In the third day of NaPodPoMo, I talk about why I started 21st Century Work Life and how it has evolved in format and content.
And if you’re thinking of starting your own podcasting adventure, I recommend Buzzsprout as host – click here for my affiliate link, which also gets you a little discount…
Here’s the transcript:
Hello and welcome to day three of the little experiment that is taking part in NaPodPoMo, National Podcast Post Month. My name is Pilar Orti and you’re actually listening to Adventures in Podcasting. No intro, no music, just getting straight on with it because this is me trying to publish an episode a day for the whole month of November, and I am talking about podcasting.
I thought today I would just talk about the 21st Century Work Life podcast, which is the show I’ve been doing now since 2015. And I hope it helps anyone who’s thinking of starting a show just see how things can evolve. And anyone who’s still doing a show and thinking, “not sure I want to continue doing this for a while”, I don’t know, maybe it gives you some ideas.
So this is a show that I started as part of getting myself out there as a management trainer, as a trainer of remote teams, as a podcaster. And to be honest, just as someone who has lots of opinions, especially about the world of work, I love talking about work. I love talking about the world of work.
I don’t know why it really fascinates me. And so I started this show called 21st Century Work Life because I thought, well, I was born in the 70s, so I started my work life in the 21st century. And it’s very different.
I mean, you could say this about almost any generation, but it really is. The mindset has changed, the way we use technology has changed, the range of how people can earn a living has changed. This is kind of my homage to recognising that and bringing that variety onto the show is my way of paying homage to that.
Now, as I said, I was starting to look at remote teams around then and I could see that this was going to be a big thing. That’s why I went into Virtual not Distant, that company I set up. But at the same time I was like, I don’t think I want to publish shows every week or every two weeks, only about remote teams.
I mean, how much is there to say about that? 300 episodes later? There is a lot to say about that. So I thought, okay, let me do this in two ways. One is I can have solo shows, I can have guests on, and I could have a co host, which I love.
I could write a whole book on co hosting. And I had met Lisette Sutherland around then. She’s the host of Collaboration Superpowers. And I said to her, would you like to be my co-host once a month and just talk about something to do with remote work or remote teams? She said, yes – she’s writing a book, so she’s also getting herself out there for her company. And I thought, okay, we can do once a month, talk about remote teams, and then the other once a month episode. So the other second episode a month can be with a guest about something that is not about remote teams or not necessarily. And that’s how it started and it was great for a while.
But what happened that because Lisette was really deeply embedded in the remote world work, virtual teams and Agile, as in Agile software developers who use Agile methodologies, a lot of that audience started to associate the show with remote, with Agile, and a lot of the feedback and interactions and comments that we got were about remote work. So I thought, okay, let’s go there, let’s go there.
There are not many other shows looking at this, so let’s go there. And I subtitled the show as leading remote leading remote teams. Was that it? 21st century work life leading and working in remote teams.
I can’t even remember that. Well, the reason I put that subtitle was to increase the SEO in the podcast apps. So if someone put “remote teams”, maybe 21st Century Work Life doesn’t come up, but leading remote teams will.
So I put it in for that. The other thing it’s done is it’s allowed me to see the people who write to me pitching guests or whatever. I can see who’s just automated it and basically who hasn’t had a person putting the emails together because if it says, I really enjoy your show, 21st Century Work Life, I know they listen to it, or they might have listened to the first 30 seconds of it.
If I get an email saying, I love your show, 21st Century Work Life and Leading Remote Teams, I go, okay, this is just from a database with podcast titles. So that’s interesting, thought I’d share that with you. But again, so I stuck that and then I started to focus on the virtual teams, remote work, leading remote teams thing.
At one point, I can’t remember if it was episode 100 something, lisette had to finish her book. And also she said, well, I can’t do the show with you anymore – off she went.
Caused me lots of heartache, but, you know, people move on and we’re still friends. And in fact, today I am about to go to the airport and I will see her in a couple of days in Holland. So she went off and I thought, I love the co-hosting aspect.
I don’t want this just to be me or me with guests. I like the dynamics of co hosting as a listener and as a co-host, and it gives them continuity with themes, voice, and a lot of audiences like it. And it’s unusual especially to have two women co hosts in a business podcast, which sometimes I pay attention to the gender thing, other times I don’t.
But I thought, that’s good. So there was a friend of mine who I met, in fact, in that group of people blogging about Spain that I talked about in the last episode, Maya, and she was doing some work for me, and I said, well, part of the work, do you want to come on the show and co host with me? And she said yes. Now she’s got her own show, Future is Freelance.
And, yeah, I really enjoyed and that co host episode went through lots of iterations. We went from, okay, let’s do a themed episode about remote teams. Then I was really bored of that and I wanted to do something magazine style.
So we had like a segment on Tools, a segment on well being, blah blah blah, I don’t know, really complicated stuff that took ages to put together. And even though I had the help of Ross Winter by then, who was polishing the shows and putting segments together, but still, it’s a lot of work. And eventually when remote work around 2018, I think it was, or maybe it was after the Corona, at one point, the world of remote work just exploded and there were a lot of conversations, a lot of articles, lots of stuff going on.
And we titled the episodes. What’s going on? And they used to be us picking five articles and then talking about them for like an hour. Honestly, we tried to keep it down to about half an hour, but we can talk.
And if I can talk on my own when I’m with someone else, we talk lots more. So that was a what’s going on? Episodes. So that’s the format that it’s on now.
In November 2023. We’ve changed the last three months. What’s going on? To instead of just take articles that we’ve seen, because we got a bit bored of doing that.
And to be honest, in 2023, the headlines about remote work are all the same. Oh, going back to the office. No, not going back to the office.
All this tech blah blah, blah, AI, blah blah. And we thought, this is getting a bit repetitive. So Maya suggested that we comment on or expand on the themes of the guest episode.
So that’s what we’re doing now. But as from January 2024, I’m going to go back to the original focus of 21st century work life. Remote teams is going to stay there.
I want to keep some episodes with Maya, of course, but I want to talk to people about more than remote teams, to be honest. There’s lots of friends I want to bring on the show. There’s lots of people I’ve met online or whose work I like that I want to bring on the show.
But that wouldn’t quite fit into that remote work virtual team space. But that space now is full. You’ve got now loads of podcasts about remote work.
When Lisette and I started, it was basically Lisette – Collaboration Superpowers -, myself and Yonder, the Yonder podcast. There might have been one other one, but that was it. And now we’ve got loads.
And with like, really high profile people in the remote space hosting, and sometimes you just get the same guest all the time, so there’s lots of other stuff there. So I think I can now start to go back to the original 21st century work life podcast theme. All right, I think going to try and keep this to under ten minutes, so adventuresinpodcasting.com for your messages! See you tomorrow!