We Doubled Our Audience And Chose Honesty Over Silence | Ep 355

Nov 29

Milestones feel different when they’re earned through setbacks, not shortcuts. Our latest month set a new record for listeners and viewers, nearly doubling our reach and welcoming new audiences from Colombia to New Zealand, from Nigeria to Japan. The surge matters to us not just as a metric but as proof that honest conversations about mental health, recovery, and resilience meet a real need. We refuse to dance around painful topics. We meet them head-on with care, faith, and respect for the complexity of being human, because that’s where change actually begins and where community becomes more than a buzzword.

That commitment was tested by a stubborn technical failure on episode 353. The video didn’t transfer from Zoom, though the audio survived. Instead of pretending nothing happened, we recorded episode 354 to recap key moments and show exactly how to find Olympian figure skater Nicole Bobek’s memoir on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It seems small, but clarity matters: Kindle and paperback on Amazon, hardcover at Barnes & Noble, and an audiobook on the horizon. When tools break, purpose can still carry the day. We’re not immune to glitches, but we won’t let them block access to stories that help people feel seen.

Growth brought a wave of gratitude and a deeper sense of responsibility. We’ve always said Voices for Voices is global, but seeing new listeners across South Korea, India, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, and Uruguay crystallized our mission: elevate difficult truths with empathy, practical hope, and cultural humility. We thanked every country and reminded ourselves that analytics only tell part of the story. Private servers, privacy settings, and word-of-mouth mean the real impact is larger—and more personal—than any dashboard can show. Our north star remains the same: help at least three billion people over my lifetime and beyond, one honest conversation at a time.

Honesty also means speaking about sobriety. I spent years numbing fear, shame, and pressure with alcohol—never a middle gear, only off or all the way on. Since 2017, staying sober has been the hardest, most liberating work of my life. It’s not a victory lap; it’s daily practice. Therapy, humility, and a willingness to choose life over denial made space for learning to live as my real self. Recovery is not a straight line, and neither is mental health. But courage grows when we trade perfection for presence and replace self-judgment with service. That’s the ground we stand on when the lights come on and the mic goes live.

There’s a gap between how we look and how we feel. People tell me I don’t “look” excited. Maybe my face doesn’t show it; maybe frustration sometimes wins. But joy sits in the work itself: building episodes, inviting guests with raw stories, and hearing from listeners who found a lifeline. We talked about the Industrial Revolution’s obsession with efficiency and how that mindset seeps into our lives—do more with less—until our spirits fracture. The antidote is not to grind harder; it’s to choose meaning, gratitude, and connection. The Mariah Carey song Hero captured it: the hero is within. Validation is welcome, but purpose is non-negotiable.

So we celebrate real wins and own real flaws. We ask you to subscribe, share, and invite someone who needs a steady voice on a wobbly day. We hold space for faith and for doubt, for art and spoken word, for music and silence, for laughter and tears. If this record month proves anything, it’s that truth travels. And if one person steps back from the ledge because of something they heard here, the work is worth every glitch, every late night, every imperfect sentence. We’ll keep showing up with compassion and courage, ready to learn, ready to listen, and ready to serve.

Please smash that subscribe button, give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, share, comment

Chapter Markers

0:02 Gratitude And Milestone Announcements

2:30 Owning Hard Stories And Purpose

4:58 Episode 353 Glitch And 354 Recap

8:20 Finding Nicole Bobek’s Book

10:15 Record Analytics And Global Reach

12:20 New Countries Welcomed

14:40 Faith, Unity, And Shared Humanity

17:10 Efficiency, Perfectionism, And Being Human

21:45 Sobriety Journey And Hard Choices

26:05 Showing Emotion Versus Feeling It

30:20 Turning Setbacks Into Service

34:40 The Hero Within And Self-Validation

41:30 Thanks, Subscribe, And Future Vision

#AudienceGrowth #HonestyMatters #ContentCreation #EngagementStrategy #ViralMarketing #TransparencyInMedia #AuthenticContent #SocialMediaSuccess #CommunityBuilding #DoubleTheViews #TruthOverSilence #BrandIntegrity #VideoMarketingTips #InfluencerJourney #BuildingTrustOnline #justiceforsurvivors #justice4survivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #Jesusaire #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether #VoicesForVoices355

We Doubled Our Audience And Chose Honesty Over Silence | Ep 355

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