The Professional Humans Podcast started in October of 2015, with the intent of helping people explore the challenges of being a regular human at work. Because, sometimes it sucks! We were wrestling with questions like . . . Should you bring your authentic self? If so, how much of it? Surely not ALL of it. Or, maybe?
Co-founder Josh Berg and I wanted to have conversations that would be less serious than a lot of work podcasts, and hopefully listeners would benefit from hearing about the struggles of professional humans we knew. We thought we could make it kind of funny and light so it wouldn’t actually feel like work to listen. The most surprising thing that happened is that . . . people listened!! A LOT of people. People told us that the conversations helped them — and that was all the fuel we needed to keep going.
Over the next year, we published just over 40 episodes and held two really fun live events, and people just kept showing up and listening, and guests kept coming to talk to us and adding their great stories and advice. We learned a ton and had many incredible conversations. But some things just come to an end, and one of those things, unfortunately, was our relationship — so the podcast went on hiatus. We didn’t really talk about it publicly, we just let the podcast go quiet while we got ourselves sorted out. We released our last episode in November of 2016.
Since then, I’ve been amazed to find that Professional Humans is mentioned to me often and people are still hoping we’ll fire it back up again. Until now, I’ve been pretty non-committal about that, even though I have wanted to continue to lead conversations that help people unlock more growth and happiness at work.
You should know that doing a podcast is a TON of work and a labor of love, even though we surely made it look super glamorous and wealth-making (JK.) If you know me, you know I don’t shy away from hard work. What I was reluctant to commit to was the cadence of the thing. I needed a break, to have a little distance from it. I never stopped believing in the original intent, I just didn’t have any energy to feed it for a while. What changed recently is that over this last summer, I realized that we didn’t really need to create a new cadence. People have become pretty accustomed to seasonal, binge-able content with breaks between. I talked to many folks that led me to realize that it’s the new normal, and actually preferred.
Now I feel liberated to make seasons — or, as I more fondly think of them — concept albums — because I’ve always wished I was a musician and everything about that makes perfect sense except my complete lack of musical talent. No regular cadence needed, just a multi-week sprint of planning and recording and voila! Binge-able-ness for you, my friends.
With that, we are creating a new season, a new chapter of Professional Humans, and I’m delighted to introduce you to my new co-host, my dear friend Aileen Guiney. I can’t wait to share it with you, and hear what you think.
