My new business podcast, Business by Design Podcast Show is now live! But first a little backstory.
I still struggle to speak Manga 🙂 Last year I wrote about my struggles with adapting to the visual communication world of Instagram and YouTube. A misspent childhood that rewarded reading and writing over all other forms of communication has atrophied the other parts of my brain. A growth mindset means challenging yourself to continually learn.
It is fun – and a privilege – to be able to experiment with different media. More so when you have friends who are willing to lend you their time, patience and expertise in partnering with you on this journey. My co-host Vaishnavi Reddy, founder of OriginUX, provided the push and power to make this podcast a reality. I’m super grateful to the experts who were so generous with their time for the first set of podcast episodes: 1. Nakul Shenoy: User Experience at Clear2. Belson Coutinho: co-founder, Akasa Air3. Nitin Sethi: Chief Digital Officer – Consumer Businesses, Adani Group4. Nikhil Shankar: VP Customer and Partner Experience, Urban Clap
Why Business by Design
How easy is it to use your product or service determines to a large extent how successful you will be. And ease is determined by good design. Every time you struggle with an app or customer service representative it is because of poor design. Even failure has to be planned for – “graceful failure” is an actual idea! I talked about it at a CMO Roundtable for Oracle on CX, which makes for a great read even now. (Don’t know why non-smoking flights have an ashtray? Read the article for the answer!) Marketing does best when the business is designed to be easy to use by its customers. And hence the choice of theme for this podcast. I love that the conversations revolve around how to design a better customer experience using all the latest tech.
Why did I decide to launch a business podcast
As a young account executive in Ogilvy, I was rotated across media – hang out with the billboard painters, spend a week at the printers, visit the newspaper office with the press releases, shoot a video, smell the sawdust at a live event construction, record a jingle (yes, I even did the voiceover for a Bru Coffee ad in Tamil!). I did not however get to do a podcast, because, well, they didn’t exist at that time. Podcasts are definitely a rising medium of communication and a great way to get your message across. I wrote a blog post on how wonderful they are too! And I felt that I would enjoy this new medium of storytelling because while I am still a text-first kind of person, this format allows me to talk to other like-minded people and condense our learnings into a fun, conversation of 20 minutes. I really hope you will enjoy it – Vaishnavi, I and our expert guests have tried hard to make sure this is “not another boring corporate podcast’. There are no sponsors or commercial drivers to the show – it’s just us chatting. And that brings me to the bit that I like the most, personally, I get a reason to hang out each week with the coolest people in my network! I’ve missed that over the past couple of years. Do grab a coffee, listen to an episode – most should fit into a single pomodoro segment. And tell me what you think! How can I make it better!
What have I been listening to?
I admit that long podcasts struggle to hold my attention, as I don’t have long commutes. But I listened in full to Joe Rogan (don’t blacklist me!) interviewing Dr Gabor Mate on “The Myth of Normal”. Thanks to Siddharth Shivakumar for pointing me in this direction! I’m now reading Dr Mate’s book Scattered Minds.
What’s on my bookshelf?
Last Saturday was the Bangalore Business Book Lit Fest and I was privileged to be a jury member. Amongst the set of books shortlisted were a couple that while they did not win and not my usual genre I found interesting despite myself – one was How I Quit Google to Sell Samosas and the other was the autobiography by Vijaypat Singhania.
Where am I going?
It’s been years since I travelled for a conference! I confess I have missed the travel, the lanyards, the buffet, the chairs with bows more than I should 🙂 So I am super excited to attend the Horasis India Conference in Vietnam this weekend! (Fingers crossed that my visa comes through!)
