The Podcast That Almost Didn't Survive Its Own First Seven Episodes

• 4

• 7

• 11

• 9

• 13

• 17

• 12

Those are the download numbers from the first seven episodes of a podcast I now consider genuinely successful. A show that's helped its host generate real business and build real authority in his niche. A show I'm proud to have been part of building.

If that host had evaluated his podcast by those early numbers, he would've quit before episode eight.

And he almost did.

James Clear calls it the Plateau of Latent Potential.

The idea that results are always delayed from the effort that produced them. You don't see the payoff of your first ten episodes in your first ten episodes. You see it in episodes thirty through fifty when a new listener finds your show, bings the archive, and shows up already trusting you.

Ed Mylett tells a story about a pinata at a child's birthday party. Six kids take turns swinging. Nobody breaks it. The seventh kid steps up and on the first swing, candy flies everywhere.

The question he asks is the right one. Who broke the pinata? Was it the seventh kid? Or was it every kid before him?

The episode that breaks through for your podcast isn't doing the work alone. It's standing on the shoulders of every episode before it. Every swing that didn't break the pinata still mattered. It all adds up.

The only podcasters who find out what's on the other side of the valley are the ones who keep swinging.