Alchemy For Life
I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.
in 1656 Blaise Pascal wrote in a long letter at the very end (in French) “I have made this longer only because I did not have the time to make it shorter.” His point was that it takes effort to make something shorter. This is the effort that I have used to make my podcast episodes only about 10 minutes. And I’ve done so for over 300 episodes. Join me for a celebration, reaffirming my mission statement, and answering questions. Celebrating 300+ Episodes and the Reality of Podcast Survival. Eek Well, hey there! Welcome back—and welcome back for the 300th-plus time. I didn’t have a 300th-plus episode celebration, and I think this show deserves that. Not only is this podcast in the top 5% as far as reach, but with reaching over 300 episodes, we are in the 1.4% of podcasts that survive that long. For comparison, would you believe that only 50% of podcasts ever make it past 8 episodes? So you’ll definitely agree that we need to celebrate and also talk about some things. It’s about time I told you about my mission and origin and all that stuff, and I do tend to sprinkle that in from time to time. But let me get down to it, and in advance, I’m going to apologize for breaking my rule. Podcast episodes like this, I try to stick to 10 minutes. This is probably going to be double that. I explain why I do that as well. The Origin of Alchemy for Life™ and Interviewing High-Profile Guests So let me talk about the origin. The origin is the same origin as everything else that I work on in Alchemy for Life . It was a life-changing event that set me on the path to figure out what life was made of and what we spend our time, energy, and resources on. So, from that moment, I worked on a coaching system. I worked on understanding. I started writing books. And one of the very first things I did was start a podcast. And at that time, I started focusing on interviewing people because I knew that I didn’t know a lot of things, and other people did. I pushed far out of my comfort zone, and I interviewed really high-profile and famous people. I interviewed Scott Adams, the late John McAfee, recently a monk from Bhutan, and the executive producer of the Stargate franchise. An Unscripted Interviewing Style Built for You (the listener!) My interviewing style is different, and let me try to kind of put bookends around it—and you can see I’m struggling just to sort of describe that. So this is what I do. I don’t really have a list of questions. I formulate a list of questions and how I think I’d like it to go in my mind, but then I’m open to the way that the conversation works. And then at the same time, you’re there. I think of you being there. I think of the average person who’s listening to a podcast. I don’t want you to ever say, “Oh, why didn’t you ask them that? Oh, if I was interviewing them, I’d ask them this.” Well, I try to do that for you. Direct Outreach, One-Hour Limits, and Respecting Listener Time Reaching guests is direct. I reach out directly. I don’t use a service. I don’t like filling out forms. And a lot of times, it’s an email or a DM in some way, whether it’s on YouTube or Twitter or what have you. Sometimes it takes literally six or more months to get in touch with someone. Sometimes they’re busy, and sometimes they’re kind of putting you off because they don’t know who you are. I mean, if you say, “Hey, I’m Mark with Alchemy for Life,” they go, “What, what?” Those interviews are kept to about an hour. And when I say they’re kept to about an hour, there’s a number of reasons. I don’t like podcast episodes that are extra long, and I’ll get into that later. But for interviews, I promise people I will only take one hour of their valuable time. And I think it’s very valuable. And for you to sit there and just have a conversation with a stranger for an hour or more is really wonderful. And I remind them when we get to the end of the hour, and some people actually say, “Well, no, can we go longer?” The 10-Minute Format and Actionable Homework And so that leads me to the philosophy and the format. So, for those, they are one hour. My episodes in which I try to do what I do for you are kept at 10 minutes. And the reason I do that, there’s a number of reasons. One of them is I respect your time. I mean, if you’re going to listen to this, I’m not going to babble for 30 minutes instead of giving you what I could give you in 10 minutes. I think the majority of podcasts out there do the opposite, quite frankly. My format is that I research and find something or notice something, and then I present it to you to raise your awareness. So the first part of the show is raising your awareness. The second part is, “Okay, what do we do with that?” And then the third part is moving forward and kind of a homework. And people think homework’s a bad word, but it’s not. It’s sort of like something to do or think about after the show. I want every single episode to be something that you take at least one thing moving forward and go, “I’m going to think about that. I’m going to write that down. I’m going to do that.” The Check Mark App and the 3 D’s: Discover, Distill, Disseminate And speaking of actionable takeaways, the Check Mark app that I created also has the episodes in there, and it includes the homework in a really cool list to use. I don’t really know of any other podcasts out there in which they have an app that you can use as a to-do list, but also has the episodes in there that you can search. It’s kind of cool. Check it out. My philosophy in really approaching everything, which includes the show, is the 3 D’s. And there’s actually 5, I think at one time I wrote them down. But for me, it’s Discover, Distill, and Disseminate. So, I find something, I notice something. I try to research it and break it down so that it makes sense and that I’m not fibbing. And then disseminate means, you know, I show it to you. I get it out to the masses. I get it out to you so that you can see it as well, and you can go, “Oh, I didn’t realize there was this known psychological effect of doing this. I didn’t even know what the parasympathetic nervous system was. Three Voices? That’s crazy talk. What’s that?” Solo Production, Automation Distaste, and Cross-Referencing Books As far as the production of the show, it’s my massive team. And when I say my massive team, I mean me. That’s it. It’s just me. I’m the person that creates the graphics, I’m the person that records the show, sets up the clients, reaches out to the guests, posts about it, and so forth. I don’t even use automation to post. I don’t like when people use automation because I can tell right away. It’s like static. You see the same thing posted time and time again, and you’re like, “And?” Like I’m supposed to pay attention to you in this thing you posted, but you couldn’t take the time to post it? Now look, I understand when you have a lot going on, it makes sense to set up, you know, HootSuite and all that other stuff. I get it. But for me, I just post something thoughtful about each episode because I care about each episode. Each episode means something to me. I put my heart into it. Sorry, I need to back up. When we were talking about the show format and things like that, one of the things I also like to do is like integrate things. So if I mention something to you, but it’s something I’ve talked about at length in a book or touched on in a book, I mention that book as well. Like I said Three Voices before, if there’s something that is related to intuition, I’ll say, “Hey, by the way, in Three Voices , I talk about that and it’s called the first voice.” So I like to cross-reference everything in the library, and I’m your friendly neighborhood card catalog for all of my stuff. My Stance on AI in Creative Writing Okay, back to the production. So, I have some interesting thoughts on AI, and I’ve probably done four episodes on it, and I have another one that’s probably going to come out right after this one. AI has its place as sort of like a bean counter and sorting machine, but I am absolutely against AI doing anything remotely creative for me. It has never written for me, it never will. And the only thing it does, or there are two things it does for me: One, I actually have a paid subscription to a service that allows me to do AI art. And we can talk about that and argue with me about that later. But it will take literally 10, 20, 30, hundreds of iterations to get one image that I want correctly. I don’t go into ChatGPT and say, “Oh, make me an image about this, make me this flyer that makes me throw up.” Instead, I craft something over and over again to the point where I go crazy. And that’s the art I sometimes use. There’s one that turned out really well, it was a little boy who was like fascinated with wonder and creativity, and I thought that one turned out really well. The other thing is I will run by my particular AI the SEO titles for my stuff. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I tweak it, sometimes I don’t. As of this show, I have actually switched the software that I use to produce these episodes. Podcast Monetization, Sponsor Integrity, and Hey It’s Free As far as monetization, with the reach that I have and so forth, I have none. I’ve been approached a couple times about, you know, a certain pill or a certain this or that that they will pay me to talk about, but I’d also have to take it. And I’m not doing that. I’m just I’m not going to be taking any kind of drugs or medicines or herbs or whatever just to put it on the show. If you want me to say, “Hey, this is a great vacuum because, you know, I’ve noticed that and I did the research,” that’s fine. You know, please send me a vacuum. So because of that, I’d like to think I have some pretty good sponsorship integrity, which is at this time none. But I also don’t really have any support. I mean, I do have Patreon set up for this, but I have never gotten a subscribing Patreon person. I mean, I have a donation link for people, I have a Buy Me a Coffee thing. So people are always welcome to do that. You’d think after 300, or after 100 or 50, at some point I would have said, “Well, dang, this is—I don’t make money doing this.” And you’d be right, because I did. I did that many times. I had this little meeting with myself and thought, “Mark, why are you doing this?” And for me, the reason I do it is it’s sort of the outreach wing of what I do. You get to hear about my books, my thought processes, the new things I’m working on, how everything integrates together, all that stuff. And you don’t have to pay anything for it. You don’t have to even go pick up a book or do that—please pick up a book—but you don’t have to do any of that stuff. You can just simply listen to these episodes. Where to Stream, Searchable Master Archives, and Command+F And speaking of listening to the episodes, I make this available on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, and on my Alchemy for Life site. There’s an embed on there where you can look at each and every one of these, and there’s a player you could play in the browser while you’re reading the transcript or reading the articles that I write. In some cases, I write an entirely different article. And people have thought I’m crazy because I record this, and then I go back and I go, “Well, now I’m going to write that in—not a conversational voice, which is what this is, hello—but instead, I do it as an authoritative voice, which is how you write articles where you’re trying to teach something.” There’s actually two pages on the Alchemy for Life site for this podcast: One just shows all the pretty graphics that I have, and it’s in chronological order. And then there’s another page that’s just text that specifically lists every single episode. And the cool thing about that is Command+F on a Mac, Control+F on Windows, will allow you to search that page. So if there’s a name or a concept or something that you want to look for, boom, you can do that. And in the Check Mark app, it does that as well. Can you Hear ME? Seeking Real Listener Feedback and Community So let’s talk about you. Because I’m in a vacuum. How many emails, how many comments, how much feedback would you think I get? If your answer is anything other than, “Well, none,” well, you’re wrong. There’s an incredible lack of communication, and it bothers me. It’s sad, because I put a lot of work into this, and I’d love to hear how you feel about something. I’d love for you to say, “Well, Mark, I disagree with what you said in this particular episode.” And you can go into Patreon without paying anything and actually be part of communications. I envisioned having after-listener parties in which people would listen to this and then we’d get together and everyone would sort of talk about a specific podcast episode. Wouldn’t that be kind of a fun community to form? Like people who are like-minded, as they say, but people who are really open-minded and enjoy this stuff. And then I can sort of moderate and do that. I would love to do that, and I hope someday I’m able to do that. Hopefully before 400, 500, or 1,000. So if you haven’t commented, feel free. I’m open and I listen. There are a number of ways to communicate with me. You can email. Again, Patreon’s fun because that way people can see your comment and then there might be other people who say, “Yeah, you’re right.” Reviews, Ratings, Guest Appearances, and Theme Song Music Credits If you haven’t rated this podcast, I implore you, please. I mean, obviously I hope that every rating is 5 stars, but, you know, rate with your heart. And if it’s something that you got something out of, I’d love to hear about it. I have some really great—I have some great ratings, except for when I was review-bombed. And you can always see that there’s 5-star ratings from people and they have this great description, and then there’s that 1-star rating. And you’re like, “Oh, what didn’t you like? Did you just come from the dentist? What’s wrong?” And that sort of thing happened to my books, too. And, you know, it is what it is. But your voice is heard and it’s added to the whole, and it really means a lot to me. If you’re like, “Look, Mark, I’m not going to throw you any money, but I can say something kind,” by all means, do that. It means the world to me. And that’s why I do this. If this podcast got in your hands and you yourself also have a podcast and you’re looking for guests, I am open to talking about all the amazing things that I work on. The music I use for this podcast is from Audionautics—Audionautics, excuse me, I never say that right—and it is under the Creative Commons, so I’m free to use it. The theme song, however, was created by me, and it’s much longer than what you hear in the beginning. It’s got an awful lot of words and it tells the whole Alchemy story, but I don’t use it. I just use that beginning part that fires me up. Final Gratitude and Wrapping Up So, in closing, if this is the very first episode, oh my god, I apologize. I don’t normally ramble on for this long. And I know for you, you’re probably like, “Oh, well, that’s not a big deal. We just hit the 15-minute mark.” And if you’ve been with me for a long time, if you’ve been with me for more than one—this is your second episode—thank you. You’re a long-time listener. I really appreciate it. I know what it takes to listen to a podcast, which is why I don’t do hour-long or hours-long rambling about stuff. I mean, if you really want to hear that, go sit in a bar next to an old dude and ask him a bunch of questions. But I’d like to do something that gives you tangible takeaways. So I really appreciate you listening and being a listener and subscriber. It really means a lot to me. If I get to work with you sometime in the future, even cooler. But regardless of that, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is the 300+ episode. Take care of yourself. You mean a lot to me.
