300 Episodes and Counting: Lessons Learned from the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions Podcast

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  00:00

If you could go back and change one thing about your podcast journey, what would it be?

Maya Acosta  00:04

I would hire a team. Well, yeah, I would actually, if I could go back and start all over again, I would hire a producer. And I would hire a team to do all the work for me. So that all I had to do is just do the interviews. This is the healthy lifestyle solutions podcast, and I'm your host, Maya Acosta. If you're willing to go with me, together, we can discover how simple lifestyle choices can help improve our quality of life. Let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of the healthy lifestyle solutions podcast. This is Maya Acosta and Dr. Is today we hit 300 episodes. That's,

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  00:41

that's a lot episodes, it's hard to imagine.

Maya Acosta  00:44

All right, so we're gonna start with rapid fire questions that we're going to ask each other. And this is just to break the ice and to see what the other thing?

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  00:53

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting a podcast today?

Maya Acosta  00:58

Oh, my God, there is so much work. I'm gonna say, know that you're getting into a lot of work. And if you can afford it, hire a team from the get go. Because you will get burned out real quick.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  01:13

Okay, if you could go back and change one thing about your podcast journey? What would it be?

Maya Acosta  01:19

I would hire a team? Well, yeah, I would actually, if I could go back and start all over again, I would hire a producer. And I would hire a team to do all the work for me. So that all I had to do is just do the interviews.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  01:32

Well, those two kind of went together. So okay, I get to ask another question. What's one topic that you haven't covered on the show yet, but we'd love to explore in the future.

Maya Acosta  01:42

I think I'm covering most of the topics, and we'll talk about how the podcast has changed. But I really liked the topic of women's health, and most recently had a topic that can be considered taboo with an expert who talked about the use of vibrators as medical devices. And that was a topic that I was hesitant about you, you know, bringing up on the show. And then I decided to go for it. And because I think that there are many things that women suffer with that, especially women don't talk about. And if women don't talk about it, no one else is working on solving the solution. I touch on mental health. I talk about stress, because that's a big one that we face. And there is the other one that there is one that I actually had thought about bringing on the show, which is work equity in the home shared responsibilities in the home. And that's because I heard that episode somewhere else. And I thought, Oh, I'd like to bring that guest on and talk about that.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  02:40

What was the most surprising thing you learned while recording 300 episodes of the healthy lifestyle solutions podcast.

Maya Acosta  02:47

The one thing that surprised me the most is that I really liked doing this work that I really like running a podcast. I remember when I was younger, I would listen to talk radio. And I always liked DJs. Because back in the days, the DJs would talk on the radio, now just play the music. And I remember being interested in journalism, and things like that, like in college. But what surprised me the most is that had I known I love this field, I probably would have studied it.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  03:17

Okay. All right. And here's your last one. Apart from me, what was your favorite guest or episode and why?

Maya Acosta  03:28

I think you'll know this one. My favorite guests was Dr. McDougall, Dr. John McDougall, who came on the show, I don't know two or three years ago, and very early on, he might have been like Episode 12, or something I don't remember. I think what surprised me was that he said, Yes, I really hadn't had like big names, like well known people. But how real He was, how passionate he is how he said yes to the podcasts, and how I just really liked him. He's the person that turned me on to this whole lifestyle. So that's still my favorite episode.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  04:04

You know, what I liked about that episode, too, is that, you know, he started started to really focus too on the concept of environmentalism, which I think goes hand in hand with a lot of what we talk about anyways,

Maya Acosta  04:19

I don't talk so much about the environment on the podcast, but the environment is very important to me. All right. Tell me about your experience coming back on this show, and now doing Monday segments that our titled doctor in the house,

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  04:33

so I really like it. I like the idea that we're picking one topic, and we're doing multiple episodes on that topic. So it really allows us to delve into it more deeply. And we can kind of divide it up into segments, so that we can present that information to people in an organized manner. Right. And so it's just not all over the place. And, and so it's a it gives us an opportunity to do little more in depth over a period of time. So I've really been enjoying it. Yep,

Maya Acosta  05:03

that's true. What would you say if you had someone that came up and say, hey, I want to start a podcast?

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  05:08

You know, I think I think you got to just take it seriously. This isn't this isn't something that's done lightly. And you don't think you're just gonna, hey, tape recorded something and put it out there. And it's, it's just going to happen series, podcasting is a lot of work. I see you put in dozens of hours a week, probably 4050 hours a week, just on your podcast work. And, and that can be anything from preparing for interviews, reading from about interviews, reading books, learning about who you're going to interview, doing the interviews, editing the interviews. And so there's a lot of work that goes into it. And I think if you want to be a serious podcaster, you got to realize how much time it's going to get a take. And then, you know, one thing that I've noticed is that a lot of people they start, they do one or two episodes and then they stop and it's probably because they don't realize how much work is gonna be so, so serious, serious. Podcasting is a lot of work. Yeah.

Maya Acosta  06:10

Okay, we're gonna do a quick I'm taking you back to the beginning. So you guys are gonna watch if you're watching the video, or listen along with us as we play this one recording for you.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  06:24

Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Riz, and this is Maya. We are Plant Based DFW Podcast, we are starting a podcast to share our experiences with you. We are from the Dallas Fort Worth area hence the DFW in Plant Based DFW Podcast. We also like to travel and we also spend a lot of time on our sailboat.

Maya Acosta  06:42

And so therefore, this is why we're doing a podcast because we tend to travel more and have more access to other people that are plant based.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  06:51

So whether it be from Dallas, or in our travels, or during our sailing, whenever we encounter some people with plant based lifestyle, we enjoy meeting them and oftentimes we can get them to share their experiences with us.

Maya Acosta  07:05

So that's the Plant Based DFW Podcast. All right, with Dr. risk in Maya,

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  07:11

we're excited to get started and have you join us in this endeavor.

Maya Acosta  07:15

Right now we are actually in Annapolis, Maryland. And we are here because

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  07:21

so we came to the boat show, which is one of my passions. It's the 2018 US sailboat show, which is the largest Boat Show in the United States. And so I'd been like a kid in the candy store. And I had a really good time checking out the boats and all the all the ideas for boats. And yeah, and I even spent a little bit of money bringing some stuff back. And then also while we were here, we got to meet up with someone and and do an interview.

Maya Acosta  07:48

That's right. For the podcast, of course, again, tying in both of our passions, in a sense, sailing are all things sailing with all things plant based. And we also were able to meet some of the popular YouTube channels that we watch. Yeah, that was exciting. And so we're wrapping it up. Today's the last day we're flying back to Dallas. Last month, we were in San Diego as well, right on another trip where we also incorporated another interview with a plant based physician. And you want to talk about San Diego.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  08:21

So that trip wasn't a sailing trip that was actually for the plant based nutrition health care conference, or one of our other passions. And so we had a good time in San Diego and got to meet a lot of the pioneers and our heroes in the field of plant based nutrition.

Maya Acosta  08:38

Okay, so there you have it, our very first episode, what do you think Dr. Oz

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  08:42

brings back on memories that it's amazing that we did our first episode in another city, the podcast is something that's in evolution, you know, we started off, you know, we're talking about sailing, we're talking about plant based nutrition. We're doing some stuff when we're traveling all the way to where you are today, and you've gone through some various iterations. And so there's been some, you know, and I think that's probably natural.

Maya Acosta  09:09

So I recently was talking with my life coach, Michelle, and some stuff have come up. And I was telling her about how some of those earlier episodes like I didn't really like and but I didn't delete them. Because I wanted to honor my guest. You know what I mean? Like, it's almost like if somebody scraps your episode, because you were one of the earlier ones like that would suck. So I kept the stuff. And you can tell that there was some technical issues in that first episode, the editing was a little bit bad. But the interesting thing is those two interviews that we talked about the juice lady, and the interviewer in San Diego. We had a lot of technical problems with those and I thought it'd be fun to talk about it because these things happen. Which one do you remember?

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  09:56

Well, I mean, even even our first episode I remember that we were only hearing each other out of one ear. Yeah. Because of the way we had it hooked. Yeah,

Maya Acosta  10:06

that's the one we just watched. That's the one I was talking about. Yeah, I was using a different recording device. And I didn't know how to adjust it so that the sound is often there. And we interviewed a girl a someone who I looked up before we got to Annapolis. She has a juice shop right there in that cute little area of Annapolis. And I scheduled an interview ahead of time. And I took my equipment after one of the days at the boat show. And I specifically said, Do you think that we can record in a quiet place at your store? And this and that? And she said, Yes. Well, she didn't close the store. We sat next to a refrigerator, we kept being interrupted by customers that were coming in and out. The lighting was really bad. And it was so bad. I scrapped it. I never released that episode.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  10:58

That's right. It was it was just kind of frustrating. Because there was no continuity, you really couldn't just get a rhythm or a flow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, she wasn't she didn't really sit down and devote some time to you to give you time for a podcast, right.

Maya Acosta  11:15

And I, you know, back then I don't even know if she knew what a podcast was. But I mean, it's like, I used to record more on location. I don't do that anymore. Because there are so many interruptions in the immediate surroundings. So the other one was in San Diego with a chiropractor that we met. And he reached out and said he wanted to come on the podcast. So we went over there after Plantrician and 2018, our very last day. And he didn't tell us that he was in the path of the airport planes like he didn't the path. So every five minutes, we could hear an airplane going above us.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  11:50

Yeah, not only that he his office was right next door to a gym where people were playing basketball. And you can hear the balls bouncing off the wall. Yeah.

Maya Acosta  11:59

Yeah, it was so frustrating, because those are distractions. And so that's what happened early on. I was also recording local people a lot more, which so I would take my gear, and I would interview at their locations. And that became a lot of work for me. And then over time, I started interviewing people outside of our city. And so yeah, the podcast evolved. So we did. We started in late 2018, did a lot of interviews in 2019. And then when things started to change was during the pandemic 2020. I started just I didn't really have a structure. But I started interviewing a lot of people that were not in the immediate area, because we were not gathering and that's how my outreach began to spread outside of our city. And then in 2021, I actually felt like giving up, we got Papi, our mini miniature pincher, and he was five months old when we got him. And I remember, there was so much we had to potty train him. He also, he also used to cry whenever you'd go to work. So I was like having a newborn in the house. It was so stressful that when I was interviewing a potential team, I actually told him that I didn't want to actually have the podcast anymore. Like I couldn't manage both things.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  13:19

He doesn't bother us as much. He's older.

Maya Acosta  13:21

He's only two years old. But now he because he sees me recording a lot. He just sleeps on this couch, this couch. I kind of got for him. So it turns into a bad.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  13:32

I think he's just chilling out he hate. I think he probably sees when you get this all set up. He knows it's time to just chill out while you do your work.

Maya Acosta  13:41

Yeah, he knows. Anyway, that's some of the stuff that happened in 2021. I hired a team in 2022. And then they took me all the way through this year in February, and then I switched teams, but that team rebranded me, we decided to come up with a new name. And it was you guys, the listeners that helped me pick the name that designed the logo, the cover, like based on my photographs. And I liked that so much that when I decided to add a segment inviting Riz back as a guest expert, you guys helped me pick the title of the segment. And then the photo that I should use doctor with this photo, and then that's kind of like how it's evolved. I've had listeners helping out.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  14:24

Yeah, I kind of like I really liked the format now.

Maya Acosta  14:27

Yeah. So now I'm releasing three episodes a week. So we're celebrating 300 episodes. This the day that this airs, I really wanted to do a live recording. I wanted to go on YouTube live and interact. But I have so much work I didn't have time to plan it or promote it or any anything like that.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  14:45

I really look forward to continuing to do doctor in the house. Right? Because I think that there's just a lot of topics that we can cover. I enjoy breaking them down and what I really would like you Is that give us your questions and and then we can directly address them. It brings up interesting topics for discourse. Yeah. And so we would love to hear from you on that stuff.

Maya Acosta  15:09

Before I forget, we are going to the National Health Association's conference in June, I want to say that it's June 23, to the 25th. In Cleveland, Ohio, we are going to have a meet up there, we're also going to have a booth as pod leaders, we're gonna have a gathering with other pod leaders, their plan pure pod leaders. And on top of that, the tickets for the virtual conference just came out. And I would love it if you guys are interested in, I'm going to put a link in the show notes. But if you're interested in attending the virtual, I want to say it's going to run from my June 23, through our 22nd through the 25th. And you can register for the conference, if you're not available to attend that moment, like on that particular time. And on Friday, for example, because you're at work, you actually will have access to the recordings. And we have a link it is an affiliate link, but it's a link that you can use if you want to sign up under us. And it's bit b i t dot L y forward slash and then the rest are going to be capital. NHADRRIZ. So NHADRRIZ all capital. NHADRRIZ. And that's the link that takes you to our affiliate link. And then right now the tickets for the virtual are only $97.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  16:31

Yeah, that's quite a deal. If you don't get to attend this in person, which I think it's pretty much already sold out anyways. For a great fee, a great deal here. You can either listen to it live or come back and listen to it at your leisure. And I just, you know, I think it's a it's a it's a very affordable, yeah, opportunity.

Maya Acosta  16:53

The Virtual Conference is $97. The prices go up June 1 to about $127. So you might as well get the ticket now. Also, I believe we're going to have a virtual space you and I Dr. Risk so that we can have a gathering virtually with some of the attendees. And also just as a teaser, who are some of the speakers that are going to speak for NHK, which is exciting. So you might might have heard of Dr. Kim Williams, who is a cardiologist, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Dr. Esser. And then of course, we have Wanda mark, and Wanda Huberman, who will be there as well. And then Brittany, Gertie, who is more of an influencer. She has a YouTube channel, she teaches people how to make delicious meals. Anything else that you're looking forward to?

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  17:46

I'm just really looking forward to the conference in general, we this will be our first NHI conference. We've been talking about it for years. And it's a great organization. And we've always wanted to go to the meetings and participate and be a part of it. Yeah, I'll even I'll even throw in a plug for their cruises. They have plant based cruises where you can go and enjoy yourself. And I know that I'll be hopping on one of those boats in the next couple of years myself.

Maya Acosta  18:15

Yep. Yeah, they also have like this beautiful newsletter that they release four times a year. I just kind of want to mention that this past weekend, I, we had Earth x 2023, here in Dallas at the Fair Park. And that's one of the largest environmental expos in the country. And I got invited to do a certain segment of interviews, as some of the speakers were coming off stage. And that was a lot of fun. It was back to back interviews. I've never done anything like that. It was on behalf of a recording studio, not mine. But it was a great experience to do that. And then the next time we returned, and you and I went,

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  18:56

Yeah, I had a great time there. In fact, I didn't get to spend enough time looking around. There's just so many different interesting booths and topics and things to learn about. And, you know, I, you start talking with people and suddenly 1520 30 minutes have gone binary, and I go, Oh, my goodness, I got 50 More booths. I want to hit up and learn but, but it was it was great. And I really liked the expo.

Maya Acosta  19:22

Yeah, it was great. And that was also our first time attending. Anyway, I'm sure that there's so much more that we can share. If you're interested in joining our newsletter visit this link bit v i t dot L y forward slash join Dr. Riz and that's Dr. R i z. And then follow us on social media. I am at healthy lifestyle solutions. And you are at

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  19:50

Dr. Riz Bukhari but it's Dr. Dr. Underscore Riz Riz underscore Bukhari, bu k h a r I

Maya Acosta  20:00

Ah, so it'll be fun if we keep doing this podcast to go back and then look at episode 300 and see how we did this recording, compared to the first one.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  20:09

Stick around for episode 600.

Maya Acosta  20:11

All right, everyone, I hope that you celebrate with us. Leave a comment in our social media, because I'm going to do a post about episode 300. We are redesigning our website. We're moving away from the name Plant Based DFW Podcast. And we'll let you know what the new name is. But we are redesigning the website and I am looking for testimonies to put on the website. If you feel like you have benefited from adopting a plant based lifestyle, or incorporating pillars of lifestyle medicine and you want to be featured on our website, please send me a message let me know that you want to be considered and I can record you like this like almost like a guest for the website. So hit me up with that as well. All right, thank you Dr. Riz, for joining me today.

Dr. Rizwan Bukhari  20:56

Thank you, Maya. I've enjoyed it.

Maya Acosta  20:58

All right. You've been listening to the healthy lifestyle solutions podcast with your host Maya Acosta. If you've enjoyed this podcast, do us a favor and share with one friend who can benefit from this episode. Feel free to leave an honest review as well at rate this podcast.com forward slash H L S. This helps us to spread our message. And as always, thank you for being a listener.