270: 🌈 Taking a Quiet Sabbatical and Pausing the Podcasts — For Now . . .

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host, Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now, onto today's show.

Welcome back friends. This is a joint episode for Pivot and Freetime because I'm making a bittersweet announcement, which is that I'm pausing the podcast indefinitely. Now, I don't have it in me to say I'm closing them or shutting them down because I really have no clue what the fate of them will be. But I do know for sure that it's time to take a little break. In today's episode, I'll share a little context how I reached this decision through a combination of a download in the park and some conversations with friends. As we turn the corner into the ninth year of podcasting, I really want to say thank you and also get into some of the business reasons behind it. For those of you who are curious just how the math, maths or doesn't, and then some ideas about what's next, even though I have no clue. And that is part of what I'm calling my quiet sabbatical that starts now. As I pause these podcasts, I encourage you to stay subscribed because I will not be able to resist having Conversations with Friends, hitting record, and even doing more live events and live tapings for paying subscribers at Substack. So if you want to join any of my three substacks and keep in touch if you're not already, visit substack.com ennyblake and there you can stay in the loop on Pivot list twice a month. Time well spent. That's the free time newsletter that goes out three to four times a month and then rolling in dough, which is where I talk about all my divine disaster diaries of my 13th year now of running a small creative business. You can hear even as I record this that I have a little cold, my throat's a little scratchy. I got Covid a year ago after making it through three years in New York City, riding subways, being exposed to people out walking with Ryder. And ever since then it triggered my childhood asthma that you've probably heard me vent about on the show before. My asthma came back actually much worse than it ever was when I was a kid where it was waking me up multiple times a night. And finally, after three months, I stubbornly saw a pulmonologist. She prescribed a steroid inhaler, and that has been miraculous in terms of being able to breathe again and sleep through the night. But it's affecting my voice. And so, weirdly, for the last year, as I was getting more and more confused about what my business wanted to become, I was also losing my voice. Physically. It was becoming a little more tricky to record episodes. Now, I wouldn't have let that get in my way per se, but I'm also somebody that really listens to the somatic signals that my body is giving me. And for the few years prior, it was raging ear infections. So my inquiry was, what am I not hearing? And then losing my voice also sparked something. What am I not saying? Or what do I need to say or do differently? I was having a conversation with my friend Natalie Liu at Dumbo House in Brooklyn when she was visiting from the uk. Natalie's been a guest on both Pivot and freetime, and she recently made the courageous decision to shut down her podcast. She's been building a platform online for 18 years, and the Baggage Reclaim sessions, which was her show, she said that one day she thought maybe it's time to wrap this up, and that that thought alone let her know, yes, indeed, it was time. And instead of picking some beautiful round number and recording 20, 30, 40 more episodes, she just said, I'll record one more and I'm done. Something about that conversation stuck with me. And as I got to the end of 2023, which was another really tough year business wise, I realized that I had gone all in on these podcasts for two years. I hired an incredible production team, One Stone Creative. We produced 14 episodes a month across my two shows, plus the private feed for BFF. And I was even a recurring guest host on my friend Jonathan Field's sparked podcast. Now, this was a Herculean effort, but it was not without a purpose and a rationale. I wondered what would happen if I went all in. So after Hybrid Publishing, FreeTime that came out in March 2022, I'd already had the FreeTime podcast going. Since March of 2021, Pivot the Book has sold really well, so the podcast continues to do well too. I didn't have the heart to shut that down just because FreeTime launched. Long story short, when I brought One Stone Creative on at the start of 2022, I really committed and I said I love podcasting. This feels like my zone of genius. I know it's really hard to earn a living in this arena and it's getting harder every year. I'll link to some articles in the show Notes, but I've got to at least try. This is definitely the thing that brings me joy where time is flying. Like all the advice that I give to other people when pivoting and following their passions and freeing up time, all of it pointed to the podcast for me. But after two years and going full steam ahead, going all in 14 episodes a month, like really trying to get the numbers up to the point where I could even be represented by an ad agency, I had to face cold hard facts. The truth, the reality of the situation was that even after eight years of podcasting and two years of treating it like my full time job, they still weren't breaking even. They were still costing more money to make and produce than they were earning through ad revenue. In fact, I got rejected by two different ad agencies to represent me. That's why you don't ever hear me reading too many ads for other people's products unless they reach out to me independently. Outside of an agency, though, I am part of the megaphone slash Spotify ad network. So you hear ads running on the episodes, but they earn less than if I were doing host read ads. Now if this were in the before time pre pandemic, I probably wouldn't need to care if the podcasts made money or not, because my speaking career was doing just fine getting one or two paid speaking gigs a month at that time. In the before time, they were often in person, but even here or there throughout the pandemic when they were virtual, that could provide a buffer for some of my more creative projects like the podcast. But in 2023 it just @ least for me personally, maybe other speakers had just as robust a year hitting the road or doing virtual sessions, but for me it was really light. So without keynote speaking to grease the wheels of my business, even my household, and provide those cash infusions, after two years of going all in, I just looked at the numbers. I looked at how much I was spending, looked at how much I was earning, and I also looked at my time, my energy and my attention was really 80% on producing the podcasts and then I would fit in other things around it. I realized that I can't justify investing so much going for another year because I didn't have the cushion of speaking gigs to fund the Runway of the podcasts. So in a way I kind of needed them to grow faster than they did. And of course I take full responsibility that I Didn't figure out how to break through. Now again, if you read some of the articles I've linked to, they don't paint a pretty picture. They essentially show that the maths don't math anymore. For independent shows, there's really only celebrity shows that do well, not even the super highly produced ones that we were used to from back in the day, like Gimlet's startup or other shows like that. So even popular podcasts, even popular podcast networks are struggling. It's really tough out there. In the past, I was never somebody to let that stop me. But if my business is not thriving, then I need to take a pause. And so the two big decisions that I made. There was one day where I was taking Ryder for a walk in mid November, and all of a sudden I had that feeling that I describe in the opening of the Free Time book that I wanted to burn it all down. And this little voice said to me, stop everything. Part of me wondered if I was in a bad mood and okay, okay, burn it all down mode. I know how to work through that. And this feeling will go away. Something about the clarity of that message really told me, okay, I need to listen now. My business wants to become something else and I don't know what. And I'm too busy producing the podcast, preparing for interviews, conducting the interviews, editing the show notes, checking everything before they go live. Even with a ton of help from an incredible team, I was spending so much time and effort and energy on this one arena that I really was not getting the clarity I needed on the bigger business picture. So I'll link to a post I did for Rolling In Doe where I did a serendipity stroll through New York City. It's a photo essay where I'm looking for serendipity signage. And I received so many of them on this one walk throughout my neighborhood. And that's a really fun one. So again, I'll put that in the show notes. By the time I came home, I felt like, yes, this is the right decision. This is what I need to do. And it's very bittersweet. I'll get to that in a minute. There's a lot I'm going to miss during the pause. But the clarity came that there were two major things that I needed to put on hold. One was my private BFF community for small heart based business owners. And the other were the podcasts. Now, both of them have been the thing that I have enjoyed the most. Both of them have given me so much the last few years. If you're here listening. You have brought me so much. These shows wouldn't exist without you here, listening, leaving ratings and reviews, submitting questions, sharing episodes with friends. And for that I'm deeply grateful. And yet my business, where it felt so stuck and just even financially, is not really providing what I need to support my household or even to continue living in New York City, although I'm still here hanging on tooth and nail. And so that's what I decided, that even though I would be really sad to put these things on hold, that I needed to step back, I needed to create more space, and I need to listen even deeper to what my business wants to become and what I'm meant to be doing at the helm of this delightfully tiny media company that I'm running logistically. At the time of this download, I checked both podcast production calendars and I realized, okay, I've recorded. At that time it was probably 15 episodes each that were already recorded and in the can for both shows. And then I had about 10 interviews still to conduct for both shows. So even though I had this insight in early to mid November, you know, assuming I didn't cancel all the interviews that I had already booked months prior, the pause would actually start around mid February 2024. And so I don't know exactly what day you're going to be listening to this, but it has been sitting. So I've been sitting with the decision, making sure it's what I want to do, and it does feel right. I am ready to take a pause. And the thing is, even the download numbers for the shows, it's not like they've been growing at such a rapid clip that it's encouraging me to keep going. Both shows stabilized, even though it looks really good on listen notes, which is one way you can get a back of the napkin idea of the size of a show. Pivot is in the top.05% of all podcasts, and the last I checked, Freetime was in the top 2.5%. Freetime was nominated for a Webby in the business episode category. Freetime won two W3 awards. Three actually, silver for best host and gold for best podcast in the business category. Again, Pivot has been around. This would be the ninth year of the show. Pivot has over 360 episodes. Freetime has over 260. I can't even do math that quickly. That's over 600 public episodes and another hundred that I had done for the private BFF community. That's a lot of content. The fact that they didn't grow fast enough. To be honest, I'm not trying to make excuses. I probably needed to spend a lot more on paid advertising than I did, which was only tiny little experiments here and there. But I didn't have the extra money. I was already struggling to stay afloat because I wasn't doing much speaking. I lost a big licensing client. I didn't have it in me to take on coaching clients because I'm going through so much change. So I didn't want to take the risk of throwing thousands and thousands of dollars at advertisements, knowing that it takes time to learn what works, and even that's not guaranteed. So I didn't do the things that I probably quite needed to do to get them to grow enough. And that's definitely on me. But I also think that if I'm being really honest with myself, if the shows were good enough, they would have had more listeners. And I'm not saying that I'm not fishing for compliments. This is not an audio thirst trap. I'm just saying that I do believe that if things are unique enough and high enough quality that people cannot resist but to tell their friends. And it's not that they're bad, it's just that they might not be quite unique enough or have quite big enough a listener base or I Jenny, I know my Achilles heel is marketing and creating big platforms. I'm not on social media. I'm so stubborn that way. But that would really suck all the rest of the rest of the joy out. So, I mean, these are my flaws. These are my factors that play into this that made it really hard and just make it hard to be able to invest at the same level to keep it going and not only just needing clarity on what my business wanted to become, but I was starting to feel, especially with free time, but also with pivot that I had said a lot of what I wanted to say. I was getting more and more stuck figuring out what I could share in solo episodes. It's not that I couldn't share little stories, but I started to feel allergic to giving advice because when I'm in a really stuck, liminal, uncertain state, I'm not really in the mood to give advice. I don't really feel like anybody should listen to me. I can share my stories. I can share my experiences. That's what my rolling in Dose substack is all about. It has nothing to do with advice. It's actually the opposite. It's like, look at all these things that are going sideways or feeling confusing and I fully understand the irony that I wrote a book called Pivot about navigating what's next. And here I am kind of stuck not knowing what's next. All I can say is that I'm following the process. It didn't make it in the book, but this phrase, put yourself in the path of Pivot. That's what I've got to do now. I've got to get out of all the old things I was doing from the before time and from my old life and my old business. And I just need to see what's next. And it is terrifying. It really is. And so I know so many of you have been going through this exact same thing, especially these last four years now. I can't believe it, but that's the gist of these decisions. I also want to say a huge thank you for being here listening. I was very excited to unwrap my Spotify wrapped for both shows. They did them for podcasters this year, maybe for the second time, but I missed the previous year. And so I want to give a quick shout out because this was one of the things that gave me FOMO that if I stopped publishing, I felt so bad for the top listeners. Now, these statistics are only for people who listen through the Spotify app, of course, not if you listen through Apple podcasts or Overcast or Pocketcast or anywhere else. But just from Spotify alone. Pivot, there were 681 of you for whom this is your top 10 podcast. There were 373 who this is your top five. And there were 65 people who this was your number one show. It just blows my mind. I can't even imagine one person having this as your number one show for pivot, let alone 65. And then for free time, there are 423 of you who it's in your top 10. There are 247 for whom it's in your top five podcasts that you listen to on Spotify. And then there were 57 where Freetime is your number one show. And again, totally blows my mind that of everything out there that you could listen to all the celebrity shows, all the big network shows, all the big business shows, Freetime makes the top of your list. And so this was very bittersweet for me seeing this data because I felt like I don't want to disappoint you if this is one of your favorite shows, I feel sad to put it on hold. But like I said, I am hoping, you know, I will not be able to resist having conversations with interesting people having an excuse to reach out and make new friends. But I do want to experiment with maybe inviting paying Substack subscribers to attend and listen and ask questions. Or maybe releasing more nitty gritty episodes behind the paywalls. We'll see. I mean, there are definitely ways to still have fun with this, and I gotta shake it up a little. So that's the long and the short of it. You can hear that it's kind of a jumble of emotional reasons, business reasons, financial reasons. But most of all, I would say that because my business is in such a liminal, confusing state, I know I need to just clear away the time and space, and that is taking the advice from Free Time. So I'm combining, taking my own advice between Pivot and free time, and that's what I'm up to. So I would encourage you to stay subscribed to these two shows, Pivot with Jenny Blake and Free Time with Jenny Blake, wherever you listen to podcasts. Because I will drop interesting things to the feeds when I can. And I don't know, I was thinking if I return, maybe I would experiment with seasons, which I've never done, where I would batch record episodes maybe in one quarter or one season of the year, and I would release them in the next. And that would allow me to pick like 10 fascinating people, maybe even along a theme, record them in the same batch of a couple weeks, edit them in the same batch of a couple weeks, and then they could drip out over 10 weeks or something. Then I could take a break and maybe the seasonality of that would be fun. I mean, up till now I've had a blast doing so many every week and every month that I've met so many friends. And I love connecting with you who are here listening. Stay subscribed both to the podcast and again to the substacks, because I do want to do things that might not go live on these feeds, but would be fun opportunities to interact and talk to cool guests with me. The substacks are@substack.com ennyblake and I'll put any links to things that I've mentioned in the show notes. Thank you again for being here. Thank you for listening to this and I really do hope to see you soon. I just don't know exactly when. Wishing you all a wonderful day, week, month, year, and let's be sure to keep in.

Touch.

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Star. Thank.

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