Welcome to Podcast Insider. I hope everybody had
a good holiday weekend here in The US.
It was fourth of July weekend.
And today, we got a special episode. I'm
gonna have Michelle Aronson
from
True Stories at Work. She's our podcaster
of the month here at Blueberry. So without
further ado, let's, get to the interview.
You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike
Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the
Blueberry team,
bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips
and tricks to help you start, grow, and
thrive through podcasting.
With all the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting,
welcome. Let's dive in.
Michelle, thanks for being on Podcast Insider. How
are you doing today? Thanks for having me.
I'm awesome.
So, Michelle
Aronson, she does true stories at work and,
also a proud Blueberry customer. For many years.
Yes. I do remember talking to you,
a few times,
but that's that's not bad. It's good to
get to know people.
So the magic of Blueberry is that when
I had a problem, I could actually talk
to somebody. So I I thanked you even
before I ever, like, met you. So thank
you for all your support.
Very good. And, Mackenzie and I,
met Michelle at the, Chicago
Podcast Movement Evolution Show, here a couple months
ago,
and Michelle's gonna be our podcaster
of the month.
Yay. Woo.
Yeah. There we go.
So,
I always ask these type of questions about,
you know, how did you get started in
podcasting? What was your, motivation?
Well, I'll tell you a quick story that
I was at a silent retreat
and after being silent for a few days,
podcasting
literally popped into my mind. I had not
even
listened to a podcast.
I
had never considered it, but I had always
wanted to collect really good stories from work
and thought I would write a book,
but podcasting
felt more
real. You could hear them in the voice
of the person instead of like reading on
the written page. I also
started to notice that people don't like to
read anymore,
but they do listen to podcasts. So it
was really
just being like,
you know, pretty still.
And then also just being open to do
it. Cause I'll say it was a little
scary to
consider something like that and going live with
the show and doing all the,
like, getting through all the technical hurdles, but
I love it and just love to
collect people's great stories from work. So How
long have you been podcasting?
Two or three years. I don't count. But,
I think I'm in my middle of my
second year.
Wow. Very good. We've been at it a
while. And,
and, like I said, when you first started,
we we helped you out a bit. And
then,
after that, we don't hear from you anymore.
And that's probably, I would imagine, a bit
of a customer journey for all brand new
podcasters.
Right? They need a lot of support in
the beginning, and once they get the hand
of it, they can do it on their
own. That's beautiful.
Yeah. And, you know, it's not as scary
as people think.
You get a few of the basic technical
stuff out of the way, and then it's
just make your content, rinse and repeat, and,
you know, promote, promote, promote.
Have you, ever run into anything that, because
of your podcast, you're now doing this other
thing or,
anything cool happening because you podcast?
I have a coaching
strategy business.
Helping small businesses
really
build in their
culture, their values,
be a place that people want to work.
So that is what I do. Podcasting is
for fun. So I've always really considered them
very separate.
Well, I had a gentleman reach out to
me who wanted me to do some coaching
for his,
CEO.
And when he introduced me to his CEO,
he wrote,
Hey, Michelle is a podcaster and then put
the other stuff second.
And my heart really went
like big because I had never been introduced
as a podcaster
first. So it was, it was really funny.
I guess he had listened to my show.
He must've liked what he heard and then
ended up,
just, you know, reaching out to me for
the business. So that was the one. And
I did tell him I was really flattered
because
I consider myself sort of a
HR professional teacher first, podcaster on the side,
but,
he kinda flipped that script for me. Okay.
Now the tone of your show, is it,
the stories, are they sometimes comical or is
that the focus? What do you focus on
as a good story?
Well, Mike, obviously you never worked in HR
because anybody who has ever worked in HR
knows exactly what they're about. They're about
sometimes they're funny.
Sometimes they're heartbreaking.
Sometimes they're disgusting.
Like it's how people behave in the workplace.
And,
I interview HR people who have to investigate
things like
sex at work,
people doing very strange, passive aggressive behaviors at
work,
like poop. I'm just going to say the
word poop.
You know, all sorts of things,
affairs, you know, that comes up a lot.
People,
just sort of doing things that they do
when they're human, but they take it into
work and then
it has to be investigated. And that's sort
of the when people say, I don't know
what HR does. I do. And, you know,
Yeah. I really don't know what you're interesting
than you think. Yeah. I would imagine.
Mhmm. Like I said, I I don't have
to deal too much with that. I I
do
hire people once in a while and that
kind of thing, but, yeah, definitely not in
the nitty gritty of HR and
being that we're a pretty small company. We
don't have a lot of those issues, at
least. Mhmm. I have to That you know
about that you know about. I'm just gonna
say, I know small companies that have big
problems. I've worked with them. So, it it
For sure. You know, where ever you have
people, I,
I did have an I have had a
couple of employment attorneys on the show and
they just get them
over and over and over again. And so
their stories are,
really funny, but it doesn't matter the size
of your company. Sometimes it can be three
people and something
very unusual happens, but,
typically, there's no HR person
at that size. So Yeah. We we have
a a a guy that he's he's one
of the owners, and he takes care of
the HR stuff, and he's pretty good at
it. So
shout out to Barry.
Bless you, Barry. I'm sure I'm sure you
wanna call me because nobody wants to take
care of some of that stuff.
Right. For sure.
For sure. Yeah. So, what's a a standout
story that you care to share here on,
by the way? Oh my gosh. I'm trying
to think of my favorite. There are so
many it's honestly hard to choose, but there's
some of them are just funny. So my,
one of my
interviews,
a person got terminated. They acted badly.
They got into the elevator where they were
being walked out by the HR person
and
they pulled out a harmonica
and started playing while they went down the
elevator. And they're like, I'm getting fired by
HR. No. No. No. No. No. No. You
know? And they just, like, sang their way
down their termination. So it's a range of
things. There's a lot of really good stories.
So you should Yeah. I think you should
go back and listen to some of my
episodes, Mike. I definitely will. Fascinating.
They definitely will.
That's one of the probably the harder jobs
in HR is, is walking people out or
and, you know, terminations
and whatnot.
Luckily, we haven't had to do that around
here, so,
that's been good.
Yeah. It's hard, and it's also nothing that
you do
with light hard. You know? I mean, it's
always a horrible
experience, I think, for everybody
in the room.
Oh, yeah. For sure. Yes. This this person
apparently found
their harmonica
and,
tried to memorialize it with music and,
which makes for a good story. It wasn't,
you know, probably their best day, but,
quite a good tune, apparently.
Well, yeah. I guess sing sing the blues
in the elevator on the way down.
Right? You're feeling it. You're really feeling the
blues, and so just let it out. So
Yeah. Yeah. So,
yeah, that, that that whole
genre of of podcasting, you know, for, you
know, stuff at work and, you know, HR.
I mean, I'm sure there's other shows out
there,
but,
you know, that just doesn't cross my radar
very often. So, you know Yeah. And I'm
just gonna say most of the HR shows
that I listen to
are, like, information
shows. They're like
like these experts, like talking to you.
And mine is really focused on having
the expertise come through their stories because every
experienced
HR person has had to deal with these
things. And nobody can tell you how to
deal with somebody who, you know,
has sex at work when you're investigating it.
And so just listening to some of these
stories can be a little bit, maybe entertaining,
maybe educational,
you know, but it makes you feel a
little bit less alone and maybe a little
more prepared for something that you never thought
you would have to prepare for.
Yeah. You know? Sounds like, you know, why
I listen to podcasts about podcasting
because it's not
that I need to learn about podcasting is
I just wanna hear how other people are
dealing with the issues that I deal with.
So in your case, that'd be the same
same sort of motivation.
You know, we always say, you know, when
you start a podcast, you have to start
with a goal.
And and then what was your goal? Just,
as a recreational
pursuit or
learning? Couple a couple of things. I mean,
first of all, I wanted to educate. I'm
a teacher. I've been teaching for over fifteen
years, graduate students
when I would tell them content, right? These
students that I'm teaching master's level,
it's night school basically. Right.
I would tell them stories and people would
come up to me years later and say,
I still remember that story. And I thought,
oh,
such a good way to teach. You know?
And so they weren't bad stories. They were
just examples, like really bringing
the concepts to life. So I think for
me, a part of it was
to inform
a little bit to amuse because that might,
that is by far one of my favorite
parts of HR is really,
I would sit down with a group of
HR executives and be like, tell me your
best story, please. You know, I just want
to hear, because
it's things I can't manufacture.
Right. They're just too good and too real
and all the things. So, well, people are,
interesting and HR is people.
So
very cool. Yeah. One of the attorneys said,
you know,
beware humans at work, you know, it was
kind of like, you know, yes, they're at
work, but they're still humans. And so the,
the good things they do they do at
work and some of the bad things that
they do, they also bring to work. Right.
Well, with Blueberry, you know, since about 2020,
we've been all virtual.
Is there any differences
in doing HR for a virtual company or
for remote workers? I know that's been a
big thing last few years. It's a hot
topic, and people, even in the HR industry,
are completely divided.
Everybody should return to work.
Nobody should return to work. There are people
in the middle
from my perspective. And most of the work
that I really do is around culture.
I think it needs to be driven by
the culture that you want,
the business goals that you have and what
the best way to achieve those are. And
if you can meet
those criteria, you can figure it out and
decide.
Some companies work really well virtually.
During the pandemic I was consulting at a
three d printing startup, so much fun, but
they, they were never going to go virtual
because they're a wet lab, which means like
they're working with like different types of chemicals
and they're building this stuff and they needed
their software team to talk to their technical
team, to talk to their lab team. And
there was never going to be a chance
of, of that kind of stuff happening. So
it really should be driven by, you know,
business and your culture.
Right. Yeah. You know, with with us, we're
a, you know, software company, basically. You know,
you get down to it, software as a
service, and it works out pretty well for
us. Do a lot of Zoom meetings. You
know, like, sometimes some days, I say death
by Zoom.
But, you know, we have a culture that
that works for us. You know? We've got
people scattered about the country,
but managing people like that
is probably a bit of a challenge.
When the whole pandemic happened, that's kind of
how I started my business. I had quit
my job. I had taken a year off.
This was before the pandemic.
I ended up
south by Southwest was canceled. That was going
to be my last year from last trip
from my year off. I ended up locked
in my house unemployed as the pandemic began.
And I called three people who I knew
from HR and said, Hey, what does the
world need? I want to go back to
work. I, you know, I buried my father.
I traveled around, I'm ready to get busy.
And one of them,
was telling me what the world needs. And
I said, I don't want to do any
of that. She She said, what do you
want to do? And I said, well, right
now it feels like we had a lot
of mediocre leaders, like before the pandemic. And
now everybody's at home and they're trying to
lead people virtually. Like I want to put
together a program for like emotional intelligence and
leadership and help them be better
leading virtually.
And you know what? She said, I'll buy
that. And I was like, grabbed a pen.
I was like, what do you want? And
so I, you know, I sort of began
my business very organically
by filling just that need that you're talking
about, which
is
giving people the skills to really communicate in
a meaningful way, even if you're not in
the same
space, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. And we we have periodic meetings,
you know, where we have all hands meetings.
We go somewhere cool and, you know, meet
for two or three days. And, you know,
we do that once a year, and then
we have other little, meetups that usually at
conferences or whatever and, you know, where we
get to see, at least a few people.
And, yeah, it's it's harder to do it
that way. And and with your podcast, you
you know, kinda
I'm sure you've had episodes,
dealing with that,
topic of remote work and and that kind
of thing.
Yeah. People feel very strongly about it. I
had one person,
KL on my show who,
like, really thought, you know, people do not
need to go back to the office. I've
had other people that are like, we're bringing
people back and there is no right answer.
It's kind of like any right answer. I
would be very suspicious
of anybody who gives me a right answer
because
it's very unique to the people that work
there and the, you know, ability for the
leader to be
strong as a leader, leading a virtual team.
It's a whole different skill set, like you
said. Getting back to your podcast, how's the
success been as far as, you know, are
you,
reaching the audience you want to reach?
You still having any challenges and getting the
word out, anything like that? Well, I'm not
very good at the promoting
stuff. So I have like this. I mean,
I've grown,
You know, in terms of numbers, but I'm
not very
promotional. So I need to work on that.
I mean,
for me, the podcast is an opportunity to
create, to connect and then like learn. And
so I think my next big learning for
this show is
that whole promotional
thing and recycling and not
just literally, I will put out one post
on LinkedIn. Like my show is up.
That's it. I do notice who subscribes because
I kind of will
put the show up and then see how
many people listen and then I'll promote it
maybe a day or two later just to
see how many people are kind of listening
before I put that thing on LinkedIn. So
what do you suggest? Like, tell me your
expert. Like, what do you do for your
show? How do you promote that? Yeah. My
my show my personal show is,
how should I say it? It's long lived,
but, not very listened to. It's because I
don't promote it, really. It's just a a
creative
thing for me, kinda like what you're doing.
But,
but what we say, you know, for promoting,
if you look at our podcast insider, this
podcast,
you know, we do
we'll do short videos
on YouTube and LinkedIn and
where all the places.
And, you know,
as promoting an episode,
we'll take clips from from videos that we
we do of the show, or we'll do
AI generated clips and
you know?
But that kind of thing. And, plus, we
have an unfair advantage. If you're using PowerPress,
we're in the welcome screen,
our episodes,
so that's our unfair advantage.
But since we're talking about podcasting,
what a better place to promote it? Promotion
is one of those things. You know, Mackenzie's
more of an expert at that, and she's
my cohost on on the show, usually.
Todd or Mackenzie or all three of us
sometimes.
And, yeah, that that's a hard one, you
know, just getting the word out to the
right people, getting in front of the right
people. Another thing I'd like to do
is get into a a Facebook group
or forums of some sort or Reddit or
whatever about your subject matter, your your genre.
Mhmm. And go in there and be helpful.
Don't go in there and say, hey. I
got a podcast. Check it out.
You know, be in there you know, be
a a member that people start knowing, and
then, you know, say a topic comes up
that you covered in an episode. You say,
hey. I covered this topic in my episode
and send them a link to that episode,
whether it's a two year old episode or
one from the other day.
And, you know, that that kind of builds
your
expertise in that field.
I like that. I like those ideas.
The thing that I I really need to
promote, because this really slows my show's production
down.
I have this segment at the end and
it's really hard to get content for,
but I don't want to give it up
because it's kind of my favorite part of
the show.
It's called workplace confessions.
So people can call in and confess something
they've done at work
that they didn't get caught for. So maybe
they ate their coworkers lunch. Maybe they would
do their back to school shopping in the
little supply cabinet that they had in their
office.
The good news is my best friend was
kind of an office delinquent. And so had
a bunch of episodes for my first, like
eight shows. I really, she goes, oh, I
have more, you know? And,
but, I've promoted it a little bit and
that's really I do like to have them,
so it slows me down in terms of
recruiting. So Well, how often do you podcast?
Like, once a week, once a month? What
what's your cadence? Once a month, I would
like to move to every two or three
weeks. So that would be my dream.
I always tell people on this show, and
they've heard it a 100 times. I'm the
king of inconsistency.
Podcast insider goes out every week, my personal
show, you know, whenever I feel like it.
And that's not a great
way to grow a show.
You know? Agreed. Do
as I say, not as I do is,
you know, it's kinda what I say. But,
you know, usually,
weekly is probably the sweet spot. Every two
weeks is good. But be somewhat consistent,
meaning you're gonna do a monthly show, put
it out on the third of the month
or the fifth of the month or whatever
and do that, or the first Tuesday of
the month or something like that. Try to
be consistent because and that's another way to
get feedback. Here's a dirty little secret. If
you're every Friday or every Monday on a
weekly show and you,
don't get it out that day, you're gonna
hear from people. And when you hear from
people, that's a way to get feedback and
getting to know them. Kind of a tricky
way to do it, so delay one once.
Provoke them. Make them mad and get their
feedback. Then you know they care.
But I, you know, I listen to a
couple daily shows, and if it's if they
miss a day, I'm like, where to go?
You know? People build you into their Mhmm.
Routine, especially with a monthly show, you know,
that that's gonna be a little harder to
build into a routine because they've got weekly
routines. That
is good. I need to get on my,
I need to get on my workplace confession.
Cause I have a backlog of episodes, but
I don't have a backlog of
confessions, you know, and I do love that.
So maybe I'll put the commercial in. Good.
Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll send you the link
in, it can be read in a robot
voice. Like I can do all sorts of
things to keep it anonymous. Nobody has to
give me any names. So that would be
amazing.
You know, juvenile delinquents, Mike, is that what
you're saying?
No,
never. Adult delinquents?
Never, never.
So where do people find you? I see
you're using a WordPress site with PowerPress.
The most
amazing WordPress site ever. I have a podcast
website, truestoriesatwork.com.
And then
also
my episodes are listed on my regular
site, my business site, cultureandstrategylab.com.
So
options to be on the show
or submit a workplace confession or just drop
some really good,
workplace wisdom
on us. So lots of opportunities for interaction.
We'll have a link to that in the
show notes over at podcastinsider.com.
Well, anything else we didn't cover that you
wanna cover?
Oh, if you have any workplace stories, what's
the strangest thing that's happened to you in
the workplace?
Oh, I, I would have to,
I'll have to do that on a confessional.
Okay. All right. Perfect. Perfect. I was in
the military. There's all kinds of fun military
stuff.
So, I bet you saw a lot. I
bet you did. Alright. Well, thank you for
having me. Really an honor and, great to
have this opportunity to connect more deeply with
Blueberry and your show. We'll catch you on
the next episode.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com
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