MBA2000 What I Learned After 2,000 Podcast Episodes

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. 2000 episodes strong delivering daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And yes, today is episode 2000. It's almost unbelievable. For me, this has been a milestone I have been looking forward to for some time. But today's episode is not just about celebrating 2,000 episodes. It's about sharing what I've learned along the way. What I've Learned after doing 2000 episodes of our podcast. What were the hard lessons? What are the things that surprised me? What are some of the hidden upsides or delights I didn't see coming, as well as what it took to get to episode 2000? I'm going to open up the books to you, give you everything I've learned, be totally transparent and a bit vulnerable too so that you can get the most out of what I've learned after 2,000 episodes of the podcast. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or not, I am confident you will find something valuable in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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We launched the $100 MBA show podcast in August of 2014. I still remember it as if it was yesterday. It was a big moment. It felt like a big moment for me. My co founder and the producer of the show, Nicole, worked with me super, super hard to make sure we come out with a bank. A lot of people don't know this, but this is not our first podcast. Our first podcast was a bit of a failure and we learned some hard lessons through that failure that allow to see what we need to produce with this show. I'm going to spare you the details of that story, but the summation is we were not leveraging our strengths. That first podcast was a me too, another interview podcast. While my strengths is actually teaching, I've been teaching all my life professionally, I'm actually a qualified teacher. I taught in the classroom for 13 years, so I should have been teaching when I'm podcasting. And there is kind of the genesis of the idea of the $100 MBA show to teach daily lessons. The podcast soon got momentum after launch, Nicole and I really worked really hard on perfecting the sound and making sure our show was top notch. And it was a tough time to launch a podcast. We launched the same time serial did in the Tim Ferriss show and Startup by Gimlet Media, which was a huge hit. But despite all the competition, we won Best of itunes that year. In December of 2014, iTunes awards their top podcasts and it's about a dozen and says these shows are a hit. And that was kind of confirmation that we've kind of built something worthwhile. Winning Best of itunes was just like winning an Oscar in podcasting land. Gave us that momentum, allowed us to build our audience. And now 2,000 episodes later, the show has grown tremendously. We have over 125,000 daily listeners, over 180 million downloads or listens. It's really kind of unbelievable for me to even say those numbers out loud, but the road to all of that and to 2000 episodes was not paved with rose petals. There have been a lot of challenges and a lot of lessons, things that really just ring true, and I want to share them with you right now. So there are a couple of things that without it would be really Impossible for us to reach episode 2000 to have any level of success that we've had. The first one is consistency. This is something that people really undervalue and overlook. Sometimes you just outlast the competition because you, you are consistent. You do the work, you put out the content, you keep doing it. Not because you're seeing amazing results. It's because you understand that you need to put in the reps to see the results. You need to stay consistent, you need to keep going at it. You're not going to have amazing success with every piece of content, every single podcast episode you put out. Some episodes are going to do amazing and some not so amazing, but if you're not consistent, you will never reach any success. Consistency is key, and this podcast actually helped me be consistent because it's a daily podcast. I had to step up to the mic, I had to do the show because I knew that the listeners are waiting. So it forced me to really have consistency as a top priority. Regardless of what's going on, how I feel, if I'm motivated or not, if I'm having a good week or not, if I'm feeling it, it doesn't matter. The rule is be consistent. And I would translate this to everything in life and business. Whether you're trying to get healthy and you need to go to the gym consistently, whether it's being consistent with showing up for your business and giving it your all, whether it's being consistent for those you love. The point here is that it's easy to do things when you feel like doing them. The challenge is doing it when you don't feel like it, when it's hard, when it's inconvenient. The podcast has become a part of my life. I don't travel without my podcast setup, without my mic, without my recording situation in studio. I take it with me because even if I am recorded in advance and I'm batched out and everything, there could be a change. I may need to do a last minute change to a sponsor read. I might have made a mistake, but you know, in the edit, somebody picked it up. The point here is that it's dedication and consistency that allows you to reach any success. And I'm not saying this from a high horse. Please, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this just because I finally figured it out with this show. This show actually opened so many doors for me. And it all started with just being consistent and putting out an episode, even if I'm not super proud of it. You're going to have cringe worthy work, but you need progress, not perfection is what you should be aiming for. So I said there's two things. The second thing is to understand that if you want to stay consistent and you want to continue to grow, you can't do this alone. In order for you to get to the next level in anything in life, you need the help of others. And I'm here to tell you, I do not do this podcast alone. Yes, I come up with the content and the curriculum and I record these episodes. But so much gets done in the team that allow this production to make it what it is and for it to be a wheeled machine. So it does get published every day consistently. This show wouldn't sound even close to what it does sound like without Carl, our editor, our sound engineer, our producer Nicole takes a look at all the aspects of the podcast, which I'll mention in a moment. Works with our sponsors, make sure that our show is also being energized and infused with new guest teachers, making sure the whole system's working. She's the producer, she allows me just to focus on the content and without her we can be consistent. We can't get any traction. Romina. Romina is our executive assistant. She's like the production assistant. She puts it all together. She takes the recordings, she publishes the posts on WordPress, our website. She makes sure the files are ready to be published and available and be syndicated. She brings all the pieces together, all the administration. We have Connor, who writes all the copy for the marketing that makes sure that all the emails that are written to their newsletter to let people know about our new episodes are done properly. He writes all our show notes so that when people read the descriptions of each episode, they know exactly what they're in for. We have Cindy, who's in the marketing team as well, that makes sure that all this gets promoted on our social channels, on our website, on different platforms. She creates little audio snippets and samples to, you know, market with. She creates the visuals and pretty much everybody on the team listens to every single episode and are always giving me pointers, are correcting things I need to correct. We have an incredible team that does a lot of quality control. So again, I don't do this alone and it takes a team to take things to the next level. Now, we didn't start out that way. It was just me and Nicole that started and launched a podcast and we did everything but, you know, the quality of everything we did wasn't really at the level we wanted it. So we needed basically help. We needed people to just focus on one thing. Hey, your job is to focus on the edit, your job is to focus on the copy. And therefore, this is what we've learned. This is what we've learned. If you get people that are specialists, you can build something very special. Another thing I learned from the podcast, which really surprised me, is how much the content matters. Now we know that you have to publish great content and we say, hey, if you don't publish your content, then it doesn't really matter. Well, yes, but a lot of people say, well, you can market anything. Just create a few pieces of content and market that over and over and over. It doesn't really matter if the content is great. I beg to differ because we try our best to market our podcasts and let people know about the new episodes. But in terms of actually spending a lot of ad dollars or really getting an agency or whatever it is, we're lightwe when it comes to how much marketing we do for the show. But because the podcast has been so consistent, because we focus on the content, so we make sure the show quality is great, the content is great, it's focused, we stay true to what we are. We're always experimenting and trying new things and improving the show. Because of that, the marketing kind of takes care of itself. Every month we get published in some sort of write up as one of the best business podcasts. And we have no involvement in that. We don't reach out to anybody, we don't have a PR agency. It's all because we focus on making sure the content is great. This is the number one priority. And when you do that, people talk and word of mouth is very powerful. And throughout the last 2,000 episodes or seven plus years, we've gotten so much publicity without much effort, you know, just because of the actual content getting on Inc. And Forbes and Fast Company and Entrepreneur magazine and Time magazine. And just recently, TechRadar, which is a very popular site with over 47 million visitors a month, mentioned us as one of the best business podcasts of 2022. Now, it's incredibly humbling. It's incredibly amazing feeling that your hard work is paying off. But I recognize the fact that the show gets noticed because actually we focus on the right things. Some of us, whatever your business is, whatever your podcast or your show, your blog or whatever you're doing, your YouTube channel, we get distract. We get distracted by the tactics, we get distracted by the metrics, we get distracted by what other people are doing. And at the end of the day, if what you're creating is not great and improving and resonating with your audience, it really doesn't matter. It really is the really important factor. It's like the thing that's going to make or break you. If you get that right, everything pretty much is going to take care of itself. Now, one of the biggest challenges I've had over the years is that a lot of the lessons I teach on the show come from what I've learned through my business journey, through my actual businesses in real life. Now my challenge is that I need to actually step away from the actual challenge, the business problem I had and how I overcame it. I have to actually allow some time in between me teaching the lesson I learned and experiencing the lesson, because I have to be objective. I have to actually teach this thing in a way that other people can absorb and that will help their specific business. Often when you have an issue or challenge in your business, you're a bit jaded, you're a bit biased, you're a little bit emotionally charged. So one of the things I got in the habit of is understanding that if I want to teach a lesson that I've learned from an experience, I need to allow some time to go by. I need to actually journal about it. Write down. I would write some notes in my journal, I'd write some notes in my little tech stock that I used to plan the show about what the problem is and how we overcame it. What are some things that surprise us, things like that. I let it sit for a month or two, maybe even three. Some challenges are so big, I had to let it go for six months, a year, because I was still feeling the pain from it. And it was important for me to take the lesson for what it is and understand that the way I feel about it shouldn't affect what I've learned about it, if that makes any sense. Because I want to share the learning. I want to make it concise, I want to make sure that it's applicable to anybody and not just boo hoo about the problem and say, hey, you better be careful. This is going to happen and it's going to come off as cynical. One of the things I try to do in the show is be as positive as possible. There's so much negativity out there on social media, in the media in general, in our world. Entrepreneurship is hard as it is. I don't need to make it harder for everybody by being cynical. I need to be as positive as possible and show people, hey, there are solutions to problems and put it in a positive light as much as possible.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in 2012.

Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

Before I wrap up episode 2000, I want to share a few more takeaways that I've learned along the journey. One of the things the podcast has taught me is how to be mindful about how I feel about who I am in the moment, my state of mind. Why? Why has the podcast taught me this? Well, because. Because I can't just get on the mic at any time, regardless of how I feel. I'm constantly thinking, okay, I gotta record later today. What am I doing before I record? Is it gonna change my state of mind? Is it gonna put me in a certain mood or a certain vibe? You know, am I gonna feel 100% so that I can give 100% on the podcast? What do I mean? Well, I don't wanna schedule any kind of big time planning meetings or heavy conversations before I record because those conversations could be pretty full on. And then I can't just ask myself to just jump on the mic and forget about everything that just happened and just, you know, turn it on. I want to be genuine, I want to be authentic, I want to be real. But at the same time, I need to be consistent. So I got to plan my day around my state. When I record. This just generally has made me aware of how things affect me, how things change, the way I feel, what gives me energy, what takes away energy. Because at the end of the day, if you are in the publishing business, if you have a YouTube channel, you have podcasts, even if you're blogging, you're actually, in a way, performing in a way. You are stepping up to the mic, to the keyboard, to the camera, and you gotta be in the right frame of mind. As much as this is information and facts and learnings, it's also an art in some way. And I recognize that I need to be at my best or I'm shortchanging the show, I'm shortchanging our listeners, I'm shortchanging myself. Second, it took me a while to really learn when the best time is to record because of, again, energy levels. And it actually took our editor Carl, who edits the show and noticed, hey, Omar, you actually sound totally different when we Record in the morning versus when we record in the late afternoon. Your energy level's totally different. The way you project, the way you sound. Maybe you should record around this time. It's better for the show. And it just was an alarm bell for me, like, okay, wow. Not all energy is equal throughout the day, so managing your energy as well is something that I've learned throughout the podcast journey. Guys and gals listening to the show, the last thing I gotta say when it comes to this accomplishment, reaching 2,000 episodes, a lot of people ask me, what drives you? Why do you keep going? And at the end of the day, the answer is, I keep going because of you. I keep going because of the listeners. You guys tune in, you listen, you give feedback, you leave us reviews, you write in and ask questions. To me, that's what I need. It's the fuel that keeps me going. I know that it's helping people in some way, and people depend on it in some way. They listen to it when they go to work, when they're thinking about their business, when they're commuting, when they're exercising. It's a part of their life. I want to be there for them. And just the idea of people depending on me keeps me going. So thank you. Yes, you who is listening right now. It means so much to me that you actually take the time to improve yourself and listen to my journey, listen to what I have to offer. It's the fuel that keeps the show going. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Not just today, but every day for the last 2,000 episodes. We're going to keep on going. We're going to keep producing more episodes every day to make sure not only we improve, but that. Of course you improve. Because when you get better and your business gets better, it's proof that what we're doing works. That wraps up today's lesson. That wraps up today's episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Congratulations to everybody. I'm super proud that I can share this milestone with everybody. Episode 2000. One of the things that entrepreneurs are really not good at is celebrating. So I'm going to make sure that I celebrate somehow today, March 9th. I'm going to make sure, even if it means just going for an ice cream with Nicole to recognize. Hey, this is a milestone. We did it. It's a big deal. Let's keep going. I encourage you to celebrate your wins as well. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then take care.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon, but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in2012.

Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save Big. It feels good to Geico.