Podcast Spotlights

Podcast Spotlight: Happily Never Equal

November 30, 2017 8:56 am

Last updated on September 4th, 2023

Being in a relationship takes constant work by both parties, it doesn’t just come easily — there will always be compromises, give and takes. There are always scenarios or things that will come that both sides might not agree on. That’s where Happily Never Equal comes in — a podcast from long-time married couple, Randolf and Cecilla.

Happily Never Equal gives marriage and family advice based on listener questions. Have a question about how to properly handle a situation with your kid, or how about what to do with your in-laws? Randolf and Cecilla will tackle that.

I got a chance to meet Randolf and talk about their podcast, the challenges they face as an indie podcast, and whether the podcast has brought him and Cecilla closer together. See below for our Q&A.

Discover Pods: What’s your podcast about?

Randolf: Randolf and Cecilla (husband/wife, married 13 years) advise on relationships, family and marriage.

DP: What’s unique about your podcast?

Randolf: Listeners get to hear their relationship/family/marriage questions openly discussed between an impartial man and woman. We both have our own approach to problems presented. My wife offers heartfelt, empathetic solutions. I offer hard truths and pragmatic advice.

DP: Why did you choose to podcast?

Randolf: This medium gives listeners the opportunity to witness the process which we go through to arrive at our solutions, which I believe gives people looking for advice a better understanding of the tools used. An understanding of a tool empowers a person to use that tool instead of blindly trusting or relying on someone else.

DP: Where can listeners find you?

Randolf:

DP: How did you and your wife decide to get into podcasting?

Randolf: My wife had been a stay-at-home mother for most of our marriage. Our 2 kids were getting older, more self-sufficient and needing less direct supervision. This freed up some of the time she had been allocating to taking care of children. I suggested that she pick up a new hobby to keep herself busy and after some back-and-forth the idea of a podcast came up. Originally she planned to have guests on each week to co-host with her (we had recorded a few scrapped practice episodes before publishing our first official episode) but these became tricky to consistently have on, so I agreed to co-host with her every other week. I had committed to just every other week as a way to encourage her to line up guests, since she disliked hosting alone so much, but eventually I saw that guests were just not happening with or without my encouragement and so about 6 months ago I fully committed to co-hosting every episode with her.

DP: Were you two looking to start a podcast and then landed on relationship advice, or did you have some sort of background in advice giving?

Randolf: Relationship advice was a natural direction for us. I have had previous experience doing “life coach” work with young men via the internet; assisting with dating, marriage and overall social improvement. Likewise, my wife has frequently been the woman in her social circles that is sought for her perspective and opinion on similar matters. After observing other people’s tendencies to gravitate towards our stability, we concluded this was a fitting topic for our podcast.

DP: Are there certain subjects or topics you and your wife will never see eye-to-eye on?

Randolf: Funny you should ask, in our most recent episode “Old Duck” my wife and I got in to a pretty heated argument about whether or not the parent we were advising was at fault for her child’s behavior. Most of our disagreements happen because of personal bias or past experience on our part, which informs us of a situation different than the other person. Typically we spend some time making sure the other person fully understands our perspective and that we understand the other person. If after this phase we still disagree on the matter, we determine if it is something we can just “agree to disagree” on or not. If not, our relationship dynamic dictates that my wife trust and defer to my judgement. To some people this arrangement can seem a bit one-sided in my favor, but as Uncle Ben says, “with great power comes great responsibility”. Deferring to my judgement means that I must also take responsibility for any negative outcomes that come from it. For us, this is an optimal configuration. (As a disclaimer, we acknowledge that this doesn’t work for everyone, and we only speak from our own experiences)

DP: What’s the biggest challenge you face as an indie podcaster?

Randolf: Finding the time each week to do everything we need to do so that we can keep a consistent publishing schedule. In addition to myself, recently my wife has begun working full time outside our house. Balancing our work schedules, family/friend commitments, and other various side projects has been a real challenge.

DP: What channels do you leverage to continue to grow your audience?

Randolf: Because so much of our content comes from Reddit, we focus primarily on audience engagement there. We are also active on Facebook, Twitter and most recently YouTube.

DP: What are you five favorite podcasts?

Randolf: My wife and I both really enjoy listening to Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast.
My wife’s top 2 are Totally Married and Manic Mommies.
My top 2 are Hardcore History and We Hate Movies.

DP: Anything else you’d like to add?

Randolf: I don’t get a lot of opportunity to talk about my own hobbies/interests on Happily Never Equal, so I joined up with another podcaster and now co-host with him twice a week on the Internet Citizen Podcast. Anyone who wants to hear me geek out about the internet and gaming should check that out at http://internetcitizenpodcast.com/.

Header Image Courtesy of: https://i.imgur.com/Q1Sgi40.jpg