The Final Episode: Lessons Learned From 1000 Episodes

Speaker A: M. Welcome to the Self Employed Life, where we discuss business strategies, personal development, and daily habits that create sustainable success. I'm your host, Jeffrey Shaw. We go into business for ourselves to control our destiny, yet find ourselves in uncontrollable circumstances. I'm here to help. Hop on over to jeffryshaw.com to find out more about my speaking and check out my small business consulting and branding services, the Self Employed Life. This is business with a soul. Um, well, here we are on the 1000th episode of the Self Employed Life and the final episode. So I certainly have been asked many times over the last few months, since I announced that the 1000th episode would be the last episode, people have asked, why am I closing the show? So let me start with that and I hope to share with you a few big lessons that I've learned from hosting this show. So it has been 11 years that I that I host the show, and I'm going to share with you in a moment a little bit of how that came about, because there's some lessons in that. And my gosh, in. In the peak years and for many, many years, the show was receiving 25 to 30,000 downloads a month. It was crazy. I mean, I'm talking about first, over the 11 years of the show, a big span of that was 25 to 30,000 downloads a month, putting it into the top 15% of all podcasts. Now, you can imagine in 2014, when I started the show, podcasting had been around for a while, but it was still pretty much the wild West. Like, it was still pretty new. People didn't know what they were doing. There were no podcast conventions, I don't think quite yet. They came shortly after. But, you know, as, as the volume of podcasts increased, it's still ranked very high in the percentages of all podcasts are out there. So why am I closing this down, you might wonder? And yes, I've. Over the years, I have received many coaching clients and, and all the things that you could expect in the ways that they would grow the business. So why am I stopping it? I'm stopping it for one, because 1,000 episodes just seems like a number. Like, where do you go after that? 1005, 1035? Like, when do you close down a show after a thousand? I don't know. I just didn't know. No numbers seemed to make sense to me. But more than anything, I feel complete. I feel very complete with the journey of how far I have taken this podcast. Now, I want to clarify, this is not the end of my life as a podcast host. In fact, I'm launching a new show on September 16th right around the corner. New shows called Selling Luxury. And of course, I invite you to join us for that show Selling Luxury. Yes, it will be very targeted to luxury sales and marketing, but as all my work is today in the luxury space is that I encourage people. And you're going to hear more about this in a moment, by the way. I encourage you to join, uh, the show, listen to the show and extract the information from it that's valuable to you. I truly believe that my life for 40 years, having served a very affluent clientele and a luxury buyer, that 40 years experience afforded me with kind of a, an accelerated perspective of, of buyer behavior and psychology. Because when you're working with affluent families, everything else is just more intense. Or as I like to say, it's like the rest of the world on steroids. Right? Their emotions are more intense so they're more resistant, they're more hesitant, everything's more. So that enables you, no matter what your industry is, to, to gain some lessons from my experience in the luxury space to say, well, if this is the barrier that you have to get through to get to, through the luxury buyer, then in theory it should be easier to break through, uh, a market that's not luxury. So I think there's going to be tremendous value in listening to this show that yes, it is specific for luxury sales, marketing, luxury brands, leaders, luxury brands. But yet if you are a business that is not at all in the luxury space, you're not a luxury product or service. I still encourage you to meet me in the new podcast Selling Luxury because I think there's going to be a lot of wonderful business lessons that you can extract from that. So let's talk a little bit about, because I've been thinking about this a lot, about closing the show and wanting to share lessons. I mean, first of all, that's a hard thing to do. How do you unpack lessons learned over 11 years? Now, I'll tell you, part of the challenge is in order for me to keep up with the show, I read one to two books a week for 11 years. Yes, it was 52 episodes. Well, there were many years more than 52 episodes. You're going to hear more about the sequence in a moment. But so I've been reading one to two books a week for 11 years. So that's a lot of content to take in. And I struggle with retaining all that I've learned. But there are some bigger overriding lessons that I've learned that I, that I want to share with you. But the big lesson, the biggest lesson of all for me was how and why I started the show. So back in 2014, it was, I was turning 50 that year, and to celebrate my 50th year on the planet, I wanted to do something significant. A friend of mine climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and I thought, never in a million years am, um, I going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Like, super impressed. But that's just not going to happen. So instead, I did a year long leadership program. And I said to my friend, by the way, as I was in complete envy of his climb, you know, the physical challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. And I told him what I was doing and I kind of felt a little wimpish. Like, here I am taking a year long, woo woo leadership program. And he said to me, I wouldn't do that for a million years, like, and I thought from that I might. I extracted from that. Well, I guess we all have our Mount Kilimanjaro's, right? I have no interest in the physical challenge of that, but he has no interest in the personal exploration it takes to dive into a year long leadership program. So we all have our Mount Kilimanjaro's in life. But I decided to launch this podcast. And yes, as a leadership program, we were challenged to do something bigger, be a leader. But that wasn't why I started the show. I started the show because I was in my 50th year of life. I was clearly wanting something bigger. My income was almost entirely derived from being a photographer at that point. I started coaching in 2009, but coaching was very much kind of a side income stream compared to what I made as a photographer. So even in 2014, I was, you know, 98% photographer. 90% of my 98% of my income is coming from photography. But I had this inkling that there was something bigger on my future. I wanted to be bigger in the world. And I was having my insecure moments, turning 50, feeling like there was something bigger out there for me, but I didn't know what it was. I started really questioning my value, right? What value did I have in the world? And I started questioning the success I had achieved. I started questioning whether did I not just barrel my way through, right? Was I, was I a successful photographer because I was actually a really good photographer? Or is it just because I worked really hard to break through? Was I a successful photographer because of the hard work I did the hours and the hustle I put in. Or was it, you know, part luck? Especially when you're breaking into such a hard market to, to break into. I don't know everything about it. I was really questioning my value, feeling like my life had come down to the results I saw. My life came down to what I had pushed hard to get. And I used to joke that I was a permanent guest in the world, uh, besides a photographer. I photographed entirely on location. And I was a speaker at that time. So my entire life, every day of my life, I was, as I always said, uh, I was always asking other people where the bathroom is. So because I was always the guest, I was a guest in people's homes. I was a guest at speaking events. I spent my life asking, where's the bathroom? And I began to question my value. If I'm always the guest, if I've gotten myself in the door, if it's my hard work and effort that got me in the door, am I worth coming to? Am I capable of being a host? If I threw a party, are people going to come? If I started a podcast, would people show up? That's why I started this podcast, because I was questioning life. I was questioning my value in life and questioning whether my value in life was only the result of my hard work and my effort and my pushing doors open. The question was, would people come to me and listen to a show that I created? Would guests say yes to me if I invited them? Well, boy, did they ever. My first guest was Michael Port, best selling author of countless books. My second guest was Sally Hogshead, who wrote Fascinate and How the World Sees you and to this day is one of my favorite people on the planet. And I was in such admiration of her. In 2014, I was like total fangirling over Sally Hogshead. And I sent her an email and asked her if she'd be a guest on this brand new show. And I have nothing to offer you except really wanting you to be one of my earlier guests. And she said yes. It was crazy. Now, Michael I had a relationship with, so I hoped he'd say yes. Michael Port. But Sally knew me from no one, and that's the type of person that she is. And she said yes. And other guests said yes and the next guest said yes. And then people started showing up. And in fact, when I started the show, it was originally called Creative warriors because I started the show because I was a creative person in business. And I realized how difficult that is. But it wasn't just. I didn't want to start a photography podcast. I wanted to start a show for creatives in business, creative warriors, those of us that were warriors in the world in creative businesses. That's why I started the show. That's why it was called Creative Warriors. So when I started the show out of the gate, I think our very first episodes received about 1400 downloads, which is actually really good. And I'm always careful to tell people that, you know, most podcasts start with, you know, expect to start with one listener and may just start with one listener. I was fortunate I had 1400 listeners right out of the gate because I had a decent email list at that point. And then we stayed at about 2,500 downloads for about three years. And I want you to understand the pattern at which this grew, because I think this relates to a lot of businesses, a lot of whether you are writing a blog, whether you're starting your own podcast. So it started off small. For about three years, we plateaued. We were just not breaking the 2,500 listeners per month downloads for about three years. And then something clicked. How the show resonated for people clicked. It began to grow and grow. Twitter was a huge part of the show at that time because Twitter was big. Twitter was where people shared content, people were sharing their experiences, listening to the show all over the place. And Twitter really grew this podcast. In fact, my own Twitter following increased to nearly a hundred thousand followers, uh, at one point. By the way, I no longer have a Twitter account or X at all. Shut it down over the last couple years for reasons we don't need to discuss. But it was a big part of the growth of the podcast, for sure. And then when we hit 10,000 downloads a month, that was a tipping point. And I think the 10,000 number is just interesting because I find a lot of people experience something similar, whether it's subscribers to a blog, a newsletter, or your own email list. Like 10,000 seems to be this number that hits a tipping point because it took a long time to get 10,000 downloads a month. But then all of a sudden we went from 10 to 25, 30,000 relatively quickly. Hello, friends. I'm very excited to announce that my latest book, Sell to the Rich, the Insider's Handbook to Selling Luxury, is now available everywhere. You buy books, if you're currently serving the luxury market, aspire to, or want to stand out like a luxury brand and be accepted exceptional in your field. This book is for you. Or as I like to say, this book is for those that want to elevate everything, including themselves. Because what you'll find out, one of the many inside secrets is that to sell to the rich, you have to rise to the level of those who expect more. And you can Sell to the Rich is available everywhere you buy books and@, uh, selltothrichbook.com it's more than a business book. It's your call to greatness. So let's talk about the lessons. Let's talk about the lessons learned. So what I didn't expect, honestly, when I started this podcast, because I started it just wanting to prove to myself that I was worthy of coming to. I was getting way out of my comfort zone of being a host and not a guest. But what I didn't expect were the relationships. I just couldn't have expected it because I didn't know anything about podcasting. But first and foremost, the biggest benefit were the relationships. Relationships with the guests, relationships with the listeners. I loved the relationship with the listeners. And often when I would post on social media that I was going to be somewhere for speaking or otherwise, and if there were listeners in that area, they would reach out to me and say, hey, you're coming to my town. I'd love to meet up. And I did as often as I could. Three times, by the way, three times in life, I was recognized by my voice. One time I was ordering ice cream on Cape Cod, uh, Massachusetts, and someone said, are you Jeffrey Shaw, the host of Creative Warriors? Because she recognized my voice. And that's when I realized how crazy intimate this experience is. And that happened to me. Three times that people recognized me by my voice, which I don't think is at all distinctive, but how fascinating that is. But that's really what drove the lesson home for me, that this is an intimate experience for the people listening to the show and to respect it as such. But the relationships between the guests and the listeners was just so special and unexpected. So as the show was trucking along, here's, uh, another a good lesson for any of you that are content creators and doing big things in the world. At some point, someone said to me, you know, I listen to your show, and you do a fantastic job at making your guest look great, but I don't think you're helping yourself. You're not highlighting your expertise. And that was really interesting to me because he was right, and he was a big deal in the podcasting world. So. And at that point, we were broadcasting two guest episodes a week, while we added a third episode a week, and that episode were just Single episodes of me talking, it was me highlighting my expertise. Important thing to remember, like, we can be so generous in our hearts that we're making everybody around us look good. But remember, you're also trying to get hired. You're also looking to build relationships around your expertise and to let the world know what you are the authority on. And that was a huge turning point. When I started introducing solo episodes of just Me talking. Those episodes took off, brought up all the downloads to that 25, 30,000amonth place. And eventually these solo episodes became more popular than the individual episodes. So the lesson is, remember that people want to know you. People want to know the authentic you. And by the way, somewhere along the line of those solo episodes, I used to script them, I used to write them out verbatim as to what I was going to say. And eventually it started feeling a little stiff to me. So then I just, I just made notes or I had a single idea as to what I wanted the show to be about. And just like right now, hopping on the mic and just rambling. Hopefully not rambling. I'm trying to. I do have bullet points, which I will often do, like bullet points of, to keep me, my, myself focused in a sequence. So it's not random, but no script. And that I found is when people really resonated with authenticity. So make sure in whatever you're putting out in the world that you remember that people want to know the real you and make sure you're breaking down the professional facade, you're cracking open your heart. Make sure that you're letting people know the true you. And those shows were a blast. They were fun for me to do because I could just be myself and people really, really connected to them. So at that point, we were doing three episodes a week. It became too much. We scaled back and dropped one of the guest episodes. So for many, many years, it's been one guest episode, one solo episode per week. And then in 2020, I rebranded because in 2021 I would have a book coming out called the Self Employed Life. So in order to stay on brand, we rebranded the podcast to also be the Self Employed Life. But again, it was originally Creative warriors and we rebranded it to the Self Employed Life. Now it's specific to understand in the podcasting world that it was just a rebrand, meaning we changed the show artwork and how it appeared in podcast apps, but we did not change the RSS feed or how the podcast was distributed. So the audience for Creative warriors was just kind of brought along into the Self Employed Life. If you are a subscriber of Creative warriors, you maintained being a subscriber to the self employed life. And what was interesting about doing this and I think I did it this way because I felt it was the same audience. And again another business lesson and I talk about this all the time. To me this was, it was sort of like my attitude has always been uh, against niche. Like the whole idea of having a niche or a niche, however you want to say it, that people tell you that you can only be for one thing. What I knew is that all the content I was creating for all those years for at that point there's six years. So for six years of creating content for creatives in business, everything I was talking about applied to anybody in business or certainly self employed people in business because you are by nature, if you're self employed, you're creative, you're a creative problem solver, you're a creative marketer, you're being creative in what you are marketing, you're creative in just your existence of trying to keep up with the world. So Creative warriors are self employed. So I just brought every that audience along from Creative warriors to the self employed life. Now to clarify that this new show is not a rebrand this time because the shows, the Self employed Life and Selling Luxury are different enough. I don't want to drag along my existing audience. I don't want to assume that you as a listener of the self employed life have any interest in hearing what is said on the on Selling Luxury. I hope you do. I think there's value for you but I'm not going to drag you along. So this, in this case the show is being shut down. There will be no us, no more RSS feed broadcasting episodes and a ah, complete rebuild for the new show Selling Luxury. But in this case I felt like this was almost my statement against the typical idea that you must have a niche. To uh, me it was about going broader. It was taking Creative warriors, broadening it to include all self employed people. Now I mentioned earlier that one of the big benefits about the show was the relationships and that really was the big win. But here's something also I want to make sure that you understand that relationships need nurturing. And I realized this was a real flaw in my system for many years where I met the most incredible people through the podcast, my guests. And yes, many of those guests became friends. I stayed in touch with their speaker friends, author friends. But I did realize at some point that I was terrible at maintaining those relationships. Like there was a great Connection. There was a relationship and important relationships, many important relationships that could lead to speaking events, et cetera for me. But I didn't do a really good job at maintaining them. I didn't create a reason and a, uh, way to keep in touch. It's one of the things I help my coaching clients with. I share with them what I call an expert business model, which are like all the pieces of a business model when you are an expert on a topic. And one of those is, yes, you need to have a good network, but one of the things to consider is, are you nurturing that network? Are you actually taking care of the excellent relationships that you built? For me, I found it to be a major flaw in my system at one point that I've gotten much better with just to make sure that I meet important people on my show and in life. And now I text them and stay in touch. So make sure you're nurturing the valuable relationships that you come across. Another huge lesson for me from the show was the value of the less obvious. Some of my favorite episodes and some of the most popular episodes were not obvious episodes for a show called the Self Employed Life. In fact, many times they weren't, they weren't obviously even about business. So for one example, one of my favorite episodes, one of my favorite conversations on the show was with author Anne Bartolucci, who wrote a book called Better Sleep for the Overachiever. It was fascinating to me because the obvious reason overachievers might struggle with sleep is because we're stressed. But that actually isn't the biggest problem by nature of being a, uh, high achiever or an overachiever. By nature. Your brain is wired a little differently. Your brain is always solving problems and it's spinning and so that might be what's interrupting your sleep. And uh, we wanted to solve that problem by having a conversation about better sleep for overachievers. So I found some of the most valuable episodes and one of the most important things I learned by hosting this show for so many years was the benefit of the less obvious. And what the lesson is from that is that our lives as business owners and self employed people, we are an entire ecosystem. And I realized the value of having a show that wasn't just about business strategies, but a show that was also about better sleep. All the shows almost, um, for the whole year during the pandemic during 2020, almost all our shows were focused on taking care of yourself. Well, being, keeping yourself inspired. Like how do you keep yourself going when we're ah, on Lock. And I found there to be so much value. And I will always continue to support the idea that as a self employed business owner, it's a whole big life. It's the whole, your personal life is not separate from your business life, that we need to respect the entire ecosystem. Which is why when I named my book the Self Employed Life, my publisher actually wanted to call it how to be self Employed, something like that. And I'm like, no, I won't do that. Like I wanted it to be encompassing, all encompassing, um, of the whole life. It is the self employed life. So I really gained the value of looking at the whole ecosystem. One thing that did always strike me interesting, and I want you to consider for yourself, is that episodes about leadership and any episodes about money were the least successful ones. And yet one of the biggest struggles and one of the biggest challenges we face being self employed is money, right? Is managing the money, making the money, scraping by. It's so common. And yet those were the least popular episodes. Same thing with leadership. And I get it, any topic on leadership. A lot of self employed people don't identify with leadership because it sounds like such a corporate word. But hey, as the owner of a business, you are a leader. So it always baffled, uh, me that people didn't gravitate towards the term leadership even though they're running their own business. And then the money episodes I always felt was like good medicine. Like I know my audience needed to hear some advice on how to manage their money better episodes, like with Mike Michalowicz for profit first, like fantastic book and yet never a popular episode. Even though, uh, Mike is wildly popular. The episode, it's kind of like people like, yeah, I don't want the good medicine. So it wasn't listened to a whole lot. So I, I want to invite you to take your good medicine. Even if you think it's something you don't want to hear, if you know it's something you should hear. And I'm not a big fan of should, but consider it. Take the good medicine. Here is a huge lesson that boy, uh, would I love you to hear this and really take this in. And this is the collective lesson of 1,000 episodes and 11 years. Uh, one of the strongest characteristics I have noticed of successful people is their ability to cross innovate. What I mean by that is having the ability to take an idea from one place and see how it can apply to you or apply somewhere else. Without a doubt. That has been my biggest observation. And for 11 years and a thousand episodes, talking to successful people and a success minded people. I would say the number one characteristic of those that stand out is their openness and ability to see an idea anywhere in the world and wonder where can that fit into my world? What can, and I talk about this in the luxury space. What can luxury brands learn from Amazon? Seems crazy, right? Like what? Uh, they're so different. There's nothing, nothing luxury about Amazon. What can top notch luxury brands learn from Amazon? They can learn about speed because today's buyers are so conditioned by the speed at which we get things from Amazon. I don't care how quite high quality your luxury product or service is, your clients today are not willing to wait an inordinate amount of time. Her maze as the luxury brand is the only one that's getting away with making people wait two years for a Birkin bag or however long it might take. They're the only luxury brand that I know of that's going to continue to get away with that. Every other brand needs to figure out how can I give the same quality and get it to people quicker? Because people don't have patience, they want to move on. So that's what Amazon can teach, uh, luxury brands. So the ability to see something somewhere and imagine how you can benefit from it is brilliant. And it is the standout characteristic that I see from successful minded people. The most successful, the most financially successful thing I ever did in my photography business was an idea that came from Starbucks. I'm not going to explain the whole idea, but I want you to get the idea. The ability to take an idea from one place, including nature, right? Look how nature behaves. One of the lessons I love from nature is that nature abhors a straight line. Nothing in nature is a straight line. So when you see people landscaping parks and landscaping towns and everything's like in Florida, all the palm trees are lined up and you know, it's inauthentic. It looks, it might look neat, it might look pretty, but it's not real. Because nature never drops seeds in a straight line. So what I love about that is that life is not linear. What I love about that is the way you behave and market does not have to be this, this sequential all lined up thing. And by no means does your entrepreneurial journey have to be linear. It's not going to be linear. So stop, stop challenging yourself to be so focused you think it needs to go in a straight line or listening to people in the world telling you to narrow down focus. And as if life needs to be a straight line. It's not so your ability to look at nature, to look at other businesses, no matter how random it is, and see something in that that you can bring into your business, that is the most important characteristic as a successful person and will take you incredible places. I encourage you to think about that. It's been an overriding collective observation from 11 years of podcasting and meeting so many people. So as I get ready to kind of bring this show, this episode, to a close, I want to talk about the question that I ask at the end of every episode. And it's changed over the years, but for many years now, the question I ask every guest at the end of the episode is, what's one thing about you that says everything about you? And some people are close to me know my answer to this, but I want to share with you my answer to this in case you don't. My answer to that question, what's one thing about you that says everything about you? My answer to that is the ridiculous amount of time and energy I put into naming all three of my kids. And I luckily had a very patient wife at the time that was willing to go along with me and give me free reign in a lot of ways with her approval to name our kids. But what was important to me is that all three of our kids had a signature that stayed above the line because Jeffrey Shaw is a mess. I got a J, two Fs and a Y that are below the line, and it's a mess. And then Shaw is all above the line. So it's out of balance. I was insanely focused on coming up with names for our kids that when they signed their name on legal documents, that their name would be all above the line. And they are now. What was. What is that saying about me? A. It's letting you know, if you don't already know this about me. I'm a complete neat freak. But actually the most. Oh, and the other thing it points out is I put way too much thought into any everything. I go down rabbit holes that, uh, are just ridiculous. I just spent, like five months searching skincare products. Like, that's just me. Like, I go down rabbit holes and I enjoy them. I enjoy the ride. But in this case, I spent way too many, too much time naming each of our kids. But here's what stands out to me, and I think this is the deepest truth. That. And it's who I am as a father, but it's also who I am as a person that I was thinking very long term, I was worrying before my Kids were born before they were named. I'm picturing the day they're signing their mortgage papers, when they buy their first house, and how their name should be above the line. I was also very sensitive to the names of men because on these forms, so often there the assumption is that, you know, the man signs the top line, the woman signs the bottom line. Uh, it doesn't say male, female. I don't know why the world is in that pattern, but it tends to be common. So I was really careful that my son's name was not below the line because I didn't want him infringing on the room of any woman who would ever be in his life. Like, there's no place for that in my world. So it was really important to me. So what this told me was how far ahead I plan and I do. I, uh, am a planner. I look far ahead. And I was coming, uh, from a place of empathy. Always looking for the future. And I look towards the future, even today, for myself and for you. And at the end of every episode when I say, you may be in business for yourself, but you are not in business by yourself, be your best self, be proud, and keep changing the world. I mean that because that has always been and will always be my vision for you and for everyone that I have the good fortune to interact with. To be your best self. Be proud of who you are, what you've accomplished, the impact you're making, and by all means, please, keep changing the world. Keep changing the world for the better. This today and, uh, will always be for as long as I just keep on working, which I intend to be a very, very long time. I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. But the idea of looking forward, of having a vision for not just myself, but for you and the world we create, that will always maintain for me. Which is why as I close this chapter, this is just the closing of a single chapter of my life, but the opening of many, many more. The new podcast selling luxury. And I can't even share with you some of the big things coming that will be shared experiences with you. I can't quite announce, but if we're connected on social, if you follow me in any way, if you're on my list, you will hear about it in the next month or two. Big deal stuff. So, yes, a chapter is closing. Big chapters are opening. Life is not linear. Nature does not drop seeds in a row. And sometimes we just need to follow those seeds, no matter how nonlinear they may be, and see what incredible gardens they may lead you to or open fields where you can catch a breath. Life is not linear, but sometimes we just need to follow what's unfolding with that. This is Jeffrey Shaw signing off. And while my Self Employed Life will continue for as long as I can, the Self Employed Life podcast is complete. Mhm. Sam.