How to Avoid Podcast Burnout

I can't take it anymore. I've been grinding at this thing for as long as I could remember, and with each passing week, I hate it more and more. What I'd really love to do is just escape, to just go to an Airbnb and do nothing for a week. But at the same time, every time I do that, and I just throw my hands up in the air and go take some time off and shut everything down, I don't feel better. I feel worse. I just sit there and I worry, and I feel anxious about having to go back to the grind. And besides, if I did that, if I just took a bunch of time off, what if I lost all the momentum I've built up so far? I can't stop now. I didn't come this far, just to come this far. Maybe if I just power through a couple more weeks, things will get better. I hope. But I don't really see how. And if I want this thing, if I really want success, I'm going to have to grind it out, right? Whatever. It's something just quit being weak and power through. Have you ever had this conversation with yourself? I have many times. In fact, I can pinpoint a few times in my entrepreneurial journey where I had that exact conversation in my head. It first happened with my very first podcast, Philly Ho, in late 2018, and it happened after eight months of grinding and releasing really, really heavily produced episodes every single week. At that point, I didn't want to miss a single week because, like everyone says, as a podcaster, you have to be consistent if you want your audience to grow, right? But after eight months, my podcast wasn't growing at all. I was making zero money, and I was totally burnt out. Burn out again happened to me in June of 2021. At that point, I was a year removed from launching my coaching program, the Grow the Show Podcast Accelerator. At that point, we had 65 clients in the program, which is incredible, and the business was already in the low six figures, which is amazing for its first year. But this was June of 2021. One year earlier, I had launched the program in June of 2020, and for that entire year, that entire first year, the Accelerator program, every single weekday, and some weekends, I took on average between four to six hour long Zoom calls with no break. Now, that was in addition to coaching my clients, growing the team, and building out the company. I was at that point that I also had that conversation and felt extreme burnout. And the third time I started to feel it was actually just a couple weeks ago, in March 2022. At that point, the Grow the Show Accelerator had more than 200 students. The team has grown up to eight people, and it's about to grow some more, and the business is now doing six figures every month. Yet, once again, I felt that familiar feeling start to creep up. Burn out. It's a terrible, terrible feeling, and I know that it's a feeling that you've felt before, and you might even be feeling it right now about your podcast. It's common for podcasters, because when we launch a podcast, we do sign ourselves up for quite the grind. We commit ourselves to releasing an audio show usually once per week. Some people do daily or twice a week. And while planning, recording, post producing, and publishing podcast episodes every single week is a ton of work, that's only a third of the job, because you also have to work to promote the show, and you have to work to monetize the show. What's more is that I'm willing to bet that your podcast was launched as a side project, as a five to nine side hustle that you work on on nights and weekends outside of your nine to five. Or if you're a business owner, the show is part of your marketing strategy, sure, but it also has to slot around the main work of building and serving your business. It usually also winds up being nights and weekends. And in both cases for podcasters, because of this, burnout runs rampant. And when it rears, it's ugly head. It destroys. It can destroy your podcast, your business, your relationships, and the quality of your life. And burnout also traps, because even when you get so desperate that you throw your hands up in the air and finally say, that's it. I'm taking a break. The break doesn't help, because while you're resting while you're on vacation or doing nothing, you don't feel better. You feel anxious. You feel awful. And then you get back and you're still burnt out, except now you're behind. So what can we do about all this? And I got this question a lot from podcasters. How can I avoid burnout? Today, I can finally say that I think I have an answer for you. I can tell you what I've finally figured out anyway. It has saved me and it has saved my podcasts from fading into the podcast graveyard. And I know that it works because I literally just used it a couple of weeks ago to stop burnout cold in its tracks. And for the first time, that happened. Like I mentioned, just a couple of weeks ago, I started to feel burnt out again. All those ugly thoughts started creeping up. I'm not cut out for this. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired. How long much longer is it going to take? I can't grind it out anymore. And I started to panic. But this time was different because I was able to apply what I learned the past few times. I got severely burnt out. And this time, I was able to nip it in the bud. And it totally worked. Today, right now, I am more invigorated, excited, and energized about my podcast and my business and my life than I have been in half a year. And guess what? The solution to burnout is not what you think. The cure to burnout is not what everyone says it is. After all, if it was, nobody would be burnt out, would they? But everyone is burnt out except me. And after this episode, accept you. This is Grow the Show. The podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to grow your audience and monetize now so that you can have a six figure podcast business. Today on the show, it's just going to be you and me because we need to have a little talk that will have a big impact on the longevity and success of your podcast. Here, we're going to talk about burnout. And I'm going to share with you the revelation I have recently had that has finally finally given me the key to unlock burnout prevention and cure for good. And once you have it and you get it, you're going to be able to ensure that you don't get burnt out from your podcast business and that you're always excited and energized to keep making and growing the show. So if you want to have a chance at podcasting for the long haul, then stick around to this episode of Grow the Show. Burnout is rampant. I am not going to bother looking up fancy stats to tell you that you already know this is true. And how to avoid burnout is surprisingly actually one of the most common questions that I get from podcasters. And actually when you think about it, it does make sense because podcasting is intense, which is funny because people who don't have podcasts think that podcasting is easy, right? You might have even thought it was easy before you started one. But here you are. Now I have been on the cycle of burnout crash resume burnout crash resume for literally years and up until very recently, it just felt like something that you have to deal with and prepare for if you're going to be a creator or an entrepreneur. But now I know it's actually totally not a necessary evil. That's because I now realize that burnout is not a condition. Burnout is not a problem. It is a symptom of a problem. Just like a fever is not a disease to be cured, it is a symptom of another disease like a virus or a bacterial infection. And you have to get rid of that to make the fever go away. Just like with burnout, you have an infection that you need to make go away before the burnout will go away. It is a symptom, not a cause. But if that's true, then what is the cause of burnout? That is the major epiphany that I've had and that I'm excited to share with you today. Now I am not a doctor or a psychologist. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm simply sharing with you what I have discovered for myself, my beliefs and what has worked for me and it's worked very well. And I think it'll work for you too. I'm extremely confident that what I'm about to share with you is going to work and it's going to be helpful. Now to map out how I figured this out, how I got to this conclusion, let me share a few more details about my three biggest burnout episodes. Maybe as I share them, you'll notice the pattern that I've finally noticed and you'll see it for yourself as well. So my first experience with burnout was with Philly Ho in 2018. At that point, it was six to eight months into releasing the podcast. And I had released an episode every single week since the show was launched. Every single week since the show had launched. At that point, it was just me all by myself. The show is very heavily produced and I was spending 40 to 60 hours per week on each episode. I was spending very little time growing and monetizing the show because at that point, I thought the internet would just do that for me. I thought that creating a podcast just meant publishing the episodes and then question mark, question mark, question mark, big guest, boom, huge audience, tons of money. I now know it doesn't work that way. But at that point way back in 2018, I thought that's how it worked. So here I was eight months in having spent all this time creating this show and there was no growth and no monetization to be found. Yet, I was following all the podcast advice on the internet that said, just follow your passion and be consistent. Don't miss a week and eventually your show will grow. After eight months with no growth or monetization to show for it, I burned all the way out and I had to take a break. I said, all right, I just got to break this consistency rule. I got to take some time off and figure out what the heck is going on. And so I did that. I took six weeks where I did not publish the Philly Who podcast and over that six weeks, I studied what podcasts that have actually grown and have actually monetized, do what, what, how did they get there? And what I learned is that I was not doing what they do. I was doing what other podcasters who have no audience and no money do. So after I took some time, dug deep into what actually works in the podcast world, I was able to bring Philly Who back, apply what I learned. And within a year, take that show past six figures and revenue and six figures in downloads. Burn out cured, right? The second time I was totally burnt out, as I mentioned before, was one year into the Grow the Show podcast accelerator. So this is the summer of 2021. Now at this point, it was, it really started to happen in about June of 2021. I was heading into my 13th month of taking enrollment calls for the Grow the Show accelerator every single weekday and some holidays and weekends. And that was tough. It was really, really hard to after an entire year straight with no breaks and no vacation to just continue getting on the phone, getting on a Zoom call with four to six people every single day, seeing if they are good fit for the accelerator. It was a lot. And I'm telling you, I was burnt out. And the reason why I was burnt out is because I just didn't see how it was possible that anybody else could take those enrollment calls. Now I don't take them anymore. I have a team who takes them, right? A team of podcast growth specialists, many of whom are clients of the accelerator who have found success. And they now take the enrollment calls and decide, you know, who gets invited into the Grow the Show podcast accelerator. But there was a time in June 2021, where I didn't understand how the heck I could possibly teach somebody else how to take those calls. So I did. Now at that point, because the accelerator was doing well, I could afford to just literally say, you know what, I'm just going to take some time off and forget everything. And I did that. I literally booked four days at the Jersey Shore. Didn't tell anybody. Didn't even go with my girlfriend and just went by myself for four days and sat on the beach and stared into the ocean for entire days. And while it was nice to take a break, it actually didn't help with the burnout at all. It did literally nothing to help with the burnout because that following Tuesday, I came back from that impromptu four day weekend and did not feel any relief. And I just felt behind because I had missed all this work. So I had to start taking calls again. But then what I did was I reached out to one of my business coaches and got some really great coaching on how to hire an enrollment team for the Grow the Show podcast accelerator, how to find people, how, you know, what questions to ask, how to understand when someone is a good fit for the accelerator versus when they aren't. And so I got some guidance from somebody who has, you know, grown a business into eight figures on how to actually do that, how to essentially hire a sales team. So I was like, oh, okay, that's actually doesn't seem so hard. And then within a month, Mr. Reagan Bell, a key member of the Grow the Show team today started taking the enrollment calls for me. And then what happened after that was I then had time to focus on building out the 2.0 version of the Grow the Show podcast accelerator, which was extremely exciting. I now saw a very compelling vision of the future of the Grow the Show accelerator. I now believed that I had the ability to hire other people to do certain things. And I could see the path forward to growing this company past seven and eight figures and more importantly to serving as many independent podcasters as possible and to help them to grow and monetize their show. So burnout was gone. Once I actually got some help and was able to see the path forward. But last summer was miserable. It was terrible. It was three incredibly difficult months where I was struggling with burnout. Every day I would wake up. I did not want to work. I would just brute force myself to work for 12 hours, go to bed, wake up, do it all the next day. And it just I took a couple of weekends off throughout that period. It didn't provide any relief. And for a long time, I felt trapped and considered just stopping the whole thing, which my team is probably worried to hear that that was going on. But it's true. I was totally totally burnt up. By the end of July, I went on a week long vacation. First week vacation I took in years. And at that point, I did have somebody taking enrollment calls while I was on vacation. And three people joined the program while I was on vacation. It was the first time someone ever joined the Grow the Show podcast accelerator without me running the enrollment call. And I literally cried on the beach when that happened because I was so relieved. And that is when the burnout went away. And so for the winter 2021 into 2022, things were great. Things were fun. I moved from Philadelphia to Miami. Things were going wonderfully. And then this past March 2022, that familiar feeling came back again just a couple of weeks ago, where I started feeling burnout. I started feeling like this is too much. I can't handle this. I'm tired. I want to stop. But I had learned a key lesson from the two other times where I've been severely burnt out in 2018 and 2021. And this time, I knew what cured burnout. And I knew that it was not taking time off. And so this time, I was able to detect the feelings of burnout. I was able to adjust course, treat the cause of the burnout, not the symptom. And literally within two weeks, the feeling of burnout was gone. And like I said earlier, now I am even more excited about grow the show and serving you as I've ever been. So what was different this time? Why is it that the first two times I was severely and dangerously burnt out? It took me months to get out of that feeling of burnout. While this time, it took maybe two weeks. Well, first of all, the biggest year Rika moment came from listening to an interview between two entrepreneurs Alex, Harmosi and Grant Cardone. I had the interview on while I was setting up my new recording studio in Miami. And they were just talking about, you know, their own journeys, having built in sold companies. And my ears perked up when Grant Cardone said something really, really interesting. So Alex Harmosi had said that he had just sold this company because he got burnt out on the company after three years. And that he was working hard. And Grant Cardone corrected him and said, actually, burnout doesn't come from working hard. It comes from not seeing an end in sight. It comes from working really, really, really hard and not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. And this made a lot of sense. And I was immediately able to connect this to two people in my life. My cousin who is a nurse and my mother who is a teacher. Nurses and teachers have all in mass been quitting their profession since the pandemic. Why? Because they've been working unbelievable hours with no end in sight. They got burnt out. This stuck with me. Because I heard this at a moment where I was considering burnout and thinking about a fourth time that I was feeling burnt out that I actually haven't mentioned so far today. And that was a time period where I worked literally the hardest I have ever worked in my entire life and had no results. And for some reason, I wasn't burnt out. This was August, September, October and November of 2020. Six months after creating the Grow the Show podcast accelerator, I had been on eight to 12 calls every single day with podcasters about the Grow the Show podcast accelerator program. At that point, the Grow the Show podcast didn't exist. It was just a coaching program. And I'll tell you what, I have never felt more rejection in my life because over that four month period where I had taken over 250 enrollment calls for the program, three people said yes, three people joined the coaching program. 247 said no and many of them were pretty mean yet even after four months of nothing but rejection working 12 to 14 hour days. I didn't get burnt out. In fact, I look back on that time period fondly even though I had no results. So when I heard Grant Cardone say how burnout doesn't come from working hard, it comes from working hard with no end in sight. That is when it made it crystal clear to me when burnout does and doesn't happen. Burnout does not come from working hard. We love working hard. It feels great to work hard. What I have learned for myself is that burnout is a symptom of working hard without one of two things. So you can work hard and grind it out. But if you're missing one of these two things, you will be burnt out very, very, very soon. And so if you're feeling burnt out now with your podcast, I'm willing to bet that you're missing one of two things. The first thing is a clear and exciting vision of the future that you're driving for. Now you may or may not have that. But for me, the two times I have been burnt out on the grow the show podcast accelerator. It's because of this. It's actually because I know what was me, but I had outrun my own vision for the accelerator. In both times, I set a goal for where the accelerator would be and then caught that goal. But just after I caught the carrot, the treadmill was still going at full speed. So I caught up and surpassed the vision that I had for the program. But kept working really, really hard and didn't know where I was going with it, because I had already achieved the goal. I had achieved the vision. So what I learned from there is really to just dream bigger and have bigger and more exciting goals. And at the moment, I catch a goal or achieve a vision. I really, of course, take a moment to be grateful and appreciate what I've gotten. But if I'm going to keep working as hard as I have been, I have to upgrade that vision. So I have something clear and exciting to chase after. So that's the first thing. You can get burnt out if you're working really hard and you don't have a really clear and exciting and compelling vision for the future that you're working hard for, right? And I think that this happens with a lot of people who burn out on something and quit because there's just no, what, why are you doing this? What are you driving towards? The second thing, now you might be listening to this and being like, but Kevin, I'm feeling burnt out and I do. I have a clear and exciting vision for my podcast. I know exactly what I want. I want to have a large growing adoring audience. I want to make money by making the show and maybe even just be a straight up full-time podcaster. So why am I burnt out? Well, it's because you're missing the second thing, which is absolute certainty that the work that you're doing is going to get you to that vision. This is the key piece. If you are grinding, grinding, grinding and you are not seeing any evidence or you have no belief that the grinding that you're doing is going to get you to that clear and exciting vision, you aren't going to burnt out. That is why in the fall of 2020, when I was just getting my butt handed to me on Grow the Show Enrollment Calls, perform on straight, getting nothing but nose, I still was having a blast and I didn't get burnt out because I was absolutely certain that the vision that I was headed towards with this accelerator program, the one that has been achieved today was possible if I just kept at it and kept getting better at what I was doing and sure enough, that was true. But the three times that I have been dangerously burnt out, once when I was doing Philly Ho, again, this past summer when I was taking all of the enrollment calls for the Grow the Show accelerator program and I didn't know how to teach somebody else to do it. And then just a month ago, when we surpassed our goal of a $100,000 month, I caught the goal and I didn't know what to do next. So back in 2018 with Philly Ho, I was grinding, grinding, grinding out, but I didn't believe that that grindy work was actually going to grow and monetize my podcast because it wasn't working. This past summer of 2021, I was grinding and grinding and grinding it out. The accelerator was growing, which was awesome, but I was taking so many enrollment calls. I knew that I couldn't do that forever and I didn't have certainty that I would be able to delegate those things, right? So are you hearing the difference here? Both cases where I was so severely burnt out that I literally had to shut everything down. It's not because I was working hard. It's because I did not have certainty that the hard work that I was doing was going to get me to the clear and compelling and exciting vision that I had, right? So those are the two things that you need. So if you're feeling burnt out right now, I want to challenge you. Number one, do you have a clear, specific and exciting vision for the future that you're driving for with this grind? And number two, if you have that vision, do you have absolute certainty that the work that you're currently doing is going to get you to that vision? If you don't, you're going to burn out. If you have both of those things, it is not hard to work really hard. In fact, it is super, super fun. And I've actually seen this in action with many, many clients in the Grow the Show Accelerator program because many of them take a break from releasing the show when they join the accelerator, right? They come in, they're burnt out. Things aren't working. They're like, I'm just going to join this accelerator program and figure out how to get, make this happen. They join. And then many of them actually take a break. They put their show on hold so that they can take some time to consume the course and you know, make some strategic changes to their show. Some of them will come back in two weeks and they will be rip-roaring ready to go. They have already reinvented themselves. They've gone through the course material. They have clarity on their vision and exactly the path forward. And they crush it. They explode. There are others though that take a break and they don't consume the course. They just take all of the time off and do nothing. And unfortunately, what happens is I hear back from them a couple weeks later or I don't hear back from them and re-reach out and say, hey, what's going on? You know, how's your break going? And if they haven't consumed any of the material in the course or at least stayed engaged or thought about how to actually get where they want to go, they're still burnt out. They don't get started again. They have no momentum because they've just stopped doing anything and they have not achieved clarity on their vision and an absolute certainty on how to get to that vision because they just shut themselves down. And in those cases, my job as their coach is to push them and to help them create that vision and help give them the certainty that exactly how to get to that vision. So, what does this mean for you? If you are feeling burnt out on your podcast, the answer is not your time management techniques. It's not batching. It's not this. It's not just taking a break. I mean, breaks are important. But really, it is my belief that if you're feeling burnt out, you need to ask yourself number one, self, do I have a clear and exciting vision that I'm driving towards? A specific and clear and exciting vision. It's got to be specific and dream big. Don't be shy. And if you have that clear and exciting vision, the next question is, do you truly believe that what you are doing today, the work that you're putting in is going to get you to that vision. If you have any doubt that the hard work that you're doing is going to get you to your clear and exciting vision, you are going to burn yourself out. If you just keep throwing time and effort at the project, hoping that it'll blow up and you'll be rewarded, it's not going to happen. Because while you tell yourself to just shut up, keep pushing and stay consistent, there's a voice inside your head that keeps saying, we've been doing the same thing. We get in and we get out. I keep posting these audio grams and nobody comments on them and my listenership does not go up and I keep cranking out this content for ages and nothing has changed. Should we really keep doing this? But you ignore that voice and you power through until eventually that voice takes over, takes the wheel, makes you feel super burnt out that you stop. And in most cases, you give up. Now again, I'm not saying that taking a break is a bad thing. Of course, balance the whole nine yards. You should take a break. But remember, stopping and taking a break in and of itself is not going to cure burnout. Just stopping and doing nothing does not cure burnout, getting clarity on what you want and getting certainty and how to get there is how to cure burnout. And sometimes that certainty just comes from a little verification that you are on the right path. And that is how I was able to cure burnout for myself just two weeks ago. We caught our goal of $100,000 revenue in one month. And at that point, my vision was unclear. I was like, wow, now I really don't know where to go from here. Now our goal is a million dollars in revenue per month. And we could probably get there within a year. And we probably will because we have a clear and exciting vision. And at the same time, through mentors, through my team, through looking around, I have gotten certainty that we are on that path. And that I have the ability to get us there instantly. My burnout dissipated. And I didn't even have to take a week off, even though I'm about to go to alter and take some time off. Ravers, what do you say? So if you are feeling burnt out and you would rather feel clarity, certainty, excitement and invigoration for what you're doing, ask yourself those two questions. Do you have a clear and exciting vision for what you're driving towards? And do you truly believe that the hard work that you are doing is absolutely going to eventually make that vision come true? If you have any doubt that your activities, that the work that you're putting in is going to work, you must address that doubt by either confirming whether or not it will work by finding other people who have done it that way or stopping what you're doing and repeating and repeating and repeating with no results and start doing things that get results. And if you're not sure what that is, listen to more episodes of this podcast and join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. We have over 2300 growth minor podcasters in there. And if you're not sure whether what you're doing with your social media or your show or your promotion or your monetization is the right path, go ask other people in that Facebook group who are a couple chapters ahead of you. There are podcasters with unbelievable growth and monetization numbers in there. And there are beginners and everybody in between. So we are there to serve you. So that is it for today. That is all I have for you. Hopefully you found this valuable and hopefully if you're feeling burnt out, you now understand that problem is not you. It's not a problem. The burnout itself is not a problem to be solved. Instead, you don't have clarity and you don't have certainty. And that is all that you need to get to make the burnout feelings go away so that you can resume your path to podcast superstar. So that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening. This episode was written by me, produced by myself, and Catherine Nails with Post Production by Jeremy Bishop. Here is a very special thanks to you for making it to this far. Join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. And if you've got any value from this episode, please, if you're on Apple podcasts or Spotify, give us a rating and a review so that we can get even bigger podcasters on this show to share what works with you. My name is Kevin Schmidland. Thank you so much. Please don't allow yourself to be burnt out a minute further. Get help from me, my group, or just somebody else. Please get help. And I will see you in next week's episode.