When You Found Your Niche, Timing Is Everything

When You Found Your Niche, Timing Is Everything

Hey Hormuz’ies! Time for my monthly checkin, where I send updates to the entire Strait Talk community about the podcast and what to expect in the coming weeks. This is a big one…. so here we go!

First of all, wow. I mean, just wow. When I started this podcast five years ago, the people in my life who I trust most all unanimously told me it was an awful idea. “Who wants a weekly show about the Strait of Hormuz?” they asked. “I don’t know where it is, I don’t know why it’s important, and frankly I don’t care to learn. You should be tending to your family, they miss you.”

Well, now who’s the selfish moron? After five full years of podcasting into the abyss– and two additional years of a YouTube show that also failed to monetize interest in the Strait– my subscription numbers went through the (mothafuckin’) roof. 

As you may have noticed, the Strait was all anybody wanted to talk about last month. We even had on Anne Hathaway to talk all things Hormuz (and promote Devil Wears Prada 2, in theaters now!). Sponsors started calling me back, I began chipping away at the massive credit card debt it took to get me here, and I sold out NYU’s Skirball Center for our very first live podcast recording. Truly, a dream come true.

The last few weeks have been a bit more challenging.

Our largest sponsor pulled out, citing that godfosaken ceasefire, and Anne Hathaway threatened me with a restraining order (unrelated to Devil Wears Prada 2, still in theaters!) if I didn’t stop mailing Strait Talk merch to her home address.

And that’s not the worst of it. In my blind enthusiasm for all the attention the show was getting, I stupidly took the credit card company’s special offer of “double or nothing.” I don’t understand how it’s even legal in the first place, but failing to pay off the full debt, I now owe them… Triple. Yup, triple. Apparently, it’s in the fine print.

But I have not lost any hope. Not a shred. If I’ve learned one thing from the roller coaster of the last seven weeks, it’s been that the difference between failure and success is narrow, but we are in control of what gets through. And although it may seem closed for the timebeing, we’re just one productive conversation away from everything opening up.

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Michael Weber is a writer who provides New York Times journalists with first-hand accounts of whatever it is they need a first-hand account of. If you received this email, you signed up for his newsletter at some point. If you'd like to unsubscribe, you must first find somebody else to replace you. Share a link to subscribe!