[00:00:00] Welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship. We are at a very special episode. It’s episode 156, but 156 is not what makes it special. What makes it special is it is the four year anniversary of this podcast. I have been writing about friendship for 11 years this fall, so we are talking about many years now, but I want to focus on the podcast, not the column. I have said it so many times the history of how I got there. And I’ll link a couple episodes in the show notes that tells that story as succinctly as possible. It really explains as a writer how I ended up in the friendship beat. That’s what I think of it as As a writer, when you’re doing freelance writing, you have a beat.

Nina: You write about parenting or politics or travel or whatever the vertical is that you are on. To celebrate four years of the podcast, I have to say thank you. Thank you for being here for any amount of time [00:01:00] that you have been here. Whether this is your first episode, whether this is your 156 episode, if that is you. You’re probably Bryan, my husband, who has listened to every single episode. So thank you, Bryan. But maybe there’s someone else.

I’m thrilled to have you here anytime you are here. For my four year anniversary, no matter how long you’ve been listening, what I would love to ask is if I have helped you in any way, if you would share an episode with a friend.

It is the most, helpful thing to help the show grow. The show has grown a ton since the beginning. It started in July of 2021. There was a trailer around this week, four years ago, and then I put up the first three episodes later in July. That’s my favor I’m asking. I just did an episode not that long ago about asking a friend for a favor. So I’m asking listeners for a favor, which is, if there’s an episode that has really stood out to you, if you would share it with a friend and just say, I think you would like this.

Or share it on social media with lots of friends and say, I think you would like this. That would help me continue [00:02:00] to grow in the way that I am trying to push forward.

Thank you for considering that. Moving on to what I wanted to focus on for today, which is four lessons I’ve learned about friendship after four years of podcasting on the topic. And four lessons I’ve learned about podcasting too. Why are we sticking to the number four? Because it’s been four years. that’s the theme today. I needed to have something to organize my thoughts around. In terms of the story of starting the podcast, I also have recorded an entire episode about that. I explained how my brother-in-law, Dave, helped me, all kinds of details on how I started the podcast, and advice on how you could start a podcast.

So again, we’re not gonna go over that here, you can find that in episode number 1 39. Like everything linked in the show notes. Moving on to those four lessons about friendship, and I could really do more than four, of course, but I have 155 other episodes if you want to find those.

I’m distilling it down to four in terms of what I have learned for my own friendships based on the interviews [00:03:00] I’ve done in the past four years, and the letters I’ve received in the past four years. And really, more like the past 11. I would say the number one lesson is that having humility is probably the solution to most friendship issues. Why do I say that? Having the privilege like I’ve had, of being the recipient of so many people’s friendship issues over these years, it has taught me that people make so many assumptions about what they think they know.

And I know I’ve done this too in my life. There’s no question. By the way, if anyone has benefited from this work about friendship I’ve done, it is mostly me. I do it to help other people. But since I’m the one mired in the information all the time Talking to so many people about their friendship issues. Of course it helps me. I learned so much from everything I read and research and really just talking things through with people in the Facebook group, answering people’s letters, interviewing so many guests for the show.

What I am seeing is if we could come to some of [00:04:00] these moments of issue we have with friends or doubts we have about ourselves. Whether it’s for the kids, for us, if we had some more humility to accept that we all have our own versions of a story, we all have our own interpretations and so do the other people.

So everything you assume, they’re making their own assumptions. coming at these with humility means accepting that you actually don’t know what the other person’s thinking. I guess the better way to say it is to not assume. Have the humility to not assume that you know what other people are thinking, and if you could come at any potential conflict with a friend with that belief, it will help you because that is probably the best way to work something out, is to accept that they have a version of their story that’s valid to them.

And even if it’s not valid to you, it kind of doesn’t matter because it’s valid to them and that’s what they’re coming at it with. backing up even more, if you could assume the best before you’re even upset, it’s having the humility at that point to say, well, maybe I [00:05:00] don’t really have the whole story.

The second lesson I have learned is that making friends the struggle of making friends what it takes to make friends is an ageless issue. It does not change with age. You will always have to do something a little uncomfortable. You will have to put yourself out there. You will have to show up at classes that you’re interested in because you are interested in the topic and you may or may not make friends from it, but you’re not gonna make friends sitting at home.

That is true at any age, you have to keep trying new things. You have to talk to people at those things that you go to. Even if it is online, let’s say it’s a Zoom class or you’re always in the same comments in a certain section of Instagram with somebody, you still have to do the awkward thing of reaching out to somebody and saying, Hey, we seem to be interested in the same things.

And don’t tell me that never happens. we talked about this last week in episode 155 with Lisa Giordano who had moved to Austin Single was working a remote job. Was tired of living in her town on the east coast and decided to pack up her [00:06:00] car, move up to Austin, all by herself.

I’m not gonna regurgitate everything we talked about in that episode, but the things Lisa had to do at age 32 are no different than what you’re going to have to do when you retire in your seventies or eighties and decide that you are ready for some new friends. because a lot of your friends have moved or maybe you moved.

And it’s no different than when you show up to summer camp for the first time at nine years old it’s no different than when you switch schools or you’re in the middle of high school and you realize that you don’t love the people you’re hanging out with. Or you’re in your twenties, your thirties, your forties, your fifties.

I could go on and on. It doesn’t matter what stage you’re at. It doesn’t matter if you’re single, married, have kids, don’t have kids. All the things that it takes to make new friends, to form connections that are new to you are going to be the same skills you need no matter your age. A lot of it comes down to being uncomfortable and then becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable, but you might never be comfortable doing it.

It is so awkward to ask someone for their number. Maybe some people have no problem with it, but for most of us, it’s never that comfortable [00:07:00] to put yourself out there in any way to make it clear that you have a need of some kind of desire, and you’re hoping that that person helps meet you in that need, you have to try and it doesn’t matter how old you are. You have to do the awkward thing of talking to people when you sometimes don’t feel like it being in a good mood visibly, even if you are feeling shy and uncomfortable, not looking at your phone when that’s the easier thing to do.

None of that changes with age. It just doesn’t, it’s hard to break into at any age, but it can be done. It just takes work. the third I have learned from podcasting about friendship for four years. I’ve probably said this in almost every single guest post that I have done on other podcasts. I’ve had a lot of them now, and by the way, I keep a list of those on my website and on Spotify. I keep a playlist of all the times I’ve been a guest on other people’s podcasts because that’s a different position for me to be in.

I enjoy that a lot. The issue that comes up, the third thing I have learned is that reciprocity is [00:08:00] a really big issue for people. And if doing this podcast all these years, 155 episodes later, this is number 1 56.

If I could leave the world with one idea, it is that redefining reciprocity would change your life. Redefining, reciprocity would change your life. If I ever write a book, maybe that should be the title, except that’s not a great title. It would change your life because so many of the letters I get other than the humility thing, which is no one uses that word.

The words people are using when they write to me usually are about reciprocity. They may even use that exact word, but they may not. They may write something like, I do this thing for my friend, and my friend does not do that thing back for me. I do this for my friend’s birthday. My friend does not do that same thing for my birthday.

I text this often and this quickly. My friend does not text this often, this quickly. I reach out for plans way more often than my friend does. If you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know my take on this. I’m just gonna say it For the four year anniversary, redefining reciprocity will change your [00:09:00] life.

What if we saw reciprocity as, I’m a really organized person and I’m an extrovert, not me by the way. I actually am an introvert, but let’s say I was an extrovert I really needed to be with people a lot. I’m gonna reach out more because that’s important to me.

I’d say one of the most eye-opening episodes I did on this topic was way back in episode three. I interviewed my friend, Pam Moore. We talked about a letter, one of many letters I got about reciprocity. The person who feels like they always text first, they always reach out first, and that if this letter writer were to stop reaching out to the friend, the friendship would dissolve.

I have seen so many versions of that letter. I had somebody else call in with her point of view of the letter. A friend of mine, Kristen, she’s wonderful, I asked her because I knew Kristen would have a really good way of answering this, and she did. Kristen said, she’s an introvert.

So if somebody in her life. Is really wanting to get together. She loves to get together. She’s happy to see her friends. being an introvert doesn’t mean you never want to be with people. She loves to be with her friends, but she doesn’t need the time together, and [00:10:00] so she’s usually not the first to reach out and she read the letter and said.

Wow. I hope my friends don’t feel that way. She worried her a little, that her friends might feel like if she doesn’t reach out as much, that she doesn’t adore them and want to be with them. It’s so not the case. It’s just that she likes to be home and so given the choice, she probably would be home. But if a friend reaches out, she’s like, sure, she’s out for it.

It was great to hear that point of view. That’s really not personal in this case . this just comes up so often I’m trying to push people to see reciprocity differently. What if the person who always reaches out to Kristen saw reciprocity as Kristen always says?

Yes. Why can’t that count? Why can’t, when Kristen gets together with that friend who always reaches out and Kristen’s really funny and a great listener and gives excellent advice, why can’t that count? How come that is not reciprocity? i’m using Kristen as an example here. I want to be clear that letter was not to Kristen. I just had Kristen help answer the letter along with Pam who was the guest. But anyway, stay with me here. If you are the kind of person who really needs to be with people a lot, and [00:11:00] you have a friend like Kristen who doesn’t, the answer is that you need a couple more friends who are as interested in going out as you are.

It doesn’t mean that Kristen needs to change who she is so that you feel good about the friendship. That is part of my mission in life to get you to see reciprocity as not, I do this thing, you do this exact thing the same way I do it. Reciprocity is I do this thing, and then you have your way of showing that you care about the friendship, and it might be different than the way I show that I care about the friendship.

I call that performing friendship differently. We all perform friendship differently, so I’ve talked about that in 8,000 different episodes. Okay, not 8,000. I’ve only done now 156. But certainly over the past 11 years and all the different guest episodes I’ve done, I have gone over this again and again.

So I had to do it for the four year because it’s such a big one. It really almost could have been number one, but these aren’t really in order. One was humility. Number two was that making friends is an awkward endeavor no matter your age. It is ageless.

And finally, [00:12:00] number four, which very much correlates to my event in Chicago coming up in a couple weeks, is about friend groups. What have I learned about friend groups over the past four years? Well, a lot of that will be discussed at my event, which it’s okay if you can’t be there. The episode will be recorded live and it will be on the podcast feed a few weeks later. So you will also hear that. So I’m not gonna go into this one too much because I don’t want to be too repetitive, but I will say what I have learned in the past four years, podcasting about friendship also in the past 11 years writing about it, is that people feel very unsettled about friend groups.

Either they want one because they don’t have one, or they want one for their kids because their kid doesn’t have one. not everyone wants one. Some people are in one and feel trapped in one and feel they can’t leave. Or they’re in one and they feel bad about it because they feel like it’s exclusive. They know it’s exclusive, and yet they don’t want to be hanging out with 20 people all the time.

And so what choice do they have to be kind of exclusive about it? What is my point? People have a lot [00:13:00] of unsettled feelings about friend groups we are gonna talk about that really at length coming up in a few weeks, both in person and on the podcast feed.

Now four lessons about podcasting. Number one thing I have learned by being someone who has access to my own statistics. You know, if you’re just a listener, you don’t know what’s going on in the data. I don’t know what’s going on in anyone else’s data, but I am privy to my own. People do not care that much who the guest is. You come for the topics, and I think that’s true about my behavior when I’m listening to other people’s podcasts.

I don’t really care who the guest is. It’s the topic I might come for the guest, but that’s usually because of the topic, the topic the guest is bringing to the show.

So that’s something I’ve learned about the listeners. Actually not as much about, hosting, although if you’re a host, it is something to think about. You do not need to turn yourself upside down and inside out to get a certain kind of guest. People come from the topics. What you should do is turn yourself upside down and inside out to figure out what your listeners are interested in and what [00:14:00] you love to talk about.

The second thing I’ve learned about podcasting in the past four years is that it is a really good idea to have social media to go along with your podcast. But if you’re not having fun with that, then don’t. You should just be doing that for fun because it’s another way to talk about the topics you care about.

It’s a way to possibly get attention on your show, but not necessarily. That is a whole other art that is completely different than podcasting, but it can be really fun if you let it be fun. The only way to let it be fun. Is to not worry about what your real life friends and family think. I would say I’m 90% sure that my real life friends and family are rolling their eyes when they see my stuff.

Not all of them. Some are like super supportive. I’m sure some are like, what is she doing? And that’s true about you too. If you are on social media, putting yourself out there, being a goof, people are rolling their eyes and what I am want to say to you is, who cares? who cares? It doesn’t matter what they think.

You’re doing it for fun, you’re doing it for you. And if it’s not fun, then don’t do it Why would you do something that just adds a [00:15:00] lot of time to your plate and probably pulls you away from other things and can be a little bit embarrassing? You should only do it for fun. That’s my advice on the social media piece of this.

Another lesson I learned about podcasting in the last four years is that I should have monetized earlier. I feel lucky now that I have sponsors that are interested in reaching my listeners, and I could have done that much, much earlier. That is a process that took me some time to figure out.

It just wasn’t something I wanted to dive into for a while, but now I regret not doing it sooner. if you are a podcaster and you think you might be able to monetize, my answer to that is it takes some work but not as much as you think, and it’s worth trying.

I think advertising on a podcast is a great way to reach listeners. You’re right in people’s ears and there are plenty of businesses that agree, and you don’t need big, giant businesses that you’re hearing on the bigger podcasts. Having an independent podcast like I have allows people who don’t have huge companies to reach customers, [00:16:00] and I’m glad to be able to provide that to people at a much more reasonable rate than they would get if they were trying to advertise on Dax Shepherd or something.

That’s not possible. You’re not gonna be able to do that. But if you’re an author or a coach or you have a smaller business, that’s something you can do on a smaller podcast like mine, if the podcaster has the system in place for it, and I do have the system now, and I wish I had done it earlier.

The fourth thing I’ve learned about podcasting in four years is something I suspected at the beginning, but it’s only proven true to me as time has gone on again and again is that you really need to know how to edit. I think that it makes a lot of sense to have other people edit your podcast when you are using your podcast to be a funnel to other businesses, but even so, if you’re editor quits or isn’t around. It’s a skill that is, I think, important to have when you have an audio show. Or a video. I have both, and I know how to edit both. It’s really important to have that skill, even if you decide not to use it, even if you decide it’s too time consuming, which it is. It’s quite [00:17:00] time consuming, I have sampled having other people do it for me.

I never really like how it turns out I end up doing it myself anyway, and so I save a lot of money doing it myself. But for me, the podcast is the main job, so it makes sense for me. That’s my content. That is the most important thing of what I’m doing. So. Of course, I want it to be just right. If your podcast is a pushing off point for something else, I understand having someone else edit it, but don’t not know how to do the skill of the thing you’re producing.

If you ever have anybody give you advice that a show does not need to be edited and just put it up and it should just be a natural conversation, I could not disagree with that more. I talk about that a lot in my how to podcast episode number 139. Because books aren’t that way, like Right, we don’t, we read a book and and want every single thing somebody said in there.

No, we want it edited. A conversation in a novel. The dialogue also in a memoir, also in nonfiction, is always edited. We don’t get every single thing that the person said because what we’re reading is an artful version of the conversation.

It is no [00:18:00] different in a podcast. A podcast is the artful version of the information. Nobody needs to hear every single, um, and every single restart. And every time there’s a long pause . That should be edited out. When you edit that stuff out, you are showing respect for the listeners time and the listeners interest level and attention. With that said, I have certainly gone on long enough here today.

Thank you for being here. If you’ve made it to this part of the episode, thank you for being here for any amount of time you’ve been listening to this podcast, as I say, every week. Come back next week when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around.