Nate Tilley traces his podcast from 2017 to 400 episodes and top-10 rankings, arguing that audience growth requires years of consistent work, not viral shortcuts. He shares a friend's story of posting daily until it became profitable, and says the real move is committing to a decade-long game where you stop expecting results from each individual post.
Questions this video answers
2017 (speaker states the timestamp of first episode is 2017).
Approximately 400 episodes (speaker: "we just crossed our 400th episode").
Around 150 episodes (speaker: "the first 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better").
Chapters
People are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days they're somehow going to blow up. In the beginning, 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better. I got a DM the other day, somebody who was like, yeah, it's easy for you to build this brand because you already have this big audience. I was like, dude, just start. He was discouraged by the fact that he had no following, he had no audience, etc. 99% of people who are watching this do more cool shit and then you'll have cool shit to talk about rather than regurgitating other people's stuff. But for everyone who sees the overnight success, right, what I want you to do is go to my podcast and look at the timestamp of my first episode is 2017, five and a half, six years ago, it just now hit the top 10. And in that six year period, I did not miss every week, one to three podcasts for six years. And so people are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days they're somehow going to blow up, when the reality is that you're finding your voice for the first year, you're figuring out what way you communicate, you're learning how to teach, how to entertain you, how to present, you're learning how to speak, and you're also learning about the stuff that you're learning meantime, right? Like in that period of time, I might not have had as much stuff that was as cool in the beginning that applied to as many people, because the first 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better. Right around 150, I started talking about marketing in general because that's what I was into at the time. And then I started talking about sales and I started talking about business in general and M and A and things as they've evolved over time. And so the subject matter, as well as my skill in delivering it both improved over that period of time. And now the podcast is top 10 on entrepreneurship and very high ranked in business next to names that I looked up to my whole career. I'm like, holy cow. I'm like, we're wait, we just went above this guy that I've been looking up to my whole life. It doesn't take 90 days, it takes years. If you think in days, the time's going to pass no matter what. But if you can think in decades, when you make your goals, when that decade does pass, it'll show that you were thinking that way, right? Not the outcome, the goal. Make the action. The goal. If the action is, did I make the post? Did I make the reach outs every day, then you're a success. You check both boxes. I want to tell you a quick story. So there was a guy who started at the first gym with me same day, all right? And we've been friends since then. And I started my gym, and then he started his gym and he started changing gym. So we went in parallel, all right? And he ended up selling those gyms and he wanted to go online. He was like, dude, I need to build like a brand. And I was like, dude, you just need to start posting, you know, short form stuff, making stuff that's valuable. He posted every day for six months, and then one video took off, and then the next video took off, and the next video took off. And then all of a sudden now he's making $100,000 a month from the content that he was making. He'd already been doing business for nine years, and then all of a sudden it took off and he messaged me. He was like, I'm super grateful that you told me to do that. And so he did the post and he did the reach outs. And what ended up happening is that earlier on he would, he would have videos that would start taking off, he would start doing reach outs, he'd start making sales, and then you'd make some money and then he would slow down. And then all of a sudden you get in scarcity mode. Once he was like, oh, shoot, there's no money coming in. There's no money coming in. And then you start making content, start doing reach outs again, and you make money again. And he was like, dude, how do I break the cycle? And what we did was we shifted what he was focusing on because he was focusing on the sales he was making, he was focusing on the money he was making rather than focusing on the process. You are not successful in my eyes because whenever you see some outcome, you. You stop the activities, which means you don't have the trait of consistency. I was like, the reason you aren't where you want to be is because you can't do things repeatedly. And so most people can't do one thing over and over again. You need to be able to do the doing without seeing the result of your doing. And you have to keep doing it. And if you can keep doing things independent, and this is both ways, if it goes really well, you keep doing the thing that got you there. And if it's not going well, comma, yet, you keep doing the thing so that you get good Enough that one day it will. And that's the shift that most people don't make. And I think that's why most people just stay for when the reality is that if you can commit to the actions and the behaviors and the traits that you will grow through doing, then at the end of this process, a decade later, you will be the type of person who can do something for a long period of time and wait. And I promise you that if you have that trait, money will never be a constraint in your life. And this is from Atomic Habits. Every winner and every loser have the same goals. So when you measure yourself by having this external thing and people are like, set goals, everyone wants to be rich, everyone wants to have a six pack. Your goals don't make you unique. It's the activities that you do that make you unique. The goal of the winner is to commit to the activities. The goal of the loser is to commit to the goal. 52% of 18 year olds, high school seniors, think they're going to be millionaires. By 25, the world is going to be shook. Many of you will fail and that's because most of you have the same goal. 52% of you think you're going to be a millionaire, right? That's just math. But only a small percentage will. Because if you want to be a millionaire, you're not going to focus on making a million dollars. You're going to focus on the stuff that makes a million dollars. And so when you can divorce the activities from the outcome, then you can focus on the doing, which, whether your income does this over that period of time, your self esteem remains the same because you're committing to what you can control. If you can make that shift, it will change your life. So I started making podcasts six years ago. I committed to that process when I signed on with a YouTube vendor a few years ago. On the first call I said, I'd like to have this channel be something in five to 10 years. I was like, we'll look at it then and see if it was worth continuing to do. I was like, but I'm in for a decade. And he stopped me afterwards. He was like, I've literally never had a client say that to me ever. He's like, they're all like, how can I get leads in the first 90 days from YouTube? And like, blah, blah, blah. I was like, if we're making progress, I'm good, I will commit to that. I think that if you can think that way, you will get what you want. And then people will ask you a decade from now, man, how did you have this overnight success? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And aren't you like, don't the followers and the fans like, how does it not get to your head? And you're like, because it was never the goal. And so I feel just as good at year one as I do at year eight because the activities that I committed to remain the same. If you can think that way and you can shift your perspective, it will, it'll decrease your emotional ups and downs. And, and I think we all need ways to decrease our emotional ups and downs in the game of business because like we need to have second lives and third lives and fourth lives. And the way to do that is to not put your life, your game playing life in something that you can't control, but putting all your game playing life in the things you can. Right now, we just crossed our 400th episode. 400 episodes. Like if I did one a week, that's 52, 4, 8, 1 a week for a year. That'd be eight years of doing that. If I had 400 episodes, I'm at like year six. If you make 400 long form pieces of content, I guarantee you that your following will be bigger than it is today. Well, how long is that going to take? As long as it takes. Because the goal was never the outcome. The goal was to do the thing.
