18. Year-End Podcast Review and Planning the Year Ahead

In this year-end review, I'm sharing quick, low-pressure questions to reflect on your podcast year.

Let's review what worked, what didn't, what drained us, and what actually brought us joy- without judging downloads or comparing our journey to anyone else's. 

In this episode:

• Reviewing downloads without letting it mess with our mindset
• Asking ourselves if we enjoyed the process 
• Listing our wins (even the quiet ones)
• Highlighting what feels hard or heavy in our workflow
• Deciding what we want more of and less of going forward

Check out the related Substack posts: Celebrating wins in a year that felt like creative quicksand and A quick year-end podcast review. 

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music for episodes 12+: (1960's 2 house) by mobygratis

Transcript

Transcript via Descript. 

[00:00:00] Angela: Hey, podcast friends. We are now at the end of the year, and if you're like me, you'd like to do a quick little podcast audit just to reflect on how your year went and to kind of plan a few things for the year ahead. So in this episode, I wanna share with you some of the things that I'm reflecting on this year and some of the ways that I'm kind of planning for the year ahead. And hopefully, there will be some nuggets in here that you can incorporate into your end-of-year review, too. My name is Angela Briones, and I wanna welcome you to the space where we talk about podcasting, sharing our voice and life behind the mic.

All right, you guys, this is kind of one of my favorite times of the year, to be honest with you. I get really nerdy about planners. I get really nerdy about decluttering, and honestly, I need to do a lot of digital decluttering this year. I can honestly say that I was very scattered this year and not as organized as I meant to be, so that's something I'll talk about later because that's one of my goals for 2026, but this is a great time to just kind of look back, see how your year went, and do a little high-level planning for the next year. I like to call it high-level podcast planning because I like to keep a lot of the creativity in it. I don't like things to feel so rigid.

That being said, I wanna share with you three things that I reflect on for the year and three things that I wanna focus on in the coming year. And as I do that, as I share with you these three things, I kind of wanna share with you 

[00:01:34] my story - how that went. So hopefully that's helpful to you.

The first thing I do that I think we all do is look at the numbers. We look at the download numbers, right? And I'll be honest with you, I don't really pay attention to the download numbers a lot. The only time I pay attention to the download numbers is when my podcast host sends me a weekly email summary of how many downloads I got.

Otherwise, I never look at it purposely. I never log in to look at downloads. That's just not my goal at all. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's a bad thing, I don't know. But I just feel like it distracts me from what I'm trying to do, which is just share stories, show up - connect. However, we wanna know that somebody is listening, right?

We wanna know that we are connecting and that we are making an impact. That's the most important thing to me, and I'm sure to you too.

So the download numbers do matter to a degree. However, I never compare my download numbers to somebody else's, and I know we see different social media posts or reels or whatever of, you know, somebody saying, I got 5,000 downloads this year, or I got 10,000 downloads this year.

I got a thousand downloads this month. Whatever it is, right? And a lot of times those things can make you feel like you're not measuring up. Like, if that's where I'm supposed to be at, I'm not there. But you really can't compare your numbers to anyone else's, even if you're in the same category of podcasting because everyone's circumstances are different.

Some people have more time than others and can create more episodes or show up on social media more, or whatever it is. So when you're comparing your download numbers, just look at your numbers compared to the year before. 'cause those numbers will tell a story, and I'm just gonna focus on this podcast and not my other one when I'm talking about my podcast review, because then it's gonna get a little confusing. But for me, this gets tricky because this is my first year of this podcast. So clearly I didn't have any downloads the year before. I didn't have anything to compare it to, but I was also really happy with the download numbers, mainly because I didn't do a lot of social media for this.

I had started out with like this soft launch, and I meant to officially hard launch, but truthfully, I never did. So when I looked at my download numbers for this podcast. I was like, these are great numbers, and if I actually put in the work for some blogs or some social media posts or something, I think I can expect a good amount of growth for next year.

This is where you ask yourself, how did this year go? What do I need to change next year to see the growth that I wanna see? Am I happy with the growth? Do I wanna keep the consistency of things? You know, maybe everything is great and you don't wanna change anything, you don't wanna tweak anything. This is just a quick but meaningful way just to kind of take stock of your numbers and ask yourself what the numbers are telling you to do, or what the numbers are telling you to add into your process, or 

[00:04:25] just keep doing whatever you're doing.

The second thing I focus on is the experience. Did I enjoy the process of podcasting this year? Did it light me up or did it feel heavy? Because this is big. That's a big question, and it's such an important question to ask because if there's any part of this that is not bringing you joy and it's not motivating you, you're not gonna keep sitting behind the mic.

Period. You know I've talked about that so many times, right? What is it that's hard? What's not bringing joy? What is bringing joy? What needs to change? And for me, I know what needs to change as a part of my process. I really don't like, I really don't enjoy booking guests like the actual act of booking.

It just feels so formal a lot of times, and it kind of takes away the excitement to me. It just doesn't feel like, yeah, we're gonna sit down and I'm gonna talk to so and so, you know? So that's one of the things that just does not light me up. Also, social media. I love social media to scroll. You know, as far as Instagram, that's my preferred platform.

I love to scroll. I love stories. I'll post every now and again, but I really don't like podcast reels or podcast posts, and I'm not sure why, though. And honestly, I need to like put a little asterisk on there and revisit that with you another time, because I truly don't know why it feels like sandpaper. I don't know why it is so hard for me.

I'm very positive it's a mindset thing as opposed to anything else. But I also feel like it's time. Social media just takes time that I just don't wanna devote to it. You know what I mean? So, asking this question, did I enjoy the experience? What is it that I enjoy? What is it that lights me up? What is it that feels heavy?

Those questions help you tap into what you need to eliminate or where you need to pivot. So, as far as booking guests. I'm working on a new guest form that will hopefully take a little bit of the work out of things for me. And I'm also not planning to schedule episodes too far out. Like I feel like things just change too much from week to week and day to day.

So it actually feels very heavy for me to say, Hey, do you wanna do a podcast? In three weeks. I don't know what's gonna happen in three weeks. You know, I don't know where I'm gonna be in three weeks, what my mindset's gonna be, what my bandwidth is gonna be. And I certainly dunno yours. Right? And I thought it was crazy for this, to be honest.

I thought, no, Angela, you just gotta get, you know, more professional than this that just can't be. But I was listening to Buzzcast, the Buzzsprout podcast, and one of the hosts was saying that he feels the exact same way, and he's taken this whole new approach. He's just been like, Hey, let's just like do a quick, like little save the date.

I'll check in with you that week, see where we are, keep it high level and we'll go from there. And I was like, fantastic. I'm not the only one. You know. I'm also going to start using cal.com instead of Calendly because. Calendly in their free version only lets you do one event, but cal.com in their free version, lets you create multiple event calendars.

And I think that that's something that's really gonna help me out and kind of make things a little bit easier, because sometimes you just wanna schedule a connect call or sometimes you wanna schedule an actual podcast. And I couldn't do that in Calendly without reinventing the wheel for the event. But also I didn't like just having my calendar out there because like I said, things for me change so much, even from week to week that it's really hard for me to commit too far in advance.

So I'm hoping that taking a little more of a casual approach to that will help. I hope I don't end up shooting myself in the foot -to be continued on that. I'll check in - three month, check in here- and kind of share how this is going, by the way.

And as far as social media goes, you know, like I said, I don't like doing the Instagram posts. So much, but I do enjoy writing, so I'm gonna plan to have Substack be where I connect about my podcast and Threads be where I share new episodes. And I'm hoping that focusing on those two social media platforms will actually help me. With the traction and the return on time investment because I feel like people in Substack and Threads are really there to connect and to actually take action as opposed to Instagram where I feel like it's a little bit more of like a casual, laid back vibe.

So I'm hoping that doing those things is a way that I can pivot and make 

[00:09:09] the experience and the process of podcasting more enjoyable.

The third thing I'd like to focus on is the wins. What are your wins this year? Big or small? And you guys, I wrote a blog post recently for Substack, um, I'll link it in the show notes. It's called Celebrating wins in a year that felt like creative quicksand because that's how this year felt for me, and it probably felt the same for many of you as well. So whether your wins are big or small, a win is a win period, especially in this year. That felt. And I tell you that because I think it's so important to celebrate all of the things along the way.

Get off the hamster wheel of podcasting and enjoy it more. Like, if you started your podcast, stop for a minute and really celebrate that because that's huge. Did you hit a milestone? Did you hit 25 episodes, 50 episodes, or a hundred episodes? Celebrate that, and the question becomes how do you celebrate?

Well, I mean obviously that's personal to everyone, but. Some ideas can be like, maybe there's a microphone that you really wanted, you wanna level up to, maybe there's a piece of, you know, different piece of equipment. Maybe it's going to a nice restaurant that you've been wanting to go to for a while. You know, take somebody with you and say, Hey, I wanna go celebrate this achievement that I did.

Or maybe your win is a little bit different. Like, how did you stretch yourself this year? Maybe you guessed it on a new podcast, and that was a new space for you that was uncomfortable. I know when I guested on podcasts, it's very hard because I'm on the other side of the mic, right? It's different. So that's also a win.

Or maybe you did a podcast swap. I've honestly never done a podcast swap. That's actually something that I wanna incorporate into my podcast this year, and we'll talk about that later. But those are wins too. I tell you that because my other podcast won a podcast award back in June of this year, and I barely allowed myself to embrace that award.

I'm learning how to accept that. So that just goes to show you that sometimes celebrating is hard and it's not intuitive to us sometimes, you know? Another thing that I'm really proud of this year that I did, and I wanna share these things with you because if I can't share it with my podcast friends, who am I gonna share it with?

Right? This last year in 2025, I was asked to be on the board of advisors for Latinas and podcasting for their second annual summit, and that was so awesome to experience. Speaking of Latinas in podcasting, I also just wrapped a presentation that will be presented in February for the Latinas in Podcasting Mini Summit called Love Your Voice, and I'm so excited to be a part of that.

So that was also a really amazing win for me. Another thing I wanna celebrate is I have new cover art. I don't know if y'all saw that, but I leveled up that cover art. Now. That's a whole other story and that will be a totally different episode, but that was something I wasn't expecting in the year. It was kind of a surprise to me.

But I also feel like new cover art is kind of a different type of a win. So kind of go back and take stock and look at your year and celebrate those wins. Whether they're small, whether they're big, they are wins. Take some time to stop, get away from the microphone and go celebrate 

[00:12:26] what you're doing because those things are gonna keep us motivated.

Now, all of these questions lead me to how I wanna improve for the next year and kind of help me shape my goals.

So the first question I ask myself is, where do I need to improve to make the process more joyful? Most of all sustainable. So in that previous question earlier where I asked about the experience, how was the experience for you?

How was the process? That's where you identify the holes in your podcast process. And this is where you ask yourself, how am I gonna fill the hole in my process? What am I gonna do? So for me, I'm gonna work on my workflow, on my standard operating procedures, which includes cal.com, and kind of being a little more laid back on booking.. So where do you need to improve the process to make it more 

[00:13:13] joyful and easier for you?

The second thing I ask myself is, what do I wanna incorporate in my workflow or my podcast life? And I get really intentional about the gaps in that first part, in the one that I just said. So what do you wanna incorporate into your workflow or your podcast life?

Do you need some new gear this year? Do you need better habits? Do you need to take a break? I mentioned earlier how I needed to declutter my digital workspace. That's one thing that I need to incorporate into my podcast life. Not necessarily into my workflow, but into my podcast life. I need better habits.

I need to make sure that I streamline my personal process of how I take notes for the podcast and where I'm saving my files, et cetera. Things get very disorganized very quickly, as you know. So for me personally, that's how I can make my workflow better and subsequently my pod life better, to be honest with you.

Some other things I wanna incorporate into my podcast life is, I do wanna guest on more podcasts and continue that, and I wanna incorporate podcast swaps. I've never done that before. I mentioned it earlier. It's pretty easy thing to do, I think. Pretty straightforward, but it's something I've never done, and I think it would really have an impact on those download numbers that we were talking about in the very beginning. 

[00:14:29] And a pretty easy way you can kind of make a big impact.

And the third question I ask is basically a mindfulness check. What do I want more of in the new year? What do I want less of in the new year? Because a lot of times we forget, we're the creator, we're creating this thing, and it takes a lot of work to do that and to nourish that and to keep that motivation going.

So I think it's a really important question to ask. What do you want more of, and what do you want less of? For me personally, I need more things that are IRL, need to do things that are like in real life, I wanna record with people face-to-face. I wanna go to at least one podcast conference. I don't know if that's doable or not, but I'd love to do that.I want less virtual everything and more in real life stuff. Also, something that I wanna do more of, and 

[00:15:19] we talked about this earlier, is I wanna celebrate more.

So real quickly, I wanna recap the three questions that I ask when I review my year, and three questions that I look at when I talk about upcoming goals.

First thing is, how was your download growth? What did the numbers say or not say? Two, did you enjoy the process? What parts do you need to tweak so that it works for you and flows more and is more joyful? And number three, list your wins. Take stock. If you started a podcast this year, if you won an award, if you went to a podcast meetup, if you stretched yourself, that's a win.

When you look at your upcoming goals this year, when you start to think about how you wanna shape your podcast, year number one, do you need to make the process more joyful? What can you do to make this easier? What do you wanna change? Target where the holes are? Number two, once you have identified those, what do you need to incorporate into your workflow and into your podcast life? And number three. What do you want more of and what do you want less of? What's depleting your energy when you're podcasting?

I hope these things have helped a little and have sparked something for you. I mentioned my Substack blog, Celebrating wins in a year that felt like quicksand, so I wanna remind you that that is in the show notes, and also in the show notes is a link to another Substack post that relates to this episode, where you can kind of go back, read through, and journal along the way if you want to.

So I'll also have that in the show notes as well. I can't tell you the name of it because I am writing it pretty much as we speak. So once this episode publishes, that post should also be ready. It's just not ready yet, but I did wanna tell you about it 'cause I would love for you to check both of those out.

I wanna thank you for joining me for this end-of-year recap and for joining me on the podcast this year. This was the first year of this podcast and it's honestly been a really joyful space for me. This has allowed me to just create freely in a space that has felt very supportive, and it has allowed me to morph the podcast when I needed to.

I changed up the intro, I've changed up the music, I've changed up the format of the show. All in a year. So I wanna thank you for allowing me to feel comfortable enough to do that here with fellow podcasters, and I hope this has been as joyful of a space for you as it's been for me. I hope you have an amazing new year.

Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll chat with you in the new year. Take care y'all.