Pilar talks about why she’s batch recording for this challenge, asking for things from the audience and what happened when she “put out there” that she wanted to podcast more – and the long-term result of that, which was the re-launch of Management Café.
Links:
This post has links to all the episodes (and its numbers for those of you listening in an app) for the series on Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams that was co-produced with Shield GEO: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/reflection-connection-disconnection
And talking of calls to action:
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, and Riverside FM for recording, which you can access through this other affiliate link.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, and welcome to adventures in podcasting. And this is episode 44 and it’s day six of the NaPodPoMo Challenge, where I’m podcasting every day. Well, I have a confession to make.
The first three episodes I batched recorded because I was not going to be well, I would have just come back from traveling and I didn’t want to have to record. You never want to have to do anything you enjoy. And so I did those three.
And now today I’m actually recording from the past of day six because I have decided to batch record three episodes at a time for this challenge. Part of this challenge, like my friend Steph says, is discovering what works for you and having to do this every day. I think I’m discovering a lot about my style of podcasting, how I like to podcast, and what I need to be able to podcast daily if I ever want to do this in another way for another reason.
So at the moment, I am batch recording and three is enough. Three means I’m still fresh with each episode. It means that invariably I have ideas for the next few episodes, which is great because you want to get ahead of yourself also with thinking about it.
And for example, I hope that tomorrow plans might change, that tomorrow the episode will be on AI and podcasting and I need to watch something before I come and tell you about it. So today we’re talking about calls to action and just saying stuff on the podcast and asking for things. I am really bad at asking for things from the audience.
So first of all, if you’re listening, please say hello. I must confess, I listen to so many shows and I rarely get in touch with the hosts.
So don’t worry, I understand. It’s great that you’re listening. That should be enough.
But there are some times when it’s worth putting out their stuff. So back in around episode 200 of 21st Century Work Life, I was enjoying it so much and I wanted to do more shows. But the audio for 21st Century Work Life was done and is still done by Ross Winter.
At the time, Maya, my co host for every other episode, was doing the show notes and more support around the podcast. And so in order to do more episodes, I needed more money. And also if I needed more time to put into the episodes myself, that meant I couldn’t do the work that paid.
So we needed more money. So just put it out there. I said, hey listeners, we would love to do more podcasting.
So if you want to sponsor a series, a season, an episode, let me know. And that’s how I left it. Luckily, one of my connections, and by connections, I mean someone with who might had quite a few conversations online in a community, who had recorded also with me on the podcast.
He sent me an email and said, hey, he listened to the show regularly on his Alexa. I hope I didn’t wake anyone up. And he said, well, Tim Burgess, he said, Pilar, he was running a company that was providing a service for remote workers, remote organizations.
And he said, look, we’d love to put something back into the community and shall we talk? So we talked and he said, I have someone in the team, well, in the company who would be great for this. She’s a journalist and it would be great if she could be part of this project that we’re going to do. So we talked and eventually we ended up doing a season on loneliness in remote teams.
We actually called it connection and disconnection in remote teams. And that was partly because I know, and I knew there was an issue with loneliness in remote teams. There’s always been an issue with loneliness at work.
And at the time there was also an issue with loneliness, period in the UK. But in particular, we knew that when you are working in a remote team, I’m not going to say it’s more likely, but the conditions are there. You’ve got to be a lot more deliberate.
Like with everything in remote, you’ve got to be more deliberate in addressing it and doing things so that it doesn’t happen. Because you can’t just get together with people. And sometimes people who work remotely either travel a lot or they’re in new cities or they’re in places that are actually remote physically.
So there’s all of that. And I knew there was an issue, but it’s not something that I had ever felt. And so I wasn’t sure.
And I thought that Connection and Disconnection were broader words because a lot of this loneliness comes from a sense of disconnection and there’s a nuance difference, but I’m not going to go into that now. So that was the name of the series, connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams. And it was great because Bree did something completely different to what I usually did.
She took the journalist approach and I mean, the amount of work she did, she interviewed loads of people, including myself. I was really chuffed to be on the show, I have to say. She then took these long interviews and then used pieces for different episodes.
Each episode focused on an aspect of Connection and Disconnection, starting with what is disconnection, what is loneliness, right? To how is it manifested, what we can do about it, what do we do as managers, what do we do as people? Blah, blah. So seven episodes in the end. And some of the episodes had seven voices in them, which is a lot and a lot of work.
But they sponsored it, so we were able to do it and do it well, which is something that I’m very grateful for, following that, because that led to a lot of contact with Tim. We became really good friends, Tim and I, as in, we always discuss only work, mainly because that’s what we like to discuss. And so at one point when I wanted to pick up Management Cafe, which, if you remember, yesterday’s show was all about shows disappearing, was a show I could not let go of.
I got to like episode, I don’t know, remember, 40 or something, or maybe 20 no, 20 something. And I didn’t have the time for it, for a solo show, Management Cafe, but at some point, the show would just not let me go. So I asked him if he would like to hop on a call, he wouldn’t have to do anything else.
Well, that’s not true. We needed to discuss how we would work together. Yeah.
So I asked him and he said yes. And we’re now co hosting Management Cafe. I do the editing for that.
I do all the sound stuff and then he does all the show notes. So actually, it’s not that he doesn’t have to do anything he does, but it’s worked out really, really well. We’ve really split the work in two, which is great.
That is the topic of today. And I think I’m going to start wrapping up, which is, if you don’t mention it, no one knows that you’re looking for it. And maybe I’m just talking to myself here.
And another thing, I have an affiliate code for Boss Sprout, which is a hosting company where this show is hosted. I really like them. I’ve been with others, but I recommend this one.
And if you use my affiliate code, I get some money. You get some money off. Also, I’m also an affiliate of Riverside FM.
So, again, if you’re looking for a platform to record and you haven’t signed up with anyone and you decide to sign up with Riverside, you might want to use my code. It’s just a way of supporting the show, if you want to support it. And it’s just a way for me to explore what is it like to make money as a podcaster, which maybe we’ll come to at some point.
I’ve tried it in different ways and actually, maybe I will write it down and maybe it can be day eight. All right, so if you want to get in touch, I would love to hear from you.
If you’re doing NaPodPoMo and you are listening to me on the feed, let me know. Let me know in the Facebook group. It would be great to say hello and I’ll give a shout out to your show as well.
All right, listeners, thank you for listening and I will speak you tomorrow.