Saying “See Yah Later” to Our Podcast

By Lauren | February 4, 2021 | 0 Comment

If you’ve been following me at all over the last two years, you may (or may not) have seen that I have had a podcast since 2019 called Somebody Date Us.

This podcast was born out of feeling defeated after a breakup, and hearing similar complaints and issues from my single friends. I joined forces with two of my single friends (Carley & Asal), and Carley brought on her friend Mike who started as a producer, and ended as a fourth co-host.

When we launched Somebody Date Us, we never expected that a) we would keep it going for 2 years, and 100 episodes, but b) that it would take off to the level it did. To-date we have 76K downloads, we’ve won NOW Toronto’s Best Local Podcast in 2019, and a Canadian Podcast Award for Best Adult Podcast.

Having a podcast, has definitely been full of amazing opportunities. We’ve also met a ton of cool people, and still can’t believe we had/have dedicated listeners who listen to us for hours on end. However, at the end of 2020 we decided it was time for a break. Why? Well there were a few reasons…

Content is hard to come up with

I work in content creation full-time, so since this is my job, you think I’d be able to think of endless topics for us to talk about on a podcast. However, as we made our way through more, and more episodes, it became harder, and harder to come up with unique things we hadn’t already talked about. Also, unique things that we were qualified to talk about.

For example, there are a ton of areas we didn’t touch on in our 100 episodes, but if none of us felt we were educated on the topic enough to talk about it, or didn’t have personal experiences with it, it made it too challenging to make an episode out of it.

Guests brought on more work

To follow-up on the content point above, naturally, when you don’t know about a topic on a podcast, you invite a guest or expert to come talk about it with you. We had tons of amazing guests who did just that, and we learned so much from them. But having guests also brought on more work than just recording the episode with the four of us. Because we now had to:

1. Find guests
2. Reach out to guests to see if they’d want to be on our podcast (lots don’t even respond)
3. Have a phone screening with the guest (we learned early on that we needed to do this to ensure they could actually talk confidently in the unique setting of a podcast)
4. Prep for the guest by preparing questions, and doing research
5. Work around the guests schedule for recording

…and the list goes on.

Putting out consistent content is exhausting

Our podcast started and ended with having weekly episodes. We thought from day one that people wouldn’t get in the habit of listening to a podcast that didn’t come out on the same day every single week.

This strategy worked out great for us pre-COVID. When we got together to record, we would record two episodes in one night, so we didn’t have to worry about our schedules not aligning every, single week. However, with COVID, we had to record remotely. This opened up a new can of worms.

First off, we hated recording on Zoom. We spent all day on video calls with work, friends, family, working out, etc., that the last thing we wanted to do is go sit on Zoom at the end of the day for another two hours. On top of that, we just found Zoom challenging in terms of trying not to talk over each other, lagging, sound quality, and with that we felt we lost some of our overall banter we’d have when we were in-person, together. Not to mention the fact that we could only record one episode per night because Zoom made recording a lot more exhausting.

With everything moving remotely for way longer than we anticipated, there’s also another small detail here. We were all either in relationships, or unable to date safely because of COVID. When you have a podcast all about relationships and dating, how on earth are you now supposed to think of topics that are unique to talk about when nothing in our lives is happening in that area?

Starting a podcast with four people can be hard

Starting a podcast with your friends is definitely fun, don’t get me wrong. When I decided to reach out to Carley and Asal to be a part of this, I knew we’d all bring something different to the table, because we all are very different people. We date differently, our personalities are different, and that’s what brought the magic to the podcast (paired with Mike’s much needed male perspective). When we recorded, it felt like (and sounded like) just a group of friends chit-chatting over wine.

However, just like any project or business venture, when you have too many chefs in the kitchen, it can present some challenges. For starters, not everyone works the same, or likes to work the same. Not everyone is committed to side projects at the same capacity as others, and not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye with everything.

For the most part, we were great team players, and always figured things out together. But as someone who had to do a lot of the organizing, lining up guests, running our social media, etc. it became really draining, especially when I had multiple other side projects too (freelance work, a travel blog).

In conclusion

All in all, for me, it just felt like the right time to say goodbye (for now). Not only am I in a relationship now, so I’m no longer going on multiple dates a week, loaded with content, but I also felt I wanted to end the podcast on a high note. 100 episodes, 76K downloads, thousands of followers… that seemed like the high note.

Will we be back? Well we left it as “we’re on a break”. To me, I feel good about ending it completely where it is. However, you never know what things could change in the future that may bring us back to creating more episodes or content.

Until then, it’s a sayonara from SDU for now!

0 Comments