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EP 68: SOLO - We're Back! · Crafted Connections

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're back.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are back, back, back.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Crafted connections, let's go.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I took the summer off to get some clarity around the podcast.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this fall, I'm going to tell you the whole story of the hardest experience of my working life.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: But first, I have to tell you what changed while I was gone.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, I'm Caitlin and this is Crafted Connections.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been around for a while, it's still the show you know, still the show you love, just a little bit clearer about what we're doing each week.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Creativity, business, and the very human process of building a life around the work you love.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: This fall on the show, it won't be a random string of episodes.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing a series.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna walk you through the closing of my former business, the part where it fell apart, the part where I climbed back out and recovered and took care of myself, all that jazz, and everything the experience gave me.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a story I've been circling for three years and I'm finally ready to tell it.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely gonna be like an in-process telling, but it's we're to the point.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's go time.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And today is the on-ramp for this.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna catch you up on where Slow Girl Summer actually landed and why I'm coming back more confident.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why the break?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I take the summer off of the podcast?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So for those who've been following along for a while, I did Slow Girl Summer in 2025, where I was like, hey, we're gonna be chill.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves, we're gonna take care of ourselves.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I'm not still doing creative projects, it's not that I'm not still doing the work.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's I'm taking it slower and more gently and enjoying my freaking life.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I did a great job in 2025.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But approaching the summer, I was like, it's time to do it again.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to give myself that love.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And right when I was getting to July of this year, I was like, what if I give myself a breather on the podcast?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because honestly, I was chasing Thursdays, trying to get the podcast ready for every Thursday, but not giving myself any time to be like, what is this podcast even about?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because people would ask me, What is your podcast about?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I could not explain it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I knew there was creativity, right?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a creative entrepreneur, I do video work, I tell stories, I'm a filmmaker.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I also like love to geek out on business and with my business colleagues.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes down to it, the underlying piece is the humanness.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was really cool to like give myself time to figure that out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I honestly didn't even spend that much time brainstorming it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just needed to step away because I was literally in this like produce, produce, produce, produce, produce mindset.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it's super cool to be back, to feel very fresh, and it to click just like that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings me to Slow Girl Summer.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: This past summer, oh my gosh, I did such a good job.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I decided, right, early July, I'm not chasing this deadline.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: What if I take Q3 off of the podcast and like set the intention?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We will be back on October 1st, but as of July, I am no longer producing episodes.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And dang, it was good.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was so good.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's not even it's not even like I was like having hits on what to do with the podcast the whole time, but I was able to like focus on the thing that was actually in front of me.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to show up, be creative in ways that I haven't really let myself in the past few years.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that was such a treasured, treasured routine this summer was having coffee on the back deck with Gonzo.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The marina is not like the cutest scene in the world, but there is water and there is nature.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I I got kind of obsessed with this one bird, which I don't even know how to say its name, the Cormorac, that is like, it's kind of like a duck, but it like swims halfway through the w halfway in the water and halfway out of the water, and I'm like, is this my next documentary?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: But long story short, if I was trying to hit these podcast deadlines every week, I would not have given myself the time in the morning to do that.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that slowness matters because when you let yourself take the space, it's really fun to see what hits and and what's like able to fill the available gaps.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to do some more running and walking.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to be out in nature more.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely lived a schedule where I woke up around six or seven, sat on the back deck until like 10, did like a 10 to 3 kind of work day, and then went to the park and did like a two-hour one run walk and then relaxed with my fella in the evening.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a beautiful routine that I cherished.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think something to keep in mind with all this is I didn't do Slow Girl Summer to and I didn't get this out of Slow Girl Summer to have a result at the end necessarily.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I did it to fill my cup again.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're gonna see that in this series that I that I'm gonna present.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see how results-driven success stories or pursuits is not really it.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least I don't want it to be it for me.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll dig into that in a second and I'll give you a little bit of sneak peek on the series in a second.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, quick pause in today's episode because I want to tell you about something I've been building, I've been working on, that I've been curating for y'all.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Calhoun Edits.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing we all know we should be doing video.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Solopreneurs, marketers, business owners, you know the benefits, but the part that we all dread is the editing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: You film something, it's super fantastic, but getting over that hurdle past the edit halts the entire project.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've spent all this time creating something, you don't finish that last little bit, right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've been editing video for over 10 years, and I'm here to make it super, super, super dang simple.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to succeed.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to utilize the power of editing and the magic that can come from putting things together, having that rhythm.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And over on Instagram at Calhoun Edits, I break down short, practical tutorials, mostly in the edits app, because it's free as can be, on stuff that you probably don't know about.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Keyframes, captions, sound effects, all sorts of little things that make your videos feel polished without taking your whole afternoon, your whole day, your whole life, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd rather hand it off or want some one-on-one help, you can book a free 30-minute consultation right in my bio.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So go follow Calhoun Edits and let's get your videos out of your camera roll and into the world.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: We deserve it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, back to the episode.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, what what can we expect now from Crafted Connections?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have been interviewing lots of people from the sciences, from business, from the creative space.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think all of those things are very human.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And some people we identify with different like skill sets, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But what's under all of it is the human experience.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always been a big fan of capturing that.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it would only make sense that Crafted Connections is a part of that.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: The way that I've positioned it in in the past was, you know, storytelling creates connection, create connection creates community.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's still going to be in interwoven in these stories.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it's discussing creative topics, geeking out on business, and the real key piece is getting that like under the hood humanness of building something.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that includes failure, which I promise you, this series I'm about to do for y'all is going to provide a lot of examples of that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not just for me.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm also talking to some close, close connections that that have gone through hard things.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them have not fully come out of those hard things yet.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important to to talk about as well.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I needed that desperately in my own experiences.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really excited to build that out for everybody.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I hope that you're excited too, and I hope that you stay tuned with it all.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because this burnout series is not just a, oh, I was burnt out, I did too much, and how did I get burnt out?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think we all know how burnout actually happens, andor like we've done it, and or we know someone who's done who's done it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're living in very busy, challenging times.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's moving so quickly.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, burnout and how it happens is not the question.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: How do we recover from it has been a question of mine for flipping ever.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been moving through my own version of recovery in the last three years.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got some friends that I'm gonna share with you that that also have had that experience.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just so excited to see how this series all comes together.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, this whole series is gonna start next week, and I want to invite you to reflect before next week.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: How have you been in it too?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see yourself kind of feeling maybe a little burnt burnt out?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what would your own recap of this summer look like?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna dig in, we're gonna dig in together, we're gonna have this conversation together.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, please subscribe so you can enjoy the series.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you can follow us on Crafted Connections Pod at Instagram.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Come find me, you know, you know where I am.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's all in the show notes.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you being here.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this short cutie, and uh we're gonna dig in next week.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just happy to be here.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about this fall, and uh even more excited about 2027.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's finish strong.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Crafted Connections is lovingly produced by Calhoun Creative Consulting, a strategic storytelling firm dedicated to helping people and brands tell their stories in a way that resonates.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and connect with us on Instagram at Crafted Connections Pod.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Keep creating, keep connecting, until we meet again.