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Show Notes:

Today, I'm veering off the normal podcast course and I'm breaking a few rules and I just want to share some of where I am in my own work and play and how that affects this podcast moving forward. I'm really excited about where I'm headed and I want to be very honest with you and take you along in this journey with me. I value you, I'm grateful for you listening—especially those of you who listen every week I'm so, so grateful and I'm excited just to share my heart with you today.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.

So, like I said, I'm going to be breaking a few rules in this podcast and telling you some things that I feel like are written in a secret rule book that I just shouldn't share publicly on a podcast, but I'm going to do it anyway because that's how I believe things should be done, just with integrity, with transparency and just to kind of let you know how I got to this point and where I'm headed in this work.

So as y'all know, I had a baby in July of 2021 and it has been such a joy to welcome him into our family as the fourth kid and I took six months off social media and work following his birth and it was such a good refreshing time for me.

I was also excited to get back to work, I love this podcast, I love what I do. I knew that I wanted to enter into work with just a very structured, limited amount of time that I'm giving to it because I want to primarily be home with my kids. I want to primarily be a stay at home mom, and I want to work just a little bit every week, you know, a few hours here and there while they're at school.

One thing I've realized is my plate is overflowing even without this podcast, even without any kind of work on it. And I love that, I love being a mom and I love spending time with my kids and even still, I still have help. I still have help from my mother-in-law and my aunt on like a regular weekly basis.

All of that said, I'm trying to figure out what is my cadence, because I feel like every week my cadence is a little bit different with sickness or us, you know, just recently spring break, and my oldest daughter's spring break was on a different schedule than my two middle preschoolers’ spring break. So just trying to figure out my cadence of work and what that looks like.

I have just a really irregular schedule. Okay, so that's kind of the context of my life right now, as I'm talking. I know even in five years from now, my life is going to look so different from this, but right now I just really want to savor this season with my kids.

And so there's a lot of work in parenting and motherhood, and there's a lot of play in parenting and motherhood. And then of course I have my podcast Work and Play, which is primarily work for me, but it's really fulfilling for me as well. So I say all that to say, it's a puzzle piece that I'm kind of telling you about as I move forward with this podcast.

My biggest priority is home. My biggest priority is my marriage and my family and making sure I'm there for them in this season and so I've just been praying about what needs to change, what do I need to do? I've also realized that giving time to this podcast—it's time, it's a lot of time, it takes me a few hours to prepare for every episode that I bring to you.

That also requires childcare, and you know, not to mention reading the books that I read to talk to you about, which of course I want to read those anyway, but it's a little bit more diligence in preparing and taking notes and things like that. And bottom line is I've realized if I want to be away from my family, I need to make it worth it to my family financially.

And so I sent out a survey to you guys earlier this year about, you know, if I needed to monetize this podcast, because I do ,and I need to make it worth it for my time and my time away from my family and the hours that I put into it. Would you rather have ads? Would you rather have a community? Are you familiar with Patreon?

Do you have any suggestions? And by and large, a lot of you came back and said, do ads. So I was ready to go. I was like, let's do ads, let's do ads. I made a list of all the businesses I was going to contact. I got the contract together, got everything ready to go.

And the story is, I mean, God just kind of pushed pause on that. I mean, I had the email draft ready to go and I'm so thankful, I'm so thankful for God leading my business, leading the decisions in my work, because I realized that as soon as I signed these contracts with these companies that I love and would love to talk about on the show would love to monetize this podcast in this way, I lose the flexibility.

I lose the time. If I were to have, you know, sick kids or an emergency in my life, I couldn't just stop this podcast for a month and I need that flexibility right now to do that. So another reason I felt like ads are not for me at this time is I started putting all these things together and realized this is going to take time.

Myself and Sammy Jo, who works with me, we're going to have to devote a lot of our time to corresponding with either an ad agency or these businesses one-on-one to make this happen with Ad Copy and things like that blah, blah, blah. I won't bore you with all the business side of it.

Bottom line is that it's going to take time that we don't have and I was actually looking into an ad agency and was excited to say, hey, let's just pay an ad agency to do this for us and then we won't have to devote any time to it. Well, ad agencies require a certain amount of listeners per episode and I just don't meet that threshold yet. I'm kind of close, but I don't meet it yet and so that means we'd have to do it all ourselves.

And neither one of us have the time to give to that. So, I'm not saying I'm never going to do ads, but right now it feels like too much time and the contracts feel a little bit too binding for me to do that and do that well. So I kind of felt like I was back at square one, like, what am I going to do?

I want to keep this podcast going, but it has to be worth it to me in order to do this and so I started asking people about Patreon and I don't know if you've ever heard of Patreon, but basically it is a website where you can create like a community of sorts and ask for people to give or it's kind of like donating to creators who are creating things for you.

A lot of podcasts use it, a lot of artists like musicians, they use it, and it's a really neat way to kind of provide an inside scoop or I don't know, just different bonus episodes or things that you can really connect with these creators on and then you can support them financially and you get to choose how much money to give.

So the first time I learned about it, I was like, no, I don't want to do Patreon, it feels like a donation and I feel like—not that that's bad, but as a business person, I want to offer something of value. Like I want it to be an exchange, if you pay me money, I want to give you a course or a lesson or something like that.

And I asked so many friends and people about this literally for about a year I have been going back and forth as to what to do. And basically long story short, I have kind of come to realize it's the perfect platform, it's the perfect answer for what I'm trying to do. You, as a listener, would get to decide how much you pay and support for getting access to extra bonus content, whether it's an extra episode or something that I post in there.

So I know the question you must be asking in your mind, is like, well, wait, is this podcast going away? Am I going to have to pay to get access to it? And the answer is no, I'm still going to keep it available to you. It's just going to be supported by those of you who maybe want to connect with me a little bit more, who might want a community to talk about the books that I'm discussing or talk about an episode.

We'll have different discussion threads and we'll have a place for people to come, and my listeners to come and interact with me and interact with the content of this podcast a little bit deeper. And so I realized I am going to be providing value, I am going to be able to provide something more to those of you who want to get on board with Patreon and see me continue to do this work.

Also y'all know that I care deeply about finances and personal finances. So if you're not in a position to do that, that's okay. You can still listen to my podcast, I want to make it available to you, but if you are in a position to financially give even as little as a dollar a month, you know, that's like $12 a year to continue to hopefully listen to a podcast that enhances your life, then you can, and that's going to be the thing that, that really drives and keeps me going.

I'm also hoping to give special discounts to those who support me on Patreon and just more of an informal kind of connection point with me, especially as I've kind of taken a step back from social media, I'm hopefully looking to Patreon as the space that's a little bit safer and less cluttered and more of my people to connect with you and allow you to connect with one another.

So I'm really excited. I'm really excited about this, guys I have been praying, praying about this next step for a long time and I obviously have tried different things and I'm finally at the place where I have a peace about like, this is this, this is the direction I want to go. This is what I want to do.

I'll communicate with you every step of the way, and I'll tell you what's coming and you'll definitely get some extra quarterly content from me, whether it's extra episodes or digital downloads, I haven't exactly decided all that I'm going to do or include for my patrons yet, but I'm really excited to know that it's coming, it's coming and I'm thrilled about it. I'm still trying to figure out how the book club is going to fit into this.

I think that maybe we'll have some extra bonus content for those of you who are participating in the book club in Patreon, but I'm still figuring that one out. I will say this, I am going to pause the book club for a few months right now, just because of what I said with my time. And I really don't want to feel the pressure of scrambling through a book, I really want to read it well.

So I am going to pause it and pick it back up and I'm going to revamp the list of books over on NancyRay.com/bookclub, if you want to take a look at kind of the updated version of that. So I'll be updating you more as I figure that out.

Right now, I'm realizing that after taking six months off, jumping back in trying to figure out how to make this podcast worth it, what direction I'm headed. I'm really trying to honor the Lord first, my family second, and this season of my life. And what that means is I'm likely going to be releasing less public episodes. I'm thinking of going back, not going back to, I've always done four episodes a month, but after having the sweet baby, it's feeling hard for me to create four quality episodes for you every month.

And so I think I'm going to kind of tune it down. I don't, I don't know what my new cadence is going to be, maybe two or three episodes a month and then maybe something extra for my patrons. I don't know yet, but I do want to let you know that I'm going to just be kind of reassessing my rhythm of this.

Now don't worry, May is For Mamas is still coming, I'm working on some really great episodes for May is For Mamas and that is when I'm going to be launching Patreon. So you can just keep an eye out for that, or an ear out, I guess, since you're listening to a podcast, keep an ear out for what's to come, but there's going to be some great content for May is For Mamas, and then I'll be launching Patreon and that community and those additional resource to you in May.

Thank you, thank you just for listening to this. I know this wasn't something amazing for you and your life today, this is just an update about me and my work and my play, and really wanting to prioritize play in this time of my life with little kids and minimize work in this season. And I think that's good and I'm excited about it, but you know, my number one goal is to stay open to what God has for me, to what is good for me in this season and to actually practice the things that I preach and tell you guys about on this podcast episode.

Which is to really create goals around the season of life that you're in and be willing to change, and it's hard to change after, you know, I've been doing this podcast for—I'm looking at the calendar, I'm realizing it's—goodness, three years. I think it's, we're at the three-year anniversary of this podcast this month, which is awesome, but I haven't missed an episode a week for three years. I mean, I've well, that's not true, I have taken a couple months off and I've had two babies in that amount of time. So I have taken some months off, but I still have been releasing a podcast episode every week consistently when I haven't been on maternity leave.

So this feels a little bit different, a little bit hard, but I feel so, so peaceful about it, so good about it. I feel like I'm still providing, I'm going to be providing something so good to you. Actually, I feel like I'm going to be providing something better to you by making these changes and providing access to my patrons to some really great exclusive content and a place for you guys to talk to one another about the things we talk about here, to talk to me a little bit more.

And also even if I don't release four episodes a month or one episode a week, the episodes are going to be better. They're going to be better because of that and my family is going to be more honored and I feel like the Lord is going to be more honored in my life because of that. Okay, that was a lot to talk about over the course of like 15 minutes.

So thank you for hanging in there, thanks for supporting me, thanks for just being a listener, I'm so grateful—I'm so, so grateful. Stay tuned for what's to come, it's going to be good and I'll see you next week.

Okay, I have one more confession, I did break one more rule today and that is that I had a tiny helper at my feet the entire time I recorded this podcast, which is I think the first time that's ever happened, but my daughter Milly really wanted to be in here with me and so we prayed together before I recorded this episode and now she has a little message for you.

So this is my daughter Milly. How old are you Milly? “Six.” And what would you like to say? “Thank you for listening to my mommy's podcast.”

Thanks for being my special guests today. So I've broken some rules today, I've told you about the plans for this podcast, my financial decisions regarding this podcast, maybe how I'm going to lessen the episodes of this podcast and how I've had a tiny helper at my feet the entire time, all that to say, I'm grateful for you for listening and for just hanging out with me a little bit while I updated you on all that's going on in my work and play.

Kristen Dalton said the words: