Podcast Binge

Someone once asked me how I retain all the marketing and productivity tips I hear when I listen to so many podcasts.

The short answer? I don’t. 

It’s next to impossible to remember all that information. There’s nothing I’m listening to in these podcasts that will transform my business or my work overnight. If there was a tip like that, I would definitely remember it. But there’s not.

Instead of listening to these podcasts for direct input-to-output tips with trackable ROIs, I listen so that I can learn to speak the language. I didn’t grown up with an entrepreneurial tendency, I was just a kid. I didn’t attain any experiential advantages when I was young like some friends I have. I’m coming into the marketplace relatively green. So I listen to these podcast, I read books and I try to eavesdrop on conversations so that I can learn to speak the language of successful people.

And the cool part? It’s working. 

I can point to more than a few times in which I’ve heard something on a podcast but I won’t really understand it. Then, six months down the road, I’ll experience something in my business and it will feel familiar. Or I’ll come up against a roadblock and remember a solution that Don Miller or Seth Godin discussed on their podcasts. Jake Kassan, who just sold MVMT watches for $100M after 5 years, said the only way to progress is to make mistakes. But if we can learn from other peoples’ mistakes, we essentially outsource that time and energy. That’s what learning the language is helping me do.

The amazing part about our internet ecosystem right now is more people than ever are publishing their ideas. And if we’re smart, we can learn the language from them and impact our communities with it.