Marnie Robbins: welcome everyone to the next episode of The Shift. I'm Marnie Robbins, and as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Mindy, my main gal Honcoop. And today we're talking about something that might feel a little unexpected for an HR podcast, and that is podcasting itself. Not podcasting in the download count, sponsorship, deal sense. We're not here to talk about growing your audience. We're talking about podcasting as one of the most Underused relationship building tools HR and people leaders have. And in a world where HR leaders are stretched thin, burnt out, and have quietly lost some of their own voice, that might be exactly the shift worth making. And that's exactly why today's guest has built his career on this exact topic. Mindy actually connected us. She calls Greg the expert of podcast. And after this conversation, Today you'll see why he's actually walked us through a comedy of ours this morning already. Craig Wasserman calls himself a relationship generator, someone who creates opportunities by connecting people, ideas, and conversations in ways that lead to real business outcomes. He built that instinct across two decades in relationship development at places like Yahoo and CBS and in startups along the way. Always finding the through line between a good conversation and a real opportunity. Today, as head of relationships for rss.com, one of the world's largest podcast hosting platforms, Greg's mission is simple. Everyone should have a podcast. Not as a content play, but as a relationship engine. His own show, Podcast Network Insights, is proof of that concept. So, Greg, welcome to the shift.
Greg Wasserman: Thank you guys so much.
Mindy Honcoop: Mm.
Greg Wasserman: I don't think I
Marnie Robbins: And
Greg Wasserman: mean, we don't have to talk anymore. You did such an amazing job. Anyone that's listening
Marnie Robbins: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: to this, y you got the answer right there. Done.
Marnie Robbins: Just do it. And then it all goes downhill from there.
Mindy Honcoop: Marnie's brilliant at the intros. She's brilliant at them. I No, no, uphill.
Marnie Robbins: Uphill, uphill. But one of the things that I did love about our intro conversation with Greg was you talked about through line. And that's actually how we start every conversation, maybe a little obviously, but to get us kickstarted in the conversation, Greg, what is this story or your through line? that got you living by the idea that you say life is all about time and relationship.
Greg Wasserman: So if you think about taking yourself back to child, you know, for me, the childhood was I was an athlete, had a very competitive brother from an academic standpoint. Parents are like, all right, you gotta do well. So you're doing the academics, you're doing the athletics, but you realize as you grow up, you're you're at least my parents threw me into sports, you threw into some kind of club. And you realize as you start growing, like people move out of those places. But that doesn't mean that you your friendships ru are are over. And you see you just start realizing everyone's going into different clubs and different activities, but you love these people. So how do you bring them all together? And so I look at some of my friends who I played sports with, but then went on to play magic cards. I'm like, I don't what did I know about magic cards? Besides like the article that I just read that like they're massive and billions of dollars, whatever, right? And so you're like, well, I can go hang out with these people. Like they're good people. I play sports with them. Like so you just started understanding like how do you connect the dots between friends? And that's ultimately led me into like a career, as we can tell, just listening to me. I love to talk. My background's in sales, like I'm a salesperson in that regard, but more of a relationship generator. And that's because I'll go into a sales meeting, go in like, look, I've got something to sell, but what I have to offer may not be what you want. So let's just connect because we all know people leaders, every one of us, we're all. not staying at our career or staying at the same job that we've we were like our parents for that matter. You know, I look at my mom, 41 years at the same company, same school for that matter. So how could I go if I like Marnie, if I like Mindy, like let's have a half an hour conversation. Let's get to know each other. Let's connect. I'll give you the sales pitch, but like you ultimately tell me what you're looking for. And my job is not necessarily to sell you what I have, but to help you solve a solution. And so if I don't have the answer, I guarantee you, I'm talking to other sales reps here who probably have the solution. So I can go, Mindy, Marnie, I'm gonna save your mailbox, all these emails you're gonna get, which would be amazing for you. I'm gonna introduce you to three people that will actually do what you're looking for. And that's the trust building, your the relationship you're building. The I'm not trying to just sell you on something. And that's ultimately how I've lived most of my career because life is about time and relationships. So let's create that relationship. And the timing today may not be right, but who knows where the timing may take us. And we could look at that from an HR standpoint, like, you're a great person, but not the right fit for this role. So let's stay in contact, keep in contact with me, because maybe I'll have another role. Or maybe I'll be like, I know the right person that I should bring in to create a role for. And so all that kind of goes into the way I look at life.
Mindy Honcoop: Ugh, so good. We talk about humanity here on the shift quite a bit without ever meaning to. it seems to be the underlying underlying theme of of many a conversation. And and I I think that is a shift because I think s often even in HR, you're getting also just sold a lot of things.
Marnie Robbins: Mm.
Mindy Honcoop: It's a lot a lot of noise. And so you don't want to become the very thing you're running away from. and podcasting sometimes has its connotation of of being like could be salesy and and versus relationship building, which I love your shifted mindset around podcast. and just the need for connection. I think that's another thing is we've lost the art of connecting. with in humanity and how to have conversations. And so, how are you kind of seeing r the relationship building through podcasting actually helping us reconnect and and build the connection month muscle?
Greg Wasserman: So the way I look at podcasting, this is why I say everyone should have one. So it doesn't matter what industry. That's why I can have this conversation with everyone that's listening to to your podcast. Is if you use your podcast for relationship building, meaning, let's say you have we we can go down multiple paths here, right? So you're an HR leader, bring on people from your your company and start bringing those conversations to light. Use it as a recruiting tool, use it as just how do we bring light of conversations and people or sorry, people inside the company, what they're doing, what they're working on, and create that connection, that moment. You're not looking for how many people are downloading this. You're making that person feel good. You're building a relationship between you as the host and the person you're bringing on. you know, from I always say it, I use it as a lead magnet. And so you're like, great, how do I go ahead and find talent? How do I go find different people that I could bring on? And the people you're bringing on are ultimately the people you want to build relationships with. Like that's the key piece. Who do I want to build relationships with? Those are going to be my guests. And those guests then as we did here, you do a 30 minute pre-call. So like, great, how do I get to know these people? Start getting an understanding of are they married? Do they have kids? Like actually the human component of them. But also then you start mapping out what would this conversation be like when we actually sit down, as we did here. For a podcast. And then just as we're doing right now, you bring that person on and you have that conversation. So now you've actually got about 90 minutes of a connection with this person. But it becomes completely different because most of us, and I've I've heard this many times. People are like, I don't need have a podcast. I'm having these conversations already. I mean, that's exactly why I started a podcast. Because I'm having the conversations with my guest already. The difference is. Is it's behind closed doors. And once you start having that conversation as a recording, it changes a completely different atmosphere. Changes the vibe, but it also makes me feel like my voice is being heard beyond just this internal conversation we're having that's not being recorded. So there's so much more I can continue to say, but like I don't want to get long-winded because I tend to do that. But that's that that that's kind of the way I look at it.
Marnie Robbins: What I love about that is you said ninety minutes of connection that we've already had. And it's like now, yeah, I know Greg. We're we're we're tight, you know, as far as yeah, it it's that that connection piece, but I also think of the conversations that you're having behind closed doors. And when I think altruistically, the reason we started the shift was look, Mindy and I are yes, we have expertise in people and culture and you know, human centered design, but really there's so many more great stories. Out there and bringing those people to light. And so I think that relationship building is not only internally between the guest and the host, but how can we share with our networks? And I'm even thinking from a people and culture perspective, like career seekers, you name it. where have you seen the best case study for a podcast really being born out of just strictly because naturally they they felt that a podcast might be cool.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, I guess I could look at mine, but like if if if we go back to I think your intro that you're talking about, Marnie, what I believe is we're too often, and I and I know even in the HR world, we're all metric driven, right? It's like retention, salary, like everything is metric driven because that's just kind of the world we have to live on. I look at metrics as a relationship building. And so if we start moving away from using podcasts to go in, How many people are listening? How many downloads did I get? This isn't worth my time and effort. Because we know HR leaders, like leaders in general, you are overworked, underwhelmed, stressed out, burnt out, taking on one more thing that just feels it feels like work. But when you treat it as, hold on, relationships aren't work. I mean, they are because you want to keep cultivating it, but like you think about how much value comes out of a relationship. where this takes you, not only from the company standpoint, but from your career standpoint, from the thought leadership standpoint. So if you move away from these metrics of like I need to get downloads, I mean, I look at my numbers just for the sake of having it, because I want to get a I hit 20 episodes, you know, celebrate and promote it out there just so that I can feel good about I made it past the eight episodes that most people don't make it. But beyond that, I'm just looking at what are the connections, what are the relationships I'm able to have and then how do we use that? Once again, life is about time relationships. We have no clue when those relationships will come to fruition. It's my job just to keep cultivating it. No different than how I do with you two. It's like I'm not expecting to stay in contact every three months, four months, five months, but it's not the, hey, two years have gone by. I need something. So now I'm reaching out to you that just feels then transactional. And no one likes to be feel Transactional. So is an a leader, it's an HR leader is an employee, like no one wants to feel like a number. So if we can use that podcast to build those relationships, to cultivate them, to create something that's more than than you're an employee here, or I'm using this as a recruiting tool, it's a relationship engine. And that's the key piece for me.
Mindy Honcoop: can also when you come through that way because I've listened to podcasts you can pick up when it's not about relation and I just will I'll just turn it off because it does feel very transactional cold and scripted. This and it feels like a points trying to be forced versus a natural conversation like developing. and I can imagine like at the HR leaders they're in conversations all day long and being able to also kind of Showcase the type of conversations happening in your organization in an organic way, and being able to have people get a sense of that would be able for individuals to both see how our company is doing things differently internally, but also capture the, you know, what does it feel like to be in this organization? Who is in this organization? Who are You know, how are they thinking about things and how might I be attracted to that or not? Or how might I as a leader want to take some of that because it's inspiring to me. I'm like, I never thought I never thought about it like that, doing that in a company. I want to go try that out in my organization. Cause I know for me when I'm listening to podcasts, I am so inspired and I think differently and I get into curiosity and ideation. It kind of takes me out of the weeds of my day to day and helps give me a perspective from, you know, someone else. So get to see into someone else's snow globe, which is is kind of fun. I think in HR, we often can get into the weeds and and get siloed in. And having conversations is another way to step back and we just get to ask questions and hear from someone else.
Greg Wasserman: A hundred percent. I mean, if you are bringing people into your office and going like, hey, let's sit down and have a conversation. Imagine if you were able to record that and the question's now you're able to get out there. And in some cases, no different than how we push people to, hey, fill out this how do we get a net promoter score that we're gonna go use as a marketing tactic so that we can tell people of How great our company and our greater culture is and yada yada. It's like, what's better way than actually bringing your employees on into a conversation or bringing in leadership? Or I mean you can look at it as bringing in vendors. Like there's so many different conversations as
Mindy Honcoop: Mm.
Greg Wasserman: an HR leader you could look at. That's not just an internal marketing tool, but how do we strengthen our relationships with anyone for that matter you want? Like I'm not saying you have to. Only do this style of podcast. I'm just saying, what are the relationships you would love to cultivate? And those that would be the basis of your podcast. So if you want to cultivate the relationships with your vendors and understanding, hey, what are you doing to help my company? And now you're able to go and say to your bosses, like, look, we're working with this vendor. And I've now got a half hour conversation with this entire vendor suite of why I've chosen this company or why I'm not choosing this company based on the conversation. Like you do 50 of those conversations. Now that is my thing. You do 50 conversations that's a week, but that's 50 relationships. But you could always do it in seasons. Like there's so many different ways to look at how you approach this. You're like, all right, I can do a season where I talk to vendors. I do a season where I talk internal employees. I do a season here. So like my whole thing is of course the 50 episodes. But for anyone that's listening, like if that's overwhelming There's so many different ways to think about how you would structure this. At the core of it is the relationships and what do you do with those relationships thereafter.
Marnie Robbins: Well what like I have so many light bulbs, you know, but you had said the relationship driven is the goal of the podcast. But if I am wearing an HR or People Pro hat and I'm in an organization and we talk about MPS scores and we go on listening tours and we have these one on one conversations and I'm remembering the old adage like the HR and the cardigan, you know, and like that one-on-one provide me feedback type type situation, but throw a podcast in there and then all of a sudden the vibe and the tone is a completely different conversation because then it's for you're you're almost establishing weirdly trust through exposure because that conversation is open for others to hear. What's interesting about that, that's let's say we're talking like our first season that we wanted to focus on was for internal team members. What would be the first step? Like if I don't know anything about podcasting, like what what would be the thing that I want to focus on on like yes, I want to build this relationship. Now what do I gotta do?
Greg Wasserman: so I mean, from a tactical standpoint, from a system standpoint, you know, it's very easy. I mean, I'm the head of relationships for rss.com. We have a free hosting platform. So to get your your voice out there, you could record it. we're currently recording over Riverside. You could do it over Zoom. It's not the the the it's not highly recommended, but you could do it, right? It's just getting out there. you don't need a thousand dollar mic so we're not talking about expensive the the nice thing is is there's so much technology that'll help you clean up a lot of the sound but ideally be in a quiet room get that get a good mic it's a hundred dollars seventy five dollars on amazon easy figure out what you want to call it and the graphics always understand the strategy of like what am I calling it from that standpoint. let's see here what else record it we didn't talk about this but ultimately you're gonna want to repurpose that content. So let's put that on a shelf. I'll come back to that because we symphone focused on the relationship component. but in terms of the questions you wanna be asking, like, what do I want to get out of this? And those are gonna be the kind of the kind of questions that fuel. you know, you can, as you guys did, you gave me a list of questions beforehand. So we all have the power of AI. It's like, great, I've got Greg coming on. This is what I want to talk about. Give me a list of questions, knowing that it's going to be still free form. So, like you've given me some structure, but we're kind of just going with wherever this takes us, based on where I guess my answers come and where you guys wanna take the conversation. but at the end of the day, you can choose how long you want that conversation to be. I say the 60 minutes because remember, I'm not focusing on downloads. I'm looking at hi, if I can get 60 minutes with this person and get 60 dedicated minutes with them, that's gonna be more from a relationship standpoint than I would ever imagine. That if no one wants to listen to, because the average listening time is about 38 to 45 minutes is an average podcast. So if you're as mine, some of them are over 60 minutes. And I know that's probably deterring people. They're gonna look and go like, hold on, 60 minutes. I don't have 60 minutes to give this. Great. You turn in those clips, you you turn them into any handouts and information that you want, and actually becomes the content fuels your your the the conversation fuels your content engine. And so as an HR leader, I'm now able to go, great, I had this great conversation. I connected with Marnie, I gave Marnie assets, so she promotes it. I want to touch on that from an HR standpoint as well. But there's there's the value of now what do I do with that conversation? I could turn it into. a handout that I send to employees. I can turn this into here are the lessons I learned. I can turn this into a listicle. I can turn this into a worksheet. I can turn that conversation and then asterisk all my conversations into all these different pieces of content that fuel what I want to be doing as a a further an HR leader.
Mindy Honcoop: I mean, I think that's like so powerful because HR leaders literally are having a lot of conversations all day long. But I also love too, and I hadn't thought about it this way, but sometimes in organizations, HR leaders aren't always in a place of trust. Like they're not seen by others. They're not the person that you're gonna want to open up and talk to. they may also there may be like a power differential, depending on who you're talking to. But immediately if you're in role of I'm the host and you're my guest. That like changes, that kind of shifts whatever maybe role that you're in before and whatever feelings about that. It kind of takes you from being the HR person to now being this podcast host and you're my guest. And now we get to like have a con you're not talking to just the HR person. You're talking about the topic we've selected based on all the great things you just told us. And we have some structure for this conversation. So it kind of takes us for a moment outside of these roles. That the workplace has put us into to maybe have a more s a platform for a different a shift of a conversation that we maybe couldn't have had without that. which I just I hadn't really thought about the benefit of that. And if I'm gonna be having these conversations anyways, so much better than okay, we talk about having stay conversations. We talk about having you know, after an engagement survey, let's do some focus groups or let's dive in deeper talking to some people. If we're actually putting these into podcasts, now we're getting to create other content. Like, all right, there's some things that all these employees are saying that maybe we could put into some manager training. Maybe we could put it it goes from there. Like the whole list of all the things. And now now we don't even need an engagement survey. Now we've like, we are now we're getting a sense of where people are at. If they feel trusted
Greg Wasserman: I
Mindy Honcoop: to share.
Greg Wasserman: if if anyone's just listening to this, I have like the biggest smile on my face based on what you're saying. Because that's true. Like the guard comes down if I look at it from a I'm getting an email or you get an email from HR saying like I want to talk to you. All of a sudden, be sweating,
Marnie Robbins: Mm-hmm.
Greg Wasserman: what did I do? Right? Like no one it's like going to the the the principal's office. Like, what did I do? Why am why is HR wanting to talk to me? It'll it never feels good in that regard, which Is a is a problem. It's like, how do we change that? But if I of
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: a sudden go like, hey, I value you. I would love to bring you on to the company's podcast, or I would love to bring you like, wow, you feel that that is has a completely different feeling that creates a a different kind of trust. it's not the I'm trying to get you now. I can't wait to get you on this podcast. Like, because remember, your goal is to make your guest look good, which ultimately makes you look good. So you don't want Whoever you're bringing on, an employee, your leadership team, your vendors, industry, professionals, whoever you are trying to talk to, they're building a relationship. So the lesson you want to do is ruin that by, haha, I got you. I got you to say something, and now no, it it that's not gonna happen, which is somehow what happens when it's behind closed doors or
Mindy Honcoop: Mm
Greg Wasserman: The objective is unknown. but you know if the objective when it's a podcast, you're like, here are the questions I'm gonna ask you. This is the purpose of the podcast. This is why we're doing this. This is what I want from you. This is what I want to give you. Like all that actually becomes. So back to like I had the biggest smile as you were you were saying that because that's literally what I tell everyone. If from a sales standpoint, when you're using from Lead Gen, it's like imagine you're trying to cold call or email people and they're like, Nope, delete, delete, delete. I don't want to talk to this person. Come on my podcast, like, I'm gonna respond to that same exact thing from any any medium.
Marnie Robbins: I think about too the the case of I don't know about you but how many times I've had to come in after maybe a tough decision that a that a company's had to make. Maybe it's a re-org, maybe it's you know something along those lines. And so I want to talk a little bit about vulnerability in the in the podcast arena. And I'm refle reflecting back on a time where I had to send out an email of like, hey, we knew this was gonna happen. We t we said that this was the N North Star. It feels really gross right now to people. They're scared. They're unknown. And so when I look at it from a people and culture lens, of there might be an opportunity with an internal podcast, anyway, to be able to have these conversations with your CEO, with your founder, with your CFO, or just even to recap or retro in a way that is more humanizing and more honest and contextual to bring so it's not always highlighting the best but potentially highlighting us in our messiness and so that brings me to you know kind of pondering of does that work though like it it in my in my brain I feel like this is gonna that that seems like an excellent case study right but where does that break or or what should we be thinking of if we're saying let that's have an honest conversation about what's not going great.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, from that standpoint, if you're everything doesn't go. I mean, life is messy, life isn't perfect, right? So I think that's the joys of having a podcast is you can have those messy conversations, you can have those honest conversations, and you can breathe to it. The other side is is if we think about town halls, right? I mean, think about where town halls have come now. Who's raising their hand to ask the questions of of leadership? Who's asking the I mean, it's been a while I've had a town hall, but it's like the benefits question, or like when are we gonna do this? It's like, how do we then bring that up into a podcast and then give people the ability to to engage with that conversation in a completely different way than the canned town halls, which we all know how those kind of all work out. But yeah, you could do an entire season of like, all right, I'm gonna bring in the leadership. We just had this messy situation we had, whether it was layoffs or we missed our numbers, whatever it may be, you are the able to guide that conversation and and build the trust with your company. maybe you're maybe you're not the host, and maybe your your founder, maybe your leader is the host. Like, no one's saying you necessarily have to be the exact host. I'm just saying. Everyone should have a podcast. It's just a matter of how you want to take that. You guys are doing it as co-hosts, right? So, like, it's very easy for great the HR leader and and someone else, we're gonna be co-hosts. Like, you've got the ability to structure it really how you want. The point is, what are the relationships we want to build and how do we strengthen those? Because right now we're not, we're relying on AI to do a lot of work.
Mindy Honcoop: Mm-hmm.
Greg Wasserman: we're We're what is it? We're in a pandemic or epidemic of loneliness. So I think as an HR leader, we have the ability to control a conversation, to build that connection, to build that trust, in whatever capacity we want to. once again, depending on who you want to talk to, what kind of relationships we want to build, but we have the ability to do that. And there's another thing which we haven't touched on, but I think. I keep saying this over and over. So I feel like I I want to drop this other pin in here. Is we're also living in a state right now where we are turning to our employees and asking employees to be voices, to be brand advocates, to post on social media, to help drive, you know, the recruitment of our company, going like, I love working here, and here's why. So if we are leaning on our employees to be these brand advocates, to to talk about our company and what they're doing there, then shouldn't we also have a podcast and showing then our employees, hey, I have a podcast, I'm gonna bring you as a guest, get you comfortable so that hopefully this becomes your next piece. Because if you can engage a a a I was gonna say plethora, but a I just love that word, but a a a quorum of Of your employees to all start their own podcasts. And now each one is a brand advocate, and we don't care. Like, let's just face it, HR people, like once again, as already said, we're all going to be leaving a company. The goal is in HR is like, how can I help this person stay here as long and empower them? But if if I'm an engineer and an engineer starts their own podcast interviewing other things about an engineer world, but they're talking about our company. And then they leave our company and they go somewhere else. Great, the podcast stays with them. That's okay. But at least for that moment, they're talking about us, they're fueling us. And and it's our job to help those employees become a voice for our company so that what we're doing with the culture we're building is being elevated by our employees. So I'll pause there, but like I knew that was something I wanted to touch on because that is a key piece for why everyone should have a podcast. But as an HR leader, how we can show that as a cultural component for our employees and build that culture that I think right now most workplaces are asking for.
Mindy Honcoop: I I love that too, because it's building muscle like around helping someone get behind a microphone. I communication skills. How do you connect? So if you're asking them to come on and be a host, or you know, maybe they're a co-host first with you, so they're learning through doing and and and being able to ask questions. You have to be curious. It's not like, okay, yes, I can ask AI, but if you really want to You know, be in a conversation. It's not like you're just reading off every question. You can start that way, but now you're I'm engaged. I'm listening, active listening, being curious, seeking to understand, maybe taking the allowing the conversation to go deeper. I mean, these are all connected skills that we're not seeing in organizations. We're seeing like a deficit of connection and the ability to connect. So it's like the podcast is like without the going to some learning and development class, a a way. Also, to start to build this muscle, which is really exciting. I hadn't thought about that.
Marnie Robbins: Well what else it reminds me of is the cultural connectedness that we literally just talked about this morning. It it's connectedness
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Marnie Robbins: of of the cultural norms within your organization. And one thing that Greg said that I really like too was along the, you know, it's okay if they go somewhere else, take their podcast somewhere else. One thing I always say
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Marnie Robbins: is you as an organization, if I'm putting together a strategy for an org, I just want to be a good place to come from, right? And if we're a good
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Marnie Robbins: place to come from and we've developed those relationships and we've had those conversations, they're brand ambassadors beyond the the termination letter, you know, and so to me, is there a it it almost feels like there is that learning and development, there is that that knowledge share, that connectedness. interwoven theme that I'm hearing and even now I'm just rambling, but like AI. You know, we talk about AI implementations and whatnot. Why, you know, that's how the conversation. People get a little little jumpy around it. Let's talk about how we're implementing it in our organizations. What's working, what didn't work, what did we learn? Where things like that. But I I I think for me mostly is wondering, Greg, from from your standpoint, do we need themes? Like you said we can do seasons and depending on who you want to build those relationships with, but do we need like how important is brand identity within these conversations? Do you kind of let go a little bit of that because we're having those conversations or because there's there's just so many possible conversations that you could have on a podcast.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, I think the answer to that is the guide of of what you what you want the relationship to be and how you're how you're trying to fuel that. So if it's an internal one, I mean, vulnerability is the key piece. And I think you mentioned it. I I love Brene Brown. So there's the how do I be vulnerable without telling you everything that's going in my life? It's like you could still as as a as a leader, we we know that skill set or we're working on that skill set ideally. But if I'm trying to do this with internal employees, you know, I I want them to know me. Like that is that is a key piece that once again, this is if this is going to be something that others are going to be listening to, I want them to be, I like Greg. He's approachable. he doesn't know all the answers. He's doing the best he can, but he's creating this environment, this culture that we all want to work for. We all are are happy to, even when those moments are are are difficult. Like, We just did layoffs or no one got a raise or whatever the difficult piece may be. The human component is what's missing. I think in part of my LinkedIn, one of my titles, you know, relationship generation relationship generator, but it's also a humanization person. And too often we're numbers in a spreadsheet, we aren't real people. So, how we as leaders help create that human component of what this company stands for? Not just the values we've got there beyond us, but ultimately how are we living those values? How are we showing those values? How are we creating a culture that is human and creating that? Because at the end of the day, you can say AI is going to take all of our jobs. Sure, but you still need the human component. Component, even if all of our jobs somehow get taken by AI, it's it's that human component, it's that relationship that's gonna keep us all connected. and so I think from that standpoint, that's kind of how I would answer your question of like, what what do I want to get from these questions? What do I want to get from these conversations? Each person's gonna answer that individually. do the seasons if you want, or talk to if you've got 300 employees in your company, well, that's Fifty episodes right there and that's
Marnie Robbins: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: that you could cover in a in a year. If you're like, I don't have the time, then do it bi weekly. Like no one is saying that you have to do it weekly. That's just what I love because it's a relationship generation there. But if you don't have the bandwidth to do all that, then great, break it up into seasons. But I still believe the whole point of our conversation here is everyone should have a podcast using it for the relationships and development you want. I don't think I've said it, but like Podcasting is the greatest relationship generator that fuels your no-like and trust, that builds a content flywheel. So if we look at that, I'm now building relationships. More people get to know not necessarily just me as the host, but my company, who I'm working for, others, other companies, other industry leaders that may be listening to this. That I'm using it as a marketing, a retrenchion, recruitment, whatever it may be. And then the content that comes out of it. I mean, hopefully there's good nuggets that your guest says and they turn into little clips. Maybe they just ramble and you're like, great, I'm gonna aggregate these five conversations that I've had with these five employees or five five vendors or five leaders. And as I think, as you said, Marnie, how do I turn this into whatever that survey or whatever? piece of content I may want to because right now, I have to imagine most of us aren't recording the conversations because what HR conversation wants to be recorded when it's on a podcast, it becomes a little different. And and
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: now you get actually the feedback. You start getting actual data that you can use. You start learning what what more are your employees saying, what more are your vendors saying? so there's a lot to the value of having a podcast for anyone specifically, you know, the the the anyone that's listening to this.
Marnie Robbins: And it's the storytelling too. I th a lot of times
Mindy Honcoop: Just gonna say that. I was just thinking of story. No, you go.
Marnie Robbins: it but I mean we talk about that. I think that a lot of the mentoring and the coaching and counseling that we do, particularly for co-founders and startups and whatnot, is we forget to tell our stories. And there's so much powerf powerful lessons that that you learn from hearing other people in different situations. And even if that story is not apples to apples the story that someone else is walking through at that moment, they still learn from it. So a strong tool for learning and development as well. idea generation and I know we we have about ten minutes left but I do have one more question as far as like for those people who say I don't I like I don't have good ideas. I can't come up with you know creative like this is what I think should be on a podcast. Any you know good suggestions as far as those people who are drawn a blank but think that they might want to do this.
Greg Wasserman: I I would start with just I guess the real life example of like how I started my own podcast and and where that came from, right? So I looked at the market and my podcast is about podcast networks. So I saw there's so many podcasts out there about podcasting. I don't want to be a guru teaching other people about podcasting, but no one was talking to podcast networks. I'm like, great, there's a little niche that I could fulfill that I can already have in these conversations with podcast networks. So let's now instead of having a a one-on-one call with this person where you do the let's talk about podcasting, let's talk about life, let's talk about yada yada, let's actually do an hour focus on just podcast network. And then from there, the first question that came to mind is like, well, what is a podcast network? Great. Every first guest or sorry, every guest I'm gonna ask the first question will be, how do you define a podcast network? Right. And so from there, it just then like, well, what else do I want to know? Like, okay, well, how did you get into podcasting? How did you start a podcast network? Right. So going back to what Mindy was saying, it's all curiosity. So if we think about how did you how did you end up working at this company? How did you start your career? Like the joys of being an HR leader is looking at the person's through line or going, did this person stay within this industry? Or did we hire outside of this industry? Hey. How did you end up this company? Because your background is X, Y, and Z, and you didn't actually come from I don't know, whatever industry we're currently, our company currently works in. Like, what made you want to change industries? Like you're you're just getting curious. You're able to start asking those questions. And then you'll start understanding like, what story do I want to tell? I like that you call that because. Part of a podcast is, and I just came back from a conference. And so part of the conference was it was the academic space and everyone's talking about rigor, rigor, rigor. And I don't, I I'm like, I never hear that word, but it's big in the academic word, right? Academic world. But part of the every speaker that was using that word was saying, you need to tell the good story because no matter how much you researched, how factual you're telling, people still want to lean into a story. So Give me a story to tell. Otherwise, no one's going to listen and you're going to lose the message of what you were trying to give in the first place. So the curiosity of like, what story do I want to tell? What questions do I want to get answered for my own self? that would ultimately help fuel. So that becomes another piece. Like if you're a, if you're a a beginning HR leader or an assistant or you're just coming up, like maybe. Maybe your questions, maybe you start interviewing other HR leaders. You're like, hey, who do I learn from? Because technically the only person you can learn from is your boss right now. And let's be
Marnie Robbins: Mm, yeah.
Greg Wasserman: honest, we all know how that goes. You're like, I I want to ask my boss a question, but I don't know. I want to feel stupid, whatever. So great. You start asking other leaders and you bring them on and you're like, now. Your boss is looking at you going, like, wow, you are improving so much more, yada yada. And it's not just my tutelage of doing it, but because you've gone out there and you've sought mentorship from everyone else. And now, if a good boss is looking at that and going, Hold on, I don't want you talking to all my competitors or all these other HR leaders because you're gonna leave me and then I've just lost you. Well, then you're not actually being a good leader in that first place because You should want them to gain knowledge, but you still should be able to keep them within your company and going like, I'm giving you the wings to grow. I'm giving you the wings to do and and do what you want to be doing. And I am the leader for you, but I can't teach you everything. So you're out there gaining some more perspectives. Like those are all good things you can be thinking about. But you're right. It comes to storytelling. What's the story I want to tell? Curiosity is going to kill the cat in this regard. And it's a good thing.
Mindy Honcoop: I love that. I mean, there's that also is like that's a shift in mindset. That's a leader that's thinking about it either from scarcity or from possibility and abundance. And so as a leader, where am I? And why am I why is this feeling coming up for me where I'd want to squash something and take autonomy away from my person? Well, it's probably something I need to reflect on and understand deeper. And also, we had just had a podcast, episode go live. We're talking about quality motivation. And I keep hearing in this about connected culture. How are we truly motivating individuals in an in a a way of care? And that's not to get to a forced outcome or that feels like just an activity that we do. So they're not really getting value, like feeling valued from it. It's it's it was like what you're saying, it's around first of all connectedness, relationship building And I if we counted that the words probably use a thousand times and just it's time together, but also autonomy that the and tr and which is like trust and allowing that person to go and have the freedom to do that. But then it's also around competency building and and being able to feel like you're growing and progressing towards something. So it's this podcasting also hits all three of the kind of basic fundamental criteria of quality motivation.
Greg Wasserman: Microps, all done. You're right. Yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Ha ha
Greg Wasserman: I mean
Mindy Honcoop: This like conversation to me now is like I I knew podcasting's awesome. And when we were talking together, I was like, is it a crazy idea that every person because I love how you say that and I was like, HR people have everyone a podcast. But then I was like, when I hear you talk about it, I'm like, yes, they should. All employees should have a podcast. And this like you just like resemented that even further for me today.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, if you look at every different avenue you could think about attaching a podcast to a goal. So how do I look at retention? How do I look at recruiting? Great. So what's the content I'm putting out there? Most likely you're not putting out a lot of content from a why should I work at this company standpoint? If I'm going on Glassdoor and I'm reading reviews, imagine if I had a podcast that actually gave me real 30 minute, 40 minute conversation of like what it's like working there as opposed to the disgruntled employee that left or or the person who's like, yeah, this is great in leadership. It's like you get to put that all in a podcast now and have it as the control. as we talked about, you're you're able to fuel the conversations, connections with employees who are now out there talking. So Well, I like my podcast is my own podcast. It has nothing to do with and it's not tied to my company. But that doesn't mean I'm not saying on my own podcast, like I'm the head of relationships for rss.com. This podcast has nothing to do with rs.com. So imagine now every employee that's probably doing the same thing. They may not be talking about I work a company or this is a company X podcast, but they're like, I'm currently working at Company X. So now you're getting marketing materials about this employee saying, Wow, I want to go work for a company where their employees are actually allowed to have these conversations, to build connections, to build these relationships. And that's gonna fuel from a company standpoint more employee, more employees wanna work for you, more employees wanna stay there, more vendors wanna work for with you, more sales are gonna happen. Like you've now, in a sense, as an HR leader, fueled what you should be doing as a company standpoint. all that and tying that all together and and then you look like a really winner. I was gonna say something else, but I won't swear. So yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Well you can swear, hell. But I mean talk about talk about double micro. Yes.
Mindy Honcoop: No.
Greg Wasserman: You look like a badass. You'll at the end of the day, you'll be the badass. Like look
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Marnie Robbins: HR badassery.
Greg Wasserman: Yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop: People are gonna talk about the company no matter what, no matter where they're writing, Reddit, Glassdoor, Blind. They're gonna be talking about your company.
Marnie Robbins: Yeah. And see.
Mindy Honcoop: You can't you can't stop that.
Greg Wasserman: But you can control part of that narrative. You can
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Greg Wasserman: build the relationships that matter and you can humanize it. And that's becomes the big piece
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Greg Wasserman: because right now there's no humanization. There's the there's the distrust. If I go read something on Glassdoor, or it's like any Yelp review, right? It's like, was this person paid to put up there? Were they asked, please write this review? It's it's the do I trust this? There's not a lot written about it. And then every HR person's got an answer going, like, that was a disgruntled employee, or you know, that's old, we've changed our culture. Like when you actually have a podcast, you're you're able to show all
Mindy Honcoop: Mm-hmm.
Greg Wasserman: those things. So, like, yeah, this is where we are, this is where we're going, this is what
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: we want to do. And our our culture is we're living and breathing, that culture component.
Marnie Robbins: Okay, with that said, I think you have to jump to recording your own podcast with someone else.
Greg Wasserman: Hehehehehe.
Mindy Honcoop: Yes, yes.
Marnie Robbins: Where can people find you, Greg?
Greg Wasserman: so this is the fun part. I'm the do as I say, not as I do person. I live on LinkedIn. I don't have a website. I live on LinkedIn. Greg Wasserman. it's where I've been since eight. It's where I continue to live. I post content five days a week and I love creating connections. So please, this is the other side and we haven't touched on, but I always love ending like this. But The joys of having a podcast is someone's going to listen to it. And ideally, we right now are all talking to a void. And so someone's gonna listen to us and we're gonna ask, please, not just rate and review this podcast, but reach out to your guest because they want that. And then I'm gonna go ahead and say, Hey, Marnie, Mindy. X person just reached out to me. When Mindy and Marnie probably don't know who's listening right now, so they're being like, wow. We now know who's listening and they found value in this episode and that creates such a flywheel. So please follow me on LinkedIn, set up some time. Let's chat. I I connect to anyone because you have no clue where conversation will take you.
Mindy Honcoop: Right. I love it. And it's true. Like I've actually I felt like I was having a text conversation with Greg on LinkedIn. I've never had people real time
Greg Wasserman: I forgot about that.
Mindy Honcoop: respond to your messages.
Greg Wasserman: I totally forgot about that. Yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Okay. Well thanks for being on the shift and we'll talk soon.
Greg Wasserman: Thanks you guys.
Mindy Honcoop: Thank you so much, Greg.
Greg Wasserman: Thank you guys so much.
Mindy Honcoop: Mm.
Greg Wasserman: I don't think I
Marnie Robbins: And
Greg Wasserman: mean, we don't have to talk anymore. You did such an amazing job. Anyone that's listening
Marnie Robbins: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: to this, y you got the answer right there. Done.
Marnie Robbins: Just do it. And then it all goes downhill from there.
Mindy Honcoop: Marnie's brilliant at the intros. She's brilliant at them. I No, no, uphill.
Marnie Robbins: Uphill, uphill. But one of the things that I did love about our intro conversation with Greg was you talked about through line. And that's actually how we start every conversation, maybe a little obviously, but to get us kickstarted in the conversation, Greg, what is this story or your through line? that got you living by the idea that you say life is all about time and relationship.
Greg Wasserman: So if you think about taking yourself back to child, you know, for me, the childhood was I was an athlete, had a very competitive brother from an academic standpoint. Parents are like, all right, you gotta do well. So you're doing the academics, you're doing the athletics, but you realize as you grow up, you're you're at least my parents threw me into sports, you threw into some kind of club. And you realize as you start growing, like people move out of those places. But that doesn't mean that you your friendships ru are are over. And you see you just start realizing everyone's going into different clubs and different activities, but you love these people. So how do you bring them all together? And so I look at some of my friends who I played sports with, but then went on to play magic cards. I'm like, I don't what did I know about magic cards? Besides like the article that I just read that like they're massive and billions of dollars, whatever, right? And so you're like, well, I can go hang out with these people. Like they're good people. I play sports with them. Like so you just started understanding like how do you connect the dots between friends? And that's ultimately led me into like a career, as we can tell, just listening to me. I love to talk. My background's in sales, like I'm a salesperson in that regard, but more of a relationship generator. And that's because I'll go into a sales meeting, go in like, look, I've got something to sell, but what I have to offer may not be what you want. So let's just connect because we all know people leaders, every one of us, we're all. not staying at our career or staying at the same job that we've we were like our parents for that matter. You know, I look at my mom, 41 years at the same company, same school for that matter. So how could I go if I like Marnie, if I like Mindy, like let's have a half an hour conversation. Let's get to know each other. Let's connect. I'll give you the sales pitch, but like you ultimately tell me what you're looking for. And my job is not necessarily to sell you what I have, but to help you solve a solution. And so if I don't have the answer, I guarantee you, I'm talking to other sales reps here who probably have the solution. So I can go, Mindy, Marnie, I'm gonna save your mailbox, all these emails you're gonna get, which would be amazing for you. I'm gonna introduce you to three people that will actually do what you're looking for. And that's the trust building, your the relationship you're building. The I'm not trying to just sell you on something. And that's ultimately how I've lived most of my career because life is about time and relationships. So let's create that relationship. And the timing today may not be right, but who knows where the timing may take us. And we could look at that from an HR standpoint, like, you're a great person, but not the right fit for this role. So let's stay in contact, keep in contact with me, because maybe I'll have another role. Or maybe I'll be like, I know the right person that I should bring in to create a role for. And so all that kind of goes into the way I look at life.
Mindy Honcoop: Ugh, so good. We talk about humanity here on the shift quite a bit without ever meaning to. it seems to be the underlying underlying theme of of many a conversation. And and I I think that is a shift because I think s often even in HR, you're getting also just sold a lot of things.
Marnie Robbins: Mm.
Mindy Honcoop: It's a lot a lot of noise. And so you don't want to become the very thing you're running away from. and podcasting sometimes has its connotation of of being like could be salesy and and versus relationship building, which I love your shifted mindset around podcast. and just the need for connection. I think that's another thing is we've lost the art of connecting. with in humanity and how to have conversations. And so, how are you kind of seeing r the relationship building through podcasting actually helping us reconnect and and build the connection month muscle?
Greg Wasserman: So the way I look at podcasting, this is why I say everyone should have one. So it doesn't matter what industry. That's why I can have this conversation with everyone that's listening to to your podcast. Is if you use your podcast for relationship building, meaning, let's say you have we we can go down multiple paths here, right? So you're an HR leader, bring on people from your your company and start bringing those conversations to light. Use it as a recruiting tool, use it as just how do we bring light of conversations and people or sorry, people inside the company, what they're doing, what they're working on, and create that connection, that moment. You're not looking for how many people are downloading this. You're making that person feel good. You're building a relationship between you as the host and the person you're bringing on. you know, from I always say it, I use it as a lead magnet. And so you're like, great, how do I go ahead and find talent? How do I go find different people that I could bring on? And the people you're bringing on are ultimately the people you want to build relationships with. Like that's the key piece. Who do I want to build relationships with? Those are going to be my guests. And those guests then as we did here, you do a 30 minute pre-call. So like, great, how do I get to know these people? Start getting an understanding of are they married? Do they have kids? Like actually the human component of them. But also then you start mapping out what would this conversation be like when we actually sit down, as we did here. For a podcast. And then just as we're doing right now, you bring that person on and you have that conversation. So now you've actually got about 90 minutes of a connection with this person. But it becomes completely different because most of us, and I've I've heard this many times. People are like, I don't need have a podcast. I'm having these conversations already. I mean, that's exactly why I started a podcast. Because I'm having the conversations with my guest already. The difference is. Is it's behind closed doors. And once you start having that conversation as a recording, it changes a completely different atmosphere. Changes the vibe, but it also makes me feel like my voice is being heard beyond just this internal conversation we're having that's not being recorded. So there's so much more I can continue to say, but like I don't want to get long-winded because I tend to do that. But that's that that that's kind of the way I look at it.
Marnie Robbins: What I love about that is you said ninety minutes of connection that we've already had. And it's like now, yeah, I know Greg. We're we're we're tight, you know, as far as yeah, it it's that that connection piece, but I also think of the conversations that you're having behind closed doors. And when I think altruistically, the reason we started the shift was look, Mindy and I are yes, we have expertise in people and culture and you know, human centered design, but really there's so many more great stories. Out there and bringing those people to light. And so I think that relationship building is not only internally between the guest and the host, but how can we share with our networks? And I'm even thinking from a people and culture perspective, like career seekers, you name it. where have you seen the best case study for a podcast really being born out of just strictly because naturally they they felt that a podcast might be cool.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, I guess I could look at mine, but like if if if we go back to I think your intro that you're talking about, Marnie, what I believe is we're too often, and I and I know even in the HR world, we're all metric driven, right? It's like retention, salary, like everything is metric driven because that's just kind of the world we have to live on. I look at metrics as a relationship building. And so if we start moving away from using podcasts to go in, How many people are listening? How many downloads did I get? This isn't worth my time and effort. Because we know HR leaders, like leaders in general, you are overworked, underwhelmed, stressed out, burnt out, taking on one more thing that just feels it feels like work. But when you treat it as, hold on, relationships aren't work. I mean, they are because you want to keep cultivating it, but like you think about how much value comes out of a relationship. where this takes you, not only from the company standpoint, but from your career standpoint, from the thought leadership standpoint. So if you move away from these metrics of like I need to get downloads, I mean, I look at my numbers just for the sake of having it, because I want to get a I hit 20 episodes, you know, celebrate and promote it out there just so that I can feel good about I made it past the eight episodes that most people don't make it. But beyond that, I'm just looking at what are the connections, what are the relationships I'm able to have and then how do we use that? Once again, life is about time relationships. We have no clue when those relationships will come to fruition. It's my job just to keep cultivating it. No different than how I do with you two. It's like I'm not expecting to stay in contact every three months, four months, five months, but it's not the, hey, two years have gone by. I need something. So now I'm reaching out to you that just feels then transactional. And no one likes to be feel Transactional. So is an a leader, it's an HR leader is an employee, like no one wants to feel like a number. So if we can use that podcast to build those relationships, to cultivate them, to create something that's more than than you're an employee here, or I'm using this as a recruiting tool, it's a relationship engine. And that's the key piece for me.
Mindy Honcoop: can also when you come through that way because I've listened to podcasts you can pick up when it's not about relation and I just will I'll just turn it off because it does feel very transactional cold and scripted. This and it feels like a points trying to be forced versus a natural conversation like developing. and I can imagine like at the HR leaders they're in conversations all day long and being able to also kind of Showcase the type of conversations happening in your organization in an organic way, and being able to have people get a sense of that would be able for individuals to both see how our company is doing things differently internally, but also capture the, you know, what does it feel like to be in this organization? Who is in this organization? Who are You know, how are they thinking about things and how might I be attracted to that or not? Or how might I as a leader want to take some of that because it's inspiring to me. I'm like, I never thought I never thought about it like that, doing that in a company. I want to go try that out in my organization. Cause I know for me when I'm listening to podcasts, I am so inspired and I think differently and I get into curiosity and ideation. It kind of takes me out of the weeds of my day to day and helps give me a perspective from, you know, someone else. So get to see into someone else's snow globe, which is is kind of fun. I think in HR, we often can get into the weeds and and get siloed in. And having conversations is another way to step back and we just get to ask questions and hear from someone else.
Greg Wasserman: A hundred percent. I mean, if you are bringing people into your office and going like, hey, let's sit down and have a conversation. Imagine if you were able to record that and the question's now you're able to get out there. And in some cases, no different than how we push people to, hey, fill out this how do we get a net promoter score that we're gonna go use as a marketing tactic so that we can tell people of How great our company and our greater culture is and yada yada. It's like, what's better way than actually bringing your employees on into a conversation or bringing in leadership? Or I mean you can look at it as bringing in vendors. Like there's so many different conversations as
Mindy Honcoop: Mm.
Greg Wasserman: an HR leader you could look at. That's not just an internal marketing tool, but how do we strengthen our relationships with anyone for that matter you want? Like I'm not saying you have to. Only do this style of podcast. I'm just saying, what are the relationships you would love to cultivate? And those that would be the basis of your podcast. So if you want to cultivate the relationships with your vendors and understanding, hey, what are you doing to help my company? And now you're able to go and say to your bosses, like, look, we're working with this vendor. And I've now got a half hour conversation with this entire vendor suite of why I've chosen this company or why I'm not choosing this company based on the conversation. Like you do 50 of those conversations. Now that is my thing. You do 50 conversations that's a week, but that's 50 relationships. But you could always do it in seasons. Like there's so many different ways to look at how you approach this. You're like, all right, I can do a season where I talk to vendors. I do a season where I talk internal employees. I do a season here. So like my whole thing is of course the 50 episodes. But for anyone that's listening, like if that's overwhelming There's so many different ways to think about how you would structure this. At the core of it is the relationships and what do you do with those relationships thereafter.
Marnie Robbins: Well what like I have so many light bulbs, you know, but you had said the relationship driven is the goal of the podcast. But if I am wearing an HR or People Pro hat and I'm in an organization and we talk about MPS scores and we go on listening tours and we have these one on one conversations and I'm remembering the old adage like the HR and the cardigan, you know, and like that one-on-one provide me feedback type type situation, but throw a podcast in there and then all of a sudden the vibe and the tone is a completely different conversation because then it's for you're you're almost establishing weirdly trust through exposure because that conversation is open for others to hear. What's interesting about that, that's let's say we're talking like our first season that we wanted to focus on was for internal team members. What would be the first step? Like if I don't know anything about podcasting, like what what would be the thing that I want to focus on on like yes, I want to build this relationship. Now what do I gotta do?
Greg Wasserman: so I mean, from a tactical standpoint, from a system standpoint, you know, it's very easy. I mean, I'm the head of relationships for rss.com. We have a free hosting platform. So to get your your voice out there, you could record it. we're currently recording over Riverside. You could do it over Zoom. It's not the the the it's not highly recommended, but you could do it, right? It's just getting out there. you don't need a thousand dollar mic so we're not talking about expensive the the nice thing is is there's so much technology that'll help you clean up a lot of the sound but ideally be in a quiet room get that get a good mic it's a hundred dollars seventy five dollars on amazon easy figure out what you want to call it and the graphics always understand the strategy of like what am I calling it from that standpoint. let's see here what else record it we didn't talk about this but ultimately you're gonna want to repurpose that content. So let's put that on a shelf. I'll come back to that because we symphone focused on the relationship component. but in terms of the questions you wanna be asking, like, what do I want to get out of this? And those are gonna be the kind of the kind of questions that fuel. you know, you can, as you guys did, you gave me a list of questions beforehand. So we all have the power of AI. It's like, great, I've got Greg coming on. This is what I want to talk about. Give me a list of questions, knowing that it's going to be still free form. So, like you've given me some structure, but we're kind of just going with wherever this takes us, based on where I guess my answers come and where you guys wanna take the conversation. but at the end of the day, you can choose how long you want that conversation to be. I say the 60 minutes because remember, I'm not focusing on downloads. I'm looking at hi, if I can get 60 minutes with this person and get 60 dedicated minutes with them, that's gonna be more from a relationship standpoint than I would ever imagine. That if no one wants to listen to, because the average listening time is about 38 to 45 minutes is an average podcast. So if you're as mine, some of them are over 60 minutes. And I know that's probably deterring people. They're gonna look and go like, hold on, 60 minutes. I don't have 60 minutes to give this. Great. You turn in those clips, you you turn them into any handouts and information that you want, and actually becomes the content fuels your your the the conversation fuels your content engine. And so as an HR leader, I'm now able to go, great, I had this great conversation. I connected with Marnie, I gave Marnie assets, so she promotes it. I want to touch on that from an HR standpoint as well. But there's there's the value of now what do I do with that conversation? I could turn it into. a handout that I send to employees. I can turn this into here are the lessons I learned. I can turn this into a listicle. I can turn this into a worksheet. I can turn that conversation and then asterisk all my conversations into all these different pieces of content that fuel what I want to be doing as a a further an HR leader.
Mindy Honcoop: I mean, I think that's like so powerful because HR leaders literally are having a lot of conversations all day long. But I also love too, and I hadn't thought about it this way, but sometimes in organizations, HR leaders aren't always in a place of trust. Like they're not seen by others. They're not the person that you're gonna want to open up and talk to. they may also there may be like a power differential, depending on who you're talking to. But immediately if you're in role of I'm the host and you're my guest. That like changes, that kind of shifts whatever maybe role that you're in before and whatever feelings about that. It kind of takes you from being the HR person to now being this podcast host and you're my guest. And now we get to like have a con you're not talking to just the HR person. You're talking about the topic we've selected based on all the great things you just told us. And we have some structure for this conversation. So it kind of takes us for a moment outside of these roles. That the workplace has put us into to maybe have a more s a platform for a different a shift of a conversation that we maybe couldn't have had without that. which I just I hadn't really thought about the benefit of that. And if I'm gonna be having these conversations anyways, so much better than okay, we talk about having stay conversations. We talk about having you know, after an engagement survey, let's do some focus groups or let's dive in deeper talking to some people. If we're actually putting these into podcasts, now we're getting to create other content. Like, all right, there's some things that all these employees are saying that maybe we could put into some manager training. Maybe we could put it it goes from there. Like the whole list of all the things. And now now we don't even need an engagement survey. Now we've like, we are now we're getting a sense of where people are at. If they feel trusted
Greg Wasserman: I
Mindy Honcoop: to share.
Greg Wasserman: if if anyone's just listening to this, I have like the biggest smile on my face based on what you're saying. Because that's true. Like the guard comes down if I look at it from a I'm getting an email or you get an email from HR saying like I want to talk to you. All of a sudden, be sweating,
Marnie Robbins: Mm-hmm.
Greg Wasserman: what did I do? Right? Like no one it's like going to the the the principal's office. Like, what did I do? Why am why is HR wanting to talk to me? It'll it never feels good in that regard, which Is a is a problem. It's like, how do we change that? But if I of
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: a sudden go like, hey, I value you. I would love to bring you on to the company's podcast, or I would love to bring you like, wow, you feel that that is has a completely different feeling that creates a a different kind of trust. it's not the I'm trying to get you now. I can't wait to get you on this podcast. Like, because remember, your goal is to make your guest look good, which ultimately makes you look good. So you don't want Whoever you're bringing on, an employee, your leadership team, your vendors, industry, professionals, whoever you are trying to talk to, they're building a relationship. So the lesson you want to do is ruin that by, haha, I got you. I got you to say something, and now no, it it that's not gonna happen, which is somehow what happens when it's behind closed doors or
Mindy Honcoop: Mm
Greg Wasserman: The objective is unknown. but you know if the objective when it's a podcast, you're like, here are the questions I'm gonna ask you. This is the purpose of the podcast. This is why we're doing this. This is what I want from you. This is what I want to give you. Like all that actually becomes. So back to like I had the biggest smile as you were you were saying that because that's literally what I tell everyone. If from a sales standpoint, when you're using from Lead Gen, it's like imagine you're trying to cold call or email people and they're like, Nope, delete, delete, delete. I don't want to talk to this person. Come on my podcast, like, I'm gonna respond to that same exact thing from any any medium.
Marnie Robbins: I think about too the the case of I don't know about you but how many times I've had to come in after maybe a tough decision that a that a company's had to make. Maybe it's a re-org, maybe it's you know something along those lines. And so I want to talk a little bit about vulnerability in the in the podcast arena. And I'm refle reflecting back on a time where I had to send out an email of like, hey, we knew this was gonna happen. We t we said that this was the N North Star. It feels really gross right now to people. They're scared. They're unknown. And so when I look at it from a people and culture lens, of there might be an opportunity with an internal podcast, anyway, to be able to have these conversations with your CEO, with your founder, with your CFO, or just even to recap or retro in a way that is more humanizing and more honest and contextual to bring so it's not always highlighting the best but potentially highlighting us in our messiness and so that brings me to you know kind of pondering of does that work though like it it in my in my brain I feel like this is gonna that that seems like an excellent case study right but where does that break or or what should we be thinking of if we're saying let that's have an honest conversation about what's not going great.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, from that standpoint, if you're everything doesn't go. I mean, life is messy, life isn't perfect, right? So I think that's the joys of having a podcast is you can have those messy conversations, you can have those honest conversations, and you can breathe to it. The other side is is if we think about town halls, right? I mean, think about where town halls have come now. Who's raising their hand to ask the questions of of leadership? Who's asking the I mean, it's been a while I've had a town hall, but it's like the benefits question, or like when are we gonna do this? It's like, how do we then bring that up into a podcast and then give people the ability to to engage with that conversation in a completely different way than the canned town halls, which we all know how those kind of all work out. But yeah, you could do an entire season of like, all right, I'm gonna bring in the leadership. We just had this messy situation we had, whether it was layoffs or we missed our numbers, whatever it may be, you are the able to guide that conversation and and build the trust with your company. maybe you're maybe you're not the host, and maybe your your founder, maybe your leader is the host. Like, no one's saying you necessarily have to be the exact host. I'm just saying. Everyone should have a podcast. It's just a matter of how you want to take that. You guys are doing it as co-hosts, right? So, like, it's very easy for great the HR leader and and someone else, we're gonna be co-hosts. Like, you've got the ability to structure it really how you want. The point is, what are the relationships we want to build and how do we strengthen those? Because right now we're not, we're relying on AI to do a lot of work.
Mindy Honcoop: Mm-hmm.
Greg Wasserman: we're We're what is it? We're in a pandemic or epidemic of loneliness. So I think as an HR leader, we have the ability to control a conversation, to build that connection, to build that trust, in whatever capacity we want to. once again, depending on who you want to talk to, what kind of relationships we want to build, but we have the ability to do that. And there's another thing which we haven't touched on, but I think. I keep saying this over and over. So I feel like I I want to drop this other pin in here. Is we're also living in a state right now where we are turning to our employees and asking employees to be voices, to be brand advocates, to post on social media, to help drive, you know, the recruitment of our company, going like, I love working here, and here's why. So if we are leaning on our employees to be these brand advocates, to to talk about our company and what they're doing there, then shouldn't we also have a podcast and showing then our employees, hey, I have a podcast, I'm gonna bring you as a guest, get you comfortable so that hopefully this becomes your next piece. Because if you can engage a a a I was gonna say plethora, but a I just love that word, but a a a quorum of Of your employees to all start their own podcasts. And now each one is a brand advocate, and we don't care. Like, let's just face it, HR people, like once again, as already said, we're all going to be leaving a company. The goal is in HR is like, how can I help this person stay here as long and empower them? But if if I'm an engineer and an engineer starts their own podcast interviewing other things about an engineer world, but they're talking about our company. And then they leave our company and they go somewhere else. Great, the podcast stays with them. That's okay. But at least for that moment, they're talking about us, they're fueling us. And and it's our job to help those employees become a voice for our company so that what we're doing with the culture we're building is being elevated by our employees. So I'll pause there, but like I knew that was something I wanted to touch on because that is a key piece for why everyone should have a podcast. But as an HR leader, how we can show that as a cultural component for our employees and build that culture that I think right now most workplaces are asking for.
Mindy Honcoop: I I love that too, because it's building muscle like around helping someone get behind a microphone. I communication skills. How do you connect? So if you're asking them to come on and be a host, or you know, maybe they're a co-host first with you, so they're learning through doing and and and being able to ask questions. You have to be curious. It's not like, okay, yes, I can ask AI, but if you really want to You know, be in a conversation. It's not like you're just reading off every question. You can start that way, but now you're I'm engaged. I'm listening, active listening, being curious, seeking to understand, maybe taking the allowing the conversation to go deeper. I mean, these are all connected skills that we're not seeing in organizations. We're seeing like a deficit of connection and the ability to connect. So it's like the podcast is like without the going to some learning and development class, a a way. Also, to start to build this muscle, which is really exciting. I hadn't thought about that.
Marnie Robbins: Well what else it reminds me of is the cultural connectedness that we literally just talked about this morning. It it's connectedness
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Marnie Robbins: of of the cultural norms within your organization. And one thing that Greg said that I really like too was along the, you know, it's okay if they go somewhere else, take their podcast somewhere else. One thing I always say
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Marnie Robbins: is you as an organization, if I'm putting together a strategy for an org, I just want to be a good place to come from, right? And if we're a good
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Marnie Robbins: place to come from and we've developed those relationships and we've had those conversations, they're brand ambassadors beyond the the termination letter, you know, and so to me, is there a it it almost feels like there is that learning and development, there is that that knowledge share, that connectedness. interwoven theme that I'm hearing and even now I'm just rambling, but like AI. You know, we talk about AI implementations and whatnot. Why, you know, that's how the conversation. People get a little little jumpy around it. Let's talk about how we're implementing it in our organizations. What's working, what didn't work, what did we learn? Where things like that. But I I I think for me mostly is wondering, Greg, from from your standpoint, do we need themes? Like you said we can do seasons and depending on who you want to build those relationships with, but do we need like how important is brand identity within these conversations? Do you kind of let go a little bit of that because we're having those conversations or because there's there's just so many possible conversations that you could have on a podcast.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, I think the answer to that is the guide of of what you what you want the relationship to be and how you're how you're trying to fuel that. So if it's an internal one, I mean, vulnerability is the key piece. And I think you mentioned it. I I love Brene Brown. So there's the how do I be vulnerable without telling you everything that's going in my life? It's like you could still as as a as a leader, we we know that skill set or we're working on that skill set ideally. But if I'm trying to do this with internal employees, you know, I I want them to know me. Like that is that is a key piece that once again, this is if this is going to be something that others are going to be listening to, I want them to be, I like Greg. He's approachable. he doesn't know all the answers. He's doing the best he can, but he's creating this environment, this culture that we all want to work for. We all are are happy to, even when those moments are are are difficult. Like, We just did layoffs or no one got a raise or whatever the difficult piece may be. The human component is what's missing. I think in part of my LinkedIn, one of my titles, you know, relationship generation relationship generator, but it's also a humanization person. And too often we're numbers in a spreadsheet, we aren't real people. So, how we as leaders help create that human component of what this company stands for? Not just the values we've got there beyond us, but ultimately how are we living those values? How are we showing those values? How are we creating a culture that is human and creating that? Because at the end of the day, you can say AI is going to take all of our jobs. Sure, but you still need the human component. Component, even if all of our jobs somehow get taken by AI, it's it's that human component, it's that relationship that's gonna keep us all connected. and so I think from that standpoint, that's kind of how I would answer your question of like, what what do I want to get from these questions? What do I want to get from these conversations? Each person's gonna answer that individually. do the seasons if you want, or talk to if you've got 300 employees in your company, well, that's Fifty episodes right there and that's
Marnie Robbins: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: that you could cover in a in a year. If you're like, I don't have the time, then do it bi weekly. Like no one is saying that you have to do it weekly. That's just what I love because it's a relationship generation there. But if you don't have the bandwidth to do all that, then great, break it up into seasons. But I still believe the whole point of our conversation here is everyone should have a podcast using it for the relationships and development you want. I don't think I've said it, but like Podcasting is the greatest relationship generator that fuels your no-like and trust, that builds a content flywheel. So if we look at that, I'm now building relationships. More people get to know not necessarily just me as the host, but my company, who I'm working for, others, other companies, other industry leaders that may be listening to this. That I'm using it as a marketing, a retrenchion, recruitment, whatever it may be. And then the content that comes out of it. I mean, hopefully there's good nuggets that your guest says and they turn into little clips. Maybe they just ramble and you're like, great, I'm gonna aggregate these five conversations that I've had with these five employees or five five vendors or five leaders. And as I think, as you said, Marnie, how do I turn this into whatever that survey or whatever? piece of content I may want to because right now, I have to imagine most of us aren't recording the conversations because what HR conversation wants to be recorded when it's on a podcast, it becomes a little different. And and
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: now you get actually the feedback. You start getting actual data that you can use. You start learning what what more are your employees saying, what more are your vendors saying? so there's a lot to the value of having a podcast for anyone specifically, you know, the the the anyone that's listening to this.
Marnie Robbins: And it's the storytelling too. I th a lot of times
Mindy Honcoop: Just gonna say that. I was just thinking of story. No, you go.
Marnie Robbins: it but I mean we talk about that. I think that a lot of the mentoring and the coaching and counseling that we do, particularly for co-founders and startups and whatnot, is we forget to tell our stories. And there's so much powerf powerful lessons that that you learn from hearing other people in different situations. And even if that story is not apples to apples the story that someone else is walking through at that moment, they still learn from it. So a strong tool for learning and development as well. idea generation and I know we we have about ten minutes left but I do have one more question as far as like for those people who say I don't I like I don't have good ideas. I can't come up with you know creative like this is what I think should be on a podcast. Any you know good suggestions as far as those people who are drawn a blank but think that they might want to do this.
Greg Wasserman: I I would start with just I guess the real life example of like how I started my own podcast and and where that came from, right? So I looked at the market and my podcast is about podcast networks. So I saw there's so many podcasts out there about podcasting. I don't want to be a guru teaching other people about podcasting, but no one was talking to podcast networks. I'm like, great, there's a little niche that I could fulfill that I can already have in these conversations with podcast networks. So let's now instead of having a a one-on-one call with this person where you do the let's talk about podcasting, let's talk about life, let's talk about yada yada, let's actually do an hour focus on just podcast network. And then from there, the first question that came to mind is like, well, what is a podcast network? Great. Every first guest or sorry, every guest I'm gonna ask the first question will be, how do you define a podcast network? Right. And so from there, it just then like, well, what else do I want to know? Like, okay, well, how did you get into podcasting? How did you start a podcast network? Right. So going back to what Mindy was saying, it's all curiosity. So if we think about how did you how did you end up working at this company? How did you start your career? Like the joys of being an HR leader is looking at the person's through line or going, did this person stay within this industry? Or did we hire outside of this industry? Hey. How did you end up this company? Because your background is X, Y, and Z, and you didn't actually come from I don't know, whatever industry we're currently, our company currently works in. Like, what made you want to change industries? Like you're you're just getting curious. You're able to start asking those questions. And then you'll start understanding like, what story do I want to tell? I like that you call that because. Part of a podcast is, and I just came back from a conference. And so part of the conference was it was the academic space and everyone's talking about rigor, rigor, rigor. And I don't, I I'm like, I never hear that word, but it's big in the academic word, right? Academic world. But part of the every speaker that was using that word was saying, you need to tell the good story because no matter how much you researched, how factual you're telling, people still want to lean into a story. So Give me a story to tell. Otherwise, no one's going to listen and you're going to lose the message of what you were trying to give in the first place. So the curiosity of like, what story do I want to tell? What questions do I want to get answered for my own self? that would ultimately help fuel. So that becomes another piece. Like if you're a, if you're a a beginning HR leader or an assistant or you're just coming up, like maybe. Maybe your questions, maybe you start interviewing other HR leaders. You're like, hey, who do I learn from? Because technically the only person you can learn from is your boss right now. And let's be
Marnie Robbins: Mm, yeah.
Greg Wasserman: honest, we all know how that goes. You're like, I I want to ask my boss a question, but I don't know. I want to feel stupid, whatever. So great. You start asking other leaders and you bring them on and you're like, now. Your boss is looking at you going, like, wow, you are improving so much more, yada yada. And it's not just my tutelage of doing it, but because you've gone out there and you've sought mentorship from everyone else. And now, if a good boss is looking at that and going, Hold on, I don't want you talking to all my competitors or all these other HR leaders because you're gonna leave me and then I've just lost you. Well, then you're not actually being a good leader in that first place because You should want them to gain knowledge, but you still should be able to keep them within your company and going like, I'm giving you the wings to grow. I'm giving you the wings to do and and do what you want to be doing. And I am the leader for you, but I can't teach you everything. So you're out there gaining some more perspectives. Like those are all good things you can be thinking about. But you're right. It comes to storytelling. What's the story I want to tell? Curiosity is going to kill the cat in this regard. And it's a good thing.
Mindy Honcoop: I love that. I mean, there's that also is like that's a shift in mindset. That's a leader that's thinking about it either from scarcity or from possibility and abundance. And so as a leader, where am I? And why am I why is this feeling coming up for me where I'd want to squash something and take autonomy away from my person? Well, it's probably something I need to reflect on and understand deeper. And also, we had just had a podcast, episode go live. We're talking about quality motivation. And I keep hearing in this about connected culture. How are we truly motivating individuals in an in a a way of care? And that's not to get to a forced outcome or that feels like just an activity that we do. So they're not really getting value, like feeling valued from it. It's it's it was like what you're saying, it's around first of all connectedness, relationship building And I if we counted that the words probably use a thousand times and just it's time together, but also autonomy that the and tr and which is like trust and allowing that person to go and have the freedom to do that. But then it's also around competency building and and being able to feel like you're growing and progressing towards something. So it's this podcasting also hits all three of the kind of basic fundamental criteria of quality motivation.
Greg Wasserman: Microps, all done. You're right. Yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Ha ha
Greg Wasserman: I mean
Mindy Honcoop: This like conversation to me now is like I I knew podcasting's awesome. And when we were talking together, I was like, is it a crazy idea that every person because I love how you say that and I was like, HR people have everyone a podcast. But then I was like, when I hear you talk about it, I'm like, yes, they should. All employees should have a podcast. And this like you just like resemented that even further for me today.
Greg Wasserman: I mean, if you look at every different avenue you could think about attaching a podcast to a goal. So how do I look at retention? How do I look at recruiting? Great. So what's the content I'm putting out there? Most likely you're not putting out a lot of content from a why should I work at this company standpoint? If I'm going on Glassdoor and I'm reading reviews, imagine if I had a podcast that actually gave me real 30 minute, 40 minute conversation of like what it's like working there as opposed to the disgruntled employee that left or or the person who's like, yeah, this is great in leadership. It's like you get to put that all in a podcast now and have it as the control. as we talked about, you're you're able to fuel the conversations, connections with employees who are now out there talking. So Well, I like my podcast is my own podcast. It has nothing to do with and it's not tied to my company. But that doesn't mean I'm not saying on my own podcast, like I'm the head of relationships for rss.com. This podcast has nothing to do with rs.com. So imagine now every employee that's probably doing the same thing. They may not be talking about I work a company or this is a company X podcast, but they're like, I'm currently working at Company X. So now you're getting marketing materials about this employee saying, Wow, I want to go work for a company where their employees are actually allowed to have these conversations, to build connections, to build these relationships. And that's gonna fuel from a company standpoint more employee, more employees wanna work for you, more employees wanna stay there, more vendors wanna work for with you, more sales are gonna happen. Like you've now, in a sense, as an HR leader, fueled what you should be doing as a company standpoint. all that and tying that all together and and then you look like a really winner. I was gonna say something else, but I won't swear. So yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Well you can swear, hell. But I mean talk about talk about double micro. Yes.
Mindy Honcoop: No.
Greg Wasserman: You look like a badass. You'll at the end of the day, you'll be the badass. Like look
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Marnie Robbins: HR badassery.
Greg Wasserman: Yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop: People are gonna talk about the company no matter what, no matter where they're writing, Reddit, Glassdoor, Blind. They're gonna be talking about your company.
Marnie Robbins: Yeah. And see.
Mindy Honcoop: You can't you can't stop that.
Greg Wasserman: But you can control part of that narrative. You can
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Greg Wasserman: build the relationships that matter and you can humanize it. And that's becomes the big piece
Mindy Honcoop: Yes.
Greg Wasserman: because right now there's no humanization. There's the there's the distrust. If I go read something on Glassdoor, or it's like any Yelp review, right? It's like, was this person paid to put up there? Were they asked, please write this review? It's it's the do I trust this? There's not a lot written about it. And then every HR person's got an answer going, like, that was a disgruntled employee, or you know, that's old, we've changed our culture. Like when you actually have a podcast, you're you're able to show all
Mindy Honcoop: Mm-hmm.
Greg Wasserman: those things. So, like, yeah, this is where we are, this is where we're going, this is what
Mindy Honcoop: Yeah.
Greg Wasserman: we want to do. And our our culture is we're living and breathing, that culture component.
Marnie Robbins: Okay, with that said, I think you have to jump to recording your own podcast with someone else.
Greg Wasserman: Hehehehehe.
Mindy Honcoop: Yes, yes.
Marnie Robbins: Where can people find you, Greg?
Greg Wasserman: so this is the fun part. I'm the do as I say, not as I do person. I live on LinkedIn. I don't have a website. I live on LinkedIn. Greg Wasserman. it's where I've been since eight. It's where I continue to live. I post content five days a week and I love creating connections. So please, this is the other side and we haven't touched on, but I always love ending like this. But The joys of having a podcast is someone's going to listen to it. And ideally, we right now are all talking to a void. And so someone's gonna listen to us and we're gonna ask, please, not just rate and review this podcast, but reach out to your guest because they want that. And then I'm gonna go ahead and say, Hey, Marnie, Mindy. X person just reached out to me. When Mindy and Marnie probably don't know who's listening right now, so they're being like, wow. We now know who's listening and they found value in this episode and that creates such a flywheel. So please follow me on LinkedIn, set up some time. Let's chat. I I connect to anyone because you have no clue where conversation will take you.
Mindy Honcoop: Right. I love it. And it's true. Like I've actually I felt like I was having a text conversation with Greg on LinkedIn. I've never had people real time
Greg Wasserman: I forgot about that.
Mindy Honcoop: respond to your messages.
Greg Wasserman: I totally forgot about that. Yeah.
Marnie Robbins: Okay. Well thanks for being on the shift and we'll talk soon.
Greg Wasserman: Thanks you guys.
Mindy Honcoop: Thank you so much, Greg.
