It's The Sales Evangelist 1000th episode and Stephen A. Hart from the Trailblazers.FM Podcast is conducting the interview while Donald Kelly answers the questions. This podcast started five years ago after Donald attended sales training to try to improve his performance. He started seeing some gains, and he figured the very least he could do was tell other people what was working for him. He realized along the way that he would get to interview great guests like Jeffrey Gitomer who would share a wealth of information and he was hooked. Donald wanted to share sales content that would help himself and others at the same time. Blessings and opportunities The greatest benefit to a podcast like this is the relationships you build. There's a camaraderie and people want to help each other. [05:50] Perhaps it's because the medium is so new, but a lot of podcasters are connecting with each other to share experiences. People have become like family, and many business opportunities have emerged from it. There's a whole crew of people in the background who help create the content, and it's blessing people along the way. After Donald jumped ship from his full-time job in 2015, this lifestyle business allowed him to travel and speak in different parts of the country, and it all stemmed from the training and consulting that has developed. 10,000 hours The podcast is officially five years old, which amounts to about 10,000 work hours. According to Malcolm Gladwell's theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, Donald is officially an expert podcaster now. The story started when Donald was working at a software company in Boca. His plan was that at the three-year mark, he wanted to go back to grad school for an MBA. [10:11] The other alternative was that he would launch a startup. TSE started as a hobby because Donald had done B2C in high school and college. Now, he transitioned to B2B, but he didn't know how to talk to people or set up business opportunities. His company provided training and he discovered a love of teaching and an excitement about the content he had learned. He paired his love of teaching and his desire to be the center of attention, and it was a perfect marriage. Edutainment allowed him to educate and entertain at the same time. Birth of a podcast Jared Easley introduced Donald to the world of podcasting despite the fact that Donald knew nothing about it. He started by listening to Seth Godin's Startup School, a podcast that featured Seth guiding 30 entrepreneurs through the process of launching a dream business. [11:46] He was still debating startup or college, and he realized that a startup didn't have to mean developing a product. Donald didn't see how the podcast was going to make money, but he launched it as a hobby. The platform existed six months before the podcast did, but Donald recalls that he had to get over the worry and just pull the trigger. He had to stop worrying about how it would sound and what people would say about it. He eventually decided that he had something valuable and he needed to share it. When he got out of his own way, the money started coming in. When Donald started producing content that benefited the people around him, people started to raise their hands and seek his help. [Tweet "Done is better than perfect. #TakeAction"] Lessons learned Donald calls episode 1 cringe-worthy. He says he was nervous and afraid throughout it. He was self-conscious about his voice, and he didn't own his personality. [15:29] Donald also wishes he had done video much sooner. He was afraid of the comments people would make and that fear kept him from producing video. Donald also wishes he had known that people don't know what you have to offer until they know what you have to offer. He was afraid of sounding pushy, so he was apprehensive about sharing what he knew. Take more action. Get out of your comfort zone. Get out of your own way. Despite the late start to the video world, TSE is getting into video