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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Joshua Rivers, I like to turn gas prices into a history lesson for my kids, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share about learning to let go.
Today’s Fun Fact:
170 years ago yesterday, the Smithsonian Institute was created.
After a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law.
In 1829, James Smithson died in Italy, leaving behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the event that his only nephew died without any heirs, Smithson decreed that the whole of his estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Smithson’s curious bequest to a country that he had never visited aroused significant attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
Smithson had been a fellow of the venerable Royal Society of London from the age of 22, publishing numerous scientific papers on mineral composition, geology, and chemistry. In 1802, he overturned popular scientific opinion by proving that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals, and one type of zinc carbonate was later named smithsonite in his honor.
Six years after his death, his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, indeed died without children, and on July 1, 1836, the U.S. Congress authorized acceptance of Smithson’s gift. President Andrew Jackson sent diplomat Richard Rush to England to negotiate for transfer of the funds, and two years later Rush set sail for home with 11 boxes containing a total of 104,960 gold sovereigns, 8 shillings, and 7 pence, as well as Smithson’s mineral collection, library, scientific notes, and personal effects. After the gold was melted down, it amounted to a fortune worth well over $500,000. After considering a series of recommendations, including the creation of a national university, a public library, or an astronomical observatory, Congress agreed that the bequest would support the creation of a museum, a library, and a program of research, publication, and collection in the sciences, arts, and history. On August 10, 1846, the act establishing the Smithsonian Institution was signed into law by President James K. Polk.
Today, the Smithsonian is composed of 19 museums and galleries including the recently announced National Museum of African American History and Culture,nine research facilities throughout the United States and the world, and the national zoo. Besides the original Smithsonian Institution Building, popularly known as the “Castle,” visitors to Washington, D.C., tour the National Museum of Natural History, which houses the natural science collections, the National Zoological Park, and the National Portrait Gallery. The National Museum of American History houses the original Star-Spangled Banner and other artifacts of U.S. history. The National Air and Space Museum has the distinction of being the most visited museum in the world, exhibiting such marvels of aviation and space history as the Wright brothers’ plane and Freedom 7, the space capsule that took the first American into space. John Smithson, the Smithsonian Institution’s great benefactor, is interred in a tomb in the Smithsonian Building.
What I Learned Yesterday
I was first introduced to podcasts in late 2011/early 2012. I listened to the replay of Dave Ramsey’s radio show. From there, I learned that he had the Entreleadership podcast. This led me down the road to exploring what other podcasts were out there, and I subscribed to several podcasts covering both leadership and web design. I was interested in web design podcasts because I was wanting to get into the web design and development field.
After listening to podcast for a few months, I learned about Michael Hyatt and his book, Platform, which was about to release. I pre-ordered the book and used it to help grow my online platform through a blog. I wasn’t really consistent, but usually published at least once a week. I used the tagline, “Dedicated Discipleship” for my blog with the idea of helping people with personal growth and self-improvement with a Biblical basis. I was really vague in what I was posting and slowly started to narrow my focus over the following six months.
This gets us to around November of 2012. I started to get the bug for creating a podcast. I started listening to a couple podcasts about podcasting so I could learn how to begin. I didn’t have a microphone, but I bought a $40 Logitech headset with a Target giftcard I got for Christmas. I signed up with Libsyn as a media host and installed the necessary plugins on my website.
I reached out to a few people I knew to interview, and I was even able to interview best-selling author John Miller and his daughter even before I launched. I was excited! I officially launched the podcast in February 2013.
I was pretty consistent in publishing weekly for the first 6 months to a year. I started to miss a week here and there, but kept going. After about a year, I published an episode about meeting Dave Ramsey in person at a book signing, and the podcast grew from double-digits to 400 downloads an episode pretty quickly.
By this time, I had already started a second podcast. It was about the show 24. I also started getting an idea for a third podcast, which I planned to start after the season of 24 ended. The new podcast was to help grow my web development side business. I called it Creative Studio Academy and planned to share various things about online content creation. At that time, I had been blogging for almost three years and podcasting for a year and half – so I had personal experience to draw from. I was playing on the “Academy” aspect and was trying to structure it as some sort of online school that could both help my current clients and help create leads for new clients. I started with the idea in mind that I would have a seasonal format so I could make them like school semesters. In fact that’s what I called each season at the beginning.
Through some “accidents” I started editing podcasts for a couple people. I was getting more business with podcasts than I was with websites, so I decided to change the focus of my side business. I talked with Darrell and he was kind enough to give me some advice and direction with a podcast editing business. This was in the spring of 2015.
If we fast forward through the rest of 2015, I struggled with my first podcast. With everything I had going on, I was having a hard time with focusing and getting everything done that I needed to. I wanted to build my business, but kept getting myself distracted thinking about that first podcast. But I wouldn’t do much with that podcast. It was just taking up mental space.
Between 2015 and 2016, I read or listened to several books to help with this. Three of them were “Procrastinate on Purpose,” “Essentialism,” and “The One Thing.” The main idea behind all of these is to really know and understand what the most important, or essential thing, is, and put my focus on that. If something doesn’t contribute to that thing, it shouldn’t have my time or attention.
This eventually led me to make the decision to stop that first podcast. It was a really hard decision. It was my baby. It’s what started me as a podcaster. It helped lead to my first podcast clients. But it was drawing focus away from the business I’m trying to build. This week, I recorded and scheduled the final episode for that podcast. It was hard. I had to stop a couple times and re-record. I wasn’t crying, but I was feeling a lump in my throat.
Here’s What I’ve Learned:
Sometimes you need to give up things you like – sometimes even things you love – so that you can give your time and attention to the things that matter most. For me, putting more focus into my business should help me to both improve my skills and gain more clients. Building my business will help me to be able to leave my full-time job to work on my business full-time. Doing this will help create freedom for my family. It will also create freedom for working in ministry because I won’t be tied to a job in a physical location with specific hours. Both my family and ministry are important to me, so I need to sacrifice some of the good to have the great.
I’m Joshua Rivers, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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