Why I Want More Women on my Business Podcast

The other day a friend asked me where I find the time to produce all this content both at my job and for my side projects or personal brand on platforms like LinkedIn, Medium, Spreaker, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, Facebook, Clammr, Vimeo, (uh, I think you get the point). I told her that anyone can do it. You just need the willingness, some tools and even better, influential ideas that drives our cognitive meets creative society. The software as a solutions/service supply to make ideas and productivity come to life are endless.

She seemed overwhelmed like so many of us that too many solutions existed. My answer to her was that those solutions of abundance is what allows us all to be our own chief technology officers and chief digital officers. What I have on my mobile office is very different from what is on her mobile office. That's the beauty of personalized technology in a world moving away from mass solutions at scale.

It's also what allows us to be our own communication designers, chief information officers and come to think of it, chief executive officers (though don't tell my wife Allison and my two daughters Olive and Matilda this, according to them I report directly to all three of them as co-CEOs).

I have always disliked titles with the terms marketing or public relations in the name because that represents a world of yesterday. Design, art, behavior, communications and technology are now all incorporated in everything we do in the current era and much of it helps with better strategy and execution in ultimately understanding how people react or fail to react to messages. We should always adopt what makes the most sense for us to connect with people regardless of the platform in order to truly get people to adopt our philosophies, services, solutions, products, cultural view, etc.

Yet at the same time, while I am of the mindset that mediums aren't as important as messages, I'm still a big proponent in the intimacy of audio (read my recent posts on the power of podcasting here or listen to this interview with Rob Greenlee of Spreaker or this one with BJ Smith from Internet Summit 2015). Because of this I'm really trying to get more people both inside and outside of Microsoft to adopt audio to help them share their points of view about the world, whatever the subject.

One thing I've analyzed looking at troves of data recently is that podcasters are comprised of a majority of white male voices, especially business podcasts. So I'm doing what any disruptive marketer would do and putting sentiment into action. Instead of accepting the status quo, I want to break this trend by looking for and recruiting more female business executives, authors, thought leaders, strategists, futurists and more in the field of marketing and management to be a guest on my show. It's the right move and reminds me about something similar I did seven years ago when I heavily recruited female and African-American strategists and creative directors at the agencies I worked at to provide new solutions to a stale and tired status quo.

I'm not going to simply complain anymore that business and the media isn't diverse and inclusive enough. We know that's an issue. But with tools and attitude and armed with a producerism mindset, we can make things happen while influencing others to pick up those microphones (and software or apps) to take action based on our inspiration. This is what makes communications so powerful in the here and now.

Don't try to beat the media. Be YOUR media.

So here goes.

What female business leaders want to be on my podcast? The only technical specification required is really easy. You just need Skype so I can patch you into my recording software. That means you can be anywhere in the world and have your voice heard on a Top 200 marketing and management podcast. That and I usually record on Friday afternoons from 2pm-4pm Pacific Time. In addition, I usually write a piece and embed each podcast here on LinkedIn for additional exposure. 

So what are you waiting for? Hit me up here on LinkedIn and let's get diverse and eccentric and underrepresented voices in marketing and management heard!

Geoffrey Colon is a communications designer at Microsoft where he works on search advertising products. Listen or be a guest on "The Marketing Podcast for Eccentric Minds," Disruptive FM and a soon to be released podcast for Bing Network. Check out his upcoming book Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal on Kindle, Hardcover and Audio this year.