Whether you’re a long-time listener or just joining us, in this episode we explore how to turn the spark of an idea into a beacon for others, how to navigate the inevitable hurdles you will face with grace (sort of), and how to stay true to your vision when the climb gets steep.
From the power of starting to the resilience needed to keep going, we’re diving deep into what it takes to build something meaningful and keep it thriving.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Starting with a clear vision and being open to change.
- Approaching work with quality, consistency, and a mindset of service.
- Overcoming the common fears that plague creators and leaders.
- Practical steps to creating something that stands the test of time.
Referenced Episodes:
- E255 Podcast Strategies: What I’ve Learned After 2,000,000+ Downloads
- E156 What You Need To Know About Writing A Book & Getting It Published
Referenced Resources:
Other AoC Resources:
- New Book Updates
- Live Events
- 1:1 Virtual or Group Mentoring/ Staff Development
- Group Mentoring (The Coalition)
- Online Courses
Next Apprenticeship: On February 3rd and 4th, The Art of Coaching team will be partnering with Diakadi Fitness for our first Apprenticeship of 2024! If you are unfamiliar with The Apprenticeship, it’s a highly interactive 2-day workshop that steps out beyond the boundaries of typical conferences and seminars. This isn’t a “rah-rah,” motivational, death by powerpoint event. On the contrary, by attending, you’ll experience the practice, coaching, and feedback you need to truly improve in the areas of communication, leadership, and building trusting relationships. And on top of that, you’ll earn 1.8 CEUs for 18 hours of continuing education. The early bird discount is ending soon so sign up today to develop the skills necessary to help you strategically approach any conversation. We’ll see you there!
If this episode was helpful, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes and share the episode with anyone else you think would benefit from it. This helps us more than you know, and we can’t thank you enough for your time, effort, and support!
TRANSCRIPT
Brett Bartholomew
Welcome to the Art of coaching Podcast. I’m Brett Bartholomew, and at a young age poor communication nearly cost me my life. Now, I help others navigate the gray area of social interaction, power dynamics and communication, so they can become more adaptable leaders, regardless of their profession, age or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you’re in the no nonsense type, who appreciates frank conversations, advice you can put to use immediately, and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership, you’re in the right place. I’m glad that you’re joining us. Let’s dive in.
Welcome to the 300th episode of The Art of coaching podcast. This is a bit surreal for me. And I wanted to put something together that was helpful to you, not just an episode that celebrates this or reflects on that but gives you something tangible, whether you’re somebody that endeavors to start out on something like this a journey, whether that’s creating a course writing a book, doing a podcast, going out on your own pushing something in your life further, or you’re already doing it and you feel like maybe you’re losing a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of juice. So what I did here, and we’re going to go through this in a fairly asynchronous manner, is I’m going to share some of my journey strategies a peek behind the curtain, I’m also going to share a number of questions and prompts that many of you have sent in. And all of this is going to be geared, hopefully, just like you feel many of our episodes are around just giving you really, really, really practical value. So I want to be clear, this isn’t just for people that want to start a podcast, we have an episode on that, we’ll share that in the show notes. This isn’t just about tips for writing a book, we have an episode of that, we’ll share that in the show notes. This is an episode that just talks about what it takes to continue on this path of sustainability and consistency, even when our lives get crazy. And I think you’re gonna find a lot of relatable pieces here.
So 300 episodes ago, I started this podcast, to really dive deep into the intricacies of human interaction, to empower a lot of leaders and coaches just like you to harness that, right, that skill of effective communication, contextual competence, being able to read the room so that you could improve relationships so that you could improve results. So you could ultimately just be a better human because I know that’s a path that I’ve been trying to be on. Right? I’m very open about this. I’ve had numerous challenges in my life, I always joke that I have just the right amount of self hate because I put myself out there so much, it’s impossible not to see one’s flaws. But to be able to use those flaws as a tailwind and to continue to say, Hey, this is who I am. This is who I’m trying to be. And I’m going to dive into whatever research and practical methods possible to be a more complete person, right? And so many of you, you need to tackle that initial insecurity of will anyone listen? will it matter? Those are doubts that are very much valid, but they serve to also become just the echoes of your soul. And they’ll cloud your mind if you don’t get them out of the way. So we’re gonna peel back a lot of layers. We’re going to talk practical, I will say this, I owe you a huge thank you. Because ultimately, while we don’t sit here and look at listener count every week, we do pay attention to are we growing, and we can’t grow, if not for you. So I’ll say this, we’ve never had any shame in asking for help. If you have not yet rated the episode in Apple podcasts or iTunes, wherever you listen, please do so it helps more people like you find it and I know many of you are likely driving. So just say hey Siri, make sure to remind me to leave a review for the Art of coaching podcast or make some kind of reminder or jot it down. Otherwise, we get buried by the end PRs of the world and all those mammoth machines because that’s where we’re going to start with this.
All right, when you start anything, you are always going to feel like an underdog you are always going to feel like an underdog. You’re going to feel like either my ideas great, and I’m gonna hit the ground running. And then you’re going to kind of get hit in the mouth or you’re going to feel like I don’t even know where I would start. I’m too freaked out. I don’t want to pigeonhole myself. And that’s really not the way to start endeavor. A big truth of this is I got started just because a game became very clear that there weren’t a lot of mediums out there. That felt right for sharing my message. blogs were real popular at one point in time but those started to fade and go out of style. We do a newsletter, love our newsletter, social media. Nobody ever really goes back and looks at a ton of past tweets. You know, that is unless they’re trying To cancel you, or a lot of past Instagram messages, so it sure felt like, I was wondering, is anything I’m putting out there even lasting? Or is it getting churned up into whatever content universe just cannibalizes at all. Of course, my book conscious coaching was out there. But I know people digest things in different mediums. So for me, a podcast made a lot of sense. And I thought it could also be this time capsule, one that could remind me of my growth, two, when there’s a time that I’m no longer here, my son can listen back and know what his father thought and any future children that I had. And also, just so many of you, when you ask questions, felt like you had an evergreen resource you could go back to, if you are struggling with overwhelming burnout, boom, there’s an episode for that. If you’re struggling with how to tell your partner that you want to go out on your own, and you don’t like your job, boom, there’s an episode for that. If you’re a people pleaser, and you’re trying to get out of your own head in your own way, there’s an episode for that. So the Hallmark take home there for you is no matter what you’re thinking about starting, or are in the middle of one of the keys to sustainability, is just making sure that it’s something that you’re passionate about something that you have true insight. And remember, you don’t have to be a know it all. That’s another misnomer that you have to be some guru or have it all figured out. It’s just the opposite, right? You just have to be passionate about it, you have to have some insight. And I think it’s really important that we talked about topics, this is just for me, it doesn’t have to be for you. But I want to talk about topics that are just as relevant now. And they will be relevant 100 years from now. And beyond. That is the core thing that anchored everything that we did. Now, I changed a lot there too. And this is geared at some of you that feel like, Man, I just I don’t know, I’m multi passionate, I have this, I don’t want to kind of get put in pigeon holed into one thing, you won’t. When I first started this podcast, I was still a strength coach. And a lot of our audience was still strength and conditioning and fitness. And that was still a core mission of mine to help more people in that industry, get out of their own way and think bigger and more entrepreneurially because the industry had gone through some really tough times. And there are a lot of people that were pigeon holed into thinking they had to be something that they didn’t have to be successful. I took a lot of inspiration from people like Jay Z, and even Dr. Dre, people in the music world that started off in one trade, and then transitioned into something else and helped other people. It became very clear, not too long into the podcast that my greater interest was just all things human interaction psychology, and broader leadership. I no longer wanted to serve just one population. I wanted to serve anybody, anybody and our business followed this trajectory that wanted to have tools to better navigate the messy realities of life and leadership. And that made me happy, which is something that’s really important that you’ve got to find it made me happy, because I felt like now I can explore so many more things. Every single day, there’s content. If I have a disagreement with a woman in the DMV line, if I had an interesting story from travel, if somebody came up to me and asked me, How do I deal with a difficult colleague, everything in life became content for us. And there were things that I wanted to know too. So just think about this, if you’re stuck transitioning a little bit. If you’re stuck, and you’ve been doing something consistently for a while, ask yourself, do you still feel really aligned with this? You know, because, there’s no rule, you don’t have to start a new podcast or change the name or any of those things. You know, just make a statement, say from this day forward, this is what we’re going to focus on. And I appreciate you being with me on this journey. You’d be surprised or maybe you won’t be and how many people will follow you and appreciate that. I’ll give another example. We easily could have called this podcast, the Brett Bartholomew podcast or any other number of names, especially as I transitioned with the content. But for us, coaching meant leadership coaching meant guiding. So there was no need for that, despite the fact that you know, we had some people that said, Oh, coaching is always going to connote sport, we just didn’t agree. And as our broader as our audience broadened out, they didn’t agree either. There’s many of you that have written in that are in the world of real estate, those of you that are in the legal profession, in the medical profession, and you know that you coach or guide somebody. So don’t overthink things. If you feel like you have to pivot from your origin story, no matter what motivated you to start something. Right, your original vision should evolve over time. It should.
Now let’s talk about some of the biggest challenges. This was a question we got what were some of the biggest challenges you’ve overcome in producing 300 episodes? Well, I think it’s important to note, it’s not just 300 episodes, it’s 300 episodes without missing a week since we started and for a while we were doing two episodes a week. So and I know I’m fuzzy on the math here. I don’t remember if it was December 2018 December 2019. But we’ve never ever missed A week. And that meant that there were times when I had to take the show on the road, literally, I would have to take my mixer, my road caster Pro, if you want to see the things that I use for this podcast, or any of our stuff at art of coaching, just go to artofcoaching.com/favorites. We vetted all of that for you, and you’ll see it, but I would have to take a microphone and my mixer with me. And I would have to do it in a hotel room. Why? Well, for those of you that are maybe new to this, and you haven’t heard me talk about this, for almost the past five years, I’ve traveled 100,000 miles or more, and even on down years, sands this year, because we moved and we changed some of our business model, I was traveling 65,000 miles a year. So I’m not somebody that and this isn’t shots at anybody, I’m just contrasting it. I’m not a tenured professor or just a creator of content. We’re actually out there coaching and teaching. And this is in addition to what we do, we don’t make a ton of money off the podcasts, we used to do a lot of sponsors. But now we really try to use it to bring awareness to our own stuff. So this is something that I had to do in addition to the four or five other things that I balanced in many of you can relate. Right? So I was trying to balance having a family, my doctorate working on my new book, going out and doing in services and workshops. So my lesson for you there is you have to think no matter what your undertaking is, can you do it on the road? Is it adaptable? If you need all this fancy equipment, you’re not going to be able to do that. We don’t use a big kind of multi camera setup one. I’m not Howard Stern or Joe Rogan, I don’t have 10 or 15 people, I think Howard Stern is 35 working on just that thing alone. Right now, if some of you out there are people that that’s your background, and you’re in or around the Phoenix area, and you’d love to be involved with that great, but that wasn’t something that we had. So I wanted to make sure what I thought what do I need to be successful in long term at locking this in? What do I need to do, and it was okay, I need to have different kinds of microphones, I need to have different kinds of setups, because life is gonna get in the way, and you just have to make it work for you. That’s another important lesson. So many people will get lost and not be able to stay consistent because they’re listening to too much advice from everybody else. Oh, you should do this on YouTube and this or you should stream it live. Or you should take live callers or you should write this kind of book, or your course should be this first principles thinking, folks, if you can’t do it, in the worst of circumstances, when you’re sick, and God knows there’s been many of those episodes, anything like that, then you shouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t do it.
You have to find a way to make it consistent and manageable for you. All right. Another piece that I think should motivate those of you and I’m bouncing back and forth between maybe those that are doing something and looking for more inspiration to keep going. And those that aren’t. But those that aren’t I made a note here. A lot of the excuses that people will give, and I know that they’re valid, but just I am going to use the word excuse is they just feel like well, you know, I don’t want to be perceived as this. And that is frankly, a lot of what holds many of us back we don’t want to be perceived as something. But a little quote here from the great mental models. You all know the person who has all the answers on how to improve your organization, or the friend who has the cure to world hunger. While pontificating with friends, a bottle of wine at dinner is fun. It won’t help you improve. The only way you’ll know the extent to which you understand reality is to put your ideas and understanding into action. If you don’t test your ideas against the real world, keep contact with the earth, how can you be sure you fully understand. So then says the biggest barrier to learning from reality is ourselves, it’s hard to understand a system that we part with, if we have blind spots. My message here is that is another guiding principle for me when I create anything is when you have skin in the game. And skin in the game for me is putting things out there via my book or a podcast, or the things that we do in our private, mighty networks community or newsletter. It does a couple of things. One, it makes you really go back to the drawing board and say, Do I believe this? Do I know this? Have I vetted this and it also puts you in a position where you grow from an emotional maturity standpoint, because you’re not going to be right about everything you’re gonna realize some of those great ideas you thought you had were crap. When you start to kind of just pull on those threads of complexity. They didn’t stick. On the other hand, there’s going to be some things that you maybe didn’t think were great, and they really helped people. And that’s why another reason I can’t think many of you enough for reaching out, those of you that reach out and say, Hey, this episode helped me. You don’t realize, for us, that’s not an ego pat on the back, that’s like, Okay, now I’m learning from this person’s experience, this point, and this point really helped them grow. There are people out there waiting for you to have those moments with them. There just are. So I just want to poke a respectful poke some of you that think you’re already pretty bright. And I know you are, that you’re an intellectual that you’re an expert. And I know and I’m sure you are, I’m not trying to be, there’s no subtext here. But you’re not to the level that you could be if you’re not putting your ideas out there and testing them. And that’s just a friendly challenge. For those of you that are achievement, drugs, just put your ideas out there, put them in the arena. And don’t worry about the people that criticize you, they’ve never built shit, frankly, they have it. And so just put your ideas out there people like me, who have had a combination of praise and a tremendous amount of criticism, you’re always gonna get more respect from people like us, and circles of true creators, because we know what it’s like. And you know, what it’s a different kind of fraternity, it’s a different kind of secret society, where we all know, yeah, we’ve been punched in the mouth we’ve grown, we keep going. That’s a special thing to be a part of. So I just really want to encourage those of you to, put that out there, test those ideas, test those assumptions. Okay.
Memorable interactions? Can you talk about a memorable interaction with a listener that reminded you of the impact of your work every day? I think the biggest aha moment for me was when, how do I phrase this, it takes a lot of work to come up with topics, because we’ll put things out on our newsletter. We do things here on the podcast, we’ll do things in our private community. And you don’t want them to be redundant. At the same time, it makes sense for some of these topics to live in different mediums. But early on, I felt like many of you would just crucify me. If I did a topic on our newsletter in 2018. And then it was a podcast in 2020. And I made that up in my own head. I did, I made it up in my own head, I just for some reason, I thought, you know, like, I wouldn’t care if somebody did that. Now, I would care if I saw every single week, this person put something out on social media, that was the same thing that they did there. It was just a never ending circle of repetitive bullshit. But I’m like, Why would I care if somebody that had something really valuable to say on their newsletter in 2018 made it a podcast. And so that’s one thing I just want you to be aware of, nobody really cares. People need that. And that wake up call that interaction for me was somebody saying, Hey, I remember you wrote this in your newsletter in 2019. I saw you post about it, and then you did a podcast about it. And it was that podcast that finally hit, I needed to hear it three times. And more importantly, I needed to hear it in a variety of ways.
Jumping in here real quick to remind you to get to artofcoaching.com/events. Right now, we only have a handful of our Apprenticeship workshops left. And these are by far, one of the most impactful things I promise you will do throughout your career. Here’s why you’re going to have a lot of misunderstandings through life, there’s also going to be a lot of times where you simply screw up as a leader. And you’re going to have to figure out what went wrong there. How did they misinterpret this, how, despite my intentions, everything fall apart. That is exactly why I created the Apprenticeship. Leadership is a messy full contact sport. And when I wanted to learn better ways to get my point across or to resolve conflict, all I could find was these wishy washy seminars where either watched a PowerPoint all day, or it was like these Win Win FBI negotiation kind of things. And I wanted something where I could get in and actually get practice and feedback from my peers. Now I understand that can sound scary to some of you. But these are workshops where we normalize failure, you get to learn you get to rewatch and replay the situation that you struggle with most. In essence, you get a practice for real life. I mean, think about it. People practice for sports, they practice for all kinds of things, but they don’t really get a practice for the most meaningful moments in their lives as leaders. Some of our previous attendees have said things like the Apprenticeship at the end of the day provided an opportunity for me to get feedback. Nobody else I worked with was going to give me I need time and opportunities to work on the hard stuff. I know I often can come across the wrong way even though I mean well. And this gave me the tools I needed to get better. Another individual that recently came said listen, this was really hard to do leading up to it, knowing how interactive this was going to be. I just knew that at the end of the day, I could either continue to fall victim to my blind spots and act like I had it all figured out. And everybody else was the problem or I could face this head on. I mean the bottom line guys This isn’t a communication workshop. It’s not a leadership workshop. It is a social agility and self awareness workshop. And it’s something where you are going to be able to get the tools, the skills, the practice and the refinement you need. In order to make sure that you decrease the amount of misunderstandings, decrease the amount of time wasted, and maximize the efficiency of what you want to get done. It’s about the people elements side of things. And everything you do in life will always be about people. So invest in it, check it out, it’s not going to be for everybody. But if you do want to get better, if you do understand that progress is not passive. And you understand that no matter what you know, and how decorated you are, how many years of experience we have, and what you do. If you can’t connect with others, you’re not going to get things done at the highest level, go to artofcoaching.com/apprenticeship. Now, to learn more. Finally, as always, we try to remind people, these are open to every age, every profession, every gender, every everything, all you have to do is be a human being that wants to get better, isn’t entitled, and wants true feedback. And that’s artofcoaching.com/apprenticeship.
I needed to hear it three times. And more importantly, I needed to hear it in a variety of ways. So I want you to consider that. No matter how repetitive you might think you are. Somebody is waiting to hear this thing for the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time. That’s what they need to get through. And I just want to give you a moment to pause and relax. Think about something you needed to hear again, and again. And again. And again. And again. Until you thought. Okay, yeah, I’m listening now. Think of something you had to experience again, and again, and again. And again, to be like, Wow, yeah, I’ve got it. People are waiting for those moments with you. Also. The other part of this, the memorable interaction is I realized one week, I was really struggling to come up with something I was just kind of down in the dumps. I had felt like I’d given so much content, I put so much out there, I think I made my we just got done making Blindspot, which was my third online course. And I was just kind of empty, I needed some recharge time, but I wasn’t gonna be able to be afforded that. So I’m in the middle of a two day workshop. And I thought, you know, your audience here, the people at this workshop have shared so many things, why are you not writing these down and making these episodes, and it was just a no brainer. I mean, people had come to this Apprenticeship workshop saying I struggle being a people pleaser, I freeze up, I feel like I struggle with making small talk, because I don’t understand the point of it. Another person was mad because a contract of theirs got rejected. And they’re just like, I don’t understand people that don’t see the validity and what I do, and it was just man, these are all episodes, this is all content. So I’ve said this over and over. And you’ll want to Hallmark this part in the episode or you could dog ear the page or screenshot whatever the best content is always going to be real life. And unfortunately, that’s something that I couldn’t even get some members of my staff to understand at times, because of their own fears and it took it takes them growing, and everybody grows at their own pace. But I’ve always wanted art of coaching to be more than just mean now, that doesn’t mean we needed to have 510 1520 employees. That means it could be representative of you, our listeners and things that you write in and say and share with us, our facilitators, because we have a facilitator program where you can get paid to teach all around the country or the world for us. But the bottom line is I wanted it to be more than just me. And there was a time when somebody asked, Hey, I see a lot of you on the art of coaching social media, do you ever let your staff come on? I said, you know, what I encouraged my staff to come on and our audience and our facilitators to share come on or write things in all the time. But I can’t force them to, you know, when you talk to staff or facilitators, and they’d say, Well, you know, I just feel a little insecure. And you’d kind of have to look at them and say, Hey, this is the nature of our content. Remember, we can’t teach a set people if we’re not embodying it. And most importantly, they quit thinking you need to come up with something groundbreaking. Something happened to you today, you got an argument with your partner or significant other or you saw some commercial that use an influence tactic that we talked about, or something, you just have to pay attention. Many of you just have to continuously breathe, and get out of your own way and pay attention and that content that aligns with what you want to talk and teach. Talk about and teach is right there. It is right, right. Right right there. So just think about that. Think about that for a minute and quit making it so hard on yourself to stay consistent. When I did that the floodgates open. And that’s what’s led to over 3000 Instagram posts. God knows how many tweets, a newsletter since 2017. The podcast 300 episodes, it’s not just one medium, it’s all of it, because you start seeing your stuff everywhere. And that’s, one of the pieces of advice I’d give to myself. Again, if I could start back. Remember that real life is your best content, I think we’ve done an okay job of that.
Now, there are plenty of times we’ve struggled, one of those struggles is always managing guests dynamics, how we choose our guests, the tactics we use to ensure the conversation is valuable to our listeners. Now, there is a core truth here, one that I didn’t think about early enough. And one of those pieces is when I started this podcast, I never wanted it to be something where we just chase down a bunch of celebrities, you know, sure, we’ve had bigger names like Robert Greene and Annie Duke, and others on. But I didn’t want to chase the same end, you know what I’m talking about, if you listen to podcasts, somebody will come out with a book. And they’re all of a sudden on every podcast, or there’s a movie coming out there on everybody’s podcast, they’ve got a Netflix documentary, and that’s part of the game. I’m not hating on that. I’m just saying that I wanted to do something different. Now part of this was ego. I don’t mind being honest with you. I remember when I was a graduate assistant, I would listen to a podcast is a great podcast. This is back when I was a strength coach. And they always had the same strength coaches on it was always the big names. But for me, I was trying to find ways to learn from other people in my position. How can I learn from where I was at, what are other people like me going through. And so I remember I was like, I wish somebody had a podcast like that. So when I started the art of coaching podcast, I said, Alright, we’re going to do a combination of solo episodes, but also podcasts with people that are out there doing stuff, maybe they don’t have a platform, or a huge one. But they’re good people. They’re sharp people. They’re doing a lot of great things. And we’re going to be a podcast for the Underdogs. Great, a lot of relatability there. What I didn’t anticipate is, and this was something I saw from Howard Stern, when they were asking him about interviews is he said, One thing he doesn’t like about podcasts is there’s a lot of people on podcasts that are not media trained. And what he said by that is they don’t know, when they’re maybe going on a tangent, they don’t know the right mix of kind of BS-ing and guiding and educating and getting to a point or sometimes even not being brief, you know, in certain areas and knowing how to tell a story. And he’s right. And this is something I saw in myself when I was on other people’s podcasts as well and I had to work at, but there are hard times where you have people on. And no matter what prep you do before, you know you kind of let them know you have them take a breath, you remind them of their audience. I even tell them that many of you listening, I go listen, and I’m telling all of you that straight out of the bat, I tell every guest that comes on our audience is a group of high achievers that are very hard on themselves, they do not like fluff, you are going to get them to like you a lot more if you can just be a real human. So if you don’t know the answer to something, just take a beat. Or even if you’re kind of talking it out, you know whatever. Or asked me a question they don’t expect question answer question answer, they know this is gonna kind of go all over the place they want real. All they want is a real. So make sure that you just do that strip off the mask of the expert. And just be a human first. Yeah, I got it. I got Okay, great. Yeah, this will be great. And then we do it and they freeze up. Or all of a sudden they start going on all this kind of long winded banter. And that becomes tricky because as a host, there’s this balance between letting people find their way. And then knowing when to say, All right, let’s reorient this a little bit. And I actually have an episode planned in 2024. I’ve already recorded it, where I have somebody on. That’s an example of this brilliant person. Brilliant. And they’d admit very multi passionate brain can go a million directions. And I thought, I wonder what it would be like to interview this person knowing that these things are gonna happen, and just continuously having to try to navigate that. Because it is this balance, especially because we have a wide ranging audience, right? You have to tell people, Hey, make sure that you also try to connect the dots for a lot of people. Well, we’ve had people on from strength to conditioning or fitness because I still want to honor that early, primary field that I was in s&c and you tell them make sure that you oriented around other things, and they will for a while, but all of a sudden they can’t help but drop jargon. But that also happens from people that we’ve had in the tech world or anything else. And so it’s this constant balance of just realizing that you know, People are gonna get in their own heads. Sometimes they had an interaction before the show that’s gonna throw them off. Other times, maybe they’re trying to, you know, do a little bit too much in the episode. But managing guests dynamics has been pretty tough. So we choose underdogs. And we choose people doing good work. We choose I make it a point not choose a bunch of my friends. And I may have lost some for that. You know, I think there are some times early on where my friends expected me just to have them on the show. And if you didn’t, they think that you didn’t value them. And it’s like, no, I’m just not, I’m not going to be a Homer, right. And if you want to make it on the show, just make it undeniable, one reach out two show that you’ve listened and lay out a plan for how you’re going to make it valuable for the audience. And let’s do that. But a lot of folks don’t always do those things. But when it comes to just making sure the conversations valuable to the listener, even when they rant, I’ll just get to a point eventually, where I ask some very pointed hard questions, even though I like keeping the podcasts conversational, say, Okay, you said a lot there. And there’s tremendous value in it. But I’m still going to ask you just this one piece, if you could extract blank, or if you could do blank. And I hope it’s evident many of you that I have you top of mind, the thing that I’d ask all of you to remember, and even those of you that are doing this stuff to give yourself grace on is, for us, we only do a one hour episode, we don’t do the four hour long form, right? People aren’t paid to be on this podcast. So there’s only so much you can achieve in that hour. And we’ve kept it a bad hour because we just feel like right people are busy or you know, there’s commute, they can listen to half of it on the way there half of it on the way back or a long walk or anything like that. Another key point that we got, as somebody eventually just said, Hey, I like your solo episodes. Now, this was a double edged sword for me, because I was like, Well, I don’t always want to hear myself a lot more. That said, this whole episodes do allow me to create evergreen content. So when somebody asks a common question, boom, it’s there. But when I asked him, Why do you like it? And they go, Well, I just know what I’m gonna get with you, you’re gonna go into the root cause of something, you’re gonna give some practical advice, and then you’re gonna kind of color that was something personal? And I thought, oh, okay, great. Yeah, that is my process for crafting kind of a clear message. Like when we did our podcast on how to communicate with neurodiverse populations. But first, why do we need even have a podcast on that laid out? What is a neurodiverse? Mean? How might this relate to the listener? What are some common issues we have? And where do those start? Why do we get into these habits of communicating this way? Makes sense, right? How do you keep intimacy going with your partner after X amount of years? And if you work together and whatever? All right, well, let’s talk about that. I think that that’s always the thing that shapes it is just start from the simplest place first, start from the simplest place first. And you start to see these building blocks come together now. Right, realize that your thinking evolve. Don’t worry about it so much, have a clear focus, however, whether for me that’s topics that are going to be relevant 100 years from now, and deal with the interpersonal and the leadership side of things, whether that’s self doubt, anything like that. Make sure that you realize the best content is real life. Be open to a going different places, because improv is life. And then just make sure that you know, when you’re crafting that message, you start from the simplest place. Those are all really, really huge pieces. Those are all really huge pieces.
Now, going into another question, are there times where you doubted yourself? Name it? Are you kidding? We’ve seen weeks and months where the podcasts, people were 10,000 episodes downloaded in a week. Then we saw weeks where it’s like 2000, then we saw 2000 in a month. Then we saw Okay, now we crossed the 2 million download barrier. Good, bad, bad, good. We’ve seen it all. We’re making a podcast and you, you the listener, we’re all living during a time where there is more content than any of us could ever consume. So I would take things personally when the reality was, you know, there’s a lot of competition out there for ears and eyeballs and attention in general. There’s a lot of that and that made us even just double down more on creating meaningful content, because we weren’t going to be able to keep up with people out there that you know, they had some YouTube podcast with, you know, the most famous people are drone shots of this or exotic locations. It’s like, no, let’s go for the gut. Let’s go for the heart. What do you want people to say about what you’re doing for me? It’s, yeah, that shows useful as hell. I guarantee you if there’s something that your team or your team has struggled with, Brett’s got an episode on it. If you have an episode that you struggle with Brett’s got an episode on it. Yeah, but it’s one of those guys that thinks he knows everything. No, actually half the time he beats himself up and half of his episodes but not to a toxic point, but he’s competent. Some other things, right? These are the things that I want to say because it’s the real me. Like you, I have to overcome doubt like you, I get tired. Like you there’s times you want to cash it all in, like you there’s times where you’re on a high with and you feel like you’re crushing it like you, right fill in the blank, like you. That’s the goal of the podcast to make something like you have to deal with like you want to share, like you all of these pieces. So use that reflect on this stuff. Just reflect on this. I’m trying to give encouragement for the hesitant, and I’m speaking as directly as possible. What do you need to keep going?
This was probably one of the most interesting questions I got. What do you need to keep going. But one, I want to know that it still matters to you. I want to know beyond the download numbers that we see that it still matters to you. So please email us info@artofcoaching.com. Or leave a review. It’s so easy to do on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Just tell us why you’re listening. What it helps you with. I need to note that, you know, and if you said Well, would you still do it if nobody listened? Yeah, probably. Because like I said earlier, it’s a chance for me to sharpen the sword. It’s easy for me to keep getting better. If I’ve created an output where I have to show up every week. I do. I show up every single week and I reflect it’s like a more practical it’s a more practical thing of like, then therapy for me, because I have to talk this stuff out. And by the way, each podcast takes one to three hours to make. And I don’t always outline sometimes it’s just a bunch of stray points on a page. And I’ll make sense of it as I go through it. Sometimes it’s just a straight up raw take. And then sometimes for bigger episodes, you know where there’s a lot of psychological underpinnings. I’ll outline a little bit, but it’s a lot of work. And we don’t get paid for that. So I want to know that it matters, the bigger thing however, the bigger thing is, when you reach out, you let us know that it matters. It reminds me that we still live in a world where people want to think practically where people, I need to know that people don’t just want a bunch of content out there. That’s about biohacking, or shortcuts, or celebrity gossip, or whatever I want to know. And I need to know, I think even just for my own mental well being and being somebody that’s raising a kid, in today’s day and age, people still want to think, do people still want to face the hard stuff? Do people still care about being better humans, better communicators, better leaders, more understanding. And this also goes into my next book, my next book, go to artofcoaching.com/book for updates, sales tip. But my next book is not going to be one of those parable books. It’s not Chicken Soup for the Soul. This next book is gonna require you to learn a new language a little bit, to learn some new definitions to be willing to kill some things within yourself that don’t serve you anymore, to be willing to think. Now mind you have to do it all in 300 pages or less. But it’s not one of those books. It’s like five tips for happiness, or three parables for more passion. And I think if I ever got to a point where nobody wanted to work on this stuff, nobody wanted to think deeper. Nobody actually wanted tactical advice that they could use, they just want magic pills, they can swallow, then I’d maybe stop. I just have to collect my thoughts for a little bit. I’d stopped for a while, regroup and then I’d probably do something else. Again, because I want to sharpen that sword. But that’s what I needed to be keep going. I don’t need universal acceptance from everybody. And you shouldn’t either, because that means you’re playing it too safe. So I don’t need everybody to listen. I don’t need to be a world leader. But I do need to know that there are critical thinkers out there and people that want to grow, that it’s still really mattering to them. And they’re like, Yeah, I want to work on myself. I want to work on how I interact. I want to work on all these things. And I thank you for being there. So I thought that was a really insightful question. And I’d love to know what that is for you guys. What do all of you need to keep going? What do you all need to keep going? Ooh, that was an interesting one.
I said you guys somebody said what is a memorable cringe worthy guests moment I won’t really get into this because I respect all of our guests. And like I said before, I have many cringe moments, I’m sure when I’m I guess. But that was something in in numerous episodes. I would say hey, if I say guys or whatever, it’s an inclusive term. It means everybody. But one time at the end of an episode, I got corrected by my guests and said, Hey, thank you for the insightful questions and you did your homework, but I am going to flag you a little bit. You said the term you guys that’s not included. serve. And I swallowed it, I was kind of taken off guard, because I also just realized it doesn’t do me any good to be like, hey, well, thanks. But you know, if you were in, if you’d listened to previous episodes, you know that I use that as this, but I just thought, who is not the world that we live in now that we have to have everything with a disclaimer, that’s another thing, I just encouraged many of you if you want to keep going, and you have to just remember hanlons razor, whether it’s a guest or a critic or whatever, don’t always assume that somebody is trying to say something to piss you off or, to get under your skin. Sometimes people just don’t know, they don’t read the room, or they’re really anxious to make a point of their own. And so they kind of word vomit stuff. But you’re gonna have, a lot of really interesting moments.
Aside from this, and I think I’ve encapsulated a lot. So I’m gonna let you go. Just remember, doing anything worthwhile means that you’re going to have to find your audience. And that’s going to take some time, you’re going to have to demystify a process, one that you’re likely going to make too difficult. You don’t need to make your process so difficult. You don’t find good people that help thank God for somebody that we have helped. His name is Lance, he helps edit out some of the coughs, put some of the things together when we send him the ads, if we do ads or announcements, Lance is a godsend. And there are plenty of Lance’s out there. For all of you that would love to help so find contractors that can help you overcome that impostor syndrome. If that’s something you still deal with go to artofcoaching.com/imposter, we have something for you actually crave and seek criticism, it’s so much better than indifference. It is I would much rather have somebody be like that episode didn’t really connect, or, Hey, this was a great episode. Could you do a part two where you cover this, then nobody’s saying anything. That, to me is the worst when nobody reaches out, nobody says anything. Good, bad. You don’t want indifference. And if you do get indifference for a while, be realistic. If you’re 10 episodes in sorry, you’re probably not gonna get many people listening, you shouldn’t pay attention. Even until like, you’ve done it for six months. For my next book, that’s part of my expectation, since I know I’m not writing like, three ways to be happy, or the answer or the secret or whatever, I’m going to judge my next book on how it does within three years, not on if it sells a million copies out of the gate. That’s ridiculous. There’s so many books produced now. And the majority of the world just wants easy, bite sized candy stuff. So that wouldn’t be smart. My book is a book for the long term, something that is going to be relevant. And it’s going to be harder for people to kind of get into, because it’s going to ask them to, you know, think deeply about some things. So I need you to do that, too. If you’re like, Ah, I created a newsletter, but nobody’s reading and it’s not growing. Well, how long have you done it four weeks? Okay, you know, so you got to have realistic expectations.
And other pieces, we consolidate this and I’m going down the line, build a support network, it is really important to find a community or mentor peers that care. For me, that’s our Coalition. I created that, because I wanted that. So whether it’s Jenny Mapes, or our good friend, missy, or Scottie, or anybody that’s been a part of our Coalition people like Tessa and Caitlin, you know who you are, if you’ve been a part of any Coalition in the past, and you’ve been an active member in it. Without you, I don’t think I could have kept going either, because you invested in us in the highest level, and you shared your journey, and you guys have got to find that create a mutual admiration society. People that, you know, if you don’t hear from them for a while, you don’t have to worry, oh, do they support me or whatever, because they’re there when it matters. They’re there when it matters, you’ve got to find that mutual admiration society and that support network there. Okay? Overall, this is how you sustain passion. You just do it again and again. And again, you keep it practical, you have it aligned with your purpose. You invite other people’s opinions in there, you find a support network around you. And you just realize the only way anything is gonna get better or get noticed or be helpful is if it lasts. That’s that quote from The Dark Knight that always sticks with me when Christian Bale says, Well, what would you have me do Alfred, and he said, endure Master Wayne. And that is a lot of it to wherever you’re at in your journey. Just keep going. Because so much of your job is to make sure that when everybody else that’s competing for eyeballs or sound waves or whatever, when they’ve all died out, that you’re still there when your audience is ready or needing you the most, because there is an audience out there for everything that you do. Okay, I promise you.
And once again, I thank you for being ours. I don’t know how to put it into words which makes me feel like a phony as a communication strategist. But I Just you’ve all bring me so much happiness that listen, thank you for making something we do matter so much. And know that I’m never beyond your encouragement. Okay, I’m not this savant. I’m not somebody that thinks I’m some end all be all. I’m not. I love it when you reach out. I love it, and so does my team. So please let us hear more from you. If this helped shoot us a message. If it didn’t tell me what I could have gone into. And I’ll do another podcast episode on this in the future. If you want to laugh, go back and listen to episode one, or maybe episode 10 or 12 or whatever. Listen to some of those early episodes. Some of them were done with lav mics. They were done in so many different atmospheres with a different kind of theme music than I could tell you some stories off the record about that it’s wild. But most important, I just hope to see all of you in person at some point. I know that may not be realistic, but go to artofcoaching.com/events. Check out what we have going on. We do retreats, we do workshops, we have a private community. We’re there for you, and we appreciate you being there for us. Alright, until next time, Brett Bartholomew, for the art of coaching. We’ll talk to you soon.
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