Working with friends is amazing. But it’s still work.
Friendship is what brought our podcast together. Now I’m learning to sustain that friendship, after the mics are off.
A couple weekends ago, I went out to dinner with Jenn Lukas and Katel LeDu, my friends and collaborators on No, You Go. It was glorious: hours of cheese boards and oysters and fancy cocktails and laughter. We even stopped for dessert…twice. The whole night was perfect — decadent, intimate, just plain fun.
Three days later, I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. And at first, I couldn’t figure out why. Sure, it was a lovely evening. But why had it seemed so particularly magical?
I mean, I love these women. But I also see them all the time. Since we started planning the show back in November, in fact, we’ve spent more time together than ever. We sit around my dining table eating Thai food and talking show ideas. We hole up in our makeshift “studio” (my office) recording episodes. We share ideas and feedback and selfies on Slack. We eat Doritos. We drink wine. We even got on a rooftop on an 18-degree day in December to hold a photoshoot, and we still laughed the whole time. Every minute I spend with them is excellent.
Then it finally hit me: creating a podcast with my friends, as wonderful as that is, isn’t the same as just hanging out with my friends. It’s fulfilling. It’s fun. But it’s still W O R K.
It takes focus, and brainpower, and thoughtfulness, and care. It takes planning, and project management, and a shit-ton of spreadsheets. I fucking love spreadsheets.
And we’re not making it easy on ourselves. No, You Go aims to balance a lot of things: we want to book diverse guests and tackle difficult topics. We try to be real, to shed some of those layers of self-protection and let ourselves be vulnerable (no easy task when you know anyone could be listening in). We try to be celebratory and joyful in a world that, right now, often doesn’t feel very easy to find joy in. We also want to produce a professional show — one where the audio doesn’t suck, and the inevitable missteps and dead weight of conversation are cut out and smoothed over. Where every single episode comes with a full transcript, so that as many people as possible can access the material.
But then, hiring production and transcription help takes money, so that’s a whole other workstream: finding, pitching, and signing sponsors. Tracking listenership. Promoting each episode. Trying to find and reach new audiences. It’s the kind of work that takes up whatever time you give it. You could always be doing more: spend more time researching guests or crafting show notes, more time following up with potential sponsors, more time generating marketing and promo ideas.
And we’re doing all that on top of lives that were, frankly, pretty full already: we have businesses and jobs and projects and families and speaking engagements. It’s just a lot.
I have no regrets about the time we’re putting in — in fact, I love it. I love that we’re working hard to get better at interviewing, better at storytelling, better at editing. I love that we’re being intentional about how we speak, and whose voices we amplify, and what we share. I love that I’m learning new skills. I love that we’re putting something meaningful out into the world.
But if I’ve learned anything in my professional life, it’s that all work requires breaks. Even work that, in the moment, doesn’t feel like work. Even work you’re doing with your best friends.
For us — the hosts of a show that was born from our friendship — that means making time to just be friends. No mics. No to-do lists. Just us: three friends sharing food and stories and laughter.
And at least two rounds of dessert.
If you like this, check out No, You Go, a weekly podcast about being ambitious, getting free of toxic BS, and living our best feminist lives at work. And don’t miss I Love That, our biweekly newsletter of all the things we’re feeling the ❤︎ for right now. Brought to you by Jenn Lukas, Katel LeDu, and Sara Wachter-Boettcher.
