Latest / The MindSets Podcast / Episode 49 - Is the Podcast Ending?

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Episode 49 - Is the Podcast Ending? · The MindSets Podcast

• 0:07
  Hello and welcome back to the Mindsets Podcast and a happy new
• 0:11
  year. It is 2025, a great year,
• 0:14
  hopefully for both of us, you as a listener, me as a podcast
• 0:18
  host. And let's get into this episode
• 0:21
  because this episode, my guest is you.
• 0:26
  I am doing a solo episode today. It's the first one I've done
• 0:28
  since the very first episode where I was explaining what on
• 0:30
  earth I was doing with a microphone in front of my face.
• 0:33
  Now, one thing that I want to talk about is what happened last
• 0:37
  year, and another thing that I want to talk about is what's
• 0:39
  going to go ahead and happen this year for the podcast.
• 0:42
  Firstly, I want to say a massive thank you for listening not just
• 0:45
  to this episode, but hopefully to the other episodes you might
• 0:48
  have listened to in the past. And if you haven't, great
• 0:50
  opportunity go back and listen to some really cool
• 0:52
  conversations that I've had because the support that has
• 0:56
  been shown last year really enabled me to carry on doing the
• 0:59
  podcast. At times it became very, very
• 1:02
  difficult to juggle a lot of things.
• 1:04
  And if I'm honest, I really did think about stopping the podcast
• 1:07
  at certain points. But seeing the value that was
• 1:10
  provided to you guys as listeners and how much some of
• 1:13
  the guests actually enjoy doing the podcast really made me
• 1:15
  realize I should be doing this more.
• 1:18
  And that's why we are continuing.
• 1:21
  Now. I want to talk about 20/24/2024
• 1:25
  on the face of it was actually a complete failure for the
• 1:28
  podcast. And hear me out.
• 1:31
  At the beginning of last year, I decided to write down a bunch of
• 1:35
  goals. It's what I saw everyone was
• 1:37
  doing on my social media is something that I hadn't done
• 1:39
  before. And I thought this is absolutely
• 1:41
  what I should be doing. And in reality, I think I only
• 1:45
  hit two of the five goals that I actually wrote down.
• 1:50
  I didn't hit the number of episodes I wanted to hit.
• 1:52
  I didn't therefore meet the number of guests that I wanted
• 1:55
  to meet. I wasn't able to earn as much as
• 1:59
  I wanted to off the podcast by the end of the year, and I
• 2:04
  wasn't able to therefore invest as much money as I wanted to
• 2:07
  into the podcast by the end of the year.
• 2:10
  There's a few other things that didn't happen along the way, but
• 2:12
  I'm not going to get into those because I want to immediately
• 2:14
  start to put a positive spin on things.
• 2:17
  While I didn't achieve certain things last year, the podcast is
• 2:20
  now sat at 1100 and something followers which, and bear in
• 2:25
  mind that is on Instagram. If we're talking about all
• 2:28
  different platforms, then it's even higher than that.
• 2:31
  But I keep coming back to the fact that if there were that
• 2:34
  many people in a room listening to me right now, I don't think
• 2:38
  you guys can understand how nervous I would be.
• 2:40
  So that is huge and cannot be understated and in reality makes
• 2:45
  2024 look like a massive success.
• 2:47
  Cause a year ago I think the podcast was sat around 300
• 2:52
  followers. So we're nearly four times that,
• 2:54
  which means for everyone of you listening, you've now got 3
• 2:58
  mates along with you. As well as that, some of the
• 3:01
  people that I met last year and some of the stories that we got
• 3:04
  to hear, some of the different sports that we learnt about was
• 3:08
  amazing. I had never really thought about
• 3:10
  doing episodes with people in certain situations like disabled
• 3:14
  rowing or taking performance enhancing drugs to be on stage
• 3:18
  for bodybuilding or doing crazy ultra marathons back-to-back.
• 3:23
  Doing Iron Man's 32 days in a row and some other absolutely
• 3:28
  ridiculous stories from the military and all these sorts of
• 3:31
  things. As well as getting some advice
• 3:33
  from people that work within Sports Base, whether that's
• 3:36
  nutritionists or actually coaches for women.
• 3:40
  I find the whole understanding of training for women deeply
• 3:43
  interestingly it deeply interesting because I'm a guy.
• 3:46
  There's certain things that I never have to consider in the
• 3:49
  way that I train, but there's amazing things that I learn and
• 3:52
  now appreciate for 50% of the population that are training
• 3:56
  alongside me now because of 2024 being the way that it was for me
• 4:02
  in my personal life, it meant that the podcast took a hit,
• 4:05
  which is something that I do regret.
• 4:07
  And I want to again, thank you for holding on and bearing with
• 4:10
  me. For those that don't know, my
• 4:12
  background is actually engineering.
• 4:14
  I have a masters in aerospace engineering from Loughrey
• 4:17
  University and when I actually started the podcast, I worked at
• 4:21
  Rolls Royce. And the reason I started the
• 4:24
  podcast was a couple of things on a personal level where I was
• 4:28
  interested in the sort of mental and physical impact of, of life
• 4:32
  on each other. But at the same time, I had this
• 4:35
  itch that I couldn't scratch now that I'd left university.
• 4:37
  For those of you that don't know, I'm not sure where you're
• 4:39
  listening from, but Loughborough University is renowned for its
• 4:42
  sport. And I went and did my
• 4:44
  engineering degree, that my engineering degree there as kind
• 4:47
  of a chance for me to still do sport at a high level and
• 4:51
  explore sport whilst also studying for my degree.
• 4:55
  The thing was, once I left the university, I kind of lost the
• 4:58
  sport side and I changed sports. I wasn't really sure what I was
• 5:02
  doing. I found myself in the gym kind
• 5:04
  of just following a program for the sake of it, no intention of
• 5:07
  doing any bodybuilding, but I was doing some sort of
• 5:09
  bodybuilding split. It was all a bit bizarre.
• 5:12
  And so the itch that I needed to scratch was in the sports space.
• 5:16
  And the podcast to begin with gave me this ability to talk to
• 5:19
  athletes and learn from them, find out about their lives being
• 5:24
  athletes, what that must be like.
• 5:26
  And it was OK for a while, but as you guys can probably tell
• 5:30
  now, it wasn't enough. And last year, I made the
• 5:34
  decision to walk away from engineering.
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  It wasn't the smart move, according to my parents and to
• 5:42
  some friends, especially because engineering is so financially
• 5:46
  stable and you can do so many cool things.
• 5:48
  But it really wasn't giving me what I wanted.
• 5:51
  And I wasn't willing to sit behind a desk and stare at a
• 5:55
  computer screen doing something I don't want to do for the rest
• 5:57
  of my life just because it made sense.
• 6:00
  So I took the bold move, and I left.
• 6:02
  I tried to get into the sports space in a normal career to kind
• 6:06
  of again, try and scratch the itch whilst doing the podcast
• 6:10
  and meeting people, that sort of thing.
• 6:12
  But it was harder than I thought it would be to be honest.
• 6:15
  And what I ended up discovering was that maybe I should back
• 6:19
  myself and work for myself, which is something I've always
• 6:21
  wanted to do anyway, but I kind of came around sooner than I
• 6:25
  thought it would. So what does that mean for me
• 6:28
  personally? Well, I now work a camera for a
• 6:32
  living, so I film people at sporting events.
• 6:35
  Most recently, I've obviously been doing High Rocks myself,
• 6:37
  and High Rocks is a fantastic opportunity to film great
• 6:40
  athletes doing their thing and making them look quick.
• 6:43
  But that doesn't mean to say that I absolutely can't work
• 6:45
  with people in a normal gym space or actually just doing
• 6:49
  sort of documentary filming or things like the podcast itself.
• 6:53
  So I got into that, which was a huge personal investment both in
• 6:56
  time and financially. And that is where the podcast
• 7:00
  took a bit of a hit, which I hadn't been able to plan for at
• 7:03
  the beginning of the year because I didn't know that I was
• 7:05
  going to make the leap halfway through the year.
• 7:08
  Now, that's kind of what's going on behind the scenes, and that
• 7:11
  is me trying to justify why I wasn't able to get as many
• 7:14
  episodes out towards the end of the year.
• 7:16
  In fact, I wanted to have an episode every single week for
• 7:19
  the entire year, and I didn't even close to that.
• 7:23
  However, again, kind of justifying it, I think of the 40
• 7:28
  episodes that went out last year, I knew maybe six of the
• 7:32
  people before 2024, which means that around 34 people I met in
• 7:37
  2024 managed to get them on the podcast and get a great episode
• 7:42
  in. It's also worth saying that for
• 7:43
  every episode that did come out, there was probably about two to
• 7:46
  three planned that actually fell through.
• 7:49
  And that is the nature of doing this whole thing by myself as
• 7:53
  well. Not complaining.
• 7:55
  I've absolutely loved the process of doing it all by
• 7:57
  myself. It's taught me so much and I've
• 7:59
  met so many incredible people. But it is incredibly stressful
• 8:02
  trying to juggle all of these people coming over to do a
• 8:05
  podcast and convincing them that it's a good idea while they've
• 8:09
  got incredibly busy lives themselves and trying to make
• 8:11
  all the stars align to get a great episode in.
• 8:14
  But what hasn't changed is you guys.
• 8:18
  In fact, while there's more of you, there's a lot of you that
• 8:21
  are the same in your interests in giving me great questions to
• 8:26
  ask guests and making the episodes so worth doing.
• 8:30
  So I want to give back to you. So let's talk about 20252025.
• 8:35
  The podcast is going to look different.
• 8:38
  There will be less episodes. That means that hopefully the
• 8:40
  quality of the episodes can go up.
• 8:43
  The next thing is the the guest episodes are actually going to
• 8:46
  reduce. And no, that does not mean you
• 8:49
  will be getting more of these episodes of me rambling on about
• 8:53
  what's to come, what's happened, everything like that.
• 8:55
  But I'm actually going to have a cohost for a lot of the episodes
• 8:59
  in 2025 and the Co host and I will be going through all sorts
• 9:03
  of different performance related topics.
• 9:06
  Now that means that within your given sport, if there is
• 9:09
  something you wish you knew more about or you want to understand
• 9:12
  more about, whether that is scientifically or whether that
• 9:15
  is anecdotally, then this is the opportunity for you to continue
• 9:19
  being involved in driving the podcast.
• 9:21
  So reach out, there'll be opportunities for you to ask
• 9:24
  questions about certain topics that we'll cover, but the main
• 9:27
  aim is to start giving back to you guys as listeners, ways to
• 9:31
  understand the way that you train and push yourself to a
• 9:35
  higher limit. Now, that might mean you're
• 9:38
  getting into a new sport, you maybe you're getting into the
• 9:41
  gym for the very first time. What's really the best way of
• 9:44
  doing it? Or what are some standard
• 9:45
  approaches you could take? And what are the little nuances
• 9:48
  within these different ways of training or ways to approach
• 9:51
  your competition or ways of thinking that could really help
• 9:55
  you get the most out of your performance?
• 9:57
  That's the aim of that. Now, within those episodes,
• 9:59
  they're not going to be deeply serious.
• 10:01
  There is going to be a few games, a few quizzes, these
• 10:05
  sorts of things that we can do to make it more entertaining.
• 10:08
  I'm really, really looking forward to those episodes.
• 10:11
  And as in a bit of announcement, the Co host that I will be
• 10:15
  moving forward with is a man called Charles, Charles Engel.
• 10:19
  In fact, he has been a guest on the podcast last year.
• 10:23
  He's one of the best coaches I have ever met in person, both
• 10:26
  for his dedication to understanding sport, but his
• 10:30
  ability to cater his understanding and teach to those
• 10:35
  from many, many different backgrounds across many, many
• 10:37
  different sports. That is why I think those
• 10:41
  episodes are going to be fantastic is we are not just
• 10:44
  going to be talking about things in a hierarch sense, because I
• 10:47
  do hierarchs. We're going to be doing this for
• 10:50
  all different sports. Whether you row on a Sunday and
• 10:55
  you play squash on a Monday and then you do ice hockey on a
• 10:58
  Friday, there should be things that you can take from all of
• 11:02
  our conversations that apply to all of those different sports.
• 11:06
  So that's the first announcement.
• 11:07
  The next announcement is that the venue is changing for the
• 11:11
  most part. So for those that don't know, a
• 11:14
  lot of the podcasts have actually been filmed in my house
• 11:18
  in the spare bedroom, which has been absolutely fantastic that
• 11:20
  I've had the space to do so. However, it's been an absolute
• 11:24
  nightmare for moving things around because believe it or
• 11:27
  not, this room does not permanently live as a podcast
• 11:29
  studio. However, some episodes will
• 11:33
  still be here. But the new location is actually
• 11:36
  in central London. I have got access to a new
• 11:40
  recording studio, which means that it's easier for guests to
• 11:43
  get here, which might mean that we can get some of those guests
• 11:46
  that couldn't make it last year onto the broadcast next year.
• 11:50
  And we can also push the production quality.
• 11:52
  It's something that I really tried to do last year but found
• 11:54
  it very difficult while I'm in a house to sort of decorate, make
• 11:59
  it look more like it's the Mindsets podcast, or even add
• 12:01
  some cool things to look at while you're watching on
• 12:03
  YouTube. But we'll be able to do that
• 12:06
  from now on and going forward. So that's another exciting
• 12:10
  thing. I think one of the other targets
• 12:13
  that I may have mentioned briefly last year was that the
• 12:17
  podcast financially has always been done by well, it's been
• 12:21
  propped up by me as a result of, you know, editing, producing,
• 12:27
  planning, filming. All of this has been done purely
• 12:30
  by me because it's my own venture.
• 12:34
  I'm the only person investing in it.
• 12:36
  And I really, really wanted to have the opportunity to work
• 12:39
  with a podcast sponsor to enable me to maybe travel to different
• 12:43
  guests and get some different episodes in where it's difficult
• 12:45
  for them to come to me because of their training schedules or
• 12:48
  just, you know, how busy they are.
• 12:50
  And, but I was unable to make that happen.
• 12:52
  I think part of that is due to the consistency towards the end
• 12:55
  of the year, but part of it is also that podcasting is an
• 12:57
  incredibly, incredibly competitive space.
• 13:00
  And it's also difficult for some brands to work with podcasts
• 13:03
  because there isn't that much feedback on engagement.
• 13:06
  That being said, the engagement on the social media has been
• 13:10
  incredible. The traders have been doing
• 13:12
  fantastically. Even the short clips have been
• 13:14
  doing really, really well, well above expectation, which I'm
• 13:17
  really proud of. So thank you for the support on
• 13:19
  those. And what it's meant is that
• 13:21
  there are opportunities going into this year to work with some
• 13:24
  cool brands at some events or actually get them involved in
• 13:28
  the podcast episodes. One of those opportunities is
• 13:32
  actually tied to Charles and we'll discuss that more in the
• 13:35
  next episode that comes out. But we will be moving forward,
• 13:39
  we will be working with a particular brand, a particular
• 13:43
  company that I think provides really good value to you as a
• 13:47
  listener, but we'll also provide good value to the podcast with
• 13:50
  what they do. So that's another exciting
• 13:53
  announcement. I think the thing that I just
• 13:56
  said first is changing is the number of episodes, which I do
• 14:00
  want to circle back to because I'm trying to make it not sound
• 14:02
  like it's a negative thing, but we will be dropping it to one
• 14:05
  every other week. Part of the reason is because
• 14:08
  I'm still just as busy as I was at the at the end of last year,
• 14:11
  which makes churning out episodes, recording that many
• 14:14
  episodes and networking that much a little bit more
• 14:18
  difficult. But it also means that the
• 14:20
  quality can go up. And the other thing with the
• 14:23
  episodes with Charles is they're slightly more consistent, which
• 14:25
  again, just means the quality can go up.
• 14:27
  We're giving you guys more of what you want.
• 14:30
  And it means that when we do get guests on, those conversations
• 14:32
  can be fantastic. And we can cover all bases as
• 14:36
  well as tying some of those topics that we talked about in
• 14:39
  our performance conversations with Charles into those guest
• 14:42
  episodes. So we can ask more directed
• 14:44
  questions towards the guests about the way that they train or
• 14:47
  the things that they've overcome and, and kind of how they've
• 14:49
  done that. So that's the plan for 2025.
• 14:54
  And I keep thanking you for being here.
• 14:57
  I will continue to do so. It is wild to me that there is
• 15:00
  that many of you listening. And if you're still here in the
• 15:03
  episode, then even more wild that you've made it through a
• 15:06
  solo episode where I ramble on about the year.
• 15:09
  I just want to say that I'm incredibly proud of what has
• 15:12
  been built and what you've become a part of and I don't
• 15:15
  want to let it fade. It's very, very easy in today's
• 15:20
  world of social media to kind of start an account and leave it
• 15:23
  alone and forget about it. And that's something that I
• 15:25
  don't want to do. The audience has been
• 15:27
  cultivated. You're a great audience.
• 15:29
  I would have paid a lot of money a year ago to have all of you
• 15:32
  here. Unfortunately, you've all just
• 15:34
  invested in me by pressing that follow button.
• 15:38
  So one thing that I can request or I can try to ask of you is if
• 15:42
  you haven't already, if you can leave a review, ideally 5 stars
• 15:47
  on the streaming platform you use.
• 15:49
  Leave like, subscribe, follow on the social media and continue to
• 15:53
  like and share anytime you enjoy one of the posts or even just
• 15:59
  tag the podcast when you're listening, whether you're
• 16:01
  listening to this episode while you're out on a walk or while
• 16:04
  you should be working, drop it on your Instagram story and tag
• 16:09
  us. I would love to share it and
• 16:11
  show some love back your way. 2025, I think, is going to dwarf
• 16:16
  2024 for the podcast, both in what it offers you and the way
• 16:20
  that it grows, which is incredibly exciting.
• 16:23
  So before all of that happens, before the movie officially
• 16:27
  starts for 2025, I just want to say one last time.
• 16:31
  Thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you in
• 16:34
  the next episode.