Today we are celebrating the 500 episode of the podcast.

That's coming up on this episode, 500 of 7th to W.DabReptical Retalk Strategy and Ideas and have lots and lots of trip reports.

I am your host, Shannon Albert from wDW Prep School.com.

And today is a different kind of episode.

It is the 500th one. You've heard me over the last several months balking at the number. Like, what do you mean? We're at 486, a 491 because I just

felt like, oh, we're creeping close to that number. And I'm not super great milestones. I'm

super great at like stopping to acknowledge, you know,

whatever that has happened over the last several years, but 500, but like one worth celebrating.

And so I wanted to take the time to do that today, a little break from trip reports,

although the feedback on the trip reports is always good. The most recent ones have been especially good.

And we'll get right back to that soon.

But it seems like a good time to stop and just talk about how it all began.

I think there's probably a lot of stuff that people don't know from the beginning.

And we're going to talk through that today.

And then you will know. And we can then move on to the normal regularly scheduled episodes but today is is a good one so this

podcast started back in August of 2013, August 18th, 2013 specifically. The website had started

in May of 2012. I quit my full-time job in around that time May of 2013. So about a year

after I started the site, I quit my job to do it full-time. I wasn't making anywhere close to my previous corporate salary, but it was gaining a lot of traction. And so I thought,

okay, if I quit my full-time job, then it'll give me time to do other things. And that included

launching a podcast. So that's why the timing worked out the way that it did. My original intent for starting the podcast

was just because I love podcasts. And I think that that can be enough sometimes because you know what

you like, you know what works, et cetera. And so you can kind of dive in. My background is as a programmer.

...