After 8 Years of “Disrupt Yourself,” It’s Time To Turn The Mic Around And Disrupt Myself

You’ve persevered through the teething pains of the Launch Point, you’ve accelerated through the Sweet Spot, and now, after all that effort, you find yourself finally at the top of the S Curve. That dream of Mastery you had all those months or years ago is finally within your grasp.

So… now what? You’d think it would be easy to jump to a new curve. Veni, vidi, vici – you came, saw, you conquered. You took your time to celebrate your achievements. You did what you came to do, and now you’re at that plateau where growth levels out and, well, there’s just not much else to learn.

There needs to be a change because you can feel that this road is about to dead-end. Deciding on a new course, a new mountain to climb – it can be exhilarating, sure, the promise of new challenges, but it can also be terrifying, bittersweet in the same breath. You look back on that long and winding path you’ve surmounted, and you feel attached to the struggle, in love with what each step felt like.

But it’s time to move on. Life is change, a series of disruptions. And this moment I’ve just described is exactly where I am at with the Disrupt Yourself podcast. After eight years and around 400 interviews, I’ve decided to put the podcast on pause. Frankly, it’s time.

It’s also time to reflect. As we go on hiatus, I wanted to share with you some of what I’ve learned and observed about the podcast, about myself, and about what disruption—this concept my co-founder and I have built an entire company around—really means.

1. First and foremost, it’s been an absolute joy for me to have conversations with so many profoundly interesting people. Yes, I have almost always read their books and biographies beforehand, but nothing quite replaces the opportunity to have that moment in time, just 1-on-1, to hear their story. There is so much magic in a conversation. It’s been helpful to repeatedly confirm that this is one of my favorite things to do.
2. It’s been useful to do vocal coaching. A couple of years into doing the show, someone mentioned to me that I had room to improve my diction, pronunciation, breathing, etc. So I saw that as an S Curve all on its own, and I hired a coach. Before Disrupt Yourself, I would have never thought to do something like that, to build on the basics of how I speak and deliver my thoughts.
3. I found myself growing as an interviewer. When interviewing John Mackey, the co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods, I remember he was initially reluctant to come out and play in that conversation space, if you will. I think about it as if it were a tennis match. He started with what you really don’t want to hear from a guest – “this isn’t going to be that interesting.” So, I started hitting the ball back at him. You can let that ball whiz past you – or lob it back over the net. I ran into him at the airport a few years later. His comment was – hey, that was a good interview. I learned it was important to show up, not only as a guest but also as an interviewer.
4. And finally, it was useful to be reminded that even with something you absolutely love to do, something that grew into an eight-year project, the plateau comes for us all. So, we must define ourselves and how we disrupt by how we pause just as much as how we start. What I heard from listeners was that they tuned in for this journey of learning how to be agentic in their own lives. And now, it’s time to model that myself.

So with that, I want to end by saying – thank you to everyone who’s given us a listen, thank you to the talented team of writers and producers who made Disrupt Yourself happen every week, and thank you to the guests who shared their stories with such vulnerability and candor. There’s a new mountain I’ve already started climbing, working my way up the gradual foothills of the Launch Point, and I can’t wait to share it with you soon.

Until then, be well, and don’t forget to take a moment to breathe and appreciate just how far you’ve climbed already.

My best,

Whitney