~3 Years, ~140 Episodes, and a Decision to Take a Break

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After almost three years (!), I’m taking a break from the podcast. From the realities of summer schedules to a desire to infuse seasonality into the podcast, this episode has a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at the decision. Plus, a heartfelt thank you to the women who’ve made this whole thing amazing to do. Thank you.

Full transcript:

Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.

Hey. Hey, and welcome back. All right, today’s episode is a little different because it’s the last one. For a little while I wanna chat about just the podcast itself. Get a little sentimental up in here and why the break? And a big, big thanks for being here. So, as I was making the decision on whether to take a break from the podcast, I kind of came back to the original purpose of the podcast and.

Three years ago almost, I was thinking about doing [00:01:00] this and a lot of it came down to, particularly at the time and, and probably still to a big degree, writing is the main way I process ideas. I kind of like solidify my own ideas and therefore it’s a good way for me to share ideas and connect with people.

But what I was running up against is the very understandable thing that the women that I tend to work with, including myself, usually need to consume at least in certain life stages. That I find myself in through audio. You know, I used to be a voracious reader, like paperback books would read in person.

As a kid, I had like my dresser drawers were full of books and not clothes. Like I love reading and yet I myself listen to audio books now. I listen to audio books, podcasts. It’s how I. Really taken content because of my life and I figured that the woman I tend to work with was at least part of the women, like the group of women I work with is like me [00:02:00] and that’s made a podcast a really good vehicle to share about what I love nerding out about and in a way that could like meet her, like meet you where you are at.

It was also a way that I felt like I could grow. My content in a way that, I mean, candidly, I was raising my rates. It was becoming a high ticket offer to join a program that I was running, and I had weird feelings around raising my rates that high. And so by offering partial scholarships like I do twice a year, but then also having forum like the podcast to share content, I figured it could help people beyond the people that I would work with.

And so that felt good. I am a business. I have to make money that is a part of this. But it also felt like a way that I could share and improve the lives of women even if I never worked with them. And in addition, I’ve learned that speaking is a good [00:03:00] way for me to also figure out my own ideas, like rambling at you and you being gracious enough to listen and share your responses to it.

And that kind of stuff is a really nice way to tease out. Good ideas to figure out what are good ideas and what aren’t, all that kind of stuff. And so that’s been a really interesting reason to do the podcast is that anything where you have to put out ideas forces you sometimes to put out ideas that are a little half formed, half baked, and.

Sometimes when I do that with writing, because I can’t lead anywhere, great. I kind of just like don’t publish it. Where I find that I’m more open to, again, rambling at you and like seeing what happens. It comes from there. I think it just feels like sometimes more of a conversation. And so that’s been really fun.

So the podcast started with all these things in mind. It’s what I’ve tried to keep in mind as I continue through it and it’s been really enjoyable. [00:04:00] And what’s. Crazy is, it’s been three years, there’s been over 130 episodes. It’s been almost three years. It shows it’s almost three years. It’ll, it would be three years in May, and we’ve covered a lot.

I was looking back over the episodes and I mean, it, it’s been really fun for me. We’ve talked about things that I love to nerd out on, like realizations I’ve had around negative space and how white space in our calendar actually doesn’t get us breathing space, which is really what we’re ultimately after.

But we misconstrue that what we want is white space, when really it doesn’t get us what we’re looking for. Uh, we talked about all or nothing thinkers like the Orange Theory Podcast of going back to running once a week and why that’s wonderful. And to catch ourselves when we’re doing that all or nothing thing to ourselves.

You’ve nerded out on topics with me, like managers versus makers, which I just love that framework. We’ve had incredible guests. Everything from [00:05:00] learning about one-on-one meetings with Nicole, case two friendships with Danielle Bayard Jackson. We’ve dug into questions that I’ve gotten asked by other women here, like, what do you do when your work relies on others, or what do you do if you.

You need a full hour to do anything, so you waste smaller pockets of time. We’ve dug into weirdly more emotionally complicated things like outsourcing at home and decisions around that. I’ve gotten to share decisions that I’ve made in my own business, like stopping corporate speaking or saying no to certain opportunities and what that’s done for my business.

I’ve also enjoyed the ability to do like one-off, really more niche topics that we can pull out when it is the right time for people. I did episodes on time management with a newborn and time management, and the one year shakeup. What do you do when you just wish that you could do things faster? And what do you do with surprise?

15 minute pockets of time at work. And what’s fun is that then when people ask me questions, just like in my dms on [00:06:00] Instagram, I can point to specific episodes and meet people where they’re at when it’s time. That’s a cool part that I did not realize fully about podcast episodes is it’s like a library.

You create this library of things you can draw on to give to people when it’s time, even if it wasn’t time when they published. It’s prompted conversations with people around what hit and further information that makes me think about something different. It’s just been a wonderful, wonderful experience and one that I hope to continue.

I feel like I’m making this sound like, you know, a lot more dramatic than it needs to be, but it’s more just like it’s, I’m gonna take a break. I don’t know when I’m coming back and it feels. Reflective, I should say. I don’t think that it’s, I’m not like devastated or anything, but it is a reflective moment and it’s been fun to reflect on it and the role that it played.

And so why the break? As I think about what was the purpose of this? What has been the [00:07:00] purpose, what do I enjoy? All of that. The reason I’m taking a break is not because of the podcast itself, the podcast I really enjoy. It’s wonderful for all of the reasons I just shared. To back up for a moment how it fits in my business, and this might be just interesting to people, particularly if you don’t run a business.

I, I mean, as someone who spent my whole life thinking I’d be a lawyer, was a lawyer, never thought I’d be an entrepreneur, this side of things is always kind of interesting to me. My main marketing approach, how I find and kind of attract clients to what I do is what we call content marketing. I share content.

I don’t think I’m blowing your mind. You probably know that content marketing is sharing content about what you do so that people understand what you do and can decide if they wanna work with you. And I’ve always found that. Incredibly powerful for what I get to do, because when I say I work on time management, people are like, okay, I don’t know what that means.

And by [00:08:00] putting content out there about, here are examples of what I do. Here are examples of women I work with and their results. Here are examples of the types of things I get to work on. Here’s a slice of the bright method. People start to understand it more. People understand my approach. People understand the systems approach.

People understand the types of results that. Other people see coming out of it. And it’s really FI mean, once I, my first foray into this was really Instagram way back in like 2019, and I had been dabbling in this space for at least the time management space for about a year. And it wasn’t till I started Instagram and sharing there that my husband was like, I get what you do now.

That’s basically how it works. Like content marketing is a way to help share what you do. If the title of what you do is not clear, because I kind of made it up, so of course it’s not clear and getting to share about it more is the way to make it more clear, [00:09:00] and it’s been so fun to do that and get to share what I view as truly life changing power of a weird calendar system.

It’s so surprising to me. How much we talk about the technicalities of calendars and what to put there, and then the massive ripple effects that come out of that. It’s so powerful in this wonderful way, and I love getting to use content marketing to share parts of that and to find people who resonate with it.

Because I do think time management, as you’ve heard me say, is so personal. That. I think it’s important to get a good taste of what it is like to decide if it is the right fit for you, because it might not be, and that’s okay. And so I like sharing it just to share again, the power of it, and then help people decide is this the right fit for me?

Would this work for me? Am I attracted to it? And over time, the content marketing side of my business has grown and grown and grown in [00:10:00] a way that’s normal. I think that. Life work. Every realm we’re in has a habit of growing. I think anyone who’s like moved houses understands that. Where you’re like, yeah, we have a good amount of stuff.

And then you have to move and you’re like, oh my gosh, there’s so much stuff here. And like you call and call and donate and donate and it’s just amazing. And we moved a lot in the last couple of years with renovations and I joke that we need to pretend we need to move every two years just to like.

Inventory everything we have again, and get rid of stuff and not let it build up. And in the same way, I feel like that’s happened a bit with my content marketing. You know, I started with, I think email, my email weekly newsletter was the first thing I brought in. And then Instagram and then the podcast, and then how I structure my day series, which is part of Instagram and part substack and part taking a life of its own.

And while I have gotten support to outsource a fair amount of that, I work with a wonderful woman on social media named Bella [00:11:00] Foxwell. I have an incredible EA who basically runs the How I Structure my Day series. Now I outsource the editing of this podcast, like I’ve tried to build support. At the end of the day, it’s still is me behind.

A lot of it, I’m very crazy protective of my voice and so I’m, I micromanage the content marketing probably more than I should for scale, but it’s important to me, so I do. And so the content generation as a whole has stacked up to quite a lot. And so as I was thinking about, I’m spending a lot of time, I’m looking at my calendar, I’m seeing the time that all this takes, I’m thinking.

This is a lot of time going to content generation of free content that is competing for time, for serving clients, doing the other backend things that I have to do in the business projects that I wanna do, along with working out, having breathing space, creating friendships, [00:12:00] all that kind of stuff. That’s kind of where I was approaching this from, and then I’m looking at summer is approaching.

I really realized last summer I lose at least an hour and a half of work time every single day to driving the school year. I have a bus in the summer. I don’t, so I spend a lot more time driving around for camps. I think that’s pretty typical and it’s important to realize. Yikes, that does a lot to my capacity.

I’ll also add in that another thing I was thinking about was, it’s been three years, you know, it’s been three years of running this podcast. I wanna make sure that I share valuable content. Given what I do, one of the worst things to me is that you listen to something and you think or read something of mine or something you think that was a waste of time.

And I just wanna be mindful that I’ve shared things for three years. I hope that they’re meaningful on the whole, but I also don’t wanna be putting out content just for the sake of content and have you feel like the value’s diminishing. [00:13:00] And so I just wanna be mindful of that and take a break so that I can come back with.

Real value for you. And the other thing I’ll note is that I love seasonality in my business. Before this past September to now, I ran two programs a year for the most part. There was a season, I did three programs a year, but I don’t know the last three or four years before that, I was running just two a year.

I had very clear seasonality in my business. I’d be in a program out of a program, in a program, out of a program, and I have that now still in this new model of it being evergreen. It’s just more of my year. It’s from mid-September to end of May. I’m carrying a client load, which I love. It’s actually been phenomenal.

I’ve been relieved that the results are the same for women like similarly. Wonderful. Thank goodness. It’s been awesome, and it’s just more of my year that I’m on. And less of the year that I’m not. And so I just need to [00:14:00] protect that time that I’m not on with clients so that I can make the most of it for the projects that I save for that period of time.

And so when you combine all of that, that the free content generation was becoming pretty heavy combined with summer and reduced hours, three years of running a podcast and wanting to make sure it was valuable content and they’d want to really preserve. Seasonality in my business and potentially bring seasonality to the podcast in a different way.

All of that just kind of combined to say, I think this would be a good time for a break. And I share that partly ’cause I mean maybe it’s interesting but also ’cause maybe it’s relevant to a decision you are making around your workload, seasonality of workload. Realizing that while there’s value, I think in consistency.

There’s also value in seasonality and taking breaks from things, and I hope that it helps to hear it. In terms of when I’ll come back, [00:15:00] I’m not sure I’m kind of leaving that open. I could see coming back maybe with more of a season, like more of a clear idea of a start to finish and not just every week. I imagine it might be sometime in July or August, but I really don’t know, and I’m gonna keep it open and we shall see, and I’ll let you know.

I think at the very least, very, very least, I will be randomly releasing episodes of rambling ideas that I have just to get people’s input and continue the conversation where I think there’s value. But I do keep the door open and think it’s more likely that there will be more of a seasonality approach going forward.

Before I go, before I wrap this up, I do wanna say something that I think is worth saying. I think the demands. On all adults. I was gonna say working women, but we’ll expand to adults are very real. You know, they’re very [00:16:00] heavy. I think that there are a lot of issues with systems in our world, in our country that make the expectations placed on adults and in particular, I would say women, particularly during certain phases of life, incredibly heavy.

There are external expectations, societal expectations, demand systems, all of that. There are things that we’ve absorbed that we impose on ourselves that are very heavy. There’s lack of systemic support in so many ways to support working women and working moms. There are motherhood penalties. There’s all of that, and I do want those systems to change, and I also don’t think we can wait for them to change.

We are, as corny as it sounds, the authors of our own lives. We have to, in a sense, save ourselves. Like no one’s coming to save us in that corny way, but true. And I think that [00:17:00] we women often aren’t talked to in that way, in the sense that boys are taught how to be a man, but girls are often not taught what it means to be a woman.

I think because of that, sometimes we don’t step into that and really take control of our life in a way that we maybe could. Again, I think that there are so many system problems. I’m not saying that, but I also think that more is in our control often than we think. Then people led on to us, and so we have to do that, and to me, the Bright method has been a major way that I do that.

It is the only way I know and have experienced firsthand. I’m sure there are other ways, but it is the way for me that I have found to design and live out a life where I feel more in control of my time, that helps me understand the realities of my time, that helps me push back against expectations. [00:18:00] That gives me data to have the confidence to draw boundaries and hold them against pushback and all of that.

It’s the way I’ve seen it work for clients. I’ve had clients on calls say things like, I’m the boss of my time now. I’ve had a client and a testimonial say, I feel like I’m finally navigating my life in the driver’s seat instead of being taken for a ride. I really believe in the power of the Bright method, and I say this at a time when the Bright method is not open for enrollment, so that it’s not salesy.

I don’t want it to be seen as salesy. I believe in it deeply, and so I share it to nudge you that if you have been understandably struggling to take control of your time, your workload, your capacity, all of that, because so often we are not taught how to do it. I do hope you’ll consider joining me to learn the full system at some point.

And I say this because I believe [00:19:00] in the power of it so much. All right, last thing. Most important thing. Thank you for being here. Truly, if you can’t tell, I find this job incredibly fulfilling and a huge part of why is the women I get to do this with. Yes clients for sure, but also the women I just get to hang out with here in my dms and email who let me know how things land on the podcast, all that kind of stuff.

The women I work with and get to talk to. It’s amazing to me that they come from such a variety of industries, families, kids, no kids partner, no partner. Truly across industries. There’s so much differentiation, and yet there is this unbelievable common thread through everybody of kindness, of curiosity, of being so smart and thoughtful and nuanced and all of it.

Women who are. [00:20:00] So accomplished and want to continue to be, but also want breathing room and are curious and experimenting to try and get it. You know, I named the Bright Method because I think of it as bright women seeking bright lives, and I just feel so thankful to feel like I am surrounded by those women through this podcast.

So truly thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me get to hang out with you as part of this incredible job. Also do work that I find so fulfilling and thank you for letting me do it. All right, so while I’m on a break, dig into the back catalog. I’ve even had clients who are like, I listen to the podcast again ’cause it just hits different a second time.

Revisit some of the old episodes, someone to a friend who it might resonate with. If you want to follow me on Instagram, if you’re there, join my email list. There are a lot of ways to stay in touch, so wherever you hang out, I hope we get to continue hanging out there too. And we’ll see where [00:21:00] this goes in terms of the podcast.

As always, most importantly, thank you for being here and I’ll catch you in the next one.

Links you might enjoy:

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~3 Years, ~140 Episodes, and a Decision to Take a Break

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