Invite Me to Listen…
The mind controls the body, and the body sends messages back to the brain telling it how it feels. These are fundamental truths that Dr. Joe Dispenza has spent most of his life studying and researching in order to answer the age-old question, “What makes being a human different?” On episode 679 of the School of Greatness podcast, hosted by former pro athlete Lewis Howes, Dr. Joe describes how he came about finding these discoveries within the quantum physics and neuroscience realms. However, I won’t be going any farther on the topic of how meditation can heal any ailment in your body. Instead, I will be talking about how this conversation between Lewis and Dr. Joe on a podcast, turned into a worldwide phenomenon and accelerated Dr. Joe’s popularity across the world. Why did podcasting allow for that? Why has podcasting become so relevant in today’s world? And why after only reading a couple of short sentences at the beginning of a Medium article, are you intrigued to now go and listen to this episode?
Podcasting is not new. The basis of it has been around for almost a century, and a very good argument could be made that all podcasting is, is a database of prerecorded radio talk shows that can be accessed by the listener at any time. The discovery of podcasting is not a revolution in society because radio has been around since 1920. This begs the question then, “Why has this media, which inherently is nothing new, become such a cultural phenomenon in the 21st century?” It’s because podcasting offers something different.
Everywhere we go we are bombarded with advertisements, images, and videos. We are constantly being asked to engage with these super loud pieces of media that invade every area of our life. After an overabundance of this every single day, our brain tends to go numb to these marketing pieces. We begin to block out and skim past these pieces of content because we have been previously fooled enough times into thinking they were useful. Podcasts don’t do this. Podcasts are there if you want them, but they aren’t screaming at you for your attention. This key factor in the way we approach podcasts changes the dynamic of our experience with them. Because we take the initiative to listen, we invite ourselves into the conversation. We have a sense of need to listen to what we are hearing. We are giving our precious time away to listen to these people on a podcast talk about something we are passionate about, and because of that, we feel that what they give us in return must be something of value. This new level of experience allows us to feel as if we are there in the room with these hosts, talking about these same issues with them. We now feel personally engaged, almost attached to the conversation. We feel as if we are friends with the hosts we hear talking, and we feel important in the fact that they allowed us to take part in this experience. Still, how did this “experience,” produced by a media that has been around for a century, become the basis for a resurgence of audio content so big that it may take over the king of content itself, video? The answer lies in thinking about how podcasts have evolved and how the digital age dramatically transformed the way people consume within our society altogether.
In the early days of podcasting, most people saw it as a hobby to enjoy and have fun with friends. There were no corporate budgets or agendas for using podcasting as a marketing tool. There were no entrepreneurs using podcasts as thought leadership building tools or for content creation or for their branding strategies. You had people like Joe Rogan sitting in his living room smoking pot with a bunch of unknown comedians all talking about the things they do from day to day. So, what issued in this new age of podcasting where not only anybody and everybody could have a show on any topic they were passionate about, but also have millions of people listening to them every single week? Technology happened.
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. How little did anyone know about how much this device was going to change the world. We now had the power of a computer in the palm of our hands. We could learn anything and search for anything our heart desired at a moment’s notice. Oh, and we also happened to be in another socially reconstructive age of connecting with the rise of Facebook. Fast forward a decade and now our culture is this hyper consuming/sharing society that can’t seem to get enough of the information our world puts out. The iPhone has made every piece of media more easily consumable — music, video, articles, news, you name it, and now we have access to it at any time of the day. When Apple announced the addition of a podcast subscription library to its iTunes update, that list of easily consumable media started to include talk radio as well.
As more and more people have bought smartphones, more and more of them have begun trying to find ways to maximize their time with them. Education, being one of the main tenants of self-improvement and financial gain, was something people were trying to find easier and easier ways to intake. Some common hurdles people experienced when trying to improve their lives was having to stop what you were doing to watch a video, having to go to the library to get a book on the subject you needed, or even attending an in-person class to learn about how to improve themselves in the areas that interested them. All very cumbersome and time-consuming hurdles they had to overcome when trying to develop themselves. When society stumbled upon podcasts, a media which removed all these hurdles and allowed people to be educated while they were driving, cleaning, working out, or even sleeping, the whole landscape of the podcasting world changed. Now, this feeling of being someone who is “Drinking the Kool-Aid” because you bought a Napoleon Hill record on how to improve your life, was squashed. Podcasting allowed self-education and self-improvement to become a household norm for everyone wanting to learn how to live a better life. With the advances in software, recording equipment, and a continuously growing audience, the world now found itself with a new industry where anyone could become the expert in their field by merely sharing and learning with others about the things they know.
This shift in mindset of not needing to see that people have prestigious awards or billion-dollar bank accounts in order to believe what they say is exactly what has led to the rising in awareness and success of people like Dr. Joe Dispenza. Dr. Joe was invited on a podcast, hosted by a former pro athlete turned LinkedIn guru (who already has built a quality network and audience for himself), and he was asked to talk about his experiences in life. The conversation started with getting to know Dr. Joe and his struggles which inspired him to do his life’s work. Lewis, the host, then began to ask Joe all sorts of questions related to the topics of mediation, neuro-regulation, and how you can use your mind to heal your body. This simple conversation has now put Dr. Joe into the ears of hundreds of thousands of listeners where he gets to geek out about all the things he has learned over the course of his life on how to help people. He is now not only spreading his message and marketing to totally new segments of people, but he is also branding himself as a thought leader or expert to them. They now know that Dr. Joe Dispenza has spent his life doing this work, they know why he spent his life doing it, they know how he spent his time while doing it, and they know what it can do for them. So, moving forward when the audience thinks about experts in the neuroscience and mediation space, they think of Dr. Joe. And the best part, it all happened for free. Talk about a revolution in business for marketing and credibility building.
Podcasting is in an upswing. Each year more people are listening, and with the combination of YouTube videos, more people are watching them as well. People are coming around to the idea that they don’t need a fancy degree or that they don’t need to be talking to Warren Buffet to learn something. This resurgence of audio, an audio renaissance if you will, has come about because of how easily it can be consumed. Our society is obsessed with having more, both good and bad, and in the essence of being obsessed with improving your life, there is no better place to start than with podcasts. I think we are just at the beginning of something bigger. As media continues to evolve and content becomes more and more important, I think every business will need a podcast to stay relevant. Just as social media was a novelty for business in its early days, I think podcasting has still yet to hit its stride. Once every business owner realizes how effective and efficient podcasting is in helping them build their brand and bottom line, then the potential of good that podcasting can do for the world will be endless.
