Tony D’Urso is a top-tier podcast host, entrepreneur, and five-time Amazon bestselling author who built a media platform under ten listeners to more than 45 million downloads. Tony is the host of The Tony D’Urso Show, the #1 talk show on the VoiceAmerica network, where he interviews elite entrepreneurs, leaders, and stars. He’s also the creator of the Vision Map™ methodology, a system that helps business owners clarify purpose, set long-term objectives, and translate vision into daily action.
Tony joined host Robert Glazer on The Elevate Podcast to discuss his leadership career, entrepreneurship, vision for life and more.
—
Listen to the podcast here
Tony D’Urso On Building A Vision For Your Life, Career And Business
Our quote is from Jim Rohn, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” Our guest is Tony D’Urso, a top-tier Podcast Host, Entrepreneur, and five-time Amazon Best-Selling Author, who built a media platform from under 10 listeners to more than 45 million downloads. Tony is the host of the aforementioned Tony D’Urso Show, the number one talk show on the Voice of America Network, where he interviews elite entrepreneurs, leaders, and stars. He’s also the creator of the Vision Map methodology, a system that helps business owners clarify purpose, set long-term objectives, and translate vision into action all things that I think everyone could use more of these days. Tony, welcome. It’s great to have you on the show.
Robert, thank you so much for having me join you. I’m excited to be here. It’s great to be on another show, especially a big one such as yours. I absolutely love it and I hope I can share some good stuff with your audience.
It’s like being in the guest chair for a change. I find it interesting to start at the beginning. You came to the US from Sicily, I think at the age of three, and you had some early jobs delivering papers and contributing to your family which was, I think, much more common a generation ago. What impact did that have on your development and work ethic and overall?
Survival And The Value Of A Dollar
After being a paper route boy nearly seven days a week for most of the time on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, winter, rain, storm, I’ve seen it all for ten years, there’s one thing that you come away with, Robert. You understand the value of a dollar because back then when I was first starting at 5, 6 years old, I think we made $1 and change a week, $2 and change a week, something like that for delivering the papers. All the money went to my parents, as you had mentioned. You just learn the value of a buck.
That doesn’t sound like a lot. What was $1 or $2 a week like in today’s dollars? I’m sure you’ve done the math.
Not really. A bag of groceries back then, a regular full bag, was probably $25, $30, to give you an idea. I didn’t drive, so I couldn’t tell you about petrol. I just know what petrol was or gasoline was well under $1. Maybe it was $0.50 cents a gallon, $0.70, $1? I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. We’re talking time period of late ‘60s, whatever that was. You just appreciate money. I guess that’s the best way. I say a buck, but you just appreciate money because you did all this effort. Whatever you made, you made. For example, at 14, I emancipated myself after 10 years of a newspaper boy giving all the money to my parents. I went into fast food and I believe I started at $1.25 an hour.
In between that time, you described a rough and tumble upbringing. There were six boys. Was that all of them, or were there also girls too?
No, just six boys. I was number four down.
You had a strict dad. What were some of the implicit and explicit lessons that you learned during childhood around competition and resilience? I can’t even imagine six brothers. It must be like everything is some game.
I would say if I look back, it was stressful because you had multiple people bigger than you that would boss you around or tell you what to do, and that’s always very stressful. Then, of course, when Dad is, compared to your size, he’s a towering giant with a booming voice, and you learn obedience in the household, and you learn your place. No one necessarily teaches you. You just learn it because you get smacked otherwise. You learn what you’re supposed to do. It really is a school of hard knocks, not even a joke.
There is a reason. Maybe this isn’t the case. You said your money went to the house. I assume you and your brothers working, a lot of that was sustenance. It was it was collectively providing for the family. I think the way that parenting has swung, you have to understand this was like more survival than it was luxury at that point?
Correct. There was there was no luxury. It was just give the money. Parents sent us to a private school, a parochial school, and they paid the tuition and you had your uniform and your books and all this. That all had to be paid for. The paper route job helped do that, as well as pay for groceries and stuff.
It’s funny as I’ve studied this for some research I’m doing on a book, like, the dominant form of parenting was more militaristic and it was obedience. The goal was a little bit different. It was like we need everyone in line because we don’t have enough resources. We need our employees performing to have enough revenue on the balance sheet.
It wasn’t personal. It had nothing to do with hatred or emotion. It was business. No one ever told me I had to do a paper route job. It was just the natural thing to do. I don’t even know where it came from. I my older brothers did it and then I did it. Maybe it was because they did it. Nobody said, “You must do a paper route job.” No, but it was, we need food, we need the books, we need this, I need stuff. Where’s the money going to come from?
Mastery: The 120 WPM Professional Standard
You built an unusual edge. You became an elite typist as a teenager. I’m curious. Two things. How’d you get into that and then what was the value gained from learning around mastering something? I always think there’s like the process of mastering something teaches much beyond whatever that thing is.
I can tell you that when you are an expert or a master at something that you really don’t think you are an expert or a master at it. At least this is my point of view. I needed work. I got a job. I went in this this pool. Companies had pools.
When you are an expert or a master at something, you don’t always see yourself that way.
Typist pools? No one under a certain age has any idea what that means. They can Google it or ChatGPT it.
You look like a fit person, you’re competent, so you get hired and then they figure out where to place you. It actually worked that way. Now, you get hired for something. Back then, you get hired for whatever they may want. You expedite, you help in different departments and then you gravitate towards something. It was just a different system back then. Even people I interviewed back from the old time periods, they started that way, especially in media and entertainment. My task was to type. No one said, “Can you type or not?” That was the task. I started typing like this.
With my head bowed down, down looking at the letters. I realized that that was really silly where I’ve seen other people just do like this. I said, “I’m going to do that.” I went to the library, got a book, and self-taught myself and started practicing until I became such a proficient typist that people would come to the office door and just stand there and watch. I wouldn’t pay much attention other than periodically, like, “Did you need something?” “No.” I’m just doing this and they just came to watch. I guess that’s a good thing. You don’t you don’t think of that when you’re really good at something. To me, it just never came to my mind. It is a fact.
Was it a talent or skill or both? Did you study it how to get better?
I went through every page of the typing book until I mastered every lesson. I did that for a couple months.
I probably should read that book. My typing is still terrible and AI is not helping that.
I used to type faster than the machine typed.
I was going to ask you, what was your words per minute?
It was over 120 because I would type so fast that the keys would stick. You had to learn cadence. You had to learn just the right cadence, otherwise, you would type so fast everything would just jumble up and get stuck. At that at that rate, that was 120 words a minute.
You seem like someone who holds themselves to high standards. Did that come from the family unit? Was that an internal thing? Where did the, “If I’m going to do it, I should do it well,” come from?
I believe that came from God. I just always inherently felt that if I’m going to do something, do it well, though I have read books and I have learned it in school and I have learned it through bosses and stuff. It was something echoed to me or at me, just if you’re going to do something, do it well, be a professional.
If you’re going to do something, do it well — be a professional.
“Whatever you are, be a good one,” whatever that quote is.
Yeah. If you’re young, it’s something that you realize that you just need to do it.
The Imposter Syndrome Of Elite Achievers
It’s interesting. I think there is a lot of folks these days and I don’t want to fall into the, “kids these days,” trap but they’re like, “How do I do the minimum?” sometimes, like, the mastery, it’s for yourself. I think people forget that when you get good at these things and you get better, how good you feel. Sometimes doing the minimum or doing the minimum where you need to do is punishing yourself.
It is. If I did the minimum podcasting, I would have quit a decade ago. We’ve got over 50 million downloads and listens of my show. It’s because I keep at it and I and I literally don’t think I’m very good. That keeps me wanting to grow and do better.
Why is it the people who are good at what they do seem to have well, what is the term? What’s the thing when you don’t think you’re very good?
You’re being humble or have your expectations are much higher?
No, the there’s a phenomenon. It’ll come to me in a minute. It’s a psychological phenomenon where you’re worried of being found out. I don’t know why I can’t think of the word. That you’re going to be exposed as not knowing anything. What I’ve found is that people who are really good at whatever they’re doing always have this. People who aren’t very good at what they’re doing, they’re the ones who are incredibly over-confident. Think they have no room to get better.
I have found this is internal to me that being arrogant can lead to failure and not doing so well because when you if when you get to this point of “Look at me, I did all this,” you stop working and striving to be any better. If you think you’re not good enough, you keep striving to be better. I am definitely not good enough. There’s just absolutely no way. I know there’s room to improve on my show and how I interview and the audience that I have and I’m going to just keep at it. It’s the only way to survive sometimes. You have to grow.
Imposter syndrome. That’s the word. Just came to me. You’ve heard that? People with imposter syndrome tend to be the best in their fields, really good at what they’re doing, and they say they are wary of being found out as a fraud. Interestingly, it tends to be more prevalent in women and there are over-confident men who are not very good at what they do who don’t have imposter syndrome, and then there’s very confident women who tend to have it more. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I’ve always found that the people that always tell me they have imposter syndrome and are afraid of being found out are usually at the top of whatever it is that they’re doing.
It’s very interesting. I don’t know of one friend or family member that thinks I’m great or I’ve done whatever because someone may like a show or may like an episode, but I’m not like a god or anything. I have lots of room to grow.
You spent three decades in the corporate world. Sales, marketing, management. What were some of the key things that you took away, lessons that help form some of your core principles?
There’s a lot to say about that, Robert, some of which we’ve already spoken about. I’ll talk for a long time. When you work for somebody, especially when you’re working for the CEO or the founder of a company, they’ve built it. They have that pride, that ego, that arrogancy to some degree. “I built this. We’re an eight-digit company. This is me,” or “I built it on my father’s company.” I’ve run into that a lot. Bosses that are like, “I’ve worked here at this company and I’ve worked here,” and so you work with egos and you work with people that are hard-headed or arrogant, yet they hired you because they need help.
They want the work done. It’s work to figure out how to do your job without trying to make anybody look bad, but still do your job and do a good job. It takes some work at doing it. The one thing you realize is that no matter how well you work, you’re never good enough in a company. That was the probably the biggest lesson in the corporate world is you’re never good enough. No matter what it is, there’s always more, there’s more profit, there’s more money, there’s more this, there’s more that. I can’t recall ever being very satisfied working in the corporate world.
Is that any different than when you’re working? Don’t people who work for themselves and eventually become have the same problem, it’s never enough?
No, you missed the whole thing. It’s this. See, in the corporate world, Robert, you work 40 hours. When you work for yourself, you work 80 to 100 hours a week and you’re having and you’re having more fun. You’re still not good enough, but you’re having more fun, so that that makes it worth it.
When you work for yourself, you may work 80 to 100 hours a week, but you enjoy it more.
I’m sensing the theme here is an asset for you is it’s never good enough and always something to do. Really, a lot of people struggle with this running their own businesses. You did leave corporate life, you became entrepreneur, you dealt with including the 2008 financial crisis of which we’re now actually the birth decline of that is now hitting the college age, so the apparently college is supposed to shrink in the in the ranks. How’d you weather that storm? We’ll get into this as you talk about Vision Map but this, “what is enough,” no matter whether you’re working for someone else or you’re yourself, I think it’s a really hard thing for people to figure out.
It is. The fact that you’re not good enough is not the biggest lesson I would say of my life, but it does seem to be a focal point of this conversation. I’ve worked three decades in corporate, what I call the corporate world, worked for others, and I’ve worked three decades as an entrepreneur working for myself. It’s a very good balance.
Which boss do you like better? Yourself or the other people?
You’re taking me way back. When I worked in fast food for five years from the age of 14 to 19 or something like that, 15 to 19, when I worked in fast food, I had some good bosses. I enjoyed that. That was fun. That was a long time ago. Now, my boss is the bank account. My boss is my spouse. I have to answer to these things. I have I don’t have any bills they’ve all been paid off thanks to podcasting. I have less bosses now. Anybody that I owe money to is a boss.
Scaling Through Content Syndication
Let’s dive into that because you’ve got this incredibly successful podcast, 40 million. How many episodes do you do a week?
I do one episode a week. It publishes every Friday at 2.00. You’ll find it on Apple, Spotify. I’ve been doing this since I think it was fall 2015.
It pays your needs. Someone comes to you and says, “Tony, I mean, obviously, if you do two a week, we could get even more downloads and we could get more advertisers and you’d have more revenue and then you’d pay off this.” Why not?
I did that for a while, Robert, when I joined Voice America. After almost two years of podcasting solo, I joined Voice America and wound up with two episodes a week for a while. Yeah, you have double the sponsors and you have double the audience and all that. It’s a lot of work. You think one show a week is not enough? Let me tell you, with all the promotion and all the marketing and all the back end and all the overseeing, it’s a full-time job.
I take off Sundays. I don’t work. I take off one day a week. Otherwise, I’m pretty much working it. Now, can I go out to dinner? Yes. Can I take an afternoon off? Yes. Can I do this? There’s a lot of moving parts to be successful on anything. If you hire people, fine, but you still have to oversee there’s still something. It takes a bit of work. It’s too much work for me to do two shows. Now, that said, I’ve added another facet where I take the interview, I now write an article. I’ll write an article about you and that actually gets published in the newspaper in the County Newspaper. The population is 30,000, but that doesn’t necessarily mean 30,000 people get the paper. That’s the county size.
I’m starting to take that information that I get and make more use out of it. That’s going to be happening. I’m starting to syndicate that. I’m starting to syndicate my podcast. One interview, like your interview, not only is it going out on Spotify and Apple and iHeart and all that, but you’re actually going to be on community radio. I’m starting to syndicate that. I’m starting to syndicate my podcast, one interview like your interview, not only is it going out on Spotify and Apple and iHeart and all that, but you’re actually going to be on community radio. I’m starting to syndicate that. I’ve taken the one thing it’s almost like saying what you said of having multiple shows but I’m taking the one thing and making more use out of it. I guess you call that repurposing it. I’m doing that more and more. That’s filling up my idle hours, for sure.
Floating High: The Delegation Strategy
Yeah, more leverage out of it it’s better to do more of the I was just writing a management article on this about one of the biggest mistakes we ever made, and I think it was we centralized a lot of functions. It was always the justification was, “We have account managers doing billing. If we had a billing specialist and the account managers could do just more accounts,” then it would all pay for itself because they each take another account and the billing manager and it never worked out that way.
Now, A, there’s a lot of back and forth that’s lost with communication. The problem was people could do a lot of things for maybe 3 or 4 accounts, but they couldn’t do more accounts. It was what you were saying. It was interesting. They hit some natural law where if they spread themselves around more things, it was more complicated than going deeper on one.
You get to a point where you have to delegate. I keep delegating and I develop things. I develop marketing things like with my newspaper and I delegate now someone’s in charge of putting that out together and getting that out. It’s very key and I should have mentioned this before is I like to float to as high as I can in my own organization. Let’s call it an empire, but it’s not, but it’s a good concept. When I develop something like the newspaper or the radio shows or the community radio is delegate it to someone to take care of it, otherwise, I’m too stuck in. By myself rising up my organization, I create more products or services or repurpose myself more. I like that. It’s a lot of fun to do that.
Tell us about the Vision Map. What is it and what prompted you to create the system?
When I first started with podcasting, I have no radio experience, no real no speaking experience. I didn’t know any elite entrepreneurs, millionaires, billionaires. I knew nothing.
Sounds like great credentials to start a leadership podcast.
Beautiful. I’m just this former newspaper boy, immigrant from Italy, what do I know? Who do I know? But I did go to school and I did go to university and I did learn some things and I’ve read books and all that. I worked out the steps. What is it that I want to accomplish? That was my vision. Now this is the forerunner for me because I didn’t know about vision casting, as some people go, “Tony, that’s vision casting.” Yeah, well, let’s bring it up. Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Arnold Palmer, Jim Carrey, all those words because they talked about it. They talk about vision casting was their key to success. They created a vision and they acted it out.
Jim Carrey’s got the awesome story about the check.
The check for $1 million dollars in his pocket.
Was it a million? Maybe it was I thought it was $10 million. Maybe we’re just telling that story so long. He carried a check made out to himself I think for either $1 million or $10 million and carried it until he was able to cash it one day.
Exactly. That’s the first step. I didn’t know those stories back then, but as I went through just trying to understand what’s going on, I realized that the first thing you start with anything is a vision. I read a book by Jordan Adler called Beach Money, which really hit home. Beach as in going to the beach, sun and beach ball, swimming. It blew me away. It did everything I wanted.
The first thing you start with in anything is a vision.
He talks about I’m going to tell you the story. If I’m not mistaken, second chapter, he’s a total complete failure. I think it’s the second chapter. His book’s been revised so who knows what chapter now. He goes to the park, basically to cry out and be sad, and he gets a pen and paper and he starts writing out his vision. I don’t know how or why he did it and I don’t remember anymore. He starts writing out his vision. “I’m going to do this.” He spends a couple of hours at it and goes home. He periodically looks at it and forgets all of it.
Why did he originally do it? What precipitated him to do it?
I don’t remember chapter one. It was many years ago. Go to chapter three now. I think it was chapter 3, maybe 4, but chapter 3. Now he’s moving. Years later, fast forward. He’s moving. He finds this piece of paper in his move. In his moving. Jordan Adler gets down on the ground and starts crying. He looked at that piece of paper, he gets down on the ground and starts crying. Why? What happened? Robert, he’s moving to a brand new house. He had the girlfriend, the love of his dreams. At that time, we’re talking like ‘80s, Jordan Adler was making $100,000 a month. He accomplished everything just by having that vision all worked out. I was like, “Man, I’m sold.”
I started working out the vision and I go, “This is great, but if you don’t follow through, I’m sitting on the couch every day eating my favorite potato chips, watching movies, but I got that vision. It doesn’t do anything.” it’s a great vision. I started looking at stores and you go to stores. They call them mission statements, which I really have a thing with. It it’s an incorrect name.
Tell us why you don’t like it.
De-mushing The Vision Vs. Mission Statement
I’ll explain the first three things. There’s eight steps. The first step is the vision. Think of yourself as a child. You’re dreaming. “In the future, I’m doing this and I’m playing this and I’m creating this.” It’s called a vision. Step two, which just about everybody will argue and say it’s wrong but for me, it works because it makes sense. It’s your purpose. It’s why you’re doing it. When I asked you to go outside and play, you didn’t say, “Why am I going to go play?” You tell me, “You just go out and play.” That’s your vision. You have your purpose.
The third step is your objective, what are you accomplishing. Now, when I go into stores, I don’t know anymore, but when I used to go in stores, when I was writing the vision, they had their mission statement and they were wrong because they were talking about their objective, their vision and who they were being. They had it all mushed. That’s why I used that word.
Yeah, so companies have these mission, vision and some of the stuff doesn’t even sound any different.
It’s a mush. It’s like a mash. You got to separate it out. Take a big triangle upside down. That long, broad statement there, Robert, is your mission, is your vision. Underneath that is your purpose. Underneath that is your objective. It goes all the way down to what you’re doing now. There’s only eight steps. I give it away free if you go to TonyDUrso.com, get my newsletter, and then in the community resources, you’ll see the Vision Map free draft there. It’s there.
I’ve done lots of lectures and talks. I’ve done keynotes. I’ve been to Caltech twice giving keynote speeches on the Vision Map. It really works when you add all these other points. It I wouldn’t say the word “foolproof,” but you can’t help but be successful because it just drives you. It drives you by having all these steps in place.
I’m going to push you on that. There are two schools of thought. I won’t give away where I am on this, but I’m curious where you are. There’s The Secret crowd the vision where you can manifest things and bring them to you with energy. There’s the pragmatic crowd that says, “Look, you write these things down, you focus on them, your energy you see it.”
I call it the Black Jetta syndrome. Suddenly, if you buy that car, it doesn’t exist more on the highway, but you see it everywhere because you’re just focused on it. Where are you on if that’s a spectrum of why this is. There’s Think and Grow Rich, there’s Napoleon Hill like do you think that it is putting it out there and it is an energy thing or do you think it falls more on the pragmatic discipline or somewhere in between?
The Vision Map™ Analogy: Car, Gas, And Map
I’ve never been asked that, but I’m going to ask you answer you very honestly. It appears to me that those things are also mushed up. The Vision Map, eight steps. Come on guys, it’s eight steps. It’s like you can you can think it easily helps sort that out really easily. The thing about it is you have to write it out. If I write it out and put it on the computer, now it’s buried somewhere. I can’t find it very easily. The fact that I can look at my steps, especially what I have to accomplish, it doesn’t need electricity. It’s written.
I can always refer to what I need. If I’m traveling and my laptop is not accessible, I have the key steps that I need to accomplish all the time with me because they’re written there and they’re patiently looking, waiting for me to review them, work on them, cross them off. There’s a whole system I’ve developed with it that’s very easy. I should write a book on this at some point. It just takes itself. What I want to say about the Vision Map, I want to give you an analogy. It’s really not a great analogy, but the concept is beautiful. It’s a little bit different than what the pundits say.
I’ve seen what the top, most successful people in the world say, and I don’t want to say that they’re wrong, but I think it’s a little more mushed. Let me explain. You’ve got a Jetta, I’ve got a nice car. I’ve got a beautiful car in my driveway. Consider that like your vision. It’s a bad analogy, but just stick with me. The gasoline in that thing is my purpose. Just bad analogy, but it works. That car, that vehicle, is never going to go anywhere, Robert, ever. Unless I get in it and it’s got some gasoline and I can then take it to destination. It just isn’t going to go. Okay, now people have electric cars.
Battery, gas all the same, yeah.
You need some juice. The way I look at it, just for the analogy and a concept, but I’ve now got this vehicle. I’ve got the gasoline. I’m missing the map. Here’s the point. You could take your car and grab your family, your neighbors, your parents. Say, “We’re going on vacation.” “Great. Everybody, jump in the car. I’ve got the gas, I’m ready to go.” “Okay, where are we going?” “Let’s go to Mount Rushmore.” “Wonderful. Where is it?” “I don’t know.” Now, you don’t have a map, you don’t have a phone, you have nothing. Where is it?
“It’s North of here. Let’s go down these streets. I’ve got two-week vacation. I’m going to drive here, I’m going to drive there.” You’re going to say, “Tony, stop. Come on. You’re not going to make it.” I go, “Yes.” You’re going to have a hard time going to Mount Rushmore, which is in South Dakota. You’re going to have a tough time because you don’t have a map. Where you going? How are you going? For you to have a business, for you to be successful in anything, you need a map. Tony’s telling you that map is eight steps. It’s called the Vision Map to take you from where you are to accomplish your vision. It’s that simple.
That’s a great there’s an analogy that I like. It’s what I call the prism and the laser. I think it goes with what you’re saying. If you take a certain amount of energy and you refract it through a prism, which puts it in millions of different directions, it makes a very pretty light. If you concentrate it, it cuts glass or steel or otherwise. When you’re pushing the gas pedal, you’re driving in five minutes in one direction, that is the prism. I think what you’re saying is you’ve got to concentrate the difference of concentrating the effort in terms of where it goes.
My upside-down triangle, the focal point is at the bottom. It’s what you’re doing now. It’s very laser focus. I get my stuff done, my show grows. It just works.
You’ve alluded to this. This is a controversial topic. I shouldn’t say controversial. It’s not politics. It’s purpose. I’ve heard people strongly on both sides of this. Purpose is fuel in life. We just talked about it. Go find your purpose. Some people will say that is great advice and some people will say that is horrible advice. There is growing camp that is telling kids are running around looking for their purpose is causing a whole lot of problems.
The more rich people say exactly what you say. There’s no question. I’m not trying to be rich. I’m not interested at being a billionaire. Do you want to know why I don’t want to be a billionaire? It’s because I can’t eat that much food.
Purpose As Fuel, Not A Destination
In that context, how do you think people should figure out their purpose and has it been mislabeled, like there is this one thing that if you just find it, everything makes sense versus that’s a tool that you need to sharpen and then figure out?
It is. I’ve seen so many wrong, misleading information.
Purpose has become very controversial. It really has.
We know who they are. Come on, guys. I’m not going to name names. I’m not pointing shade at anybody but the biggest, most richest people will tell you just make money. Just go figure it out. Make the money however you can. Make the money. You hear it all the time and you hear how to make the money and that’s fine. It’s almost like a house of cards in a way. It doesn’t last. It’s got issues with it. There’s got to be a balance.
There’s also rich people that tell you to go find their purpose and I think to other people, that’s also a privilege to find your purpose. It’s confusing to people. Is it a thing hidden under a rock somewhere or is it something that gets forged and you develop?
I should pull out the dictionary definition because really serious because this is very important. Purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. Purpose is like who are you being with a boy. The vision map is like what do you see yourself doing in the future? What do you need to be doing? That’s D as in doing. The purpose is who you’re being. I’m an educator, I’m a professor, I’m a teacher, I’m a I’m a civil servant. It’s who are you being? That’s your gasoline that’s in the car. I am being this person. That goes in the gas. It’s fueling my vehicle to take me to where my vision is. That’s something I explain and I have a book.
Purpose is the reason for which something is done, created, or exists.
You’ve answered it. It’s fuel, not a destination.
Correct. That’s not your purpose.
People say, “Go find it,” like it’s hidden. Just go find it everything will make sense.
Go back to the childhood. It’s what do you like to do and why? That why is part of it. I love helping people that really need some help. This is a true story. It really gives me very good feeling. I help widows. My foundation helps widows, we help orphans and we help the elderly. It’s just such a great feeling. We just fed a family of six people. The dad is sick the mom can’t find a job, the oldest daughter is having trouble working and they need food.
We bought food for them. It’s a good feeling. When you start doing things and you get that good feeling, you get a better idea of who you are and what your purpose is. That’s where you should work even if your day job is being a cashier or you’re being a cook. Whatever you’re being, find that time where you can work on what you really enjoy doing that hits your heart and that’s something to grow. That’s your purpose.
Building Durability Through Passion
We touched on it before. Let’s look at your podcast as an example here. You got into this without the skills, without the networks, and you built one of the top 0.1% and started in 2015 with under 10 listeners podcast in the world. You’ve also talked about pod-fading, and I’ve seen this. When I came out with my show years ago, I went around to all these people. I
Did the show. When I came out with a book two years later, I went around back to them, half of them were totally gone and done. These were some big-name people and leaders in their field. What did you do differently to get to tens of millions of downloads that other people couldn’t even last a year before they quit on their podcast? If someone were starting now, how would you advise them to build something that’s durable and lasts? It’s an interesting story.
Thank you. The key point on that is take what we’ve just discussed a little bit. If you like doing it, if you feel good doing it, if you enjoy doing it, then you’re going to get up every day and do it. When I started podcasting, nobody paid me, nobody knocked on the door, I had no money. I just did it. I did it for like a year and a half.
If you like doing it, feel good doing it, and enjoy doing it, you’ll get up every day and do it.
The key thing you enjoyed it. You weren’t doing it for a reason.
That’s the thing. I loved it. It was my purpose. I felt great being a curator. Robert, there’s a lot of smart people out there. There’s a lot of books and I tell you right now and I challenge every single person in this audience, I challenge you forever, you cannot read everybody’s books, listen to everybody’s podcast, take everybody’s seminar, take everybody’s class, and go to everybody’s event. You just can’t. It’s not possible in one life.
I curate people who who’ve accomplished something. Share that with the audience. I’m a facilitator in that. I just love doing it. Those people I’ve interviewed, I’ve used that information, Robert, to grow my own show. It has nothing to do with podcasting, hardly ever do we talk about podcasting, but I’ve distilled that information and it’s helped me a lot. I’ve used that for my show.
I think you show that’s what purpose looks like. My answer was similar. My observation was that a lot of these people were experts in their field. They heard it was a great idea that they should start a podcast. It wouldn’t make any money, it would be a lot of work, but it would help their business. They didn’t really like doing it. It was a means to an end. That wasn’t enough to sustain itself.
I think that’s the majority of the ones that I saw fall apart. I always say like in my podcast people are like well can you interview me or do this or whatever I’m like look there’s some interesting people and I have chance at one conversation to have with them probably in life. That’s exciting to me. If you’re a good friend of mine and we talk all the time, then it’s going to be hard to recreate that one conversation. What I saw in common with all the ones that stopped was they weren’t doing it for itself. When it’s boring and when it’s hard, that’s often not enough to sustain you. You literally weren’t getting paid. It wasn’t like you were doing it for the money.
You hit the nail on the head, Robert. Whatever you’re doing out there in the audience, fine. If you love something, let’s just make it up. Orchids. I love orchids. I really truly do. If I did something and I spent a couple hours a week doing a podcast on orchids, I can grow that into a business because I love orchids. I’ll get up. It’s 2:00, I’ve got to go record my orchid my orchid show. I’ll do it for free. I know that I’ll grow, I’ll get listeners, I’ll get sponsors, I’ll get affiliate programs, I’ll start selling gloves and pruning things, etc.
I’ll make money out of it because I love orchids. Yet during the day, I’m a teacher or I’m a cleaner or a chef or a cook or whatever you’re being. If you’re not doing this now folks fine. Spend a little bit of time a week or a month on something you love and grow that because I think that’s really is the way out of all this. It’s the way to being debt free, it’s the way out of having that security of because I know I can podcast. I love podcasting. I can go anywhere in the world and podcast. If it was orchids, it would be the same thing so it’s following what you love. We talked about that. The pundits will say otherwise but I’m telling you it works and it works very well.
The Multi-Faceted Strategy: Avoiding The “Two Birds” Trap
Alright Tony last question that I always ask. This is multivariant. It could be singular or repeated and personal or professional. What’s a mistake that you’ve learned the most from?
The biggest mistake is not going to make any sense it’s a very detailed one. I had two podcasts and I merged into one. It was a mess. It was a mess technically because I took the biggest show that I had and I let that go for a show on Voice America but I wound up losing all my reviews I didn’t know this. I lost all my reviews on the other show and I lost all that tenure and then I wound up with some shows disappearing and it was just a mess. That’s a very technical error if you do two shows. That’s the first thing that came to mind. It probably may not make a whole lot of sense.
It reminds me of the proverb. It’s kind of what you said before. The man who chases two birds catches none, maybe.
Let me reverse it because I’m doing that now. When you have something you want to grow, add it like a step or another facet. A diamond glitters and lets off a lot of light because it’s polished. I’ve created facets. My podcast is now on community radio. The people I interview now go in the newspaper. I’ve now created a whole column called People You Should Know. I’ve taken what I have and I’ve used that to create another product or a service that can help other people and reach other people. It’s the reverse of that mistake. I hope that makes total sense.
All right, Tony, where can people learn you learn about you and your work?
Just about everything you want is at TonyDUrso.com. My music, about my people, my podcast, my books. Drop by. I’m on all the social media so I’m very easy to find. If you know how to spell my name, you can find me.
That’s the hardest part. Alright, Tony, thank you for joining us sharing a lot of your wisdom and your journey and your input on the vision. I know it’ll be helpful to a lot of people.
I really hope it helps. Thank you all so much. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this episode or the show in general, I have a quick favor to ask. Do you mind leaving us a review or sharing it with a friend? Either one of those keeps new people discovering the show. Thank you again for your support and until next time, keep elevating.
