On January 11th, 2011 ( 11-01-11, or 01-11-11) I had an artificial deadline – start a show that would be released as a podcast.
For a month or two beforehand I had struggled with a name, wanting to so something that would fit ANSP.com, but in the end decided I could use ANSP.com for something else.
For years I had gathered quotations, clips, and stories to use in communicating with others, but now was a time to share them.
The general ideas were:
- keep it short
- one topic or idea per episode
Thus StartingCube was born. The domain was secured, a short episode talking about “Just get started” was recorded & released, and an idea for the second episode was clear. Cube2 – the Billionaire to the Millionaire was also about the journey of developing Starting Cube. The message was a little about the mindset I was taking with StartingCube.
Day by day, week by week, a little at a time, StartingCube has improved & standard practices have evolved.
Now the hardest parts of making an episode is deciding upon:
- cube to use
- title for episode
- what image to pair with it
Lots of time can go into those three elements, everything else is pretty standard.
Today is the 4 month mark for StartingCube, with 35 episodes released & people in over 220 cities around the world reached.
In all the 35 episodes, one episode has come to be the best explanation of why a person should listen to StartingCube:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
[mp3 - 7:47]
In listening to it, there is no wonder why it was the top downloaded episode, by a large margin, in April and has nearly passed all other episodes, even those with a 3 month head start.
Looking Forward
I am debating what path to take StartingCube.
Some of the questions include:
- put more time into that brand, or keep the same
- try to monetize it directly or not
- find other people to be involved or not
- work on the website or keep with my original plan (there is one specific programing project I’ve been thinking about)
- start doing more “non cube” but related content or not
- push for others to do “thoughts on cube ##” type of content or not
Your thoughts?
About jon
