چگونه تمام پادکست های انگلیسی تقریبا شکست خورد

This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 73: “How the All Ears English Podcast Almost Failed.”

Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you’ll finally get real, native English conversation. Now here are your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer’ and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,’ coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

In this episode, learn the secret story of how All Ears English almost failed and what this means to you and how you can apply our learnings to your English improvement.

Hi Lindsay.

Hey Gabby. What’s going on with you today?

Not much. But I’m super excited. We have a great review. I just want to share with you guys. It’s from kskosm. And he says “Very helpful for improving English listening and speaking ability. Thank you.” Well thank you for the review.

Yeah, we really appreciate those reviews guys. And the reviews really help the All Ears English podcast to kind of move up in the rankings, so we can provide a better podcast for you. So please if you haven’t done that yet, go ahead and leave us a review. Tell us what you think.

Yeah. Cool. So today we’re talking about tenacity and how the All Ears English podcast almost failed.

Almost never existed actually.

Can you imagine?

(I mean what) would life be without this podcast.

Yeah, but (I mean) we’re at a million downloads.

Yeah, that’s incredible.

So, yeah, we wanna (want to) share the story of how we almost never happened.

And how we actually did end up happening.

Yes. And how you can apply that to your English learning.

What that actually means for you.

Yeah. So we have a quote that we want to start off with from Amelia Earhart, the famous aviator. It’s (um): “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.”

What is tenacity?

To keep going, to continue.

Yeah.

To not give up.

To dig in.

Yeah. Keep going.

To have grit.

Yes. Oh, great phrase.

Grit. That’s a great word.

Yeah.

We’ll talk about that in another episode.

Yeah. Sounds good. Well, so we were talking about how this happened with our podcast, right, because Lindsay and I, well we got together and we were talking about how we could combine our ideas and, (you know), how to work together and we’re both English teachers and we’re both pretty ambitious and we like to create things. And thinking “Oh, what can we do?” So, yeah, one day, (you know), I think you asked me if I would be interested in a podcast.

Right. And you said “Yeah, definitely.”

Totally.

So we met. We had a coffee and we got really excited, got a lot of ideas on the napkin, and (you know) the – as they usually say.

Yeah, yeah. So we decided to do it. We decided to act and to create a podcast, but then we actually had to do it.

We actually had to do it and, and (you know), we got some pieces of equipment in the beginning and then we realized it was actually harder than we thought.

Grabby:

Way harder.

We ran into some problems.

The planning, and the, (you know), implementation and just figuring out how to do everything was (like) really much harder than we thought.

We didn’t know anything about audio.

Nothing.

We didn’t know anything about editing podcasts.

Right.

(Um) we didn’t know how we were going to structure the show. We didn’t know what to focus on.

Everything was new to us.

So all we had was the decision that we had made.

Right. And a few times we had (um) technical issues, like, (you know) the audio didn’t sound good. And we thought, “Oh, we have no idea how to fix this. So what are we gonna (going to) do?” And I think We spent an entire day recording – we spent eight hours in the last weekend of summer the last beautiful weekend recording episodes that we eventually had to throw out.

Yeah, out.

Completely wasted. Complete waste of a day.

Yeah. So I think that was (like) the lowest moment when we were just thinking, “Oh my goodness. Is this worth it? Can we do it?”

Yeah.

“Can we pull through?” But we did.

We did. So we had all those moments where we had to decide if we were going to be, (you know), if we were going to be tenacious and keep going.

Right.

And we did and now, (you know), we’re so happy to be here and we’re so happy to have you guys here listening to this podcast.

Yeah, I would say it took us over a month to really get started, (like) from the time we made the decision to actually (um) having an episode in iTunes.

A couple of months.

A couple of months.

It was a couple of months ‘cause (because) we also had to stop for another reason.

Right.

And, yes. So what does this mean for our listeners? For their English?

Well you can connect this to your English learning because it’s easy to decide to learn English, right? You can say “Yes, I’m going to learn English. I’m going to improve my English, I’m going to be fluent,” (um) but the most difficult thing is (um) – well it’s tenacity – it’s a little different from the quote that we read, but I think I actually disagree with Amelia Earhart, I guess.

(Uh) now that I look at the quote again, she says “The most difficult thing is the decision to act,” but I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s easy to decide and then the difficult part is to follow through.

Follow through is so important.

Yeah.

And once you’ve got (sort of) a routine going, it gets easier.

Yeah.

Right. So for us it’s gotten a lot easier.

Yeah.

So you need to make the decision to improve your English and then decide, get yourself into a habit. What are you going to do every day? And – yeah.

Yeah and if you have some setbacks like we did, (you know), don’t give up. Just think of another way around it. And, (you know), I have to say one of the reasons why we’ve gotten through the setbacks is because we’re working together as a team. Right?

I’m sure I would’ve quit by now if I were working by myself.

Gaby:

Yeah, me too. Me too. But (um), just knowing that someone else is out there and working on it together with you, it, it really helps so, (you know), maybe you can apply that to your English too and study with a buddy.

Definitely. Get into a study group – people who will hold you accountable, people who won’t let you quit because if you’re quitting, you’re quitting on them and yourself, right?

Yeah.

If you wanna (want to) learn four ways to win with English, come to our website and join our email group and we will send you a special audio message that shares our four All Ears English strategies for learning English and winning at English. That’s allearsenglish.com/win. (w-i-n.) [Instrumental]

If you like to put your ears into English with Lindsay and Gabby, be sure to subscribe to the podcast audio in iTunes for free on your computer or on your smartphone. Thanks for listening to the All Ears English Podcast. See you next time.