The Real Story - Behind The Podcast

My story with Humans at Work started on a beach, with an idea about finding my voice again as part of my recovery from burn out. 

You can catch-up a bit more about that in earlier blog posts and podcast recordings. 

The basic idea

Humans are diverse, there is tremendous value in our uniqueness, yet we spend so much time trying to conform or being told to fit into a mould. 

So, by interviewing people around the world who have embraced their unique traits positively, other people may feel the courage to do so for themselves. 

Executing that idea was a little more difficult!

Choosing guests, working out how to record interviews with sufficient sound quality, choosing the intro music for the podcast, working out my questioning style – fun and serious, without too much structure but with focused intent.

The first podcast I recorded sitting in an understairs cupboard at 6am, with blankets tacked up to the walls, using just my laptop mic!

Finding guests who would be willing to appear on the podcast has always been a bit of a courage exercise – the act of asking people – yet amazingly, almost everyone I’ve reached out to has said yes!  And previous guests often nominate future guests – giving me an incredible network to call on.

I wanted to make sure the podcast conversations were as universally accessible as I could – so from the beginning I wanted to have a full transcript and a graphical journey for each episode. 

That meant I also needed a good website that could house the graphical journey, the transcript, the show notes, as well as the recording and intro videos. 

After a few weeks of waking up at 4am to teach myself digital skills before doing a full days work in my ‘other job’ I decided enough was enough!

While I could have tried to do all those things myself, sometimes you know that you’re just not the best person to do something – for example, my drawings would have been rubbish compared to what Larissa @Creative Visions can do!  And when my IT company heard how I’d set up some of the back-end links they laughed!

So, all that meant working with a transcriber, a graphical artist, a production team and a digital web designer. 

And of course, that all costs money. 

Funding passion projects

Now that I have processes and partners sorted in a humming ecosystem, each podcast episode costs around NZ$3.5k to produce. 

An average season of around 8 guests is a direct investment of NZ$28k (thats about €16.000 or US$17,000).

This isn’t counting my time, my guest’s time, or the general costs of running and hosting a website, annual licensing etc. 

Humans at Work is a passion project – which I believe is also code for – it’s entirely self-funded. 

Its not something my accountant is super happy about, but it does show the depth of my commitment!  And it illustrates another key component of this story - what we use as measures of value and success. 

What is Success?

Often in business or work contexts we’re expected to focus on numbers – how many podcasts produced, how many downloads, how many good reviews posted, how much money made. 

But I prefer to focus on value and reach.

I describe value in 3 ways:

• For my guests and I, the value of the connections we make through the podcast conversations. My guests often reflect on how much they enjoy the experience, and many of these connections have deepened into long-term friendships and professional collaborations. 
• The value that listeners/readers get from the ideas, inspiration and sense of togetherness. We are humans who enjoy and benefit from sharing human stories.  For example, the chiropractor who loved the story Vince Warnock tells about ADHD being his superpower, or the partner who learnt something new about their wife by listening to their podcast!  
• The impact on my own creativity and sense of place in the world – every conversation gives me the gift of perspective, ideas, complementarity, inspiration, humour. And the generosity and courage of my guests in sharing their stories continuously refills up my hope and optimism tank!

I really admire other podcasters who have incredible audience numbers around the globe – it tells of hard work, approachability, consistent quality and truly interesting subjects!  But if I measured myself or the value of Humans at Work against them, I would be setting myself up to fail. 

The aim is not to be like others.  The aim is to take an idea and execute it with passion, ethics and impact, while having major fun. 

Having said that, I’m really excited that visitors to the Humans At Work website last year topped over 30,000 page views.  If even 1% of those visitors learned something, took some inspiration, felt part of a wider movement for social equity and environmental protection, thought more positively about their own sense of worth – well that’s an amazing step in our collective story!

Thank you for reading our blog post! We hope you found it informative and engaging. If you enjoyed our content, we have more to offer through our podcast and monthly newsletter. Here's how you can stay connected and get even more value from Humans at Work.

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