200 Steve and Jason - Lessons from 200 Episodes

Join us for a special milestone episode of the Insight Interviews as we celebrate reaching our 200th episode! Throughout this journey, we've uncovered invaluable lessons that have shaped our perspective and fueled our growth. From the depths of adversity to the heights of achievement, each episode has been a stepping stone towards greater understanding and achievement, and we want to share the insights we’ve gained along the way.

In this episode, Steve and Jason discuss the Lessons Learned from 200 Episodes:

• Incremental Improvement
• Get Help - Have a Team/Community
• Persistence Through Resistance
• Celebrate Wins
• Hit Play - Focus on what's in your control and then act

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace consistency and perseverance for lasting success
• Harness the power of incremental improvement for significant growth
• Experience the benefits of collaboration and support in achieving goals
• Discover the unseen work behind remarkable success stories
• Overcome resistance and take action for transformative results

“Done is better than perfect. “

- Jason Abell

Connect with Steve and Jason:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
• Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
• Email: grow@rewireinc.com
  
  

Listen to the podcast here:

Steve and Jason- Lessons from 200 Episodes      

Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of the Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell, and your other host, Steve Scanlon. Steve, we're face to face today, brother. We're in person live. Here we are.        

If you'd have never said that no one would have ever known.

I think we've done one or two episodes where we've literally been face to face, voice to voice, real and in person.

If you say so.

We'd have to look that up. But anyways, we are here in person. And when we thought about this particular episode, this was an assignment that we had., this wasn't something that, it was like, oh, we should cover that topic, it was something that reached out to us.

Heck, we didn't even want to do it. Just kidding. We did. Of course, we did.

Of course, we did. This episode that you're listening to right now, dear listener, is episode 200.

200.

200 of the Insight Interviews. That's the fan noise. Can you hear that? I think that sounds like a stadium.

People are cheering us on, in the millions. 200 episodes, brother.

But like we said when we prepared for this, like we said when we started the podcast, this is not about Rewire or Jason and Steve having a podcast, this is about the insights that anybody who listens to our podcast is able to get. And so, we've thought about, okay, what does it mean to do something 200 times? And we've pulled some things out of this, and we think that the people that listen to this episode, if you're the type of person that's listening to this episode, there may be some things that are important to you about doing something 200 times.

Yeah. Again, for what little prep we did for this, we started just rattling off a lot of different thought leaders, books, research that talks about, you know, is that Malcolm Gladwell and 10,000 hours? And I mentioned to you Angela Duckworth and Grit and Susan David and Emotional Agility. And there are just a lot of different ways to look at what it means to be resilient and to do something repeatedly. We thought we would take this opportunity on our 200th episode to bring that concept forward and go, that's just super important. And when I actually think about the podcast and doing this 200 times, if we're being honest with one another, how many times did we come back and go, should we keep doing this? Are these good enough? I feel like Stuart Smalley and dang it, people like us, right? Like, are we good enough?  Was it good enough? Did it make a difference? Did this, did that, and there was just a bunch of stuff. Resistance. That's what Steven Pressfield calls resistance. So, we had resistance to this, and frankly, I got to credit you. You're the one, like, we keep going, we keep going. And lo and behold, we got a ton of downloads. Like, there's people that listen to this thing, and we're super grateful for that, but we both probably must credit the fact that there was some stick to it-ness. We just stayed with it and stayed with it. We got better, right? I think we got a little bit better at doing this.        


Well, if you look at the data, and every now and again, we do, we've had over 30,000 downloads now of 200 episodes. And look, some are better than others, right? There's no question about that. But over time, our listenership has gone up. And, man, I got to tell you, there is something to be said about the market figuring things out. And what I mean by that isn't our podcast is so great, but what I do mean by that is, boy, if it was terrible, our downloads wouldn't be going up, my friend. They would be going down, or there would just be no one listening to us. So, something is happening there. The market is figuring that out. And again, I don't know that any of that is about us; it's more about the guests that we're interviewing. It's more about, heck, it's been 200 times of us asking people questions, and my gosh, if you're not getting better over 200 times, what are we doing?

Well, even our ability to do this right here, right now, we say this a lot of times in the podcast, that we intentionally don't reach out to our guests and send them a bunch of questions and have them prep answers. That could be good, sometimes it could be bad. We choose not to do that. I think we fall into the category if it was improvised, and people were a little more authentic because they weren't ready for that question, and I think that's proven to be true. I think you and I have done that. We're doing it right now. Transparently, we did talk a little bit about how we were going to do this 200th episode, but we didn't come together and have to map it out for two days. And our ability to stand here, speak hopefully in a way that people could be like, that sounds like something, like we got better at doing this, and I think we're going to continue to get better at doing it.

And I think one of the messages- we did plan out a few things. I think there's a couple of messages that we want to get across today, and one of them is there is incremental improvement that happens when you start small and just continue to ring the bell every day, day after day. Whether that is from a health standpoint, whether that is from a spiritual standpoint, a relationship standpoint, a business standpoint, and so, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh, man, I'm doing this thing and it seems small right now, or it seems, I don't even know why I'm continuing to do this, sure, there's times where you need to stop doing what you're doing, but there can be times where it still makes sense to get up and to do the thing and to take the next step. And gosh, if this podcast is an example for that, for you as you're listening to this, well, then I think that might be good.

Yeah, I feel like I got one. I got one. I'm raising my hand over here.

What's the next message?

Well, we didn't talk about this one because I made it up. That's what it means, I guess, to improvise a little bit. I think we've sustained this, and I want to suggest to anyone listening to this, if there's something in your world, in your life and your business that you need to sustain, and I know this is going to sound a little like accepting an award at the Academy Awards or something like that, but people get up there and it's not just them. It wasn't just me and you. Like, if we're really being honest, we got to give Stephanie Weatherby a lot of credit.

Yeah.

She would come in, she gave us deadlines on stuff, and she would hold us to something that we said we wanted to do. We have an editing team that we pay for that make it sound good and stuff. And I think if it were just, I feel a little beholden to you, like we're partners in this thing. And I guess what I'm saying is, if I had to go, like, I'm going to do a podcast, I'm going to create the content, and it's only me, and again, I know people do that, and maybe they can, I think it's been really helpful for us that it's been a collaborative effort, and when you do something in collaboration like that, I think you activate a certain part of this social thing that helps us keep going.


                                                                                                         
"The community aspect of really anything that you do is just of the utmost importance."

In fact, I interviewed somebody today for the podcast, Nick Johnson. And our whole episode was based on that piece, finding your tribe, finding your community for whatever it is, the thing that you're looking to do. And he used examples of certain things in business or certain things that you might need help with, even if it's negative. An addiction that you're dealing with or loneliness or anxiety, we happen to be talking about something with business right now, podcasting, but you're exactly right. If you think of our iceberg model that we use so often, right? At the very tip top of the iceberg.

Results.

The results. 200 episodes. Then there's the actions that lead to the results. Us pushing record, us getting more guests, editing that's done, but if you look below the waterline, the things that you don't see, it's all those things that you talked about, the community of people, whether it's our staff. And you mentioned Steph, and Steph, I know you're going to be listening to this episode, and you're going to hear your name multiple times.


I think we ought to name this episode Steph rocks, and she's the best. And so, when you reach out to us-

I wouldn't be opposed to that at all. But also, our friends at TurnKey. I mean, one of the first things that we did when we decided to do a podcast was, okay, who's going to help us with this, and Doug Sandler and Turnkey podcasts and their whole staff. And then we've got marketing people that make sure that it gets on the right platforms and that you know about it on Instagram and LinkedIn and whatever, and all of that's below the waterline. And so, for you, that's listening, whatever the thing is that you're working on every day. Yes, the community of people around you.


And then I also think you made me think earlier about, I read a book one time when I was writing a book, and by the way, I always tell people, if you've written a book or you want to write a book, maybe you're good at it. I don't think I was. And it was hard. And in the middle of writing that book, I read a book about writing a book, which is hilarious. It was actually a form of deflection. Instead of actually writing, I was reading about writing, but the book I was reading was by Steven Pressfield, and it was called the War of Art. And this guy wrote a book about how hard it is to write books, and that might sound a little silly, but he really spoke about this concept of resistance. And I can't imagine there's a single person or leader listening to this podcast that doesn't know what that resistance feels like. There's no way. You've got a thing in your life, you got to do it repeatedly. You got to do your thing 200 times. You got to put in your 10,000 hours. You will find resistance. As you and I were talking about it before that, it comes in 5000 forms. Resistance comes in. It's amazing. I'm a little tired today. That wasn't really that good. I'm not sure I got- whatever it is. And you and I, as coaches, we hear that all the time, and we deal with resistance. So, I think it's important for our listeners to know that when we do these, dude, we had it today- should we push this? It's in the afternoon. Like, are you 100% sharp about-you know what? Let's push the button and let's do it. And so, it's not that I want to talk about all the forms of resistance because that obviously ends up being kind of negative, but at the same time, we don't want to ignore resistance because that goes back to, if we can name it, we can tame it.

Oh, for sure. I mean, whatever it is, listener, that you come up against, that's your form of resistance. Whether it's, hey, I don't feel very good today. I don't feel up to it. Oh, the person that I'm relying on fell down today, and I wasn't able to rely on that person or I just had a fight with my partner or whatever it is, you've got resistance as well. I remember resistance when we were first kind of even talking about the idea of starting a podcast. Where do you start? Where do you begin? What do you talk about? Like, there's all these things, but we just started anyways.

Here's where you start- hit record.

Yeah.

Ask a couple of people. Get going. How about the resistance of perfection?

Oh, for sure. I mean, I would like to call out, and if you've been listening to the podcast for any period of time, you already know this. Not every episode is amazing.

And we're going to list out which ones we think aren't.

                                                                                                             
"That's how it works. And if you try to make everything that you're doing on that project that you're working on, or the goal that you want to achieve, perfect, you said this before we hit record, the enemy of great is good, or the enemy of good is great."

Talk about that a little bit.

Well, I don't know. Someone's going to catch us on this. Maybe we'll finally get some emails like, hey, you idiots, here's the real saying. But Jim Collins certainly said, the enemy of great is good. I think what I was also referring to is it's almost the opposite of that, and that is, the perfect thing that you never put out is not nearly as good as the pretty good thing that you get out all the time.

Done is better than perfect.

That's it. Did you say that, or did you make that up? Can we quote Jason Abell on that?

Probably not, but sure, why not?

Jason Abell said, done is better than perfect.

Yeah. And that's always the case. Steve Longan on our team is famous for saying, hey, a bicycle that you're pedaling is easier to steer than one that's just standing by itself, right? Like, once it's going, you can steer that.

How about, even a dead fish can swim downstream?

We could really take this far.

Whatever your form of resistance is, the last quote I'll do is of Carl Jung. Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist, stated that what we resist persists. So, if you don't even want to talk about resistance and ignore it, it'll kick your butt anyway. And so that's why we're calling it out like, no, we do have resistance. Today, we were having some resistance, dude, let's hit record. Let's go. I think we've got a good message for our people that has to do with the very thing we're talking about. It's our 200th episode. Proud of getting it out. The thousands, the tens of thousands of downloads that we've had, it's a milestone for us. And how about that? Celebrate.



That's right. Yeah.

Are we asking our clients about that? And how are they celebrating in life? And so, what milestones can we celebrate?

And that makes me think of even the small daily milestones like, I've got clients that are working on mindfulness and meditation right now, and they're like, you know what? I'm going to start with 1 minute. I'm not doing 20 minutes of meditation, I'm starting with one, and just getting through that 1 minute, like starting small and celebrating the incremental improvement, so, if we get to two minutes of mindfulness, well, that still may not be 20, but you did two and let's celebrate it. And I think that's what you're saying is, hey, there are times where we need to go, hey, we did that and celebrate it. And so, I would ask you, if you're listening right now, are there any things that you need to celebrate, maybe with your teams? Small little celebrations, small little mile markers along the way. And, man, I would certainly encourage you to celebrate it and celebrate it with gusto.        

Maybe one last one, as I think about it, and I think about the goal of 200. I don't know that I recall sitting down with you and going, let's get to 200.

No.

It's a cool goal, but I think that's lately, and again, we're here at the beginning of the year. We just recorded a podcast on resolutions, and I just think that's relevant here because we have so many people that do business plans at the beginning of the year, and they express these goals, which are good, but at the end of the day, I think as coaches, we start asking questions around, hey, your goal is awesome, thank you, great, you're pointing at something. Wonderful. What does pushing play in your life look like? And maybe that's because I've been studying the stoics and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and these people, and one of their things is all about, this is a very stoic, philosophical thing. Really understand deeply the things that you can control and the things that you can't. I don't think if we just sat around like, we're going to get to 200, we're going to hit play.

Right.

Because we're in control. We can actually do that.        

Yeah.

And so, I would say that we focus more on our ability to ask certain guests onto the show. We can do that. We can reach out to guests. We can have people help us do that. We can get really good guests, and we can hit play, and we're focused on the things that's within our control. And as we continued to do that, we pulled up our head and we were like, oh, my God, 200.

That's right. Yeah. There was no goal of we're going to do this for this many years or we're going to do this only if we have this many listeners or if we hit certain number of episodes. ut we could hit record today and we can see what happens and then we can do it again tomorrow. Even in the middle of certain resistance that we come up upon. I'll just be transparent with our listeners; we don't have a goal of 300. Maybe we hit it and maybe we don't. I don't know what's going to happen.

I know that we will get to 201.

Well, that's exactly your point, right? Let's hit play and see what happens. That whole idea for you, listener, of what is it that you just need to hit record or play on today? What is it that you need to start now on and what is it that you need to just start pedaling and then start steering along the way? Those would be my questions.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I don't mean to put down a good goal, I just happen to notice that goals in and of themselves are, I know this is going to sound really crazy, I don't know that they're within our control. The goal itself. I think perhaps we could talk about what we can influence towards that, but at the end of the day, dedicate more energy to just hitting play. Hitting play. What does that look like for you? What does hitting play look like? What does taking your car out to drive look like? What can you control? And I think if we do that, I think more of us would probably lift our head up and go, wow, we're hitting milestones.

Man, that's so good. We start every episode with asking about gratefulness and we didn't do that today.
            
Should we end with gratefulness?

Well, that's where I'm going. I'm still thinking about Steph Weatherby, and it's just going to be funny when she listens to this episode.

Let's just keep using her name. She loves that.        

Yeah. Steph Weatherby, I am grateful for you for making this podcast happen, and we're just going to end our episode with saying your name as many times as possible.

And as a bonus, we want to reward you with two straight hours of uninterrupted eye contact, with no talking. We just want to stare at you.        
            
Steph Weatherby. Steph Weatherby. Steph Weatherby.

In all fairness, she has helped us both through more resistance stuff because like I said, it's not like, I don't know, was that one any good? Should I do this one? I'm a little tired. Like, Steph is the one that's like, just hit play and she reminds us, and it's just so good. So, we're super grateful for her, and we'll stop saying her name because next thing you know, she won't even let us publish. This one's not even dropping.     
   

That may indeed happen. So, thanks for listening, everyone. I know I had a ton of insights even as we're listening to this, and it is around that idea of resilience. It is that idea of, I even thought about a few things that I just want to focus in on and start now and control only what I can control. I'm glad you brought that up.

I know. I thought of one thing. I got to hit play on. I'm not going to say it on this episode, but see, that's the kind of insight, right? Yes. I'm sitting here talking to you, but I'm like, I'm actually not hitting play on a certain thing that I know I should do. And I'm not even going to tell you what it is because I don't want to hear it, but – no, I'm teasing. I'll tell you what it is later, but I got to hit play on something, and it's important. And this was a great reminder, and that's exactly what we're trying to do with this, is have those insights. 
     

So true. But as we end every episode of the Insight Interviews, it doesn't much matter what Steve's insights are, and they're important to him, it doesn't much matter what my insights are, they're important to me, but what really matters, listeners, is what insights did you have?   
     

Yeah, 100%.

                                                                                                               ---

Thanks for reading. If you got any value at all from this episode, a little nugget all the way up to some big, huge insight, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google. That stuff matters to us, and it allows us to continue interviewing more awesome people.

Important Links

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• Grow@RewireInc.com