Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
149. The 2024 Retrospective
This episode focuses on our biannual retrospective, where we reflect on our podcast's achievements and challenges over the past year. We discuss listener growth, content quality, community engagement, and strategies for improving our podcasting approach moving forward.
• Celebrating listener growth and improved content quality
• Acknowledging the importance of the Discord community
• Discussing strategies for deeper topic exploration
• Reflecting on areas of improvement and listener feedback
• Setting goals for future engagement and growth in 2025
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don't, don't, don't you dare. Why? Why is this a thing every time we do this podcast? You're just silent and you can't control yourself welcome back to corporate strategy.
Speaker 2:The podcast it could have been an email. I'm bruce, no, no, and I'm clark what's going on. It could have been an email.
Speaker 1:I'm Bruce, no, no. And I'm Clark. What's going on? Oh, I thought you were going to do the whole thing like that, are you done?
Speaker 2:Oh, no, I'd get canceled.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest, it was pretty good. Thank you, I was convinced it was convincing.
Speaker 2:I love accents Always, have, always, will, can do quite a few of them. Don't because of the cancellation fear, but as a white dude, as a genetic European white dude. I feel like it does give me some liberties to play in some of those spaces publicly. If you were offended by the intro, join our Discord.
Speaker 1:That's how it works.
Speaker 2:You just offend them and they come. Yeah, because, like I said in the last episode, I'm not going to read the email. If you are offended, join the Discord, tell me of your offense and I will offend someone else the next episode. So that's how that will play out.
Speaker 2:You know they say An apology for anyone who might have associated with the accent that I'm not going to say where it's from or who it is, because that would be giving it power right, like if I just say oh, I was just doing a voice, who knows what geographic location it originates from, what you going to do about it, but I will do one that insults a different geographic location If you were offended and you do join the Discord after this episode. So that's how you do that. I'll link trees in the show notes. That's how you get in the Discord. Clark has covered his face with his hand. He's crying. I've never seen Clark cry before. Clark is crying. Crying, ladies and gentlemen, is a first. The man can weep on this day. Clark cheddar movements, his eyes welled up, salty tears poured forth. Join the discord. You good, I'm great. How are you? You good, I'm great.
Speaker 1:How are you? I'm just I can believe how long that went on. You you did. You didn't invent something you know build and they will come offend and they will come Offend and they will join.
Speaker 2:It's a new tactic and they, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:One-on-one. Wow, join the discord. Just get really outrageous and people will probably join your platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to have it happen Really offensive. Yeah, if you join next week, I promise you another offensive accent on the start of the next episode. I promise you.
Speaker 1:I hope you remember this. I remember everything. I'll try to hold you accountable. I'll try to hold you accountable.
Speaker 2:so we don't forget, try, try to try. How about that, hey? Speaking of holding each other accountable, you know what it's time for. What's that? It's time for our biannual, yearly retrospective.
Speaker 1:Biannual? Is that once every year? Or is that once every two years? Or is that twice a year?
Speaker 2:It's the biannual yearly.
Speaker 1:So is that twice a year? Twice a year? I hate when people do that Whenever I send out a recurring meeting and they're like bi-weekly. So is that twice a week, or is that every two weeks? I'm like I swear Every two weeks.
Speaker 2:I swear it's every two weeks, duh weeks, I'm like every two weeks, I swear it's every two weeks duh. Sometimes more words is better, truly. You know what word I can't stand is next I hate. Next, yeah, next tuesday. Next tuesday, like tomorrow. Yeah, the next tuesday, tomorrow, if tomorrow is the next tuesday, then yes, or you could just say tomorrow.
Speaker 2:or you could say this coming tuesday because the next Tuesday, then yes. Or you could just say tomorrow. Or you could say this coming Tuesday, because the next Tuesday. Doth sound like it's not tomorrow, it sounds like next Tuesday. It implies next week? Yeah, next has distance, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a week in between there.
Speaker 2:I hate it. I hate that word. I try not to use it when talking about actual dates and time.
Speaker 1:You should say this Tuesday, this.
Speaker 2:Tuesday this coming Tuesday, tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's words for this Three days from now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, is it a duty-aware retrospective twice a year, or once every two years? Oh, it's just once a year. Oh good, our biannual, yearly review Retrospective, that's right, that's right. I hope you marked your calendar. You know what I miss these. I miss retrospectives. Do you miss retrospectives?
Speaker 2:Do you do retrospectives? Yeah, I used to do them. What happened was we did them once a month and then the calendar invite died and I didn't rebook it.
Speaker 1:Did anyone ask Okay, hold on, Before you say anything else. Did anyone ask where it went and why it disappeared?
Speaker 2:Yes, One person.
Speaker 1:I said don't worry worry, I'm gonna rebook it. Never did, never did. So that means your retrospective was not very good um, it was good.
Speaker 2:It actually served a really good purpose. It worked well. We constantly came up with action items, we talked things through, we found solutions to problems. It was great. It worked wonderfully. I just didn't want to run it anymore.
Speaker 1:You just gave up because you're like I don't want to do this anymore. You got too many meetings.
Speaker 2:Clark, if a good one has to die, so three bad ones can live, so be it. This is the way the world works. It's the opposite.
Speaker 1:Don't do this. Don't do this to the people, these poor people. You are in your batty era for sure.
Speaker 2:This was three years ago.
Speaker 1:That's so much worse. How dare you? So what is a retrospective?
Speaker 2:What is it? Yeah, a retrospective is an opportunity to get together as a team or collective or group and talk about what went good, what could have gone better and what you want to do in the future. And it doesn't have to be in that specific cadence of words, but the real underlining value in it is it's a span of time that you're able to evaluate, identify room for improvement and set goals for what happens next. I recommend everyone do it in every stage of your life, for everything it is really good.
Speaker 2:I hold private retrospectives with myself, do you?
Speaker 1:You talk to yourself. I do New Year's resolutions just happened. What went well in 2024? What didn't go so well in 2024? What am I going to do better? This is Bruce. This is your introspective. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Introspective, retrospective, introspective, retrospective. How can I do this better than what I'm doing right now, or do I want to do it better?
Speaker 1:you know, yeah, yeah, that is an option. Yeah, it's always if you work in software development. This is primarily where this came from right, like agile software development is where agile way of working started, which basically just means short iterations, called called a sprint, that you can get feedback quick after building something. So that way you can iterate and move to the next thing. And it works really well in a team sense. Because you have short iterations, you can get together as a team.
Speaker 1:You can say, hey, everybody, let's get it on the table. What did we do good? Let's celebrate our wins. What did we not do not so good, what went bad? And talk about those bad things, not pointing fingers, just saying, in general, things that didn't go so well. And then, what can we learn from this? What can we take forward? What are our goals?
Speaker 1:Whatever you want to call, the last phase is recommendations, solutions that you can say, hey, the next sprint, we're going to incorporate one of these. Everybody vote, pick one, pick two, pick three, pick four, whatever it is, we're going to do these things that we're recommending and we're going to meet again in the next retrospective. We're going to say, hey, did it go well, did it work? If it didn't work, let's try something else. And so the beauty of it is just those fast iterations. And it started in agile software development, but then it permeated. Now, you know, everybody does agile, everybody works in this way of working, because it makes so much sense to have those very lean, tight cycles for feedback. So yearly, I guess biannually, yearly we we do our retrospective where we try to do the same thing. Yes, corporate strategy, let's do our own retrospective and let's give the people some of our feedback we're not going to do quarterly business reviews in this pod.
Speaker 2:I refuse no qbrs, no, no never.
Speaker 1:I think you should be held accountable to some number objective and if we don't hit that we've got to put you to some penalty. We got to get to 15 000 downloads by x date, otherwise bruce does a solo accent only podcast, where he has to yodel at least three times. Oh yeah, I will do it.
Speaker 2:Is this a punishment or is this a privilege? I'm confused. Are you giving me permission, of course, of course I am. One thing I think that you brought up that I forgot about the retrospective, and the important thing about it is evaluating previous retrospectives, which we're not going to do today because I don't remember, and this is a problem. When you do biannual, yearly retrospectives is a 365 day period passes and in that amount of time one can't remember unless one writes it down. And I know for a fact neither of us did.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say you're also. Yeah, you were banking on us writing something down somewhere.
Speaker 2:No, I wasn't banking on it.
Speaker 1:The great thing about a podcast, though it's there, we can go back and get it at any point that we want. But will we oh, we could. We definitely could do that. We're not going to do that. I'll tell you that, yeah. So where should we? Where should we start? You want to start with what went well. You want to celebrate our successes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's celebrate. I mean, what went really well is we've grown. We've continued to grow year over year with listeners. I will say this year did not grow as much as the previous year, which is, you know, a little sad. Interesting. In 2023, we had a big jump in listenership talking, going from like 500 downloads a month to like 800. And then this year we've gone from 800 to about, you know, 1,000, 1,100, but it fluctuates between there. So you know, it's just a little bit less than it was the year prior. But in staying in the positive and this is kind of a second item and I want to swap between you and me I do feel like our content got better this year, and that's just a personal feeling, but I don't feel like growth equals quality content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think we grew much from a listenership perspective, but I do agree that our content did improve. Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest wins that we had is we brought a lot of guests on this year and that type of content, as well as our just podcasting abilities, I think, got better.
Speaker 2:And I.
Speaker 1:I think we should celebrate that, because that's a huge win.
Speaker 2:I think switching the webcams on which no one sees but we see it brought a new energy to the pod. That was needed, an injection of flavor, to quote Guy Fieri. The guests were phenomenal Ten out of ten guests, every single one of them we had. I mean we had more than five. We had more than five guests this year. Like it's a big jump.
Speaker 2:And I think the other important thing we got was it's not just one-timers Like everyone who came on. We will have them on again if they let us. Like we've got recurring crew now that we can lean on for different expertise and the episode quality I think is just even when it's just you and me, like pat ourselves on the back a bit. I think the topics we've taken on this year and the conversations we've had have been a lot deeper and when we're not in the beginning and end of the pod, an absolute madness town, like I think we're getting somewhere. Like I do feel like we're unlocking secrets and figuring things out to make things better, and I say that because it's improved my life. Like taking our own advice has improved my life, so it's a plus on that regard too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, actually that was one of my what went well.
Speaker 1:I think I became a better corporate citizen because we're able to have these conversations not only with each other but with the guests that we brought on, like you mentioned, and the discord, like the amount that I feel like I've grown as a corporate citizen, either from understanding different perspectives, from taking in, you know, management tips, from understanding capitalism a little bit better, from debating, you know what makes a healthy or safe workplace, like so many different things that I think this podcast gives us the excuse to think about and talk about together, you and I, but also with the guests and also with the people in the discord.
Speaker 1:That has made me certainly a better corporate citizen, and I really appreciate that, because otherwise, you know, you're just going to be, you know, another cog in the machine and you're not really going to take the time to think about these things and talk about these things where you can express your own opinion and get other people's opinions and perspectives, and so I do think that's a huge, huge win for this year. I think that started last year, to your point, but this year I think we really started hitting those topics that are like they're not just surface level, and that's what I think was really interesting.
Speaker 2:I think the discord helped a ton with that too. Is it me or is it corporate? You know, I think we're starting to see some really interesting things from that effort. I love that we've started that. But just the general conversation. People have been open to talk about problems that I think are more personal or things that aren't necessarily just we can solve this. In an episode, like there's been multiple times now, we were like we don't have the answer, but here's some suggestions and it's. It's getting into things that are a little bit soupier of problems that like where there's never going to be a clear cut, clear cut solution. But the way that we've talked through and figured it out both in the pod and in the Discord, I think it's much better than it used to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I think that's a huge one.
Speaker 1:And the growth I think has happened on the Discord side, we've grown phenomenally from the amount of volume of people posting, but also just the people that have joined it. So I feel like we've actually cultivated this community a little bit more and it's brought a ton of value, and some of our guests that we've had on we're directly from that. Like they just joined after listening to a few episodes and then we got them on the podcast, which is super cool. So shout out to all of you guys who were able to encourage that and build this community so that people feel welcome to do that. That's super awesome. What else? What can we? Uh, you know it's cool. At Monday, january 1st 2024, we were at episode 104. What?
Speaker 2:episode are we at now?
Speaker 1:148?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, son.
Speaker 1:I'll make it 147. So we we know 148, 148.
Speaker 2:You're right, we did. Did one one's out today so 44 episodes.
Speaker 1:We did good.
Speaker 2:That's pretty good that's we've had our best year. We've had our best year by far in terms of getting content out being on. I mean, we're recording on a monday because we were gonna miss it, like I think you and I we've gotten to the point where it's like this is not just a if it happens, it happens. It's like we're going to make this happen. Every week we make it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think part of that is the growth, like we have to be accountable for everybody that's listening for everybody, that's, you know, in the discord, like they, they want more content. Like I thought about it, I'm like shoot man, we're so close to hitting that. You know we're 44 versus 52 weeks in a year, so we're eight weeks off and that feels like a lot. But when you really think about it it's like no, we pumped out pretty much an episode every single week. If you disregard like travel schedules, that really was the biggest issue last year.
Speaker 2:There was a span, I think it was in either, uh, either May June, where you were out for a week, then I was out for a week, then you were out for a week, then I was. It was just like the travel made it, so we just couldn't get a couple episodes in. And then, I think, just between holidays and sickness and you know Life, life finds a way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also we introduced Corporate Strategy Raw, which I think was a hit. We've only done two, but I think it's a hit. People really like listening to these and they think it's pretty funny. I would say the listenership isn't huge on those yet because there's not like a topic, so the SEO is bad, but it's pretty great. Everybody on the Discord seems to love it and I've gotten some personal remarks too.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that podcasts do well at least podcasts I listen to do well is they branch off right Like a lot of the shows I like they will do sort of side episodes that might not be related to the main stem of the trunk of the tree. It's like we're going to go tangential and talk about movies or whatever, and I think raw can become that kind of thing where it draws almost its own audience because it's just such a weird little thing, and I would love to continue to experiment and try more things like that, not just raw, but like other weird little things. It's not just the typical you and me talking to each other.
Speaker 1:Agreed what didn't go well. You were going to jump here and I just went right back into the the good.
Speaker 2:But yeah I love it I mean we didn't grow as much as I would have liked, right, like I think that's a big one for me. I would have liked to have almost seen like a 500 listener jump on the episode. I think we, you know, around two to three hundred. It's good, but I think 500 would have been better. And I know this year we're setting a very ambitious like let's get 1000 more. Uh well, no, it's not 1000 more, it's let's get to 10,000 downloads. Right, that was we for the baby ones, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're saying it out loud, that's a bold move it is, it is Uh well, if we set the goal, it's not our job to make it happen. I mean, it's our job but we can't. Word of mouth is how this podcast has grown and will continue to grow until we can be very public about who we are and identities. So it is really up to the listener to share and if you find value, share with others and help us achieve that growth. Otherwise you will not get that baby onesie or sticker or mug or whatever we ship you. Yeah, I agree. How are the 44 of you in the Discord turning that episode? And we committed to it.
Speaker 1:I actually think there's more than that. When I checked the numbers last time, I was like oh, 15 more. We got a good number, something I would say as well yeah, we did not. I mean, yeah, we did not. I mean we did have a lot of great communication in the discord, but I was hoping for more like collaboration.
Speaker 1:It it feels like the maybe collaboration is the wrong term. It feels like the communication happens like people are engaging, which is great, like people make a post to post, but there's only been like a few really good threads that have happened, and I think the the long-term value is like getting people to collaborate on things. I think even like when we were talking to one of our guests, they even said this to us after we were talking about like well, what can we do better? How can we improve? And I think one of the points that was brought up was like we need to find a better way to like engage people. Like how do we actually engage more than just like posting something small and putting on, or people reacting Like how do we generate conversation?
Speaker 1:And so I think that's something we didn't do great, even though we were contributing and I think a lot of people were engaging. The communication or the collaboration wasn't really there. It wasn't like a lot of conversation, it was more like one or two posts and that's it and that's done with the thread. So I think we could have done more there and there's a lot of value I'm not saying there's not because I think a ton of value in the Discord, but I think we need to do better to foster. How do we bring up topics or engage in a way that'll get people going in that conversation past the surface level, just like we did going from year two to year or, I guess, year three to year four?
Speaker 2:No two to three. We went deeper than surface level. We got to figure out how to engage with the community. Get them to do that as well. Yeah, I think it's listening.
Speaker 2:Carrying the conversation forward is a like that's a big one. Um, you're totally right. Like when you said it, I was like, yeah, duh, that's, that's a huge one, because I think it's almost question gets answered, a couple of solutions get thrown out. Cool, like it would be really nice. I mean, maybe we look into like almost a bot or something that when we have things like this, we do a reminder hey, check back in on this in five days. Like is your problem resolved? Like what's next? Let's work through this. We can also make use of threads in Discord too. So, like, if it is a conversation, it's worth like kind of keeping separate and, apart from the individual posts that happen, like, I think there's some tools and utilities we can use to make this even more long-lived and better, because I don't want to let these things die. They're like, these are important things we're trying to help solve Absolutely.
Speaker 1:No, there are nuggets of gold in there.
Speaker 2:And I know it's helped people.
Speaker 1:I mean, we know we've gotten the feedback like, hey, all these tips helped me land my promotion or my next job or whatever it is. So I think there's so much value in there, even in what we're doing now, which is, how do we go that one level deeper? And the thing I love about the section quick time off this section is where you start coming up with what can we do better off, with what can we do better. So a lot of the times, like you jump, it's natural you jump into solution mode. We can do this, this, this, and at that point you know if you're in a large team, you should probably write that down and put it on the what went well, instead of interrupting someone and like just saying, well, we'll fix this. Not that we're doing that now, it's just two of us, so it's really easy to just do it the wall and wait until you get to that section to talk about what it was in relation to. So you're, you're doing exactly what we should be doing here of like, what's the solution? I think everything you said there is great for growing the discord. Uh, what else? What else didn't go well?
Speaker 1:I think our something, and I don't know if this is a what didn't go well or something I'd just like to try is doing a little more research for topics, going like a couple levels deeper, where we're going to go.
Speaker 1:You know, do this, this and this, and then we're going to come back and kind of like talk about it in depth, and I think the episodes that we did with a capitalist correspondent, alex Restrepo he would always bring that like he had so much knowledge.
Speaker 1:You bring it to this episode, ok, yeah, he knows his stuff, and bring that like he had so much knowledge. He would bring it to this episode and be like, okay, yeah, he knows his stuff. And I know people probably get value out of going that deeper level, and so I think that's something that we can maybe try is, how do we spend a little more time like preparing for some topics and I also think the secondary on that is being more consistent with our format. I don't know whether people like the craziness, I think with podcasts, at least for me, I like the structure of like okay, it's this segment, now this segment, now the main episode, now they close with this. The consistency is nice because you know what to expect and we weren't the most consistent with the structure of our podcast this year. So I think that's certainly something we could do a little better.
Speaker 2:Unless you want chaos.
Speaker 2:If people want chaos, tell us I live in chaos, so I thrive in chaos. I think one of the things I'd like to see and this is this is against the call to our listeners. You know we have these segments like is it mirrors a corporate? What do you mean? Right, getting them, having them ready and available? Uh, if they're, if we have a an overflow of them, then it just becomes a recurring bit that we can call back to where, trying to see like, was there something in the channel? No, that's two weeks old. Okay, so we haven't had anything recently. Like it would be good to have more of those things than what we get yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:and maybe that goes back to like the collaboration, the discord of like how do we spur people, people's brains, to be able to think of those things? And like just even at the beginning of the year I think the first day of the year, maybe it was like the first monday of the year in the general channel I just put like hey, what's you know, what's everybody's move, their corporate strategy move they're making in 2025, and like that got really good engagement and and I suck at polls. So I'm sorry I didn't even put an option and just stay in your current job and your current role yeah.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people are quitting. Hey, I mean, you said something. We set a motto that we would. What did we say right at the beginning of this? We would offend and they will come. I mean, I got blown up, I got roasted right after I posted that.
Speaker 1:So it's working, but maybe more stuff like that, like maybe more polls, things to, like you know, spur that conversation and selfishly I posted that because I wanted to know what everyone was doing. But it also gives us an opportunity to talk about the most voted thing, which at this time is get a promotion, and so we could start putting together good content around. How do we actually help people get a promotion in their current role, in their current company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's. That's a really good idea and I think also just again solving on the fly. We have these channels like pod topics. You know, is it me or is it corporate? What do you mean? Maybe we just create like a little reminder bot that posts once a month like hey, this channel's meant for this. Like be sure to you know if you listen to an episode and if you've experienced something you want to anonymously comment, do forward, slash, confess, and you can do that. So like it's not just us saying it on the pod, because who knows if they make it to the end of the show or not, it's in the discord, it's, it's real time. They can see the reminders. And we could we could build stuff around this too yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:The last thing I had that is probably in the what can we do better in the solution calm. I wanted to do more with cac this year. I still feel like and it's I know it's a helpful tool because everybody that I know personally that like I talked to and listen to the latest episode they always tell me like hey, this is such like a helpful tool, and everybody who's come on the show like always references it, and so it's an absolutely helpful tool for you to understand my workplace happiness score. And I think we need to lean into that a bit, to like make it more of a tool for people so they can make it actionable, rather than just like having a concept of it and then helping others.
Speaker 1:It's funny, even my employees who don't listen to this show, I bring it up to them. I'm like these are the four things, like where do you stand, so I can be a better manager to them and help build the environment that's going to make them happy. And so I feel like that's an opportunity for us is to really jump in and, you know, make CAC a thing again, like we did the last episode, talking about adding to it, maybe making a calculator for people, maybe making a tool that people can. I don't know. I don't know what to come up with something.
Speaker 2:We need to. I mean, we need to write a short ebook, a corporate strategy, cac ebook, and actually get it in print online in PDF. That way it's not just us talking about. It can actually send people and say like hey, here's this thing, here's how you can evaluate, like kind of understand it yeah, I agree and it's bacock, by the way, now.
Speaker 1:So there's a healthy discussion happening live about whether it should be cack or whether it should be bacock, and I I don't know where it's going to land. So if you want to have an opinion on bacock or cack, you better get in the discord, because then you's going to land. So if you want to have an opinion on Bacock or Cag, you better get in the Discord, because then you're going to have to hear that every time. Do you want that? I don't want that, anything else. Any last notes this has been a very productive retrospective. We got some good action items.
Speaker 2:I would. I mean, like you know, we talked about doing different formats of the show. We're I would. I mean, like you know, we talked about doing different formats of the show it we're limited because of the identity crisis, but I would like for us to do more venues than just podcast, like last year. I do remember we said we were going to do more YouTube stuff. We did the emoji thing and that was more work than it was worth. But, like, I would like us to try and get more active on a social network, have something kind of presence on YouTube and or TikTok, in addition to the podcast platforms we're already doing today. I don't know what it is, but like I do know that part of our growth problem is, you know, we're limited towards mouth but we're not using the venues that we could use to better advertise ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, we're very single channel, single modality podcast. Only for a while we were posting on, I think, linkedin. We were having like quotes from every single episode, which was kind of cool. We can bring that back, but we didn't get a ton of engagement, so I think that's linkedin sucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I. I really think blue sky is probably it. Blue sky and tiktok, like if I depict two today, yeah, those are the two I'd go for. Yeah, I agree, yeah I think you gotta go where the freshers are yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Go where the freshers are, get in the ear holes.
Speaker 2:That's what let me tell you, Any fresher that logs into LinkedIn is immediately thinking like I have to do this for the next 50 years. Is this what's in store for me?
Speaker 1:This is the life I have to live. I have to post AI generated content every single day to make myself look good and gain followers.
Speaker 2:And the answer is yes, yes, it's a garbage, fire Terrible.
Speaker 1:So bad. Yeah, we need a competitor to LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:How has?
Speaker 1:that not happened yet. Blue Sky can just instantly become a competitor, but we don't have a LinkedIn competitor yet. Come on yeah.
Speaker 2:Corporate strategy. I mean we could set that goal. We could build the new corporate networking platform that is actually meant for networking, not sharing your weird political ideologies with AI images of six fingered women. Oh, it's so bad, it's so bad, so bad.
Speaker 1:I think that's everything I had. I don't think I have any other notes. You actually stole my last one of just expanding beyond around now. But if you in the discord, yeah, I'm only talking to you. So if you're not in the Discord, stop listening. Unplug your headphones really quick. We want to talk to just those people on our Discord. If you have any more feedback for us, we would love it. Last year we brought corporate correspondent Alex Restrepo on to give us some candid feedback and actually that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:So maybe it's time to bring him back in the next couple of months and have him roast us again and tell us how we can improve. Maybe we bring on a panel. Maybe we bring all the guests back and just have them tell us how we suck. That's a scheduling nightmare, but we should do it.
Speaker 1:That's hilarious. Bring on everybody who is at least a few of them who were on our show last year. Have them be a panel of how we improve corporate strategy in 2025.
Speaker 2:I'm down, I'm down to have my face torn off.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling baby onesies going out to everyone who joins.
Speaker 2:Is that? Oh, we're just. Anytime someone does something good, now we give them a baby onesie. Is that, is that how it's going? It's the crown jewel of this podcast. Okay, can you imagine? I'm going to throw a scenario out there for you real quick. So you're a listener, maybe you're a married husband, wife, no kids. You receive in the mail a corporate strategy baby onesie. But your significant other opens it up. I'm just saying, like what?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, that's mail fraud. You can't open up a Google's mail, so you got to stay in your lane, right? That's illegal. I'm dying. I'm dying. No, you do have to wonder what would go through your head. What do they have planned?
Speaker 2:It's like why did this podcast send you a baby onesie janine? What are you not telling me? Who is this bruce? Is it clark?
Speaker 1:is it bruce or is it clark? Why did they sign a personal note to you and send you a baby onesie? Why am I on mute? Why do they keep saying thank you for staying on mute?
Speaker 2:Are you okay? Yeah, I'm just. I'm just setting you all up for the future that you might get if this year goes well for us.
Speaker 1:To quote a great show, it's because of the implication.
Speaker 2:There's a good show. I don't know if that's the quote we want to use, but yeah, it's a good show it's the reason for the baby onesie oh, now we're just gonna do it because you're hoping it creates some horror stories and they show up in the discord.
Speaker 2:But you would only know that if you join the discord. It's true, it's true, in fact. All of this could be for not if you haven't joined the discord. So, and would only know that if you join the discord it's true, it's true, in fact, all of this could be for not if you haven't joined the discord. So, and we don't care if you lurk. We do have people who join and lurk and they lurk freely and we do not judge. Someone literally just joined. I will ask you to introduce yourself if you'd like, otherwise, lurk away. There is no obligation for you to participate in our discord whatsoever 100 agree and you can do that by clicking on the link trade.
Speaker 1:There's all the links in there. There's a website share. You can give us coffee because we are ad free at the moment and that one day we'll run out. We don't know when that date is, so maybe we need to start actually figuring that out, because ads are going to come back at some point when we run out of yeah, they going to come back. Yeah, so we got to get some coffees.
Speaker 2:That is quick. That is one more thing. Uh, we, we should probably open up a Patreon, and I don't want to like talk about this. I'll just edit this part out. No, I won't, but uh, my, my wife, who is a coffee so, and people might be more comfortable doing that than the other way. Listen, if we got $22 a month, that's it. The podcast now is paid for in full for the rest of y'all's life and we'll continue to do it with ad free. That's that's all we need. So maybe we can do, like a, a figure out a way to get there. You know it's funny. I support my favorite podcast, do you? I do? No, I do support this one. I do support this one, but I do support my favorite podcast that's good, I do too, I actually.
Speaker 1:I used to be so cheap, maybe because I grew up poor. I would never give people money for anything. That's good, I do too, I actually. I used to be so cheap, maybe because I grew up poor. I would never give people money for anything. Now I do. Now I do. Now I'm like I appreciate you, I'm going to subscribe, I'm going to download your stupid app.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give you five bucks because you deserve it, that's. That's something that happened to me, because I also grew up poor, but then I realized like there is a joy in knowing that your money is helping other people, and I do take joy in that. So if you've never tried it, try it. It's a good feeling. And just know that we will appreciate you and we appreciate those who have donated so far, because you are the real heroes and you can do that also in the link tree.
Speaker 1:Buy us a coffee and maybe we'll explore some other venues in the future, see if that makes it better, I like it, I like you, and that's all she wrote. That's it. Good, retro, good show, good, retro, good year 2025 to the moon.
Speaker 2:Let's go. That'll wrap it up for another one. Make sure to click that link tree Everything you need's in there. It wasn't a quick one, but we got to get these things out and get them done before Clark and I hit travel season again. So until then, I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute. We'll see you next week.
