“I didn’t know if anyone would listen in 2013. I showed up every week for years, 750,000 downloads the first year and now over a million a week, and what made the difference was committing well past the doubt.”
“I started Operators because I wanted a trusted group of confidants to workshop ideas with, and we refined the show every single day. A year of wanting is just fear dressed as planning; record one episode, ship it, and let the audience prove you wrong.”
“I spent a year thinking about Podcast Junkies before I started it in 2014, and the audience question almost stopped me. What moved me was deciding the first fifty listeners didn't matter: the guest list did.”
“I spent a year sitting on my own show idea, terrified no one would care, until I realized the question wasn't whether people would listen, it was whether I was willing to find the right people and keep showing up for them.”
“I was 17 in Virginia when I dropped my first episode and literally had no clue if anyone would tune in. The thing that kept me going was making the show something I'd want to listen to even if the numbers stayed at zero.”
“I spent a year wondering the same thing before we launched Feed Your Brand, and within five months we had 100,000 listeners a month. The audience doesn't show up because you waited until you were sure; it shows up because you started talking about something worth bingeing on.”
“I dragged my feet on My First Million for months because I was sure nobody would care. Shaan basically tricked me into it by promising to do all the work, and even then I thought it was a side project. The audience showed up because we were genuinely having the conversation we wanted to have, not because we optimized for one.”