During my first year as a podcaster, I felt like a failure.

I imagined that I would have thousands of listeners, but instead, I only had 20.

Was I a failure?

I put things in perspective. At that time I was part of a Toastmasters club. I was learning how to become a public speaker. If I had an audience of 20 people I was both grateful and terrified.

Well, here in my podcast I had an audience of 20 people. I should be grateful. Also, I was improving my communication skills and I was having conversations with people who I admired. So I decided that I was not a failure.

As people come and go in a field of expertise, many of them are tire-kickers. They come, they see, and they leave. So automatically, without doing anything better than anyone else, you are above this group of people.

As you stay on the game, people know what to expect of you. It’s like eating at McDonald’s. No one will ever accuse McDonald’s of having the best hamburgers in town, but everyone knows what to expect. People become familiarized with the brand, they build a habit of going there, and McDonald’s wins just by staying in the game. So can you.

As you stay in the game longer, you develop some expertise and self-confidence. Newcomers start asking you for tips on how to get started, you begin to be seen as part of the establishment. You begin to get new opportunities simply because you have been in the game for a long time. If you have lasted this long, you must be OK.

You grow drip by drip, client by client, listener by listener. It’s nothing like the hockey stick growth that it’s so idealized. It’s not viral growth. Instead is growth by default, it’s growth because the audience (or clients) have become familiarized with you, with your product/service. It’s growth by attrition, when others in front of you fall, you will take a step forward. Eventually, one day, you will be in front of the line, and then a few years later you too, you will bow down and someone else will take your place.

Almost everyone I admire in one field or another has been in the game for a long time. They have seen their ups and downs, and one day they became the leader of the pack, many times by talent but other times by default, because it was their turn, they had paid their dues.

Right now, after three years of podcasting, my audience is more than 20 people. Now I get about 3,000 downloads per month. I am just at the beginning stage of my journey. I know that eventually, success will find its way to my door because I am planning to stay in this game for a long time.

When you are contemplating your future, try to figure out how you can make your move a long-lasting move. Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what’s the one thing you want to do for the rest of your life. But oftentimes it’s very easy to figure out the things you don’t want to do. Don’t do those.

A good rule of thumb is to think that if you don’t want to spend your next ten years doing that one thing, you don’t want to spend one day either.

But with all that said

No matter how hard you try, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to win all the time.  There are very few unbeaten champions in any field and they tend to go down as legends (with luck on their side).  

Realistically, losing is a part of life.  At a minimum, you’re going to have to learn to deal with it.  Ideally, you’ll learn to embrace your failures as being great teachers.  There are all kinds of lessons you can learn from losing.  Possibly the most important is to keep your pride in check when you’re winning.

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3. Getting Rid Of Impostor Syndrome