Signing Off: A Year in Review and What’s Next

Hello and welcome back to another brief episode to the FreeDive podcast uh we’re wrapping up for the year I don’t have a full episode for you today we’re taking another break in fact we are off for the rest of the year and um I’m just going to keep you for a couple minutes today I wanted to give you a brief um couple up updates some thank yous tell you what’s coming um and I figured I would just be as informal as possible about it um it’s been a wild year it’s been a wild year and things have not gone as anticipated

uh in the in the beginning of this we we did not know how it was going to go we really didn’t and I did as much research as I could and and um you know in the beginning I saw that unless you’re already a celebrity or an influencer you’re not going to kick off a podcast with millions of views and streams and likes and subscribers from the beginning and although I like to think of myself as a celebrity um I understand that that wasn’t what was going to happen um but I’m very grateful for um as much traction as we have gotten um in the six months six months that we’ve been doing this so I’m here to say thank you I want to say thank you to some specific people um for some specific things um

I wanted to start out by thanking my internal team for all of the support that we’ve had specifically I want to thank Anna Baglien, Dan Lal, Deb McGranaghan Kevin Burns and Mark Silverman all people who I know are faithful listeners but also people who have agreed to be on this podcast with me I know it is not easy to sit down in front of a camera uh and just be vulnerable to the world um so thank you very much for your creative support for your support on camera for listening faithful every week I get updates Tuesday Mornings from a lot of these people just about what they liked from the episodes and occasionally what they think that I can be doing better which is also very helpful so thank you all very much uh

Rachel Lynch has been transcribing these episodes all for me um just making them prettier making them website ready so thank you so much Rachel um

I want to thank my big brother Kevin Billingslea who was also a guest uh early in the beginning but uh as a professional audio engineer has been invaluable to me when I’ve been just constantly pestering him anytime my audio equipment just goes haywire or just asking him what kind of mic equipment I should get and mics whatever he’s just been there through all of it just answering my questions so thank you so much Kevin um

all of my um out out external guests that have been on the podcast this year Kerri Struble, Alisa Meredith, Kyle Figueroa, Tina Gammon, Christina Garnett, Nathan Nokes, Kayla Roberts you are all beautiful guests thank you so much for your free time and effort and giving us beautiful episodes for everyone to listen to um

and of course I want to thank uh Bill Cutrer of course for always just indulging me in these crazy ideas that I have to make our money our company money and uh make our company better and do the marketing for our company in new ways this has been a very fun um different and crazy uh new experience for us so thank you Bill for indulging this and putting trust in me

and then finally of course uh I want to thank Anna-Lynn Pelotte cuz she has been my partner in this um this year did not go how we thought um Anna-Lynn and I both have had uh just from the moment that we launched this podcast uh she immediately started having some health problems and um hasn’t been able to be involved as as much as she wanted um I’ve had a lot of personal family problems this year and it’s made this podcast a lot more challenging than we anticipated um but everyone has just stepped in and be been super helpful through all of it so um thank you all very much for such a a beautiful year and support through all of my frustration and complaining and creative brain mess um

where we’re going moving forward we have some big changes coming we have just creatively been spilling through new ideas on where we want to take the podcast next year um so be ready for for things to to switch up a little bit um I’m really excited for where it’s heading I think it’s going to continue to get keep getting better um I knew in the beginning that things were not going to be perfect in the beginning and I left a lot of space for that and prepared to be patient for that um so I continue to be excited for things to improve and you should too so next week you can get excited for our end of the year blooper reel um this is something that everyone always gets excited about when I make company blooper reels the podcast is going to have one I really hope you enjoy it um again if you are a person who has been here for one episode or for all 33 episodes thank you so much um please please reach out to me personally in our DM or leave comments so that I can thank you personally I would love to thank you personally um and please join us back in January for new things um to come then so um enjoy your time off and we’ll see you guys next year