How to revive your dormant podcast.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
Whether by choice or beyond your control, your podcast might have to go on a hiatus.
And it could be so long that the podcast even seems dead.
How do you come back from that?
And can you even get back into your rhythm?
It will take some work.
But here are my recommendations and what I'm practicing myself too.
If you'd like to follow along in the notes, there's simple tap or swipe away inside your
podcast app or at TheAudacitytoPodcast.com/revive.
Number one, review your podcasting goals or your why.
Why do you really podcast?
What profit are you after for yourself?
And profit is P-R-O-F-I-T.
That's not just a spelling lesson;
I make profit stand for something. That's popularity, relationships, opportunities,
fun, income, or tangibles. So which of those are you after for yourself? And what about
for your audience? What are you trying to help them get? How will they profit from your podcast?
As you seek to revive your podcast, you might need to consider adjusting your purpose and goals for
your podcast. It's okay to go from business to fun or the other way around from fun to business.
But what's most important is that you know why you're podcasting so that you can set
appropriate goals and then take the right steps toward those goals.
Number two, treat your podcast return like a lunch.
Think about everything you had and did when you first started your podcast, whether that
was months ago or years ago.
No matter how much you've lost due to your hiatus, and I've seen that myself with my
own hiatus, you probably still have much more than when you first launched. You have more skills,
more knowledge, more relationships, more tools, and probably higher quality tools too, more resources,
and yes, you even have more audience. After all, you had zero when you first started. We all had
zero. So look at this as your launch and you'll realize you have more than zero now, even if it's
been a long time. Some people will keep your RSS feed for years, holding on to hope that you'll
someday return. That's what I did with the Ask a Ninja video podcast and more about that later.
Imagine then if you had all the resources you have now, but years ago. So you can treat your
return almost like a launch with the same kind of enthusiasm, the media blitz, we could put that in
quotation marks, the promotion, the sharing, asking friends and what audience you do have to help and
more. But this time you have a whole lot more of everything than you had before. Number three,
use a podcast trailer to promote the return. If it fits into your timing and maybe don't delay
your return just for this, try to publish a trailer to promote the return of your podcast.
Make it one to three minutes long like a trailer should be for a podcast. I'm not talking about a
promotion but an actual trailer and make sure you actually set it as a trailer episode type in your
podcast publishing tool. As a trailer then either don't use an episode number on it or set its
episode number to be the same as your next episode will be so that some apps can treat that trailer
as a trailer for that upcoming episode. And soon after you get into publishing again you can go
back and remove that trailer from your podcast feed. And instead of making the trailer about the
past by apologizing for being gone or talking about what's happened during that time, focus on
the present and, more importantly, the future. Why are you excited to resurrect the podcast? What are
you eager to share in upcoming episodes? What might you be doing differently that your audience will
appreciate or look forward to? You can even take this opportunity to adapt this trailer into your
regular whole show trailer that can be featured in podcast apps. When you set it as your trailer
type with no season or episode number attached to it, then it's a trailer for your whole show.
And then that gives you all kinds of great promotion opportunities and ways that you can
stand out in some of these podcast apps and get more easily featured in certain ways because you
have a nice trailer that gets people excited for your podcast and in this case also gets them
excited again for the return of your podcast. Number four, this one's a tough one, lower your
expectations. Yeah, this is a reality check. You'll need to lower your expectations. Lower your
expectations of your podcast's influence. Lower your expectations of your audience's response.
And even lower your expectations of yourself. I know that can be hard to hear. Yes, you have a
That doesn't mean you can just jump right back in and have all the same popularity,
influence, audience, and even strengths and abilities as you did before.
But you haven't lost everything.
Although Ask a Ninja did not return as a video podcast,
so I now know I can finally delete that RSS feed from my podcast app.
Nonetheless, it did return.
Now on YouTube.
So not a video podcast, but it's on YouTube.
But it did return.
That's the exciting thing.
It did return.
Am I angry with Ask a Ninja for being gone for so long?
No.
I'm happy it's back.
Do I need to know what happened for all those years or why he wasn't doing the show?
No.
Am I just happy he's back?
Absolutely.
And do I mind that it's on YouTube instead of being a video podcast?
No, not really.
Because I'm just happy it's back.
And I can look forward to being killed by him soon.
If you watch the show, you'll get that.
Speaking of ninjas, I train in karate.
And I've taken two big breaks from karate over the years, some of them lasting many,
many years for a break.
After I returned from the first break, I had all the head knowledge of techniques, but
not as much muscle memory and certainly not the same physical fitness.
Because of that, I injured myself and did so very quickly and I had to take a break
again.
The second time I returned to karate after many more years, I took it much slower, pacing
myself, understanding that my mind knew things my body couldn't do anymore, at least not yet,
without working myself back into it. And there were also a lot of things and techniques and
katas and just basic stuff that I forgot. And it was really easy for me to mentally beat myself up
for not remembering these things. I could be there training in a class doing the most basic techniques
that I should know and I'm going blank on them. And yes, I was hard on myself for that. Yes,
several times I felt like giving up because I felt like I should know this. I'm a black belt.
I should know these white belt things. And I didn't. I'd forgotten them. And it was really
easy to beat myself up and think about giving up. But with patience and intentional practice
and recognizing and accepting lower expectations of myself at that time,
I did relearn things and they started coming back to me.
And then I was able to learn new things on top of that.
And then I was ready to test for my second degree black belt.
But something happened at that test that I thought could happen,
but I didn't actually expect it.
And I'll tell you the rest of that story further on in this episode.
How's that for a tease?
Apply these same principles to your podcast.
Be honest with yourself that you might not be able to do as much as before or maybe not
even do it as good as before.
But don't beat yourself up for that.
You can work yourself back into the rhythm with intentional investment.
It might be rough at first, but if you keep pushing yourself further and don't give up,
you'll probably be back to your previous momentum and ready to grow again.
Number five, don't apologize or explain in your regular episodes.
I often encourage you to think how you can make your podcast and community and engagement
timeless.
Although it won't apply to all podcasts the same way, it's still a good practice to consider
what will matter to your audience, new or returning audience, a year from now or several
years from now.
Consider podcast seasons, for example.
If the only reason you want to use seasons is so you can take a break every now and then,
then you don't actually need seasons.
Those season numbers won't mean anything to your audience,
and a year from now, someone playing your podcast
won't care that you took a break a year ago.
And if they see season one to season two,
and they don't notice any difference,
then there's really no need for those seasons.
So think about what makes sense for your audience
a year or several years from now.
And along with this, similar to the trailer,
but especially for your returning episodes,
focus more on the present and future and less or maybe not even at all on the past. You don't have
to apologize. You don't have to explain yourself or make excuses. Just prove yourself by making
great content from then on. If you really do feel like your audience wants or needs to know about
the gap, save it for the end of the episode or maybe even a separate detached temporary episode
that you put out in your podcast,
like a personal update thing
that maybe you leave it up there for a few weeks
until your most loyal audience gets to hear it.
You see the downloads are what you might expect,
and then you can take it down after a few weeks.
So then your audience, again, years from now,
won't have to hear that
because it won't be relevant to them.
They don't need to know why you took a break five years ago,
but you've been podcasting ever since that.
They just need to know what you're doing now
and that you're continuing to put out great content in the future.
And speaking of the future, number six, make and follow a plan to keep going.
Consider Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion or the law of inertia
that says an object at rest remains at rest and an object in motion remains in motion.
But what changes the state from one to the other is a force.
Think about for an aircraft to fly, it needs thrust.
Thrust!
from Chicken Run. What causes a ball to eventually fall to the ground, no matter how hard you throw
it, is gravity. And what causes even the best podcasters to retire, like Marc Maron is retiring,
or pod fade, when they slowly fade from their podcast, is when the energy they're putting
into the podcast is not stronger than the forces against the podcast. Before you bring your podcast
back to life, you and your podcast were at rest. Now you're trying to get it in motion. So it's
going to take a force of energy from you to get it in motion. And it might take more energy just
to get it moving than to make it move faster and keep up its momentum. And since there are a barrage
of other forces that could slow its motion, you have to keep putting energy into it. More energy
than the forces opposing it. Let's go back to my karate example. I had to create a schedule
to practice the karate I was relearning and especially new things I was trying to learn.
I had to be disciplined to stick to that schedule and that meant I had to fight against a lot of
forces that would have kept me at rest. And in the beginning, it was hard. I suddenly felt my
actual age. I could see how much less flexible I was, like physically flexible. I can't do the
splits anymore. I used to be able to do the splits. I can't do them anymore. I can still
kick really high, but it took work. And I could feel that I wasn't as flexible as before. And
my handy Apple Watch, which I didn't have many years before in karate, could tell me how hard
my heart was working and how long it took to recover. So thanks for rubbing it in, Apple Watch.
But the more I kept pushing through, the easier it became. The shame and self-doubt I felt about
my abilities began to be replaced with confidence and even instinct. The, I should know this,
screaming in my head was replaced with, I know this now. And then that was getting replaced with,
how can I make this even better than ever before? How can I do this even stronger, faster, better,
more precise? Because I was ready to grow after I got my momentum going again. So what happened at
my black belt test? Patience, grasshopper. If you're in that place of trying to restart a podcast
you've let go dormant, you'll need more than just motivation. You need to put that motivation into
a plan and grow the discipline to stick with your plan. With every podcast I've ever hosted,
I saw the most growth, the most efficiency, and the easiest momentum when I scheduled my work
and honored those appointments with my podcast.
Actually put it on your calendar.
Block out the time so you can focus
and know that's the only thing
you should be doing at that time
instead of getting distracted by other things.
And saying yes again to your podcast
will probably mean saying no to other things.
That could be simple distractions
like wasting time scrolling social media,
or it could mean setting aside another hobby
so you can refocus on this one.
Or maybe it's even time to delegate
some of the tasks to smart tools or people. And I can recommend a great podcast production company
if you're interested. Just whatever you do with your podcast, just don't compromise your commitments
to your faith, your family, and your work. And then after you get going strong, it will take
much stronger forces to knock you off your path. You've got your momentum again. You've built a new
rut but a good rut because you've got that path ahead of you and you are strong on it. And by the
time I stood in front of a board of higher ranking black belts, I knew I was ready for the test. I had
invested all the energy I could, I had practiced hard, I had sacrificed less important things,
and I was ready to be tested. And even without knowing the results of the physically draining
hours-long test. And with that rapidly beating heart and panting breath, as I was told to step
out of the room while my superiors discussed my performance, I thought to myself about how I did,
and I was proud of giving it my best. And I actually felt a whole lot more confident
after the test than before, and I felt more like I might actually have done well enough
to earn my promotion, but I didn't get my second degree black belt.
Instead, they said my demonstrations of technique, power, application, and knowledge were above my
level. And so they unanimously agreed to promote me not to second degree, but straight to third
degree. Wow. Deep down, I knew that could be possible, but I didn't dream of it. I only focused
on doing the best I could with the work in front of me. I didn't go in testing for third degree.
I went in testing for second degree, but having done my best to be prepared for it and giving my
all during that test, and that's what impressed them so much. They felt I deserved a third degree
because I did so well on it.
And this isn't to brag.
This is just my personal illustration for all of this.
So please understand, I don't mean this to brag
or show off or anything like that.
But this is what it will take for you
to bring your podcast back to life.
Whether it's been on hiatus
or you're just struggling to keep it going
and you're fighting against that pod fade force
that's trying to get you to stop podcasting,
you need to dedicate yourself and invest the energy
if you really do want to keep it going
or if you want to revive it
and bring that podcast back from being dormant.
And that is also why I decided
to review my podcasting goals,
push through my barriers,
change my expectations,
and shift my focuses
so that I can come back to you.
And as The Audacity to Podcast is celebrating
its 15th anniversary on June 17, 2025,
I'm not looking back,
but looking forward to the years to come
of continuing to give you the guts and teach you the tools to start and grow your own podcast
for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis, and this is The Audacity to Podcast, back to serve you!