Twelve

Another year has passed, and Relay is now 12 years old.

The versions of myself and Stephen who started this podcast network in 2014 feel incredibly different to me. We’ve learned a lot, changed a lot, adapted a lot, and sought new opportunities along the way.

I kind of feel like our personal journeys have mirrored Relay’s journey. There have been ebbs and flows in our business, as we have attempted to adapt and shift towards what we think the audience wants from us, what the business needs, and where we want to take things.

I would say the last few years have been intentionally peaceful. We have allowed the business to be in a place of stability. We have not sought out new shows in the numbers we had previously, and have instead been focused more on maintaining what we have.

But I feel like new opportunities are on the horizon, and I think that mirrors where I am in my life right now. I am looking for new things to do and new ways to do them. I am leaving some of my preconceptions at the door and trying different approaches, while maintaining the core of what I believe produces a good show for an engaged audience.

I am not attempting to be cagey here, so I’ll give a couple of examples of what I mean. With Designed in California, we chose Kickstarter to launch rather than the tried-and-true way we have done things in the past. For this show, we want to make a really great video edit, but we do not want to make it a video-first show. The show will always be audio-first, so Jason has been working on a tool that can take our meticulous audio edit and create a mirrored video edit. This is very different to how we’ve approached video before, where we have had a separate editing pipeline. But we think it will make the video much better content-wise.

With some of these decisions, we are purposefully trying to expand what we do and maybe reach some new people – but I am also excited by all of this, and that keeps me engaged and pushes me to do better. I love that feeling.

Relay has been the work of my lifetime. I am so grateful for everyone who has helped us along the way, and who continues to be there for us year after year.