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The Linkin Park Story Every Podcaster Needs To Hear · Your Mic

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  It's your birthday, your friends show up, there's cake, drinks, music, the whole nine yards,
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  and then you get a phone call from a band nobody has ever heard of.
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  Do you stay at the party or do you grab your keys and drive into the dark to scream your lungs out
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  into a microphone? The late Chester Bennington chose the drive.
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  Welcome back to your mic, a podcast for new hosts, burnt out hosts, and entrepreneurs who keep
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  getting kicked in the teeth by their own ideas. My name is Freddie Cruz, founder of Speak Podcasting,
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  and if you want to chat pods, hit me up Freddie at SpeakPodcasting.com that is S-P-E-K-E
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  podcasting.com and today, we're going to go to church on rejection because if you think
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  podcasting or business or any kind of creative career should feel like a straight escalator up,
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  you're going to hate this story. But if you're willing to bleed a little, you might love it.
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  Now, before Lincoln Park became Lincoln Park, they were zero with an ex, then hybrid theory.
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  They were a hungry band in LA trying to get anybody with an office in a title to care about them.
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  Chester is in Arizona. He's been grinding in bands working in nine to five, a friend of a friend,
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  gets him a demo from a small LA band looking for a vocalist. On his 23rd birthday,
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  he gets that chance. He leaves his own birthday party, walks out on his cake and heads into
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  the studio to record vocals on those tracks. No guarantee, no contract, just hunger and a shot.
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  The band hears the tracks and goes, yeah, that is it. That is our guy. The moment changes his life
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  in the band's life and arguably the entire sound of rock in the 2000s. And then there's the name.
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  They're forced to change hybrid theory because of naming issues and they're kicking around ideas.
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  Chester keeps driving past a place in Santa Monica called Lincoln Park. It sticks in his brain.
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  They like the sound, but the standard spelling L-I-N-C-O-L-N is a mess for the internet. Also,
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  the domain is taken. So they do something almost insultingly simple and incredibly smart. They
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  change the spelling to Lincoln, like L-I-N-K-I-N-L-N-Park, so they can own their .com. They didn't seek out
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  a branding agency. They didn't pay for a six-figure logo project. It was just a dude in the car,
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  Chester, staring at a park sign and thinking, if we tweak the vowels, we can own the corner of
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  the internet with our name on it. That's the first lesson for you as a podcaster, as a founder,
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  as somebody trying to make a thing. Nobody came down from a mountain and handed them
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  the perfect name. They didn't wait for some future day when the perfect domain magically appeared.
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  They used what they had, where they were, and moved. You might be stuck on your show title,
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  your cover art, your brand color, so the hex numbers. Well, there is a Lincoln level idea,
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  part five minutes from your house, and you just won't pick it. And here's where it gets brutal,
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  really brutal. Even with that name, even with Chester's voice, even with the songs that would
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  become hybrid theory, Lincoln Park got turned down over and over and over and over again.
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  Now on the internet, you'll see the number 44 labels floating around in different stories,
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  whether that exact count is 44, 38, or 52, the point stands. It was a lot of nose,
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  lots and lots of nose. Even the label that finally signed them, passed multiple times before
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  somebody at that building decided to see what they really had. And sit with that for a second.
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  You're one of the most popular, explosive vocalists of your era. You have a band that can fuse
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  rock, hip hop, and hooks like nobody else at the time. You've got songs that'll end up selling
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  tens of millions of copies worldwide. And the people whose job it is to spot that, they say,
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  no thanks, dozens of times. Now zoom back in to your world. You publish a podcast, you get
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  a couple dozen downloads and your brain goes, this must be a sign from heaven that I should quit.
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  You pitch your offer to seven people. Nobody buys and suddenly you're rethinking your entire
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  existence. That was me at the beginning of my speak podcasting journey. Oh, man, do I know about
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  that? Lincoln Park, they heard no again and again from people who were just flat out wrong.
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  And here's the nuance. Those nose were still useful. Rejection does three things if you're
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  willing to let it. It exposes weak spots. Sometimes no means the show is not clear. It's not ready for
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  prime time. The offer is just not there. It's not doing anything for whoever you're pitching to.
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  Or you sound like everybody else. And that is actually fixable. It clarifies your people.
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  Now, if a gatekeeper or a sponsor or some legacy outlet doesn't want you, that might be exactly
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  the sign you needed that you're not building for them. It trains your pain tolerance.
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  Oh, man, do I know all about pain tolerance? You cannot lead a podcast or a company with
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  paper thin skin. If no ruins your month, you're not ready for yes. Rejection is not a bug in the
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  system. It is the system. Now, let us go back to Chester leaving that birthday party.
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  He doesn't know he's going to be Chester from Lincoln Park. He's a guy with a job of family
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  in a dream that has not worked yet. And he's celebrating his 23rd birthday. The easy move would have
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  been now just record tomorrow. Or if they're serious, they can wait until I'm done celebrating. It's
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  my birthday after all. Instead, he treats that call like oxygen. He leaves. He records. He delivers.
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  And that is persistence in the wild for podcasts hosts and entrepreneurs persistence is not some
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  cute quote on a mug. It's a logistics problem. Do you have a system that let you keep showing up
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  when you're tired? Do you have a schedule that survives your worst week, not just your best week?
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  Do you have a reason strong enough to keep your hands off the delete my show button when you see
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  someone else charting? You see, staying in the game is not sexy. What it is is recording when you
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  would rather scroll, shipping an episode, you give a B plus instead of waiting three weeks for an
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  imaginary A plus. It's taking the sting of no and translating it into a more honest hook next
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  time. And if you're listening to this thinking, yeah, cool. But how do I set this up without losing
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  my mind? Let me put a weapon in your hand. If you want to keep your show alive long enough to get
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  good, you need a plan that does not depend on you being motivated every Tuesday. And if you need
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  something to help you get there, what I can do for you right this very second is hand over a road
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  map. It's the speak podcasting road map. You get it for free at speakpodcasting.com slash free
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  resources that is spikpodcasting.com slash free resources. And here's the hard truth you're never
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  going to get on an inspirational carousel on Instagram at midnight. Your podcast, your business,
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  your art might not ever get the Lincoln Park fairy tale. You might not ever have the big label,
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  the giant publisher, the unicorn client, but you can absolutely have their mindset.
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  There are two different beliefs. I deserve this and I will outlast this. I deserve this is fragile
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  entitled. Every no feels like an insult. Every slow month feels like a cosmic mistake.
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  I will outlast this is ugly and powerful. It says, I'm going to be here when the tourists leave.
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  Lincoln Park outlasted dozens of notes, changed their name, changed their strategy and worked
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  every angle until the right people finally said yes. Then they took that yes and turned it into
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  albums that defined an entire generation. For you outlasting might look like making 50 episodes
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  before you decide whether the show works. Staying in your niche long enough to become the person
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  instead of one more voice. Treating every no from a gas to sponsor or a listener as a rep, not
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  a verdict. Your podcast is not dying because people say no. It dies when you agree with them.
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  So here's what I want you to do with this Lincoln Park story. Take the domain lesson and ship
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  the best name you can get today. Take the birthday party lesson and treat your next opportunity
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  like oxygen, not a chore. Take the rejection lesson and decide how many knows you're willing to eat
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  before you quit and then triple that number. If this episode hit that source spot in your chest,
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  do two things for me. First, I want you to get your hands on that roadmap. You're not going to
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  be guessing every week. I do not want you to go there. So get it. It's free at speakpodcasting.com
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  slash free resources. I'll link it in the description. If you're going to keep taking punches,
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  you might as well have a corner man. All right, to do it. Second, share this episode with your
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  favorite podcast underdog, the friend whose show deserves way more ears. The host who keeps hearing
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  no and showing up anyway. Send it to them and say, you're allowed to get rejected. Just don't stop.
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  This is your mic. Keep yours hot. Your skin thicker than your excuses. And remember,
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  the people who said no to Lincoln Park still have to live with that.