Venture Step

Dalton Anderson (00:00.824)
Welcome to VentureStep podcast where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasion book review. We've hit a milestone. This is VentureStep's 50th episode. Today I'll be taking you behind the scenes and discussing and showing some podcast analytics and discussing and reflecting my journey so far. Today we are going to touch on analytics.

comparing podcast downloads slash YouTube views and the differences between the different platforms. What are the next steps for the podcasts and just some reflections of life goals and motivations behind venture step and whether I think it is a success. And then the last item would be touching on the importance of thinking big and aiming high. But of course, before we dive in, I'm your host, Dalton Anderson.

My background is a bit of mix of programming, data science, insurance, offline. You can find me running, building my side business or lost in a good book. You can listen to the podcast and video or audio on YouTube. And if audio is more your thing, then you can listen to the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

analytics and seasonality. So originally I thought that it was a seasonality thing and general sense when people first start their podcasts, they are attached to the numbers and the downloads and the other stuff that comes with posting episodes. And they're excited that people are actually listening because general sense is no one's going to listen to the things that I talk about on the internet. And

I didn't really subscribe to those ideas of what is successful for a podcast. And I'll talk about that a little bit later, but I did at some point just monitor the numbers just because I'm curious. And one, was surprised that people even tune in to it is kind of cool to see where people are listening in the world. I thought that was interesting. And in general,

Dalton Anderson (02:21.696)
my downloads on

separate platforms, either it be Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

YouTube doesn't count because it's not part of, it is part, you could set up your RSS feed to YouTube, but I'm doing it via video. But that's besides the point, just all the places you're hosting your RSS feed, which is the feed that you connect to, if you're not familiar, that you connect to those platforms to upload your episodes, I would say.

I would think about it as an API where you have your endpoints and then these podcasts hosts, you connect to them, send them your RSS feed. And then whenever you update your RSS feed, then it publishes a new episode for you. And if you wanted to update that episode, you just update that episode. The RSS feed is updated and then all those updates are pushed to the 20 or so platforms you're on instead of managing them individually.

But for some cases, Apple podcasts and Spotify, since they're such a big contributor, you would want to provide a little extra love to those. But in general, I felt that there was maybe some seasonality when I was looking at the numbers. But then I was like, OK, the seasonality and what is deemed to be seasonality is typically in the summertime.

Dalton Anderson (04:01.832)
And the thought process behind the other podcast hosts and just analytics and data is people are busy in the summertime, right? You're not locked up in your house. It's not winter time. And I have a skewed perspective because I grew up in Florida, live in Florida and it's nice all the time. And if it's rainy, I'm still doing whatever I need to do. So I don't let the weather stop me. The only time I'm stopped is if it's a hurricane and those happen a couple of times a year or

Not at all. So you don't know, but in a general sense, I'm just doing whatever, whenever, any time of year for majority of the people in the world, they have seasons and those seasons reflect what they do in their free time. During the winter time, you're cooped up, you're looking to learn or you're building whatever you're doing, building whatever you want to do. I don't know what you're doing.

but you're doing something that doesn't involve being outside and doing stuff outside. And your downloads typically spike in the winter months, which makes sense because more people are inside, they're grouped up and they need something to stimulate their mind. And so they tune into podcasts, which I think is fair. And then when I was looking at the months, was like, wait, these aren't really,

These aren't really summer months. mean, this is like end of summer. And during the summer months, I almost had a record month. Like I think my summer month is my record month. So I was a bit confused there. So I don't know. Maybe it's seasonality. What I do think is I think my RSS feed got messed up and it messed with my downloads on Apple and Spotify. Cause I remember my mom calling me. She's like, Hey, did you miss a week?

I know it's important to you that you don't miss a week on your episodes. It seems like you missed a week. I don't see your episode." And then I was like, no, I published. I published the episode. And she's like, well, I'm trying to listen to it right now on the way to work and it's not here, bud. So check it out, And I go check it out and it seems like it's not there. I don't know. So what I did was I just refreshed my RSS feed.

Dalton Anderson (06:26.656)
and reconnected it and then everything was fixed later that day or end of the day, like beginning of the next day. But I don't know how long that's been going on for. So that might be what was happening. am not completely sure. But all that being said, I would like to share my screen. And I don't know if a lot of people do this, but I'm going to just share the analytics because I find.

and it looks interesting and it will help tell the story. So I'm going to share this window.

go and let me just verify that I am sharing. me just check. can't see.

Dalton Anderson (07:22.222)
All right, so I can see. OK, so if you're viewing my screen, you'll be able to see if you're viewing. If you're viewing this episode in video format, you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. Otherwise, I'll do some short descriptions of what I'm discussing. So the first thing that we're looking at here is our all time listeners. We broke 500 downloads, which I think is an accomplishment. And if you just do rough numbers, that means we're averaging a little bit.

more than 10 downloads an episode because we're at 50 and we are now at 516 downloads. But if you're looking at the months, see how March, April, May, June, June, May, June, June, had 26 or 56 downloads, May at 59, March I had 68, which is currently the record in November. I was close to breaking the record.

I'm at 66. If things are trending the way they are trending, I think December is going to be my best month for the podcast. Currently it's December 24th. I am at 57 downloads. So I think that if we could get out, what, 11 plus downloads from the recent episode, and I have one more episode to publish.

I should break the record just barely. So maybe by 10. But that's great. I would love to get to a thousand, a thousand downloads a year and that would be a hundred a month, but you got to think about it. It's not each episode's getting a thousand downloads. So these episodes are going to be here on the internet until I delete them. So people will search the internet. They'll be searching things like, stuff about Nvidia. Like there's an episode.

which wasn't my best episode I'll point out, but decoding Nvidia, the release window, is the first, first day in the second day of the downloads.

Dalton Anderson (09:36.078)
Pretty sure, yeah.

During the release window of Decoding NVIDIA, I got four downloads. And then on the third day, I got one download. The 11th day, I got one download. And then randomly, like 30 days later, close to it, day 27 and day 29, I got four downloads and a download. So give me a

five additional downloads. So there's someone on the internet searching something up. They want to know a little bit more about Nvidia. They found this episode. So if you had a repository of hundreds and hundreds of episodes and maybe they're just getting what two or three, let's just call it four additional downloads a month and you had a repository of 270, right?

If you had 270 episodes in your repository, that would give you a thousand and 80 downloads a month, just from random viewership. And that's not counting the new stuff. So you could see as your repository grows, you could easily get over a thousand downloads. No problem. But that's the next goal. I would love to get the podcast to 500,000 downloads. We're starting at 500.

And then we're in good 1000 and then it'll be 10,000, 5000, 15, 20, 25, 50. And then we'll just keep pushing. But it will become easier as the I improve my speaking skills, as I improve the podcast. And I also provide better quality content and bring on guests that are interesting and intriguing, and they'll share it to their social network and.

Dalton Anderson (11:34.67)
Hopefully I get referrals for additional guests and their social network finds the content that I am providing interesting and then they share it and it just kind of snowballs in itself.

And then the last thing that I wanted to talk about was one, just such a bad graph that they put together for

for the platforms that you're using. So this shows the listeners that I have and it shows literally everything I'm hosted on. So it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, desktop browser, Podcasts a Dick, transistor site, Fountain, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Audible, and the list just goes on. Instead of just putting the top three, right? So my top three is by a long shot, Spotify,

Apple Podcasts and what is this? I don't know what this third one is. Desktop browser, I guess. I'm not completely certain where these, maybe this is a bot downloading my stuff. I don't think that many people are using the desktop browser, but maybe someone just had a marathon, I'm not sure.

And then the breakdown of the devices is think is pretty cool. So majority of people listen to podcasts and mobile app, 81%. There's a slight few, 13 % desktop browser. Then we have desktop app, and then we have mobile browser. Desktop app, that's some crazy stuff. Not only on your computer, but you're also downloading the app for Apple podcasts or Spotify and listen to it via app instead of online.

Dalton Anderson (13:23.598)
And then the OS or the operating system that dominates my listens currently is Apple, so iOS. And this number has gone down recently. Normally it was 90 % and then it was like 5 % Mac OS and then 5 % Android or something. Now it's...

Now it seems to spread her out. now iOS at 71, Windows is at 4%, Mac OS is at 10, and then Android's at 15, which I find interesting. And then this is my favorite part where it kind of shows not only the country that's listening, but the breakdown of the geological areas in that country where people are listening. So the majority of my listeners are in the United States at 78%.

that has recently gone down and decreased. It was before 95, 98. Now it's gone down and it's still even decreasing. And so I have a different balance of listeners. Close to 6 % listen to the podcast in the UK. So 86 % within the UK are in England and then Northern Ireland and then some in Scotland.

majority of the listeners are in England, which I find interesting. Then we have Singapore. It doesn't give you the geological breakdown that we have Australia, Canada, India, and anything under 1%. I'm not going to discuss, but I find that's pretty cool. And you can kind of look at the little areas and see the downloads. So the UK is at 29 downloads. United States have 404, Canada's at 11.

That was, and my estimated subscribers is five for podcasts. And this is difficult to estimate. says podcast subscriber counts are notoriously difficult to measure. We average out the first 24 hours of downloads of your last three episodes to calculate the estimated subscriber count. So it's just a graph over time. Okay, so let me stop sharing.

Dalton Anderson (15:47.021)
All right. So that was podcast analytics for my podcast host transistor and the different platforms I'm hosting on in my downloads. The next thing that I would like to cover is YouTube. So YouTube is a completely different beast than the podcast host. And one of the reasons why I felt strongly about not only recording my episodes via

video and publishing them on YouTube.

One, I feel like there's gonna be an increase or influx of AI generated podcasts and AI generated things and it's gonna be difficult to know what is true and what is not. And differentiating artificial generated content and content that is curated by human.

is going to be difficult in the future. So I felt that starting with video and who I am, sharing my face, myself, my personality, and adding that extra bit of interaction via video, I thought was important because you don't know how advanced this stuff is gonna get and it is gonna get pretty advanced. I've had an episode in my pocket where I'm going to

generate an AI version of myself to talk and also lip sync what the AI generated voice is going to do. And then I'm going to publish it. And you could tell that it's going to be AI. The voice is really good. The face stuff might be a little wonky, but it is only a matter of time until you could get something on a different level.

Dalton Anderson (17:53.037)
And another thing that's interesting about YouTube is it's more a community platform, right? There's more interaction, more buy-in. When you're listening to a podcast, the podcast content might be good, but there isn't as much

I say favoritism, but there isn't as much, hmm.

Dalton Anderson (18:25.343)
I would say...

Dalton Anderson (18:31.158)
Maybe...

interaction or people aren't trying to find a community. They are just trying to listen to the episode and then go about their day. With YouTube, people, there's a whole group of people where they find people that don't have that many subscribers that are searching and providing great content, seem like great people from what they can deem on the internet.

And then they search out those people. They subscribe to their podcast or their YouTube to support their content. They interact with the videos. They leave comments, leave feedback and help that person reach whatever they're trying to do. And that's exactly what people have been doing on YouTube. Like people are subscribing to my videos, even though my videos aren't the best, my

camera quality is somewhat poor. My camera angle is this weird thing at the top here and overall just not the best quality lighting. And I'm not doing much in the background. I'm just speaking and talking into the camera and maybe people resonate with that because there's so much manipulation when it comes to these videos where they're talking and every

Every couple seconds, they switch three frames to view some other image to distract the viewer and then bring them back and then want them wanting more. And there's all this other nonsense and algorithmic gamification that

Dalton Anderson (20:17.556)
isn't something I'm interested in. I'm not interested in going viral. I'm not interested in any of these other things. And I hope that other people resonate with what I'm trying to do. And it seems to be true, but I would like to share some standout comments and some analytics on YouTube, which I also find interesting. A lot of interesting stuff.

regarding the data and how things have changed since I started the podcast. So let me share my window again and I will be sharing this window.

Dalton Anderson (20:59.439)
was hidden.

So now I am sharing my screen again. I'm gonna scroll over to YouTube. So the first thing that is awesome is recently I have gotten more than 50 subscribers. Currently I'm at 63, which is crazy. Never expected that people would subscribe to the podcast or a

the YouTube channel per se, as the podcast is on the YouTube channel.

And I would not expect that, get so many views. So last 28 days, I've gotten 2.7K and the total watch hours is 23.3 hours. It's a long time. And I would not expect that. No way. And just find it cool that people are

buying into learning more or they just want to support me. I don't know. I I don't get to interact with everyone. Some people make their subscription private so you don't get to see who they are. So I have no idea. Sometimes it's shared, sometimes it's not. But overall,

Dalton Anderson (22:28.846)
Pretty cool. So I'm going to share the content, or maybe do the content or trends or let's do.

Dalton Anderson (22:42.732)
And I'm just going to do all content instead of breaking it down.

And overall, I've gotten the last 28 days. Let's just do all time and then we'll bring it back to 28 days.

Dalton Anderson (23:01.806)
So while this is loading all time shown in feed is 71,000. So that means that somebody was able to see the video, but they didn't actually view it. Total views were at 26 K close to 30, which would be awesome. Total number of subscribers in the lifetime, which doesn't make sense. Oh, this is from short, sorry. So if I do all time, if I just do videos, so videos, huh.

Okay. So videos have 2.3 K total impressions, 57 click through impression rate, 2.6%, which is low. And the average viewership time is three minutes and 35 seconds, which is pretty low when these are podcasts and they're 35 minutes, but not everyone needs to view the whole podcast shorts. have 26,000 views, 71 K shown in feed.

234 likes, 23 plus subscribers. And I wonder how many subscribers I've gotten from video. It doesn't show me for some reason. Okay. And one thing I find to be intriguing is originally, so my total lifetime, I this is important, how many choose to view the video? And so my swipe away rate is 63 % currently. And the total people have viewed it was 36. And if I,

Reduce the timeline, so if I go to 90 days.

Dalton Anderson (24:36.65)
So now my swipe away rate is at 59. And then if I go to 28 days.

my swipe away rate is at 57. And then if I go to seven days, I think it increases a little bit more. So now I'm at 58. So it's holding steady at the high 60s, but it's lowered substantially. If we go to audience.

Let's see here.

So audience, which I find weird is if I go to the last 28 days, returning viewers is 39, unique viewers is 2.5K, subscribers is plus 20, sorry, not plus 20, last 28 days plus five subscribers. And you could see that the new viewers who have returned are low, low, low, low. So one, my content may not be interesting. Two, the

people that have seen the video don't want to come back either because they are too busy to see the video or they might have something going on. don't know. But the amount of people that have subscribed versus not subscribed viewership time is not subscribed to 74%. Subscribed is 26%.

Dalton Anderson (26:01.134)
What is the gender and age of the viewers? So originally, last time I viewed this, was closer to 90-10, 90 % male, 10 % female.

As of recently in the last 28 days, it says 100 % male and the age groups, the main age groups are 25 to 34 and 35 to 44, which I think makes sense given that I'm quite small and the numbers aren't that large, right?

I think that makes sense. That was the YouTube piece. And there was one thing that I wanted to kind of share was if I go to videos and what videos did very well, it talks about.

Let's see here, lifetime. Talks about my best videos and they're all related to AI. So AI agent building intelligent assistants has 1,000 views. Alpha Fold 3, CHPG, everything that has the most views is directly related to building something with AI. And so if I really, really wanted to, I could just build stuff that

is related to these topics and try to go viral. But once again, it's not about going viral. It's about becoming the person that provides value consistently that people want to learn about what you're doing or learn things that you're expressing. And to do that, you've got to build yourself up, acquire the skills that are required to maintain that level.

Dalton Anderson (27:54.496)
of excellence and if you just seek

Dalton Anderson (28:01.304)
views and watch time and viewership, you can do that by gaming the algorithm. It's, it's not too difficult, but what is difficult is to become the person that people deem to be someone that they want to listen to, that they want to interact with consistently and keep them in the shop. It's easy to get eyeballs, but it's hard to keep people in your community or in your area.

the expertise. So I'm going to stop sharing now.

Dalton Anderson (28:37.657)
So that was the YouTube platform. And I quite enjoy YouTube. I'm not an expert in YouTube. I was never someone who utilized YouTube and subscribed to a lot of people. I would subscribe to scientific things and coding related channels to help me study for the competitive programming or leak codes or.

different technical platforms and channels and I'd watch their videos.

But as far as subscribing to lifestyle or other types of channels, never did that. So as far as my YouTube interaction goes, I am just a viewer. I'm one of those people that don't interact that much, but I've been trying to interact more and produce more comments and.

And not to try to feed people into my channel or anything like that. I've seen that done it and it's some kind of strategy, but just general interactions where you are interacting with people's channels and letting them know that you appreciate their video and you like their perspective or whatever it is because it's, it's a nice thing to do. And if you want to have a community that you, I would phrase it differently.

You want to create, if you want to have a community that you believe in, you've got to be the person taking the first step. And that kind of is similar to the people who want reviews, great reviews on their products, or the people that review what people said about a product and interpret their feedback, but they don't write any reviews themselves. Why is that?

Dalton Anderson (30:39.67)
And I, for years now, have taken the time and created reviews for the public. And these aren't toy reviews or reviews related to.

products, these are reviews for restaurants or things to do, parks, different places around the world. And just putting out my perspective, posting some photos and letting people read them.

because these things are important. If you're valuing something, you need to also provide the same level of value to others so they can see what you're doing. Like, wow, that's great, that's awesome. I wanna do that same thing. And it's definitely not an overnight situation. One thing that I'm trying to do on LinkedIn is I'm trying to publish articles on LinkedIn so that...

people see that this is a little bit more of, there's more to this platform than just saying, oh, I'm proud that I've got a promotion or I'm seeking work or congratulations, congrats, congrats, congrats. There's more to it. And so instead of complaining about LinkedIn and the platform and how much I don't like it and that I despise just the fakeness of the platform in general, instead of

complaining I am taking the first step to try to carve out a little section of LinkedIn where it feels like home and somewhere I want to be. So that being said, I have had some interesting interactions with the community on YouTube and I don't know if these people are subscribers, but some of which they interact consistently on the platform. a standout as of the last

Dalton Anderson (32:42.895)
couple of weeks has been, and I'm going to read it off their name because it's quite random. ABCD-MX9RH. Okay, so that's their username. Their comment recently was, looks way better than the previous ones. You should compare some of your previous videos.

This one's way better. I feel like I want to hear something from you. You're not some big YouTuber, but I think if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll get there. And then I replied something like, thank you. I generally appreciate it. I hope you continue to engage with the channel. I strive to improve each week. For me, it's not about gaining popularity. It's more about setting a tone of what it takes to succeed.

I aim to inspire others to pursue their dreams and ambitions while setting a positive example of what that journey looks like. It would mean the world to me to know that I have inspired someone to achieve something that they never thought possible. And if that road stops at 65 subscribers and 20 viewers a week, I would be all right with that.

And then they had another reply a couple months ago that was pretty good. And this is constructive feedback from ABCD-MK9RH said, sorry, if you're just saying too much, try to be more comfortable and look at the camera as a viewer. I want to, I.

Don't want to see your eyes rolling everywhere or making small glances away from the camera. Instead of trying to make a script, try to have more energy and speak as you're speaking to a friend instead of speaking to a large audience. For me, it's like a friendly guy giving me advice and I would like you to look at me while you're speaking. And the end of the day, it's just my thoughts. If you feel like it's not correct, you can just ignore it. I think that's a great point.

Dalton Anderson (35:02.914)
And fortunately or unfortunately, my mom was also saying the same thing. She's like, why are you look, where are you looking? Why are you not looking at the camera? Why are you looking around and looking at the ceiling, looking at the desk and doing all these things? Just look at the camera. And I had this bad habit of just looking around.

For what reason? I don't know. It kind of helped me think. But so I've channeled my thinking into the camera and now I look at the camera. I wouldn't say.

Dalton Anderson (35:39.263)
all the time, but the majority of the time I would say 90 % of the episode I'm looking at the camera and I hope that it's better. But that's what this ACD person was talking about, ABCD person was talking about was I wasn't looking at the camera. They felt that I wasn't paying attention to what they were saying and they felt that I was trying to do too much and I felt that was fair. So then what I said was, thank you for bringing this to my attention.

It's something I've been working on when speaking to someone directly. I tend to make eye contact, but my gaze tends to wander when I'm talking into the microphone. I need to focus on the camera instead. I'm not following a script. I have an outline that I have that I would glance at, but.

I just have a tendency to look around out of habit. And that was my issue. So those were some pretty cool comments that ABCD-MK9RH. My feedback is get an easier name. Something, it doesn't have to be a real name if you wanna be anonymous, but it's difficult, man.

Okay. So the next part is defining my success for the podcast. And I talked about this many episodes ago when I was discussing what I wanted the podcast to be. And I think what is success and just in defining it is important. And for this episode and for future episodes and just the podcast in general, I think success is

couple things. Long term, would like to have many guests on the show consistently, at least once a month. Ideally, twice a month and then I have two episodes that I curate myself.

Dalton Anderson (37:38.455)
I would want those guests to have some unique qualities that everyone could listen and take something away. But long-term, would love to, one, create a book from what they've talked about that is relevant and provides guidance on how to do things and how to run a company and how to be a good person and how to lead and what does it mean to be a parent and all sorts of

important aspects of life, I would like to have rolled into one book on self-improvement and becoming the best person that you could be. So you're prepared for your dreams and ambitions because if you have these dreams and ambitions that are high and you're not preparing beforehand, you're preparing for failure. So in my opinion, the stuff that I'm doing now will prepare me for the stuff that I want to do in the future.

And having a book like that would mean so much because one of the books that I like when I was a kid and I couldn't find the book and I can't find the title, but I think it's called, somebody told me that and it's about a grandfather who has three grandchildren or something like that. And then he writes them letters once a month when they're in college and he saved the letters and turn it into a book.

there's something similar with the.

high growth startup, scaling your startup from what 10 to a hundred thousand employees, I this name. And in that book, it has many interviews and those interviews are then curated and turned into a book. They're curated and summarized and turned into a book of highly condensed valuable information.

Dalton Anderson (39:36.847)
That's something I would want to do. And another thing that I think would be pretty cool is if we turned in all of these transcriptions online and the RSS feed and use that as a content repository and made an app for people to ask questions. So you could ask, like how do you make an AI agent? And then it would reference the episode and

would show you how to do it for whatever platform or how do you market your product and do competitor research? And there was an episode about that and it would glean that stuff plus the stuff from the internet and it would make something cool.

I think it'd be cool to have an app where you could ask questions about episodes of the transcription information just in case you don't want to listen to the episode or you couldn't catch it. An overall cool project, I think.

Dalton Anderson (40:42.105)
But what I deem as success for the podcast, that's the long term. Short term, I want to inspire someone. And this has happened over the last two, I wouldn't say two weeks, but maybe two months, that people have messaged me privately, not on YouTube, but just in my personal life, people I've interacted with professionally or personally. They have reached out to me and said, thank you for

pushing me and having me ask more for myself and requiring that from me and believing in me. And that's changed the trajectory of my life. Like, thank you so much.

Dalton Anderson (41:30.296)
That kind of stuff means so much to me. And it's awesome that I was able to have a positive impact on their lives.

Dalton Anderson (41:45.731)
That being said, those interactions I would love to have worldwide. And even if it's just one or two people, that's okay. Because those one or two people, they'll pay it forward, they'll take that energy and they'll inspire one or two people. And before you know it, you've got a thousand people that you have indirectly influenced their lives in a positive manner.

which would be amazing, would be amazing. And another thing that I would deem to be success for the podcast is.

that it improves me. allows me to become disciplined or stay disciplined, allows me to stay disciplined in my learnings and my lifestyle, my routine on consistent improvement and always searching for things that would be interesting and valuable to share with others and learning it at a rate quick enough to produce a valuable episode week in, week out.

and then interacting with founders that I typically would not be able to interact with because I'm not on their level and they are busy. But if

they could get into this episode and be a guest, then I could have additional interactions with them. I've got to introduce myself, I've got to pitch them this idea, then they've got to get on the podcast, I crushed this podcast, and before you know it, I have a friend. And if you could do that consistently, then you can grow a network of people who are exceptional, and if you're trying to be exceptional, the best way to...

Dalton Anderson (43:36.13)
To run fast is to run with fast people. And if you are trying to be exceptional and want to be an entrepreneur, the best way to do that is to interact with entrepreneurs. And that's the long-term goal. The long-term goal is to use this podcast as a catalyst of self-improvement.

I think that's working. I recently got promoted to senior product manager, which I guess for my age is a big deal. I don't see it as a big deal. And it was a weird thing. I saw a video recently and it was talking about how if your minimum is winning, then like your minimum expectation and requirement is winning, then

when you win, you don't feel like it is an accomplishment. It just feels like you're doing what you're supposed to do. And that's how it feels to me. And it's somewhat of a bad thing, somewhat of a good thing. Like one. I'll be successful 100 percent like there's no doubt in my mind that this podcast is going to blow up. There's no doubt in my mind that I am going to be successful and found a company and

go through the whole seed funding thing and find a co-founder and do something interesting and being that positive impact to society. There is no doubt in my mind. I'm going to do those things. None at all. But I have to prepare for those moments. I have to be ready for what's to come. And this podcast will help me build the network. It'll help me understand complex ideas. It will.

enable me to be constantly learning. And doing that over years and years will allow me to reach levels that normally you wouldn't be able to do.

Dalton Anderson (45:43.501)
And with all that, it allows me to be delusional and for my delusions to become reality. That's the goal at least. And that's the thought process. And that's the, the process map or process flow of how I see things playing out in my head. So I don't think that it won't be successful. I am delusional on what

it's going to happen and what will happen because I'm in control and I'm asking the world.

what I want, what I need, and I'm dreaming big and I'm letting everyone know that this is what I'm going for and this is what I'm obtaining and this is the minimum. And it's a weird thing that happens when, and this has happened to me multiple times where I wanted to work in investment banking and I told everyone about it. Then I just started going to financial management places like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and just pitching to them, hey, like let me intern, let me intern.

And from there, you could get an opportunity to go to New York. And I eventually became an intern and then I had the opportunity to potentially go to New York. Never did it. Pulled out, but.

The next thing is, I wanted to become a data scientist and I didn't even know how to code at the time. And I was telling everyone, I'm gonna become a data scientist. That's what I'm doing. And they're like, what are you talking about? You don't even know how to code. Like, what are you doing? And then I try to switch my major. I try to transition to data science and do all this analytics stuff. And they're like, you've got to repeat college.

Dalton Anderson (47:35.247)
And I was like, I'm not doing that. And so I got up every day in college, 3 a.m. and I studied for hours every day, didn't skip a day. And I'd work out, come back, shower, eat, study two hours coding, and then go to school, study after school. And all I was doing about twice a day for a while was coding to learn how to code.

And then I told everyone that I wanted to do these things. And then before you know it, I was in that position. And the next thing is, okay, I want to, want to become a founder. And this is always the long-term goal is become a founder and found a company. Now I'm announcing that to the world and making it more public because it is quite sensitive when you're telling your work or these other people that you want to become a founder and entrepreneur. People get a little sensitive, I would say.

After that...

It just happens. You ask the universe for something and you constantly think about it, that you're gonna be one of the greatest, that you're gonna become a founder, that you're gonna do whatever you want, whatever your dreams are. Maybe it's the best basket weaver there ever was. If you're constantly thinking about that, if you're constantly working on it, and if you're telling everybody that's what you want, society, the universe, whatever it may be, God, whatever you believe in.

something just clicks and you'll get the right opportunity for you to execute on your ambitions. But you have to be constantly thinking about it. have to be putting it in your head. You've got to visualize what success looks like. You've got to be hammering people, everyone that you can interact with. Like this is what I want if that ever comes up. And these are the things that I...

Dalton Anderson (49:34.072)
I want and eventually someone is gonna know someone or that someone that you're speaking with is like, I've got the connects. I used to do that for 20 years and, or I've got a friend that they could hook it up, whatever the situation may be, somehow these things just connect. And I don't completely understand it.

but it works, it works. so without a doubt in my mind, this podcast is gonna blow up. Without a doubt in my mind, I'm gonna become a successful founder. It might take a couple of tries, who knows? But I know long-term, it's gonna work. And that's what you should ask from yourself. You should ask more for yourself. And I would phrase it as cranking your neck. And if your goals are eye level, you're competing with everyone else around you. And the people that you're competing with,

are not asking as much as they could be from themselves. If you crank your neck and you look up to the sky, you're not seeing that many people. You're competing with a few, a select few. And those people that you're competing with are exceptional. They are exceptional. And with this, they'll have unique personality traits from

soft skills to hard skills that you can do analysis on. You can see what they're good at, what they're bad at, what are their bad characteristics. And you could take some of the skills that they have that you like, and then you could look at yourself internally and retrospectively and see what things you are not good enough at. And you can improve and you can become more well-rounded and you'll have some peaks and some skills that you're phenomenal at that other people just can't compete. And then,

you better yourself and then you get what you want. And that may not be a founder. That may not be these things, but it could be, I want to be the greatest dad or I want to be the best mom or I want to be a teacher that inspires generations. Like the Khan Academy guy. Like it's incredible what Khan Academy has done. It's not necessarily that his ambition was to make money or to do these things.

Dalton Anderson (51:58.081)
What I feel is my life purpose is to build stuff. And for me to build cool stuff, in my mind, I need to gather knowledge. Knowledge gives me more value. More value gives me more responsibility. More responsibility gives me the ability to build cooler stuff. Building cooler stuff gives me more knowledge, which allows me to get more knowledge. And then the cycle continues.

until I get to the point where I can build all the stuff that I want that I find interesting.

Dalton Anderson (52:34.446)
So set the minimum high. Set your goals and your ambitions and do the things that people say are crazy. A lot of times the baseline or the expectation that you make of yourself is what you see around you. Don't do that. Make a crazy goal, like a crazy goal that you don't even think you could do. And you're like, how am I gonna do this? Like, this is insane.

Like this is legitimately insane. Like, I don't know. I don't know, man. When you have goals like that, then you are reaching the level that you need to be to obtain those goals. And overall, it's gonna change your life. And providing a hard goal where you have to be disciplined,

and execute day in, day out. You know what it takes, just get it done.

Let me repeat that, you know what it takes, just get it done. You've seen all these athletes, these famous people, and they all talk about all the time they put in. And then you have some kind of dream that, you know, I don't think I could do that. My parents said no, or my family isn't supportive, or I'm not in the US, or whatever your excuses are. Just shed them away, one at a time.

one at a time and just get started. That's the hardest part. I think 80 % of the challenge is just getting started and shedding off these rumors of incompetence and searching for more from life. Life is so beautiful. This world is just breathtaking. There's so much positivity and people search for the negatives, but you could go where there's extreme poverty and people have it all. They're not searching for more.

Dalton Anderson (54:40.076)
People that have everything have nothing. And...

There's something for you in this world. There's There's plenty of resources for you to take what you really wish for. And don't let people break you down.

ensure you ask less of yourself. Ask more than what you think you're capable of and the world will fill you.

with the tools and opportunities to obtain what you're looking for. And I truly believe that, and I truly hope that as we go on this journey together and you see how I evolve as a person and as a leader and a speaker, that you will see the difference not only in me, then ask yourself, what difference have I made in myself?

That being said, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I hope that you tune in next week and wherever you are in this world. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Thank you for listening and hope you listen in next week. Goodbye.