085: What Three Podcasters Experienced When They Took a Break from Their Podcast

If you’ve been playing around with taking a break from your podcast, today three of my clients are sharing their own experience in taking a break from their podcast! Listen in to hear how Bree Pair, Laylee Emadi, and Bonnie Bakhtiari approached pausing and scaling back in their own podcast and what results they saw from it!

Clocking In with Haylee Gaffin is produced and brought to you by Gaffin Creative, a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about our services at Gaffincreative.com, plus you’ll also find resources, show notes, and more for the Clocking In Podcast.

Make sure you take a listen to Episode 084 of Clocking In, where I share my own experience in taking a break and how you can plan for one in your own podcast!

Check out the Show Notes:

Hear from Bonnie Bakhtiari (1:29)
Hear from Bree Pair (7:12)
Hear from Laylee Emadi (13:09)
Haylee’s Break (18:00)

Review the Transcript:

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love hearing about what other people are doing in their business in their podcasts and their own experiences. So while I shared about taking a break from your podcasts in the last episode this week, I’m actually joined by three of my own clients to talk about what it looks like for them to take a break from their podcast this year.

Hey, y’all, welcome to the clocking in Podcast, the podcast for entrepreneurs and professionals making their way in the working world. I’m your host Haylee Gaffin. This podcast is produced and brought to you by Gaffin. Creative, a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about our services at Gaffin creative.com. Plus, you’ll also find resources, show notes and more for the clocking in podcast. So let’s clock in and get to work.

Friends, while there might be a multitude of reasons for you to take a break from your podcast, we covered a lot of those in the last episode.

So go back to episode 84 If you haven’t listened already, but in today’s episode, we have brought on a few podcast hosts to share their own experiences and their own stories. And kind of give you an idea of why they decided to take a break, how they approached it and what they learned from it. Every podcaster has a different experience. And I decided to invite three podcasts clients of mine, whether they were a client the time of their break, or not to come on and share their own experience here.

So let’s get started with the first one. My first podcast host that I’m featuring today is Bonnie Bock tre of the brand strategy podcast. Bonnie is the owner of BS for Bonnie design, where she offers brand strategy and design to entrepreneurs. Now, Bonnie actually takes a sabbatical every year. And I love this. I’ve worked with Bonnie for over two years. Now she does this every year. And it is something that I hope to one day implement very consistently in my own business. I also love her approach to how she managed her content during this time, which is what we’re talking about today. So Bonnie decided to scale back rather than take a full break and just stop. She planned ahead she planned episodes for every other week of the summer that would release throughout her sabbatical when she returned so that she could approach her sabbatical without too much worry, but also return without having to immediately jump back into the content creation mode. Now, I want you to hear from Bonnie today, if you’re planning a sabbatical of your own and struggling with how you’re going to figure out how to consistently still release content. Bonnie’s experience. Her expertise is so powerful in this scenario. So take a listen.

Bonnie Bakhtiari:

Hey, friends, I’m Bonnie Bakhtiari, host of the brand strategy podcast. This summer, I decided to take a break from my podcast by scaling back on the number of episodes that I was sharing every month because I wanted to enjoy my annual sabbatical. Each year, I take a entire month away from my business where I’m not showing up online, and I’m not showing up anywhere in my business. And this is such a special time because it allows me to be fully present in my life, I get to rest and recharge and travel and really experience a huge amount of time away from my business. And the reason why I wanted to scale back on my podcast was because I wanted to still be serving my audience with some helpful content during the summer months. But I really wanted to experience that time away feeling so free. And so you know, separate from what I needed to share. And when I needed to show up.

So what I did is I actually implemented this approach of scaling back earlier in the summer. So I was able to educate my audience and get them used to a, you know, lesser frequency of episodes instead of posting a brand new episode every single week. I switched to you know, like every other week. And the response was so incredible. It meant that I was able to not only give myself a break, not only was I able to really enjoy an experience fully my sabbatical, but everyone on my team also got to kind of take a break because we didn’t have to produce as much content as we normally what I absolutely loved it as well because we didn’t see a decrease in our numbers. In fact, we actually saw more people tuning in, we saw more people will actually going back into the archives, and listening to past episodes to kind of get their fix during that summer break. And it just went so well that I absolutely will be doing this. Again, if you’re in a season where you are struggling to create as much content as you once committed to based on whatever frequency you originally chose, I want to give you this encouragement to break up with that, you know, self imposed boundary, you don’t actually need to create however much content you use to, in fact, you can change the frequency of content you’re creating, you can actually take a break altogether and not post anything, you can do whatever you want, because hey, let’s remember, this is your podcast, you get to decide what works for you. And because we’re human, every season of life and work is going to look different.

Sometimes you’re going to have so much content that you are just posting episodes every time you turn around. And then there’s going to be times when maybe you don’t have much to say maybe you’re burnt out, maybe you just want to take a break and you don’t want to have to like show up anywhere on the internet for a while. That’s totally fine. You get to choose what serves you well. And I hope that my experience encourages you and shows you that even if you change the frequency of your podcast content, even if you take a break, even if you decide to switch things up, nothing bad’s gonna happen. In fact, my audience grew, the number of downloads per month grew and it was nothing but a positive experience.

Haylee Gaffin:

If you want to connect with Bonnie you can head over to brand strategy podcast.com To hear her podcast or be is for Bonnie designed to check out her work. I just want to thank Bonnie for sharing her experience and sharing her story here on the podcast. I know how valuable it is to hear what others are doing in podcasting and learn from their experiences, especially when you’re scared to take that leap.

But speaking of being scared, our next podcast host that we’re featuring was very scared to take a break from her podcast. And I’m gonna let her tell you why. But before she does, I want to introduce her. Our next host is Bree of the Thrive blogger podcast. And she is a coach for bloggers and entrepreneurs. And she’s actually what I would call my business bestie. I know that sounds so silly, but Bree and I bounce ideas off of each other all the time. We have actually been in a mastermind together for almost a year now. And it has been so wonderful. Essentially, Bree is my business coach. So here’s Bree and her decision to take a full month off this past summer.

Bree: Hey, guys, my name is Bree. And I am the host of the Thrive blogger and influencer podcast. And last summer, I took a break on my podcast because I was extremely overwhelmed. I was at the point where I had to record podcasts like the week of was what was happening, which for me is incredibly stressful. And I hate working that way. And so what I coach my clients to do, whenever they’re feeling that way, is to pause and allow yourself to get ahead. And that can be scary. I feel like especially in the podcasting space, where we’re trying to get more listeners and get more downloads and all of that. Or, you know, for the clients, I coach, it’s you know, getting more pageviews or more followers. But for me, why I needed to give myself that advice of pausing is that I was dealing with burnout, which I feel like when we get to the point of like having to create the content to release the same week. It feels like we’re on that, you know, content creation. hamster wheel that is never stopping and it’s exhausting. is a surefire sign that we need to just pause, and that we’re going to burn out if we don’t.

And so for me, that was the point I got to where I’m like, I know I need to step back. And I need to reprioritize what’s going on? And so I talked to Haylee and made sure like, Hey, I’m not alone in thinking this is a good idea, right? And sometimes you just need a coach, somebody that’s going to back you up and give you great advice and just you know, to confirm, you know what you’re doing too. So it was really important for me to do that. And it was so great. So we paused for about a month actually. And we didn’t have Can the other podcasts go out, which I know is not great, because we probably lost some listeners that were like automatic downloads and all of that. But whenever we did that, the following months, we actually saw a huge upturn in our downloads and saw the most downloads we’ve ever had. And I know that’s because I was able to create better content, because I was creating from a place of not Well, I would say, not from a place of overwhelm, and I wasn’t creating in a place of stress anymore, I was creating more from a place of abundance. And so that’s it, and like, our numbers have never been higher. Like since we took that break. They’ve just grown and grown and grown. And we’ve far surpassed where we were before we took I took that break. So if you’re struggling, like I was to, you know, create content consistently and get it out ahead of time, and you’re just feeling on the edge of burnout, like I was, and are just, you know, on that content creation hamster wheel where you cannot get ahead, then I highly encourage you to just, you know, pause and step back. And I like I said, I know it can be scary. But for me, it was 100% worth it. And we’ve grown as a result, because your audience can tell when you’re creating from a place of abundance rather than stress. It’ll be subtle things, right? Because you’re still creating awesome, magical, amazing content.

But there is a difference that happens when you are able to create in a good place rather than stress. And so I highly recommend it encourage you that if you are needing to pause and let yourself get back ahead. So you’re able to create from a great place again, then totally go for it.

Haylee Gaffin: If you want to connect with Bree, you can head over to thrive together dot blog to check out all of her resources, or connect with her at Bri pear.com. I love how transparent Bree was in sharing about how scared she was to take a pause but also opening up about burnout. Because burnout is very real, especially when you’re creating content. And that can bleed into the value and the quality that you are actually providing to your audience in your content. So if you are dealing with burnout, I want to make sure that you know it is okay to take a pause. Even if you need to plan those pauses like Bonnie did for her sabbatical. Make sure that you’re doing that if you’re working with a Podcast Producer, talk to them about it. Let them know like where you’re coming from. At Gaffin. Creative we are always open to scaling back and forth. Whether you want to go back to new episodes a month or one episode a month or every other week. Our team is prepared to do that. The way we approach it is that we plan for those things we plan as a business we plan as a podcast. We want to make sure that your podcast is still successful at the end of the day. And by planning for these breaks and planning for the sabbaticals. You can avoid that burnout, but also still serve your audience. Well.

Now our next podcast host is Laylee Emadi host of so here’s the thing podcast and Laylee was actually my very first podcast launch back in 2019. Laylee, and I sat down, talked about her podcast, walked through what it would look like for me to create a service to help her launch her podcast. And she became the very first podcast that Gaffin creative launched. Now that was over three years ago. So you can imagine the amount of content that Laylee has put out over the last three years. And in that three years, there have been a few times where we took breaks, we adjusted things a little bit. And we have gotten into a really great routine with Laylee on what her podcast schedule looks like.

But over the summer, she did take a break as well, just like Bri and Bonnie, she decided to scale back for a short time in order to focus on other things in her business. And that other thing was the creative educator Conference, which Gaffin creative is excited to be sponsoring in January in Dallas, Texas. So if you want to learn more about that conference, if you want to snag a last minute ticket, see if they’re still available at the time of this release, head over to creative educator academy.com Now listen in to Les Lee’s experience, as she shares what it looked like for her to take a break from her podcasts in order to refocus her priorities for a short time when she needed to.

Laylee Emadi: Hello friends. This is Laylee Emadi and I am the host of the so here’s the thing podcast. And I am so excited to share a little bit about my perspective on taking breaks, scaling back taking pauses in your podcasting when it’s necessary. So I have been podcasting for a while now over three years. And so I’ve taken a couple of breaks here and there but most recently, I took a little bit of a pause over the summer, so just a couple of months ago and And I, you know, it’s one of those things that I think people don’t often like to talk about. But that is kind of a mantra for me. And that is that we can do everything, but we can’t do everything at the same time. And so for me, I really like to think about in seasons of just absolute busyness and chaos, and, and that happens a lot, right, we have the seasons of chaos.

But I like to look at all the things that I’m doing. And I like to see what is something that I am able to scale back on in order to make room for other things. And so for me, it’s really, podcasting is one of those things, that it allows me the freedom to share content freely with my audience, be able to show up for them as much as I possibly can. But it also is something that because it is this content that I put out consistently, I’m also able to say, You know what, I put out a ton of content, if people want to look back at all of the episodes that I had lined up previously, that I’ve released in the past, they can, I can communicate this with my loyal listeners that, hey, I’m taking a break, here’s what you can expect. And here’s when I’ll be back.

And so often, the response is really, really encouraging and very much like good for you take that break. And so that’s really reaffirming to write that we can take these steps back, even though, I mean, I’m an Enneagram three, and I am a, I call myself a recovering workaholic. In the truest sense, it was so unhealthy for so long, that being able to take these breaks, and get that feedback from my audience has been so priceless for me. So if you’re struggling to create as much content, as you used to do, or you used to put out or you know, that your audience has come to expect from you, I just really want to encourage you, to be honest with your audience show up as your true self, especially when you are being so generous with your content and with the amount of free information and knowledge and education that you’re putting out there. And just be truthful, be candid and say, you know, hey, I need a break, I am taking the summer off, I hope you do the same. Enjoy your time. And I’ll see you in the fall. And people will be so open to that and so receptive to that.

And so I think just allowing your audience to kind of show up for you in return and reciprocate all of the amazing stuff that you put out there for them. So I hope this encourages you that if you’re in that season of struggle, that it’s okay to take a step back every so often from whatever aspects of your business you want to take a step back from. So I hope that was helpful. And thanks for listening.

Haylee Gaffin: If you want to connect with Layli, you can head over to Layli ahmadi.com. Or if you want to listen to her podcast that’s at so here’s the thing podcast.com I am so thankful that Lele shared her perspective on this, especially coming from the perspective of a business coach who understands and knows, like when it’s time to take a break, or when you just need to say okay, this is plenty I have too much on my plate. Where can I pivot or adjust? Or do what is needed in my business in order to continue moving forward?

If you’ve been listening to this episode, and you’re like, Okay, but how do I actually plan and take a break and do all the things I want to encourage you to go back to Episode 84, where I share my own experience, and highlight what it looks like for me to move as a podcast host who is also a Podcast Producer, who encourages consistent content, what it looked like for me to scale back to every other week, how I explained that to my audience, but also how how I justified it in my business, because yes, I encourage weekly episodes if you’re able to do that. But if you’re not, I encourage you to just be consistent in what you’re doing. So if you decide to take a break, and that’s absolutely fine.

My break looks different than someone else’s break. And I highly encourage you to consider what it looks like for you. And as we approach the holidays, you’ll also see a lot of podcasters will scale back a little bit to so instead of releasing the week of Christmas or the week of New Year’s, they’ll actually take a little break. And I usually recommend this for my clients. I do have clients who use this time to do things a little different, like my client, Callie James back at Thanksgiving, rather than releasing on Thanksgiving Day, which Thursday’s are her release day. She actually took episodes that she would have released in December and move those earlier to November. So we’ve recorded and edited and produced three episodes to go out Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving, instead of completely scrapping that many episodes for the year and instead made a series like a little mini series and it was such a cool concept and a good way for us to use what she had planned in her content, but pivoted a little bit too

We will work with the schedule and the holiday season and still serve her listeners really, really well. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode. We will be back next week with one final episode for the year, which is always a little bittersweet, but we will not be releasing the week of Christmas, and then we will be back in the new year. If you’re loving this podcast, I would absolutely love it. If you would leave us a review, head over to Apple. Write your review leave us a little rating and we truly truly appreciate it. We’ll see you on the next episode. This has been another episode of The clocking in podcast. You can find the show notes for this episode and more at Gaffin creative.com. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. If you love this episode, I’d be so honored if you leave me a review in the Apple podcast app. Until next time, I’m your host Haylee Gaffin clocking out