Jan 24, 2018
The best podcast on earth is back on air!
We’re talking about Social Media Unscrambled, hosted by our friends Chris Curran and David Deutsch, masters of the mic and all things unscrambled.
They were on hiatus for a long time but it’s great to have them back. You know, hiatus. A thing we would never do around here. Except for that first one. And then this last one.
Well, we’re back too, after several months and a 10,000-mile cross country trip during which we planned to podcast and never did.
So what happened?
We went through a phase where we started scripting this podcast and that started getting less and less fun. We had an idea in our heads that it would help us stay more focused on a topic and have a higher quality show.
In the end we struggled to make a scripted show sound anything but scripted and sort of lost our mojo. So we ditched the script and went back to having fun. Lesson learned.
We were on our way to Podcast Movement in Anaheim, one stop of many on our cross country trip. Some two dozen states and eleven weeks later, we learned a lot about ourselves and our business along the way.
For starters, we learned that we’re not the planning type. Much like we started trying to plan this podcast, we started traveling with a serious plan. We had dates and stops and things to do and people to visit. But after two stops and a handful of days, we realized that planning was just holding us back. We didn’t need to know where we were going. We just needed to go.
So we threw out the plans and got in the car and drove. We drove for as many as 15 or 20 hours depending on our mood and whether there was anything we wanted to see along the way. Then we’d pull into a town somewhere and pull up the Priceline app or the Airbnb app and figure out where to stay.
If that sounds a little scary, perhaps it was at first. But after a while we got used to the idea of not knowing and were even comfortable sleeping in our car if we had to.
It’s not something that I would have thought would work. But it did. Sometimes you have to forget what you think you know about yourself and let something else happen.
It seems like it would be a challenging thing. After all, routines get disrupted, cell phone service drops out, and there are so many amazing things to see and do that work could easily fall by the wayside.
It didn’t.
In a completely counterintuitive experience, working on the road was easier than working from the same old table we’d been at for months. We had our work days. And we had our play days. The new environments were exciting and interesting. Our creative juices flowed. We got into an exploratory mindset and that transferred to our work.
Being in great places made us feel great, which meant we got to be more focused and enjoy what we were doing, whether it was gaping in awe at the deep blue of Crater Lake or writing a blog for a client.
Planning helped in that regard. One thing we did plan for was working. We got ourselves a mobile hotspot. We made sure we had plenty to do on our laptops even if we absolutely couldn’t get an internet connection. We made sure that we scheduled our client calls and we showed up, even if it was at 5AM our time.
So it can be done! Far from being distracting and chaotic, working on the road was relaxing, energizing and fun.
Being on the road was a bit of a revelation. We learned more than the fact that we could survive without a plan. We learned that we’re better in long bursts than short ones. When it comes to driving, 20 hours doesn’t phase us. It’s a lot more enjoyable than 3 hours.
In a way, we work that way, too. Long bursts of super focused time and then a break.
We learned that we enjoy the outdoors more than we thought we would. We learned that we’re not city people, which was a strange thing to discover since we’re New Yorkers at heart and love the city. We love to visit, to dine, to explore. But then we go home. And then we hike with elk, and that makes us happy.
We avoided most cities, from Nashville to Portland to Denver. But we hit lots of mountains and waterfalls and trails. We especially enjoyed our stay in Marin Country in California, where we had a cottage on a farm in a beautiful place with great people, great food, and plenty of elk.
We learned that we can do it, and we know we’ll do it again. This time, without even pretending to make a plan.
Next time we’re going to talk about how to travel even if you’re on a budget. We didn’t exactly do that, but we did find ways to save and to spend a lot less than we might have.
Until then, check out some of the other cool stuff we mentioned in this show…
Podfudge, Chris Curran’s new podcast production and promotion agency.
Double Exposure, our friend and wedding photographer Sophia Lemon’s podcast. In Episode 62 she and her co-host discuss a client who demanded a refund because they were offended by the use of the word “shoot” in “photo shoot.” We might even have an opinion on that next time.
And of course Social Media Unscrambled, which is lots of fun.