🎙 Do you miss podcasting? Part Three
🏊🏻♀️ This is Like That, Revisited
Catch up on part one and part two here first:
Where we left off . . .
Swimming makes me nervous. It’s something I am still warming up to (especially when the pool is freezing, har har). The narrow solo lane at the gym is a gift, since the rest of the pool is a free-for-all with classes and/or multiple people sharing lap lanes.
On a recent visit, my favorite solo spot was fully booked. One lane had one opening, with two guys already splitting. Pool etiquette: with two people, you split down the middle; with three, you circle.
I’ll chance it, I figured. I was proud of myself for swimming almost every day these last five months. I could feel my technique improving, growing my lung capacity and my confidence. So it shouldn’t be a problem to share.
How hard could it be to swim in a circle with these two guys? I can surely keep up.
Moments after entering the pool, I realized I was in over my head. By the time I started my first lap, one of the guys was already quick on my heels. At the end of the length, I paused and let him pass.
By the time I started my return, the other swimmer was fast approaching in my peripheral vision. Even when he wasn’t, I began growing anxious and paranoid that I was slowing one or both of them down, so I started swimming faster than usual, feeling uncomfortably out of breath. This increased speed and the resulting struggle to keep up wasn’t motivating; it was triggering.
Each time I swam one pool length, I paused to hug the corner of the lane, staying as far out of their way as I could, while the two guys flipped and continued on in quick succession. As soon as both passed me, I started again, soon to be surpassed (again).
My entire twenty-minute swim went this way, completely breaking my usual flow. Some might thrive in the face of such competition; I wilt.
While my podcasts were successful in many life-giving ways beyond quantification, there is no way to sugarcoat the financial reality: I failed at going pro.
And that’s okay! It was a long-shot delulu dream to begin with.
I gave it my best shot by producing fourteen episodes a month for two years, trying to increase downloads to get agency representation and yield ad revenue that could make the shows profitable. Although I could have ditched this strategy and returned to categorizing the podcasts as a marketing expense for other products and services, as many indie shows do, that wasn’t my goal at this juncture.
I came, I saw, and I conquered—in my own small way. I did the best that I could.
I am grateful beyond words for every single listener who took a moment to email, text, review the shows, or otherwise share what an episode meant to them. These notes fill my tank and fuel every next creative effort.
While I have missed the deep conversations, collaboration with the production team, and conviviality in making so many new friends, I don’t miss being out of breath, hiding in the corners of the pool while others lap me, realizing that I just don’t have what it takes to grow the shows the way that I would want to, and/or the money to spend on advertising, and/or the skill to stand out in such a crowded field.
It is a relief to admit this—and to give myself the permission to regroup. That’s the closing question of every episode, after all: If you could give fellow small business owners to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?1
Nine months after hitting pause on nine years of podcasting, I still feel certain that it is time to move on, even though I still don’t know what will fill the time-and-purpose vacuum the shows leave behind (other than, right now, daily visits to the gym).
If I was still podcasting, stacking my calendar with interviews and solo recording sessions, there is no way I could prioritize my health the way I have this year. Pausing has allowed me the space—err, free time—to rebuild neural pathways for a daily routine that energizes and restores me.
I am grateful to report that after sounding alarm bells in the spring, my health is mostly back on track:
Bob the Neck Throb and the resulting Bell’s Palsy are long gone;
I started taking dance classes again for the first time in over a decade;
I’ve lost over thirty pandemic-marriage-puppy pounds and fit my clothes again;
I’m not sitting nearly as much, so my lower back nerve pain has lessened;
For the first time in my life, I learned how soothing regular sauna and steam room visits can be;
My COVID-induced asthma has calmed significantly (and stopping the steroid inhaler has, ironically for stopping podcasting, brought my vocal cords back);
And finally, perhaps most importantly, after exercising I harness those much-needed endorphins for boosting energy and brightening my mood—much-needed resources for steering through the ongoing uncertainty ahead.
Although bittersweet, pausing the podcasts has been a worthwhile price to pay to make all of that possible.2
❤️
P.S. Is it possible I set myself up for failure from the start? Continue reading the postscript . . .
I loved this three-parter and the image of you swimming had me veering between anxiety at the thought of it and belly laughing. I’m impressed and scared that you managed to stay in there the entire thirty minutes!
Like me, you’ve been a prolific creator. I wonder if there is something in what you’ve already created that can be transformed, repurposed, given a new vehicle. I think all the reasons you gave about how you got into making 14 episodes a month (to scale to what would make you a viable and attractive option for ad agencies) are the same reasons I opted out of trying to grow for that purpose. Having known a few people who’ve done it, including a now-retired big name podcast, it leads to burnout and saps the joy out of the thing you initially enjoyed as you have to keep doing more more more to feed the ads. And in realising my podcast would have a decent amount of downloads (just shy of 5 mil at the moment) but would not hit the big time (whatever that means) or make its money from advertising, I gradually tapered my expectations and had to keep checking in with myself.
After all, we often start out on a creative endeavour with an express purpose and intention and somewhere along the way, it gets lost in the process and the keeping up, or our priorities, purpose and intention change but we’re too busy to see it. So we have to keep checking in.
You’re so brilliant, and there is so much wisdom and gifts contained in what you’ve already made and your vulnerability and willingness to let us in on what’s really going on.
What about a series of smallish books (or ebooks) derived from editing many of your similarly themed podcasts together, with permission of course, or even helpfully co-written or embellished with the interviewee? Or even add your own new writing (as in this particular substack) to the core of the original recordings? You have SUCH a body of material that applies not only to business but to navigating life—and I often just don't have the patience, time, or right environment to listen deeply or even watch video podcasts, though I very much WANT to! It could be I'm not as auditory as other people, so reading transcripts, articles, and books (visual mode) lets me set my own pace, be interrupted, and pick up again later. . .