You're listening to Podcasting Made Simple.

Jeff was a successful podcaster with over 250 episodes under his belt.

That is, he wasn't a beginner.

And when he came to a conference like this, he'd get high fives and fist bumps.

Congratulations from his fellow podcasters.

And Jeff smiled and made excuses. Oh, it was just good timing, he said.

Oh, I just got lucky to get that guest. But even though all his stats showed that Jeff was crushing

it, he didn't feel like it. In fact, he felt like a fraud. He felt like despite all his success,

that he still wasn't quite good enough. He would get

huge names on his show and then in the middle of the interview, he'd wonder how on earth he got here.

He compared himself to his expert guests and then he'd feel intimidated by them. He was a bit

of perfectionist and he'd often re-record. He was a bit of a perfectionist, and he'd often

re-record himself because he didn't like how he sounded the first time round. And he could

easily spend six hours editing a 45-minute show. Jeff would also over-prepared by doing way

too much research, but then his interviews felt more like

an interrogation rather than a flowing conversation.

This went on for some time, and it didn't seem to get better with practice.

Each episode he released was a huge sense of relief, and then he'd worry if he could do

it again the next time. And the strain was

starting to show Jeff was exhausted, edging towards burnout. He couldn't sleep worrying about

it all. And finally, it became too much and he quit. He felt that maybe he just wasn't cut out

to be a podcaster after all. He'd started with all this fantastic passion, joy, was excited

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