I Created My First Podcast!

Whoa, I finally did it, I created my first podcast. There were about 10 minutes of coordination. 56 minutes of content recorded. 25 minutes of audio editing. 60 minutes of graphic design for the podcast art (I literally created two brands and I ended up pivoting to the second one), and about an hour and 15 minutes of account provisioning to publish my very first episode.

Learning By Doing

I've always had issues with overthinking things which often led to procrastination. I'm cursed with an endless flow of ideas - both good and bad. Many of those ideas are focused on feasible optimizations for my industry, but not all of them. I love creating things for people and organizations, it's so much fun. I also love helping people discover the things that will make them and their businesses successful. Research and experience are two main elements of developing knowledge of a particular thing - I love both, but I really love trying to achieve something by actually attempting to deliver it and learning from the experience.

My first position outside of the government was an executive Growth role with a government services company. At the time they were a very small team and somewhat scattered. They were a technology services company with exceptionally talented engineers. Their CEO was extremely entrepreneurial and business-minded, and their CTO was a brilliant technologist that could translate his skills into rich value propositions. But, the company was struggling with its identity. It had a contract providing paralegal support to some random agency...as a technology company; this isn't a negative thing, it's a growing pain of becoming a government services company. Before I arrived, they landed an exciting modernization contract with a premier civic-technology agency, and the situation was kind of all over the place.

The company had the bones...the foundation, they just needed a perspective change and a new culture to shock the system. The CTO had serious technology chops; he generated a ton of buzz around their ability to create real modern solutions for people that worked and scaled. I recognized those attributes immediately upon meeting him, it was exciting. Joining the company was a unique experience, transitioning into an executive role for Growth was a total change from being a senior product leader in the government, but I welcomed the challenge. In a lot of ways, by chance, I feel like I was the missing cultural piece to be brought on to that team, to complete the company's "Enterprise Balanced Team" and advocate for culture, quirkiness, and a domain-specific strategy.

During my time at this company, we broke into many program offices. Our greatest successes by size, profit, and scope were with my old Air Force organization, we won two massive contracts with them. We also expanded into unique cutting-edge programs across the Department of Defense, and we hired additional executives to carry out amazing responsibilities, some of whom are still there today. It was a wild ride, but if I hadn't maintained a personal commitment to "learning by doing", I never would have experienced it. I would have rejected the job offer, and I wouldn't be where I am today.

It was a wild ride.

How Does This Relate to My New Podcast?

I JUST DID IT ( 耐克 ). I literally on a whim found a chunk of time to line up with a friend of mine, and we began recording our podcast. We began to "learn by doing". There was almost no structure, we just dove right into the dance of dances; we leaned heavily on our passion to discuss the thing we care about - practical innovation. Our first episode was about "Gamification", it ended up being focused on Gamification and Talent challenges for the United States Department of Defense .

Michael Meyer , Dylan Kilbride Brown , and other friends have been kicking around the idea of simply "publishing our conversations". We used to always say "this is a great topic, other people should be able to consume this information", so finally...we just hopped on a Riverside.fm link and began recording. Randomly, I happen to have Adobe Premier Pro skills, so I was able to edit the audio well enough, and Ta-da...we have a podcast!

So many podcasts focus on the unrelatable journeys of the uber-rich, and/or the people that occupy more senior roles within their organizations. As a former enlisted Army intelligence operator and a committed "builder", I wanted to focus on the people that are actually creating "the things". I wanted to focus on the muddy trenches, the places where delivery happens. From an Infantry perspective, this would be the folks on a " combat patrol", from a DevOps engineering perspective, this would be the folks managing a Tier 3 Help Desk, and from a service industry perspective, this would be the Barista brewing the most delicious cup of "fuel" that energizes everyone's work day.

These are the people I love. These are the people that often get taken advantage of, they are the people that want to create things for people. Many of them aren't interested in designing the nasty webs and mazes it takes to create and scale a business. They just want to "do". I love and respect that so much. Earlier this year, I was working with a colleague and friend. This friend designed and deployed a cutting-edge security capability for one of the programs I support. As a nasty entrepreneur, I got really excited, I pitched him on spinning out his own startup with business support from our company. He was disinterested, he just wanted to create value for people and deliver a thing that enhanced our industry. It was beyond noble and I was inspired. It's people like these that need their voices heard. The "Expendable" podcast will be an incredible platform for the doers, makers, and creators.

If we're successful at creating a content platform for the everyday person, then I feel like morale and inspiration will universally increase in a very big way. I feel like society will become inspired again and begin to focus on creating new and unique things, everywhere, for every industry. Every success starts with a talented "doer". The Expendable Podcast will champion those "doer's" stories, and provide endless inspiration (and fun) for every industry.

I know we're just starting out. Podcast coordination and quality may suffer and start off messy, but we're going to iterate on the platform slowly. We'll get better, and we'll host some incredible folks with stories and ambitions that you will love.

Listen to the first episode, and let us know what you think!

If you want to collaborate and tell your story. Reach out to me via direct message. I'll carve out some time to chat, and we'll design a really cool episode together!