AGL 085: 2018 Retrospective

2018 has been a great year.  I rebooted the podcast with both solo shows and more interviews than ever before.  The number of listeners and total downloads have blown my mind.  The number of platforms where you can get A Geek Leader has grown remarkably as well. I learned a lot of valuable information that I can apply to my day job and my life outside of work.  I met and talked to some of the coolest people on the planet.  I suspect 2019 will be even better.  All good retrospectives usually answer 4 questions: What went well? What didn’t go so well? What have I learned? What still puzzles me? So let me tackle those now. What went well? The Guests and Interviews.  Interviewing people went way better than expected.  Several guest have not only heard of the show, but were regular listeners of the show, which was humbling and mind blowing to me.  My time management and scheduling got better since I started using Calendly to schedule my interviews. The Platforms.  This year we expanded past iTunes and Google Play Music on to I Heart Radio, Stitcher, YouTube, and Spotify.  The growth on new platforms made a big impact to the number of subscribers and downloads. The audio.  The audio got better after switching to Zencastr for recording. The downloads.  It may not seem like a lot for some podcast, but passing the 50,000 download mark and having nearly 500,000 youtube views were both big accomplishments in 2018. What didn’t go so well? So I missed an interview due to timezone issues on my end.  Totally my fault, but I still feel bad about it.  I didn't release episodes on a consistent basis.  Sometimes I rolled 3 a week, and other times I skipped a week. I need to be more consistent on getting out episodes. Sometimes I didn't feel as prepared as I should have been for some interviews.  There were a few times when I scheduled 3+ interviews in 1 week and had to bust my butt to get the work done for prep.  Sometimes I the material would run together and I didn't feel fully prepared at times. I'll do better on spacing out the interviews in 2019. What have I learned? The number 1 thing that I've learned (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that my listeners prefer the interview format over solo shows.  I feel as though I still need to do solo shows, but the stats don't lie. Another thing I learned is that people love to be interviewed on podcast.  Dozens of people I had never met before were willing to spend an hour talking to a total stranger about their life and leadership adventures.  People (at least my guests) are good and enjoy helping those around them, even at zero financial gain. What still puzzles me? How great will 2019 be?  Who are all of you listeners and downloaders of the show?  I did a survey a while back, but we have way more listeners and subscribers than we got responses back on the survey.  Who all are you guys and why do you listen to my show?  What do you love about it and what do you hate about it?  I can't change and make it better without feedback from you.  email me your feedback.