The Power of Podcasting to Promote Culture & Engagement

I am here today to talk with you about a, you know, Zach was giving the tee up about achieve engagement. It's like, how do we achieve engagement? And there's all these great topics that they put out. And I think the core to anything working with engagement is communication, right? It's what is the make or break of how things work or don't work. It's how we communicate it. And so what we have found is that the best, how, the best vehicle that I always say this is like the golden ticket to be able to bring everything together with internal communications or communications, period. We found to be podcasting. And I've only been podcasting for seven years. Seven years ago when I started, I had no id, I'd never even listened to a podcast. It just happened to be that the medium of podcasting took over my whole life. 'cause it worked so well. And we were doing this for external, um, like issues like, um, brand awareness and lead generation and um, storytelling for companies, all external things. And then it clicked. I was like, oh my goodness, everyone has one of these. And due to, you know, all of our lives with COVID, we all work very differently now, right? We are remote in many ways, whether we're back in the office or not. Like we just learn that there's so many more opportunities to have, like work-life integration, and we have to lean into that. And so, man, podcasts have been a great way to be able to bring everyone together all around the globe in the same day, right? At the same time and on demand. So can't wait to share more. Was it Melissa? Melissa, you're the one that said, um, I don't know much about podcasts, but I can't wait to learn. Oh, I'm glad you're here. I guess I need to go and listen to Game of Roses because I've never listened to that. And I saw a couple people put that out. And then one more thing, two of your shows that you mentioned are on our network. I was like, oh my gosh, I love seeing that. So People Forward Network, we have many different podcasts that tie into people First leadership, all different topics. Like there's specific ones sometimes for HR versus, um, you know, more of like culture strategy or employee engagement, diversity, all kinds of things. So check us out. I was glad to see that there's two of those, uh, shows that we do that are on our network that are your favorites. So can't wait to spend more time together. Alright, so we are going to start with this question. If you can throw it in the chat. Um, I think everyone is here in some capacity to sharpen your internal communications and learn about how podcasting does that. One thing I will say is whether you ever do a podcast, ever, um, I hope that I give tips today that you can use in other mediums. Podcasts are just one medium. You're gonna learn all kinds of ideas today. This is not just like, all about podcasting. It's like, like, yes, podcasting is the unlock. Um, but we're gonna solve problems today whether or not you ever use podcasting. Okay? So you can take this however you want. I wanna know what are your biggest internal communication challenges? 'cause I'm hoping to tap into those today. Tap into solutions for you guys. All right, let's see what we got. So, biggest challenge is people internally don't actually read the emails we send out. And man, do we spend a lot of time on the emails? Please read them. Engagement of frontline tech workers, um, making sure that everyone is included in the messaging. Global alignment. Actually that's a topic that we'll talk about for sure. Reaching folks who don't work on computers. Um, keeping to the time, uh, losing track. Yep. Delays. Oh my gosh, these are so good. Just keep 'em coming. Multi-generations. Oh, I've got a, I've got something to share on that too. So, uh, yeah, keep those coming. And we're just gonna continue to work through a lot of these things. And then if we don't have time to cover your topic, we have people on my team that are super specialists or partners that are super specialized in internal communications. So if I can connect you to solve your problem, I'm not here to just say, Hey, podcasting, and here's what we do. And all, you know, I, there's so much to learn together and I would love to be a mentor or a resource. Here's what we hear. No one ever reads our emails and I'm like, well, is it that no one ever reads them? Or it's just a low percentage? They're like, oh, it's only 30% open rate or something. And you're spending so much time on emails. I get how that can be so frustrating. Or you want people to respond, right? You don't just send things out to not get a two-way response. You wanna hear back. And what about the telephone game? It's like, how is this the word on the streets? What is going on? Um, we all work different shifts or our remote team is disengaged. Um, you know, in our remote team, we don't know how to help bring them in. 'cause a lot of us are, you know, working in an office space together. And how do we bridge that? These are all things that we hear. One of the things with the different shifts, when I was working in healthcare and I had a, I was working in a software company that targeted healthcare, it's impossible to bring everybody together, you know, all together. So how do we solve these problems? And the ones that you shared? Well, let's talk more about that. First, I wanna start with, um, you know, the platforms that you use right now that work really well to reach people where your internal communication efforts are working, the how you reach them really matters. Obviously, podcasting is one way, but a podcast has to be plugged into something a lot of times, right? Like, how would they find it? So what I wanna learn, what platforms do you use currently that work really well for your culture and your people? For me, slack. I love Slack. Anybody else A Slack fan out there? We do on my team at People Forward Network, we do our whole life communication on Slack, meaning we also share things about what's happening in our, um, life with our families and like celebrating personal stuff. We have channels that talk about dreams and like where are we going, like the, you know, big innovative ideas for our future and sharing that we have a health channel so that we can learn new, you know, health hacks with, you know, what, what are you drinking that's like maybe like a clean or healthy energy drink to keep you focused. Or, um, here's a new recipe, or here's my new workout program. Like all of that, aside from work stuff, which is obviously the main focus of why our team works together, but I would love to see teams you say and Gchat Slack. Um, I hear you on the overwhelming sometimes. Uh, okay, well we'd love to plug into what already works, keep doing what works and then the things that aren't working, maybe we get rid of those or replace those. Okay. All right. So we were, someone had mentioned about multiple generations, and here's the statistic for you. Um, I put at the bottom two sources that you can pull from Edison Research or Buzz Sprout for this realm of like podcasting and statistics and knowledge and things. I will tell you that these statistics that I'm sharing right now are an a year old. They're 1-year-old. So I'm gonna guess the stats are even stronger. I need to update my stats. I know, but let's just use this as kind of some anchoring audio is the number one way that people among five generations consume content today. So you think about audio, there's many different ways, um, like Audible. Does anybody still use Audible? Uh, for books I've really replaced that. I got rid of my audible, I have so many books that I'd already downloaded. So thank goodness my favorite books are on there. But I am like such a podcast listener nowadays that I am just spending so much more time there. But I used to be a audible, I'd be on the road all the time or traveling and use that, and it was just so efficient. Or I could be like doing yard work and listening to my favorite book. Uh, now I do that with podcasts. And I think a lot of people, that is the reality of like, I'm gonna do the dishes and consume audio content. Think about it like this. If we are meeting people where they are across five generations, audio is the number one way that humans are consuming content. What if, you know, the meetings where we're trying to get everyone together and on this meeting, which is impossible. What if it's on demand and you don't have to coordinate all the schedules and you have this for them to consume on demand while they're doing the dishes, while they're, you know, working out. Man, it just sounds like, yeah, no brainer. So that is where we started to lean into podcasting because audio is the number one way that across five generations, that's how we consume. 92% of us and probably even more over the age of 12 have a smartphone. So we all have one of these on us at all times. And it doesn't go very far. Sometimes you wanna throw it out, you're like, get rid of that thing for a little bit. But it's always with us. How do we meet people where they are on those smartphone devices? And then 73%, again, this is 1-year-old statistics of a 12-year-old and older are listening to audio on a monthly basis. So even getting stronger, definitely we'll have to get some new, new statistics, but if you wanna research further, I put those sources on there. And then like Zach said, you'll get the recording. So let's start with, as a people first leader, I wanna, I wanna be a people first leader in how I communicate. Um, here's some things to think about. And I put chess, chess, uh, what do you call those, like chess pieces on here because it's like really playing chess. Um, one is we need to meet them where they are. So we, you know, we've always done it this way, our intranet or whatever, right? Is it's like, is that mobile friendly and are they able to reach what they need at any given time? If not, we probably need to, uh, evolve. So we need to meet people where they are with how they are consuming content, where they are, what they need, the generations and understanding, you know, their wishes and how they're gonna engage best because we want to achieve engagement, right? So meet them where they are, provide flexibility and promote work-life integration. So that means on demand, that would be the key takeaway. Um, and let's meet you in your work life integration experience to be able to do this on your time. You know, there are so many people out there managing the sandwich generation, if you will, that I think they still call it that, where it's like you have kids and you're taking care of your elderly loved ones or parents and you need flexibility. And it, as an employer, we need to be able to provide that for our people. And then regularly giving clear, honest updates in this. I'd say over communication is the key. Say it again, say it again. Say it again. We just did this session with another partner company and there was a internal communications leader on with us, and she was talking about how, think about when you, when you hear an ad, an ad on TV or radio or whatever, or you're a, a company that's investing in an ad, you play it over and over and over and over and over. Think about the same thing as like, why do we do ads over and over? Because we wanna reiterate, we wanna, at some point somebody's gonna be like, I need to go check out that website, right? And so same thing, we have to over communicate and be really clear and the honest, transparent updates. I think a lot of times leaders hide from the honest, like, oh my gosh, are we gonna scare people? Yeah. And you do have to play a dance on how you share things for sure. But honest, transparent, regular updates connect through storytelling. I'm gonna ask you today about your storytelling, um, skills, and we're gonna spend some time on that. 'cause the best way to communicate is through stories. People remember stories. They don't necessarily remember facts, figures and stats and all of that might remember one out of five. But to recall and remember, a story becomes theirs to tell. I was on this achieve engagement, um, webinar and I heard this story, and it becomes their story to tell. And so we gotta get good at that and then give employees of all levels and all types of voice. The employee voice today is so important and we have to, it's not just the same three people that are talking and we need to really give them, give them a voice. So provide whole human development resources in your communication. So what would be the most important in communications? It's where are we going? How does this apply to your role and how you, uh, contribute, right? Helping them feel that engagement and know where we're going and really like what's next in guiding the, you know, how to take action. And I think a huge piece of this outside of that is how do we provide whole human development resources as part of our communications? So, you know, Maslow's hierarchy, let's say, you know, if someone doesn't have these basic things, you know, or the the first two tiers of Maslow, you know, we, we have to have that in order to have peace of mind to work right at work, we have to have peace of mind through the things that are foundationally taken care of. And the workplace needs to be that for us. And so that's like, hey, providing ideas to manage our health and balance stress and things like that. And then advancing DEI initiatives in our internal communications, it's like, how are we communicating to meet different types of people and make them feel seen and heard and to help other people embrace and help those other help everyone feel seen and heard, right? Like, how do we do that for all people within our organization? So that's just some chess move people first, um, I guess ways of thinking. And then let's take a look at some in intentional internal communications practices. So think about how during onboarding, how do we help people that are brand new get tied into our norms as quickly as possible? So, you know, typically there's different things that we do for onboarding. How do we make that really special to tie into each person's learning journey and give a lot of on demand experiences for that? So, you know, back in the day when I had some of my first jobs, you're in a room for eight hours a day. And the cool part is you get to rub elbows with people and, and meet people through that. But in today's world, that's not the reality. A lot of times we have people that work all over and how do we allow them to do it on their time at their pace know through two-way feedback, right? Through a podcast you listen, but then we activate two way through like Slack or Teams or something like that to get their feedback, but it's in this specialized container for the people that are onboarding. Um, and it might be that then they match to a mentor in the organization, but it's so important that we give a container for, you know, the the onboarding experience for our people and that they can do it, you know, on, on their time. So what would that look like as a couple of standout like innovative ways? You know, if in this experience they have, let's say a 10 episode podcast series and then they attend two events, um, and then they get matched with a mentor, right? Like that's kind of like a onboarding, you know, system a a set of set of opportunities. In the 10 episodes, what if two of the episodes have multiple employees talking about their experience coming in and how, and how this company's been different for them and what they would advise so they can learn from a peer during their onboarding. That's like giving a voice to the employee for them to also teach. That's just one way of doing that. But I think the key here is giving a special container section that onboarding gets with podcasting at the, at the core of that, um, increase transparency by sharing the voice of leaders. And so what I love about some of the platforms for what we've learned through podcasting is if each segment of the organization, the leader has a subgroup that they can talk to and give on demand, uh, updates to, we give a platform for each leader to be elevated, if you will, for their team to be able to share and build relationships. Like we're gonna talk about building relationships a lot because that really trumps everything else if we have the relationship. And it's funny, um, so I had said my, my favorite podcast is Mel Robbins, um, and then Louis Howes, I would say as well, those were the two that I put in there. I feel like I know them. Like if you think about your favorite podcast, does anybody else feel like they're like, they're like my bestie. I feel like Mel Robbins says that all the time. So I always feel it. But that's the, that's what we try to do inside of workplaces where, you know, how do we scale human connection? And there's an intimate experience with a podcast, uh, to be able to do that. And so how do we give it on demand and share things and build that relationship? And then sharing diverse voices that are across the company. We talked about that. Um, and then investing in, you know, team member growth constantly. So I think everyone on here, you wouldn't be part of achieve engagement unless you're a leader that wants your people to grow. And how do we help make sure that they constantly have learning content. And some of it's like, here's what everyone's doing. It's like if we're doing like Clifton's drinks, we're all doing that. But then there's optional supplemental content that's brought in. And it might be from your company or if you have consultants, like let's say you have a Brene Brown, uh, I think it was Jeff Fortner in the chat put, um, show up as a leader is one of his favorite podcasts. And you have, uh, re Rosie Ward, she's been trained by Brene Brown and is so incredible. What if Rosie's content could be piped into the podcast to help invite, uh, uh, advance your people? I mean, how cool is that? And that's exactly what we do. So whether it's internal learnings or external consultants that you see once a quarter, but how can they have more sticky factor? Um, and then integrating like global messaging because of this thing that is statistically proven to tie us. We all have one, right? Like everyone on here has a smartphone device. And so how do we tap into that with some, with the way on demand that everyone wants to consume content and, and really make that our universal approach plugged into our distribution channels of like email and slack and teams and things. But it's, yeah, it's really the glue if you will. Um, so hopefully you're taking away some really great things so far. I'm gonna ask you for your ahas in a few minutes. Okay? So when we look at, um, you know, one of the key chess moves that we can play in being a great people first leader or people forward leader, human connection is at the core, it's like if you have a relationship with someone, um, that, you know, that relationship is really the glue that keeps everything together and allows for vulnerable conversations and transparency and everything. And so we have to all become great at storytelling. We have to. And so what does it do? It increases empathy, right? Like when we tell our stories and others can hear us. Like when you see the person with the suit and tie, you have a perception or a bias. But until you get behind the suit and tie and have a relationship, you can then see the come from and we get to see them as a human. And so that is so important. And we do that through stories and sharing stories and stories. I'll give you an example of what we do in podcasting, and you can do this in any way, but if you have an origin story of your, for your company, the backstory, there's an incredible story there with a lot of detail and a lot of sweat and tears that have gotten you to where you are. And to allow that story to be captured in a great way where every employee becomes an ambassador, every partner, everyone around you becomes an ambassador for that story. What happens when we story tell is we give an opportunity for others to recall the story. 'cause we don't remember all the facts and figures in the exact year. We're like, I think it was in the seventies, or I know it was in the seventies, right? Or mid seventies, may not know the year, but you can retell maybe the decade. And they, there was two people they met in a coffee shop and it was like, serendipitous. And here's what happened and right? And it's this story that then you can take and share. We can retain that. And it's a recall function in our brain, right? So where do you have your origin story? And do all your people have your origin story? Whether you ever use a podcast. It's, it's really, really powerful. Um, and stories get passed on. And uh, when there's a big, like think about the last time that you had a really big, uh, complex thing happening, or you're trying to teach someone something really big, you break it down into chunks and stories, right? It's one of the best ways to do that. So if you've got something and you're like, it's just not clicking for people, well think about how you can tell it in a story and maybe like pieces of a story and it's like, oh, and those light bulbs go off. Um, and then, you know, we all come with biases, all of us, right? And stories help us through the story, story elicits emotion, and then we start to like break down biases or become aware of biases that we have. And we, we transition to curiosity, which is so powerful as a human, as a leader, when we can come with curiosity. There's so much good in that. I try to practice that. So what makes a good story? I am curious, I wanna do a little exercise here with you guys. And so there's gonna be a little, some quiet moments when you think of the best storytellers that you know, maybe you are a great storyteller already. Um, or you think of the best storytellers, you know, what are they doing? Like what is it? What makes a great story? Or how do you break down a story to be able to then share it and inspire others? I'm curious, take a couple minutes and jot some notes down. What have you learned about great storytelling? And I'd love for you to share it in the chat, telling the story in detail to get the visual. Yes. So Jeff, you know, on podcasts, like you had said, like Rosie Ward is one of your favorites, we show up as a leader, A great podcaster helps you listen and see it, you know? And so whether it's podcasting or not, like, you know, think about how do you help them see it? A visual. Yeah, a story that is relatable. Oh, it's so good. Um, and it helps become personal. Yes. So how do you share more, more of those things that like relate, helps you relate with, with people and make that connection. It's like when you have a connection and you're like, me too. And then you can move on from there, right? With your relationship, emotional appeal, first person narrative, present tense action. It's happening now. Yeah. Oh, present, present tense action is happening now. Yes. That's so good. The emotion. Yes. From that first person. Yes. I believe that the timing of it's about the timing of the story when it is told, when it is told is, is important. And to paint a clear picture. Yes. Yes. Timing of the story is so important. It grabs your attention by making you curious and being in the present as the story is being told. Yes. Yes. So good. That's so great. So think about how you do as a storyteller. Now, how are you doing, um, on a, like a, let's say like a scale of one to 10, how do you feel about your storytelling ability or your, you know, skills? Where are you at right now? Baseline. And maybe baseline is a funny word to some of you. 'cause you're like, listen, I story tell every day. Uh, well, where are you now versus like, where you wanna be. Cool. Good. I'm an excited er, I love it. Okay. That's awesome. Cool. Okay, so we kind of see where we're at now and like, what are some opportunities that we're already seeing that we could do from, from some of these tips that we've already heard or something that I shared. Anything so far that can help you get from a six to a seven, an eight to a nine, a nine to a 10, whatever that may be. What are those? You know what's, I love to sharpen. I have a podcast with my husband called Addicted to Betterment. Um, if you, if anyone hears like a Kobe Bryant fan, uh, the whole mamba mentality thing, it's just wired in my husband and I, and, um, it's like, what, what's just the one thing, one thing to get better? So I would just encourage you to like jot that down. And if you wanna do two things, three things, go ahead. All right, cool. Well, thank you. Let's move on. Internal podcasting. So when we look at internal podcasting, there are opportunities for you to be completely private where it is only your company that is getting this information in a very secure way, right? Like it's might be plugged into a delivery tool like Spotify or Apple, but it's coming from a hosting that is private. So it's like password protective and there protected. And there's data that does tracking to be able to understand, um, who's listening, you know, how long, which topics which in, in traditional podcasting, like external podcasts, which is what we do, a ton of that. Um, you, you don't know who your listeners are. You might be able to see like how long they listened and what they listened to, but you don't know who. But in the world of internal pos, podcasting and the platforms, when you have a private platform, you, you have everyone's name tied to tracking. So you can see how much, what are they listening to if you want to, like, there's different ways to do it, but you can slice and dice data. You know, a sales team leader with 35 people can see who's consuming what. You can look at trends and you know, the topics of like whole life development topics and what they, what, what your people are wanting. It's like, dang, people really want this health topic stuff versus these financial topics for the extras. So you can really slice and dice. But with internal podcasting, it's like, who would be on it? 'cause a lot of times it's people are, it's so new and different and they're like, that sounds super overwhelming and scary. Who would be on it? Well, leaders thought leaders in your company, internal champions, um, like let's say your employee resource groups or anything like that. Let's, let's have people from those sharing on what's happening. Employees, spotlighting employees. Let's say that someone is just on fire, like an employee that's so on fire, they are so engaged and you want others to be able to hear their why and, and to be able to illustrate that. Well, this is an example of if you had a private podcast, right? It's secure. Like no one else is listening to it. Besides your people, you'd probably wanna share with the permission of, you know, the employee, of course the story of why Sally loves working at your company and like, why you guys are so different and amazing because you could drive, drive to your talent pipeline from there, right? So we would take that episode and put it out on an external podcast, you know, on our network we have like 1.2 million listens across. Um, and so it might be something that we could, as a partner to be able to air these special episodes and get some traction. Or if you have an external podcast, then you would just take that and put it on that feed or both, right? So, you know, coaches and trainers that work with you where it's like, we see this one consultant team or coach once a quarter, but how do we bring them in regularly, regularly for sticky factor, right? And we'd put 'em in the podcast. Um, so I talked about like what it is, uh, really to meet the universal needs across the board of, uh, on demand through a device like this, you know, smartphone, uh, the internal podcast, I think I I answered that. If you have other questions about that, feel free to ask or we can talk afterwards. And I think, you know, the why is like internal communication is a must in prioritizing the strategy and having partners to help with that. It's never something you can outsource. You can't outsource your internal communications. You can have partners in that, but there's a core people on your team. And the more the merrier in helping to solve the most complex thing, right? To be able to make everything work. And, um, then the, the podcast just becomes the, the core how, the core how to activate other things and plugs into what you already use, like team or teams or Slack or makes email a lot, um, better. And then I'm gonna show you my aha moment right at the end of this that I, that I was a, a day of a light bulb moment. And then, yeah, so private RSS feed, we talked about that, that can plug into other means. So people that are already podcasting, if they're, or sorry, they're already listening to podcasts, we can plug in, but through a private portal so they can still access them through like Apple and Spotify, but it's being sent through a private means. Here's some of the standout benefits. Um, and these were last year's stats again. Uh, so they're a little bit, you know, probably outdated, just a teeny, but 500% more effective than email reaching people by podcast on demand. Um, they're just simple. It's just simple and convenient and easy. And we don't have to do all the big lift of meetings. We can turn things into podcasts for, you know, to eliminate all of these big meetings that cost tons of money and to provide data and insights. We talked about being safe and secure builds relationships for sure. Um, and then, you know, branded for your organization. You know, this is something that, you know, your podcast core to it, it looks like you, this is you. It's not like you're, this is a People Forward network podcast or something like it's yours and it's completely branded to be, to match your look. One thing that surprised me about podcasting, I started because my, um, kinda strengths area is around go to market strategy and like revenue growth partnerships. So growing, you know, the front end of the business, bringing in new business. So we've been using podcasting for that for the past seven years. And it's just been amazing. And I believe in relational selling where, what is that? It's like I'm solving someone's problem or I'm helping them achieve a dream. And the the, uh, unexpected outcome that I got was, oh my gosh, I do one episode. So fun, so fun to be with people and recording and, and having this conversation. We do this one episode and then it cuts down into multiple pieces of content. Like I would say the minimum that you would get out of this would be five pieces. So what does that mean? Okay, you record the audio, you also have the video asset. 'cause the video is very hot too. Like definitely to be able to have for like a private video channel for people that want the video component. And then it creates blogs, it creates newsletter content, it creates posts that stimulate like little key takeaways that you can pepper out through other communications. I'm a cliff notes girl. I'm like, gimme the high level and the key takeaways. As much as I love listening to podcasts, I also sometimes do need to like, look at the show notes. Like what are the key takeaways? So one episode, you get all of that, it takes so much enablement, um, I'm sorry, so much lift, that's what I meant to say off of your team for all this content creation. So you can imagine in sales and marketing, you know, it's like if someone on your team goes and does a podcast like externally with like Lewis Howes or something, first of all, it's awesome. And then they do the episode and then it gives all of these assets, your marketing team's like, yes, this is awesome. It's taking a load off of me because of what it creates. So that's so amazing. I love that unexpected surprise. One of the companies that we have looked at, watched, been mentored by is American Airlines. The, so think about that dynamic of, of that company, right? They're employee landscape, they're all over the globe on planes, on land, in offices, and they use a internal podcast that most of their stuff is out. They just share it with everybody, which is fascinating. So you could go look, look up, uh, I think they have a couple shows, but you'll see the one that is for their employees, but they don't, unless I don't, I just don't know what's private. They share almost everything that they share with their employees also externally, which is pretty fascinating. So we've learned a lot there. If you see any other brands on here that, um, you admire, maybe one of the reasons why you admire them is because they do really well with their internal communications. This is an example of season one because a lot of times it's like, okay, who's gonna do this? Who's gonna be the host? Like, what kinds of voices would we have on here? So here's an example of, you know, a sample season one, it's the most important things to capture with the most influential people in your company. And I look at four pillars of the content that's captured in podcasting for internal efforts. One, the first pillar is leaders and their stories and updates and vision and clarity, communication, right? So these different leaders and how we help to articulate things that help people connect to leader, help people be clear, know what's next, that's pillar one. That's the type of content whether you ever do a podcast, you can use these same pillars and you probably already do, but just in case I'm giving you an idea here to enhance, you know, the core of your communication strategy, leadership stuff. When I say leadership stuff, leadership communication, the leaders in the organization. Um, number two would be employee voice is employee voices. So what is mentoring? Mentoring is knowledge transfer. It's, it's someone sharing with someone else to be able to, um, help shortcut. Um, I mean, I'm sharing some of that right now. I'm mentoring my, my podcast, gut plus Science. Zach was just on it, by the way, Zach, we should send out that link. Uh, it's such a good episode on peer like learning. Um, but the second bucket is around peer learning and it is mentoring and like, Hey John, in Miami, we keep hearing about why he's so exceptional at customer service and his numbers are incredible and he just does so well with like upselling and all this. Can we put, put John on an episode? We're gonna make it super simple. We interview him, right? And cut our voice out so it feels like it's just him. It's so natural. And then, you know, um, Haiti over in LA is like learning right away from John in Miami. They're across the country, but they're learning from each other through this episode. That all gets piped through, through this, you know, device that we all carry around. Pretty cool, right? So that's the second pillar. The third pillar is, um, impact stories. This would be customer stories or, and, you know, community impact, like your corporate social responsibility efforts, volunteering efforts, giving back efforts, the stories from the mouths of your clients. Sometimes we disguise the voice, sometimes it's the name and all that, but let's hear the impact. That's pretty cool. Uh, let's hear the impact of what it, it fires up the employees to hear the end result of what this company is doing. And we have to do that more. That's the third pillar. The fourth pillar is leadership development, content, employee development, learning and development content. And so if you think about what are our core things that we teach here, like we're a Gallup c Clifton strengths, we're always doing strength stuff. You know, maybe we are a, um, you know, Brene Brown fan. And so we're, we're constantly sharing out different content from, you know, being a courageous leader. Um, maybe we have consultants from, you know, uh, achieve engagement. Maybe Achieve engagement is a consultant for, you know, they bring people in to be able to help. And so we're gonna pipe them into the podcast too, but it's like our place where everyone goes to consume great content. And those are the four pillars. Leadership updates from leaders in your company, peer to peer learning, mentoring, uh, let's hear from the voice of the employee. Three customer stories and community impact or World Global Impact. And then four is development, content learning. Okay? So podcasting made simple few things here. Huge fan of a virtual recording studio. We use Riverside, it's awesome. We, all of our clients, they have private studios. You, there's no limit on, you know, oh, you gotta come to the studio with all this fancy equipment. It's not, you literally have to have a pretty solid mic like I'm on right now. Um, uh, some ear AirPods or earbuds and you're good to go, you know, so virtual to make it simple. Operationalize step by step. Did you know that the average podcast externally like a, a B2B podcast or an external podcast to consume the average one only lasts for seven episodes. You know how much it takes to stand up a podcast. We work really hard to make it simple, but it's still a lot of steps. And the average one only lasts seven episodes. Why? I bet you could guess why. It's like only my mom and grandma are listening, you know, and they're not getting the listener traction or they get overwhelmed by the operations of it. So we break it down and make it super step by step. And it's important to have podcast experts to walk alongside for sure. Um, to just make it simple. So making it simple is having experts in anything, anything you do, like have experts alongside gamification for adoption. So everything in this world that's new has to have an adoption strategy. And we gamify that and make it fun. And you know, some people will never listen to a podcast, but they will read all the show notes. They'll read the transcript. They wanna read, they wanna read the key takeaways. Okay? You mean they're still getting it in a different way. Um, but how do we gamify that to drive adoption? Uh, yes, Riverside, Riverside is the virtual studio that we use data to guide strategy. So your hosting platform, like we use Libsyn for our external hosting and we have a number of different private platforms for internal hosting. But you want a good hosting platform to help you with your data, uh, to understand how to guide the future. You can in, in the, it's really cool external platforms for like the podcast that we love, like, um, game of Roses or Mel Robbins or whatever. The data really is crummy on external, you just can't get very much. But internal, you get everything you want as long as you set it up, right? It's like an HRIS like you have to set it up, right? To be able to do it, to get that data. But it's fantastic. You can really get insights from, from people, um, based on their habits, you know, and then activate the podcast through these winning channels. That's why I asked you about Slack or Teams or whatever, whatever works. So you plug the podcast into that and, um, built in content plan for easy approval, buy in from leader, right? So just having a simple content plan that is built in like the four core pillars and here's what what we're doing monthly and here's our cadence so that, you know, we can make things happen. Oh, I can't go back. What happened to me? Oops. Well you'll get that in the next one. Uh, okay, so I wanna tell you about this recent aha moment. So, um, we, I was learning about the power of text messages from a friend of ours, a partner company called Francis. And they lean into text. They're a wellbeing company that customizes texts, text messages from the company, um, and they use this text is the only way they go. And they, here's why. So 95% of text messages are read within three minutes. 97% of Americans have a cell phone that can read text messages. Over half of the consumers check their text messages 11 plus times a day. I think I text, I check my text like a hundred. Um, and sometimes I just wanna throw my phone away for a little bit. But, you know, we just can't do that. And I love my phone, I'm grateful for my phone. But yeah, we're super connected to this thing. So you see all these stats right here, you can read these. And so how do we, this was my aha light bulb. How do we take the platform of the podcast and activate it through Slack or teams or whatever's working in email and all that. But then the most important things that we cannot, we they can't miss, it's like the state of the company episode. You know, maybe it's once a month that the most important, hit them by text. I think that is a fabulous idea. So we have now figured out like how do we plug that in the text delivery system into our, um, internal podcast software so that we can make sure the most important ones, the most important audio messages are going through the fastest channel, easiest most adopted channel, which is text. So that's been my aha moment and I wanted to share that with you. And we're excited to see how all of that works. And with Text with Francis, you can do two-way communication that not other people can see. So if it's the most important episode and then the person gets this, they can reply back, but it's only to the administrators. So you're getting the input in a very simple, easy way that usually people like text back, right? And they're on their text all the time. Sounds really smart and I'm excited to see where it goes. Okay. And that's it. So Zach, if you wanna come back and join me, um, I would love to know aha moments. Zach, I don't know, you know, we've talked about this many times this topic. Um, thank you so much. 'cause I know you see the vision of, of podcasting to help with internal communications. And like I said, whether those of you that are on here ever do a podcast, I hope you took things away, um, that you can use in any way, right? To stimulate your internal communications. But I know z Zach, you're a fan of the podcast as a solution. Curious your aha moments, and I'd love if anybody wants to put in the chat what, what were your, what are your key takeaways? Yeah, thank you Nikki. Yeah, definitely. Second on that, adding the chat right now, like what were some of the biggest things that stood out for you? Are there certain ways where you're like, okay, this is where I could see this applying right away within our organization, or this is how we would wanna use it. And I think one like aha part for me was just also thinking about just how flexible and fluid the strategy could be. And in one aspect I like the foundational pieces that you really provided of like, okay, how do we just capture the ethos and the story and the values and then we could start to use that as a part of our onboarding programs and company updates as well as external facing things from a talent acquisition standpoint and recruitment standpoint. And then on the other end, I like how you can also get really strategic and focused on it around strategic initiatives and providing updates or getting alignment from people internally as well as highlighting certain people. And we just did a masterclass on onboarding, for example, recently, and a lot of the participants shared how powerful it is from an engagement standpoint to get people involved in those strategies, like the current employees. It creates this like sense of pride and excitement for people when they're part of like these experiences. And I think this could be also just not only as a way to drive engagement and inform other employees, but it's another way to also recognize and appreciate your current people as well. So it, it's actually something that could have a huge impact on your employee appreciation programs and rewards and recognition and saying, Hey, we would like to feature it, creates this. Yeah. People could just feel very, very, like, I just honored when they get called for, for these things. So yes. Um, I like that flexibility with it. Yeah, I love that. Like when when someone gets recognized it's, yeah, I forgot to mention that. 'cause we've seen this and someone that gets called out for what they do well and they get invited to come share it. It's like such an edifying outreach. And then we get to capture their story and the the recognition just keeps going every time someone plays it and then somebody's like, Hey Jeff, I listened to your episode today, thank you so much. And then a couple days later, somebody's like again, right? And it just keeps, it just keeps, uh, feeding, what is that called? Like it's the gift that keeps giving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I like what Jeff kind of shared too of like, especially for those companies who've been around for decades and a long time, some of those like original stories get lost because people transition. Their original founders or leadership that were there from the beginning obviously are no longer there, they're retired or, or whatever things happen. And um, how do we, how do we still keep connection to kind of the core purpose of the org organization, the origin stories. Sometimes these stories of how things came to be are incredible that you don't wanna lose and can keep people engaged and motivated if, if you're able to keep that connection going. So Jeff, I I I agree. I think that's a great starting point from, uh, from a, if you were to go to this route, um, I'd love to ask, ask you Nikki, uh, Amy's question there pretty quick. Like, what are key things to do to promote the launch of a new podcast? So let's say we're bringing, you know, bringing you in or we're launching our own podcast internally, we have some episodes like what, what does a launch look like for this? Yeah, and that's why I just threw my email in there because I'm watching our time and I'm like, oh boy, I have to understand a little bit more to be able to really answer that. It really depends. Um, so there is a strategy that ties into, you know, your workforce and how your workforce operates. So if you're a, you know, technical, like more of a service-based technical company, your people are out in vans driving around or cars, whatever, and you know, very rarely do you get together, but twice a year you do this all team day, no one's working, whatever. It's like we are going to lean into launching this thing around the time that we're doing this because of the dynamic of your workforce. And everybody's there and everybody like does this on their phone together, right? Like, and so the, the specialness of your workplace really matters. There's probably a list of, um, let's call it at least 50, at least 50 different methods for how, how to be really strategic based on your workforce and to do the simple things you would never do 50 you. But out of our list of all the things we've learned, here's your three. And so whether it's an external podcast or an internal podcast, I know we're talking about internal today, but I'm sure some people are, you know, curious about external, it's so different. And so yeah, that's what it's, it's unique. Why don't you hit me up? I put my email on there. If I can answer anything, uh, I would be happy to. And it's been amazing spending time with you all today. That was amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much, Nikki. I know we're at time. I'll just add one more thing, Jeff. I see kind of like how do we promote this maybe as a pilot. Something that was interesting someone brought up with me is like, maybe if it's too much pressure to think about how we're gonna do this ongoing podcast forever and ever and that seems very overwhelming, maybe just think about like, what does a starting season look like? Yeah. Like we're just gonna do a season same way a TV show might have its first season and show doesn't mean you have to do a second season, but it's like, hey, we'll just have some fun with these 3, 4, 5 episodes in our first season and then we'll see if we want to continue doing it after that. That way you don't put the pressure on yourself of like, Hey, we gotta do this thing forever. So, um, appreciate everyone joining though. We're at time. Uh, I am gonna take over here from you Nikki, quickly and just share the codes from today's session. Uh, you can see those on the screen here. We'll send those into follow-up comms as well. Otherwise, thank you so much everyone for spending some time out of their days to join us for this session. I definitely encourage you to connect with Nikki on online, either LinkedIn or she was kind enough to share her information in the chat there. I'll also put the LinkedIn as well as a link to the people for network. I mean, if you're a fan of podcasts and you like this type of topics and content, uh, they're your place. Like check 'em out, check out some of the hosts and podcasts that they have. Otherwise, that's all we got today. Appreciate all of you joining. Have a great rest of your afternoons and we'll see each other again soon. Thanks everyone.

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