What does coming back strong from a podcast hiatus look like? In the day-to-day chaos of our lives—balancing work, family, personal time, household upkeep, etc, etc—it's perfectly understandable if it feels like a bit much to plan, record, publish, and market a podcast on top of that. If you're thinking about pressing pause on your show, or you already have, rest assured, you can take that step without derailing your past progress.

In this episode, Mary talks you through how to put your show on hiatus and set yourself up to return strong. Whether you plan to reimagine the whole thing or just take a break before diving back into business as usual, you'll want to ponder the goals of your podcast, your ideal workflow, and—maybe most importantly—the fact that taking breaks is a natural and healthy part of continuing to enjoy your podcasting journey!

Start preparing for your pause and your return right now:

• Why it's important to keep your listeners in the loop
• How to incorporate the role you want your podcast to play
• What to include in an updated feature episode once you're back
• Why it's a great idea to build in breaks ahead of time

Links worth mentioning from the episode:

• Episode 87, "Find Podcast Success While Doing Less": https://www.organizedsound.ca/find-podcast-success-while-doing-less-episode-87/
• Episode 84, "Simplify Your Workflow to Keep Your Podcasting Passion Alive": https://www.organizedsound.ca/simplify-your-workflow-to-keep-your-podcasting-passion-alive-with-craig-constantine-episode-84/
• Podtalk, "Presence with Mary Chan": https://podtalk.show/presence-with-mary-chan/

Connect with Mary!

• Leave a voice note with your feedback at https://www.speakpipe.com/VisibleVoice or email visiblevoicepodcast@gmail.com
• Get the full transcript of the episode at http://www.visiblevoicepodcast.com
• Read up on more secrets with the Visible Voice Insights Newsletter https://www.organizedsound.ca/newsletter
• To learn more or work with Mary, check out https://www.organizedsound.ca
• Link up on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marychan-organizedsound/
• Engage on Instagram @OrganizedSoundProductions https://www.instagram.com/organizedsoundproductions

Show Credits:

• Podcast audio design, engineering, and edited by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions
• Show notes written by Shannon Kirk of Right Words Studio
• Post-production support by Kristalee Forre of Forre You VA
• Podcast cover art by Emily Johnston of Artio Design Co.

Transcript with Audio Description:

[MUSIC IN - GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL "LET'S GO" BEGINS]

MARY: With all this uncertainty in the world, podcasting is, spoiler alert, not going to be your number one priority in your life. Okay, I know. Maybe it's already on the back burner for you, actually, and you feel this nagging feeling to do something. It's like, oh, I have my podcast. I should put out an episode, or, oh, I want to talk about these things, but, oh, I don't know, how do I have time? It's kind of nagging you. 

But the overwhelm of everything else in your life either A, doesn't give you the time to record, or B, the mental capacity to say a coherent sentence at this time is truly, truly lacking. So what is it like to take a pause from your podcast and also then come back too, with that intention? How do you restart or maybe reimagine your podcast if you're in a season of overwhelm or busyness? Or you know what, it's been on the back burner for a while and you're like, I want to come back now. So what can you do either to prep for this pause or figuring out what it can look like when you want to come back? 

This is episode number 96 on the Podcaster's Guide to a Visible Voice. 

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let's go >>

Hey there, welcome to the show. This is episode number 96, as I said. 

[MUSIC ENDS]

But you know what? If you go back to episode 87, about doing less for your podcast, if you haven't listened to that one yet, do go and listen to that one, because it'll be a great companion episode for this one. It'll give you some ideas on shifting your podcast workflow and just giving you a few more details and expansion on what I'm going to talk about today. So, yeah, bookmark that. If you haven't listened to episode 87 yet, that is the one to get to after this one. All right.

[MUSIC IN]

So today we're going to talk about, hey, maybe somewhere along the way of your podcasting journey, you paused the show, or you, uh, plan to pause it now, or maybe you want to come back from your show. What does this all look like? Will you be getting back to the old workflow that you used to do? What worked for you then, and what would you change now? Another question could be, what did you never liked about that podcast workflow? So you would like to get rid of it or approve upon it altogether, right? Getting rid of it could just mean, like, skipping that step or passing it off to somebody else. 

So we're going to deep dive into some of these things today. To maybe even reimagine what it could look like to restart that podcasting journey of yours. So, the foundational question, really, I'm going to ask you is, is this the same podcast that you want to create, or is there a new iteration for you right now in your podcasting journey? So if you're in that season of overwhelm right now and you want to reimagine what your podcast can look like in the future, we're definitely going to take a look at that in this episode. So what does restarting a podcast look like? But before we even get to that, let's take a look first at the pause. 

[MUSIC ENDS]

So maybe you're in that overwhelm season right now, and you're like, I just have to stop cold turkey. I don't have time for this. But if you do have the bandwidth, if you do have that mental energy to create one more episode, it's best not to ghost your listeners. You know, as a listener myself, I always wonder, oh, is this person coming back? Or maybe I've noticed, you know, they used to have a weekly show, but they haven't published this week. Oh, sometimes I might not notice the first week, but then the second week, third week, fourth week a month, two months go by, and I was like, oh, yeah, I used to like listening to this show. What happened to it? It's not coming up on my feed anymore. 

So if you have the bandwidth, create a final episode and provide them with what your plan is so that, you know, a few months down the road, they can still think, oh, yeah, what happened to that show? I wonder if they're back yet. Or, you know what? Even if you don't have a plan, let them know that you don't have a plan, [LAUGHTER] that you'd like to come back. Just depends on what the situation is, right? So it just depends on your transparency and what you want to share. 

Some of the things that you can share are your hopes for the podcast. What do you love best about creating the show for your ideal listener? Share that as well, because they want to know what's going on in your head. So could be a short solo episode that you share this, or you can create one of your regular episodes. Especially if you do interview episodes, you can tag it onto your intro and outro for the next episode that you create. 

The point of all of this is the intention and making sure that your listener is on that plan as well. You don't want to just leave them in a lurch, right? Especially if you've been creating a show for quite some time. They want to know where you are on that journey and go alongside with you. So, you might not have all your plans ironed out right now, but maybe this is also a good way to verbalize those ideas. I've had people do a solo episode and just start with a few bullet points and then just riff on that and figure out, okay, is this what I want to do? If I say it out loud, it might create a different meaning for you. So your episode doesn't have to be pre-planned and scripted, freestyling it as a brainstorming session out loud can really be beneficial as well. 

However, if you do have a plan, great. Let your listener know. I know for me, I've always scheduled in breaks, so I talk about those pauses in my last episode before I do the break. And I'll also let my listener know when I'm back. Like, I could have an exact date or I could just say like, mid-September or something like that, right? But right now, let's take a step back, back. So we're taking a step back even further and think about some options that yo