On January 11th, 2011 I had a self-imposed deadline. I was going to start a podcast where I would share the great nuggets of gold that I had found and collected over time. For years I have gathered quotations, listened to & shared podcasts, books, and other media.That was the day I determined to be more intentional & open in sharing
As of that morning I did not have a plan in place, I had not even settled on a name, but I wanted the start date to be 2011-01-11 or 01-11-11 or 11-01-11 or 01-11-2011.
An idea came to me of calling the clips, quotations, and ideas cubes, because it was a little more interesting than blocks, and knew that I wanted the episodes to be something you could build upon. The domain name was secured, a site thrown up, and the first episode was made & released.
I knew I needed to just start, I was even thinking about a pattern for designing websites I had written on before & I knew that I had previously made podcast episodes similar to what StartingCube was in the past … but … never really released them.
The Big Two
There have been two episodes that have stuck with me the most, 50 and 25.
StartingCube 50 – How to Change – highlights some core reasons why I do StartingCube:
– promote ideas I desire to be spread around
– promote people, media, and products I want to succeed
Of the people who’s work has been shared on StartingCube, not everything they do I agree with, but they do enough good work that I want to continue.
StartingCube 25 – How to Succeed is not the most downloaded of all time, but considering it was released several months into doing StartingCube, it’s interesting how many people have and continue to download it. That episode talks about the steps a person needs to take to achieve their dreams. With that, I view a regular diet of StartingCube as fitting the bill.
Looking Forward
The second episode released was a recall of a story that Dave Ramsey told about the wise advice a billionaire shared with him. As I move forward with StartingCube, my intention is to keep moving forward & improving a little at a time.
Based on the original “how to find the best website for you†plan, I could work a site redesign, but at this point smaller improvements, like an updated About page, is more important move.
The style of episodes have also shifted a little, with shorter clips we are going to look to include an additional clip or quotation. Build upon a theme in each episode. We try to keep them short so that it just sparks a flame that the audience can take and build upon or let it go out. I don’t want StartingCube to lead people a long way each episode and finding a balance there is important.
