Episode 205 - Justin Peters Says A Personal Development Project Led Him To Start A Podcast

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. So it's so exciting to get to meet people along the journey of doing the thing. And it's funny, I met my next guest through a friend of mine who had told me about him while I was in the middle of the startup podcast challenge and seeing if maybe our paths could align with that. And we had a call about that the other day, and his story just really moved me and is a really great example of Doing the Thing. And I really just wanted to dive more deeper into his story and then also share him with you guys on how he does the thing. So I am welcoming Justin to the show. Hey, Justin.

Hey, Stacy. It's great to be on the podcast with you doing all the things.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. It's so cool when I get to meet someone through someone else who sees that maybe we're aligned in some ways, and then we get to talk, and then we're like, oh, wow, this is really great.

And you were just reading that intro to remind me who introduced us.

Pretty sure it was Brandon.

Yeah, it was. It was. I was like, man, why can I not figure out the connection? Yeah, what a great guy. I'm glad he made the intro.

Yeah, it's cool. And it's funny. I helped him start his podcast, so it's kind of cool when you just. It's like, this world is so. It's so big, but once you can start connecting the dots, it just kind of works that way.

No doubt. Yeah. I especially the podcasting space is much smaller than you think it is now. Being a podcaster for four years, I run in to a whole lot of people that are mentioning somebody that I'm like, oh, I know that person. They're like, yeah, I interviewed them on my show. I'm like, oh, yeah, that. That makes sense. So, yeah, the world is pretty small, and it's. It's kind of crazy how interconnected we really are.

Yeah. I'd love to start off and just have you share with everyone more about you and your story.

Yeah. I can make the story as long or short as you want. I'll go with the short version. I'll let you cherry pick out some of the things that maybe you want me to expand on, but it was fall of 2019. I just left an employer and made a quick jump to a different employer and realized that one was not the right fit for me either. I was a little bit lost and confused in my career at the time and just didn't know what to do next until someone gave me some great advice to take a career sabbatical. And who would have thought that would have been the best piece of advice for my career is to take some time off of it. But it truly was now looking back on it and part of that sabbatical, I decided to to create a personal development project for myself and that was starting a podcast. And I thought about starting a podcast. Actually eight months prior to that, I bought mics and they sat on a shelf and collected dust. I'm guessing something that many people listening could probably resonate. We all start that hobby or have intentions to start that hobby and never do well. That was me, of course, until the sabbatical came around and I said, no better time to start a podcast than right now when I have the time to do it. Plus, I was really looking for a story to share whenever I reentered the workforce. Essentially how I spent my time and I thought having a podcast would, would be that. Well, I eventually did rejoin the workforce. I was having so much fun podcasting that I doubled down on it and I continued to do it. And then it took me another year, year and a half until my brother came along, joined the team and quickly knocked me on the head and realized, hey Justin, you have so many people asking you about podcasting all the time, you think we could make a business around this? And I was like, whoa, that's cool. So I ran with it and we launched a podcast editing business. It's really morphed into a podcast management company now where we support service based business owners, launch and grow their podcast.

There's so much that I love about your story. So the first thing I love is the idea of the sabbatical because I think it's so rare that people do something like that and be able to really kind of take that time for themselves and kind of get more in tune with what they want. And I was just kind of curious. I know someone suggested it, but how did you actually make that decision?

It was a hard decision, especially for someone who's been working pretty much anytime, every time since 14. I started as a soccer referee and then quickly moved into some part time work. And then I started an internship beginning of my sophomore year of college. And I just started working all, all of the time. Summer breaks, fall breaks, weekends, if they could. I was just filling all of my free time with working and making money. And yeah, it never really dawned on me that maybe it would be best to take a little Bit of time off of that, especially in my 20s. I was 20, I don't know, 27, I think, when I took a sabbatical career. Sabbatical. I don't think too many people imagine taking sabbaticals midway through their 20s. But I did. And I think it really came down to the fact that I knew in my gut that I wasn't in the right place. And I didn't really know what else to do about it. And getting some encouragement, it was not an easy thing to do. This was something that I made that story sound like. Somebody just presented this idea to me and then I just pulled the trigger on it. No, that was like three months in the making. Idea presented it to me, and then I started kind of walking through how that could potentially look in my own life. And then eventually did have to just pull the trigger and go on a sabbatical. And once again, I'm so glad I did because it taught me so much about what I actually wanted for my career.

Yeah, I think it's really important for people to hear that because like you said, having worked as much as you did, and then to be able to actually take that time for yourself, to really get in tune to what you want is really the key to kind of where you're at now because you were able to stop all the noise. I like to say we walk through this fire all the time. Right. And until you can take space from it is really when it's hard to see what you truly want. Yeah.

Putting some space behind my old career, too, kind of allowed me to put some space between that identity as well. And when I started my sabbatical, I was journaling every single day on these 10 career journaling prompts that I found gotta help me identify what could be a potential next step. And it really did, actually. At the end, whenever I reentered the workforce, I started looking through those notes and. And grabbing a couple of things for some places to start. But I honestly think it was just having a month or two of space behind that made me realize, okay, this isn't as scary as I thought it would be. Nobody really cares that I left my job. That company didn't explode because I moved on. So many of these things that you're kind of telling yourself in first player mode that you play in whenever you're living your own life, just didn't really matter in the long run. And that just allowed me and gave myself the permission to reinvent myself or reimagine myself.

Yeah, you're just reminding Me why I love my podcast. So have you noticed this with your podcast is things that you're going through in your life and somehow you then interview someone that has gone through something that you're in the middle of and it helps you see it even clearer all the time.

Honestly, sometimes I seek that out like I'm struggling with something and it's like, what better way to learn than be a podcast host? And if you just follow your own curiosity with inside of your show framework, I feel like it will pay gold because then it really doesn't matter how many people are listening because you're like, holy cow, I am gaining so much value from this podcast, so I might as well keep doing it. And if someone else tunes into it, great. And I also find some of the best conversations come out of that because you're right in the midst of somebody else that is listening as well. And you can ask those great questions or those scaler type questions to the guests that you have on. But oh yeah, I get gold nuggets from people all the time whenever I'm interviewing them. Sometimes I didn't even know I brought them on for xyz and then they come on and they share this one little tidbit and I'm like, whoa, pause there real quick. I want to ask you about that because I am struggling with that right now. Let's open up that book. And yeah, I kind of love doing that, being a podcast host.

I would also love to know, as far as your podcast, I loved the way you worded it. You said personal development project for yourself. So how did that even come to be? How did you know that that was going to be able to be a personal development project from starting a podcast?

I just fell in love with podcasting probably four or five years prior to that as a medium. It took me until I bought those mics that I realized that I could be a content creator in this space. And then of course, it took me another eight months to actually act on that and start becoming a podcaster. I don't know why I got that in the back of my head that I wanted to have some kind of personal development project. I think I just knew it was a great safety net for me personally and a confidence booster that I wasn't going to completely become irrelevant if I took six months off of my career. So I knew in the back of my head that I wanted some kind of personal development project and kind of had the list that are out there. Maybe I was going to work on a course or a Book or do some speaking or whatnot. Podcasts just seemed to be the really obvious one for me.

And so you had eight months where it sat on a shelf and then you started. So how did you actually get to hit record legit?

I left my job later that day. I called my best friend, I said, hey, you want to be the first guest on my podcast? And we picked a time six days from then. And then I just went into complete panic mode and started getting things done. Actually, it was eight months prior where me just reading articles about podcasting and just collecting information. The six days between booking Mason to come on my show and me actually pressing record with him is when I actually started doing things. That's when I was like, okay, what platform do we record on? Do I need to figure out the mic situation? How am I even going to introduce my podcast? What is my podcast going to be named? All of those questions just started popping up and I was just acting on them out of nowhere. I was just like, okay, I guess I got to figure out a name because I'm going to have to introduce the podcast in some format. So, yeah, it wasn't this really cookie cutter, bullet point plan of how I was going to execute launching a podcast. It was truly just like a six day sprint until my first interview.

Have you done that before in other things where you've set. It's kind of like an accountability device where you've set that and then all of a sudden you just kind of figured it out to meet that date.

I work very well under timeline deadlines for me, and unless it gets a due date, then it's probably just got to get kicked down the road. So, yes, I'm somebody that likes to force action through actual due dates.

What else have you done that with? That's kind of been similar in the way of where you had to figure it out. You set some date for something and then you just sort of made it happen.

Last year, I ran my first ultra marathon. I'd always talked about potentially running an ultramarathon. It wasn't until I actually signed up for an ultramarathon. Literally just went out, found one that was close to my house, picked a date, perfect, done. That was on the calendar. And then I was like, okay, I better start working backwards from where I'm at now. Built a training program, started executing on the training program, and then four months later showed up to the course and ran the race.

Oh, my gosh, that is amazing. With the ultra marathon. That's not the 26 mile one. Right. That's more than that. Right?

It was a hundred K, 62 miles. It took me right under 12 hours to complete. It was a course. So we did the first 2.2 miles. It was just a small lap and then you have a base camp and then there's a 20 mile loop all around a state park in Texas. And there was aid stations every four to five miles throughout the course. But yeah, we did three big loops after that throughout this course. It was a wicked, wicked journey, I'm telling you. That was one of the hardest things I've done physically.

It's funny, my friends, again, timing is always so interesting. My friends and my boyfriend and I, we volunteered at the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego just yesterday.

Yeah, and good one.

When you're there, we're all like, oh my gosh, we should do a marathon. And so it's just so fun. And then I don't know what I'm doing yet. I have not decided. But especially when I'm at the gym this morning and I'm on the. I do. In between my intervals, I do walking on the treadmill and I'm like, I could run actually, maybe this would be the sign that I'm ready to sign up for a marathon. And I did not. I walked. So anyway.

So let's just stay here for a minute since obviously this is coming alive for me because I just watched all these people, 10,000 people do it and I was obviously motivated by it. How did you even get started when you decided you wanted to do that ultra marathon? Had you been running marathons before? Were you a runner? What did that look like for you?

Classified myself as a runner, but I had never ran in a marathon. Actually, I've never even done a half marathon before. I just skipped those two steps and jumped straight into the ultra marathon. I've done 5Ks, I've ran long distance runs just on my own, just going out for a run. But I probably never cleared over like 13 miles before I started training for the ultra marathon. So, yes, I was very unprepared for it. I was consistently running, but maybe two to three miles a day up to that point. And yeah, I had a best friend who's much more into this than I am, actually. My first guest, Mason.

Go Mason.

Yeah, I know, starter of all these great things, he, he shows up in a lot of great places in my life for sure. But yeah, he kind of put together a training program. He figured out how many, what we should be running each day, what our weekly mileage should be when to start tapering all of that. And then he really took the lead on the nutrition aspect of the actual race day. But yeah, I just got that training program from him and did exactly what I was supposed to do every single day.

So you didn't sign up with people like a group where you were running weekly. It was something where you guys just created this thing and then you followed it?

Pretty much, yeah. And Mason, he's out of state, so we didn't get to like train together, which was kind of a bummer. So I probably did, I don't even know, six or seven hundred miles of training leading up to that. And I would say 95% of those were on my own, which was kind of a bummer. Every once in a while my girlfriend would join me for a warmup mile or two. But on my long run days we got up to 20, 22. We actually. My very last long, long run day was a 26.2 mile long run just so I could say I did a marathon before my ultra marathon when it came time.

So he put the schedule together. But how did you get yourself to.

Actually do was usually the first thing I did every single morning. I'm somebody that's. I'm a huge to do list checklist person. So like if something hits my to do list, it's prob get done. I made it a priority too. I wanted to make sure that I was well prepared coming into the the marathon. So that was definitely one of my top three of the day is whatever my training was for the day. I wanted to make sure I got that done. And then yeah, a whole lot of motivation along the way. But honestly the motivation was just making sure that I showed up to the start line day of the race not completely out of shape and ready to run. But there's something about ultramarathons that you just really can't prepare for. It's. It doesn't matter how much training day of is just. It's. It's gotta be a battle. But yes, it was a lot of motivation. Luckily I'm in Austin, Texas, so weather was okay. My training period happened from October to January, but my buddy Mason was up in St. Louis and he would have to go out in like 20, 30 degree weather to get his runs done some days. So I had tip to him and he was, he was crushing it.

So you really only did it in like five months is the training.

Yep. Yeah.

Wow.

It was probably a little under what I would suggest people do. Granted, I had a little bit of Mileage under my belt from running up until that point. But, yeah, I didn't feel quite prepared as I wanted to be. But once again, it was one of those deals and probably had a through line to your podcast entirely. Sometimes you just gotta pull the trigger and do it no matter what.

Yeah. So when you would wake up, that was how you did it, is you're like, okay, as soon as I wake up, I'm gonna start running. And then what happened in the morning when you were like, I don't want to do this.

If I allowed myself, I could wait for after work and then I could maybe do it, or I would start negotiating with myself. And it's like, I had eight miles I needed to do that day. I woke up and I wasn't really feeling it. I'm like, justin, just go do two. Get two of them done. Maybe you can do six after work. And then I would start the two, and I could do one or two more. And then I'd get four or five down. And then more times than not, I'd usually get eight done whenever I was trying to get two done. Um, usually just getting the whole process started of running was the hardest piece to it. Once I actually got going, it was typically okay.

Yeah, I like that. Negotiating with yourself because you're at least doing something. You didn't just not do it. You were like, I'm just gonna at least start. And then that's kind of. I call it the gateway drug. Cause once you start, then you can keep the momentum going a lot easier than have you not started at all.

Yeah, that's the same mentality when you're actually racing, too. 62 miles is a long freaking way. It is a battle. And I would say halfway through the race, I was like, all right, just get to the next mile marker, and then you can consider dropping out. And then once the mile marker seemed too far away, it was like, just get over that next hill, and then you can consider dropping out or you can consider walking, and you're just, like, constantly negotiating with your mental self every, I don't know, couple minutes throughout that kind of race. It's quite the battle. But I would encourage everybody to give it a go at least one time or maybe go volunteer at one, because it's super impressive watching people do this as well.

Yeah, it is. And you get that and the same energy from it too. And the people are really, really grateful for seeing people there helping them. It was cool we got to hand out the medals. It was actually really fun.

Oh, that's Fun. Yeah, we got belt buckles at. At ours. Gotta do it in Texas, you know.

Yeah. So was this before the podcast or was this. Were you already doing the podcast at this.

I was already doing the podcast.

Okay, so now I have an important question. Did you actually track your progress? Did you talk about this on your podcast?

Yeah. So actually, Mason came on episode 58. He came on and we talked about the experience overall, and I'm sure I was talking about the training throughout, all leading up to it. But, yes, it's routinely referenced, especially in this, like episodes 40 through 60, 65ish time period.

Yeah. Because my. I feel like the podcast is a really good way to keep yourself accountable also, because you're activating your voice and you're getting to talk about these things that you're doing. But then also, you almost. You're putting it out there. Right. And so you have to almost follow through even more because there's something bigger than you now that's involved so many.

People, or at least I thought so many people knew when the race date was. There was no way I was going to back out. I just couldn't because I've been talking about it on the podcast, on social media, to friends and family all over the place, and it's definitely something that I use. As soon as I want to fully commit into something, I just start talking about it and then let the external accountability do its thing.

And then did you have another before we move on from this racing, the racing story? Cause this is so good, and I was not planning on going here, but we're doing the thing at the moment. But did you also do something with Mason, with the accountability? I'm trying to figure out how you really did it.

So.

So, number one, you made the commitment with him. You guys got excited about doing it, and then number two was you decided, okay, every morning I'm gonna do a run. And then if you didn't do a run, you would at least make a negotiation with yourself and figure out how much of it you could do. Number three, you're talking about it on social media, and then also on your podcast, you're getting that external accountability. And then I'm just curious, was there something with Mason that you guys did and that helped sync it even more?

We were consistently texting each other back and forth. We're both on the running app, so we could see if each other completed the actual run through the running app, which was great. And then, yeah, we both had the first half of the training. We had something where we would just text each other, I love running, which essentially means I hate running. Yeah. It'd be like one of our long run days, and we're banged up and we could really use a day off, yet we're not giving ourselves that day off, and we're going to go hit our run anyway. We would just text each other that, and then the other person would typically give that person some kind of encouragement or. Or words of support.

It reminds me now of our mutual person that got us connected. Brandon White Collar Savage is his brand, and he talks about doing burpees, and he actually says, I love burpees, just to get him to flip the mind. And now he actually really does love burpees. It's weird how it works like that. Those little tricks.

Yeah, I don't know why, but. So Mason continued to do the ultramarathon deal. He completed a hundred miler last December, and I went out and paced him for that. He. He got me to do 35 miles with him somehow as a pacer, which was just. I was not ready for that because, I mean, at least for the ultra, I had a bunch of training up until that point. I really wasn't training to be a pacer at somebody else's ultramarathon. But, yeah, he ran me to the ground legit. We were like a mile and a half out from the finish line, and I just, like, completely collapsed, and he's like, I'll finish it. That dude's a hero. And he just texted me last week, actually, and he was like, hey, man, I'm going to sign up for another a hundred miler. Can you pace me again? So I'll be doing something again this year.

At least he gave me more notice this time.

Yeah, for sure. But he'll sign up, and then he'll probably just let me know, like, two weeks before, which is fine, too.

So it's really important because you're surrounding yourself with someone that likes the same thing as you, and then you're encouraging and inspiring each other along the way.

Yeah, I think that's really important. Just to build community and support whatever it is. If we're talking about podcasting, running. Yeah, whatever your thing is, building support. And that community around it, I think is such an essential component.

And speaking of that, did you and I promise we were moving on? So we're going to move on after this, but did you surround yourself with any people for the running? Was there any kind of my people component of you being able to be with other people that were running or Was it just purely the motivation of Mason and then talking about on the podcast and social media that helped you be able to do it?

Let me know if I'm going the wrong direction with this question, but yeah, Mason was my primary running partner throughout that entire race. We ran all but, like four miles of it together. We also had another friend who was doing the same race, but he was doing the a hundred miler and had a different start time, but we saw him a little bit. But at our base camp, we had our crew. So Mason's family came out, and then our other friend Justin, his family was out there too. So we had this base crew of like 10 people every 20 miles. We showed up there and they refreshed us, helped us heal our wounds, put food in our stomach, and then celebrated, encouraged us along the whole way.

Okay, so now we are transitioning back to the podcast again, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this. And you sort of alluded to it earlier, which is why I'm asking the question is how good podcasting is to building up your confidence. And you mentioned this while you were taking your sabbatical, that this was the thing that really helped you kind of keep your confidence up while you were going through that. And I was just kind of curious if you can speak a little bit about podcasting and confidence.

Definitely during that time, podcasting was my lifeline. Somebody where work is so important to him. Like I told you, I'd been working since 14. It was a big part of my identity. I could easily look back to childhood and how my parents view work and being a productive member of society to see how work became such an important aspect to my life. And then, of course, I blow that up by going on a sabbatical. And all I have is this podcast, which was going to be fine because I was going to do tons of traveling and fun things. But I started my sabbatical January of 2020, and everybody knows what happened March of 2020. And my complete sabbatical path just fell over on itself. And all I was doing at that point in time was the podcast. And I think if I didn't have that, it would have been a really dark period for me through quarantine and those early summer months. But it wasn't. I was having so much fun. I know you know this whenever you start something new and you have to learn all the things to start it, and you're on fire and wired all the time. That's how I felt throughout those first six months of podcasting. I was Learning something from my guest when I was interviewing them. I had to learn things to solve things. Throughout the process of podcasting itself, it was such a, I don't know, golden period for me. I know so many people had such a rough time during the early months of COVID and I don't want to make light of that, but for me, it was a really, really good period. Looking back, and I was just having a bunch of fun, learning a whole lot of things, building that self confidence. And yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't say any more about podcasting. It truly was a lifeline for me at a period in my life.

Yeah, it's amazing how you could take something and once you understand what it can do for you, what you're able to then do with it.

Yeah. And yeah, it's just cool. I was coming out of a dull period in my career, and that's probably because I was in the same industry doing relatively the same thing for a seven or eight year period. Part of me realized that podcasting or starting a podcast reminded myself that I am capable of learning new things. So just the fact of starting this project and building this project gave me self confidence and it made me realize that I can reinvent myself. And I know that easily translated whenever I reenter the workforce and was in a completely different career path then, having the self confidence to say, I can do this because I just did it the last six months, kind of starting something from scratch. Going through those early lessons of putting out terrible episodes, getting some bad feedback, making it through that entire journey, and then six months later, looking at the quality of output that you're putting out now and realizing, wow, I can not only learn this, but I can improve on this and get better and better over time.

I would love to also hear about when your brother mentioned, hey, we can actually start doing this for a career, what was that like for you?

Yeah. So this was about two years into the journey. The podcast was always built for my brother. It came out of Sunday conversations. He's three years younger than I am, and he'd be asking me these life questions. And sometimes I could give him some guidance. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know, Kyle. I'm lonely too. I don't know how to make friends. I'd just be like, let me see if I can interview somebody that might have those answers. And it really started to shape or morph into what the struggle is real now, which is all about navigating your 20s and some of the early lessons learned that you have to do whenever you enter, quote, quote, adulthood. So he got really excited and enthusiastic about the podcast, and then he asked me if he could join the team. He comes from an audio production background, so his skills aligned very well with the back end of our services. He joined the team and was helping, and over that last two years, I'd really became known as the podcast guy in my network. I was just, like, really excited about podcasting and learning a bunch about it and always willing to jump on calls with people and share the things I knew and help them get started or troubleshoot their issues. And when Kyle joined the team, I'd bring him into some of those similar calls whenever I knew there was, like, a technical audio question or editing question. And it was like three different meetings. And I think the third meeting, he kind of pumped the brakes on me afterwards and was like, justin, I'm happy to help any and all of your podcasting friends, but do you think we should get paid for this? I was like, ooh, ding, ding, ding. I always wanted to start a business. I would love to do something with my brother. I'm like, let's do this. Let's just give it a go. I was once again at that point where the podcast was running smooth. And now he came on board. He gave me a little bit of time back in kind of my personal development category of how I spend my time. I'm like, let's try starting a business and see what happens with that. And it was slow to start. We massaged the idea out a little bit. We asked a friend if he could be our first free client so we could work through the processes. Then we showed up to a conference and just started telling people that we were podcast editors. And lo and behold, the third day in, I was hosting a running meetup. We were doing introductions, and I mentioned that I do podcast editing. And then someone, after the run, came up to me and was like, hey, you do podcast editing, right? I was like, yeah. He's like, cool. Can you meet with my co host this afternoon? We're looking for a podcast editor. Like, sure, let's do it. And then, of course, that ends. And like, two minutes later, I call Kyle, like, hey, Kyle, we might have our first opportunity. Freaking out everything. We went through their whole podcast and got a couple of talking points gearing up for this conversation we were going to have in, like, two hours. And we showed up to the table. They asked us, like, two questions. It was men, like, hard questions to answer. And like, cool, how do we get started? And I'M like.

I'll send you an email. And we just started figuring out how to onboard a client and a contract and how to build them and how to actually execute on the things that we promised. It was so much freaking fun. But yeah, now I feel like we're seasoned vets at this and we're looking back and we're like, holy cow, we. It's so fun to see how much we've progressed in, you know, last year, year and a half, starting our own business. And I'm so glad it happened.

Do you use those words give, let's give it a go a lot when you're trying something new? Because I really like that idea of not putting too much pressure on it. You're like, let's just give it a go.

That probably actually came out of a lot of conversations on the podcast. I think whenever you're interviewing so many entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial minded people, you realize or you pick up that they're just figuring it out too, or they're just trying things and the only difference between who they are and who you are is just the fact that they started and they said go and they actually decided, let's do this. So I think I kind of picked that up through them that the hardest part I feel like is just getting the initial spark and getting things moving. And also you're not tied to any earlier decisions. So I was in the back of my head being like, okay, if this is a complete flop and we hate editing people's podcast, then we can always tell our client we're no longer doing this and pack up shop and be done with this. But of course it was what we wanted to do.

And that makes me want to ask you also, what are just some other top things you noticed? Give us your biggest nuggets that you get from the people that you've been interviewing and what you've learned from just different interviews and podcasting.

That's definitely one of the biggest ones, the through line too, that you can just learn anything. I hear that all of the time in podcasting. Also curiosity. I feel like curiosity comes up a lot that might go hand in hand with learning, but maybe not quite. I think a lot of of the guests that I have on which are top typically like high performing individuals in some kind of capacity, they're just ultra curious about their space and they just get obsessed with things. So I see that coming up fairly frequently and then all the tried and trues like networking and how important relationship building is, is very important. Skill building and always challenging yourself in some aspect around a new skill, that you're learning different things like that.

Okay, Justin, so what would be your number one piece of advice for people on doing the thing?

Yeah, especially if we're talking about podcasting. But I'm guessing with any of doing the things, you just gotta get started legit. You need to set a deadline for yourself and get started. There are all of the big milestones, all of the big accomplishments that I've done in my life came out of this sole decision that I was going to actually do it. And then I just started figuring out as I went. And I think that's probably the biggest barrier, looking at my own self and the things that I haven't accomplished yet because I just haven't gotten them started.

Okay, I'd love to hear what's coming alive for you after our conversation today.

I mean, you. You made me reflect a lot on just kind of my short past, and it's made me realize or I'm currently feeling how much I've grown and developed as a person. I mean, I just can't even mean January 2020 is not that long ago, but that's when I kicked off this sabbatical. And it's hard for me to even identify with the person or the things that I was feeling in that moment and just in such a short period. How much I've grown is just truly inspiring to my own self. I'm really excited to continue to see how I grow and develop over time. And yeah, I think you're just making me feel that a little bit. Yay.

Well, I'd love to have you share with the listeners where they can learn about you and then also if they want help with their podcasting journey, what you can do for and then also how they can get in touch with you.

Yeah, so I'll start with the second one. So we're podcast managers. We help service based business owners launch podcast and then the ongoing support, the editing, the copywriting, the publishing, all of the things. If you're a podcaster, you know all the things that have to happen behind the scenes to make this happen, those are things that we help with. So if you want to get connected or learn more about that, email is probably the best place to find me, Justin, @simplepodstudios.com and I'm sure you'll have that in the show notes. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Justin Lee Peters on LinkedIn. I'm super active there. If you want to connect, learn, talk about podcasting or anything in the personal development space.

And what's the name of your podcast for them as well?

Yep. The podcast is called the Struggle is Real, all about navigating your 20s, specifically career and money. That's kind of our focus. We're putting out a series right now around managing your work. It is all about calendar management, email management, and project management. Some of the core skills involved in those three categories are what we're talking about currently on the podcast.

Thanks again for coming on. This was really great getting a chance to talk to you.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Stacy.

And for the listeners, do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it.