I keep running into potential Outsiders Journey Podcast guests in my day-to-day.
This afternoon – and I hesitate to share too much – I met another Marine in the parking lot of a local supermarket.
I was led to him actually. There was a bumper sticker on his car stating,
United States Marine Corps – When It Absolutely, Positively, Has To Be Destroyed Overnight
That’s an oldie but a goodie!
This part of being a Marine is often lost in the watered down marketing messages they put out there for the Public’s consumption.
But back to my new friend: again, I hesitate to share too much, as it’s likely he’ll be a future podcast guest and I’d rather you learn about him from him.
I saw the sticker, saw him sitting in the driver’s seat, and went up to see if he was the Marine. He, of course, was, and I immediately hit him with a “Semper Fi!” and we were off to the races!
This man’s back story, of which I am sure he told me about .05%’s worth, was one of the wildest and most entertaining yet
He’s a Marine, yes. But the bulk of his tale lied in the pre- and post- Marine years of his life. And he just proceeded to blow me away with it all.
But since I am saving those juicy details, why, then, am I saying anything at all about this meeting?
It’s not that I’m not listening or seeing them ONLY as a guest.
But I used to walk around thinking more along the lines of, “I don’t want to waste too much time bullshitting with any one person when I can be busy investing my limited time elsewhere, moving the mission forward.”
Who knows how many potential guests I already could have had, had my radar been tweaked to see them better in the first place?
And this man will be an AWESOME guest! I found him simply by seeing something that was not only amusing to me but also flag that brought to bear our mutual connection.
Then I said, “Hi!”
This is all it takes to start building a future the way I suggest: slowly, through a consistently fed platform, doing whatever it is that you’re most natural doing.
You find whatever it is that you cannot STOP yourself from doing, and turn that into something of value for someone else.
Then do it more loudly and with a purpose that is more than just entertaining yourself or just trying to be a “nice guy”.
Take YOU and make it mean something more by harnessing YOU for the greater good
You’ll get what you need out of it by default.
And it will start to blossom and grow before your very eyes, as I see it happening to me in this once-anxiety ridden field of gathering podcast guests.
You just have to start.
This Week’s Podcast Episode(s)
OJ POD EPI-18: En Garde Future Guests! (19:13)
The photographer of this post’s featured photo: Camila Cordeiro