We’ve officially hit fifty episodes of The Modern Editor Podcast! I’ve never been great at slowing down enough to celebrate achievements, so I want to take a moment to reflect on this milestone instead of rushing toward the next goal. Listen in as we celebrate The Modern Editor Podcast by the numbers. Don’t worry, there’s no math involved!
We’ve officially hit fifty episodes of The Modern Editor Podcast! I’ve never been great at slowing down enough to celebrate achievements, so I want to take a moment to reflect on this milestone instead of rushing toward the next goal. Listen in as we celebrate The Modern Editor Podcast by the numbers. Don’t worry, there’s no math involved!
Welcome to The Modern Editor Podcast, where we talk about all things editing and what it's like to run an editorial business in today's world. I'm your host, Tara Whitaker. Let's get to it.
Hello. Hello. We are celebrating a big milestone here at The Modern Editor Podcast. Today we have hit fifty episodes. I have no idea how I've made it this far—actually, I do, which we'll get into, but here we are.
So we are going to celebrate today. And when I was thinking about how exactly to do this, I, you know, went through, cycled through a whole bunch of ideas, and at the end I decided to just stick to my jam, which if you know me from here or the Freelance Editors Club or coaching, you know that I am big on reflection.
I tend to keep racing to the next thing, go, go, go, push, push, push, which I'm getting much better at. But because of that I have tried to make it a point in most everything that I do to pause, take a beat, take a breath, and reflect on what I just did before moving forward. Otherwise I never learn anything and it just feels like this ginormous hamster wheel.
Okay. Side note, this is a tangent. Why is there no P in hamster? That's how you pronounce it. Hamster. Even when you try to not do it, there's a P in there. All right. I'm advocating to put a P in hamster moving forward. Tell me if you agree or if you think I'm just, yeah, either way. Let me know.
Back to what we're talking about. I thought it would be fun to reflect on these past fifty episodes using numbers, which you might be like, Tara, you don't do numbers. Correct. They're not my forte, but we're not doing math so we should be fine. Okay. But caveat, just make sure that if you do hear me say something weird with numbers, just carry on. Just ignore it because it's probably some error on my end because I do words not numbers.
All right, so here is The Modern Editor Podcast by the numbers. Like I said, we've hit fifty episodes. I launched the podcast on July 24th, 2022. So at the time of this recording in May, it's been just shy of three years since I launched the podcast, which is wild.
I didn't think it was three years; I thought it was two years, but math, right? So out of those fifty episodes, including this one, forty-seven of them have been solo episodes and three have been guest interviews. And because I wanna highlight them, I'm gonna share them here in case you haven't listened to them or need to re-listen.
My first ever guest was Alex Temblador, and she came on to talk about her book Writing an Identity Not Your Own, highly recommend. Then I had Akua Konadu, who's the host of the Independent Business Podcast, and she came on to talk about Honeybook's 2025 Growth Guide. Also highly recommend her podcast. And then Haylee Gaffin from Gaffin Creative just came on to talk about podcast pitching. And if you listen to that episode, you'll know that Haylee is my podcast producer and I'm gonna talk more about her later.
I do plan on having more guests in the future, but honestly, if I really think about it, I think I'll most likely always have more solo episodes. It's just the format that I kind of got a groove in and I feel comfortable with. Not that I don't feel comfortable doing interviews either, but it's just kind of my jam, just like reflection. So I think I'll just keep on keeping on with that.
All right, I thought it would be fun to share the top five downloaded episodes at the time of this recording. So some of these are a surprise to me and others are not. We will see. Let me know what you think.
So number five was “Five Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My Editing Business.” Kind of, I can see that that's kind of a, especially for newer editors, to listen to. I think that'd be a good one.
Only separated by one more download is number four, which is “Running a Business During Tough Times.” Yeah, I can see why that's downloaded a lot and that's all I'll say about that.
Number three is “How Many Hours a Day Can You Edit?” This one I also figured would be listened to a lot because that's such a hot-button question, and there's so many different people with so many different opinions and answers. To summarize it's up to you. It's totally up to you. There's no one right number of hours to edit other than what you are comfortable with. Okay?
Number two, “How to Find Time to Get Things Done.” I can see why it's popular, but also like, I don't, I really didn’t expect it to be number two by any stretch. Maybe it caught on somewhere. I have no idea, but you all liked it, so that's all that matters.
The number one downloaded episode by a decent margin is “A Behind-the-Scenes Look at My Copyediting Process. This one is a total shock. I created the episode based off a workshop I did in the Freelance Editors Club, where I showed people my copyediting process, like shared my screen, had a Word document up, all of that.
And when I decided to do a podcast episode, I was like, yhou know, I don't know if this translates, this used to be a workshop. You know, you can see what I'm doing. I don't know if it's gonna resonate when you're just listening to it or reading the transcript, but apparently it did resonate because it's number one by a long shot.
So you all were very interested in my behind the scenes. And speaking of behind the scenes, is there any behind the scenes you want to see from me? I'd love to hear it because like I said, that one was a total surprise. So maybe there are other surprise topics out there that I haven't thought of and I would love to hear them. So those are the top five downloaded episodes.
Now, to be slightly funny, here's the number of times that I was late sending in my stuff to Haylee. Too many that I'm not gonna say because I'm embarrassed to admit it. Like I said, Haylee and her team produce my podcast. She has been so patient with me, when, you know, life tends to life, the team, they're an absolute godsend.
I would not be at fifty episodes without them, period. So this is my opportunity to say thank you Haylee and team at Gaffiin Creative because you have made this possible, which I'm gonna also mention here in the next one.
The number of breaks that I've taken from the podcast due to burnout: two. And those breaks due to burnout are a huge reason why I haven't released more episodes than I have. Not that fifty is a low number. I think fifty is a lot, but if I did two episodes a month over the last three years, oh gosh, here's the math. Uh, seventy-two episodes. I've got fifty, I think. Don't correct me on that, but I took an almost four-month break back in the spring, summertime of 2023. And then I took a seven-month hiatus from November 2023 to June of 2024.
And guess when I hired Haylee? May of 2024. So see, her and her team have helped me get back into the routine, get back to being consistent, and I've been consistent ever since. So, woo-hoo. Go Haylee and Gaffin Creative.
Okay, next one. My Apple Podcasts rating. I have five stars with 25 ratings. And that's not a brag, that's just a warm fuzzy feeling. I never look at those. I'm not gonna lie, I just, I forget about them. I listen to other people's podcasts. I don't listen to my own unless I'm listening to it before it gets released. So I kind of just forget about them. But for this episode I was like, oh, I should go look.
And I didn't look at any of the others. There's, you know, there's Spotify and so many other platforms. But this is the opportunity I wanna take to thank you all for tuning in, for listening, for rating it, for reviewing it. If you all weren't listening, if you didn't subscribe, if you didn't tune in to hear me ramble and go on tangents about putting the P in hamster, there's no way I would've made it this far either. So this is getting a little mushy, but you are what makes me want to keep doing this. You listening, you telling me insights that you picked up after you listen, you telling me actions you've taken after listening to an episode, that is what keeps me going.
So thank you for choosing to spend your very precious time listening to this podcast. I do not take that lightly. That is why I don't put out content just for the sake of putting it out. I know that time is, you know, not a renewable resource. We only have so much, and the last thing I would want is for someone to listen to an episode of mine and go, wow, I wish I had that fifteen minutes of my life back.
Because you know what? Real talk, I've totally said that before about things that I've watched or listened to, and it's disappointing, right? And not to, you know, make it so that everybody has to put out perfect things or perfectly timed things, but just making sure that what we're doing makes a difference and isn't just talking for the sake of hearing our voices, which none of you need that advice, but there's some people out in the world right now that could. I'm sure you could think of a few.
Okay, last but not least, the number of lessons that I've learned during this whole journey. Way too many to list, but I'm gonna share my top two, and this is specifically for the podcast, but also can be applied to other things in life and business.
Number one is that for me, consistency truly is key. I know by now having been doing this almost three years, that if I let the podcast fall by the wayside or I don't make it a priority, it is so hard for me to get back into it. It's partially why it took seven months during that last break. I probably could have come back earlier, but I just kept pushing it off because I didn't make it a priority and that made it harder and harder to get back into. So I know for me for this podcast, I need to keep on schedule with accountability. Shout-out to Haylee again in order to make this thing happen; otherwise, it's just not going to.
And the number two lesson is to be okay with asking for help. And I did this whole podcast all on my own when I started, and I'm really glad I did. And I honestly, you know, depending on your situation, I would recommend doing the same.
That might be against other advice, but now I know how to do everything. I know where things were sourced. I know how to edit a podcast. I can bust out a podcast whenever I want, because I know how to do everything. I'm not reliant on someone else doing it for me. But after a while of doing it all on my own, I knew that I had to delegate.
There was just no way I could keep doing it on my own. But I gave myself all the excuses, right? I can't afford it. I don't wanna give up that control, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can definitely save yourself money doing it yourself. It's definitely great to know how to do everything, but there can come a time when we need to outsource things in our editing businesses.
It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be podcast related. It can be, do you need to outsource social media? Do you need to outsource accounting or bookkeeping or taxes or, you know, so many other things. Workflows. If you have something like Dubsado or Honeybook, there's so many things that you can outsource or get help with.
At the beginning, it's a little tough, right? Because we're just starting out. But it's okay to ask for help. Dare I say, it makes you an even better business owner when you are able to ask for help and delegate. We don't have to do it all on our own. We're not meant to do that. Okay?
Ta-da? Thank you for celebrating with me today and letting me share those reflections on, gosh, podcasting for almost three years now.
I am really excited to do more episodes in the future. I wanna thank you again for listening, and if you want, if you wanna keep listening, you don't have to, but if you wanna help support me, please feel free to leave a rating or a review on whichever podcast platform you use. I am not going to pretend I know how all that works, like techie wise, but I do know that it helps push my podcast out to more people, and the more people that I can help, the better it is.
So if you don't wanna do that, though, that's totally fine. I always wanna hear your thoughts too. So feel free to email me at hello@tarawhitaker.com. If you have a topic you want me to cover, if you have a question about a podcast, please let me know because at the end of the day, this podcast is for you all and I appreciate you.
So until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you enjoy The Modern Editor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes. And as always, you can head to Tara Whitaker.com to connect with me and stay in touch. We'll chat again soon.