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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I can not grow a beard, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share the value of building up a strong team.

Golden Spiral Media now has a Patreon page! Patreon provides a way for you to financially support Golden Spiral Media for as little as $1 a month. In return, we’ll be able to do some cool things and improve some of the things that we do. Additionally, you’ll get some cool stuff in return for your support. Head over to www.goldenspiralmedia.com/patreon for more info.

Friday Forum
I want you to be a part of the Friday Forum! Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can participate in Friday Forum by visiting our Feedback Page or calling our voice feedback line at 304-837-2278.

What I Learned Yesterday:
Today’s episode is going to take a similar direction as episode 26. In that episode I spoke about the importance of being surrounded by strong peers. I want to talk about this topic again today because it’s that important. It’s important in every single aspect of our lives. I want tell you about some things that have happened over the last two weeks that have made me realize just how important this is. Now, stay with me on this. The first part of this may seem like a Golden Spiral Media infomercial, but I promise it has a point.

One month ago today we published our review of the final episode of Revolution. When we recorded and released that episode I didn’t know what the future looked like for us. Of course, I can’t see the future, but I mean that I didn’t even know what podcasts we’d be doing over the summer. At that point I had spoken with Emilee about possibly doing Falling Skies but we had not yet finalized our plans. I had had a very preliminary conversation with Doug Payton about Under the Dome and had a very preliminary conversation with Brian Kane about possibly doing something. Now here we are just one month later and we have more podcasts going at one time than we’ve ever had in our history.

Emilee and I will be recording our podcast for the Falling Skies season 4 premiere tomorrow night. You can join us for that live recording at 8pm eastern over at www.goldenspiralmedia.com/live. We’ll begin the live show with an interview with Doug Jones, the actor who plays Cochise. We also already have 2 episodes available that recap the series to date.

Brian Kane and Kevin Bachelder recorded the first episode of Arrow Squad last week. I’m not an Arrow fan. I saw the pilot at comic con a few years ago and liked it, but never got into the show. Having said that, I LOVED their first episode. I highly encourage you to check it out. Look for new episodes from them about once a week.

Tomorrow Karen Lindsay and Doug Payton will be recording their first episode of Chester’s Mill Gazette, our Under the Dome Podcast. They will be recapping the first season so that everyone can get caught up and ready to go for season 2 which starts on CBS on June 30th.

Now, you should already be aware of those three podcasts because I mentioned them a few times last week. However, we announced yet another new podcast over the weekend. Hosted by Mike Ahr and Dave Vitagliano, Dark Matter An Extant Podcast will be covering CBS’s new sci-fi show, Extant. Extant is produced by Steven Spielberg and stars Halle Berry. It premiere’s on July 9th. You can check out the trailer at www.goldenspiralmedia.com/extant.

Is it dangerous or too ambitious for Golden Spiral Media to launch 4 new podcasts in a 4 week span? Well, I guess only time will tell, but I don’t think so.

I have learned over the last few years that I have to let things go. I have to trust other people. I am a man of limited resources. I am limited in my time. I am limited in my talent. I am limited in my creativity. I am limited in my finances. I am limited in my energy.

However, these truths have become even more real to me since I became an entrepreneur last year. You’ve heard me speak about the great number of ideas that I have and my broad vision for Golden Spiral Media. You’ve also heard me talk about working with clients and my desire to grow my client base. If I want to achieve my dreams, I won’t get there alone.

Each one of the new hosts, Brian, Kevin, Karen, Doug, Mike, and Dave, add a tremendous amount of value to Golden Spiral Media. Each of them have experience that I don’t have. They have ideas that I don’t have. They have energy that I don’t have. The list goes on.

I am personally tapped out with the amount of podcast projects I can take on and maintain the balance that I’ve worked hard to achieve. One of the great benefits of each of these hosts is that they have experience hosting and editing their shows. For example, I’ve worked very closely with Brian over the last year as both he and I produced episodes for TV Talk.

Brian offered to put together the intro for Arrow Squad. I was blown away with what he did. It is fantastic. His background in radio production is evident in that intro. Kevin has a different way of approaching show notes and the way we tag our MP3 files for iTunes. After some really good conversations, I think we both learned new things. Each of us already stronger than we were a week ago, simply by communication and collaboration.

Chester’s Mill Gazette would not look the same if I were doing that show. Doug and Karen had a great concept for the show and I encouraged them to run with it. Working off the newspaper theme, their shows will have segments that have a newspaper flair. The people who die in each episode will be discussed in the Obits section of the podcast. The episode discussion will take place in the Front Page portion of the show. Listener feedback will be called Letters to the Editor.

On Friday I had a meeting with Mike and Dave about the possibility of doing an Extant podcast for Golden Spiral Media. By the time the meeting was over we had a plan of attack that included Mike taking care of the artwork for the show. He had the artwork done by Saturday Morning and it looked fantastic.

One of the new hosts suggested that we have a private Facebook group just for the GSM team so that we can share ideas, collaborate on projects, and keep each other up to date on our shows. It was a no brainer of an idea. I almost immediately put the group together and we have some conversations going. I can’t wait to see all the great ideas that come out of those conversations.

Here’s what I learned.

If I were to make a line graph that displayed the growth of Golden Spiral Media, there would be a massive spike that started about 2 weeks ago. That massive spike began when I actively started adding people to the Golden Spiral Media team. Now let me also brag about the current team of Clint, Jeremy, Kari, Travis, and Cory. I don’t want you to think that they’ve been holding us back or aren’t equally awesome. They are. There’s no way that Golden Spiral Media would have become the widely recognized, award winning media company that it is without them.

All of these men and women make Golden Spiral Media stronger. I have great potential, but that potential is so much greater when I’m surrounded with a great team.

You may think that all of this is great and hope me nothing but the best. Thanks, but that’s not why I’m sharing all of this. I’m sharing all of this because this principle is applicable in EVERY aspect of our lives. We will only reach our fullest potential when we are positively sharing life with other people who are positively sharing their life with us. This applies to our work environment, friends, and intimate relationships. When we give ourselves to others so that they can learn from us, we do a great thing. When we open ourselves up to learn from others, we do an even greater thing. When we can put ourselves in a position where both of those things are happening symbiotically, we’ve just jumped on the path to reaching our full potential.

I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.

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