When You Find Your People You Become Empowered

"When you find your people, you become empowered."

I said those words during my opening remarks at Empowered Podcasting 3, the conference I founded three years ago.

During those remarks, I thought I was sharing a lesson with the community we had brought together.

By the end of the weekend, I realized I was living that lesson too.

And in many ways, that realization had started about a week earlier at Camp Footprint.

Camp Footprint is a sleepaway camp for kids with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, directed by my life-long friend Jonah Berger. It’s a place that means a lot to me personally. Camp has always been one of those environments where people can show up as themselves, feel accepted, feel seen, and feel part of something bigger than themselves.

While I was there, I found myself paying close attention to the way Jonah leads the community.

He sets a tone.

He creates an environment where people know they can trust him. They know he cares about them. They know he understands them. And because of that, people lean in. They participate. They support each other. They allow themselves to be vulnerable, silly, brave, emotional, and fully present.

I came home from Camp Footprint thinking a lot about community.

Then, about a week later, I walked into Empowered Podcasting 3.

And I wanted to bring some of that spirit with me.

In my opening remarks, I talked about community and about what I had experienced at Camp Footprint. I shared a line that kept coming back to me:

When you find your people, you become empowered.

At the time, I was saying it to the people in the room.

By the end of the weekend, I realized I was saying it to myself too.

Setting the Tone

From the beginning of EPC3, I wanted to create a conference where people could feel connected.

I wanted the experience to feel welcoming, personal, and alive. I wanted people to feel safe enough to be themselves.

I wanted them to learn, laugh, share, ask questions, have real conversations, and leave feeling stronger than when they arrived.

And throughout Day One, people kept coming up to me and saying something I had always hoped to hear from people attending.

They kept talking about the energy.

The vibe.

How different it felt.

One person told me that Empowered Podcasting “feels like a family reunion…but we actually get along so well!”

Some compared it to other conferences they had attended. Others were attending a conference like this for the first time and told me the experience felt warmer, more welcoming, and more connected than they expected.

Then something clicked for me.

Earlier, during our first day of workshops, Jessica Schiller led a workshop about energy and fr

equency, and about how the energy we bring into our work affects everything we create.

The next morning, when I addressed the community, I called back to Jessica’s message.

I told everyone that the energy they were feeling wasn’t coming from a stage, a schedule, or a conference room.

It was coming from them.

Their openness.

Their positivity.

Their willingness to talk to someone new.

Their willingness to share.

Their willingness to show up authentically.

We had set a tone together, and then the community started amplifying it.

One person’s energy affected another person, which affected another, and suddenly the whole room felt different.

That moment helped me understand something important about leadership.

You set a tone.

You create the conditions.

And the community is what turns that tone into culture.

Community Needs More Than One Thing

EPC3 also helped me better understand what it actually takes to nurture a community.

There was an incredible amount of knowledge shared throughout the weekend.

Our speakers and workshop leaders brought ideas, strategies, experience, wisdom, and perspectives that challenged people to think differently about their podcasts, their content, their businesses, and themselves.

But some of the most meaningful moments happened nowhere near a stage.

They happened over meals.

In hallways.

During breaks.

At the bar.

At the parties.

In conversations that started casually and turned into something deeper.

I’ve come to believe that a strong community needs both.

People need places to learn together, and they need places to simply be together.

Education creates growth.

Connection creates belonging.

When you combine the two, something deeper happens.

Sure, people leave with more than just information.

But they also leave with relationships, confidence, momentum, and a sense that they aren’t doing this alone.

That’s where empowerment starts to become real.

I Showed Up Differently Too

Something else happened at EPC3 that I didn’t fully expect.

I felt incredibly free.

I allowed myself to be emotional when I felt emotional.

If something moved me while I was on stage, I didn’t try to hide it.

I allowed myself to be playful too.

At one point during a workshop, everyone in the room was quietly working on an exercise. I realized the room could use some music, but we weren’t prepared to play any.

So I joked that I could beatbox for everyone.

A few people encouraged me.

And I actually did it.

For the next 90 seconds, sitting there with a microphone, I beatboxed in front of the room the same way I used to do as a kid at camp or in social situations years ago.

It was ridiculous.

It was fun.

And it was completely me.

That small moment represents something much bigger about the weekend.

I stopped filtering myself so much.

I trusted my instincts.

And the more I allowed myself to show up as I actually am, the more connected I felt to the people around me.

Finding My Flow Again

I also experienced a level of flow that I haven’t felt in a long time.

Aside from preparing my opening remarks, I almost never worried about what I was going to say when I stepped on stage.

That alone was unusual for me.

Throughout the weekend, an idea would come to me.

Something I wanted to share.

Something I thought the community needed to hear.

A connection between two moments.

A thought about what was happening in the room.

Then I’d step on stage, pick up the microphone, and the words would come.

I wasn’t rehearsing every sentence in my head.

I wasn’t anxious about whether I would say the “right” thing.

I trusted myself.

I trusted the moment.

And I trusted the people in front of me.

I felt more in my zone of genius than I have in a very long time.

I’ve known for years that authenticity matters in leadership.

I’ve tried to be an authentic leader.

But this weekend showed me that I can go much deeper.

The more true to myself I was, the more people seemed to believe in me.

The more I trusted myself, the more they seemed willing to trust me.

I didn’t necessarily learn a brand-new lesson about leadership.

I experienced an old truth at full volume.

A Full-Circle Moment

On the final night of EPC3, during our last party and networking event, we played a slideshow of photos from the weekend.

That was very intentional.

Camp Footprint does the same thing on the last night of camp.

Everyone gathers together and watches images from the week, reliving the moments they just 

shared before saying goodbye.

I wanted to bring that tradition into EPC.

And then the full-circle moment became even more complete.

The EPC3 slideshow was made by one of the campers at Camp Footprint.

I started the weekend talking about what Camp Footprint had taught me about community.

I tried to bring that spirit into EPC3.

And on the final night, our community gathered together around a tradition directly inspired by camp, with a slideshow created by someone from that very community.

That moment hit me.

These two worlds had connected in a way I never could have planned perfectly.

Something Bigger Is Becoming Clear

For more than 20 years, a huge part of my work has been helping people start, grow, improve, and understand podcasts.

I still care deeply about that.

But Empowered Podcasting clarified something for me.

Podcasting is only one part of how I want to serve people.

I want to build communities.

I want to create spaces where people feel seen, connected, supported, challenged, and empowered.

And I want to help other people learn how to do the same.

I want to help people understand how to set a tone.

How to create belonging.

How to bring learning and connection together.

How to lead authentically.

How to build something people actually feel part of.

That realization feels important to me because EPC3 showed me what happens when all of those things come together.

The education matters.

The networking matters.

The social experiences matter.

The leadership matters.

The energy matters.

The people matter most.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I found something in myself too.

I found more freedom.

More trust.

More flow.

More clarity.

And maybe most importantly, I found an even deeper understanding of a line I had spoken at the very beginning of the weekend:

When you find your people, you become empowered.

I believe that more now than I did when I first said it.

And I’m starting to realize that helping people find their people, and helping others build spaces where that can happen, may be some of the most meaningful work I can do next.

Check out my opening remarks here: youtube.com/watch?v=Ugjbro8H3fI

Shout out to the team that helped bring this all to life...

My business partners, Jason Cercone and Rich Perry.

Our operations manager, Andrea San Roman and my production manager, Amelia Old.

And of course, my wife Amy Ronick, my rock and my soulmate.