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Why Podcasts Are Built on Compounding Returns
Even while I was still in high school, my parents drilled home the value of starting to invest for retirement early. Even $25 per month would be worthwhile, they said, and would go a long way toward building the habit of investing as I started working and could contribute more.
So, of course, I did what any high school kid would do and ignored them.
I told myself that I could still start by the time I was 20, a couple of years out of school when I would surely have more disposable income, and I’d still be ahead of the game. When I hit 20, I pushed that start date back to 25. Surely then I’d have the extra cash, right?
You can guess what happened when I hit 25 and still didn’t see all that surplus cash lying around waiting to be invested.
It wasn’t until my late twenties that I got serious about investing and committed to putting away even small amounts towards a retirement fund.
Part of the push for me was actually learning the math behind how investing in the stock market works, and the concept of compounding returns, wherein your investment grows exponentially. The gains are seemingly incremental at first, before picking up speed and skyrocketing as more time passes.
Podcasting Is Like Investing
Podcasting–and all content marketing for that matter–is similarly built on the concept of compound returns.
Your audience grows slowly at first and it’s hard to justify the time that could be spent elsewhere, but the more time and content you consistently invest, the more the returns start to accrue.
Compounding returns are a bit of a problem, however.
The reason most people don’t start investing earlier is that we as humans have difficulty thinking in the long term. We’re programmed to prioritize short term benefits over long term gains. On top of that, we have an inherent difficulty truly understanding the concept of exponential growth.
Combined, these blind spots lead us to avoid investing small amounts of time, money, or effort consistently over a period of time, even when we’re told that it will be worth it in the long run.
