The Journey and Fall of a Formula 1 Podcast
The Grid Gurus was ultimately a failure, but an instructive one. I came to understand that the market was already oversaturated with F1 content created by people whose entire job this was. They were quicker than us, operating at a bigger scale, and far more experienced. Additionally, the podcast became quite tight in my brand new college schedule as this was only my second semester, and balancing academic demands with consistent podcast production proved unsustainable.
I learned when to bow out. It wasn't working, and we weren't in a place to make it work. We lived 400 miles apart and didn't have the knowledge or the time to compete at the level required. I did not want to do something half-baked. After six episodes, we made the decision to end the podcast rather than continue producing subpar content.
I learned a lot from this experience. Beyond developing skills even more in podcast video and audio editing, this was the first time I did dedicated promotion on social media, and I saw thousands of views as a result. This was also early in the F1 boom, so I predict, had I done this today, I could have leveraged social media even more effectively, especially in the age of massive hate and anger among F1 fans. I could have capitalized on our much more relaxed atmosphere and measured takes.
However, these are all lessons learned, and they continue to help me today. The Grid Gurus taught me about understanding my audience, recognizing market saturation, and knowing when to exit a market that's already crowded. Sometimes the most valuable projects are the ones that teach you when not to proceed, and that's a lesson worth more than any successful podcast episode.