42 On Change podcasts!
Bringing you a couple of the answers to life, the universe and everything. So, why did I make a podcast? (Spoiler alert: Not to become famous)
This is an slight update on an article I wrote on LinkedIn in October 2024. In SubStack I can add some links to people and podcasts that I mention in the article.
Why I made a podcast
There are many reasons to make a podcast. Probably the most popular reason is to build an audience and sell ads to them, like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferris. My reason(s) has been very different, and the topics of my podcasts have been aligned to a particular stage in my life where I wanted to achieve a specific goal or was curious about some topic.
Thought Leadership
When I first decided to make a podcast, I was thinking of pivoting in my career. I had recently attended a Change Management conference in New Orleans and was convinced that I had found my tribe. I thought that I wanted to incorporate change management in my career in some way, so I thought a podcast would be a good way to establish myself as a thought leader in the field. I found people who were already thought leaders in the field of change management and interviewed them. This was a way for me to learn more about the subject and to see whether this might be a direction I would want to go into. This is also why my podcast is called On Change, because I wanted to talk about change management as a subject and the way in which experts in this field effected lasting change. The name is also a bit of a homage to one of my favourite podcasts: On Being, with Krista Tippett (definitely one of my fantasy dinner guests).
Get Promoted
As the series of podcasts progressed, I spoke to more people in my field of work (Business Improvement) so that in case my boss’s boss checked out my LinkedIn profile they might think I had that extra little spark which would make me promotion-worthy. In essence I was trying to reach an audience-of-one, and if some recruiters noticed along the way…bonus! PS. I was promoted and I have no idea if my audience-of-one actually looked at my profile or listened to my podcast. (Update; I received a notification from LinkedIn that my audience-of-one looked at my profile - this happened after I left the company, and he hasn’t contacted me…yet)
Talk to Interesting People
In the thought-leadership phase I met some interesting people through work, exercise and my quest for self-development and I interviewed them because I wanted to delve deeper into what made them tick. There were a couple of episodes which were purely for the fun of it, like the two where me and my bestie spoke about books that changed our lives and where Jo spoke about motorcycling around Africa and Denis spoke about being an ordinary South African.
Learning Journey Conversations
When I started my EMBA through the UCT Graduate School of Business, I met many fascinating new people, and I decided to interview some of my profs as well as some of my classmates. We did most of our MBA in the Covid-years so we didn’t get a chance to connect as much as I would have liked and interviewing them for my podcast was a fun way for me to learn more about their research projects and to try and get some of the networking in that was supposed to be part of an MBA. I called this series of podcasts learning journey conversations. (Update: I particularly love the episode with Prof. Chris Breen, where we used his son’s music for the into and outro).
Sabbatical Series
Naturally when I decided to leave the corporate world and to use my sabbatical as a series of experiments to design my new life, I got so much benefit from the experience I decided to interview others who had done the same. These podcasts are also providing rich stories for a book I am writing on consciously taking breaks from work.
As the sabbatical series of podcasts progressed, I realised that one chapter in the book would need even more research, so my natural way of gathering opinions and learning more about something was to schedule three more podcasts on that particular topic.
In the infographic you can see how each series of podcasts reflects a particular phase of curiosity in my life.
These include:
Establishing myself as a thought leader
Trying to reach my audience of one
Having fun
Broadening my EMBA experience
Getting to know interesting people
Gathering stories for a book I’m writing
Learning more about a particular topic I am writing about
Not everyone makes podcasts to monetize an audience. Sometimes we are using conversations to broaden our understanding of the world, and we think others might also want to listen in to these conversations as well.
If I piqued your interest, you can listen to the On Change podcast here.
Have a great day!
On Change was nominated by the South African Podcasters Guild as one of the Top-5 Business podcasts in South Africa in 2024. We won bronze! (So, technically top-3 then)
On Change is recorded, edited and published by Solid Gold Podcasts & Audiobooks.
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