When did The Fearless Mindset podcast start?
It was the first year of COVID. A friend’s son-in-law was a podcast producer. We met up in LA, and he asked, “What are you going to do now that you can’t go anywhere because of COVID? How are you going to tell people who you are? Have you thought about podcasting?” My answer was, “What is that?”
I never listened to podcasts.
He suggested thinking about all the contacts I’ve made in the last 15 years in executive protection, people that know me, people that I’ve worked with, ones who would probably want to come on the show to tell their story. I thought that would likely create immediate credibility around who I am as a person, what my brand is, and how I run and build my business.
These professionals, believe it or not, will plant seeds in the listener’s mind that they may want to reach out to you for support services when things open up. So I thought, “I am in.”
During the course of that first year, I was just recording and recording, trying to figure out my identity in the podcasting industry. You don’t go to school for it. I went to school to become a law enforcement officer.
My first guest was Mike Trott, one of the co-founders of Four Branches Bourbon. We had worked together on a couple of details, so we knew each other pretty well. He was willing to be a guest on the show to help a fellow veteran launch into the podcast realm. He was so humble and so gracious. The guy was protecting the director of the CIA in his day.
The first podcast guest made a true difference. I don’t think it would have had the success or the credibility that it has now without Mike kicking things off. Once all of Trott’s friends saw that he was the guest on The Fearless Mindset, it was a domino effect.
How do you make your guests open up and speak about their work and their experience?
I think it’s an easy answer. They trust me.
I’m not that douchey guy in the industry, acting like a clown. They trust that I’m not going to be rude, too nosy, or be a slime ball and ask a “gotcha” question. Because I’ve been in the industry, I have an idea of what is not appropriate to share on a podcast, so I just don’t go there.
We can talk about general terms, but not specific terms, for example, I’d never ask, “Who did you protect? What was the name of the principal or the client?”
Because I’ve worked in the industry, I know the cardinal rules of what not to ask and what’s appropriate to ask. Fifteen years of being in the business with OPSEC in EP is a real deal. I’m an EP guy with a podcast, not a podcaster trying to be an EP influencer. It hits different.
Are your guests not afraid that participating in the podcast will affect their careers negatively?
No. I think the way they look at podcasts now in this new era we’re in, it’s marketing. We’ve created a massively huge platform, so the people who ask to be on the podcast know their persona is going to be elevated overnight by coming on the show.
What does the audience want to hear? Which episodes perform better than others?
Mike Trott. Why? What people immediately do in the podcast world is go back to episode one to catch up. So the first person has the most listeners because the listener who just listened to episode 12 wants to know what the first episode was like. People who research me will say, “Oh, I heard you talk with Mike Trott. Very interesting podcast.” So everybody naturally goes to the first one.
I think that’s the key. Launching a show, you need to have a big name on the show that has credibility, respect in the industry, and not somebody that’s negative. I am focusing on keeping The Fearless Mindset podcast positive and uplifting. In the end, the guest helps build the power of the show, and the show helps build them up even bigger.
What channels do you use other than YouTube?
We’re on Facebook. Facebook is different. It’s hard. Instagram is also a different demographic. Then, LinkedIn’s a different demographic from Instagram. All the platforms are totally different.
You have to have somebody on the back end who knows how to master and publish the different posts from your podcast releases on these different platforms to reach the audience. It’s a science. It’s very technical.
Back in the day, we just had Google. Now we have Google AI, and so to get ranked, you have to be in Google AI or whatever AI platform you’re using. Otherwise, nobody’s going to find you, unless you’re using AI.
Since much of YouTube and social media is run by bots, how does that affect your day-to-day podcasting operations?
I have to be mindful that AI screens most of the podcast content now, especially on YouTube. Because of that, I purposely stay apolitical, nonspiritual, all that. You have to, otherwise they’re not going to let it run. It’s just how it is. And AI does most of the odd things now. Back in the day, you had engineers working on YouTube; now it’s all AI doing the ranking.
How did this podcast help you? Your brand, your name, your persona, your identity?
It changed my profile within a year. You show up to a conference, and everybody says, “Hey, love your podcast.” Total strangers come up to introduce themselves. They know you. We have almost 200,000 subscribers on YouTube globally. My team says everybody knows the podcast.
What is your purpose?
It is truly to educate the industry, to edify each other, and to help each other out. I have no motivation to get popular off of it. It’s just to inspire, motivate, and lift the industry, lift others around me. We do that through the power of storytelling.
You have a podcast guest who went through something, and a listener is going through some depression and hears that one podcast guest talk about their story and how they overcame adversity, how they overcame the fear in their life, maybe public speaking or getting rejected for a job. On the podcast, the guests often explain their failures and how they overcame them, and the listeners go, “Oh, I can do that too.” Because we’re all human. I think a lot of people forget that.
How hard was it for you to grow and keep up with your following? Was it difficult, or did it just come organically?
Organically. But I’m competitive, being a Marine, and I’d always call the one on my team who leads our marketing, Chris Decker. Chris is the host of the Mission Ready: Bridging the Final Mile podcast and has been invaluable to me. He knows I’m going to call after every episode and ask: “What’s our listenership? What are our downloads? What are our subscription numbers? One month would be 1000, next month would be 2000. Then, it dropped down to 500. What I learned is just to be your true self. Just be who you are, and the right people will listen.”
Who are your listeners and why do you think they follow the podcast?
The American listeners, especially over here, don’t trust what they’re being told by the media. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. That’s why podcasting has exploded because people just want to hear about other people’s journeys, because in reality, our lives are really boring.
Just think, everybody lives their lives, they do their thing. But I think in our sixth sense, we’re just wondering how much more interesting that podcast was than my life. That’s why they listen. They’re bored at work, they’re on a drive, they’re working out, they’re doing their 35-minute cardio, going down the trail, they put the ear pods in, and they just want to hear somebody else’s conversation. Because we’re all human beings. And the biggest need human beings have is the need to connect with others, to forge an emotional connection.
Is it hard to keep your audience?
I think what’s happened in our society, we’ve been programmed by Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We have a very short attention span in our brains, maybe 5 seconds. Because we’re doing this all day long. We’re swiping.
It’s an attention-driven economy we’re in now, and now we have podcasts and YouTube. If you get bored, you move on to the next thing that’s intriguing. That’s why there are so many hooks on YouTube and all the shorts now—everything is driven by shorts.
You’d better come up with something good, because the person watching is going to move on.
That’s why now I’m not so hung up on who my listeners are, or how many listeners I have. I’m not controlled by sponsors, so I can keep it authentic.
What are the biggest takeaways from podcasting?
What I’ve learned in the whole podcast world is not to fear others’ opinions. Don’t let a guy’s opinion control you. Don’t let detractors take space in your brain.
My perspective is that I live each day like it could be my last. I think as a society in America, we’re so consumed and concerned about what others are doing and what others think. Enjoy the life that you’re given and live it to its fullest.
What are the possibilities for me to continue this podcast for a few years, and all of a sudden, it changes my life? Pretty high.
The problem with most podcasters, they quit in their first month or two. They get 5 listeners, 10 listeners. I think if you get secure within yourself and you just keep on doing it, keep on showing up to practice as the athletes do, you’ll continue to grow. You know, just like how football players keep showing up to practice and putting in the work. It’s that 10,000 hours thing.
It will start becoming easier because you’re using that muscle over and over again. I think repetition builds strength, builds confidence, builds courage, builds boldness. Eventually, it’ll be like a second-nature conversation. But that took about a year.
My main occupation is still with my company. We just rebranded the website to better tell the audience and the industry what we’re doing, what we’re offering. We’re not just an executive protection company, like a lot of people thought we were. Now, we’re more in the enterprise risk advisory service line as well. We’re constantly doing risk assessments and threat investigations for new clients.
That surged 100% this last year. Believe it or not, most of our growth is organic growth, maybe also thanks to the Fearless Mindset Podcast. We really don’t get much from LinkedIn. It’s word-of-mouth referrals, doing a good job for one client.
Have you ever thought about outsourcing your podcast and hiring somebody who can also help you out with it, or do you always want to be the one who does it?
That’s a good idea. Maybe down the road, I’ve thought about building a big studio in Dallas, but I’ve also thought about hiring a chief of staff to help me run guests and all that to scale it. That’s always a possibility.
What I’ve learned is you can never say no, because you won’t always get a second opportunity.
But as I get busier, I run my company and the Fearless Mindset Podcast, and yet here’s only so much time in a day.
The way I look at it is, if I can be the face of the podcast and it helps us get business, game on. I just want to put veterans to work and retired law enforcement to work. Give them purpose again. That was the main purpose of everything: to give people purpose in life, especially our veterans. They have a high suicide rate. So do law enforcement officers.
Once you give somebody a purpose, they get up in the morning, they go to work. They’re working, they’re functioning, doing something for a reason.
Have you had any offers to sell the brand?
I had a few people offer to buy me out. They saw the threat, or more than that, they saw the opportunity. But once you are taking money from sponsors, for example, people can start to influence what you say as a narrative on your platform. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be me, and I wanted the opinions of my guests to be their own opinions on the show.
They can say whatever they want without getting a call from a sponsor saying, “Hey, we heard so-and-so say such-and-such. Can you edit that out, please?” I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted it to be neutral and authentic so people can learn from different perspectives.
How difficult was it for you to show off your face, to embrace being a public person?
When I first started it, I was sweating every episode; I was so stressed. It was probably equivalent to going back to military boot camp all over again, because each time you’re going through a new experience, you’re going through a new challenge.
I relate it very much to my time in the Marines, adjusting. For me, it took me about six months to adjust, and they’re like, “Oh, that is not that big of a deal.” But having the camera looking at you, and then you’re always second-guessing yourself on what you should say, that was probably the biggest hindrance.
Do you have any plans for the future of your podcast, and how do you see the podcast in a few years?
It has really kind of transformed and morphed into something we did at a client appreciation night in New Orleans. It was an offshoot of the podcast. We call it the Fearless Mindset Mixer. And we did it in Dallas during GSX. We’ve done several mixers under the podcast brand.
We had over 200 people attend the one in Dallas. That was a lot of fun. We had a film crew in Dallas where we recorded the agents’ training in a car at the chauffeur driving course. They did personal interviews and testimonials of what they thought. So they got screen time and credit.
That was our first film as a Fearless Mindset Production. We’re going to probably do more of that from a training aspect to highlight the agents as they grow and mature in the industry.
Do you have any advice for people who would love to start something?
Yeah, I would say just think like Nike: Just do it.
I think the biggest thing lacking in our culture is self-motivation. There are so many distractions that we have in our face, 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day, whether we are working or not, we have a lot of apps on our phones. We’re always distracted. We’re always seeing other people doing other things.
I think the key thing is putting that phone down. Put a whiteboard up, get a pen, eraser, and start dream building.
What do you want to be in one year? What do you want to be in two years? What do you want to be in five years? But figure out what your why is first.
What is your why?
What type of life do you want to live? What kind of house do you want to own? Where do you want to travel? Write that all out on the whiteboard. What vehicle is going to get you to that goal, and why? Is it executive protection? Is it starting your own business? Is it starting a podcast? But the first thing you have to ask yourself in the mirror is, who are you? How do you want to live? And why do you do the things you do?
Once you get those questions answered, start brainstorming on that whiteboard on how to get there.
Mark Ledlow is a former Marine turned podcaster, producer, and CEO. Collectively, Mark has impacted the mindsets of over 1 million people through his public speaking, podcasting, and media commentary.
Mark Ledlow’s career is defined by an uncommon willingness to step into difficult environments and figure things out — a trait forged early, from battling wildfires in Oregon to serving eight years in the United States Marine Corps, where he was honorably discharged in the weeks following 9/11.
The Fearless Mindset Podcast has now reached over 1.4 million viewers and has become a platform for talk on leadership, transition, and what it means to keep operating after you take the uniform off.
