50 Things I Learned from over 600 Hours of Business Podcasts

In the past six months I’ve listened to over 600 hours of business podcasts. That’s equivalent to sitting through a 15-credit semester of lectures in college. How did I do it? My drive to work each day is one hour, one way – and I listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed so each day I’m listening to at least 3 hours of business podcasts. If I have to travel to a client at night or on the weekends, I’m listening to more podcasts on the way.

5 Benefits of Podcasts

• On-demand learning – you can browse and download a podcast about almost any topic at any time
• Location-independent learning – you don’t need to be sitting at a desk or in front of a computer – you can listen anywhere
• Free to listen – books, audio books, and learning courses almost always cost money, but podcasts are fre
• Multiple distribution channels – you can listen to podcasts via iTunes on your computer, the Podcast app on your iPhone, or through Stitcher Radio (stitcher.com or app)
• Free mentorship – you normally would have to pay a coach, mentor, or mastermind group to get the kind of one-on-one advice podcasts provide

What business podcasts did I listen to?

• Growth Everywhere by Eric Siu
• Starve the Doubts by Jared Easley
• Starting from Nothing by The Foundation
• Bulletproof Executive Radio by Dave Asprey
• Entreproducer by Brian Clark of Copyblogger
• Your Best Just Got Better by Jason Womack
• Internet Marketing Boardroom by Keith Kranc
• Good Life Project by Jonathan Fields
• The School of Greatness by Lewis Howes
• Social Triggers Insider by Derek Halpern
• Seth Godin’s Startup School
• Podcast Answer Man by Cliff Ravenscraft
• SuperFast Business with James Schramko
• Entrepreneur’s Journey by Yaro Starak
• The Foolish Adventure by Tim Conley
• Entrepreneur Showdown by Dan Franks and Joe Cassandra
• The New Business Podcast by Chris Ducker
• Eventual Millionaire by Jaime Tardy
• Entrepreneur on Fire by John Lee Dumas
• Internet Business Mastery by Jeremy Frandsen and Jason Van Orden
• Mixergy by Andrew Warner
• The Tropical MBA by Dan Andrews
• Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn
• Build My Online Store by Terry Lin
• eCommerce Fuel by Andrew Youderian
• Empire Flippers by Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti

50 Things I learned from listening to over 600 hours of business podcasts:

1. Take massive action
2. Avoid the imposter syndrome
3. Wake up early
4. Network
5. Seek a mentor
6. Follow up
7. Go to conferences
8. Guest blog post
9. Turn off distractions
10. Listen to your intuition (hunches)
11. Focus on the product
12. Focus on a niche
13. Focus on the customer
14. Just start. You’ll never feel ready.
15. Don’t listen to the naysayers.
16. Don’t watch TV.
17. No doesn’t always mean no.
18. Help others first.
19. Mindset matters.
20. Clear the emotional blockages.
21. Be thankful.
22. Have an attitude of gratitude.
23. Define what makes you happy.
24. Work hard.
25. Passion is important, but it should be for solving a problem, not a passion for the product.
26. People buy products not markets.
27. Build an audience then sell them something.
28. PR can help, but PR agents aren’t always helpful.
29. Celebrities can help.
30. Backup your hard drive.
31. Begin with the end in mind.
32. Envision your future.
33. Self affirmations.
34. Use vision boards.
35. Vehicle for goal. Make sure it matches.
36. Multiple streams of income.
37. Multiple sources of traffic.
38. Figure out how many things it takes and work backwards.
39. “Dollarization” of a problem.
40. Don’t compare yourself to others.
41. Success takes 9 months (to 5 years). There are no overnight successes.
42. Double your price.
43. If you get a no, ask why.
44. All of your ideas are wrong.
45. Start.
46. Progress, not perfection
47. Create systems and procedures.
48. Know your avatar, or target market.
49. Email marketing works.
50. Podcasting works.

Books most mentioned:

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Updates:

Comment on Hacker News:

a3voices commented:

> Success takes 9 months (to 5 years). There are no overnight successes.

From what starting point? The decision to try to be successful, when you come up with an idea, or when you start implementing it?

To which I replied:

Every person’s starting point is really the culmination of everything in their past so every starting point is different, but this statement is born from two trends I noticed while listening:

1. “The Baby Effect” – a term coined by John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire, a 7-day a week business podcast that interviews entrepreneurs, which evolved from John Lee noticing that successful launches tended to take 9 months from first action to the point of sustainability. He called it that because it usually coincided with the founder finding out they had a baby coming, but it also worked that way for BeardBrand, for example.
2. Most of the “successful” interviewees on podcasts state they started back in 2009, so 5 years later is now (2014). 5 years seems to be the point at which entrepreneurs have been steady long enough that they start to either a) look for the next thing or b) start sharing with other people what they know. It’s also a sign that the ‘wave’ that they were currently riding (their business model) may have crested and they are in search of the next thing, hoping for a second win(d).