I love to listen to podcasts on my commute to and from work, while organizing my office or doing something where I don’t need my ears.
As a filmmaker that doesn’t come so easily because 90% of the time I need my ears for the job.
These podcasts are not on the subject of filmmaking but I’ve found many skills to be transferable and often not talked about amongst filmmaking professionals.
NUMBER 1: The Tim Ferriss Show
These are like mini master classes with top performers in their industry.
Tim does a really great job of really diving deep, interviewing his guests revealing a lot of actionable take aways that you can apply to many areas of your life and business. He’s interviewed people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jocko Willink, Seth Godin, David Blaine, Josh Waitzkin, Marc Andreessen, Kevin Kelly, Morgan Spurlock, and many, many more. If you don’t know who some of these people are then I encourage you to look into it, they all have a wealth of experience, too much to mention here.
I have learned so much from the experiences of these people that have effected my creative process, my business approach, my physical fitness, my mental clarity, my personal relations, it’s a gold mine.
If you are a fan of Stoicism you will find Tim is into that as well.
NUMBER 2: Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
This is a newer podcast where he provides a peek into revealing points in history of great business leaders. This is business focused but as a filmmaker the transferable skills are enormous.
Hosted by Reid Hoffman, often referred to as the “Oracle of Silicon Valley”. He is probably most well known as co-founder of Paypal as well as co-founder and executive chairman of Linked In. I enjoyed his book named “The Startup of You” which dives into thinking of yourself as a business-of-one, especially great framework for freelancers in a time of constant change in the job market.
NUMBER 3: The Gary Vee Audio Experience
Gary Vaynerchuk is very much about working your ass off while staying true to yourself and providing value to your clients. As he says “Clouds and Dirt”.
If you’ve never heard of Gary Vaynerchuk just google him and you will find massive amounts of content related to business, social media, life lessons of an entrepreneur and life lessons on a macro scale. This is more content then you want to consume but luckily he drills the same core lessons throughout most of his content so you should get it pretty quickly.
He is definitely a master of content which, as a filmmaker it provides invaluable insight. Where is story telling going? Where are the people that will listen to you? What does it take to get people’s attention? He covers these questions and way more.
Every filmmaker/storyteller should at the very least be aware of where people’s eyes are and how they are consuming content. Our viewers shape the way we communicate as we also shape the minds of our viewers.
Thank You
These podcasts have educated me immensely. They have helped me to better understand myself, my clients, and my audience in a deeper way. I trust they will do the same, if not more, for many of you.
Keep on telling stories, making films, and be well.