250,000 Subscribers Later, Here’s What I’ve Learned

This week, The Covert Code Podcast reached 250,000 subscribers, and I have to admit, this one feels pretty special.

I spend a lot of my professional life thinking about growth. I build marketing strategies, look at analytics, study audiences and talk with clients about how seemingly small actions compound over time. But it is very different when you suddenly look at something you created and realize that a quarter of a million people have chosen to be part of it.

I am incredibly proud of the number, but I think I am even more proud of how we got here.

There was no one magic episode. There was not a single viral moment that created The Covert Code. It has been hundreds of conversations, ideas, edits, interviews, emails, graphics, questions and Aloha Fridays. It has been guests trusting me with their stories and an audience willing to come back week after week to hear them.

And somewhere along the way, something that began as another way for me to talk about digital marketing became one of my favorite things I do.

I Started the Podcast Because I Had More Questions

If you have ever listened to me speak, worked with me or spent more than about ten minutes in a room with me, you probably know I ask a lot of questions. I genuinely love understanding how things work, why people make the decisions they make and what is coming around the corner.

That curiosity was a big part of why I wrote The Covert Code in the first place, and the podcast gave me a way to take those ideas much further. Instead of only sharing my perspective, I could sit down with someone who had spent years mastering something and simply ask them what they had learned.

That has taken me into conversations I never could have predicted. We have discussed AI, entrepreneurship, business growth, personal development, energy, publishing, leadership, customer experience, technology and everything in between. Through my podcast work, I have had access to people whose experiences are completely different from mine, and that has made me better at what I do.

The podcast has become my classroom, and I get a new teacher almost every week.

One of the Biggest Lessons Has Been to Actually Listen

I always prepare for interviews. I research the guest, their company, their books and what they have been working on. I usually have more questions prepared than I could possibly fit into one episode. But some of the best conversations have happened when I stopped worrying about the next question and listened carefully to the answer in front of me.

You can hear when someone says something that matters to them. There is a shift in the conversation, and if you are paying attention, that is usually where you want to go next.

It sounds simple, but I think it is just as applicable in business and leadership as it is in podcasting. We spend a lot of time preparing what we are going to say. Sometimes the bigger opportunity is hearing what the other person is actually telling us.

250,000 Also Reinforced Something I Believe About Authority

I have spent a lot of this year thinking about the idea of authority, including through my Authority as a Growth Strategy series with Forbes Books. We are living in a time when almost anyone can publish content, build a platform and call themselves an expert. At the same time, consumers have more tools than ever to research people before they decide whether to trust them.

That makes authority incredibly valuable, but it also means authority has to be earned.

I do not think real authority comes from putting “thought leader” in a bio. It comes from the body of work behind the bio. It comes from showing up, sharing what you know, admitting what you do not know, surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you in different areas and being willing to keep learning publicly.

That is one of the reasons I love long-form conversations. People get to hear how someone thinks. They get context. They get nuance. And hopefully they walk away knowing something they did not know before.

When I look at 250,000 subscribers, I see the result of building that body of work one conversation at a time.

There Are a Lot of People Behind a Number Like This

One of the strange things about digital platforms is that they compress enormous groups of people into a number. You see “250K,” but you do not see the individual person watching an episode on their phone, the business owner sending a clip to a colleague, the author sharing their interview with their community or the subscriber who has been watching every Friday for months.

That is what I try to remember when I look at this milestone.

There are real people on the other side of that number.

To every guest who has trusted me to interview them, thank you. You are the heart of the show. To my team, who helps turn a conversation into all of the pieces everyone sees each week, thank you. And to every person who has subscribed, watched, listened, commented or shared an episode, thank you for giving us your time. I never take that lightly.

It Is Also a Reminder That Consistency Is Powerful

In marketing, we love the big launch, the big idea and the exciting new campaign. But most meaningful growth is much less glamorous. It comes from doing something well and then doing it again.

When The Covert Code celebrated its first year, I wrote about that early journey and what the show had already become. You can read that one-year reflection here. Looking at where we are now makes that post even more meaningful to me because it is a snapshot of an earlier chapter.

That is another reason I am writing this one now. I want to remember what 250,000 felt like before we get busy chasing whatever comes next.

And Yes, I’m Already Thinking About What Comes Next

I am going to celebrate this. Anyone who knows me knows I am also probably going to start working on the next thing almost immediately afterward.

There are still so many conversations I want to have. Technology is changing at an unbelievable pace. AI is forcing businesses to rethink how they operate and communicate. Renewable energy and the infrastructure needed to power our future are becoming inseparable from the technology conversation. Leadership is changing. Media is changing. Search is changing. The way we establish credibility is changing.

Basically, I am not running out of podcast questions anytime soon.

If you are new to my work, you can learn a little more about me here, explore my latest podcast conversations, or dive into the Forbes Books Authority as a Growth Strategy series.

For everyone who has already been part of this journey, thank you. Seriously. Watching The Covert Code grow to 250,000 subscribers is a moment I will remember for a very long time.

Here is to the next conversation, the next idea and the next person I get to learn from.

See you in the pixels.

Aloha,
Anna