#39 - Controlling the Inputs w/ Jeff Albaum
Episode notes
In this episode, I share my experiment of trying to get 1% better at podcasting every single week.
No shortcuts. No viral hacks. Just small improvements that compound over time.
We talk about why focusing on inputs instead of outcomes can change everything, and how tiny, consistent habits can quietly build serious momentum.
If you're building something - a podcast, a business, or even just a better version of yourself - this episode is a reminder:
You don’t need massive breakthroughs.
You just need to get 1% better.
Transcript
Auto-generated transcriptGenerated automatically from the audio and formatted for reading. Nothing has been reworded, so expect the odd mis-hearing, and no speaker names.
What separates success from failure? What's going on? Everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Class. Today is going to be a little bit of a different kind of episode. A lot of people have been asked me like, hey, what's the, what's the goal with podcast? What do you want to do with it? And so I want to take this time to explain my rationale and reasoning for why I'm even doing this in the 1st place. So basically that the background and context is, I've always wanted to start a podcast. I've always thought to be super fun and I really enjoy talking to people.
So to me, I don't really see it as something that I'm creating. It's more so just like conversations I want to be having and then recording those like I happened to be recording the conversations I want to be having anyways. That's kind of how I've always wanted to see it. And that's, I feel like I've been able to do that up until, you know, now and hopefully we'll continue to do so. So that was kind of the, the first impetus. The second part was in 2026. I've really been thinking a lot about like seasonality, like seasons of life and what separates success from failure.
And I know it's very binary, but stick, stick with me. So what I've noticed is, and this might be selection bias of just the things that I happen to be reading of the podcast I happen to be listening to, but the thing that I keep coming back to is consistency. And so I kind of my thesis here is that if you do anything consistently over time, you will get better, right? It's not a guarantee of success. That's an outcome, but the, the input that you that you can work on, the thing you can control is what you do consistently, right. So we've all heard the quote we are what we repeatedly do Excellence then is an act, but a habit basically talking about controlling the inputs, not necessarily output.
So if the output is over here and that's success, you can't control that. You can't control whether you're successful or not you can control the inputs. So what are the inputs that I can control that will hopefully lead me to success, whatever that looks like for you. So how does it have anything to do with podcasting? So talking about consistency and seasonality. So the thing I've been thinking about and the thing I've been, I've been responding to people and they asked me like, hey, what's the goal with the podcast? I tell them I'm going to get to 100 episodes, and over the course of getting to 100 episodes, I'm going to improve one thing every release.
So each week I'm going to have one thing that I improved to make each episode 1% better than the previous one. It could be an editing feature, it could be a format, it could be the intro music, it could be whatever it is. And so I'm just going to continually improve one thing each week. And by the time I get to 100 episodes, it will fundamentally be much better than the first episode I did right. And so not to take away from any of the guests, that's not the point at all. But just the point is I'm getting better over time. And so therefore the show gets better over time.
And that's my goal. That's my goal for 2026. So I mathematically, if I release 1 episode a week, I will not get to 100 episodes by the end of this year, 52 weeks in a year, but I will be very, very close. So I will hit 100 episodes in early 2027, probably. Q 12027. So that's the goal. And so my ask of you is that if this has been something that you've been enjoying, it doesn't you've been listening to and finding value to please share it with people you think could get a kick out of it. Please let me know who you'd like to have on what kind of conversations you want to hear about can be general topics.
So like, hey, I want to learn more about I've done a lot of real estate, but I want to learn more about banking. Like how do I do? Like what about an IRA? Should I do an IRA or a four O 1K? Like that's something I want to explore more. It could be a specific guess, like, hey, this is a good person. I think you should have on. I think you guys would have good chemistry in the conversation. And you know, please feel free to put me in contact. I'd really appreciate it and it would mean a lot. So that's it for this week. But I really appreciate you and thank you for taking the time to to listen and I'll see you next week.
Have a great one. Bye everybody.