How do you know when to quit?

In this bonus episode, Travis gets super personal and shares the three questions he asks himself that, when the answers change, means it's time to quit.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

[inaudible]

Speaker 2: 0:12

you asked me a question that I think is really the thing that I didn't have a good answer. I think it's the thing that I would ask you, which is how do you know you should keep going? I mean, you know the math, right? Like don't most people give up at three months and you know the number of podcasters and make it a year and you know the growth levels off and you're right about that. Like the growth leveled off and now you know, they're new listeners who come in every day and there are people who migrate out and the growth happens, but it's slow. What is like the top two or three reasons to keep going? I guess it would be my question.

Speaker 3: 0:57

I think that's a fantastic question. Uh, I can give you my answers and hopefully this will be helpful for you and anyone listening, I wouldn't, I wouldn't presume to be the absolute authority on this question because I think every single person is different, right? Every person has different reasons for starting a podcast. Um, I think there are terrible reasons for podcasting. One of those is trying to be the next Beyonce, right? It's just, I'm sorry, it's just not gonna happen. Um, but as far as reasons to keep going, the, the things that I always come back to are, am I enjoying it? And if I am, then I'll keep doing it. Um, is this benefiting my life? I think that's another thing that I think about a lot that, uh, like once you, once you get on a roll and you get on a rhythm and a schedule, it's tempting to just keep doing it, you know, and, and throw hazard to the wind. And even if it's sucking the life out of you, you just keep going because you have to put out an episode this week. Right? Um, so I even think about like, how is my podcast affecting my marriage? How is it affecting my relationship with my, my daughter who's, uh, turning one soon, right? How is it affecting my relationship with my friends and my spiritual health and all the things that are important to me, right? Where does the podcast fit into my whole life? Um, cause it is easy to kind of diagnose and, and think about your podcast in a, in a very specific way, but it's just one piece in a much larger puzzle. Right? And so I always, I always reflect and that's, that's kind of how I decide when to take breaks with podcasts that I don't do for Buzzsprout, right? So if it's just me passion project on the side, you know, I think is doing this podcast benefiting my life or is it causing more trouble than it's worth? So right now we're in the middle of selling our house, moving in with some friends while we wait for another house to get built so that, that creates a lot of chaos, right? And so it's like, yeah, this is a good time to take a break. This is a good time to not be having this podcast going. Um, so that's, so that's a second thing that I think about. And then the third thing I think about is just making sure that's, uh, what I'm doing is taking me where I want to go, right? That I have a longterm vision and goals for. Why I podcast. A lot of those have been fulfilled with me working here at Buzzsprout. Um, you know, but I want to make sure that any action that I take today is leading me to where I want to end up. I think a couple of years ago I had kind of like a quarter life crisis around 26, um, where I was like, man, I just am not satisfied with my aerospace engineering career. I don't want to do this for 30 years. What do I do now? And I think that that for me crystallized this idea that, um, I want to be very intentional with what I decide to do and what I devote time to. And so the podcast always has to be something for me that's leading me towards what my longterm goals are. And if not, then, you know, figure out is there something better that I should be doing or am I just in the middle of grinding something out and then it might work or it might not. But it's a bet I'm willing to make. Like, I just don't want the podcast to be something that, uh, runs my life or controls my life or where I feel like I have to do it and it's become a job. Like I want it to be working towards something meaningful for me. Um, so those are the three things that I would say, um, that I think about as far as should I continue podcasting or should I quit or should I take a break, which is like small quitting, right? It's saying I'm going to take a hiatus, recharge, refresh, remember what it's like to not podcast and then if I have the bug after a couple of weeks, create a plan to come back. Um, that's been super helpful for me. And, and s like an an unintended side effect of doing seasons is when I'm on break, I'm like, man, I really enjoy podcasting and I want to go back to it. But it's not something that you like think about often when you're in the middle of grinding out that edit so you can get your head episode

Speaker 2: 5:24

out on time, you know? Right. I know yours is tough too with the interviews. That's something we didn't talk about, but that's a big difference. You have to set up Tom with someone. I'm sure there's a tremendous amount of editing. You know, we got the audio issues here, you'll figure all that out. It's very different from, I just walked back into this room when I have an idea and, and speak for 18 minutes and then it takes about 90 minutes, you know, by the time you go back in it and then you're done. I think that would you say most podcasters are, I mean there's a lot of interview stuff and the logistics of that I think are a different animal probably.

Speaker 3: 5:59

Yeah. It's a totally different beast whenever you have to coordinate with other people and you're not in 100% creative control of the out of the, you know, the end, the finished product, um, because you can't like make them say something else afterwards. Right. Um, and then like you said, trying to figure out the tech side of things. Like we were experimenting with a different software today that didn't quite work out. We had to go to plan B and yeah, it's just those are just extra, just extra things you have to figure out. Um, but I think it's, for me it's worth it because I know that, uh, interviewing somebody gives me an opportunity to share someone else's expertise in someone else's experiences, which is something that is above and beyond my own capability. And so it's, it's like I'm making my podcast better in that way instead of just limiting it to what I know or what I can offer.

Speaker 2: 6:55

I love that and I love what you do and I love getting to share what works. This is zero. This is zero competitive. There's no competition here. The world has 7 billion people in it. It's not like if I help somebody learn how to use social media, that's going to hurt me in some way. There's none of that. I mean, everything you do to help will help you and them. I really like that about this industry. I think, you know, there's just people everywhere. Any tip we can share. So I love what you do on reaching out quickly and helping when we need you or promoting something like this. It's just going to expose someone to a new way of getting their message out. It's pretty cool. I appreciate you. Thanks, Chris is very nice.

Speaker 1: 7:55

[inaudible].