162 : I (almost) Quit Podcasting [audioblog]

Click for Shownotes                 I have been podcasting for over a year now. I did not have a background in radio or TV or journalism. I just believed I could do it and went for it! As a consumer of podcasts and an entrepreneur myself, I loved hearing the journey of other entrepreneurs. In the lonely world of my own software startup, these stories kept me going. But what was missing for me was hearing from women.  The majority of podcasts I listened to were of 30 year old single men interviewing other 30 year old single men.  Usually they were single.  That was so different from my life as a wife and Mom.  When a dude would interview a woman (about 10% of the time), the questions they would ask were not the ones I needed answered. So I launched The Biz Chix Podcast to give voice to woman entrepreneurs and to get answers to my own questions. I have interviewed over 150 women and I walk away each time inspired by the women, the businesses they run and the lives they are living. But the truth is (and this is hard to admit publicly), I considered quitting, throwing in the towel, giving up on at least 3 different occasions during this first year. I’m going to be honest, podcasting is way more time consuming than I ever imagined. The majority of podcasts that launch never reach the 10th episode (I just released #160). The term“Podfading” was even invented to describe the act of quitting a podcast. In January 2014, I launched The Biz Chix Podcast, when I was 7 weeks pregnant with my 3rd child (I now have a daughter that is 13, a son that it 3 and a 6 mos only baby boy). I wasn’t planning on launching while pregnant and if I had not already committed to a launch date before I found out we were expecting a new blessing, I would have delayed the launch. If you or yours has ever been pregnant, you know that the first trimester is tough. A woman’s body diverts all energy to help baby grow and to create the systems needed to sustain baby for 9 months. Let’s just say I got really tired during the first trimester, was prone to fall asleep while sitting straight up on the couch and I ate a lot of cereal.  I mean a lot! I launched the podcast by releasing 3 episodes on the first day (1/31/14) and then 1 episode a day for the first two weeks. So for the 3 weeks leading up to this I was interviewing guests 5-6 days a week to start to build up an inventory of guests. I also needed to get intro music, voiceovers and podcast artwork produced. I was initially planning on editing and doing all the post production  myself, but in order to pull off this aggressive schedule and run my other biz and household, I needed help. My husband, Mark,  is a software developer and super techie, so he easily slid into the role of editor and producer for the show. I started my normal schedule of 5 episodes a week after my initial launch. Once I passed the 50-episode mark, I started to get worn down by this schedule. We had grossly underestimated the amount of time it would take to produce a single episode. It actually takes 4-8 hours (for our team of 3 – myself, Mark and our virtual assistant Liza May) to produce one episode with the greatest variable being the time it takes to edit. Looking back, I cannot believe I kept up this rigorous schedule during my first trimester of pregnancy. Often I would take a nap from 8pm to 10pm and then get up and finish the next day’s episode. Mark would often be editing past midnight to release the episode 2-3 hours later. An exciting early win during this launch period was being ranked as a #1 New Business podcast by iTunes. If you are not a podcaster, you may not realize that this is like being ranked an Amazon bestseller. It helps people discover you and give you some “bragging” rights. An interesting note about the graphic above. Of the 12 podcasts fully visible below, 3 are no longer being produced, one did not release an episode for 5 months and two were produced by veteran podcasters who had other shows (Pat Flynn’s Ask Pat and Tim Paige’sConversion Cast). So I am clearly not the only one that has struggled with podcasting endurance. I Want to Quit Round #1 About mid-April (or 4 months in), I decided something had to change or I was going to burn out. I decided to move to a 3 day a week schedule once I reached the 75th episode milestone. This gave me room to breathe and to think about how to interact more with my audience (something I was desperately craving) besides just releasing episodes. ... see shownotes for more