What I've Learned After 400 Episodes

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:58The first episode of this podcast, Problem Solvers, aired on July 31st, 2017. And now, I am recording the 400th episode. 400 episodes. How did I even do that? I mean, I guess the answer is, you start doing something in 2017 and you just keep going. Eventually, you hit 400. And so if you've been listening for more than 50 episodes of this 400-episode run, then you know every 50 episodes, I have a little tradition of stepping back and assessing, sharing with you with no guest and no hard topic here. Instead, just sharing with you what my experience has been like communicating and engaging and creating something that entrepreneurs hopefully find very useful.

2:56Because you, even if you are not making podcasts, you are a communicator too. You have to be. To be in business is to be a communicator, to understand an audience and to connect with them and to think about process and what it means to build something that matters. And that is what I'm trying to do here. I can't say that every week I do it optimally, but do we ever? Do we all? So on this episode, this 400th episode of Problem Solvers, that's what I'm going to do. And I jotted down just before getting going here, three things that as I reflect upon the evolution of this show and me as a person who creates things for business people, three things that I found were revelatory in the creation of this and that I think are important for any entrepreneur to be thinking about.

3:50And I'll tell you what they are, and then we're going to get into them. Number one is that the things that you think matter don't necessarily matter. Number two is that differentiation is important and you can follow your own consumer instincts to get there. And then number three is that the best work often happens before the work even starts. So now let's unpack these. I'm going to start with, well, I'll start with number one. Wouldn't that make sense? The things that you think matter don't necessarily matter. Okay, you would have had to be listening to this for, I don't even know how many years, many, many years in order to know this.

4:38But this show used to sound different. Instead of it being primarily a conversation show as it is now, it was more like a narrated documentary kind of thing in which I had a script that I wrote and then I performed. And throughout that script, you would hear bits of audio of the person who I was telling a story about. It's kind of like I retain this structure in the very beginning of each episode. As you know, I open the show and I kind of set up what's going on and set up who we're talking to. And it's me talking. And then there are little cuts to audio of the person who you'll eventually hear a conversation with.

5:16That used to be the entire show. And I used to think that that was a really important part of the show, that that was something that really set the show apart from others. and then I discovered something to my great surprise. And before I tell you what it is, actually, let me tell you another story of someone who I was talking to a few years ago who made a similar discovery. And then let's look at these two examples side by side. Okay, so the person who I was talking to owned a local supermarket, Not like a supermarket chain, just a local supermarket in a small city. And for a long time, for decades, possibly before preceding this person's ownership, I don't remember exactly, but this supermarket had been running this thick Sunday insert in the local newspaper.

6:16And again, this goes back far enough that newspapers were extremely relevant in a way that they are not necessarily now. and so they'd run this insert and the insert would it would do this thing that you surely see if you've ever picked up a newspaper in your life you've seen the supermarket inserts with all the prices and the sales and the specials and the products and all that so that's what they would run and then one week the supermarket owner gets a call from the newspaper who says i am so sorry supermarket owner, but there has been a mistake at our printer and your Sunday insert is not going to run.

6:57And at this, the supermarket owner panics, like full freak out panics, because the supermarket owner has long assumed for decades, nobody has ever even thought to question this, that the newspaper insert, that thing that runs in the newspaper, that that is the thing that drives customers every week. That customers show up on Sunday and then throughout the week motivated by what they are seeing in that Sunday insert. This is how they know the sales. They are coming specifically because of the sales, etc. And now this ad will not be there. and the supermarket owner doesn't know what to do. Starts freaking out, starts trying to move as much inventory as possible, as fast as possible.

7:50Just starts like heavily discounting things because what the supermarket owner does not want is next week to have just a glut of unsold perishable inventory because people didn't come in in the same way that they always did because this insert ran. And perhaps given the setup here, you know, or you have guessed what is going to happen here, which is that Sunday rolls along and the ad insert does not run in the newspaper. And at the supermarket, it is business as usual. Like the same number of people show up that Sunday as every Sunday, and then Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and nothing changes.

8:38And this is when the supermarket owner realizes that actually that insert that he thought was so incredibly important to his business was not important at all. And he didn't know it because he never thought to question it. And he was too afraid to run the test. And what a valuable business lesson that is for us for anything because there are so many things in our businesses that we think are critical, mission critical to our businesses that are not, that turn out to be just incidental, that maybe had a purpose, a really important purpose at some point, but then we moved on or things changed and we just never stepped back to reevaluate whether or not it actually mattered.

9:29And this is why we should be grateful for forcing functions. I love that phrase, forcing function, the event that compels action. We should love forcing functions, these things that push us to reconsider. You know, maybe we'll discover that this thing that we've always been doing is really still very valuable, or maybe we'll discover that it's not. And if that's the case, then we suddenly have freedom to explore and create something that maybe is more cost-effective, or maybe is just easier, or maybe is more logical, or maybe is more appealing. Which brings me back to this podcast. So like I had said, I used to make this show in this very produced way.

10:13And that took a lot of time. You know when I made that? I made it on the weekends. What I would do is I'd have interviewed somebody during the week, and then I would carve out some number of hours to go through all that audio, that interview, and then write this script. I remember sitting on the couch in my old apartment on a Saturday afternoon, like every Saturday afternoon, writing the script for this podcast. And at the time, I had a small child. So this is 2017. So my first son was about two years old. So still doing a lot of napping. And I'm sure, I don't remember, but I'm sure that I wrote the scripts for the podcast while he was napping.

10:53But then life got more complicated. Suddenly, we were out with the kid in the weekend afternoons. And then another child came along. And it just wasn't possible to spend the time writing these scripts. And so I realized I needed to make a change. And I was afraid. I was afraid of what that change would be, because I knew what it would be. What it would be would be, I would have to start having these conversations more as if someone's going to listen to the whole interview. Instead of chopping up the interview and writing a script, I was going to have to interview people so that you could hear the whole conversation.

11:33It's a different style of interview. It in a way is riskier because the interviewee has to be really good. You have to be on top of your game. And also, I worried that it didn't differentiate the show that much. I thought, oh, well, people listen to this show because of the format because of this unique scripting that I have. But forcing function, I just couldn't keep writing those scripts over the weekend. And I didn't have time to do them during the week. And so I made this change. I moved to this interview show format. And you know what? nothing bad happened. Just like the newspaper and the grocery store thing, nothing bad happened.

12:21Instead, people continued to listen to the show. In fact, I think I probably heard from way more listeners after the change than before. This thing that I had been holding onto, that I had been spending my weekends doing, turned out to not matter. And I wouldn't have known it. I wouldn't have questioned it if it wasn't for the forcing function. So that is lesson number one, the value of the forcing function. The things you think matter don't necessarily matter. And we need to challenge that whenever we can. All right, I'm going to take now a short break, short ad break. And when I come back, I will share the other two big discoveries that I've learned over 400 episodes.

13:06Since 1907 for deep clean wash. Even at the Johnsons. Or, Anna? That's right. Even my grandma washed with Persil. And as thanks for over 100 years trust, you'll get to 15 Euro on our best. That with the red line. Exactly. Made in Germany. More info on ourbest.persil.de. If it's deep in the air, it's Persil. Our best.persil. Alright, we're back. So two more things to share with you about the evolution of this show. I said they are going to be that differentiation is important and you can follow your own consumer instincts on that. And then also that the best work happens before the work starts.

13:50So let's continue to unpack that. Differentiation is important and you can follow your own consumer instincts. Okay, so let's build off of what I was just saying there. I was really focused, as I was saying with the produced version of this show, I was really focused on making this differentiated podcast. There are so many interview shows out there. So many. The vast majority of podcasting is just interview shows. And I didn't want to just be another interview show. But as I got into that format and just embraced that it's a format that people like, they like listening to it. I started to think, well, what else can I do to differentiate?

14:37And whenever I'm thinking about this, whenever I'm thinking about what can I do to stand out, the starting point can't be because here's what I want to make. That's just not useful because what you want to make as a maker isn't necessarily what people want as a consumer. It's a lot of things that people want to make that nobody wants to consume. People want to write novels that nobody wants to read, you know? So there had to be some better way to think about this. And what I've come to realize is that sometimes thinking of yourself not as a maker, but rather as a consumer can be incredibly valuable to just look at your own reactions to the ecosystem of products and services out in the world that you're participating in and think like, what do I like as a consumer?

15:30And what do I hate? What do I hate as a consumer? And then you try to validate that through talking to other people, but it's a great starting point. So I asked myself, what do I like and what do I hate about podcasts that are interview shows? And here's the answer. I hate that interview shows are all long. They're all like an hour. Oh God. I don't have an hour to listen to two people talk. Why would I want to do that? I genuinely don't understand. I mean, then there's like the Joe Rogans of the world that go on for hours and hours. I've never listened to that. I just don't understand why somebody wants that.

16:05So what I want is short. I want to get to the point. And then I started to think, what happens in these long interview shows? And I realized there is so much, so much crap that can be trimmed from those shows. You know, I listened to, I listened to a business interview show. And the first 30 minutes is somebody's background. I don't care about their background at all. If I'm listening to this show, it's because they're going to be talking about something that's going to be useful to me. So why don't we just cut to that? Can we just get to that and cut out all this stuff? I felt like every 60-minute podcast that I listened to could easily be a 20, 25-minute podcast if we just cut it down.

16:48And so that's what I thought I will make. based on my own consumer interest. I'm going to make a shorter show and it's going to be more focused. We're not going to be talking about somebody's background. We're not going to, you know, get into a little side tangents. We're going to start with a sense of purpose, a very specific thing that we're going to talk about. And then we're going to talk about it. And we're going to drive the conversation towards a very specific outcome. I'm going to tell you what that outcome is at the very beginning. And then we're going to get to it. And that builds off of this theory that I have developed over time as I've spent now a lot of years in business media, which is that I don't think that people in business tend to consume things for fun.

17:34I mean, you consume things outside of your business actions, right? Like you're watching Netflix for fun or something like that. But when you pick up Entrepreneur Magazine or you listen to this podcast or you read some business book, maybe you read my business book called Build for Tomorrow, you're not reading for fun. You're reading for function. You're reading because you're working on something and you want to make sure that you are doing it in the best and smartest and most impactful way possible. and you're looking for guidance from people who, you know, you can't just call up on the phone, so you're going to settle for hearing them on a podcast.

18:20But that doesn't mean that you have hours to spend on this stuff. You don't. You're busy building things. You don't have time for long podcasts, long magazines. So I thought, all right, that will be my differentiation point. In format, I'm going to do something that is familiar and that works, the conversation show. and then in practice and in spirit, I will do this thing that is built off of my own consumer reactions. And so that's why the show is this tight 30 minutes that's focused on a very specific problem. That's where that comes from. And I hear from listeners all the time who tell me they appreciate that it's short, that they can listen to it on their ride to work or as they're walking to a store or whatever it is.

19:09And I really love that. Okay, final thing, which is, I said, the best work happens before the work starts. So when I interviewed people for the format that was the produced format, my interview was like all over the place. It was all over the place. I'd be like, okay, can you give me a little bit more about that detail? And I was talking not as if anyone would ever hear me talk. I was having this kind of rambly, casual tone to me. And you would never want to hear the raw audio of those interviews. They weren't recorded to be listened to in their full. But I realized to make this podcast more efficient, I needed to go into every interview knowing exactly what we were going to talk about and knowing exactly how to do it.

20:05And therefore, we could efficiently make something excellent. And so here's what happens. I came to realize that the best way to do this was to, before an episode, to go back and forth with a potential guest and determine the specific problem and solution set that we will discuss. And I do this for literally everyone, even like famous people. I mean, then I'm usually working with their publicist or whatever, but where I'm just like, what is the specific thing we're going to talk about? What problem did they solve? Give me a list of problems. Let's pick one. And then we do, we pick one. And I know from the second that we connect, here's what we're going to talk about, here's what the problem is, and here's how to drive a useful conversation.

21:02And then I have almost structure in my head. We usually record for 25 to 30 minutes, and I have a structure in my head of, this is the flow that I need to get to. We're going to start with defining the problem. We're going to back up into how do we understand the problem? What does the problem look like? How do we start to drive towards a solution? What was that like? Give me some details. Let's get to the end. And every episode of Problem Solvers kind of follows that format. It's not meant to sound scripted. It's not. I'm doing all this off the top of my head. I don't write questions ahead of time.

21:42I'm really trying to follow the person who I'm interviewing. But at the same time, I'm keeping my eyes on the goal, which is to pay off in a tangible way on whatever problem I set out. And in doing that, I really think of the work, the most important work happens before the work happens, right? The most important thing is that I have created this structure and that we're doing this planning ahead of time so that by the time we actually record, there's nothing left to do but unfurl the thing that we had prepared. And that has taken this show from being this thing that I had to spend hours and hours working on over the weekends.

22:24It's something that I can produce much more efficiently, but still deliver great value. You know, I've come to this theory about taking on new projects, about executing anything, that the best thing that you can do is something that requires 30 % of your brain space, but delivers 100 % of the value. 30 % of your brain space, but delivers 100 % of the value, which is to say that it's building off of things that you already know well, and it is not forcing you to reinvent the wheel each time. You can be really efficient with it. You can be more efficient than other people because they don't know this thing as well as you do.

23:04And therefore you can create something that is of value, that people value, that they say, I'm getting exactly what I want out of this, even though it didn't take you nearly as much time as it would have taken someone else or that it would have taken you earlier in your career. I love thinking about it like that. And that's what this show has become. Over 400 episodes, this show has become something that just takes less of my time and energy, but hopefully delivers even more value to you, the person who I'm making it for. I'm not making it for myself. I'm making it for you. So it's 400 episodes.

23:39We're still going. When do we stop? I have absolutely no idea, but it's not at 400. It's not at 401. So I will see you next week here on Problem Solvers. There are some changes coming, by the way, after 400 episodes. We're going to refresh a whole bunch of stuff. The intro-outro music, which I've kind of come to hate. The art. You'll see some changes coming in Problem Solvers really soon. I'm really excited about it. You're going to give it a refresh. Maybe we'll do another 400 episodes. I don't know. I don't know. Everything's up in the air. It's all crazy. I can't believe I did 400 of these.

24:12Oof. Okay, thank you for however many of these you've listened to, whether it's one or four or 40 or 400. I appreciate you, and I'll talk to you next week. And that's our episode. I would love to hear what you think, and maybe even about a problem that you solved. You can find me at my website, jasonfeifer.com. J-A-S-O-N-F-E-I-F-E-R.com. Also, I have some more useful stuff for you. I write a newsletter about how to future-proof yourself and become more adaptable and optimistic. I would love for you to sign up. It is at jasonpfeiffer.bulletin.com. Also, check out my other podcast. It's called Build for Tomorrow.

24:56In each episode, I take on some belief that we have that holds us back from progress and show you why it is not as bad as you think. Problem Solvers is a production of Entrepreneur Media and comes out every Monday morning, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. Thanks to Deepa Shah for production. My name is Jason Pfeiffer. See you next week.