500 Holly Worton – Happy Trails to You

Transcript

500 Holly Worton ~ Happy Trails to You

Feb 20, 2023 | Outdoor Adventures, Podcast Episode

HOLLY: Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into The Woods podcast episode 500. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to be reflecting on the last nine-and-a-half years of this podcast, which I began in August of 2013. I cannot believe that it has been that long! And then I have got some news for you. So let’s get in.

So this podcast started out, it has actually been rebranded so many times over the years, and I have actually rebranded it more than I thought I had. So it started out as the Socially Holistic podcast, because that’s what my business was called at the time. I was helping holistic business owners with social media and their online presence and I couldn’t find a business podcast that only interviewed women. So I started my own podcast in August 2013.

A lot of podcasts way back then were very male-focussed, hosted by men, interviewing men, and I just wanted something different. I wanted a show that just focussed on women, and of course that changed over the years because in recent years I have had male guests.

But we launched the podcast in August 2013 with episode 1 of the Socially Holistic podcast with an episode called ‘how to make a difference with your copywriting’,with my online friend Tanya Gardner. Now the vast majority of my first guests were online friends, they were people that I had met in online networking and I really liked what they did, and I liked them, and I knew it was easier to have a conversation with them.

So I started from there and then I gradually branched out into newer people that I didn’t know and I branched out into inviting people to be a guest on the show that I had not really previously had too much interaction with.

So that was exciting, because I got to showcase a lot of my friends, to get to know them and their business better and I got to meet new people which has always been such a great part of this podcast and it is something that I have always really enjoyed.

Then I rebranded my business and I started calling this the ‘Ready to Bloom’ podcast, because that’s what my business was called. I totally forgot about this rebrand! I only noticed it because I was scrolling through my 500 (499 before this) episodes of the podcast and I saw that some of the episodes started out with ‘R2B’, I totally forgot about this.

Then it shifted into the ‘Business Mindset’ podcast, because I shifted the focus of my business from social media to business mindset coaching. And started talking about similar things, but online business, other types of businesses, but more through the personal growth through business and how to shift your mindset in order to be more successful with business, because I love talking about personal growth and mindset.

And then finally I shifted into the ‘Into the Woods’ podcast. And here the podcasts for the first time aligned more with my hobbies; and my books; and my writing; and my blog; than my business, which was mainly focused on publishing at this point. My business has always been focussed on publishing, since 2012, so a lot of times I was kind of running two businesses, I had my publishing business where I help authors independently publish their books and then I was also helping people with social media and other things, so. It’s been a mix, I have done so many things over the years, and let’s not even get into what I was doing before I moved to the UK…totally different things!

So this podcast has been a reflection of my journey and all of my pivots since 2013. I have shifted and changed and adjusted my course so many times in the last 10 years but the consistent theme of this show has always been personal growth and reflection, reflection on: where we are; who we are; and where we want to be. And I have blogged a lot about something that I all ‘the three questions’ and I will link to those posts in the show notes. That’s something I have been blogging about since 2011, before this podcast even started. I did this talk at a conference about what I all the three happiness questions or the three questions and those questions are: who am I? Where am I? And where am I going? And those questions are based on my previous spiritual path where my spiritual teacher would always say, these are three questions that you need to have in mind always.

So like I say this podcast has always been about personal growth and reflection, sometimes personal growth through business and then personal growth through outdoor adventures…but always involving mindset shifts because back in 2013, right before I started this podcast, in July 2013, I trained in PSYCH-K®, which, as you have heard me mention a thousand times on this podcast, is the technique that I use to create mindset shifts and to change my beliefs at the subconscious level and, over the years, I have also worked with other people. So definitely, PSYCH-K® has been a big part of this because, ever since I trained in PSYCH-K® I have always been aware of my mindset: what are my beliefs? What are my blocks? What is holding me back? What do I need to believe instead to achieve my goals and do the things that I want to do? Whether that is in business, whether that is through outdoor adventures.

Now the show has also changed in format over the years. It started out in interviews, and then I added solo episodes, which was a huge leap for me. I really hesitated to do that in the beginning because it is really easy for me to have a conversation with someone, but it is not always easy for me, well, I think I didn’t believe that I had enough to say for a half-an-hour, or sometimes more, so that was a big leap for me. And then I went into a mix of solo episodes and interviews and I wasn’t always regular with that, I think I kind of had the idea that I would do two interviews a month and two solo episodes, but sometimes it was hard to get guests and so I was doing more solo episodes and then sometimes I had no idea what I wanted to talk about, so I was doing more interviews; so it has always been kind of a random mix, it has never been that two-and-two format that I really wanted.

Now occasionally, over the years, I had regular co-hosts who you may remember from previous episodes. Jo Casey and I have had so many fantastic episodes over the years, especially about business and also about personal growth. Joanna Hennon, also a good friend of mine, we have done tons of episodes together; and Cara Wilde has also been a frequent guest on this show and she also has her own podcast. So I will link to all of those people. I actually have blog posts on my website with links to all of the episodes that I have done with all these three people.

So there have been people kind of accompanying me in these episodes for many, many, years and almost throughout since the beginning which has been great, to have people to co-create with, I have really enjoyed that.

So it has been a rough few months for me. 2022…obviously before that we had Covid which was a total upheaval for all of us and then my business went through this huge hiatus in 2022 and I eventually got a job in October of last year which I left and then I started doing freelancing work for them and now that’s starting to change a little bit how I am working with them. Things are changing in my life, professionally, but I don’t know how. I feel like I am about to reach a ‘before’ and ‘after’ point in my life, but I don’t know what the after part looks like yet. I am in the messy middle and I have done an episode on that, way back episode 198 Jo Casey and I were talking about ‘how to handle the messy middle in business’, basically that in-between part when you know things are changing, you don’t know necessarily what you want, or what that’s going to look like, you don’t know how it’s changing. I don’t know, I am in that place right now. I don’t know what’s going on but something is coming.

What this means is that I am pausing the podcast for now and this was a really difficult decision to come to but once I arrived at that decision I knew it was the right decision for me. I may come back to it in the future, I have a feeling I will, but all I know for now is that it is right for me to be pausing the podcast right now and it seemed appropriate to do that at episode 500. There was a part of me that was thinking, oh 500 that’s a nice round number but then wouldn’t it be nice to keep going for another six months until August, and then do it for ten years…so I was kind of debating about that but then really it just felt like now is the time.

So like I said, I am not quitting the podcast, I am pausing the podcast, I hope you will stay in touch with me so you know what I am doing next and if I rekindle the podcast. You can stay subscribed to the podcast if you like, obviously you won’t be getting updates, but what I will do is I will create a form on my website where you can get in touch, you can subscribe and I won’t add you to my newsletter list, I will only add you to a list that will tell you if I am rekindling the podcast or if I do something instead of the podcast, it will just be a single email.

So I will link to that in the show notes but basically it will be hollyworton.com/newpodcast and you can go there, sign up and like I say it will be a single email saying, ‘I’m back, I’m coming back’ or something else, because I would like to not lose you. I really, really, appreciate all of the fantastic listeners that I’ve had over the years, I really appreciate all of the emails you have sent me to give me feedback — its so weird podcasting because I know x amount of people download each episode but it is kind of like I am speaking and they are going out there but I don’t always know who is listening, well I mostly don’t know who is listening. But every once in a while someone will comment to me on a podcast episode and I kind of go, oh! I didn’t know you listened to the podcast and that’s always pleasantly surprising. But I feel like, I don’t know, I have this kind I of invisible audience, you are invisible to me, but I feel a relationship even though I don’t know who most of you are!

So I don’t know, it is a big thing to be pausing this podcast right now, so thank you, thank you, thank you for listening for however long you have been listening, whether it is years, throughout all these changes, or whether you are just new, thank you!

What I do know is that I will definitely be rekindling my writing. I haven’t published a book since 2021, and that’s weird for me because I published a lot of books.

Last year was the last year, since I started writing, that I didn’t publish a single book. I don’t like that, it doesn’t feel good, but I felt that my creative well was just drained and done and gone and I did not have the time or energy to write anything last year and I have got a lot of ideas. So people have been asking me for a second, not a sequel, but something more about trees and people have been asking me for a book on how to talk to trees. And I have a blog post about that and I have an online course about that and I will link to those in the show notes but it is time for a book and I have been working on the book for at least a year, maybe more than that. I have been channeling messages from the trees but I haven’t done anything with them. I have a structure and I just need the time and energy to focus on that. So that’s what is next for me.

I also have a book that I wrote ages ago, called ‘Secrets of Plant Spirit Healing with Mugwort’, and I think I might be doing a ‘Secrets of Tree Spirits Healing’ book, but that requires research and that requires me to reconnect with a lot of tree spirits. So we shall see. I think that is something that might tie in really well with my tree work which seems to be what a lot of people want to hear about.

So if you have any other things you want me to write about, please feel free to get in touch. That’s the plan for now.

I might rekindle my YouTube channel. I’ve been really feeling called to create videos, outdoor videos, for some time but I am still feeling a bit burnt-out from everything that happened last year. The last few months have been really, really, stressful, so I am kind of recovering from burnout right now. Again, I am not sure where I am going from here, but it might be YouTube. I have got some videos up there, but like I said, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or ideas I would love to hear from you: what should I do next? What would you like to see from me? I would love to know, because like I said I am in the middle middle so all suggestions are welcome.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has ever helped me with this podcast. I would like to thank all of my fantastic guests over the last nine-and-a-half-years. It has been really, really, great, talking to people I know, getting to know new people, I love interviewing people, this was a skill that I didn’t have when I started doing the podcast but I am a certified coach and coaching is all about asking questions and getting to know people and helping people get clarity on the situation. So I think my coaching training really, really, helped me to become a better interviewer. I am not going to say it is a great interviewer, but I would really say that it is a skill that I have improved at over the last nine-and-a-half years. I am kind of curious to go back and listen to my very first episode but also probably would be horrified by it, so I am not sure.

Mostly I would like to thank Jester, my fantastic podcast editor who has been with me since the beginning, I found him online, agreed to work with him before I even recorded episode one, and I would never have made it this far without his help. If I had had to edit my own audio and set up the show notes pages and do the stuff and do all the stuff that has to be done on a podcast, I wouldn’t have made it this far. Like, literally all I do, I find my guests, I record the interviews, I record my solo episodes, I will write the show notes but I send it to him, but I send it to him and he does everything else, he is absolutely fantastic. So if you or anyone else you know ever needs a podcast editor please get in touch and I will send you his details, he has been absolutely fantastic. So thank you, thank you, thank you, it has been a pleasure working with you.

So, it’s goodbye for now but you can still find me online. I am on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, I have Facebook groups as well: I have a Facebook group on writing which is not super-active, but I have a Facebook Group on trees which is more active. I will include all of my links in the show notes so that you can check them out and see what you think. And thank you so much for listening. Happy trails to you.