Meet The Action Catalyst Podcast | Leadership and Entrepreneurship Podcast, Top Rated by Inc, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and more

We had the good fortune of connecting with The Action Catalyst Podcast and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi The Action Catalyst, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
Well, our parent company, the Southwestern Family of Companies, was founded in 1855. So, one big way we’ve been able to grow is by ignoring current trends in favor of what feels timeless, what feels right. That’s one benefit of being part of a company that’s 170 years old, is that you can sort of learn to transcend whatever the fad is right now, whatever’s flashy at the moment. So we want to make a podcast episode, every time, that will still be just as listenable in ten years as it was the day it was released, and hopefully just as informative as well.

Another thing is that we don’t assume our audience is all homogenous, all the same, or that we are reaching them all in the same place. Most US-based podcasts only worry about their US-based listeners. We have a global audience that we make sure to meet where they’re at. In the US, most podcasts listeners listen on smartphones, and specifically on Apple devices. But guess what? Not everyone’s an Apple user. Any much of the developing world still listens to podcasts and still wants access to content, but they use feature phones and flip phones. So we intentionally expanded our distribution onto apps and websites that can match that global audience as well.

And a third thing I think has been really vital is just controlling your controllables. Knowing what to try to change and what to just accept. That’s critical for ANYONE. Tech meltdowns happen. Pandemics happen. We had a very very well-known guest lined up recently who was joining us from Maui, but before we were able to record, his business was lost in the wildfires there, and so our podcast had to be shelved. But you can’t focus on the things like that outside of your control.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The Action Catalyst is the flagship business and motivational podcast of Southwestern Family of Companies, which is one of the largest and oldest private companies in the country. They were established in 1855, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, and really still operate according to the same values and principles they were founded on over a century ago. For a company of that age to be such an early adopter of podcasting is really sort of unusual, but it just shows you how forward thinking and progressive they are in the way they do business and think about how to best serve their customers, and even thousands of people who will never necessarily do business with them.

The Action Catalyst was originally launched in 2013 as a way to promote some of the top-tier talent within the family of companies, but quite quickly grew into something totally different, which was a way to become a real thought-leader in the sort of areas that had served Southwestern so well for over 100 years. Areas like leadership, entrepreneurship, personal growth and success. These were always the backbone of Southwestern’s longevity, so why not try to bring some of that to people outside of the company, and find guests who aligned with those values, and had interesting and unique stories of their own to share.

And that’s exactly what the program has done, and the need that it is filling. It has recently relaunched in a new, more streamlined, faster-paced format, with a different mix of hosts, and a more diverse selection of higher profile guests, as well as more bonus episodes and additional content, and it really is a whole different animal than it used to be. So if you used to listen before, but got burnt out and haven’t checked in for a while, give us another try now. And if you haven’t heard us before, now is the best time to jump in.

Guests have included everyone from Grammy winners to Olympians, current Senators and governors and CIA agents, Navy SEALs, hugely successful CEOs and entrepreneurs and more, and that’s just in the past year. Big names you’d know like Dave Ramsey, Stedman Graham, Scott Hamilton, Chip Gaines, Dean Koontz, Adam Grant, Joan Lunden, Stephen M.R. Covey and more. And there’s still a whole other 9 years of material to dig into on top of that.

We’ve also been blessed to have been featured on a dozen Top Podcast list from the likes of Entrepreneur and Inc magazines, Business Insider, and others, and we don’t take those honors lightly. It’s our goal to constantly prove to the audience why we deserve a place on those lists, and we think we’ve got some exciting new ideas in the pipeline that are going to do just that.

But a lot of what’s allowed us to be resilient is remaining agile, and the fact that we’ve never made a host, or a guest, the focus of our podcast. The focus has ALWAYS been on the listener. And so since 2013, we’ve had host changes 3 or 4 times, which for a lot of shows would be a huge hurdle to overcome. But for The Action Catalyst, the emphasis is always on extracting the most information, the most knowledge out of a conversation for the listener, and the host is just whoever is best suited to do that for a given period of time. They’re always highly credentialed, well-respected people in that role, but the show is never centered around them any further than their ability goes to serve the listener. So, I think we’ve stayed resilient by always making the person at the other end of the speakers our real guiding star, and by doing so, its allowed us to change and to adapt, but still maintain what makes us……us.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well, we are headquartered in Nashville, so I think obviously there’s a ton of great music, and a ton of great food as the city continues to become a real mecca for foodies. But we’re going to be a little bit biased here and say that a standout attraction would be a tour of our headquarters at 2451 Atrium Way. Everyone is always welcome.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We owe a HUGE shoutout to Dan Moore, our host from July 2018 to July 2023, who really ushered the show into its current era. Prior to that, the podcast was really based more around the original host and that person in specific, and wasn’t as much of a tool for spreading knowledge that all listeners could benefit from. Dan really changed that, bringing in a totally different mindset, a more formalized interview style, and a studiousness and professionalism that just couldn’t be matched. Dan went to Harvard after all, and it shows!

We’ve also got to give a big shoutout to Chip Gaines, maybe one of our most famous guests, who was just incredibly generous with his time when joining us and helping us promote the show, and was just a REALLY nice guy. His episode definitely helped open the show up to a whole new audience.

Website: https://theactioncatalyst.com/

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheActionCatalyst

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