Ep #520: 10 Years Proud

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo episode number 520.

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Hey, beautiful friends. Today on the podcast I am celebrating 10 years proud of having published this podcast. And I want to take this opportunity to remind all of you to think back over something over the past 10 years that you have done, that you have accomplished, that you’ve been consistent at, that you can feel proud about.

I think it’s very easy when you do the work that I do that is very future-focused and very focused on visions and goals and achieving impossible things, to forget to stop and just celebrate for a minute. And so that’s what we’re going to do together today.

As I was preparing for this episode I was thinking about 10 years when I first started recording. And I remember sitting at my table recording the very first episode. And I was very inspired by Pat Flynn on the Smart Passive Income podcast. He had an amazing blog post that told me exactly how to set up my podcast microphone and my equalizer and the sound and how to record it and how to edit it and all of the things.

And I remember I was so nervous and so excited and really felt like I was embarking on this brand-new thing. I had many of my students tell me for many, many months that I should be doing a podcast and that I had a lot of great content for a podcast to do. And I’d already been a coach for many years, 10 years before I started doing the podcast, so I had all of my content and all of my material. I already had the Model. I had everything already.

And so I just turned on that mic and organized my thoughts and started recording. And I have recorded every week for 10 years. And the thing that’s so amazing about the podcast is that it is really what I attribute to my organic success as a coach because the timing of podcasts and internet and life coaching all growing at the same speed and at the same time was like a miracle timing-wise to be on that wave of growth.

And it has been an amazing ride. When I think about how much has changed since I first started, like when we think about Instagram it was still pretty new. Most people were on Facebook but they hadn’t really gone fully into Instagram in the way that we have now.

And for me, I’ve never really participated in social media in a personal way. In a way that would grow my following on Instagram or create like a community on social media. And so really, my community is built around my podcast and all of you. And I love so much the medium of podcasting because I feel like it creates a relationship that is consistent and bonding.

And it was interesting, I went to a party a couple weeks ago and the woman that I was talking to just kept looking at me like, why is your voice so familiar? She didn’t recognize my face, I guess maybe because of my hair, but she knew my voice. And it was fun, on the way up the elevator just yesterday coming up the elevator somebody was like, “Oh my gosh, I was hoping that this was the building that you lived in and I was looking out for you. And it’s so fun to have seen you and I’m so excited.”

I know that that’s all from the podcast. And even as a consumer of podcasts I feel the same way, right? I feel like so many of the people that I have learned from through podcasting, through listening to their podcast, I feel very close to them. I feel like we’re friends. And some of us actually have become friends. But other people, like I’ve never met Pat Flynn and I feel like truly he’s my brother. He’s taught me so much about how to build a business and how to do podcasting.

So I understand when I run into people out there in the wild and they really do know me. They’ve been in my world for years, literally years, and following my business, following my life, following my tools and the content. So many of them come up to me and tell me that my work has changed their lives.

And it’s just like an incredible touchstone to have been doing this for 10 years and to see how far I’ve come as a human, I was 41 years old when I started doing my podcast and my kids were 14 and 13 and we were in the thick of it in terms of raising kids and life and building a business. I was just at the beginning, like when you think about that I was really at the beginning of the growth of my business 10 years ago.

And one of the things that’s been amazing about my podcast is that it’s always been ranked so high. And the way that it’s categorized it’s been ranked really high in business for so many years, which is crazy because I feel like I talk a lot about feelings here. So to have that business rank is really cool. And to have a lot of, I would say people that maybe wouldn’t have looked for a life coaching podcast found me and listened to me because of my growing business success and the way that I market online.

So having such an eclectic group of you all listening has been such an adventure and so, so exciting. And I do feel that in many ways our industry and podcasting and content creation is still in its beginning stages, which is so crazy to think about because 10 years seems like such a long time within my lifetime. But it’s not when you look at industry growth, it’s just a short little blip.

We’ve grown 30 to 50% as an industry over the past 10 years. And I have watched that happen and it’s been such a crazy fun ride to do that. And I’m curious for each of you, like when you think about, right now when you think about 10 years ago in your own life, how old were you? Where were you living? What were you doing? What were your dreams? What have you committed to and what have you accomplished in the past 10 years?

And a lot of times we think, oh, well, I haven’t done anything huge or significant, so we brush it off. But I promise you, if you take the time to sit down and acknowledge yourself and to really be in awe of what you have done, maybe the way that you’ve raised your family or maybe you’ve written a book or completed school or stayed at the same job or been promoted, what is it that you have been able to do?

Maybe you’ve worked out, maybe you’ve lost weight, maybe you quit drinking. I hear so many of your success stories and I wonder, are you celebrating? Are you excited about what you’ve done in your life? I think when we can have an amazing relationship with our past self and really acknowledge all the work that she has done for me and created for me, it creates a sense of love for myself that is beyond, a sense of gratitude that is beyond just the everyday.

And so for me, I really want to celebrate sticking with it. What is it in your life that you’ve been sticking with that maybe doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, but you can acknowledge it to yourself?

A lot of times we get into trouble because we don’t give ourselves credit for things that may come easy to us. And we want to make sure we do that. If working out isn’t hard for you and you just go work out every day and it’s not a challenge, you may not even acknowledge that as an accomplishment. And I want to really caution you against that.

I want to suggest that you do acknowledge. You get up every day, you go to work every day, or you take care of your family every day, or you go on a walk every day. Everything that you do, take a moment to acknowledge yourself for sticking with it.

Getting it done, that’s another one. And especially getting it done when you didn’t want to. There have been many times when I needed to record a podcast and I didn’t want to record it. I didn’t have a topic. I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. And I sat down and wrote an outline and did it anyway. And many times I created something that was way better than I thought I was going to create and something that was actually useful for my own life.

The other thing I want to celebrate is by doing the podcast every week and creating from that creative content space in my brain, I have helped myself create a body of work that I am very proud of. A collection of tools that are useful. And when you think about technology and you think about the opportunity that we have, that this body of work will stand the test of time, it will be available to people long after I’m gone to be able to listen to it.

I think about sometimes like when you’re watching movies and somebody’s passed away and the person is listening to their voicemail recording, they want to hear their voice. I mean, if my kids or grandkids or great grandkids ever want to know their great grandma, they have years and years and years of my voice that they can listen to if they want.

And it kind of delights me that there may be, you know, maybe I’ll have a great, great, great, great granddaughter someday that will be interested in life coaching and self-help and will want to learn from her great, great, great, great grandma who taught this someday. That’s kind of a fun acknowledgement for myself.

I’m actually really proud of the fact that the podcast is free and that I was introduced to this medium and taught to give people results ahead of time, to give away the best stuff for free, to not be afraid to share all of the content that will really help change people’s lives. And so to think about all of the hours that are on the internet that I have created that have helped me build a business and helped me create an amazing company, but have also helped so many people for free.

And the last thing that I wanted to mention that I’m kind of celebrating for myself is that I created my business and this platform without really using social media. And I think there’s a lot of y’all that think in order to build something, you have to be on social media and you have to create a huge following. And it’s just not the case. That’s not something that you have to do if that’s not something that you want to do, which it never was for me.

I’m an introvert. I like my privacy. I like to be alone a lot. I like to walk my dogs and hang out with my family. And for me, being public with my life and being out there on social media every single day was never something that felt natural to me. But I do feel like I was able to share myself here on the podcast in this way that was able to help me build my community.

So I think it’s kind of a nod to myself for acknowledging what I knew would work for me and staying with that and then making sure that that worked. And it really did.

So as you take a minute to kind of review your last 10 years and think about how we are doing, pick one area. How are we doing? What’s going on there? Maybe it’s your job. Maybe it’s your career. Maybe it’s your business. Maybe it’s your relationships, whatever it is. Step one is really to be proud and to acknowledge yourself.

And for me, I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, being proud of myself is one of the best feelings. It’s one of the best emotions that I create. And I’m really proud that I was willing to put myself out there in a way to create something so amazing and to work so hard to create it. And so what is it for you that you’re so proud of yourself?

And believe me, it’s easy to dismiss, to think that there’s not something there, but I want you to really try. I want you to really work to give yourself some acknowledgement, to feel proud about something that you are doing with your life.

And then the next step is really the process of re-deciding. And we’ve talked a lot about decision-making on this podcast and a lot about re-deciding. And I have many teachers who have influenced me when it comes to decision-making and when it comes to really understanding that decisions are where our power is released into the world and how important it is to make strong, thoughtful decisions.

And I think it was Dave Ramsey that really introduced me to the idea of re-deciding on purpose. And I love the example that he uses, and I’ve shared it with you all many times, the example that he uses with a house and how easy it is for us to get caught up in sunk costs, right?

So sunk costs means something that you’ve put a lot of time and a lot of energy into, and so therefore you feel like you have to live in it, basically. And with the house, it’s like the mortgage and the sunk costs of moving in, the sunk costs of the down payment, of the closing costs, of all of that, and then living in this house and feeling like, okay, I’m kind of stuck here.

And if you’ve been following this podcast for a minute, you know that that is not how I feel about houses, especially in Miami, my friends. But he talks about, especially in terms of your financial life, that you should re-decide all of your financial purchases, especially the ones that you’re continuously paying for.

And so would you buy this house again? Starting today would you go and put that down payment and buy that house again? If the answer is no, if the answer is you wouldn’t buy the house for the cost that you’re paying for it now, you can decide something different. And it doesn’t mean that you will decide something different, but it just means you give yourself that option.

So every single year I have re-decided my business life, my personal life, my asset life, everything. And this is one of the reasons why I have a lot of change in my life, because I love the idea of ongoing change. I love the idea of growth. I love the idea of evolving.

And many things in my life stay consistent for a long period of time, and I re-decide them every single time. And then one year I’m like, huh, maybe it’s time to decide something different. And so as it applies to this podcast, I’m, of course, deciding to continue to do it, but I am changing the format of it. I’m changing the way that I’m going to deliver it from weekly to monthly.

And I wanted to also share with you one of the other decisions that I made on the podcast was, should I start running ads on the podcast? Because we have such significant downloads. We have such a large community that listens to the podcast. And so, so many eyes and ears on the podcast. We have constantly been asked if we’d like to run ads on the podcast and constantly been asked if we could run interviews with people on the podcast.

And I really did consider this year whether I would do that. And I’ll tell you why, it’s kind of a funny story. So my favorite sheets are Cozy Earth sheets. I think that they are fantastic. My girlfriend, Tanya Lee, introduced me to them when I went over to her house and spent the night one night. And now all of my beds have these Cozy Earth gorgeous sheets on them. And I love the way they feel. They’re soft. They’re silky. They’re wonderful. They’re thin.

And I recently got an email from Cozy Earth asking me if I wanted to run their ads or have their ads on the podcast. And it just felt like, oh my gosh, this is something I absolutely love and they want to pay me to talk about. By the way, they are not paying me to talk about this right now. This is a free one for them, and it’s because it’s true. I love their sheets. I think they have a great product. They have great pajamas. They have amazing stuff. You have to go check them out.

But after really thinking it through, and I talked to Pavel about it and got some information about it, I just decided that that is not something I want to do. And it’s because I don’t like it when there’s ads on other people’s podcasts. I do not like having to fast forward. I don’t want to listen through ads. I don’t want to hear them talk about products. I want to go to the podcast and get what is promised to me, which is the content that the person is providing.

And so that’s just kind of a little anecdote because I know some of you are considering doing that for your own podcast. Like should you do ads on your own podcast? And I think it’s an individual decision for everyone. I will tell you that I do have friends that do run ads on their podcast, and they make an extraordinary amount of money doing so. And it’s a win-win because they’re only promoting products that they really love. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just not the right decision for me.

The other thing that’s kind of interesting is the private podcast avenue. And as many of you know, I do have the private podcast feed through Get Coached. So if you are a member of Get Coached, you get that feed of all of my content and all of my coaching right into your phone app, which I think is insane.

It’s so exciting to me, like it just makes consuming courses so much easier. Instead of having to go and log in, you can just have that private podcast feed that comes right to your phone and you can just hit play like any other podcast. And obviously, that will be continuing weekly. So if you’re freaking out, oh my gosh, I need to have Brooke Castillo weekly, which some of you tell me, you could definitely get the private podcast feed through joining Self Coaching Scholars in Get Coached.

But starting this month, we will go to a monthly format. And there will be exceptions for interviews that I want to do. There’s some coaches that I want to interview from within my community and some content that I want to share with you that will be kind of outside of the regular monthly podcast. And you’ll just never know when those are coming. They’ll just pop up. They’ll just be like an exciting surprise bonus. Ding, ding. There you go. There’s the most amazing interview that you didn’t even know was coming.

And the other thing that I wanted to share with you too, and I know that there’s been a lot this year, right? It’s been a really big pivotal year for me. Lots of change. I have lots of exciting things that are happening. One of the 10 years proud things that has happened in my life is Christian, my son, who’s a golfer, just recently won – Sorry, he didn’t win. He might as well have won in my own brain, but he was actually runner up in a very significant golf tournament.

And he beat a lot of guys that have been playing golf a lot longer than him and that had been ranked much higher than him in college. And I’m telling you, after watching this man, this boy, grow into a man over the past 10 years playing this golf, this was one of those pinnacle moments. And my life, as most of you know, is very much prioritized around my boys and my kids and they’re the most important thing to me in the world.

And so being a part of Christian now about being able to graduate from college and to play pro golf, being his next goal, like me being a part of that and me being a part of what’s going on with Connor and his next phase of his life is really a huge priority for me. And so I’m acknowledging Christian’s 10 years of accomplishment.

I’m so proud of him and so locked in with what’s to come next for him as well. And I know many of you guys can relate when it comes to your kids and you look at the accomplishments they’ve had over the past 10 years and being proud of them and making sure to tell them how proud you are of them.

This was, for me and Christian, I’ve been there for all of his tournaments. I’ve been there for the good ones. I’ve been there for the challenging ones and really watched him get the coaching that he needs and practice the skill that he needs in order to be at the highest part of his game. And that is what is up for me, what is coming up for me.

And I also have a lot of other news, a lot of other exciting things that are happening in my life, some of which I’m not able to share yet but I will, for sure, coming up on the podcast. And I will be really open to anything you feel like has gone unsaid on the podcast.

If there’s any area where you feel like Brooke’s never really talked about this and I really wish Brooke would have someone on to talk about this or she would talk about it or address it, I’m happy to look at all of those suggestions. I want to make sure that you’re getting everything you need from me. So you can always email the team at thelifecoachschool.com and let them know any suggestions or anything you want to hear from me.

I am excited, y’all. It’s been 10 years. Many of you have been here with me for those 10 years and I’m very excited that we made it. I’m very excited for the body of work that is here. I will say that as I was reviewing to get ready for this podcast, I scrolled back through some of the first podcasts that I ever did and I listened to them. I wanted to hear what my voice sounded like. I wanted to hear what my teaching sounded like.

And I was just so proud that those podcasts still stand and they still offer so much help to even me when I’m going through something. I can go back and listen to a podcast and be like, oh my gosh, thank you, Brooke Castillo from the past for helping me with this issue that I’m having right now.

And so I do want to recommend, again, for those of you who are used to every single Thursday hearing me, if you want to keep the trend going, you certainly can scroll back and find any one of those podcasts that are still in the feed and listen to them because I do think that they all stand by themselves and will offer you ongoing content. And that is one of the coolest things about it.

So, everybody, congratulations on what you have done over the past 10 years. Congratulations on being here with me as I celebrate my 10-year anniversary of recording this podcast. And here’s a huge cheers to the podcasts that I will create in the future and the work that is to come. Have a beautiful week, everyone. Actually, have a beautiful month, everyone. And I’ll see you then.

Hey, if you’ve ever wanted to work with me as your coach, now is the time to do it. You can join me in Get Coached in Scholars by going to thelifecoachschool.com/join. This is going to be the best year ever. It’s your turn to change your life. Let’s go.