Celebrating 100 Episodes of Beyond Busy
I'm really proud of my little podcast. From its' humble beginnings as a side project in 2016 to its current status as one of the UK's leading business podcasts, with a global audience and weekly marketing campaigns, it's been quite a ride. Here are 10 reflections from the first 100 episodes:
1. You always need a 'first follower'. In podcast terms, that's about getting the first big name person to say "OK, I'll be on your podcast". It's way easier to get people to say yes when you've already had people on your podcast that they've heard of. Having struggled for a while to attract high profile people (and it's STILL a struggle!), I always try my best to say yes when I'm on the other end of speculative emails asking me to be on someone's new podcast.
2. I make something I'd want to listen to. That sounds obvious, but do you know how many people have told me my podcasts are too long, that they need to fit into the 'ideal commute time', that they need to have sound effects like Radio 4, etc? From the very first episode, I've tried to be the business/work version of Adam Buxton, Scroobius Pip or Richard Herring. It's not to everyone's tastes, but it means I get to go deep, and that keeps it interesting for me. Would the listenership be higher if I made it all bitesize? Maybe, but I would have got bored long before I reached 100 episodes.
3. The only thing that matters in a conversation is being present. Sometimes I'm in my head about the kit not working. Sometimes I'm in my head because I'm intimidated by the guest. Sometimes I'm in my head because I've had a horrible day. Those are always the worst podcasts, because they're the worst conversations. Being present and creating the right space is as important in podcasting as it is in life.
4. When you're present, the sense of flow is exhilirating. I think this is true in life as it is in podcasting: when you truly connect with someone and hear them, that sense of connection is magical. If I'm honest (and being critical), it's probably happened to me no more than a dozen times in my hundred episodes, but I can feel the frequency of that improving.
5. It's OK to be embarrassed by your earlier work. I've just spent the last week listening back to many of the earlier episodes. I was all over the place as an interviewer: interrupting, asking meandering questions, sounding completely out of my depth at times, to be honest. But in the more recent episodes I listen back to, I hear more ease. More control. More connection. Like anything, if you do it for hundreds of hours, you get better.
6. Imagine you're just sat at the bar. I was shitting my pants about interviewing a very big hero of mine recently, and my friend Mark Leruste said to me in a whatsapp chat "just imagine they're sat at the bar and you can ask them anything. What do YOU wanna know?". This is great advice to get to numbers 2 and 3 and 4 above. And it also means you're less likely to ask the same questions that guest has already answered a hundred times before.
7. The best way to overcome imposter syndrome is to realise that you ARE one. This was a quote from my recent episode with Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote and his weekly Guardian column, "this column will change your life". When you interview Dragons Den 'dragons' you realise they're terribly affable, when you interview Olympians you find out they love chips as much as anyone (OK, not quite as much as my son). We are all multi-layered onions and no one is the sum total of their instagram account or their wikipedia page.
8. Sometimes the questions I'm asking the guests are really just questions I want my own answers to. I have found myself many times halfway through a question, thinking that the answer is going to be really complicated. Then, their answer is really simple and I realise: I was asking on behalf of my own flaws or biases.
9. Like most things in business, it's a team sport. The people you hear on the mic are me and the guest, but Emilie works tirelessly to keep a good schedule of weekly guests, liaising with bookers and publishers who send us guest ideas and reaching out to people we shortlist. Riz, Jess and Kline make loads of graphics and write text for Instagram, Mark has been there since the beginning as my producer and his platform Podiant as my host. Whenver there's an issue with the sound he knows things that I don't know about how to fix it. I'd be lost without them, to be honest.
10. Humans are weird. I started the podcast to see what common themes might emerge in the motivations of successful and interesting people. I wanted to know what their takes on work/life balance had in common, and the common threads to do with how people defined happiness or success. It turns out that whilst there are some, for the most part the main takeaway has been that humans are weird. We're deeply flawed. We follow the path, except for all the times that our biases and flaws mean we just fail to even realise there's a path, or we decide that the path is boring. And I guess that's why I'll keep doing the podcast a while longer: because there's so much beauty in the weirdness, and every single human can teach you something you don't know.
If you're not subscribed to Beyond Busy, I'd love you to! We've split the 100th episode into three parts.
Part one is here and features Cal Newport, author of Deep Work as well as an explorer who's been to both poles and everest, a winemaker, and stars of The Mash Report and Dragon's Den. Name me another podcast that gives you that kind of range, eh!
Part two is here. We've got Radio 1's Katie Thistleton, the founder of Yo! Sushi, a former supermodel who carved out a second career as a TV chef, a star of the Guilty Feminist podcast, as well as a banker from Syria who saved his bank's deposits from the Taliban.
And part 3 can be found here where we talked to Marie Forleo, Gerald Ratner and Heather Moyse just to name a few. Head on over to the link to find out who else is on.
I hope you enjoy these special episodes. Have a great week,
Graham
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