What 11 episodes of an indie podcast taught this burnout coach about letting go of perfectionism and doing the messy thing anyway

For the penultimate episode of Season 1 of Just Rest, I asked my dear friend, coaching colleague and Messy Liberation podcast co-host, Taina Brown, to turn the tables and interview me. Taina didn’t let me just skim the surface. She will help you, dear listeners, learn a side of me that you can’t get when I’m the one asking the questions.

After reflecting a bit on this podcast and the first season, I arrived at four bits of wisdom I’d offer you if you’re thinking of starting an indie podcast or any creative endeavor:

• You don’t need to “get it all together” before you start
• Get a clear focus for what you’re doing and why you’re doing it
• Find supporters who have your back
• Let your podcast (or new venture) change you

In Episode 11, Taina Brown expertly guides me through an honest reflection on the long, messy process of dreaming up, planning and then producing this podcast. I hope it eases your fear and imposter syndrome because the world needs your voice in the mix of people putting their ideas on record.

You Don’t Have to “Get it Together” Before You Start a Podcast (or Anything)

Imposter syndrome be damned! You don’t have to have it all together to start a podcast. I thought about having a podcast for years before I did it. Sure, other people out there are talking about rest, justice and liberation, but no one will do it with quite my spin on things. Taking my time dreaming and planning this podcast really helped me hone in on the focus of the show and helped me get clear on why I was doing it in the first place.

Then, I spent a year learning from more experienced podcasters and experts through the incredible offerings from the Feminist Podcast Collective. I knew in my head what to expect and even how to do far more things than the average indie podcaster might know about what it takes to make a good podcast. But, knowing it and doing it are two very different things.

Listen to more of my story about starting this podcast in Episode 11 of Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals with Taina Brown, guest interviewer. I hope it inspires you to take the leap and start your podcast or any creative endeavor messily. You’ll figure it out as you go. I did.

The Typical Advice about Starting an Indie Podcast Fuels Perfectionism

The advice you’ll find online about podcasting tends to sound like this: Release on a consistent schedule, nail your niche before you launch, have at least six episodes banked, grow your audience with SEO-optimized titles, and treat it like a business from day one.

Some of that is useful. Some of it will paralyze you before you ever hit the record button.

What I wish someone had told me:

Your first episodes will probably not be your best. That’s normal. That’s how learning works. The podcasters who make it past the early episodes — and most don’t, with many shows folding before episode 10 or 11 — are the ones who kept going through the awkward, figuring-it-out phase without waiting for perfection.

Irregular cadence won’t necessarily kill your show. I don’t drop episodes on a rigid weekly schedule. My numbers haven’t suffered. My audience is still finding me, still listening, still growing. Consistency matters — but sustainable consistency beats frantic consistency every time.

The iceberg is real. What listeners hear is a fraction of the work involved. Planning, prep, recording, editing, show notes, email newsletters, social posts, guest coordination, tech troubleshooting — it adds up fast. Building your systems slowly and imperfectly is still building them. Keep at it and the production process will get smoother and quicker.

Having a Community of Supporters Will Help You Feel More Confident

I’m a proud member of the Feminist Podcast Collective, a community that supports values-driven indie podcasters with workshops, peer support and the kind of honest, practical wisdom that’s hard to find elsewhere. Before I launched, I attended workshops, talked to other podcasters, and asked a lot of questions. I felt more prepared for this than almost anything I’ve done in recent memory — and it was still messy.

Through it all, that community of podcasters offered me any and all support I could have asked for. When I didn’t always meet the every-other-week cadence I originally aimed for? They reminded me not to worry about it. When I was struggling with learning new editing software? They offered Zoom calls to help me figure it out. And you know what? It turned out pretty great. At the conclusion of this season, I now have 12 episodes and more than 700 downloads on some pretty excellent podcasts that are having an impact on listeners’ lives.

So go ahead and do the messy thing you want to do. When you make the choice to take messy steps forward, you also come a little closer to defeating perfectionism in your life and in our culture. Perfectionism paralyzes you. Messy steps empower you and allow you to grow.

Crowdfunding for the Podcast Launch Created Support that Went Well Beyond Money

If you’ve been sitting on a podcast idea, waiting until you feel ready — until you have the right equipment, the perfect niche, the polished workflow, the confidence that your voice deserves to be heard — I want to tell you something.

If you think you don’t have the right equipment or software – crowdfund for it. I did. It was a messy, hard process that I ended up doing twice because I didn’t meet my original goal. But you know what that created? A strong listener base. After all, I spent nearly six months talking publicly about the podcast, which refined my pitch for and focus of the podcast before I’d even recorded one episode.

Do you want advice about how to start your podcast with crowdfunding? Hop on my coaching calendar for a simple one-hour “Share My Wisdom” call in which you can ask me anything about my experience. At the end, you’ll get notes from our call and a list of resources you can follow up on.

Let Your Podcast or New Endeavor Change You

Episode 11 doesn’t just reveal my messy podcast journey; it shares the story of how things have shifted and changed because of developing the podcast: my theological roots of this radical rest movement, how this podcast is forcing me to grow and change in amazing ways, and how it’s even spurred some new rest practices in me – ones I wouldn’t have imagined for myself even 3 years ago.

Three things that have shifted and changed in me since I started podcasting:

I shed my own perfectionism. I had to adapt plans as I navigated tech issues, the schedule of a busy business, and the giant learning curve of producing my own podcast.

I learned from my guests. I was inspired by some of their rest practices and put them to work in my own life.

I leaned into supportive community. As someone who doesn’t like vulnerability at all, I really had to lean into support – both financial and moral – from a huge number of people to start a podcast. You know what? I’m so much better off because of it. Not only is it easier for me to talk about and ask for money when needed — it left me feeling so much better connected to the people who are supporting me. I even have a few regular Zoom calls on my calendar with friends who I reconnected with during this process.

So How Do You Keep Yourself from Burning Out on Your Podcast?

One of the questions aspiring podcasters ask most often is: How long does it take for a podcast to grow?

The better question is: Why do I want the podcast to grow? For most indie podcasts, the goal isn’t to make money. It may be to share what you’ve learned from a particular life experience. You may want to form a community around a particular topic of conversation. You may want to have an occasional podcast that your friends and family enjoy. All of these goals are valid!

Don’t let the “shoulds” of podcasting get you again. Let your podcast – and your reasons for it – be yours, no one else’s. I started a podcast because I wanted to increase the community of people having a conversation about rest as a tool for creating justice and liberation in our toxic capitalist culture.

I am doing that even though I have no major paid promotion (and don’t expect to get it), no celebrity guest appearances, and a release schedule that wasn’t perfectly consistent in the first season. And I had pretty solid download numbers despite that I didn’t do everything “perfectly” according to those podcasting “shoulds.”

Slowly, over time, the right people will show up to your show if you do it as your authentic self — not a polished, optimized content creator. After all, you’re reading this blog and I’m just a burnout coach, clergy person, yoga and meditation teacher, journalist and podcaster who is figuring this out in public.

Your numbers will not tell the whole story. They will never fully reflect the listener who felt truly seen after listening to one of your episodes. After I published a short solo episode (something I hadn’t planned to do in the first season), a listener emailed me to tell me how much it impacted her, reminding her to let go of her own perfectionism. That’s the impact I want and that you probably want. Don’t worry so much about numbers – listen harder for the impact that you’re having.

🎧 Listen to “Rest, Calling, and the Messy Truth about Podcasting with Guest Interviewer Taina Brown” wherever you get your podcasts.

Get Support for Podcasting without Burnout

I’m going to suggest two things to help you start building your community of support:

Join the Feminist Podcast Collective. I wouldn’t have been able to embrace this imperfect podcasting journey without their wisdom and their reminders that there are really no podcasting “shoulds.” They reminded me to make my podcast, not follow someone else’s rules.

Become a paid subscriber of the Rest Rebel Collective so that you receive my post-episode reflections called After the Mic. It’s where we slow down, integrate, and explore what rest actually looks like in real life, not just in theory.

Join the Rest Rebel Collective for only $7/month or $70/year.

Listen, Rate & Review

I’m NOT all about numbers here, but I do want to find those other people who are running on empty and who need to know burnout is not all their fault.

🎧 Listen to Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.

⭐ If this episode resonates, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast. It helps more tired, caring people find these conversations when they need them most.

Resources & References

• 🎙️ Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals
• 🎙️ Messy Liberation Podcast with Taina Brown and Becky Mollenkamp
• 🤝 Feminist Podcast Collective — community and support for values-driven indie podcasters
• 📖 Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann
• 🌍 New American Welcome Center — Champaign-Urbana
• 🌍 Amica Center for Immigrant Rights
• 🌐 Work with Nicole
• 📬 Join the Rest Rebel Collective

About Nicole Havelka

Nicole Havelka is a coach, facilitator, and the host of Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals — a podcast for burned-out changemakers who need permission to rest without guilt and inspiration for showing up without burning out.

She works with individuals and organizations who are tired of running on empty.

For individuals, Nicole offers coaching for people who need real support with time management, building sustainable rest practices, or just an honest sounding board. Nicole is a lot like that good friend who will always tell you when you have spinach in your teeth — with kindness, and because she actually wants you to succeed.

For organizations, Nicole works with mission-driven teams and leaders who are losing their best people to exhaustion and burnout, struggling with unproductive conflict, or watching miscommunication quietly erode their culture. She helps them build the kind of environments where people can do their best work — and actually want to stay.

Nicole is also the founder of the Rest Rebel Collective, a paid subscriber community on Substack where burned-out changemakers find community and practical tools, and the Calm Calendar Club, a planning and productivity offering for women and femmes in the Sandwich Generation who want put down some of the balls they have in the air.

Her work is grounded in one belief: Rest is not a reward. It is resistance. And it is how we stay true to our core purpose and mission.