How Can One Person Make a Difference in the World? For Edmonton: One Email

Tony Mantor is a Nashville producer, and he hosts a podcast called Why Not Me. He joined Melissa and me on Finally Friday on 25 September, and partway through the show he told us about an email.

Tony never planned to start a podcast. He told us, “I knew nothing about podcasting,” so he Googled how to do it and put it out there.

There were many times, he said, when he wondered whether it would ever work, and he’d ask himself, “Are people listening? Am I making a difference?”

Get #dealwithit

Then a woman in Bulgaria wrote to him. She has an autistic son, and she had moved to other countries more than once and kept ending up back in Bulgaria.

As Tony told it, she wrote, “I found that Belgium is an autism-friendly country.” The email went on: “So my son, myself, and my niece left our family in Bulgaria. We moved to Belgium, and your podcast gave us the courage to do it.”

Tony’s own comment on it was short: “It’s just one.”

Putting it out there anyway

He went straight from that email to anyone trying to get a podcast going, whatever it’s about. “You just gotta take and put it out there and keep doing it,” he said.

A few minutes later Melissa said that several painters from her very first painting class gave up and don’t paint anymore. Near the end of the show Tony came back to his point another way: “So you don’t have to change the world all at one time. You just gotta have that one thing that helps somebody.”

You can find Tony and both of his podcasts, Why Not Me and Almost Live Nashville, on Tony’s website.

You might find my book #dealwithit: Duct Tape for the Soul useful.

Get #dealwithit

This is for personal reflection, not medical or crisis advice.