Ep. 400 Eight years of Reimagining Success – what I’ve learned (and what’s next)

Reimagining Success, episode 400. This one is a bit of a milestone and a bit of a reckoning as well. A look back at what nearly 8 years of doing this has taught me, and some important thinking about whether I should keep doing it the same way. I’ve also got some news about what happens next, so stick with me.

Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach, and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility, and the fulfilment you’re looking for. Ready to redefine success and build a business that you love? Let’s get started.

How Reimagining Success began

Oh my goodness, 400 episodes. I started this podcast back in December 2018. The first proper episode was called What Does Being Successful Mean? Which tells you something, because I think that’s really still the question I’ve been trying to answer.

Now, first, if you can indulge me, a little description of what was going on at the time. So I left my job in 2013. This was actually already quite a few years into working for myself, quite a few years into my coaching. And in 2018 the beginning of the year I had 3 projects I wanted to do – I wanted to write a book, publish a book in fact, I wanted to launch my first group coaching programme and I wanted to launch this podcast. And if you have been a long listener you’ll have heard me share this story before, because it’s an important one I think that I like to share with clients too. But at the time, trying to do these 3 things at the same time was not possible. So I sequenced them and I ended up launching my first group programme because that was the commercial priority in February 2018 – that was the then business incubator. I then had a few months of working and decided to publish my first book, Leaving the Corporate Nine to Five, in October. So that was on my birthday. And then final few days of the year, I believe, I managed to push out the podcast, December 2018.

Now, for those of you who’ve had a podcast or who have considered launching one, you’ll know that there are so many fears and tech questions that get in the way. Oh my goodness, how will I edit it? What music will I use? What will I talk about? How does it even work? How do I record? Do I need a studio? At the time, I guess I was a little bit ahead of the trend – that was, after all, almost 8 years ago. It’s not like today when a lot of people have podcasts.

To be honest, I will take a moment to celebrate because, whether that means something or not, so many podcasts have disappeared or only launched a few episodes and then given up. I am actually in the top 3% apparently, which says something, if nothing else, about my persistence. And I’ll talk about that in a moment.

But all this to say that it was a great achievement for me and I’m so, so proud of myself for doing it. Now, early on, the episodes – and please don’t go back and listen to them – were basically me reading blog posts. That is not a great approach. But hey, I did what I had to do. I launched with my first 3 episodes, as I believe the recommendation was. And then over time, the podcast became actually the core of my content. So I did rather the opposite – these days, the transcript sort of acts like a post, and really the podcast episode is the core of my content for that week. And it has been a weekly podcast, pretty much without fail, even with a couple of bonus episodes, since December 2018.

The question I keep coming back to

But anyway, so I started with those first really big open questions. What is success? Why do so many of us chase a version of it that doesn’t actually make us happy? And then pretty quickly, the show got more practical. So if you go back to episode 29, I go all in on quitting your corporate job and designing your escape outside the nine to five, because that’s where I was. I’d left my own corporate career a few years before, and the show was basically me working out loud how you build something else and supporting people to do that.

And then it did broaden. So I had the 5 pillars that I talk about in Outside the 9 to 5 – designing success, cultivating confidence and resilience, choosing the right business model, building an effective personal brand, and designing flexible work-life integration. And those have been the red threads throughout these years.

What strikes me now, looking back, is that I’ve come almost full circle. The episodes I’ve started making this year – the minimum viable week, the 4-hour workday, why women are leaving corporate – they’re certainly more specific than the early ones, but they’re still asking the same question I started with. What does success actually look like, and who decided that for you, and does it still make sense? I think I just understand the question a lot better now than I did at episode one.

The shadow side of discipline

Now, the thing that most people say to me when I mention 400 episodes is some version of: oh my gosh, I don’t know how you’ve kept it going. You’re so consistent. What incredible discipline. 400 episodes, nearly 8 years, mostly on my own, with a monthly interview and then every single week. The practical side of it has become easier now with AI, with transcripts. I’m pretty sure I actually transcribed the episodes myself in the early days. So that’ll tell you how foolish I was at the time, or at least how far technology has come.

And I hear you. I’m on, I don’t know, year 3 of my Duolingo streak. Very impressive.

But I want to talk about the shadow side of this. I’ve been talking about success scripts for a living – the beliefs we run without realising. And discipline, I’m realising now, is one of mine. The same thing that gets me to 400 episodes – just keep going, don’t miss a week, show up no matter what, don’t give up – is also the thing that stops you ever asking whether you should still be doing it this way at all. You can keep going for so long that you forget to check whether it’s still the right thing. And I’ve always found that tension really difficult. I’ve discussed this with clients too. When do you know that, yes, I should just keep showing up and eventually it’ll work – and when do you go, no, actually I should pivot, I should tweak, I should scrap it? Seth Godin has written a book called The Dip around exactly that – when you know if it’s just a dip or if it’s actually not working.

Being honest about the numbers

I should be properly transparent here in case you thought this was a top 10 business podcast. It is not. I’m sorry to shock you. The numbers aren’t massive. Yes, top 3%, but I think that’s largely due to so many failed podcasts out there. And ironically, given what I’ll be sharing in a minute, the downloads and listens are actually the highest they’ve ever been right now, which is great.

But I’m not sitting on an enormous audience. I haven’t been nationally recognised. One of the podcasts I listened to – the High Performance Podcast – recently celebrated 400 episodes and it was incredible what they’ve achieved. It’s become their full-time business, they’ve hired what sounds like 40 people, lots of incredible celebrity names. And that’s just not my approach at all. It certainly hasn’t been my trajectory.

What it is – and I don’t want to undersell it – is something my clients really value. I’ve been able to send people episodes as a free resource, both people already working with me and people who perhaps aren’t ready to work with me yet. Sometimes it’s definitely brought the right people to me, although I’ve often been told that actually the more effective strategy is to go on other people’s podcasts, get onto other people’s platforms, rather than having your own.

And if you’re listening to this, which you are, I am so, so grateful that it’s something you’ve chosen to spend your time on. I certainly don’t take that lightly.

Why the show is pausing – and what I’m asking myself

All those things can be true. And also, “I should therefore keep making it exactly like this forever” is a different thing. And if I’m honest, I’ve been treating them as the same thing.

Bigger picture here: there’s a shift going on in podcasting. It’s all video now. Everyone’s starting with YouTube first, big productions, cameras everywhere. Obviously there’s the Steven Bartlett Diary of a CEO, Chris Williamson, Renée Brown, Simon Sinek, Adam Grant – and all the social media clips as well. I could chase that. But the truth for me is that the format works. I did toy with video for a while. First of all, it’s incredibly boring for you just to watch me talking to camera, as engaging as I am. And I do video interviews – but it’s a quite simple Zoom format. It’s certainly not high production value.

But the format works for me because I can literally just turn on the audio and record – often 4 or 5 episodes in one go – send them to my editor, and that works really well. I also have the sense that it works for you as a busy business owner, solopreneur, often parent, who doesn’t have time to sit and watch something. A short solo episode, 10 or 15 minutes, works.

So what I’m sitting with isn’t how do I make this bigger, or how do I make it more like everyone else. It’s: what is the version of this that’s actually worth your 15 minutes, and mine?

What comes next – and why I need to hear from you

Which brings me to some news. Drumroll please, as my son would say. I won’t be back next week. I’m pausing the show at least over the summer. I mean properly pausing – to actually think, not just take a break and pick up where I left off in September. If it comes back the way it’s been, it’ll be because I’ve decided what it’s for now, not because it’s just a thing I do every week.

It might mean a sharper focus. It might mean a shorter series, one theme at a time. I’ve always actually recommended to people if they start a podcast, just do a series of 10 episodes – and that could be enough, or at least it gives you permission to take a break and then do another series. The weekly format I’ve gone with has carried this sort of discipline, consistency, endlessness that has become perhaps a bit heavy.

The podcast might look entirely different. I just don’t know yet. And I’m not going to pretend I do.

To be honest, it’s a little bit meta – but this whole show is about not running on autopilot towards someone else’s idea of success. And ironically, a podcast can absolutely become that if you let it. So I’m taking my own advice for this one.

Fill in the survey before I decide

Which is where you come in. Before I make any of those decisions, I really, really want to hear from you – the people who actually listen. And in fact some who don’t, so I will be emailing my list as well. I would be so, so grateful if you could answer a few short questions. The URL will be in the show notes: onestepoutside.com/survey. Very simple. A few minutes. I’m trying to squeeze the insights out from you and hopefully to really help you – as well as me – to understand what the show has been for you, perhaps why you’ve listened, why you haven’t, what you’d want from it next, and whether you even want it in its current form.

And if you all go, oh my gosh, don’t stop, Anna – that’s obviously a signal. And if nobody even bothers to fill out the survey, that is also a signal, and I shall take it on the chin and move on with my life.

So again: onestepoutside.com/survey. In the show notes. And as a thank you – hopefully you’ll do it anyway because you have strong opinions and you want me to help you – everyone who fills it in and wants to will go into a draw for a 1:1 call with me, which is worth a lot of money these days. So it’s well worth your time.

A final note (and thank you)

Right. Final emotional note. I’m quite sad about this. Whether or not I come back – you just don’t know. It’s one of those things. I might say I’ll be back and then years later nothing’s happened. But I actually feel a relief and an excitement. And if I can share one more insight from this: you have to say no to something – even if it’s okay, even if it’s good, even if you’re kind of competent at it – to make space for the big yes. The exciting, scary thing that’s fully aligned, that makes you scared and excited at the same time. This podcast was that when I started. Maybe it’s no longer that.

I should – and I’m so sorry I haven’t mentioned this before now – thank everyone who’s been a guest on this show, because it’s been the best part of it. Obviously it can be quite lonely as a solopreneur, certainly quite lonely speaking out into the ether on a podcast because I do audio and I record it in my own room here. And one of my favourite things, in fact why the podcast probably started in the first place, was that I wanted to speak to other people. That’s where the first book came in – Leaving the Corporate 9 to 5. I was interviewing people for my own inspiration, very selfishly. And then ultimately that came onto the podcast. I’ve spoken to founders, super successful, living their best lives, facing super hard challenges – life, health, personal, professional – but ultimately, like me, sharing this view that we can, and should, define success on our own terms and build a business and live a life accordingly.

Final thank you – and he used to sometimes listen to my episodes but probably won’t now – to Elvis over in Sri Lanka, who has been editing this podcast. I’m sure he’ll be very relieved to get a bit of a break at least. But I may still be back. So hold that thought, Elvis. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your incredible support.

Right. Let’s go and find out what the next one’s going to be.

I might see you later. Or I might not.

Bye for now.