This growth curve might look like it’s just been an easy climb, but it was hardly that. Our podcast went live on June 1, 2016. Just like everyone who starts a new venture – I was excited about the possibilities. I thought I had it all figured out and I was ready to conquer the podcasting world. But it has been a sobering learning process. A lot of my assumptions about starting and growing a business were thoroughly tested in this crucible. A lot of my initial hypothesis have been proven wrong. Below are 2 lessons I wish I had learned much sooner!

Do it for yourself

Early on, as I was looking for authors to interview on this podcast, I was ready to interview anyone who had a business/self-help book to their name. However, a lot of those books did not inspire me or excite me … but I did those interviews for the sake of building the business. Or so I thought. When I listened to those interviews to edit them, I quickly realized that those interviews were useless because they had no energy, inspiration or excitement in them. There was no way I would put out interviews like that into the world. So, I had to throw away a large percentage of my early interviews.

Then I made a conscious decision to only interview those authors whose book I personally thought was outstanding. If their book helped me build my business or helped me in my personal development journey, I would invite them. Otherwise, I would not. So, in some ways, the podcasts are a very selfish thing I do. I interview authors from my vantage point. I try very hard to go as deep as possible so that I can learn something that I can apply in my business and life today. Reading those books and talking to the authors about those books is something I genuinely love doing.

The other thing I enjoy doing is creating short video summaries of the books I like on our youtube channel. At one point, in order to test, I decided to share the audios of those videos on the podcast. I was not sure if people would respond well to them because they were not author interviews as they had come to expect. To my surprise, they have been some of our most downloaded episodes. That told me that my audience wants to see great content – irrespective of who is talking. It doesn’t matter if it’s the author or if it’s just me. If it is great, engaging content … they want more of it.

Do You!

A lot of the times, when starting off, we have a tendency to defer to those who are already established in a field. I did the same thing with my podcast. Early on, I would just interview the authors in a way that anointed them as the expert and me as someone who was just along for the ride. I minimized what I said … because I wanted the audience to hear everything the author had to say. I tried not to add any of my own ideas, stories or feedback because I thought that my audience just cared to hear about what the author had to say. So, I would just ask a question and let the author speak on until I moved to the next question.

However, very quickly I got feedback from people that the interviews where the authors did most of the talking were boring. The content was great, but my audience wanted back and forth discussion. They wanted more interaction. They wanted to know my opinions and stories. They wanted to know me. The light bulb went off in my head … I just had to be ME! I just had to be the person who loves talking about books and ideas to anyone and everyone. I just had to be the same person on-mic as I was off-mic. I just had to own myself. I did not have to be Mani Vaya the interviewer. I had to be Mani Vaya as he was at that point of time.

By not owning myself I was doing a huge dis-service to the world. You see, I am my audience. Please read that sentence again. And I am the voice of my audience. You, my audience have entrusted me to get deep into these ideas just like you would have wanted to go if you were trying to understand those ideas.

So, as you go about your journey of building a business, keep these inner game lessons in mind. And you want to learn more about starting or growing your podcast, email me with your question at: mani@2000books.com