The Power of Persistence with Host Kristina Driscoll

Tune into to this solo episode as Kristina discusses persistence in achieving success. Having a top 1.5% global podcast didn't happen for She's Brave by accident, and Kristina shares what helped her achieve her status including overcoming technical challenges in podcasting, stories about her late husband's career and perseverance, and lessons learned from repeated rejections. Through humor and heartfelt storytelling, listeners are encouraged to remain persistent, embrace failure as a learning opportunity, and stay focused on their goals.

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Transcript

Hey everyone! As a lot of, you know, I recently made it to the top one and a half percent globally on listen notes. com. And I've only been podcasting a year and a half. Holy crap a moly. How did all of this happen? I'm going to be sharing with you guys, the number one key. To My success and to the success of anyone, anything in life whatever it is you want, whatever your goals are, it all boils down to this one thing.  Persistence. Yes, I said it persistence. 

I  want to also thank everybody for listening, for tuning in to helping me get to this spot, because without you, I wouldn't be here.  And whenever I jump on a podcast and I interview somebody,  all that's going on in my head is, how can I help you guys?

What do you guys need to know? What do you guys need to learn? How can I help you make your life better?  Hopefully you're all benefiting from that and my guests are benefiting and, even in  the most not uplifting situations, like if you haven't listened to Gretchen Witt, it's an amazing interview. Her son actually died of pediatric cancer. But.  In that process, she realized that pediatric cancer funding was completely low there was not enough funding. And she has actually raised over 21 million to date for pediatric cancer.  

 A lot of you know that before I started my podcast, I just started out as a caregiver My husband was a lot older than I was and  he got early onset Alzheimer's I was also a mom of my five year old son at the time. I was also a financial advisor, but there's a lot of years where I was taking care of my husband, my son. , According to society, I was just a nobody, you guys. And  I just got this feeling like I needed to get women's voices heard out in the world.  So I signed up for a podcasting class and I had a lot of challenges. I've had a lot of challenges along the way, and I want to share a bit of that journey today with you guys and talk a little bit more about persistence because  you don't get to this place where I'm at without persistence, you don't.

So you guys, I live in a small community outside Seattle, Washington, and  there's this very basic, slow internet bandwidth. what this means is I would try to jump onto a zoom interview and it would just be constantly breaking up. I just couldn't get enough bandwidth.

I couldn't even purchase higher bandwidth it didn't exist there was no way that I could buy a faster speed of internet.  I thought, okay, I'm going to try Starlink, not cheap,

and It didn't really work. Again, I was stuck. The next thing was I saw an ad on TV for T Mobile and. I just need to thank T Mobile for this because they said, Hey, look, if you switch your cell phone provider to us, we'll provide you with this little cell phone tower.

And it's about a half a foot tall and what you do is you carry this little cell phone tower around your house to every room in your house and you check the internet speed. Whichever room in your house has the highest speed is where you put the tower. I went around the house and found out that my upstairs bonus room, which was also my teenage son's bedroom,  Which also smells like a locker room, gross, was the best and only room that I could podcast in. You heard me right.

I really tried. I have a cute room in the house that I wanted to use, but the signal just wasn't strong enough. So I had to give up on that. I had to get creative and blur the background because every time I'd jump on to do an interview, there'd be like laundry, cans of Coke, books, strewn all over the bedroom.

Doesn't look real professional.  So basically, that's where I still am today. I'm still recording in my son's bedroom.  Talk about persistence. Yep. That's one I had to go through.  And I think at any point during that process, it could have been easy for me to say,  you know what?  I just can't do this.

There's just too many hurdles and I've tried this. I've tried that and Starlink doesn't work. If Starlink doesn't work, then nothing's going to work. But you know what? I didn't give up.  And you know what, you guys, my late husband, Bill Driscoll, used to always say,  there's always a way. Always remember that you guys, there's always a way.

It was one of his mantras, and he really lived by that. And in fact, I'm going to tell you a couple of cute stories about him and persistence. Cause Talk about persistent. That guy was super persistent.  He started out as what we used to call a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch back in the 1970s. And he was quite a bit older than I was.

And literally they would give you a telephone, like an actual, dial up telephone, a telephone book, that's three inches thick.  And for people who are young out there and don't even know what the heck a telephone book is, it's this huge four or five inches thick book that has everybody's name in it in all of Seattle.

He's living in Seattle at the time. So you basically can look people up by the last name and it's got their address and their phone number.  So you alphabetically look somebody up by their last name, first name, and then  you have their phone number. So he was given this telephone book and he was told to pick up the phone and what they called it was smile and dial. 

And what that is, it's called cold calling.  He would just pick up the phone and say, Hi, my name is Bill Driscoll and I'm a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch. And today I have a bond paying 8%. Now, back in the seventies, interest rates were really high, like they are right now.  And he'd say, would you like to buy a bond for me?

He would do things like that. He'd say, I've got a really great stock for sale that potentially is going to do great. Would you like to buy it from me now? Back in that day, if you wanted to buy a stock or a bond, you didn't get to jump on the computer and do it yourself.

You had to go through a stockbroker. This is literally how his business was built. Smiling and dialing. Talk about courage. You guys, can you imagine just having to pick up the phone,  call people and ask them if They wanted to buy a stock or a bond.  That's a lot, right? 

And then when he met me, he was a hike leader on Mount Rainier. So I was in a hiking club and it was with a group and, he had my phone number. He had everybody's phone number in the group and we connected and chatted a lot on the hike and  hikes are long. They're like 6, 7, 8 hours and you really get to know people and we just really connected.

And then we all went home and I didn't hear from him.  I thought he was really cool guy. We had a lot in common. We both worked in finance. We both love nature. We just both viewed the world very similarly in a very compassionate way about people, animals, and all of that. Long story short, two weeks later, my phone finally rang.

And what do you know?  Here's another story to tell you. He didn't tell me this till years later. Apparently, ever since the day of that hike, he  had my phone number. He would pick up the phone, dial my number, and hang up. He did this for  two weeks. Two weeks, you guys. Can you believe it?  Because he was too scared.

He was too scared to ask me out. But one day he said.  You know what?  It's now or never. I've just got to do this and I got to let the phone ring. So he did and  I picked up he said, hi, this is Bill Driscoll. Do you remember me?  I was the hike leader on Mount Rainier a couple of weeks back. Would you like to get together over dinner and discuss finance? 

Whoa, does that sound exciting?  Not really. I was like,  sure.  It was so confused. I was like, is this a date or is this just like us talking business? Cause we're both in finance,  but. I was like, okay, sure. So he came and picked me up and four hours went by in the blink of an eye. And really the rest is history, but I just wanted to share some stories of persistence because I do think that we're really in a time where we see a lot of.

Perceived overnight success, but a lot of times that, that quick overnight success also quickly disappears on the internet. So that's a thing too.  And that's actually something that came out of a recent interview I just recently interviewed chapel heart and,  they started singing  on the street corners of new Orleans in 2014.

That was not overnight success. They ended up on America's got talent, Simon Cowell ended up mentoring them. It's been a very, but it's been a very long journey. We just have to keep going we just can't give up  we got to learn how to think outside the box.

When I think back on those early days of me starting out in podcasting, I did have a lot of odds stacked against me. Here's another funny story. You guys are not kidding. Even going to believe this one. So I had this fellow classmate who was an author. She wasn't like super famous or anything, but to me, she was like a goddess.

And I scheduled and managed to convince her to be a guest on my podcast.  And so this was still back when I was like trying to deal with my internet dropping all the time. And everything was a disaster. But anyway, she was very patient with me and we did the interview.

We wrapped it up and I realized that I forgot to hit the record button.  So none of it had been recorded. The entire thing never got recorded. What?  How freaking embarrassing is that?  But you know what? She was kind and gracious enough to say to me, don't worry about it, Kristina let's just schedule another time and we'll do it again.

And so we did it. And, these things come up and they happen and, my late husband, he used to say, there's always breakage. So whatever you're doing in life, it's not going to go a hundred percent smooth. There's just always going to be some losses along the way. There's going to be things going wrong, things breaking, things not working, and you just got to keep going. 

And then I want to share a couple of stories about guests, I'm They don't land in your lap as much as you think they will.  My first year of podcasting was a lot of time of me begging and pleading people to come on my podcast.  And I had one of my first really big names. And I'm not going to tell you who it is, but I'm all I'm going to say is she canceled on me three times, you guys, because I guess she didn't really want to come on my podcast, I wasn't a big name, I was just some person, but.

I persisted and she kept saying let's reschedule. And she'd cancel on me again. So finally on the fourth attempt, I finally got her on live and she was my biggest name yet. Yeah. And guess what? You guys,  I get on the call. I'm so excited. And she's on her phone. We're looking at each other and she's driving in her car in LA. 

Okay, this entire interview takes place while she's driving in LA traffic. Now again, I could have just given up. I could have just said, Oh my goodness, you are driving and trying to do an interview. Like maybe there's going to be car noise in the background or people honking or, I can't really edit that out.

And. Maybe we should try to reschedule, but I just said to heck with it, we're going to do this anyway. And you know what she's fricking nailed it. It ended up being.  A fabulous interview. It was, I just had this attitude what do I have to lose?  And what's so funny is if you listen to that, you will never be able to tell which interview that is because you do not hear the car noise at all.

Nothing. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's persistence, you guys. I didn't give up. What I said, I'm just going to do things anyway, even if I have to reschedule it three times. Even if she's driving while I'm interviewing her.

Still turned out great.  I want to share another example where I reached out to a scheduler and to schedule an interview with someone, again, who's very accomplished, very wealthy but also this person also does mentoring and does some coaching and things. And this is a very big name said to her scheduler, Hey, I don't want to do coaching call, but want to interview her for my podcast.

You think she'd be open to that? And her scheduler said, yeah, fine.  And so we scheduled it. And again, like I jump on to this interview with this. Billionaire, and she says to me, okay, what are we talking about today? And I said, okay we're doing a podcast. She said whoa wait, she said, what?

You're interviewing me? What are we going to talk about? And I said, okay, listen, here's what we're going to talk about. And if you don't want to talk about any of these topics, we don't have to talk about them. And if you don't want to do the interview, we don't have to do the interview. That's okay too. If you don't want to do it.

Okay. That's fine. Or if you're not up for it today, you want to do another day. That's fine too. But what do you have to lose? Like here we are we're connected. We're talking on zoom, and this is fun. This is like a fun thing to do. Let's just give it a try. And if you don't like it, I won't air it. So, you know what? 

It went great. And she had a ball, and we had so much fun and. You know what? That took some persistence, right? I could have just given up and said, Oh my gosh, he didn't know that this was a podcast interview. And so, I guess I better just, not do it. And, You gotta persist, and so  that's another great lesson. 

Have you guys heard about an author, and I'm probably saying his name wrong, Jia Zhang, and he wrote this book called Rejection Proof, How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through a Hundred Days of Rejection.  This guy is like one of my favorite books ever. He's amazing.  I'll tell you why he's amazing.

 Just imagine this,  a Chinese guy with a thick Accent living in Texas, deciding to do a rejection experiment where he does all these random things like he'll literally decide one day to get up in the morning and go knock on random people's doors and just say, Hi, I'm Gia.

And would you mind if I went into your background and played soccer for five minutes? He would just do these random things, and it was just to help to build up his rejection muscle so that he could just become more strong and more brave in his everyday life. And he'd get all kinds of answers.

Heck, a lot of people would say no, but  And a lot of them would actually look at him like really suspiciously, but then,  and I'd ask him a couple of questions and then they'd say, sure, why not go in the backyard or whatever? That's just one example, but he's one of my heroes. And really you should check out the book if you haven't already, because he's such a huge inspiration to me, and that guy is the  epitome  Most awesome example of  being persistent. 

And, I'm thinking now that I'm thinking more about persistence,  I'm  thinking about persistence is also learning how to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. And learning how to adjust accordingly, because I think that when we think about  just barreling through stuff, come hell or high water, even if we're bad at it or good at it, or whatever is the case sometimes you just gotta go for it, right?

Okay, you guys, we're going to start wrapping up this topic of persistence, but I want to share a few more gems about this topic. Number one, like you have to feel confident to start something new. When I started taking a podcasting class, I  sat in the corner of the Zoom box room and said nothing.  You do not have to feel confident.

You just have to start. Anyways, okay, you guys, and also consistency is key. Perfection is not a good thing when it comes to anything you're trying new in this life because you're always going to make mistakes. And in fact,  those mistakes. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes.

You learn more from failure. And it's hard. It's hard to fail, right? Like it is so freaking hard at times. It's just you just want to throw the towel in and give up,  but you actually learn more from your failures than your successes consistency is key. Don't quit, rest and keep going.

That's a big key for me. Cause sometimes I get a little burned out and what you have to do is. Don't just quit, but just give yourself a break just rest and keep going. 

Here's another one.  Confidence doesn't come when you're at the top of the mountain. Confidence comes when you've hit rock bottom, but you keep going. So this whole persistence thing is, you are going to hit rock bottom, like forever. On your journey of whatever that your journey is and your goals are, but you have to keep going and when you do hit rock bottom and you keep going, that's where you gain your confidence.

Okay. Great things never come from comfort zone. So you gotta get over. Being, wanting to stay in your comfort zone. You got to have courage over comfort. Okay.  And the one question you should ask yourself when you feel lost or stuck is what single brave decision do I need to make today to move towards the life of my dreams?

All right. All right, you guys. So keep your head up. And your feet under you, there are far better things ahead. Keep going  persistence. I love you guys so much. 


​(Episode Outro:)
Hey, brave friends. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode. I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you. I hear you. And I want to hear from you. I want to know how you are showing up as brave and resilient and authentic. Connect with me on Instagram at she's brave podcast or check out my website at www.shesbravepodcast.com.  If you're interested in learning more about podcasting, join my Facebook group, www.facebook.com/groups/podcastmasteryjourney. 

I'm sending you guys so much love until next time. Keep being brave.