Host & Creator, The To Do Show
I’m quitting my podcast, The To Do Show. There are two main reasons. First, I’ve been working on nervous system regulation for over a year now to support my immune system after being sick constantly for the past 18+ months. It took me this long to realize that part of that healing means not filling every moment with productivity. I need actual space and stillness, which makes me profoundly uncomfortable but is clearly what my body keeps demanding.
Second, there’s an impossible conflict between me as a marketer and me as a podcaster. The internet rewards extreme angles and prescriptive rules. This show celebrates the opposite. Every guest has their own valid way of organizing their life. I couldn’t reconcile what works as authentic storytelling with what actually wins on YouTube without compromising the stories I wanted to tell.
While I’ve been interviewing other people about their to-do lists, mine has been making me physically sick. So I come to you today with the news that I quit. I quit my podcast. I quit The To Do Show.
You may have listened to the New Year’s episode where I talked a bit about my journey with nervous system regulation and how the nervous system is connected to the immune system. I’ve been working very hard on this journey for a year now. I started in March of 2024. It’s taken me a year to realize that perhaps part of nervous system regulation and subsequent immune system support is not filling every moment of my day and life with being productive, but actually trying to create some space and stillness.
It’s not something I’ve ever tried before because it makes me profoundly uncomfortable, but I think that’s the strong lesson I’m learning that is coming through and that my body and immune system keeps relentlessly repeating to me. I’ve been sick for the majority of the past year and a half. You might be able to hear in my voice that I’m currently still recovering from a cold. I have been sick nonstop since launching the podcast. I started really recording and prepping in October, and it’s just been one thing after another nonstop since October. It took me getting really completely knocked on my ass to really start coming to terms with this.
The other main thing is that my day job is marketing. That’s a big part of why I wanted to start this podcast, because I’ve never done YouTube marketing professionally and I wanted to learn a lot more about it. But this is a flawed thing because I myself as a marketer and myself as a podcaster have almost nothing in common. If I were to be giving myself a marketing consultation, I would say you are doing pretty much everything wrong. Other than I do believe in leaning into authenticity in marketing. But even so, there still needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel, something that the audience is clearly getting, a value that you’re providing other than just authenticity, especially when you are a nobody, when you’re just starting out and trying to build an audience.
Basically, myself as a podcaster and my true nature is that I just love sharing other people’s stories. I love asking people questions. I have loved every moment of making this podcast and every conversation I’ve had, getting to share these interesting people from all walks of life with the world as much as possible.
But myself as a marketer is like, you can’t just be like, oh, the moral of this podcast is that everybody is a unique snowflake with their own way of doing things, and every way that you want to be and do is what’s right for you. The way to win on the internet, especially on YouTube and social media, is to be extreme, to have an angle, to say this is the right way. Oh my God, you’re doing it wrong and I have the answer for how to do it right. These are the dire consequences if you don’t watch this episode of the podcast. This is the rule book for how to live your life as a successful person. These are angles that can win the internet, and I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of them.
Long story short, me learning this health journey and me as a marketer saying you’re not doing anything right as a podcaster, but me as a podcaster saying these are the stories I want to tell and I’m really not willing to change. Everything is at odds with each other. So I quit.
Thank you for watching any of these episodes. I’ve loved every person I’ve talked to and their amazing, unique stories. I hope that even though it doesn’t work as a marketing angle, if you have watched more than one episode, you did walk away with the lesson and the feeling that however you do your to-do list is great and that there is no one right way to do things.
Thank you. Hope to see you again somewhere doing something.
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