Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing craft and creative business.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint, and lots more at thecreativepen.com. And that's Pen with a

double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode number

776 of the podcast. And it is Tuesday, the 15th of October 24, as I record this special in-between sewed.

Now, this is a surprise show as I checked my podcast stats this week and the Creative

Fem podcast just hit 10 million downloads as reported by my audio host, Blueberry.

The podcast is also the main content on my YouTube channel at The Creative Pen,

which has had over 3.9 million views, so the total could be closer to 14 million,

and I am pretty happy with that, so thank you for being a listener.

So in today's show, I'll share some with that. So thank you for being a listener. So in today's show,

I'll share some fun stats and then I'll share seven lessons learned that are also applicable for authors and other creatives on practicalities, learning as you go, building relationships,

serving an audience, showing more of yourself while still having

boundaries, how the business of the podcast works, and how you will only sustain what is worth

it to you over the long term, whether that's writing books or podcasting or anything else.

And of course, worth it is different for everyone.

If you want the backlist episodes of the show and you can't find them on the feed because

that only has a couple of hundred, you can always find them at the creativepen.com forward

slash podcast and there's also a search bar there as well. So today's show is sponsored by my patrons,

who enjoyed our live office hours last week,

and it was great fun.

And, of course, the replay is available in video and audio.

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