Episode 678 - Ten Years, Seven Minutes, and a Microphone

we mark something. I honestly was not sure whatever happened when I started this thing ten years ten years of a microphone, an idea, and a belief that leadership lessons could be shared in seven minutes. April eighteenth, twenty sixteen, episode number one. I remember sitting there wondering if this was a terrible idea. I had never hosted a podcast before. I had no audience, no sponsors, no roadmap, no clue if anyone would even care. All I knew was this.

I had spent decades in environments where leadership decisions mattered immediately on the ambulance, in command posts, in disaster deployments, in rooms where the stakes were real and mistakes had consequences, And I kept thinking something. Leadership education had become bloated with corporate buzzwords and PowerPoint slide decks that sounded impressive, but did not survive contact with the real world. I kept thinking, leadership should be simpler than this. It should

be direct, honest, short, tactical seven minutes. That was the experiment. Could someone become a better leader if they spent seven intentional minutes a day thinking about leadership? That question started this entire journey. Episode one went out into the world, and then something interesting happened. People started listening. Not thousands at first, Sometimes it felt like maybe five people were listening, maybe ten. I remember refreshing the download numbers and thinking, Okay,

someone somewhere actually heard this. Then the email started. A supervisor from Texas, a business owner in Canada, a firefighter in Australia, a nurse in Ireland, people saying the same thing. I listened to your podcast on my drive to work. I played your episode for my team. That seven minutes helped me handle a tough situation today. That was when I realized something powerful. Leadership lessons do not need to be complicated to be valuable. They need to be honest,

and they need to come from experience. Over the next ten years, the podcast kept growing. Episodes turned into hundreds, hundreds, turned into more than six hundred and fifty and somewhere along the way, the podcast began reaching leaders in one hundred and forty four countries. That part still blows my mind. Think about that for a moment, a microphone in Pennsylvania, seven minute leadership lessons and leaders around the world listening.

That never gets old. But let me also tell you the part people don't see, the messy part, because this journey was not polished. There were nights when I recorded episodes late because the day had been completely consumed by running an EMS organization. There were weeks when I wondered if I had run out of things to say. There were episodes that did not land the way I had hoped. There were critics, There was hate mail, There were people who said leadership podcasts were a waste of time. And

there were days when life hit hard, real hard. During those ten years, there were moments of personal loss, moments of exhaust question, moments when the weight of leadership felt heavy. But something interesting kept happening every time I hit record the mission reset seven minutes, seven minutes to share something honest with leaders who were facing their own battles. Somewhere along the way, the podcast became something bigger than I expected.

It turned into books. Four leadership books came out of these conversations. It turned into new friendships with leaders all over the world. It turned into coaching conversations, speaking engagements in leadership academy classes, and maybe most importantly, it turned into a community, a community of leaders who care about doing this job the right way. Now, let me share something personal. When I started this podcast, I did not

think of myself as a podcaster. I thought of myself as someone with experience who had something to say, and that is still how I see it today. I'm not here to impress you. I'm here to share lessons that come from real environments where leadership matters. The cockpit, the ambulance, the command post, the classroom, the hard conversations, the failures, the lessons learned the hard way. Because leadership is not clean, Leadership is not neat, leadership is not perfect. Leadership is human.

And if there's one thing this podcast has proven over ten years, it's this leaders everywhere are looking for something real, not corporate jargon, not motivational posters, real leadership, and that is what this show has always tried to deliver seven minutes at a time. Now, let me say thank you. Thank you to the listeners who have been here since the early days. Thank you to the new listeners who discovered this show last week. Thank you to the leaders

who share the episodes with their teams. Thank you to the critics who pushed me to be sharper, and thank you to the people around the world who remind me every day that leadership is a universal language. Ten years, over six hundred and seventy five episodes, four books, and leaders in one hundred and forty four countries tuning in. That's not something I ever predicted when episode one went live. But here's the part that matters most. We are not done.

Leadership still needs voices that cut through the noise. Leadership still needs honesty. Leadership still needs people willing to stand up and say what actually works. And that mission continues tomorrow, because tomorrow there will be another seven minutes. So here we are, ten years later, still talking about leadership, still learning, still growing, still sharing seven minutes that might help someone make one better decision today, and sometimes that is all

leadership really is, one better decision. So thank you for being part of this journey, and thank you for helping me build this amazing leadership community. Around the world. This has been the seven minute leadership podcast and I thank you for listening. For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.