shtick is. Dave Ramsey is kind of the perfect example of this. He has a great message about getting out of debt and building wealth and becoming a generous person. And a lot of the people, including myself, initially, you find this message exciting and motivating. And eventually you just kind of learn how to stuff to Dave Ramsey. Because if you found financial sickness, financial success, you know, you just don't really have that much else to learn from him. You know, if that's you, you know, instead of learning, you know, maybe you probably don't need to learn how to get out of debt if you already have debt. You probably don't need to learn how to save for retirement if you're already doing that. Eventually you kind of hear the whole message, you get it figured out, and then there's just, you know, not that much else you can learn, but you still may listen to the same guy out of habit, or you just like his voice. But really, at some point, you will stop learning from that expert, whether it's Dave Ramsey or something else. So if that's you, you're the person that's listening to Dave Ramsey forever. I encourage you to say you only have so much time to listen to a podcast. Maybe stop listening to Dave Ramsey and start listening to another financial author or expert that you can learn some different strategies from. So instead of listening to the Dave Ramsey show, maybe you'll go listen to a show called the Money Guy show, which is hosted by a guy named Brian Preston. And in that show, they go into some more advanced strategies for the people that have gone beyond the Dave Ramsey stage of getting out of debt and going through the baby steps. That way, by actively choosing to stop listening to one expert that you can't learn too much from anymore and moving on to a new expert, you are opening yourself to new information, ideas, viewpoints that you might not have previously been aware of or exposed to or just even open to. So that's kind of the message in this video, is eventually you just run out of Stuff to Learn from Somebody if you listen to 50 to 100 different podcasts from somebody, you probably got the message. So maybe it's time to take a break from them and move on to somebody else. Certainly. Don't get me wrong, I love business podcasts. I love listening to audiobooks, I love reading business books, and I certainly don't think that reading a business book is going to reinvent my business. But I do find them entertaining and educational. And occasionally I learned something that I can apply in my business at MarketBeat. But yeah, I mean, there are definitely people that I used to follow. I used to be a big Dave Ramsey guy, but eventually I just kind of ran out of stuff to learn from them. I also understand I personally only have Tony so many times. So much time in a week to listen to podcasts, I really need to pick out the business podcast I most likely get something new from. As much as I like listening to some of the podcasts I've listened to since 2009, at some point the podcast host starts repeating himself and you kind of get the idea and you run out of stuff to learn from. So if you've been listening to the same business podcast for a long period of time, I'd encourage you to maybe stop listening to them for a while and find something you haven't heard before. If you are looking for some new business podcasts to listen to, I'm going to go through my Overcast app, which is the podcast app I use right now, and I'm just going to show you some of them. Probably going to be hard to see on the screen, but right now I am listening to Marketing Over Coffee. It's a good marketing podcast. The Quiet Light Podcast, which is about buying and selling Internet businesses. Startup Sioux Falls which is the Sioux Falls startup podcast that interviews local entrepreneurs startups for the Rest of Us, which is Rob Walring and Mike Tabor's podcast. They talk about launching a startup for people that aren't going to seek fundraising. This Week in Startups is a classic. Jason Calcandis interviews a lot of different startup community leaders and people that are founders, and there's always a new opinion on that show, so that's great. 48 Days by Dan Miller. He's kind of a classic person that helps people find work that they love through changing careers and that kind of stuff. The Authority Hacker Podcast. It's a good podcast for SEO and building websites. The Don't Roll Our Money podcast. It's a personal finance podcast. Lots of good stuff in there. E Commerce Fuel is about launching e commerce websites. Empire Flippers is another podcast about buying and selling Internet businesses. Life After Business. This is a new podcast I've been listening to by a guy named Ryan Tansom out of Minneapolis, and that's also about buying and selling businesses. Certainly the Money guy show that I mentioned, I really enjoy that. It's a really good personal finance podcast. Niche pursuits. It's kind of make money on the Internet with websites podcasts that my friend Spencer Haas runs. It's really good. The Publisher Lab. That's also a newer podcast I've been listening to. It's put on by the, I think the Eozoic team. And then they have information about kind of news publishers and magazine publishers that are online. Another podcast called Rogue Startups by Dave Rodenbai. And trying to think of the other guy's name. Oh, yeah, Craig Hewitt. These are some guys that I met at microconf a few years back. It's a good podcast where they kind of share their stories. The startup chat is one that I used to listen to a lot. I've kind of had to take a break for it for the reasons I missed this podcast. I just kind of got the message and I'm kind of out of stuff. I can learn from those guys right now. Tropical mba, you know, another classic. But they are starting to repeat themselves now that they've been doing this for 10 years. So I don't hit every episode of that anymore. The Wealthability show with Tom Wheelerite. That's a good podcast about tax and bookkeeping and ways to reduce your tax burden. That's kind of a new one I've been listening to. And then the Web Equity Show. It's another buying and selling online businesses podcast that I listen to. I think they're on break right now. And then finally at the bottom is Zenfowder. It's my friend Sherry Walline's podcast and she's got a lot of interesting topics as well. So if you're looking for some new business podcasts, those are some that you might want to check. Sorry if they didn't come across particularly well on my little phone screen. But hopefully you can look those up if you want to. So hopefully if you get anything out of this video, hopefully it will kind of inspire you to take a break from some podcasts that you've been listening to for just a very long time. And hopefully you'll open yourself up to some new experts and listening to some new podcasts that you haven't considered before and that will open you up to new ideas and new strategies and new business tactics that you might not have been exposed to before. So hopefully you enjoyed this video. I'd love your feedback, so feel free to comment below or send me an email madamelfson.com with your thoughts about my videos. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks.