A Love Letter to My Podcast: Saying Goodbye with Gratitude

[00:00:00] Nikki La Croce: Hey gang, I'm Nikki La Croce, and this is Can I Just Say? I'm so happy that you're joining me for this episode, and I am excited to share with you, and also feeling a bit distraught about the fact that this will be the final episode of Can I Just Say? as I enter a new chapter. You know, I'd like to act as if this isn't super hard.

[00:00:29] Nikki La Croce: Like, I'm really put together, and It's such a natural next step to move forward that it's almost effortless to say farewell to this time in my life. But the truth is that this podcast has had such a profound impact on me as a person and I truly don't know where I would be without it. When I started this show five years ago, I was lost.

[00:01:01] Nikki La Croce: I was desperately craving purpose and I was beyond done with the soul sucking corporate grind. I stayed there for a bit and did this on the side and it challenged me a lot. I was often faced with this feeling of distraction from my day to day responsibilities at my corporate roles. Waiting for this show to become something of a greater magnitude.

[00:01:33] Nikki La Croce: So I could leave that all behind. I was measuring success based on listens and vanity metrics. And as I step away from this show over 120 conversations later, I can say with so much confidence that so much success has come from this show and the vanity metrics, good, bad, or indifferent. are really no indication of what value has come from the conversations with people sharing their stories of self discovery, opening up vulnerably about the things in their life that are really hard to talk about, giving me space to share my own story and to relate and connect and find common ground in places that We often don't explore publicly.

[00:02:33] Nikki La Croce: When I began this show, if you were here from the beginning or sometime before April, the show was called Who The Fuck?. And I was asking myself, who am I? At the time, I really didn't know. I was also really unaware at how much I was going to uncover that over the course. Of these five seasons. In the time since I started recording, I have left an abusive relationship, gone through a tumultuous divorce as a result of that, lost my mom suddenly and had to navigate the grief of that, which is ongoing in my experience.

[00:03:14] Nikki La Croce: I have been in therapy, which if you watch or listen, you know, because I talk about it a lot. And in its own way, this show has also been extremely therapeutic for me. The people that I've had the pleasure and privilege to speak with from all walks of life, with such transformative and varied stories, have guided me through so many of those challenging moments that I've faced.

[00:03:49] Nikki La Croce: They have inspired me to keep going. And they in many ways also showed me the way out of the bad situation that I was in. I learned firsthand through the conversations that I was having, how important it is to enter conversations without judgment, to listen with the intent to understand. And as somebody who loves to talk and will continue talking for as long as you'll let me, I learned how insanely important it is to be an active listener, and to respond rather than react.

[00:04:28] Nikki La Croce: The conversations that I've had with guests have been just profoundly insightful. The variety of topics discussed from spirituality to art to just mindset overall and Oh, gosh. It's like, it's so hard. I can't even summarize it. It's like, I'm trying to come up with this as if there's a way to define everything and sum it up and put it in a neat package for you and say, this is it.

[00:05:05] Nikki La Croce: This is what I got from it. It's impossible. It's impossible to quantify what has come from this experience. But what I can tell you is that it has changed me and it has helped me see the world In a different way. It has given me confidence and it has reassured me of what I'm capable of because my wonderful guests have reiterated to me time and time again how authentic I am and how much it means that they can feel safe sharing these really vulnerable parts of their stories.

[00:05:47] Nikki La Croce: I don't think I really understood how powerful that can be. I believe that I thought most people were capable of doing that. I didn't understand that it was a unique quality or a powerful quality to have. I often felt like I was too much for people, but it's not too much. It's not too much to be curious.

[00:06:14] Nikki La Croce: It's not too much to ask questions. And if somebody wants to share and you can hold space for them, that is the best thing that we can do for each other and for ourselves. As I had more and more of these conversations, I was actively healing. I was witnessing my own evolution unfold as other people shared my experience their stories.

[00:06:40] Nikki La Croce: And I can't emphasize enough how important it is for us to be able to talk about the things that don't normally get airtime. If there was one thing that I could have done differently though, I would have been more intentional about creating some short form clips. for people to be able to easily consume the nuggets of wisdom that were shared with me that you won't hear if you don't listen to these full episodes.

[00:07:14] Nikki La Croce: And so, As I'm moving into this next stage, I don't want to leave that on the table. I want you to have that. I want you to be able to receive the advice, the insight, the guidance, the revelations that I was so lucky to receive without having to comb through hours of content to find them. And while I won't be putting out new episodes, I want that to be available to you, and I invite you to listen or watch so you can bring forth in your own life the type of growth that I've been so lucky to experience as the host of this show.

[00:08:04] Nikki La Croce: And as I get ready to say goodbye, or perhaps farewell, the last thing that I want to say is thank you. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for showing up. and supporting the vulnerability for telling me what this show has meant to you, for exploring the depths of your soul with great intention, and for being such an instrumental part of me finding my purpose.

[00:08:42] Nikki La Croce: I couldn't have done it without you.

[00:08:47] Nikki La Croce: I really thought I was going to make it through without crying, guys. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. Hold on. It's not that crying is a bad thing, okay? It's just that I need to be able to speak. Although my therapist would probably just tell me to sit with this and feel my feelings. So maybe let's take a minute to do that together.

[00:09:06] Nikki La Croce: Shall we? I am grateful for all this show has offered and brought to me. I am grateful for conversations that I've had, the connections I've made, the way that my soul has been ignited, the way that my heart has healed. The way my perspective has expanded so greatly. I'm grateful for the time that anyone listening has spent engaging with this content, learning more about yourselves, learning more about each other, and I am so excited for what's coming next, and if you're worried that you're going to have to face an emptiness because my voice is no longer echoing through your headphones or your speakers, fear not, because the other incredible gift that this podcast has given me is an unparalleled partnership with my wife.

[00:10:22] Nikki La Croce: Nikki And partner in business, Nicole. When we first met, she got to know me much quicker than I got to know her because we met online and as an avid podcast listener, she dove into the first two seasons of this show and said to herself that she had to know me and wanted to be friends with me. And. If literally nothing else came from my decision to put my voice out there, I'm going to go ahead and call it a win.

[00:10:57] Nikki La Croce: And because that relationship has blossomed so beautifully, we are venturing into a new podcast and channel, Healthy Love with Nick and Nick. And I really invite you to follow along for that journey. We're going to explore and focus on topics surrounding self love and love within our relationships. It feels like such an obvious choice because when I began this show, I didn't really understand how important self love was.

[00:11:40] Nikki La Croce: And as I witnessed so many people share with me how much their lives changed when they prioritized their needs and their passions and their purposes, I was able to uncover my sense of self love, which then translated into healthier, happier relationships across the board in my life. And so with that, I'll say it one last time.

[00:12:07] Nikki La Croce: Thank you all for being here, for sharing this journey with me, to the guests who shared the mic with me, and for all that's to come. I hope to see you there. I'll catch you on the flip side.