Dealing with Burnout in Podcasting with Shannon Hernandez

Hey everyone! Ashley here with RSS.com. In today's episode, we're chatting with radio pro and podcast consultant Shannon Hernandez, aka Shanman. Enjoy the show! Are we all set? Yeah. Okay, all systems go. Fantastic. Well, Shannon, welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you could be here. Could you do us a favor and tell us what you do? Yeah, my name is Shannon Hernandez. I'm a radio broadcaster.

I've been working in the Phoenix, Arizona area for the last 23 years, which is kind of amazing in radio world because I have heard that you actually have interviewed quite a few radio people and they say, you know, 10 years at most might be the thing. 22 years is kind of unheard of. So yeah, I do that. Been doing it for quite some time and have my own website. I teach people how to, you know, podcast, but not necessarily podcast, but get their podcast out there, podcast marketing.

That's what I think a lot of podcasters are looking into doing these days. Absolutely. So when did podcasting come into what it is that you do? God, this was about like this was about like 10 years ago when podcasting was just starting out and so it already been maybe about six or seven years old and it was still fresh and new.

I mean, people were still using, you know, actual iPods that were, you know, with the wheel that, you know, you could scroll around and have a downloaded episode of something, some piece of audio. And when I saw that, I was like, oh, this is the revolutionary way of doing a new type of radio. It didn't necessarily mean that it was going to be actually radio, but I knew it was going to be some form of radio. Fast forward to the present and now we see how it has evolved completely.

You know, about 10 years ago, it had really gone through this stage in which it was really all about marketing. A lot of marketing people were on it. You know, get your podcast out. This is a great way to get business. But then as we started to see it evolve and as I, you know, I look back on it from like 10, 15 years ago, you know, it was very primitive back then. It was like literally a couple of dudes like sharing files back and forth to each other.

So when I saw that, I thought this is a new form of radio. I've got to get on top of this. I've got to make it happen. And I started my own podcast, a comedy podcast, very vulgar comedy podcast back in the day. And then I went in and I started doing other podcasts, podcast testing my own episodes and things like that. So then as I started to learn more, I started to learn that podcasters had trouble not only with the production side, but with the marketing side as well.

So I really have pivoted in that direction. And that still seems to be the case these days that people still have trouble with things like monetization and how to even get started. So I'm curious with podcasting, do you just have one podcast now and then you're like your day job or how does that look for you?

Yeah, you know, I'm not even podcasting right now, which is kind of it's OK. So I have a client. I guess you call it the big fish client. I have a big fish client that I help edit podcasts for. So that to me is very important to make sure that his podcast is tip top shape, has the right sound equalization, normalization. I mean, all the nerdy geeky stuff that you can talk to just about any podcaster out there and podcast editor and like, oh, you got to do it this way.

But these are settings that I've been using from day one when I started a radio and my client has always been happy with how I have created those podcasts for him. So for me to create a podcast is something that just fell off the wayside. I did have a YouTube channel. Actually, I still do have a YouTube channel that provides a lot of great content. And I think a lot of people and a lot of the subscribers on that channel, they consider that as air quotes.

I don't like doing air quotes, but air quotes, a podcast. They consider that a podcast. And that's kind of the direction where we're going now these days, where a lot of people are seeing that there is this correlation, this relationship between audio and video and people for some reason love to see video. And I've never seen it that way. I've always seen it as just audio specific content that you're developing.

But now with the innovations with Spotify and now YouTube going to be jumping into the video podcasting game, which I always just thought it was called vlogging. But now it's called video podcasting. It's something that's going to be very, very relevant in the near future. Once YouTube gets a hold of it, then that's what I think is going to happen. But back to your original question, I don't have a podcast.

I have a YouTube channel with a lot of great content that's on there that teaches people all about the ins and outs of the beginning journey of that podcast. And then I just kind of stepped off the wayside of that. Life happened and things just kind of, you know, I stopped doing it because there was a sense of burnout and not saying that I'm still burned out, but I do believe and follow the philosophy of exercise. Like I'm a yogi, I do yoga every day, power yoga.

And when you get tired, you take a break, you stop and you rest. And I think that's very important for anyone who's doing anything that requires you to go out there and give it your all every single day. I still help people with podcasts. I still have clients that come to me and ask me questions about podcasts. I still have another client that reaches out to me and is looking for help with his website.

But for me, I have to take a step back from the actual content creation side because it was overwhelming me to the point to where I couldn't even get out of bed and just, you know, the thought process of thinking, what am I going to create today? Which is a good and a bad thing, because one thing you can always say is like, what am I going to create today and how excited am I going to be about that?

But there was a point in time where it just got to the point where I was like, I'm not excited right now. And when you're not excited, you create terrible content.

I think that's really true. And I am so glad you actually brought this up because though, whenever I first reached out to you, we were going to talk about like monetization and how to monetize a podcast. I was kind of excited when you said that you wanted to kind of talk about burnout because it's something that we've covered on the blog in the past for RSS.

And can you speak to me a little bit more about what the process was of like when you initially felt like, okay, I'm starting to feel burnout, what did you do? And how did you kind of keep things going with like the day job and working for your clients and all those things while also protecting your own mental health?

Yeah, that's an important thing. I think that a lot of podcasters are going to miss out on it. This episode, I think, you know, people are going to look at it and they're going to go, you know, I don't need to learn about that. But it's actually one of the most important things that I think podcasters or any content creator is going to encounter is the straight up like grind and feeding the machine and feeding the beast.

And it needs to really be looked at because it can really cause a lot of physical and mental damage to you. And me being someone who in the past used to do things at the extreme and be like, it's going to be okay. Now that I'm older, it is now caught up to me. And just because I was younger didn't mean that I couldn't handle it. I could, but it did catch up to me later down the line.

So to answer the question about what did I do and how did I kind of like take those steps forward to take steps back? You know, in the beginning, when I first started this whole journey, if someone would have told me to, well, they did tell me because I took a course in and actually had a coach about it.

They said set up the elements of your business to where the moments in which you get burned out can kind of just run on their own and you can acquire leads, you can acquire, you can build whatever content that you need. Not saying that content can be automated. It can be at points in time, but it turns out to be crap content. But just setting up those initial pieces, my business, setting up my email list.

I'm sure, you know, we have, you know, you've talked about email lists on this, on this podcast before, you know, and the importance of having an email list and harvesting those leads. So in my mind, my coach had told me, you need to put this into your head. Doesn't matter if you're a business owner or a podcaster, a YouTuber, a blogger, whatever, set up something like an email list so that you can automate it and have it coming, you know, have people coming to you.

And you know, you're still looking for business, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to be completely active. So for me, that's what ended up happening. I had an email list. It was, it's still constantly growing every single day, grows every single day. I communicate with those people every now and again. But for me, I had that aspect. And then I had the aspect of content creation. The content creation was that that was the thing that was really kind of just burning me out.

And I was strictly creating YouTube content, knowing that with YouTube content, I could, I could really boil it down into different pieces of micro content. Right. So I could say video and then I could take the audio, turn it into a podcast if I wanted to. And then I could take that, transcribe it, turn it into a blog, take that trend, you know, the typical things that you hear.

But for me, doing all those things without the funds, without the money was like overwhelming, you know, and to this day, it's still kind of overwhelming because I like things done a specific way. And so I ended up kind of just taking a step back because the content creation became so overblown. It became so, you know, hefty on my end. And I was like, I can't do this. And I'm creating more content that is bad than I'm creating content that is good. And I think that's important.

It's like watching your favorite TV show. Its first season would be awesome. And then they go to the second season. It's awesome. Then by the time you're hoping by, if they get to season five, it's still a great show. But you've seen some shows where by the time you get to season four, they just really are not that good because it's like, they're just really trying to reach for too much. And, you know, to use an old phrase, you know, they just jumped the shark in the shows.

And I didn't want to do that with my content. I didn't want to jump the shark and just say like, here are the five reasons why podcasters need these socks. You know, podcasters don't even know about like specific socks. Like I know what I need for specific socks, but that's content that I think that they just don't. It's not really that's being searched. It's not being, you know, it draws curiosity, but then they look at it and they go, no, that's not good.

So I just took a step back and slowly just kind of took a step back. I notified my subscribers, told them, hey, you know, I'm taking a break. This is something that I have to do. And that was a year ago now. And so that is what I've needed. I've needed like a solid year to really kind of recover.

I can completely understand that because as podcasters, we crank out so much. I mean, we are literally going, you know, grinding really, really hard. And there was something that you mentioned that actually I kind of had already written down a question. And so it's perfect that you talked about seasons.

What do you think about the movement towards having seasons of a podcast rather than just constantly cranking out nonstop content, something that you can batch and then drip rather than every single day I have to show up and put something out there? You know, I think it's, it depends on what your objective is. This is a huge, huge thing that I talk about with my audience when I do talk with them. And when I reach out to them and I go on my YouTube lives, they ask me these questions.

What do you think about this? What do you think about that? And it always comes back to the same question. What's your objective? What's the objective of your podcast? Are you trying to get an audience? Are you trying to monetize it? Are you trying to do? What are you trying to do with it? Are you just trying to grow the audience itself? That's it. Are you trying to grow the email list? What are you trying to do? And so when it comes down to seasons, I don't see a problem with seasons at all.

You know, but I would hope that a podcaster would have some type of game plan that allows them to harvest some form of a lead so that the day that you decide to drop, you know, season one of your new podcast, that you can shoot it out to your email list and say season one of my podcast is available for download today. We're going to release weekly at 5 p.m. Eastern so that it's waiting by the time you get home from doing whatever.

Those are great communication tools, along with social media to disseminate the message. So I have no problem with season seasonal podcasts. I would just question and wonder what the objective of the podcast is. Is it just to get an audience? Is it to get sponsorships? Does it get you know, you have to ask these questions and they're very, very relevant and important because if you're just doing seasonal podcasts with no real idea of what you're doing, then you're just creating a podcast.

And it's like saying, oh, I'm paying for hosting and I paid for the equipment and I paid for the computer and I paid for all that. And what did I get in return? Just you know, accolades. You do want those, but there's got to be a payoff somewhere.

So in terms of like objectives, let's say my objective is I want to have a really good audience that I can take my podcast and turn it into a business. For example, let's say I'm a service based owner. I'm a photographer. If I'm a photographer, how can I take my podcast, batch it in seasons so that I don't have the burnout, can keep the day job and keep people coming back listening to my show? What's your opinion on that?

Yeah. The other thing I think you could do with photography and I told this actually to a photographer friend of mine is that it really kind of also depends on like how you want to deliver that content because photography is such a visual element, right? It's so visual with people, you know, especially when you're talking about not just taking pictures with the camera, but I'm assuming that you're going to be editing in Photoshop, Lightroom, doing whatever.

And a lot of those would might require you to actually do video tutorials, but not all of them. So and there's also aspects of photography where you can talk about the philosophies behind why you you took a photo in a specific at a specific time of day, dusk, you know, and you can go through those steps and processes of your philosophy. So I'd like to look at podcasting is saying and I'll get to your question.

I like to look at podcasting and in this circumstance, I like to look at it as like podcasting allows you to share ideas and philosophies you can't really show, but you can illustrate through words, right? You can really illustrate through words, philosophies that you hold near to yourself, how those philosophies have helped you become the best photographer possible.

And you can share those and those ideas can help influence or they can help create some type of conversation around what you're talking about, right? In that seasonal podcast, I would set up some form of call to action, whether that be in the beginning, whether that be at the very end, or maybe you just want to do a mid roll, you know, briefly baked in promotion.

If you want to learn more about the first steps of what to do to get into photography, those are the those would be the little seeds that I would put into my podcast, right? And so those little seeds would be the call to action going back to my website to get a free download to grow my email list, however it may be. Because when I think about it and I think about seasonal podcast, people are always scrolling through looking for different podcasts and saying, oh, this sounds interesting.

This sounds interesting. Oh, this only has 12 episodes. Why? Oh, it's seasonal. And when they go into the list of your podcast, there may be something that they really, really enjoy or they like, and they will subscribe to your email list. Now you've got a potential customer or maybe a potential lead of some sort. And they're on your email list and you can still communicate with them over email, even if you don't create new audio content for, say, another six months, right?

So you're always keeping them engaged in your in you investing in you, even though you don't have to have a podcast like you don't even have to have a podcast. The podcast is just a way of disseminating. I look at it as like social media. It's just another way of disseminating information back out. It's content that is development. Content is developed. It's it's like Twitter, but long form, right? It's really super long form content.

So when we come to seasons and I have no problem with anyone doing seasons, I would just say you would have to prepare ahead of time so that when you'd release, like, say, I don't know how many episodes you would release, maybe 12, maybe 15. I don't know. Like some people say seasons are like 20 episodes. It just depends, you know, but I would prepare before I go into those seasonal episodes.

I would prepare what's on my website or prepare all the elements to get someone to still be in touch with me, even when the podcast is a little dormant. To me, that answer your question? Absolutely. It totally does. And to me, everything that you've said, it sounds like whether you're doing seasonal or just a constant release, it sounds like prevention of burnout, the biggest key to prevent burnout is just making sure that you're preparing everything you possibly can ahead of time.

Would you say that's an accurate statement?

Absolutely. Like they're like I said, if we go back to my my exercise metaphor, you know, analogy, you know, when you first start working out, I mean, it sucks, right? It totally sucks. You're like, oh my God, I'm sore. But that first week is your preparation. You are going to have a little bit of discomfort and it's going to be so uncomfortable that you are now placed into a zone in which you are like either I quit or I keep going. How bad do I really want this?

And when you look at it, like when you compare it to like podcasting, you go podcasting, exercise, OK, exercise is supposed to make me stronger and it will make me stronger. The first steps are always the most difficult, but by week two, week three, you start getting used to the routine. Your muscles still may be a little bit weaker or still a little bit weak, but not as weak, right? You're growing, you're building, you're building endurance.

And once you start building more endurance, you start to get strong. And then maybe you start to see weight loss, maybe you start seeing physical aspects of exercise, you know, the healthy eating, everything that all encompasses healthy lifestyle. And you start to see those results. I look at it the same way as podcasting and setting yourself up for success later down the line. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be something that's overcomplicated.

You just have to know where you need to reach your people so that they can take an action on something that you want to share with them in case there's something that is important for you to share with them. So set up everything as much as possible. Having a website, this is a big thing for podcasters. They never have a website. They always rely either on, you know, not that I'm talking bad about any services, but they rely on like hosting service websites. I'm talking full legit website.

You know, I'm talking, get a WordPress site. You know, I have a Kajabi site because that has allowed me to have the freedom to take the time off to do what I want to do and kind of just rest and still earn an income. But if you have to start a WordPress site, learn how to use it or hire someone to do it, you have to take the step somewhere because you're not going to get any further in podcasting if you're just going to continue to keep podcasting and burning out.

I have some friends that do a podcast and all they do, it's all they do. They just do a podcast. They have no website and it doesn't mean that they're not successful because they are very successful. But their model is specific towards comedy and true crime and they have already set up, you know, whether it be a Patreon, I think they still have a Patreon. I know they do actually.

And that Patreon is just one element of their monetization efforts along with the merch that they sell, along with the live shows that they do along with, you know, so they've set up everything in the process. And then they've also set up this really small, dinky little website to collect email addresses.

It doesn't have to be complicated, just has to be somewhere where they collect emails because one day, and I'm sure you, I'm not sure if the audience understand this or remembers this, but I don't know if you remember when Instagram went down like six months ago and all the influencers lost their mind, like they were losing their mind and they're like, oh my God, I can't make money.

And I remember I remember seeing specifically seeing one of my friends who's an influencer, he was losing it like every second. I can't do this. I can't do that. When those instances come around where Facebook comes down or YouTube goes down or Instagram goes down, what's the other line of communication that you have? Well, it could be your email list and communicating and telling them, hey, just letting you know, I do realize Instagram is down today.

You know, I will be back once Instagram gets back up. But here's here's a promotion that was supposed to run on Instagram, but it's right here in your email inbox. Here you go. You know, so that those lines of communication need to always be open somewhere, but you got to put the work in, in order to make sure those lines are always open.

That's I'm so glad you said that because that's one of the things we actually do talk about a lot is that your podcast definitely needs a website and it definitely needs an email list because your email and your, um, your website, those are the only things you actually own because yeah, you can post all this stuff on Instagram. You can post all this stuff on Facebook. You can post all this stuff on Tik TOK, but if any of it goes down, what are you going to do?

How are you going to reach out to your audience? Another thing that you, that you said that just, it just keeps coming back and we're talking about preparation and, and how do you can prevent burnout and all these things. But one of the things that you said that just keeps coming back in my mind is that you're saying basically to start with the end in mind. So in your opinion, how would someone go about figuring out what their goals even are as a podcaster?

Can you still hear me? I had to mute so I could cough. Can you still hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, great. Um, and so when you, when you think about your goal and how you decide on your goal, I try to simplify it as best as possible.

And I just try to, I bring up that example that I brought up earlier, you know, you're not going to be spent, you know, you can spend for the hosting, you can spend for the website, you can spend for the equipment, you can spend for, um, you know, the time that it's going to take to, you know, maybe the coaching and all that stuff.

At the end of the day, if you're going to spend all that money, and if we really think about it, and I've done the numbers on this, and I think at bare minimum, you're spending at least in static equipment and things that are going to be static, you're going to spend probably about 200 to $300 at least, right?

But if you're going to go into say like a mixing board, say you get a road cast or pro, you're talking like what $800 and that's just for the unit, you know, you're talking like a straight thousand dollars.

Now, that to me is a significant investment that that to me tells me that's a significant investment in yourself so that you can go out and you can create this content that is going to impact the world on a very deeper level and higher scale where podcasters get stuck as they go, Oh, well, the equipment is like a thousand dollars and I just can't afford that and early on I just talked to myself, but I'm only buying it once.

I'm only buying it once and it's going to be the one thing that it's going to keep remain caught. I still have the same mixing board that I bought 15 years ago. I don't use it anymore. I've since upgraded, but I still have it and it's a backup in case something, the current mixing board goes down. I have other microphones. If this one goes down, I have other ones to back me up on. So it's always good to have the backups too.

So I got to remember if I'm spending the money, I know what the goal has to be in mind. I want to return something back. I want to turn a profit to get that money back in some way. Now that's not just the only way you got to look at it. You got to say, okay, well, what is my end goal? Truly. All right. Well, your end goal has to be all right. Let's be real. Let's be serious. Like I'll talk. I'll tell you exactly what my friend Jeff C told me yesterday. He told me I want to see the money.

I just need to see the money. I don't care about anything else. I just want to see the money. Now this doesn't mean that I'm telling people think about the money all the time, but at the end of the day, if you're going to spend all that money and spend money in recurring, you know, recurring services like hosting, zoom, all that, you got to think about it and go, okay, how can I serve my audience? Number one, how can I serve my audience and what can I do? All right.

I'm entertaining them and I educate them. What can I do to make them feel invested and close to me? And number two, can I give so much great information out that they're willing to pay for it and, you know, or, you know, support me in some way? And this is very, very true because I currently experience it right now with the radio station, with what I do. I have a line of become with Facebook and they are invested in me. I've been on the radio.

Just a little bit there. Can we, can we back? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Where did I break up? Sorry. Whenever you started talking about the Facebook promotion. Yeah. When I, when I started doing Facebook live, those were the things that I had set up a long time ago and I was invested with those listeners and they invested back into me and they were like, yeah, like you do this stuff to make our day. I have no problem, you know, dropping five bucks, 10 bucks, 15 bucks here, here, there.

And that was another line of income that allowed me to take a step back from the podcasting stuff because I was already invested in them. So let's, let me simplify this real quick as much as I can. Okay. How do I know what my goal is? Understand what your goal is when it comes down to number one, what are you trying to do? What's your objective? Are you trying to monetize?

If you're going to monetize, you need to figure out and put those steps in place and know what tools you need to get and what to implement. Number two, when it comes down to finding your goal and, and, and growing your audience, what are the steps that it's going to take to get to meeting your goal of getting more listeners or more qualified listeners? I wouldn't say all listeners. You want qualified listeners.

There is an importance and a difference between having all the listeners in the world versus having qualified listeners. And I think qualified listeners make better people to be happy customers with or, uh, you know, supporters with because they understand you, they get you, they understand where you're coming from.

So if you have at least those two things in mind at the very basic level, excuse me, uh, if you have those two things in mind, you can start implementing steps three, four, five, which can be whatever you want. Or you get a coach to say like, all right, here are the areas where I think you're really, um, you're, you're really lacking. You need to really focus on this area and you need, you're not driving enough email subscribers. You're not driving enough leads back to your email list.

You need to figure that out. So try to figure out, you know, the monetization aspect, try to figure out and implement in the goal. You know, what are the tools that you need? And number two, how are you going to grow them? You know, it's all about the preparation. Everything is about preparation. That is so good.

I mean, I think a lot of the things that you've shared today make a lot of sense. And I hope that anybody who's listening to this will just see it for what it is. It's not just that you're trying to push, you know, that you have to monetize. Cause even if you don't want to monetize, you still need to know that that's your goal. You need to know, okay, this is just going to be a hobby.

I'm just doing just enough to build an audience or whatever, but either way, just the fact that, you know, we keep honing in on this, that you need an email list so that you can keep in touch with your people and that you need to prepare in advance. I think that I think it's sound advice. Well, we are starting to come up to the close of this, but I have to ask you the one question I asked everyone. What's one question I didn't ask you that you wish I had.

So this is a question that was asked to me twice within the last week. This particular question? No, it was a question that was asked by my friends on my birthday was last week and they both called me and asked me what is one thing that you could have done or that you can do today that you'll thank yourself for in a year. And I've already done what I needed to do for the last year.

But for me, I think that one thing that I could do today for my mental health is to, number one, spend more time with my family, my nieces, my sister, my brother, my mother, my mom and dad are a lot older these days. So finding the time to spend with them, I'm very fortunate to still have them around and spending time with my nieces because they, as anyone knows who has kids and I don't have kids, but my nieces are the closest thing.

They grow up really fast and I leave one week and then the next week they've grown three inches and it just blows my mind. And those are the, those are more important to me than podcasting, monetization, spending time with them is very, very important because you never get those moments back. You can always go back to a podcast and re-implement your email list, your episodes, your content, whatever it may be. Oh, that is so good.

And it actually ties in perfectly with everything we've been talking about. It's all about preparation and knowing what your goals are. This was just so fantastic. I really appreciate your time. And is there anything else that you'd like to say that you think our listeners need to hear about podcasting? No, man, just go easy on yourself. Go easy on yourself and don't overthink the process. Do what makes you happy. Make it fun. Don't overthink the process.

But if you decide you want to go a little further, just be prepared that you're going to have to prepare. Oh, so good. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Well, my fellow podcasters, we hope you enjoyed the insights, tips and ideas shared in this episode. To learn more about launching and growing your own show, head over to rss.com backslash blog. And if you're ready to launch a podcast of your own, you can get started for free with your first episode on us. Thanks for tuning in.