By Brendan O’Meara
Look who it is! It’s Rebecca Renner (@rebeccarennerfl on IG), freelance journalist and author of Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades (Flatiron Books).
Rebecca‘s work has appeared in National Geographic, Outside Magazine, and The Paris Review, among others.
I was struck by Rebecca’s self-assuredness, something I categorically lack, which made me think during this conversation as it was happening, like, Wow, what must that be like?
In this conversation we talk about revision, opening yourself up to possibilities, world building, trickster stories, and “making the pig.” Good, good stuff.
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Parting Shot from Ep. 420
I teased at the top about audience leakage and what to do about it. I’m not a huge analytics guy, but it’s hard to ignore the 3-5 people who unsubscribe every time I put out a newsletter while I get no new signups. Or watching my podcast numbers crater from by 50% overnight. I don’t say this to complain, but it’s a reality that we as creative people looking to build an audience online, people you hope to entertain and serve on some level, have to confront. When you see the numbers tank, you need to change on some level.
Or, it’s all part of leveling up. Lots of bands, listeners of this show know I’m a Metallica apologist, will change their sound, their direction, and they know they will lose audience. They have the courage to lose a percentage of the old base in order to chart to territory. Maybe find higher ground.
Seth Godin, just the other day, wrote “Trust is what’s in short supply, not attention.”
The attention is bombarded constantly, but my hope is to lean into the ones who are here. Try to bring a level of value to your life that deepens the trust in the relationship that spending an hour with the show every week, maybe perusing the newsletter, that all that combined will give you the juice for you to see things through. If people unsubscribe, or stop listening, as hard as that is because this show and that newsletter are so deeply personal that it feels like an attack on me, I have/we have to have the strength to realize that it’s OK, it’s no longer for them. But we’ll keep showing up and be there for them if they want to come back. We’ll leave the light on for you.
I’ve outgrown a number of podcasts. I grew as a person, or my skill as an interviewer means I can’t unhear the way certain very prominent people conduct interviews and I can’t bear to listen any longer. How they conduct interviews is like nails on a chalkboard. So, I, too, have moved on, but they have millions of listeners so they don’t notice when little ol’ me leaves. But, man, when the same thing happens to me, I feel it and I feel like a failure that I couldn’t win you over. It hurts. I’ve been doing this podcast for nearly a dozen years and I’ve been a professional writer for twenty, and it still stings.
But when you frame your mind around this idea of enough, you don’t get so obsessed with grow, grow, grow (though you still want to). You get more obsessed with building trust and delivering for the people who still get the joke.
So stay wild CNFErs, and if you can’t do, interview, see ya!
