Here's What 5 Years of Podcasting Weekly Has Taught Me About Consistency

Five years. 232 episodes. More than 80,000 downloads. And a frankly alarming number of hours spent talking to myself into a microphone. When I started this podcast after my sister essentially told me to stop talking about it and just bloody do it, I had absolutely no idea I’d still be here five years later. So for this episode, I wanted to do something a little different and reflect on what showing up almost every week for five years has actually taught me about consistency.

Because I don’t think consistency comes from being endlessly motivated or having superhuman discipline. For me, it’s come from making the podcast an essential part of my business, building a team around it and creating a process simple enough that I can still get an episode out when it’s 7pm on a Friday and my brain has basically clocked off for the weekend. I’m sharing what has made this one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done and why having other people invested in getting your work out into the world can make such a difference.

I’m also talking about why consistency absolutely does not mean doing the same thing forever. This podcast has changed names, topics and formats. I’ve interviewed loads of guests, stopped interviewing guests, experimented with longer episodes, simplified everything again and occasionally released episodes where the sound was a bit shit because the episode itself was worth hearing. Five years gives you a lot of evidence that you’re allowed to experiment, change your mind and get things wrong without abandoning the thing altogether.

And perhaps most importantly, doing this every week has made me a much better communicator. Recording yourself forces you to get comfortable hearing your own voice, articulate what you actually think and keep going through the inevitable moments where you feel like a total dork. I’m definitely not perfect at it (this particular recording contains plenty of evidence), but I’ve learned that commitment matters far more than waiting until you can do something flawlessly.

What You’ll Learn in This EpisodeWhat five years and 232 episodes have taught me about staying consistentWhy making something an essential rather than a negotiable changes how you show upHow having a team has helped me keep publishing every weekWhy consistency doesn’t mean sticking rigidly to the same formatWhat I’ve learned from experimenting with guests, episode lengths and different stylesWhy simplifying the podcast made it easier to sustainHow podcasting ha