Why I chose to start a media company with a podcasting niche?
Podcasting is ridiculously popular to learn and to teach from. If not an audience though, host and guests can learn together through a conversation, but also through the process of creating something. In my case, learning is better retained through teaching. I'm more of a kinesthetic learner, with an, as Simon Sinek put it, "...apt for hyperfocus with occasional bouts of distraction." See, if by the term "disorder" what we mean is "rooted in comparably more chaotic," then sure I have a disorder. My desk is messy; there are always ideas and observations, interpretations and calculations in my head. What I didn't have at the start of all of this process was self-confidence. How do you build self-confidence? For me, it was putting both feet together, hanging 10 toes, looking all four directions, then full send. Thirty meters, moving fast. I started underwater too. Just like that Department of Defense swim qualification analogy. I struggled to get air and manage the "overwhelm"; but no matter how much progress I initially felt, I still mentally kept hearing how unconditioned I was for the podcasting arena. Funny thing about confidence though, is that in order to get it, you have to find it in an area where you don't have it. That's the life riddle: to become more confident, try something, somehow, someway, where you lack it. "Festina Lente" is a term that I prefer to keep in mind. As best as I have found to translate it, it means "Make haste slowly."
Be deliberate in your preparation, and then more hasty in your enaction. If you planned or prepared well enough and did your homework with enough grit and diligence, then full send. Full send for me meant find something that was challenging enough to potentially fail, but with enough controls in place to be ok in the end. Podcasting was a cool start because it enabled me to grow as a person, learn from other people, and do it all in a way that I was comfortable with...verbally. I grew up pretty sheltered, so I had to learn people in addition to the process. Now together, Contributors and I can share perspectives, relationship building, acceptance methods, social cues, bigger talk, deeper conversations, and effective communication methods with a worldwide audience. Podcasting has become an opportunity to grow as a person, while learning to relate with other people in the process. I've better grasped my weaknesses and preferences. I've better gained awareness of my strengths. More importantly, I've developed an appreciation for people through civil conversation, different perspectives and mutual respect. If you can find a way to continue learning something about yourself and the world around you each day, fulfillment, wealth, and happiness are yours too. That's why at SDYT Media, self-literacy for all isn't only a guide, it's in everything we produce.
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