137. An update on the future of the Boss Better Now podcast

Transcript – Episode 137: An update on the future of the Boss Better Now podcast

Joe: So yeah, I think we’re going to try to do this podcast a little differently again. [music]

Joe: Hello again, friends and welcome back to Boss Better. Now let me jump in with uh a little history lesson of this here podcast. Uh I decided to start this podcast in 2021 uh after years of people encouraging me to do so. I’ve been speaking and writing about uh employee commitment for nearly two decades now. And over and over again I would have people say uh you should do a podcast. You give great advice. You’re such a great speaker. Really, you know, you get lovely feedback like that again and again. And then you start thinking maybe I should do a podcast. And for a long time, I resisted the idea cuz I just didn’t know or see a format that I was really excited about. But then when the pandemic hit, I got excited about the idea of doing a podcast for two reasons. The first was because it was a way for me to be of service to people and leaders especially during such a trying time. But also, I had landed on an idea for a show that I thought I would really enjoy doing and that would be of value to people listening to it and would potentially stand out in a in an increasingly crowded space. And the idea was to think of the podcast format like a morning FM drive time radio show. Right? If you if you tune in to your local morning radio show, you hear people bantering and chatting about lots of different issues. There’s sort of recurring bits and segments and there’s uh you know, you’re sort of talking about the news of the day, but there’s also some humor. There’s some fun elements and energy to the whole thing. And that was really the genesis of Boss Better Now when we released in 2021. And we did weekly episodes for the most part for the better part of 2 and 1/2 years. And we started out with Alyssa and I and all of the incredible conversations we were having coming out of the pandemic and about the great resignation and things that leaders were dealing with. Uh and then when Suzanne came on board, we were having a lot of conversations that were really driven by the questions that you all were submitting as listeners. But then an interesting thing happened on the way to uh recording about a hundred episodes of this. Um I became exhausted. Uh this was at the at the same time that uh I was doing a number of other things in my business and writing and releasing my third book, Employee. And by the time we got to the uh the summer of 2023, I had hit a wall. And so, I decided to put the podcast on hiatus because a weekly show is a big commitment, especially in the time that it would take us to prepare each episode, each segment of each episode each week. And despite really enjoying doing it, and despite um a fair amount of acclaim that the podcast was getting, we got nominated for some people’s choice awards. And uh to this day, one of my favorite experiences is going to speak somewhere and when somebody in the audience comes up to me afterwards and says, “By the way, I love your podcast.” I mean, that would happen to me more times than I could count. Um but in in the for the sake of preserving my own sanity and uh for the sake of preserving, you know, the relationships that I had with the people around me, something had to give. So, we took a break on the podcast, and I will tell you that I never intended for that to be a two-year break. Um, it just turned out that way. And so, when we hit the summer of 2025 and we realized that we had been on this 2-year hiatus for the podcast and in the aftermath of people asking me repeatedly, are you going to bring the podcast back? I decided that I wanted to. And so, my team and I sat down and thought, you know, how can we continue doing this and being of service to the audience and but maybe do it in a way that isn’t as demanding as a weekly show with all of these unique segments and all of these questions and topics. And so, we settled on the idea of doing a more bite-sized version of the show with just me. and it would be just direct to camera, me picking a single question that leaders uh commonly asked or searched for online. And so, as you’ve heard in recent weeks, that’s what we decided to do. And so, over the last couple of weeks, I have looked into the camera and tried to tackle a single question and we’ve relaunched our podcast. And I’m going to tell you something truthfully, I am not feeling it. And I don’t think you are either. This is just a guess. I haven’t been hit with a bunch of letters or emails from people saying, you know, Joe, I got to tell you, the show kind of sucks now. No, nobody has said that. Um, but each week that I have turned on the camera and turned on the microphone and sat down and attempted to answer this one question, I have felt like I am not setting out to do what I originally set out to do when I launched the podcast in 2021. and I wasn’t doing what I set out to do when I decided to bring it back. If you’ve been listening to this show for a little while now, you know that we set out to be food for the boss’s soul. We set out to be a place where you could get advice and encouragement as you navigate the many challenges that leaders at all levels and at all industries face every day. And I think we did a pretty good job of that for the first two or so years of this show. And I don’t feel like that that is what has been happening in these more bite-size recordings that I have been distributing. And so, when I started feeling that way, I went to my team and said, “This is how I’m feeling. What do you think?” And they all went, “We agree. The energy around the show is different. Joe, you’re different in terms of not having someone to talk to and not having people to interview and not being able just to kind of riff on these topics and share the anecdotes and the stories and the experiences that you’re having when you work with leaders and teams as well. And so, we decided to take a breath and figure out what did we want to do then with this show going forward if we know that this revised shorter single question format wasn’t working. Well, I very quickly came up with an idea. We knew right away that the show is better when I have somebody to talk with. And we also knew that the show would be better if we continued to point it at leaders just like you who wanted to understand how to create the conditions at work for people to thrive and to hear about ways that they could continue doing that. And so, what we’ve decided to do was go back to a format similar to what we had been doing before. We think the most interesting and useful episodes we have had on this podcast were episodes where I got to talk with somebody else about leadership experiences and challenge. And it occurred to me that I have this incredible good fortune of knowing so many interesting experts in my world as a speaker and as an author. and I know a boatload of incredible leaders out there in the real world, leading companies, leading teams. And it just kind of struck me all at once that the conversations I could have with them about their experiences, the best jobs they’ve ever had, the worst jobs they’ve ever had, the best bosses they’ve ever seen, the worst bosses they’ve ever seen. That those experiences would make for fascinating stories. and more importantly consistently deliver to us on this show insights and lessons that can provide the kind of wisdom and advice and encouragement that I want this show to be about. So, friends, that is what we’ve decided to do. Um, next month you’re going to see this show come back with a change in the format. We are going back to episodes that come in more around that 30-to-45-minute mark and episodes that feature conversations about leadership and the lessons we can learn about doing this well and struggling to do it well. Yeah, that music you heard at the beginning, that was our original theme music, right? if I was talking about uh you know going back to a format that really served our audience, I figured I’d give a little call back there to the uh the little ditty that used to open our show. And so, I just wanted to take a moment today and release this little update because if you’ve been coming to the podcast of late and feeling like this is just not doing for me what it used to do, I get that and you’re not wrong. And if you felt like in recent episodes that Joe has been, oh man, I just referred to myself in the third person. But if it has felt like I have been saying some of the same things a few times, I have felt that too. And so that’s the impetus for this change, feeling like that we were not serving you as well as we have in the past and want to in the future. And so, thank you for sticking around. know that in just a couple of weeks, next month, we are going to be back. Uh our plan is to continue following a seasonal model on the podcast. We are going to run the podcast in seasons every year from September to June, take a little break each summer, and we’re going to do two episodes a month and so about 20 episodes a year. And you’re going to hear me interviewing experts, thought leaders, and real world CEOs and frontline leaders who are out there doing this work and sharing with you their lessons learned, their stories, their insights, and the encouragement that they can share with you about going out there into the world and being a boss hero. And by the way, we have already started setting up some of these conversations. I cannot wait to share with you uh some of the people who have already agreed to be on the future episodes of our show. U there’s a New York Times bestselling author, there’s an Olympian, there’s even a cowboy kind of, but these are going to be I’m so excited about these conversations. I’m so excited to share them with you. So, if you’ve been listening for a while, thank you for sticking around. If you are new to the show, thank you for checking us out. Come back here very soon, next month, March 2026, for Boss Better Now version [music] 3.0. See you soon.

Joe: Hey friends, did you know that I have been publishing my Boss Better email newsletter for more than 10 years? That’s right. If you want to keep in touch with me and keep your finger on the pulse of all things employee engagement and retention, workplace [music] culture and leadership, then go to bossbetternow.com to subscribe.