Podfade Prevention: Quick Recovery Tips On Avoiding Podcast Burnout

This is Feed you'd Brand with hosts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazzard.

Welcome to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host, Tracy Hazzard. Today, we're talking about podcast burnout. Spark your passion or burn, baby, burn. I can't tell you.

Which is really terrible because, you know, there's wildfires here right now. All right, well, that was really not in good taste.

Well, if you're in a wildfire area, which we are. Choice of tagline. But the thing is that we are talking about burnout, which is entirely something different for us as individual podcasters, and we've seen it a lot. I mean, what have we talked about recently, Tracy? All these shows that had POD faded, and a lot of the common traits we saw in that. And if you haven't seen that episode, you need to go check it out, was a very recent one. But today we're going to talk about really the things to avoid, some of the warning signs, some of the common things that we see so that, you know, I think for you existing podcasters, maybe you can understand and maybe course correct and try to avoid it, or those of you that are just considering getting into podcasting, you know what you're getting into.

I think that's the biggest part of it, is that so many people are not being honest about what they're going to get into as a podcast host. There's so many services and companies that just aren't telling you the truth, and it's not going to work for you, and you're going to find that it fails, and then you're going to be in this, like, one foot in podcasting and one foot out, and that's this place that I want you to be, all in or all out. And that's really what we're talking about here. Let this thing burn out completely, be done with it, make a decision, or go all in and ignite your passion for this and get excited about it.

And, Tracy, I think all too many new podcasters don't really know what it is to go all in. They do a few things and they think they've got a podcast. You know, they think that it's really out there and they're wondering why they're hearing crickets from people, you know. So I do want to touch on a few of those things because happened again just yesterday before recording this, is that I met with a person who said they had a podcast and they just really didn't realize they didn't even have one foot in they had maybe dipped their pinky toe into podcasting. You know, it was not near jumping in.

So, anyway, so we were just talking about this yesterday as well. Is that so? Hodmadge, Alex Sampling Lippo. He had a LinkedIn post he was talking about where he had called and messaged 100 people with shows who. He said, I will give your show a review. Now he's talking about, like, a rate and review, which I don't think it's so valuable. So, I mean, if he had messaged me, I would have ignored it. But for those people that think that that's valuable, you know, they would have responded. And he said he got 24% of the hundred people. 24 people, 24% responded with no link to their show. They said, yeah, review my show. No link to it. Which he asked for. Or a bad link.

A bad link. Boy, talk about a shocking lack of awareness about your own show.

You're not podcasting. You're not serious about podcasting if you're in that 24%. Like, you want people to do you a favor, but you can't even send them the link.

And if you're sending them a bad link, you just really are not on.

Top of, look, I've made an oops on a link now and again, but you should realize it and come back and go, oops. And give them the right one, right? So, you know, that happens. But 24% of them make an oops. That's just not. That doesn't happen statistically.

Shocking, really.

And only 13% of them gave them their website, which is really low. That.

That actually does doesn't surprise me. But it's also another telltale sign of somebody that really doesn't understand the potential of their podcast and how to raise awareness.

It means that your podcast is not a part of your business. And if your podcast is not a part of your business, then it is never going to ignite.

In a good way. Not the way.

In a good way. Yeah. Not in a bad way. I have trouble with burnout. Like, I'm not the best person to be giving advice here.

Oh, my gosh.

I don't have burnout. Like, it just. It's not my vocabulary. Like, I just don't. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've decided to stop stuff. I decide to quit, but I don't burn out. Like, do something so much that I can't do it anymore. I mean, we've been podcasting a decade.

And one show to another, right? I mean, we haven't been the same show for that whole decade. But yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I think if you are a real podcaster, you enjoy the process and you want to keep doing it. Now, of course, there are some recommendations that, you know, we have for avoiding burnout and one of those is making sure you've really set up your systems and processes properly so that it isn't that difficult for you and you can focus on the fun part. Right. Actually having these conversations.

Yeah, I mean, I think that burnout happens when it's more agonizing to do it. Like, it's more work to do it than it should be. Right. And you know that consciously. Right. You know, you're doing mundane stuff like this email back and forth, trying to get a schedule link going. Like, just set up your darn calendar. Like, go get somebody to do it for you. We have resources, ask us, we'll tell you who you can use.

We've got a step by step guide for how to do it. We're not going to do it for you, but we can give you the roadmap.

Right. We've got a guide for it, we've got processes for it, we've got people who can do it for you. Like, there's no excuse to not being able to set up an automatic calendar so that you send one link at the beginning. When you say, would you like to be on my show and don't do this back and forth and back and forth, trying to get the darn thing scheduled and followed up. That's to me, like, I'd burn out. That's agonizingly difficult to me. It would drive me crazy. So that's like those types of systems are what I'm talking about here. The other thing is, is that the more you do it, the more you'll cut away you more like, I mean, we used to like heavily edit our videos and everything. Now we don't edit at, we just go live, like, because we don't need to. We're better at it than we used to be. But also because it doesn't really matter. Like the idea that I need to have this perfectly done video is just not in existence in the mindset of our, of our users out there. They want to see us doing it this way because they'd like to aspire to do it this way and have it be this easy.

Yeah, I agree. I think things have changed over the decade that we've been doing this. When we started, you know, maybe 20% of podcasts also did video and now it's flipped. It's kind of 80% are doing video and 20% are not. I do think there have been different expectations now for podcast video and what that listening or viewing experience should be the quality level. But, you know, hey, some people do need more editing in the middle because they're not as experienced or practiced, or they have a guest that you know is a newbie and not as seasoned and they got to clean stuff up. Sure. But for the most part, you're right. There's not really a whole lot that necessarily needs to get cleaned up. And yeah, I mean, really, you need to just get things set up so that you don't have to worry about the little stuff. If this is like a label. Oh, I gotta regard another podcast. I mean, I'll give you a good example. I was just talking to a longtime podcast customer early this morning who is. His issue is that he's got so many recorded scheduled out so far that his guests aren't getting aired for more than six months from when they record. And he's got people booked out through the next year. I'm like, dude, you need to publish a little more frequently. It's what you got to do. Because not only will your listeners get more value, your guests aren't going to complain that, you know, wait, I'm recording this with you. And it's going to air when you know.

But there's an algorithmic benefit doing that right now. Like, you're going to go farther on the podcast apps, you're going to go farther on YouTube, you're going to go farther on social. If you outperform everybody else, just because you said, oh, I have a weekly show. Like, this is why I can't stand it when people go, it's the search and such daily, or it's the such and such weekly. Don't name your show that. It's too much pressure.

Yeah, well, but in this case, my point is here's somebody who's the absolute opposite example of someone burning out on it. Here's someone that is enjoying it, getting great benefit out of it for himself and his company. He's all into it and he sort of has a different issue, but that's an issue that's pretty easily resolved, honestly. So, you know, burnout. Why does burnout happen, Tracy? Maybe we should, you know, help reveal some of some of the things that we see and why people burn out. Right.

So, I mean, it's what I alluded to. It's like the repetitive tasks or too many steps, too many Things in our system that cause burnt resistance, right? This is like, I mean, when we used to deal with retail, right? You want the least resistance possible to the sale, right? Anyone in sales. That's what you want. You want to create this frictionless process, but it comes with making a process. So one of the things to recognize is where are you doing these redundant steps? Could you hand them off to someone else? Could you cut the steps? Smart cut. Shane Snow, one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done. I just adore that idea. The concept of smart cuts, it is still my favorite book over a decade later. And it is this idea that there is a better cut from one side to the other to get everybody what they want so you aren't cutting out and like taking away from someone. Everyone wins in that process. That's the smart cuts model. And so thinking about that, there's gotta be a process by which we do that. Now sometimes, like when I'm setting up a show or when I'm starting through these processes, I have to do it for a little while before I see where the cuts can be made, where that path is. And lots of you don't do stuff yourself, so it doesn't help. Right. So you don't have that picture on that other side of it. How do I cut this out? But sometimes doing that just makes the process that's frictionless. You're going to find the things that you don't want to do and the things that you don't want want to do. That's where you innovate. That's where you systematize. That's where you put somebody else in to make that happen for you.

Didn't you interview Shane Snow on your podcast, the Binge Factor?

I did. I said that was my favorite interview.

Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll have to put the link for that in the blog post for this episode on podcast united.org for when it's out as a blog and a podcast. Because if he's, you know, one of your favorite books, I think, you know, people should. It's definitely a good book and listen to that one. Yeah, well, you know, I think a lot of people also, I see a lot of people burn out too early, too soon. Not just because of not having all the systems and processes set up from the get go, but they also have unrealistic expectations going into it. Do you think so, Tracy? Do you see that?

I don't know if I would say that is burnout though, because they haven't given it enough effort to Burn anything out. Like, so to me, that's like, you know, false start.

They pod fade. I guess I get. Maybe that's a fair point, Tracy. It may not be burnout as much as, I guess, not feeling a positive enough impact. So maybe what I was thinking there to talk about is not as much of a indication of burnout as much as it is, you know, false indication of either failure or not having it grow fast enough, things like that. But I do think people start to think, gee, I'm doing all this work and I'm not getting anything out of it, you know, I guess.

And so I would say that that's the case. Like, they set this thing up to be too difficult. Like, they like, oh, my gosh, I need, like, a teaser, and I need a segment for this. And I like. They make it way more complicated, especially when they're starting, than it needs to be. Grow into your complication. Grow into the fancier production, because you don't know if you're gonna like it. So you're gonna spend all this time and energy and money a lot of times building this into the perfect launch of the perfect show, and then you will burn out because it's way too much effort to do a show like that before you even have all your systems developed, before you have all these other pieces in place, before, you know if you even like it.

I agree. You know, we often say if you're going to launch a podcast, you've got to commit to 25 episodes to really get to a point where you're sort of, you know, over the hump. You get, you know, through all of the initial natural evolution of a podcast, to start experiencing the feedback loop, to start hearing from listeners, to start, you know, having enough history to see the growth. And by the way, 25 episodes, what I'm talking about is a weekly episode. So that'd be about six months. If you're not willing to commit that much time and effort into it, you really, in my opinion, shouldn't even start. But you've got to get to that point, because I think too many people, you know, they put it up on a hosting platform or on a listening app, and I'm going to come back to that a little later. And then they're looking at the analytics and they're obsessing over the analytics at those early stages, and you just shouldn't even look at them that soon. Although you should be sure that you've really properly syndicated your show everywhere. But again, I'm going to come back to that but you get too focused on the analytics and obsess over it and you're comparing podcast downloads to likes on a social media posts and things that you shouldn't compare it to. Right. I mean, you're setting yourself up for dissatisfaction and greater chance of failure when you do that.

Well, I think that part of that is that lack of support. Right. So you didn't get yourself an advisor, you didn't get yourself an expert. You thought you did, but you really got most of who we see. They get themselves a rah rah coach. And I say that like a cheerleader.

Right, A rah rah coach.

Yes, that's what my dad would call it. You don't want the rah rah people in your camp. All they do is they get you excited, but they don't help you figure out how to do anything and they don't give you where your expectations would be, where you're missing, where your gaps are. They're not real coaches. Real coaches have playbooks. That's the difference. So most of these people are just inspiring you and they're not giving you the playbook you need to create success. Right. To win the game.

I agree. And I would also add to that and say they tend to give you a plan that is the path of least resistance to get you going and out there quickly, which is not usually the plan that's going to yield the greatest chance of success.

Well, look, you're in the midst of doing a conversation with lots of podcast coaches, podcast strategists, podcast networks out there. And the number one thing that they have is a retention problem. They can't keep their clients recording because they burn out too fast and they can't keep the money flowing for themselves. So it's constant sales burn for them. It's too much churn. We don't have that problem here. We have built our process and our system and our income on a different model, and that is that you need to be successful. And continually podcasting, it doesn't mean nobody quits, but there's revenue beyond it when you do quit. And that's the difference to what we're building here for people. That there is this idea that, as we always did it in our product world, is that if the product succeeds, we succeed. We don't just get paid at the beginning of something. So the person who is only paid at the beginning to set you up, to launch you, to teach you a course, to do these things, their job is to just get you through that process because that's Success. Their job isn't to make you a lifelong podcaster who makes money off your podcast in your core business. It's the purpose is different.

You're right. It's all launch and no sustainability. The other, by the way, red flag about these kinds of podcast coaches are if they don't have their own podcast.

They'Ve already pod made their own. Yeah.

Or there's so many that just don't have one. They're supporting other people and they have obviously their experience from their perspective of supporting others. But there's a big difference in having a podcast coach or a support system that actually is a podcaster and practices what they preach and also continues to learn. I mean, that's the thing, Tracy. Over a decade we've had many podcasts that we have each, you know, launched and run their course and launch new ones. And it's different experiencing what's happening in 2025 than it was in 2015.

That's why we always say we launch a new show every year or some new iteration or some new format of it. Right now we're about to relaunch the YouTube version of our show, which is much more YouTube centric from beginning because our shows were always podcast centric, turned into YouTube and now we're going to do one the other way. So this is just a, you know, we have to be up on these models, but not everybody is. And so you get a lot of outdated support. Like, I hate the fact that we still have a bootcamp course out there. Like, I just want to delete it all together. But it does a lot of lead generation and honestly, nobody consumes it. So it just leads them in and then they see the company and then they call us and join a call and, you know, so it's lead generating even though it's not in use. But the course is so outdated. Like, it's just, it's outdated the moment we made it live. That's how I feel about it. Kind of like why, why I don't have a book right now is because it's outdated as soon as I finish writing it. Right. You know, so because things are moving so fast in this world. So if they're not supporting you with a podcast, those coaches, if they're not coaching you live and giving you more constant information, you're going to not be able to sustain the growth. You've got to get yourself into a long term sustainability in terms of a support system. Maybe it's a community of other podcasters. I mean, there's so many really great ones. Like, I still, I love the podcast community. Like, just some of them that we've been a part of are so amazing and they're so helpful and they ask great questions and someone has a different solution. But the people who give you their solution, that doesn't fit you, you have to coach the team you have. That is something that I think, you know, you see at it. It's like, you know, we can only have the players this year. Our daughter was commenting on this. She's a cheerleader and she's got made varsity this year. And their varsity just wiped out and did such a fantastic job against some of the local schools in the same school district at their camp this year. And why were they any good this year? Well, they were good because they only lost 2, 3 members total off their varsity team. And then they expanded their team and gained a bunch of new members from the JV squad who had been on the competition team. So they had a packed team of like, stellar members that had experience. That had experience. Right? So you come into a camp with a new team, but this team had basically been working together for the whole year prior. So they weren't new with each other where almost every other team lost. Half of their seniors graduated, and they get a half new team in and they've not worked together. And so they don't have a lot of time before camp starts to get used to working together. They have the potential to be good by the end of the season, but not at the beginning of it. This team had the opposite. So you get to coach the team. You have not run this playbook. That was my playbook. That worked for me and it will, of course work for you.

Well, and so this is really important, I think, to share a real good example. And that really goes to making sure you get the right kind of support. Because guess what? Who wants to reinvent the wheel, right? Every time, you know, you want to launch a new podcast, that's wonderful. That doesn't mean that you have to figure out everything the hard way the first time. Make sure you get some support from someone that has the real experience, not just coaching, but being a podcaster and not just about creating that listening experience that you want to. I'm also talking about make sure you get some support on the technical side, because here's what often happens to me. It happened to me yesterday. Somebody books a power podcast appraisal on my calendar, which is something we offer. You can check it out on our website. But basically, I evaluate a podcast and I usually Point out several things that are holding the show back from being the best it can be. And it's mostly just lack of awareness of some of these things. And so this person says, I have a podcast and they book an appointment, they give me all the information, I do some research on it beforehand, do my homework, and I can't find this podcast anywhere, honestly. Well, first of all, the name of the podcast was a big problem because the way they named it with three words had dashes in between it, and because the podcast app search function is Internet 1.0, if I didn't search on those three words with those dashes in the middle, this podcast was a ghost. It did not come up in anybody's search. So that was a technical problem. But the other reality is it was on one platform. It was on Spotify. That was the only place it was. So somebody launches a show, they don't know anybody any better. They think, I put it up on Spotify. And I'm a podcaster, and Spotify, remember.

Has like 10% of the audience that, you know.

That's for podcasts for sure. For music, I think it's a little different. But for podcasts, it's definitely a smaller player. I don't even know, in my experience, and looking at analytics of all the shows that we support, if it's even number two. I don't know that it really is all the time sometimes.

But anyway, I think it's different by the podcaster. But I would agree with you. I think it's usually down on the list.

Apple, by far, is the number one listening destination. And so this show was not only not put on the number one listening destination, it was only put on one. I think it was also on YouTube. Sometimes I see they either have a YouTube show and they say they have a podcast, or they put it on Spotify. And okay, technically you have a podcast, but it's not really out there. People don't realize there's a couple dozen listening apps your show should be on. And companies like Poditize, we go and do that for all of our customers, DIY or dfy, because when you launch a show, you need to be in all those places. So we just do it for you because you can't screw that up. Now. It's not really meant to be a shameless plug as much as it is to just beat it over your heads. Any of you that are new, get some support. You don't have to go figuring out what are all the apps I should be on. Somebody can do it. For you, it can be a podcast coach, could be a producer, could be.

You know, your hosting company.

Company. Now, most of them don't do that all for you. You still have to do it. But there's no excuse for a podcaster if you're serious. I mean, if you just playing around, then go play around. But if you're serious, get the support. And for those things that you're not going to know straight out of the gate, you don't have awareness of, get support, because otherwise you're just trying to run a marathon with one sneaker, you know, instead of two.

No, I think that. And I think that there's a case here, Tom. And this is what I do want to talk to is the people out there. This next kind of type of person, this next type of burnout is because you ran at full speed when it was a marathon. You ran a sprint in the midst of a marathon, right? This is where you had too much complexity. You tried to pack too many episodes in. You did too much for the return on investment that you were going to get. And I'm a big fan of like, let's do a slower burn, right? Let's start a little slower. Let's build up, let's add the layers of it, make sure we're seeing the return we expect from the time that it's taking us and layer on these things over time. That is a much more sustainable way to keep that spark, that excitement that you have for your show is to do it that way. So we kind of did that a little bit with our WTFF 3D print podcast, where we were doing five days a week and we did it for a year. And then we said two years.

We did that pace.

Yeah, we might have done two years. It all blurs together after 10 years.

It was 10 years ago.

Yeah, we did 650 episodes for all of you out there. So we do know what we're talking about in terms of this. We have podcaster who's joining us live today, who's done a thousand. We just recorded his thousand episodes with him. So, Scott Carson, the no Closer show, fabulous show. A thousand episodes. How do you not burn out about that? Because it is a lot. So you do, at some point have to say, okay, that five day a week thing did what I needed it to do, which was get me to the top of the list. I'm outranking everybody else. I'm there. But it's also a lot of content, and I'm at a place where I could scale back A little bit, because I don't need to cover these areas anymore. Maybe I can hit a cadence of four days a week, three days a week. Where is the cadence that's right for me and my audience? And ease into that and find out where that is for us. We ended up around two a week is where we sort of ended up at our sweet spot. And then we just frankly got different business focus, which is what happens to a lot of people. And we decided that we needed to shut the show down. So we did one episode for a while. We did a limited series to show everybody how that works. And then we have no more, but we capped it and closed, closed it. And so we're going to talk about, like, how to burn it out, like, you know, in a minute I want to get to that, like, what's the proper way to do that? But there's no reason for you not to slow things down and get to a cadence that works for you and your audience, because your audience would rather you show up. Then you over commit to something that is taking too much out of you, Taking too much out of your business resources, your personal time, your money, your energy.

Yeah. And I do want especially, you know, new and aspiring podcasters out there listening to this episode to really understand that kind of strategy of five days a week is something we decided to do. We had our reasons for it. It's not for everyone. Yeah, we have supported some others to do it, but I have to say, not so much in the last few years. Most shows you need to do one a week to be serious. Incredible. And build an audience. If you can front load two or three week in the first two months, that is to your advantage to get more episodes out there quickly and sort of jumpstart, get an acceleration. If you can sustain two week or three a week, wonderful. We do have some podcasters doing five days a week who still do. It just depends on your needs, your focus, and the community you're serving. But I don't want you all out there to think, geez, I need to do, you know, five days a week or even three days a week or even, you know, two days a week. But if you can, like I said, do a little more in those first couple months is just gonna serve you really well to then dial back to one a week. But one a week is really the absolute minimum we recommend. Although I'll tell you, we do have some people that do every other week. It's a choice, not a requirement. You just have to.

So back to this idea.

Yeah, Go ahead.

Back to this idea, Tom, of like, I'm going to call it conditioning, right? We're talking about coaches, right? You coach the team you have, and at the level that they're at, well, you've achieved a certain level of conditioning. When you get past your first six months and it's time for you to maybe have a different approach, you can layer on something new here. This is where you need to get someone from the outside to take a look at your show. This is why Tom's appraisals, and sometimes we call them audits, because you need it to be, like, really critical. But, you know, either one of those, you need those things to come into play because you need to have someone take a look at this and say, this is where I'm struggling. This is where I want to go. What's next for me? Right? You need to up your health, up your conditioning, up your strength, whatever it is you need, up your process right up your system. So all of those things need to come into play at various times, and they're not ready for you at day one. When you try to put all those things in place, it's just not a great idea. Takes 10 times longer. You lose excitement for the idea that you have a podcast. You're not going for that. However, that being said, Tom and I say that there is a minimum, right? If you're going to approach podcasting and you're going to approach it with one a month, two a month, you better understand that you cannot have any expectation of success on the other side. It's not going to work. It's dipped below the minimum required effort to succeed in the podcasting industry. If you're going to do less than 25 episodes, you also will have a much lower listener base. There is no question about it. Tom and I have studied it every which way possible. When you hit 25 episodes, real podcast listeners, especially the ones that binge on shows, take notice. They wait to see if you hit 25. So you didn't even get played or considered by the most avid listeners that would recommend you to the most people. You prevented yourself from even getting to those influencers.

You know, Tracy, I really couldn't agree more with. With what you're saying. In fact, you know, I had someone come to me within the last year, a company, and they had their plan, and it was like a big deal for their company to launch a podcast, and they wanted to publish one a month. And I actually told them, don't even bother. I really did. And that was after Listening to the full context of what their goals were, they were unrealistic and not in alignment with the level of work and commitment they were willing to put into the podcast. I was like, you're not going to achieve your goals. So I literally, I told them not only that we didn't want to support them doing that, but that it wouldn't work. I advised them not to do it, that they'd have to at minimum do every other week. And I really recommended a course, one a week, and really haven't heard from them again. Now, of course, they're welcome to DIY it and do what they're going to do and publish one a month or find some other company that's going to support them at one a month. But we're really here to support serious podcasters and especially people in podcasting to achieve their goals. And we know what's going to work and what isn't.

And look, I'm a big fan of content production in whatever capacity. And if you could do 12 blogs a year or 12 videos a year, like, that's nothing, right? Like, you're keeping your sight alive, you're keeping yourself in the game, but you're only, as Tom put it before dipping your pinky toe in. So your expectations can't be that you're going to rank on the first page of Google for your website doing 12 blogs a year. Like, you're just not, because you're competing against people who to do 12 blogs a day. You know, that's just what an article site is, a news site. So you can't have this aspiration that you want to go out there and compete against Venture Beat or, you know, Wired, and you won't even produce one a month. So it's just not realistic to have those things. You have to be aligned with what your goal and what that content output is. I'm fan of any content production you can do is you getting your message out. But let's be realistic about what that's going to do for me. So I mentioned before that we were going to revamp our YouTube. Well, we have 600 videos, so we got a lot of content to do. So we looked at that and we said, We've got 600 videos. If we take the time to put the system in place, republish two videos a day and two blogs a day, because we have to revamp both. And we put out dozens and dozens of shorts on each one. So we put out like 24 shorts. So one an hour, all day long, every single day. That's a lot of effort to put into it. And so we said we're going to do it and we're going to do it for six months. But here's the thing I didn't put on the other side. I expect you to get me 1000 views in a day. I expect you to get me so that I have YouTube monetization in 90 days. I didn't say that. I said, if you achieve it to my team, I'm going to give you a bonus. I'm going to give you a cut of what we earn because you outperformed my expectation. My expectation is we're just testing this out. We're doing the research, we're seeing what we can do, and we're putting a system in place to do it so we can talk about that system in case somebody does want to do it. So now we have like the. How does it work? What do you do? What do you have to do to make accomplish that? That's much more realistic to our output. The flip side of that, if I'm only going to do one a month, what is it going to look like? I only write one article a month now. I used to write one a week. If I'm only going to write one article a month, where am I going to put it? So it has the biggest impact now.

I'm afraid we just overwhelmed all the new podcasters who are thinking about getting going. And now I'll think about, oh, my gosh, my YouTube channel. I have to do what. So, I mean, obviously you don't have to do that.

This is how we are going to approach it, because I have to reload 600 episodes, 600 videos into a new site. And if I'm going to do it, I want to do it and see what kind of return I can get from it. That's it. But I don't have to record those 600 new every single day. Like, I don't have to do that like you do if you're creating new content. So let's talk a little bit quickly before we end here today, that about this idea that we are. We're burning out, we're flaming out right now. We're like at peak burn.

We're putting ourselves in the shoes of someone that is.

We're at that place. What should I do? And this is my. I've told this story I don't know how many times. This is where I completely disagree with Greg Reed in Three Feet from Gold. I believe that failure, by the way.

Greg just talks about it a lot.

He talks about it all the time. But I mean, it is the name of his co written book, but it's called Three Fear.

Oh, does it? All right. Yeah. All right. But the original story is Napoleon Hill though, isn't it?

The original story is Napoleon Hill, but the lesson of that story is not that you should keep going. That that's not it. And this is why. This is my burnout conversation. This is not that you should keep going because green grass is on the other side. No, it's not. The lesson is you should have gotten a consult from an expert who knows.

About gold in the first place before you went digging for the gold.

Right. But even if you didn't, as you're burning out before you quit, get someone to tell you, did you create something of value? What could you do with the effort you already put into it? Or is it like totally burned out and gone? Because there are so many shows. We talked about this when we talked about the abandoned shows a couple weeks ago. Or was it just last week? I don't even remember. It may have been last week.

I think it was a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah. When we talked about these shows that just abandoned it, they just quit. Some of them, 100 plus episodes, they just dropped their content. Now, in an AI world, that content is extremely valuable and they don't even have access to it. They can't even find it. How often did you hear of people who would be like, oh, I have all these CDs with videos on them, but I never downloaded them. Like, I never, you know, put them in a cloud. I never did anything with these videos and now I can't find my CDs. Right. I mean, I've gotten that from clients before. They're like, I would love to put these videos on my YouTube channel, but I can't find my CDs. This is what you just put your stuff in a place where you can no longer access it. So before that happens, before you sell your company to a new, you know, it could happen. On the flip side of it, you got burned out, you sold your company, they acquire the podcast and then what they do, they delete all your blogs. They deleted all the value that they bought. So before any of that happens, get a consultation.

And there are many places you can get one. You can get one from a podcast. You know, a good podcast coach, support person, producer, you also. And not to be a shameless plug, but there is on podotize.com appraisal and we'll have a link in the blog post for this episode, you can sign up completely free Power Podcast appraisal. It's an evaluation of your show. And, you know, we reveal those things. Doesn't cost you anything. Get some support.

Get some support. Figure that out. Because that is how you find out you did something. It doesn't mean there's not gold there. You may not be the format that you need to continue and go forward with. You might get some ideas about what that looks like, but you might be in this place where there's something there that then gives you this new thing that you're going to do, whole new field that you didn't know you had. It's going to emerge underneath that burnout. So that's important. The next thing I think is if you're in this place, you do have to give yourself permission to quit. That is the hardest part. I see people, you know, Energizer Bunny, keep going. When you really should quit, give yourself permission to stop. It's a decision. It's a decision to put your energy somewhere else. And I say that not get an audit, get an appraisal. Figure that out. If you're still enjoying something about your podcast, but if it's agonizing, if it's not for you, if it's not a fit, stop making yourself do it. It's not serving you, and it's not really serving your audience either. You could be putting yourself in effort into something that you love. So again, ask someone if you need permission. Get the right kind of coach. My favorite coach, Michelle, Young, amazing woman. She will tell you to quit stuff when it's the time to quit stuff, right? She will give you the hard truth. So go get yourself some hard truth that I think is really important. And then if you've decided that it's time to quit, that you're going to cut away, that you're going to stop, you're going to maybe do a new podcast, you're going to do something else. If you do that, do not pod fade. That is the worst reflection. You just ghosted your audience. You just ghosted people who were devoted to you. And it doesn't matter to me if there were five people there or 500 or 50,000 people. You don't ghost them and expect them to come into your next venture.

So you're saying, don't just stop publishing. You need to wrap up that wrap cast with a conclusion episode of some kind. Is that right?

Absolutely. Give them a conclusion episode. Give them a special series like we did with the HP series. We did for wtff. Right? Like give them something and give them a gift. We were wrapping up our design consulting business that I told you we were doing retail work. Right. Tom and I know retail really well. We used to design products for retail. We were wrapping up that business and we are probably people with experience no one else has expertise that no one else has. And we were saying we don't have time to do that business anymore. It's not what we want to do. We're doing this podcasting business. We're moving in to something completely different. And we gave them 150 free episode gift with introductions on that podcast to every single one of our valued resource partners so that they could introduce themselves. So we gave them the gift of that. That. I'm not saying you need to make it that big, but there's no reason you can't wrap it up and say, okay, I'm not going to do this business anymore, but maybe I'll introduce all my resource partners at the very end here. Give five referral partners that you could go to. Maybe I'm going to give away the five coaches that can now coach you instead of me. Do something that really serves that audience when they get to the end. Because when you just disappear, they're like, that's what they remember. Not all the time. You serve them.

Yeah. Don't leave them hanging and wondering, are you ever coming back? You know, I agree.

Although that's quitting on a post it note.

Yeah. Or by text message.

Text message. We've had that. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. But I will say we sincerely hope, and I think I can say this for both of us, we sincerely hope that when you understand the best practices and how to do it without killing yourself that you really enjoy podcasting because that's the best situation when you really enjoy it. Your energy, you know, coming through your voice is a certain way coming through, you know, your podcast episodes. People can tell you're passionate and knowledgeable and sharing your expertise. Nuggets of wisdom, helping accelerate them in their journey to learn and be entertained by the stories you're telling, to communicate it. Hopefully you enjoy doing that. That's why most podcasters keep doing it. Even if they're not getting everything from their show that they think they should, they enjoy doing it, so they keep doing it well.

And this is the thing that we've discovered so often is that like. And Juliet referred to it when she was. That was. Juliet was last week. That's so it was two weeks ago. I just remember that so, Juliet, was you throwing the baby out with the bathwater right? When you quit, when you just dump everything, you burn it, all right? You get rid of it all. You really forget that there are pieces and parts that this is in. Your website will tank. If you've been posting blogs, your TikTok will drop because you don't have as much content as you thought you did. Your Instagram, you don't have the collabs with your guests anymore. And all of a sudden, your Instagram's not doing what it was supposed to be doing. Extricating, like quitting your podcast and removing it has an effect that you may not like. And that's why we don't want you to just do it and then deal with the repercussions later and be. And regret it.

Great point, Tracy. All right, well, I think that's a great place to wrap up this episode. It's a tough one, I have to say, to share about, because you're talking about something that is not the rosy side of podcasting. You're talking about the agony of defeat, really.

Well, we promised you hard truth this year. We promised you tough love. We are delivering on that, I think, left and right, Tom.

We are. But it comes from a good place in our hearts and in our intention to help you succeed. And like, we were talking about those bad coaches out there, and there are many who take the easy path. Tell you what you want to hear. Take the path of least resistance to get you launched. Okay, you may be, to a degree, launched, but you're definitely not set up for success. That's what we're trying to support you, to prevent you from going down that path. But to actually succeed, or you've already launched, you're not having as much success you think you should. To course. Correct. There's nothing wrong with pivoting.

That's right. So before we go, before we wrap up Here, remember, Podcasters United.org is where all the blog posts will be. There'll be links to everything. But remember, there's also a Q and A there. There's also an outreach. There's also a contact form. Ask questions. That's what we're here for. If you're stuck somewhere and you just need a question answered, ask it. We want to support you wherever you are today. That's what Podcasters United is for. It is there for.

That's what Feature Brand is for, too.

That's what Feature Brand is for. Exactly right. I mean, I know that we hit a little bit more like advanced topics than we don't always hit the newbie stuff, but we're all here. There's all that information. Everything is built in there. You want to know why something has happened? We'll tell you why. You don't want to know why. You just want to know how to fix it. We'll help you fix it. Right? Those things are there, but we cannot help you if you do not ask.

Great point.

So thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back next week with more topics, more hard truths, more tough love in the podcast industry, and we can't wait for you to ask us what you would like to hear.

Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting Sting.