Ep158 Transcript: One Year Celebration Episode with Andrea Vahl

It’s the one year anniversary episode of the Late Starters Club. Uh Huh. Uh Huh. Woo hoo. Woo hoo. Today’s episode is going to be some of the lessons I’ve learned, some of the things I love, and some of the things that are going to be changing at the Late Starters Club podcast. Stay tuned.

Hello, dreamers. Welcome to the late starters club, giving you the inspiration, mindset, and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

Hey, late starters. I’m so excited to just give a little bit of reflection, a little bit of celebration for the late starters club podcast. And thank you listeners for tuning in. I really appreciate it. I have loved hearing your. stories, some of the feedback I love running into friends of mine who say, Hey, I love today’s podcast, or I listened in this week and it was great, or I got some inspiration.

That was the whole goal for the late starters club podcast. And really it was also a way for me to get inspired as well. I knew that as I’m here in midlife, I was seeing so many people friends of mine, people that I’ve talked to who are like, Oh, it’s too late to do something. Or, I don’t know, I’ve always had this dream, but I didn’t get a chance to do it. And this has been the place for inspiration for me. And I know so many others.

But today I want to just do a little bit of reflecting and talking about this past year and what it’s meant to me. And talk about some of the things that maybe didn’t go as well as I thought, or things that went better than I expected.

So one of the things that I have loved is just all the amazing people I’ve gotten to talk to, the people who are out there challenging themselves, doing things that are hard. Getting through tough times and being so transparent about sharing how they got through those times has been so inspiring to me.

I know that anything is possible, that there are no limits except the limits we put on ourselves. Maybe, okay, maybe we’re not going to be able to run the fastest marathon or whatever at this age. But there’s people who have talked about how they are faster than ever this time of their life, or they are going back to school in their eighties even, or they are doing new businesses in their seventies and I just love it. I just am so excited and I know that it’s giving me motivation to keep going.

Another thing I’ve really loved is hearing everyone’s quotes. We’ll have a link to the quote episode here in the show notes, but that was a favorite thing of mine thats going to be continued that I’m always going to ask people for favorite quotes that inspire and help get me inspired.

The thing I’ve also loved is seeing some of the common threads through the interviews. What I’ve noticed is that no one’s journey has been easy. There’s no yeah, that was a simple little thing for me to get through.

No, there’s always been roadblocks. There’s always been challenges. And some of these challenges have left my guests crying on the floor or, feeling like they are at the end of their rope, but they have kept going and shared some of their wisdom around what they do when they get overwhelmed.

And everyone has some type of practice that really helps them. It might be meditation. It might be journaling. It might be going outside or getting some exercise in. So I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways that I have learned is just to keep leaning in to whatever practice that you have that gets you through and gets you out of that overwhelm. And I think what I love too is just knowing that people have a perspective that they haven’t had when they were younger that says this too shall pass, right? So we all know that. It’s, we’re going to get through it.

The other thing I’ve loved is hearing from everyone who has said they don’t care what people think about them anymore. And I love that. I definitely feel like as I’ve gotten older, I don’t have time for someone else’s opinion about what I’m doing because I’m too busy doing it. Who cares if someone leaves a comment on my comedy video that says you’re not that funny. I’m like, delete, forget it. I don’t need to know your opinion. Did I ask for it? No. If I didn’t ask for your opinion and you are not in my inner circle, then I’m not going to pay attention to that opinion. So I’m over listening to what other people think or worrying what other people think about what I’m doing.

The other lesson I’ve learned that I love is how the challenges that people are doing right now help them feel more alive. They feel like they’re really living their lives. They’re out there just pushing through and they know that creating and doing and being their truest self is really what makes life worth living.

So I love that. And I think that’s a huge takeaway for anyone who is feeling like they are feeling a little blah, just go out there and try something new.

So a few lessons that I’ve learned or a few things that haven’t gone as well as I thought. Number one is the monetization part of the podcast. So I thought that I would have the podcast monetized by this point a year in, I would have some sponsorships, I would have some other programs created, and that hasn’t happened.

And part of that is my fault. Have I gone out and done Sponsor outreach. No. Have I tried to insert ads or do some of the things that are available for podcasts? No. Have I really done a lot of research into that? I’ve learned about a little bit. I’ve been to some podcasting events and things like that to learn about it, but I haven’t actually really done it. So that it will come. I get it. I’m going to work on that in the future but it hasn’t happened yet and that’s okay because I love what I’m doing and I love this podcast and I’m committed to continuing to create this amazing content.

The other thing that has been a lesson for me is that I was originally doing three episodes a week. I was doing the interview episode, a top takeaways episode, and a quick fix Friday episode. And while I like that idea of creating more content, of having some content that is just strictly me rather than me interviewing someone else. I get that there are good reasons to do that. It was a little bit too much. I was having a hard time keeping up. And the weird thing was the smaller episodes, the shorter five minute episodes were what was taking the most time for me.

I would stress about what I was going to say. I would maybe have to research a little bit of stuff and put it into more of a flow. And it was taking me too much time and it wasn’t bringing me joy. So I have decided to stop those two shorter episodes for now. I may bring back the top takeaways episode just because I do like that.

That was a little bit easier for me to do. And I like being able to kind of. have some reflections on the interview because I think these interviews are super powerful and it’s been really nice for me to be able to reflect and add a couple of thoughts in there as well. So we’ll see if I bring that one back or not, but for the moment we are going down to one episode a week and that is going to be the interview.

The other thing I have loved that is a lesson for me is I have loved the half hour format of the interview. Sometimes it feels a little short and I wish I could have a longer time to talk to my guests, but I do like the fact that it is succinct. We have to get right into the meat of it and we can both get on with the things we have to do during the day. So we may have some longer in depth episodes sometime in the future, but right now I do the half hour interview format.

Another lesson I learned was that I was asking some of the same questions in the beginning, or had a set kind of question bucket to draw from. And I’ve gotten away from that.

I’ve realized that really it’s about someone’s story. And maybe I can pull in a couple of those questions from time to time, but usually the conversation flows really nicely. My guests are all pros who are able to answer questions on the fly and we really just go where the conversation takes us. One of the other lessons I’ve learned is that the show is not going to go viral by itself. It does take promotion. It does take getting that out there in several different ways. And so that’s something I’m also going to commit to and making sure that I’m trying to promote the show as much as possible and gain new listeners. I’m going to be doing some more interviews on other people’s podcasts if possible, and I’m trying to do a little more cross promotion to grow the listener base because I think this content is so phenomenal and inspiring to me. And I hope it is to you as a listener as well.

And I just want it to reach more people. I think that nowadays there’s a lot of talk around ageism. Maybe that’s my own bias because I see it a little bit more being my age, but I do think that is such an important topic to get out there in the world to say that, no, you’re not over the hill once you hit 50 and old people can’t do stuff or what is age anyway? I mean, there’s lots of constructs and ideas around the whole growing older that I think need to be dismantled and thought of in a different way. So I’m hoping that this podcast will also help do that as well.

So that’s really it for the things I love, the lessons I’ve learned and things that haven’t gone as planned. I want to just say again, thank you to the listeners out there. I would love to hear from you. I think it’s super inspiring to hear what you think about the episodes and how you found this podcast as well.

If you’re listening to it and what have been your favorite episodes, please share anything that you have found in this podcast that has been helpful or any ideas you have about maybe people you’d like to see on the podcast or topics you’d like to cover. I would love to hear from you. So thanks everyone. And talk to you again soon.

Hope that was helpful and make sure you grab the free guide top tools for late starters on the website at late starters club. com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.