It's not goodbye, it's see you later. How to know if it's time to pause or quit a marketing strategy.

The Consistency Corner Podcast is going on summer vacation. Listen in as I share my journey in deciding to pause the podcast, and what that means for my marketing strategy and business. I talk about how I explored the idea of taking a break to reassess the podcast's role in my business and to giving myself time and space to make a decision. Hear me candidly share thoughts on messaging and the importance of clarity in communicating a problem you solves and who you serve, regardless of the platform where you choose to market your buswiness. 

Takeaways

• Consider the return on investment of your marketing containers and how it fits into your overall marketing strategy.
• Taking a break can provide time and space to reassess and make decisions about the future of your business.
• Clarity in messaging is crucial for effectively communicating the problem you solve and who you serve, no matter where you show up.
• It's okay to pause or pivot in your business if it aligns with your goals and priorities, even if it feels challenging.

During the summer break we'll continue to publish weekly episodes, bringing back re-runs of favorite shows and a few shows from podcasters in The Consistency Corner Community.

To continue to get CMO level strategy and insights in your inbox every month, sign up here. 

Get exclusive CMO level strategy tips, delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to the monthly series, If I Was Your CMO and learn the success equation for ANY marketing strategy. 

Connect with Ruthie and The Consistency Corner on Instagram!

Please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts and be sure to screen shot, share, and tag me in stories so I know you listened and can root for you! 

Transcript

Ruthie (00:01.07)
dearest reader or dearest listener. Come on, it's a podcast. But said in my best lady whistle down voice from Bridgerton, I got a message for you today. So welcome back to the Consistency Corner podcast and buckle up friends because I am showing you behind the curtain, behind the scenes, real life, taking you on the journey of what is happening in my business because that's who I am as a person. You know, I'm like not about gatekeeping.

I'm here about keeping it real, transparency, and so we're gonna talk about why today may potentially be the last episode of the Consistency Corner podcast. And like as I say that, I get a lump in my throat, which tells me it's probably not the last episode, but we are going on summer vacation and we're taking a pause for a little bit. So I'm gonna walk you through how I landed on that decision and what's happening with the podcast and why, because I do.

fully believe in podcasting, love doing this show, but I wanna talk to you about how it has fit into my marketing ecosystem, my marketing strategy, and how it has been working or not working in my business. So let's go. As we head into the summer season, so my son during school goes to an elementary school that is like a five minute walk from our house. So there's no commute time. I'd normally drop him off at school. We do car line.

but it's five minutes away because he's tired in the morning, whatever. So my morning, I have like a five minute drive and then I'm back home and I'm able to work and whatever. And then in the afternoon, he walks home from school with his friends and I don't have a pickup time or any of that. Going into summer, he is gonna go to summer camp. It is not the right choice for our family.

for him to be home all day with unstructured schedule because I still am working. Even though I work from home, I need to be able to think, I need to be able to focus, I have calls, I have things to do. So he needs to be in summer camp because if he was not in summer camp, he would literally turn into a feral cat watching YouTube 24 seven and we just, nobody, that's not good for anybody. So he's going to summer camp. Summer camp is 30 minutes away. So I have a 30 minute drive to summer camp.

Ruthie (02:15.534)
I have a 30 minute drive home and then I get to do that again in the afternoon to pick him up. So now 10 hours of my week is being allocated to time in the car. Now, yes, I get to use that time like when he's in the car with me to connect with him. When he's not with me, I get to listen to podcasts. I potentially could have calls with either friends or clients or whatever, just talking calls, not Zoom calls. But it's 10 hours, which is a big chunk of time.

So as I was thinking about this summer and how I could streamline my schedule and make some space, I kept getting this gut feeling about the podcast. And I've talked about it here and talked about it in my email list a little bit that I had a VA supporting me with podcast production and podcast repurposing for a long time and had to unfortunately make some difficult business decisions to cut that investment. And that

cost because my revenue was not hitting its projections. And so sometimes we have to make hard decisions. So I cut that cost and I told myself, OK, Ruthie, you're going to do it yourself for 90 days, three months, and then you're going to decide, like, is this truly worth the investment of either your time or your money? Is the podcast giving you a return on investment? Well, that 90 days lasted about six weeks before I was like, OK, we really got to look at this. And I started looking back at.

outsourcing the podcast production again. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to get really, really detailed here on an SOP and really map out every single step for the podcast from guest coordination, writing interview questions, writing an outline for the solo podcast that I do, all the way to editing, producing, and all the content repurposing that we do to promote the podcast and create content for other channels, social media, email, my blog, those types of things.

And when I wrote that SOP out, I realized it was taking me around three hours an episode to produce a show. And so I did some math and I thought, OK, if I was going to outsource that again, the things that I cannot do because like nobody can be the podcast host other than me. So the things that like have to be me is just the interview. Everything else could be.

Ruthie (04:39.342)
potentially be outsourced, right? So of the things that could be outsourced on average, let's just say it's going to cost me around $200 an episode. It could be more. It could be less depending upon who I hire, their skill level, their experience level and their rates. And I'm like not here to debate that, but ballpark $200 an episode. So then I'm asking myself, okay, I do an episode a week. If it costs $200 an episode, it costs me about

Like I gotta get my calculator because I'm trying to do math in my head and I don't want to do math in my head and say it wrong on the podcast. But yeah, it's like $10 ,400. So I'm like, okay, does my podcast support bringing in $10 ,000 in revenue in my business? And the answer is no. And I've talked to a lot of friends in the podcasting space and it is very difficult.

to measure a direct return on investment from a podcast. For many people, a podcast is a middle of funnel tool, meaning it's a nurture tool. So it's a tool that people use to get to know you, and then they may decide to make a purchasing decision. And while I can't measure directly, when I go back and I think about the clients that I have served that have purchased with me for my mid ticket or high ticket offer,

over the past 12 months, like let's just go for the past year. Of those clients that have purchased from me in the past year, I would say most of them don't listen to the podcast. Or if they do, that's not necessarily what led them to make the decision to hire me. It was either a referral, it was we knew each other from a different container, like a networking group, and they got to know me. There were a couple that I know were influenced by the podcast, but it certainly was not a...

even return on investment, it was a loss. And so then I had to ask myself a couple of questions. I asked myself, okay, if you were hitting your revenue goals and you still knew that the podcast was not contributing to those revenue goals, would you do it anyway? And the answer is yes, because I love doing the podcast. I love having guests on and getting to have interesting conversations with them.

Ruthie (07:00.494)
I love creating content this way. Like I like to talk, not write. So this is absolutely my zone of genius when it comes to creating content. I've had people tell me I'm good at interviewing. I've had people tell me they love listening to the podcast, that they love my energy. And so it does light me up to do it. But because I'm not hitting those revenues, revenue goals, I have to ask myself, is it the best use of my time? And that's where kind of the gut was like, okay, this is a gut check. And I'm a...

Human design, in human design, I'm a sacral generator, so I'm supposed to respond to my gut. And the gut was telling me, Ruthie, this is maybe not where you should be spending your time. And I also love to make a quick decision. I'm like, I wanna be like, make a decision, move on, pivot, take action, figure it out, move on. Like that's me. But this was a big decision to say like, I'm gonna throw in the towel on my podcast. And because I've actually got guest episodes recorded,

through, if we kept going with a weekly episode, through the end of the summer, I was like, well, what do I do with all these guest episodes and these great conversations that I've got recorded? I even have solo episodes recorded. But what's taking up the most time is that production and post -production content repurposing to promote the episode. So after conversations with several friends and people in my network who I appreciate so, so much for being a sounding board for me,

Also a couple of conversations with my husband who literally just like looked at me and was like, I don't, I don't, I don't know what to tell you. Like his gut is saying like, it doesn't make money, don't do it. But like, he doesn't understand all the nuance and all the things behind it. But here's the other thing that I bet you can relate to. I am not a quitter. I am a like, we're gonna keep doing this. And there's this self -fulfilling prophecy. I don't think that's even the right word.

It's a cognitive bias. There's a cognitive bias in the sunk costs of, well, I've been doing this thing, and even if it's not going to pay off, I'm going to keep doing it because I want to be consistent. I don't want to be a quitter. I'm going to prove that this thing is working, even if it's not. So there was that in my head. But after several conversations, like I said, with several people in my network, people who were in podcasting,

Ruthie (09:20.27)
people in podcast management, marketing strategists, a lot of people in my network who I appreciate so much for sharing their insights and asking me some really good questions. I have made the decision that we are going to pause for the summer. So we're not, I'm not quitting. I'm not throwing in the towel. I am not saying that the podcast is done forever, but we're gonna pause and we're gonna take June and July off. And so as I made that decision, I was like, okay.

So if I take June and July off, then I can relaunch in August. And so when I relaunch, I probably want to make sure I'm redoing the description on the back end and thinking about SEO. Maybe we'll update the title of the show. Maybe we'll do new cover art. We'll do a new intro. We'll do some new outros and maybe mid -rolls. And I'm like thinking about all of this work. And then I'm like, Ruthie, the whole point of you pausing was to take a break, to give you some time back.

So why are you immediately jumping into I'm going to do XYZ in order to relaunch? And so I was even like, I'm still considering joining a membership for podcasters that like works with a professional on all of those things to get my messaging right, to get my, you know, back end stuff right so that we can be more strategic with how we're using the podcast so that it actually does give us a return on investment.

So after I like took a breath and said, okay, maybe we don't jump immediately into that. Maybe we just take June completely off. So this episode is airing June 3rd. I am recording it and producing it at the end of May. And so then in June, I am not working on my podcast at all. And then I can decide after I have given myself that space, how it feels, what...

my gut is telling me now and if now is the time to dive back in in July and work on a relaunch for August. But I don't know what my gut is going to say after I've given myself that space. And I was reminded of a analogy in nature this week. I pulled a card from the Oracle deck, which I love and I'll actually add that link in the show notes because it's a great deck for journaling and journal prompts and just things to think about when.

Ruthie (11:43.758)
co -creating with the universe and the analogy was the card was something about Leeds or metamorphosis and it was talking about something about a butterfly and caterpillars and I was thinking about this because we've had some caterpillars like outside our house in our garden or in our landscaping and thinking about them turning into butterflies and the thing is you can't rush a butterfly.

It's going to take the time it's going to take for that caterpillar to build its chrysalis and do the things it does inside the cocoon. And don't quote me on the science here. I might be using the wrong terms in the wrong places. So it was, you know, fifth grade was a long time ago. But it takes time to turn into a butterfly and you can't rush it. And sometimes what that caterpillar needs or all the time what that caterpillar needs during a certain season is time and space.

And so I have to give myself that time and space in order for the next iteration, the next evolution, the metamorphosis to come to fruition. And if that means the podcast comes back and spreads its wings in a different way, great. If that means that maybe the podcast doesn't come back, you know what? That might be okay too. And I'll know.

in my gut when the time is right what to do. And even when I started talking with my network and asking these questions and kind of externally process processing through conversations, I literally told a couple of people I was like, I know the answer is within me. I am not asking you for an answer. I'm asking you to ask me questions to help me get to the answer. I'm asking you to share perspectives with me.

so that I can respond to those perspectives which will help me get to the answer because I know that the answer is within me. I'm just really impatient and want it to come to the light right away. But you know, it doesn't work like that. And we've talked about patience here on the podcast before and that I think as entrepreneurs, many of us struggle with patience sometimes.

Ruthie (13:57.134)
So that's where we are right now. So what does that mean? So next steps for the podcast, because we're kind of in this limbo, it might be a pause, it might be the end. What I've decided to do based on recommendations from a friend who's a podcast manager is to take the summer and four weeks over the next eight weeks, every other week, we will do some summer reruns. So just like your favorite show back in the 90s when we didn't watch shows on Netflix, we watched them on network TV.

During the summer, they played reruns. They played the best episodes from the past season or even seasons prior, and they just played them again. So we're gonna do that. We're gonna pull four of our best episodes and our favorite episodes from over a year or more, and you can listen to them again. They'll be dropped right in your feed as new episodes. And then we're gonna do four episodes that are called feed drops. And what that means is I'll have a podcast from somebody else and we'll put their podcast,

in my podcast feed. So it'll pop up in the consistency corner, but it is going to be somebody else's podcast. And when we do that, I'll have an intro of like why I think this was a good episode to share with you, why I loved it. I mean, you guys know, I listen to podcasts like all the time. I'm constantly sharing them in stories and on my email list. So I'm going to share some podcasts from podcasters who I respect, who I admire, who are part of this community that I think you'll get a lot out of. And we'll put those in the feed. And then...

we'll reevaluate, you know, after I've given myself that space, we're gonna reevaluate in July and decide if we're relaunching in August, if we're relaunching later in the year, if we're relaunching at all and what we're doing. But I'm allowing myself that time and that space to decide because sometimes that's what we need is time and space to figure it out. And, you know, the end of the year, at the end of a season, end of a quarter, a lot of times I like to reflect and ask myself,

What do you need to stop, start and continue? And sometimes it's not that I need to stop something forever, but I need to stop it for a while. And thinking about what you need to start, you know, let's go back to that time and space and that caterpillar analogy. I had this insider aha moment that was like, what a caterpillar really needs when all you could do is give it time is it needs nourishment. It needs fresh air.

Ruthie (16:22.766)
It needs sunlight. It needs food, which it's like getting from its cocoon from the plants, I guess. Again, I don't really know the science here, but it needs to take care of itself. And that's what I, as a CEO, as a human, evolving with my business and growing as a human, need to do. I need to lift weights. I need to take walks. I need to drink water. I need to spend time outside. I need to spend time with my family and friends and people that give me energy.

And so if taking the space from this can give me those things back, I'm going to be able to show up as a better CEO, as a better marketing strategist, as a better person, because I gave myself that care that was necessary while I was growing to grow into that next level. So this is not a goodbye. It's a see you later, because even if the podcast never comes back, guess what? I'm on social media. I'm around. I have an email list like I'm not quitting my business.

We just might be pausing in how we market and that's okay. It's okay if you need to do that too. It's okay if you need to pivot. And if you need somebody to brainstorm with or process with, you know, send me a DM on Instagram and let's talk about it because I'm happy to be that sounding board for you, that brainstorming buddy, because I know it is not easy.

And, you know, as I have been going through this decision making process along with the podcast, one of the big things that I am looking at is my messaging and my audience, because it doesn't matter what the platform is. It literally doesn't even matter what the content is. And the offer is if we're not using the right message, if we haven't clarified our message in terms of what is the problem we actually solve and who do we solve it for?

And I was on a networking call this week with six figure based business owner women. And there was probably, I don't know, 50 or so people on the call. And another woman was in what we call the hot seat. And she was talking about pivoting her messaging and pivoting the audience that she serves. And there was a lot of people asking some really good questions to get help her get clarity. And she got like teary. And so many of us were like, girl, we feel you. This is hard work.

Ruthie (18:42.862)
figuring this stuff out is hard and it can be just as hard when you've already had some success and you want to make a shift because you're like, well, shouldn't I just do what I've always done? But that doesn't feel right anymore. And that's maybe draining you and not giving you the energy you need. So you have to figure out what that next iteration looks like, what that evolution looks like. And it's not.

it's not easy to do. And I was, you know, as I've been wrestling with this decision about the podcast and thinking about a lot of things and thinking about my own message and getting clarity in what makes the consistency corner unique, what makes Ruthie unique? What is my zone of genius? What is that 20 % unique ability so that I can 10X? It is a lot to think about. And I was telling my husband, like, I almost felt like I feel like,

guilt at the end of the day to tell him like all I did was like think about this stuff or Journal about it or have conversations about it and like I didn't actually Quote -unquote produce anything today. I didn't achieve anything today I didn't sell anything today because you come from this corporate background and this achiever background Hello in eagram three of like I'm here To produce things. I'm here. My value comes in what I bring to the table. I

and what I can do for others. And so if I'm just thinking and working through and deciding, it feels like, well, there's no value in that. And so there can be a lot of like shame and anxiety around that. And so again, I am sharing this because I want you to know that if you ever feel those same things, you are not alone. And I appreciate the women in my circle and in my community who share.

the real amongst the highlight reel in our marketing and social media and know that like, I know at the end of the day, I live with a solution finding mindset. I'm a we're gonna figure it out kind of person and I am gonna figure it out. But I do need time and space to figure it out. So we're taking a break from the podcast.

Ruthie (20:52.526)
I'll keep you updated. Follow me over on Instagram at the consistency corner. I'll keep you updated in stories. And if you're not already on your email on our email list, be sure to go to the consistency corner .com slash CMO podcast. And you'll be opted into our weekly newsletters where I share behind the scenes and then a monthly series of if I was your CMO, where I'm actually sharing tips that I'm having conversations with my clients as their CMO of what we should be talking about and thinking about right now.

So you'll get some CMO level strategy tips right to your inbox. And I encourage you to make the most of your summer. If you were thinking about stopping something or pausing something, it's okay. It's okay to take a break. It's okay to rest and not quit. So take a rest if you need to. And I'm here if you want to talk about anything and brainstorm, hit me up on Instagram. And thank you so much for being here and being part of the Consistency Corner community.