The Rule I Made Before I Knew Better

This week is the one year anniversary of Coffey Talk!

When I started Coffey Talk, I gave myself a rule. Twenty minutes, that's it. I built the whole idea around how long it takes someone to drink a cup of coffee, and I thought that was smart. Tidy. A nice little box to build a show inside of.

It took about six months for that box to stop making sense.

Some stories need the first ten minutes just to get warmed up. Some people need to circle a hard thing three or four times before they can say it directly. I kept hitting the edge of my own rule and cutting people off right when they were getting somewhere real. And at some point I had to admit the rule wasn't protecting the show, it was protecting my own discomfort with letting things run long.

So I let it go.

Learning to Trust My Own Voice

Here's the part I didn't expect. The bigger shift this year wasn't in how I talk to guests, it was in how much of myself I was willing to bring into the room.

For the first several months, my job felt simple: sit, listen, don't get in the way. And that's true, a good chunk of hosting is knowing when to be quiet. But I had someone from the community tell me flat out, we want more of you. And that stopped me for a minute, because opening up isn't always my first instinct. I'm better at holding space for someone else's story than handing over my own.

But I ask people to be vulnerable with me every single week. I couldn't keep asking for that and refuse to do it myself.

So I started asking fewer scripted questions and trusting the conversation more. I started letting my own reactions show up on the mic instead of editing them out. It changed the show. It also changed how I show up in it.

What a Year of Stories Adds Up To

I didn't start Coffey Talk with a mission statement. I started it because I've spent my whole life being the person people tell things to, and I wanted to give that a home. A year in, I keep hearing the same thing back from listeners in different ways. Someone hears an episode about fostering and realizes they know exactly who to send it to. Someone hears a guest talk about a layoff and feels less alone in their own. We are not nearly as different from each other as we're told we are, and a year of these conversations keeps proving that to me on repeat.

I have no idea what year two looks like exactly. I know there's a book coming, built from a year of prompts I've already written. I know I'll keep breaking rules I set for myself once they stop serving the thing that actually matters. That feels like the whole point.

The one-year anniversary is a special one! My husband, Sterling Bacon, joined me to look back and chat about what’s next for Coffey Talk.

You can find links to the episode below, or tune in anywhere you access your podcasts.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3iMuX6U4N56rJTwXcm9LR1?si=cc21898313fd4863

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/one-year-of-coffey-talk-the-conversation/id1835167771?i=1000785540964

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/865o8ZUKIDA?si=i_Sh3JsHmv1zXFw4

Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/R_9O47vFGmw?si=OtCaCzSj1AcZ298v