Folks, this is a wonderful reflective piece by purposeful pioneer Mike Davis, the founder, originator and host of the Humans of Purpose podcast. Mike published the article in LinkedIn, you can also read it on the platform. It’s quite a moving read for us, as we take the reigns of the podcast, and hope to fill the very big shoes Mike leaves. Enjoy the read, and reach out to Mike if you’re keen to say thanks!
From us Mike, a huge thank you. It’s an honour and a privilege to take the baton on something so carefully, authentically and purposefully crafted over 7 years.
It’s definitely thank you, but not goodbye.
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Before we get into reflection and reminiscing mode, I want to thank all our guests, listeners, supporters, partners, sponsors and friends of Humans of Purpose.
I want to call upon the tale of the Giant Panda and the Tiny Dragon, to underscore what Humans of Purpose has meant to me-
Credit: James Norbury via Guy White (Josh’s Dad)
There’s a lot we can take from this. But put simply, for me it’s always been about the company and the people who have supported me to make this journey possible and the wonderful connections that have formed throughout.
The Commitment
- 337 hours of podcast content, 14 days or 2 weeks of constant listening to complete
- Producing an average of 1 podcast episode per week for about 7 years straight
- Making room for an average of 8 hours of work (1 day) per week to plan, record, produce, release and promote 337 episodes and to keep the podcast running (337 days) = nearly 1 year of dedicated effort
- This sixth day of the working week is found in early mornings, late nights and weekends
- Significant and primarily self-funded costs of equipment, tools, software, rental, support, promotion, services and production
Suffice to say, creating and running Humans of Purpose on a shoestring budget whilst working in busy management roles has been a significant personal and financial investment. But it has also been a huge reward and turning point in my life and career trajectory.
What’s next
I started writing this blog resigned to the idea that the podcast would end when I stopped running it. My eternally wise collaborative partner Joshua White told me that this was just one option.
Another option would be to open up the opportunity for the right new partner to take on the Humans of Purpose baton so that the journey could continue with fresh eyes and a new take. I was uncertain about this until the right person and group came along with aligned values and a beautiful intention and vision for the future.
I’m thrilled and eternally grateful to Melanie Greblo and her wonderful team at Banksia Academy and Scriibed will be not only acquiring and taking on the Humans of Purpose podcast and platform, but also uniting their high impact ventures under the Humans of Purpose name. More on this here in our recent podcast conversation-
The journey
I started the podcast because I was a lost and curious young man trying to find inspiration and his place in the world. I was a touch over 30 and an uninspired senior public servant who didn’t know what to do next. All I knew is that there had to be more out there for me.
So I started to muck around in underground innovation networks (yes, they were literally clandestine, taboo and hard to find spaces back then). When these didn’t do it for me, I just started to reach out to people via LinkedIn and Twitter, who interested me to have coffee catch-ups. Many would find this bizarre and many did. But most found it refreshing and enjoyable.
Surprisingly to me, these inspiring and purpose-driven folks were by and large most obliging. But I felt like an imposter. I also felt like I was wasting their time and each coffee I had with them could have helped so many more people. I felt they deserved an audience, and just listening to these conversations could help many in my position.
Many of these folks were not the well known superstars of the for purpose space that fill the podcast today. Many of these folks you would not have heard of, but they were doing amazing and highly impactful things. I wanted to learn so much from these conversations, but most importantly how to find meaning and purpose in work.
My working theory was, if I shared my conversations around purpose, meaning, impact, wellbeing and careers, my burning questions and my esteemed guests responses, the result might be something interested to others facing similar life and career challenges.
Classic n=1 thinking, my problems and interests are probably similarly to many other peoples problems and interests. This was the extent of my comprehensive market research before I dove in and started Humans of Purpose. To be clear, I had no interviewing, broadcasting or audio production experience at this point.
Rocky start
Turns out the hunch and raw content was good and resonant, but the execution, theming, quality and delivery just terrible. My approach was so amatuerish that I’ve regularly apologised to listeners and guests who experienced the first 150 episodes of Humans of Purpose.
In fact, I recently had Elliot Costello on the podcast as a return guest, partly to reminisce about him being our very first episode guest and to hear about his latest venture, but also as a make up episode, so that he could enjoy a modern, professional and enjoyable podcasting experience!
Thankfully these early episodes are now confined to the archives. Not just because they were amateurish, but also because people change jobs and identities so often in today’s world. I feel it’s unfair to the guest and listener to keep anything online that might be more than a few years old.
Not many podcast producers do this, but they should consider it. So much changes in this world so fast, we owe it to our guests and audience to keep content current and enable it to be as ‘evergreen’ as possible without being horribly out of date and context.
The formula
At about 150 episodes in and beyond the podcast started to gain traction. I started to back myself in a bit more, dispense with episode run sheets, excessive structure, the planning of each episode and stopped pretending to be a journalist.
I would deep dive and analyse what worked best as key elements of a good podcast. Through conversations, surveys and other feedback mechanisms I realised that people were just enjoying having a listen to a raw unedited and authentic conversation to listen to between two interesting folks.
What they wanted from me? To bring them unfiltered conversations with fascinating characters that they might not otherwise know, who are doing amazing impactful work in the community, with a strong social purpose. They valued episodes that were rich with wisdom, experience and banter.
Developing a clear and consistent brand, visual identity and theming was also critical in establishing trust with our audience and delivering a premium engagement and listening experience. Plenty more on key turning point for the podcast here-
Key moments
Podcasting is playing the long game. But if you don’t set yardsticks for continuing or investing more or less, then you won’t last long. It would be like going for a run on a new trail you’ve never run before and you are surrounded by fog.
You can’t see what’s ahead of you or what’s behind you. How do you know whether to keep running?
You need to understand the key metrics and set sensible goals that dictate whether you continue on or whether you change things or hang up your podcasting boots. Here were some of my key metrics over the past year and how we performed in brackets-
- The podcast doing on average 10,000 listens per month
- The podcast LinkedIn page growing every month in engagement and following, with goal of being the dominant podcast page on LinkedIn (3,400+ followers)
- The podcast maintaining a strong position in both the Australian Management and Business Podcast Charts (#10 and #100 at peak), podcast is also in the to 10-15% of podcasts globally by downloads
- People I choose to invite to come on the podcast know about the podcast and are happy to be invited on >50% of the time (roughly 75%)
- Guests who come on the podcast share the episode on socials >75% of the time (roughly 60%)
- Guests really want to come on the podcast and are also keen to sponsor the podcast 5-10 sponsorship deals per year
Here are some simple metrics of what we achieved by way of amateur Powerpoint SmartArt infographic-
My personal success metrics are both simple and harsh. The first is to make sure I’m at least 1% better in everything I do every week. I would argue that you should apply the 1% rule to anything you take seriously in life. Sharks that don’t keep swimming forward die.
The second is to get feedback from guests that this is the best podcasting experience they’ve had at least every other week. I’m only interested in doing this if I provide an exceptional experience and outcome. Here is one I got in the past month (you know who you are)-
“Hello Mike. I just wanted to say thank you. I have never listened to a podcast that involved me that I have liked, but I really enjoyed listening to the conversation that you and I had. You’re so thoughtful and intentional and I’m really grateful to you for the way you structured out chat and want to congratulate you for an awesome podcast.”
Here is another one that meant a lot to me. FYI, I ask all guests for feedback on what I could do better in my podcast release emails-
“Really pleased with how it came across. As a way of feedback I thought your process and interviewing skills were excellent. Your questions were great. So nothing to improve on. Keep doing what you are doing.”
So this is what it feels like when things have gone well. But every coin has two sides. Let’s explore the other side of feeling successful! This is where the real growth happens.
Obstacles endured
Podcast listenership for me has been a rocky road. At times we’ve been up to 12,000 listens per month and in down times early on around the 3,000 mark. The variation from month to month and how unpredictable it is can be entirely demotivating.
When listenership has dropped over sustained periods, I’ve had long conversations with my wife about quitting. But I don’t like giving up. It’s part of why I succeed at things. It’s also part of why I take a very long time to reflect on things and make a final call before I give them up.
Credit: Steve Martin
I’m stubborn. Painfully so. I’m also an incrementalist, so I know that if I keep putting one foot in front of another and adding 1% improvement each week, we’ll get there in the end. And we did. So I’m glad I didn’t give up, despite this happening at least a few times during the journey.
Other moments of failure have been not being able to scale a viable membership model after trying Patreon, Supercast and more. Despite having up to 12,000 monthly listeners, only two hand-fulls would ever become financially supporting members. This was my failure to not provide enough value or to find the time or resources available to enable this.
Finally, not being able to secure a paid annual or season sponsor has made it really hard to justify the time to keep making Humans of Purpose, especially after our family expanded. I made it a mission after Marlo was born in mid-2022 to achieve this goal and despite multiple promising leads and pitches couldn’t close the deal.
Things I would have liked to do better include all contingent on a lack of time and resourcing include:
- Spending more than 15 minutes preparing for each episode
- Putting time into securing more well known and established guests
- Investing in a parallel video broadcast stream on YouTube
- Meeting with and reading the books of people that come on the podcast
- Hiring someone to help me with everything especially bookings, production, admin, sourcing funding etc
What now
I’m not sure. Maybe a new creative project, maybe not. Maybe I’ll reclaim that 8 hours per week and channel it into the following things I’ve been neglecting and fantasising about:
- Reading great books (or any books)
- Watching great films (plough through the classics)
- Expanding my cooking repetoire (from pasta bake to new frontiers)
- Improve my running (beyond 5km, not hard off a low base)
- Finding new hobbies (discover what 40 yr olds do for fun)
- Seeing more of my mates (pending mutual interest)
- Spending more time with family (pending mutual interest)
- Doing some professional coaching (not life coaching)
- Doing some podcast consulting (sharing the wisdom)
Most importantly, creating space for new compelling ideas to enter my world. The best ones are the ones that haunt me. I cannot stop thinking about them and feel like I can’t help but approach them creatively and have a crack. Carving out room to deep-dive and indulge my insatiable curiosity.
Sometimes you just need to make the space and let the universe do the rest. I welcome whatever new journey is to come.
Thankyou friends
I’ll be focusing on work, health and family! For some reason most listeners don’t provide a lot of feedback on their podcast experience. So, below I’ve popped a Kudoboard for anyone who wants to leave a thought, comment or feeling-
Fictional Image: Me With Red Hair En Vacay
I want to end with a final heartfealt thankyou to our guests, listeners, partners, sponsors and friends of the show. This has been a massive part of my life and who I’ve become today. You are all part of that. Not just the Humans of Purpose journey, but my personal growth journey.
A special thankyou to my mate and podcast partner and major sponsor Joshua White and the wonderful team at Neon Treehouse for helping us grow and thrive in the past few years working together. Also a shoutout to Dimitri (Jim) Antonopoulos and the team at Tank. Strategy & Transformation Consultancy who were our partners at the beginning.
I’m thrilled to know that over 400,000 listeners are also better off for their relationship with Humans of Purpose over the years and that this has led to some great growth opportunities, more deliberate focus on purpose and social impact, connections and lifechanging decisions.
I hope you’ll continue listening to Humans of Purpose as I’m thrilled hearing some of Mel’s early ideas for where it’s all heading!
Otherwise, you’ll soon see me at The Australian Podcast Awards where I’ll be a judge for the first time.
Probably should have worn a shirt
Wishing you all the best on your journey and thankyou for being such a big part of mine.
If you want to venture beyond the Kudoboard, feel free to reach out to me at mike@purposeful.com.au.
Purposeful is my company that used to focus on social impact consulting before podcasting became the main game. If I can support you in anyway on your podcasting journey feel free to shoot me a note.
