A year ago Ryan and Daniel started recording a show about making work not suck. This week they put the show itself on the whiteboard and run it through Vision, Journey, Culture, Results — the same framework they've walked hundreds of leadership teams through.

The vision held up. The format did not. And the thing neither of them expected was that the biggest return on a year of weekly recording wasn't the audience. It was what researching a new topic every single week did to how they each run their own companies.

In this episode:

• Why they scrapped their best-produced episodes after 13 and rebuilt around weekly recording
• What a year of weekly research did to Ryan's work across 22 companies and roughly 500 people
• The blind spot Daniel found in himself, and why he's changing where he gets his information
• How to use a public audience as a live test of whether your internal messaging actually lands
• The honest list: weak intros, a website with no resources, and guest episodes that missed
• What's coming in year two — the manifesto site, real tools and templates, and a guest vetting process
• How you measure a mission you won't see the results of in your lifetime

00:00 — Cold Open: A Million People Marching

02:00 — The Vision: Work Is Not the Enemy

07:00 — Year One By the Numbers

14:00 — We Threw Out Our Best Episodes

21:00 — What Weekly Research Did to Our Day Jobs

27:00 — The Honest List: What's Not Working

31:00 — Year Two: Manifesto, Resources, Guests

35:00 — A Movement, Not an Audience

39:00 — Measuring a Mission You'll Never See Finished

43:00 — Last Word: Tell Us What to Fix

RYAN: Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast. I am marching forward in a direction on a mission to make work not suck, and I would love people to join along with us, so that we can be side by side. Just like we talked about in our previous episode about mentorship, where we can lean on each other. There are things that people have gone through, that when we talk about it on an episode people say, "Hey, I had this experience," that may help another listener. It may not even be the content, or what we say, that helps somebody. It could be the comment that's made on the video that helps somebody else.

I don't want to help a million people. I want a million people marching alongside, going down this mission to make work not suck for as many people as we possibly can. Not to be — and this probably sounds horrible — it's like the million man march on Washington. That's probably an unworthy comparison, but that's a pretty cool visual. If we can have a virtual million person march on making work not suck, can we make the world a better place? How do you not want to join?

All right, Daniel. Hope you're ready for a fun one today.

DANIEL: Bring it on.

RYAN: We are just under a year since we've recorded every single week and dropped an episode.

DANIEL: Nice.

Instead of waiting to the one year mark, I thought we'd wait till this milestone. As of this recording, we're at 24,993 subscribers. So close. We typically gain between 10 and 20 a day, depending on content drop. So we're on a pretty consistent upscale in new subscribers. By the time this episode drops, we should be well over 25,000. That puts us a quarter of the way to our silver play button — at the 100,000 mark you get the silver play button — but we definitely have a lot more work to go to get there.

What I thought I'd do today is reflect on what we've done the past year. We've recorded some of these episodes and sometimes we've reflected back and said, "Hey, we recorded this in November and here it is January." What I want to do is: what have been some of the moments in the almost year of recording this, and even some of the comments we've gotten, both good and bad? How have we made work not suck in the past year? Because when we set out to do this, we're like, "We want to make work not suck," and we just started recording. Now we've got a producer, we have a video editor, we're making more progress, we're getting a little tighter, a little more clean.

But I want to reflect on how have we impacted? And maybe this is a little bit of a question for some of the listeners too. What are some of the things that have been applied? What are some of the lessons learned? How has this podcast helped make work not suck for all of our listeners? But also just some of the things that we've done. I don't know about you, but I've taken some of our episodes and handed them to people and said, "Listen to this episode and call me tomorrow," or "Message me back and let's talk about it." I've had mentor conversations, coaching conversations, even entire leadership changes or transformations from some of our episodes.

Just take it from there. If we're going to do this, we've got to do it in the Vision, Journey, Culture, Results framework. Let's start with the vision of Make Work Not Suck. I want to hear your thought.

DANIEL: We've talked about this before, but maybe just to share with everybody else. I wanted to start this podcast with you because I think that work is a good thing. My wife and I have this argument all the time. Not to get all theological, but she's like, "Oh man, I can't wait to die and go to heaven so that we don't have to work anymore." And I was like, "Oh honey, I think there's going to be work in heaven." She was like, "No, there's no way." I'm like, "Honey, it has been proven many, many times that human beings are psychologically not in a good place if they don't have something to do, something productive."

We talk about what kind of jobs there are in heaven, blah, blah, blah. We will be working. Maybe we're all farmers, but we're going to be doing something with our days. That, for me, I think is a really important lens to remember — that work is not inherently bad. Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't suck a lot. I have had a lot of jobs, many of them crappy jobs, but I don't think it has to be that way.

Maybe I'm crazy and maybe nobody else out there agrees with me, but I believe that work does not have to suck. I think that it does for many, many people and for a variety of reasons. That's why I wanted to create this podcast — just explore as many of the reasons as we could find of why does work suck, and what could we do to influence people. Whether they're the founder and CEO, whether they're the summer intern, or whether they're just a cog in the machine somewhere in the middle. What could we do to help them make work not suck even just a little bit more, just a little bit better? That seems like a compelling thing that I'm willing to give some time and energy towards.

RYAN: I love it, and mine is very similar. You know I'm very passionate about the wheel.

DANIEL: Yep.

RYAN: I've seen the aha moment dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times whenever that's dropped — we put it up on the whiteboard or a slide or whatever it may be. And I love walking into these companies and seeing the dysfunction. I don't like seeing the dysfunction, but I love seeing the transformation. You see the dysfunction and the frustration, and people are burned out and just not quite sure what's going on. They don't know up from down. They're just in this grind.

And I love the aha moment when you get everybody aligned and all of a sudden the business is moving in a better direction. Leadership team is more aligned. Management group is more aligned. The employees are more aligned. The whole team is gelling a lot more. It's not easy. It's not overnight. But then just to watch those companies start to win and win over and over again, almost to the point where winning is boring — but because they're winning and everybody is having fun, that to me is work should not suck.

Work should be fun. Work should be hard. If you're not working hard, then you're probably doing something illegal if you're making lots of money. But work should not suck. And if we could take the lessons learned and the things that we've done in the companies we've worked with and apply it to a broader audience, where they can just take a piece of it and make their job not suck, or the company they work for or run not suck — boy, we'd be a much happier society.

DANIEL: Absolutely. I think we'd make the world a better place.

DANIEL: So then what about the journey? What is the experience of recording Make Work Not Suck been like for you? For me, it's been very interesting, because I think we recorded the first couple of episodes in Fort Worth at your place or at a neighbor's place. We've recorded most of them remotely where you and I are in different cities. I'm in Atlanta, you're in Fort Worth. Have we recorded in any other places? I know you and I have both recorded while on the road.

RYAN: Yeah, that's true. I've recorded from hotel rooms. But for the most part, we've been remote from each other. There were only the first original 13 episodes we recorded together. And I remember this pivot, because those episodes — I actually think they're really good. I think they're some of our best episodes. Here was my problem with them, and I don't know if you agree or not, but we pivoted anyway. We recorded those in like a six, eight hour block.

DANIEL: Oh my gosh, it was such a long day.

RYAN: Yeah. And it was good content, but it was all done in one chunk. They were more polished, more put together. I think they're more professional than how we record day to day now.

DANIEL: Yeah. And for a while, we were editing our own videos. Now we have an editor, thanks to Samuel, and Tom, our producer, who have made the production quality way better than what we were doing on our own. So do they get — hold on — do they get the award of making Make Work Not Suck not suck?

RYAN: I think so. Yes. I think that's the award that we're going to have to give to them.

DANIEL: Okay. So maybe we should reevaluate — are we making their work suck because we suck at... anyway.

RYAN: Gosh, I hope not. But no, we do appreciate the team that helped make this happen.

RYAN: What I remember when we dropped those episodes and looking at the room, I was like, I feel like this is not real enough. We're following a prompt, we're recording in one day 12, 13 weeks of episodes. That can't be connected enough to what's going on. And that's where we made the switch to: let's record every single week so that we can be more connected to what's going on in society, what's going on in the business world.

If you think about it, in that year's time, we've had elections. AI has done some crazy jumps.

DANIEL: Yeah, AI's done a lot. Tariffs.

RYAN: Tariffs. Yeah, there have been a few really big things that have hit that we've been able to cover on a more real-time basis, because we record weekly as opposed to block chunks that release once a quarter.

DANIEL: Yeah.

RYAN: So I think that's helped us be more connected, which again, the whole goal is to make work not suck. I think that's a journey that we transitioned to, to make the content help work not suck.

DANIEL: Yeah, and I think that was a good move. I continue to enjoy the conversations. What have you learned from doing this? What have your insights been? How are you a better leader now than you were a year ago, before we started this?

RYAN: I'm probably going to throw myself under the bus here.

DANIEL: I'm going to right after you.

RYAN: When I was in Vistage, there was this phrase — everybody knew the day after Vistage I would come back with, "Oh, we got this great idea." A lot of times I would find a book, read the book, and it was like, "Oh, let's apply that." Of course, after reading hundreds of books and hundreds of frameworks, you start to figure out how to blend them together.

But what I found out in this process is doing the research for the episodes and trying to connect it to a broader audience. I did more research into those topics. And just because I was doing the research for those topics, I found that I was being a better leader with the people I directly and indirectly manage, because I was applying the topic we were preparing for the podcast into the companies I was working with. A lot of times the topics or the things we're interacting with — that is really what's happening in real time behind the scenes with the companies we work with.

So for me, even myself, the teams I directly manage — the work has sucked less because of the research and time and energy going into the podcast.

DANIEL: Yeah. I think I have become more aware of my blind spots through this process. It's really uncomfortable, at least for me. It's very uncomfortable to watch myself on video. I seem to always make bad facial expressions. Somehow the camera always pauses and I look like an idiot, which is probably good for my humility.

But I tend to be very zoomed in on the kind of people that I tend to work with and the problems facing Americans. We've got people on various teams globally that you and I both work with. This podcast has reminded me how American-centric I am, and how that's not a good thing. I need to remember that there's a lot more going on in the world than what's happening in the United States. And I need to broaden my sources of information so that I don't just stay zoomed in on America and the drama happening here.

RYAN: Yeah, it's like getting outside the four walls. Get outside your own four walls. I think that's good for home, for work, for personal, for country. The world is a big place, but I don't think it's as big as we used to think it was. It's much more accessible now.

DANIEL: That's a good view. Anything else you learned along the journey of Make Work Not Suck?

RYAN: One thing that I've learned is the appreciation for the comments we get on the videos. I love checking the stats. I'm constantly looking in YouTube Studio — is our subscriber count going up? What's going on with the likes on the videos? We're watching it. Some weeks we have a video that drops and within a short period of time it's 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 views, many likes. Sometimes we drop a video and three days later it's got 150 views on it. I know sometimes that's luck of the draw, or how the algorithm picks it up.

What I love about it is — the bubble of work. I work with 22, 23 companies, probably have roughly 500-ish people I'm responsible for directly and indirectly. That's still a very small bubble. What I love about what I've learned from the podcast is that by putting something out there and reading the comments and seeing if it's a video that gets a lot of upvotes, downvotes, views, it helps me determine: okay, that topic wasn't very resonating to a larger audience. Maybe I need to tweak my messaging internally with the teams I manage, because if a large audience doesn't connect with it, why would my direct audience connect with it?

DANIEL: Yeah, that's a good point.

RYAN: And so just by watching the interactions — and again, I don't take every single comment that comes in the door verbatim. I mean, I read them all. Sometimes somebody misunderstood the topic, or sometimes the short only has a segment of the clip, and every so often you have to say, well, watch the full video to get the full context. But just taking that insight in helps me be a better leader, to make work not suck for the people I'm directly responsible for.

DANIEL: Yeah. I am encouraged by the people who have commented. I've had a couple of people reach out and say, "Hey, love what you're doing. How can I get some more information?" I'm doing this because I enjoy it, because I believe in it, and because I think there are people out there who could benefit from it. But there's also this moment of being surprised when people actually benefit from it and they say, "Hey, thanks. That was actually really good, really helpful." And I'm like, "Oh, wow, thanks. I'm glad it was helpful."

So that's been probably one of the most surprising but also encouraging things for me — that people I don't even know have picked this up and said, "Wow, this has been really helpful."

RYAN: Well, the first thing we did is friends and families, neighbors. Some of them gave us blunt, honest feedback. Several of them were like, "Oh yeah, it's great, it's great." I'm a friend, I'm listening to it. And then they haven't listened to it since episode five, which is okay. But to your point, the random stranger that interacts with it — that is what's motivating. Because I don't care if we have a million subscribers or 10 subscribers. If we can help one person make work not suck, that's achieving the mission.

DANIEL: Yep. And at the end of the day, there are eight point something billion people on the planet. I want to help more than one.

RYAN: Right. I don't care about having a hundred million followers on YouTube.

DANIEL: Yeah. My kids give me shit all the time. They're like, "Daddy, how big is your YouTube channel?" I'm like, "I don't know, 20, 25." And they're like, "Do you know how big MrBeast's channel is?" They always compare me to MrBeast. I'm like, "Guys, I'm not going to compete there. That's not what I'm trying to do with my life."

RYAN: So I don't know, maybe someday we'll get to a big number and MrBeast will invite us on his show.

DANIEL: Hey, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be. That would be awesome.

RYAN: I would love to get to a million subscribers — not because I want to be famous or I want a big podcast, but because we'd have helped achieve the mission.

DANIEL: Because we've helped a million people.

RYAN: Yep. That would be awesome.

DANIEL: Yeah. It's just one of the many markers.

DANIEL: What are some things you think we should change? Not committing to it, but just exploring — what are things we could do different or better in the podcast? I would love comments on this and feedback.

RYAN: Yeah. I do think we have to up our production game. I do think our intros and outros are weak. I don't think we do a good enough job of captivating people's attention, because as anybody who does anything in social media knows, if you don't capture the attention in the first 30, 60 seconds, it doesn't matter how good the content is further down.

DANIEL: I don't even know if you get 30 to 60 seconds. It could be closer to 10.

RYAN: Yeah. The benchmark is 60 seconds. If you can't hold people for 60 seconds, then your intro was dead.

I think our website is lacking on resources. I think we can get on more social channels to get more footprint out there. Our YouTube production is pretty solid, but I think you and I could be better at dialing in our content, having more focused intros and more call to action, or connected action.

We did know somewhere in the middle — six months ago or so — that our content was diverging a little bit. Over the past few weeks, I'd say the last 10 weeks, we've been working with our producer Tom and constantly modifying the briefs and the topics to try to hone in, to actually be connected. One thing we noticed is we were getting a bit too anecdotal.

DANIEL: Yeah. And not really connecting with the everyday worker, the everyday person. I think that's another one of my blind spots — kind of angling more towards an executive audience, which is most of who I work with. Most of my clients are business owners. I think I need to recognize that and be a little bit more dialed into what the day-to-day experience is for everybody else.

What I think is crazy is the amount I have learned during this process. It's given me more respect for how hard this is. I didn't think it was easy, but how hard it really is. And how much it's made me better at being intentional.

RYAN: The other thing I think we need to work on — this goes along with the resources — I want to get the Simplaphi site live. We've been talking about it for years. Right now it goes to a redirect page. But I want to get that site live with the call to action, with the manifesto and with the methodology on there. Because I think if we can get that resource live, we can give people better context. We talk about Vision, Journey, Culture, Results on almost every episode.

DANIEL: Yep.

RYAN: But we've got it in paper form and we've got it in PowerPoints. If we go into a company, we can teach it.

DANIEL: And on hundreds of whiteboards around the country.

RYAN: Hundreds of whiteboards. We suck at doing it on the podcast, and I think that would be something that could help elevate our listeners.

DANIEL: All right, here's what I want to do. We need to set up an online merch store and be able to sell Make Work Not Suck t-shirts and have the methodology on the back.

RYAN: You say that. And I haven't thought about the t-shirts — I've been attempting to make a Make Work Not Suck hat for six months now.

DANIEL: Really? Harder than you think?

RYAN: Literally, the design shop where I've had many hats made is a mile from my house.

DANIEL: Okay.

RYAN: It was trying to get the graphic to my wife to get the hat made. One of these days I'll get it. But yeah, I do think getting more intentional will help spread the message. A merch store — I'd love to get one online. That'd be fun. I don't know if anybody else would want it other than you and I, but we'll have a non-method and a method version for the nerdy people.

DANIEL: I would absolutely wear that t-shirt. Just a casual, everyday t-shirt, with or without the method on the back.

What do you think about guests? I've wondered about inviting — we did a couple of guest episodes. I think some of them are really good and some of them are really not. I'm not sure how to vet guests. What's your thought on that? We haven't talked about this in a bit.

RYAN: That is a phenomenal question. Guests are definitely in the playbook. Hopefully after the end of summer we can institute some of these new experiments, if you will. But yes, I do want to get more guests on the podcast. We've been working on the vetting process, the selection process, working with a few vendors that can help us get guests on.

And I agree. Our guests in the past — the ones that were not so much, I think it was more like people we knew that we thought could be good, but then they weren't good podcast guests. Phenomenal individuals, but just not great guests. So yeah, I definitely want to up our guest game.

Because originally our goal was to have levels of topic between executive founder, top-line executive, middle-line management, and the everyday frontline employee. I think the podcast was always meant to be more for the frontline employee, but then can cascade back and forth. I do think if we can get more real-life people from around the world on the podcast to connect with their peers, that is definitely on the roadmap.

DANIEL: I'm actually shocked we haven't done it yet.

RYAN: Yeah. It's something I've been thinking of. There's probably a Google Doc somewhere that has a list of all the people we would love to invite, but we haven't been able to pull the trigger on it yet. That is definitely on the improvement list. And I'm shocked people listen to just you and I week after week.

DANIEL: We'll have to bring them something else soon. They're going to figure it out.

DANIEL: All right, culture. People, values, emotions. What's the culture experience been like for you with Make Work Not Suck?

RYAN: That's an interesting one. I'm just thinking about this, because there's the culture between you and I and the team, and then there's the culture of the podcast itself. We can't control — nor do we really want to control — the listenership and the comments and stuff like that. But one thing I can say is there have been a few random comments made, as anybody would expect. I actually think the comments that we have — people are pretty respectful. People are looking for answers. People are putting in their two cents. And I like that.

I don't think everything you and I say is the right thing. I think there are varying opinions, or there are multiple ways to do it. And I love being challenged. I think there are multiple paths to make work not suck. To me, this is more of a movement. I don't care how you do it — well, I care that you do it the right way. You can't shortcut your way into making work not suck. It's going to be a short-term win, a long-term loss.

For those that legitimately want to make their work life better, to make their personal life and friends and family relationships better — I want to plant a flag in the ground. I want to be the pirates. Plant the flag in the ground. We want a better way. We demand a better way. There are multiple ways to get there. But let's literally change the way work happens so that we can all live better lives. That's the culture I want.

DANIEL: I love it. I think I'm very blessed to have a group of friends that think that way — you obviously being first on that list. But you and I also know lots of other people that are entrepreneurs, coaches, founders, and all share this view of: we can make money, we can make the world a better place, we can help each other become better versions of ourselves, and we can have fun along the way. Those are not mutually exclusive. Now, there's always going to be tension in there. But I think it's possible to work, to have fun, to become a better version of yourself, and to make money all at the same time.

And I'm finding that that's actually a rare view. There are not a lot of people that think that way. So I love this idea of a movement — how do we find more of those people and pull them in? Whether they listen to our podcast or not. How do we mobilize those people? Because those are the people who are going to change the world. They're not the people that are just going to cut every corner possible to maximize profits. They're not the people that are going to start nonprofits — nonprofits are great, we need them, but they're not sustainable. The people that are going to change the world are the people who are thinking like you, which is: we can do all of these things at the same time. It is hard, but it is worth it. How do we encourage each other, support each other, resource each other so that together we can change the world and make work not suck? That I get excited about.

RYAN: Oh yeah. And again, sometimes people think changing the world has got to be this grand movement. Don't get me wrong, there are grand movements — that's what's called a movement. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you're part of the movement, you have to change a million lives too. It's sometimes just being the nurse that takes a few extra steps with the patient, that saves their life, or remembers that shitty time in the hospital when they're going through this crappy experience or health problem, and the nurse and the doctors and the staff took that extra little bit to put the human touch on there and help them through it. That's rewarding.

DANIEL: Yeah. And the thing is, if you're a hospital and you can find ways to allow your teams to do more of that and get rid of the bureaucracy and red tape — not to cut corners.

RYAN: You could be the hospital administrator, or someone on the business side of it, that can find ways to enable them to provide a little care. I haven't met anybody that's a nurse that doesn't generally want to serve people. Don't get me wrong, I've met Nurse Betty that's disgruntled and set in her ways and this, that and the other. But you know what? Dammit, she gives the best care out of anybody else. She's pissed off at all the red tape that roadblocks her from doing the better care.

DANIEL: Right. And I think that's part of it — just how can everybody in the organization do something that is just a little better than what is currently there? And enough of those little acts added up together can in fact change the world.

RYAN: Agree.

DANIEL: So let's talk results. How will we know when we've changed the world?

RYAN: Well, if I've learned anything from anything, we will never know in our lifetime if we did this right.

DANIEL: Ooh. Okay.

RYAN: We will be either forgotten and this amounted to nothing — no, I shouldn't say that. There are definitely individuals that have been impacted and have ripple effects that have improved. But we will never know until we are long gone, and there may be a book written about this thing in the future. But you know what? I don't care. I'm going to march forward every single day trying to make the world at large and the world around me a better place. One L10 at a time, one quarterly session at a time, one one-on-one at a time, one interaction at a time.

DANIEL: And so how do you think about results then? I love the spirit of what you're saying, and I think we're clearly not doing this for results. It's not like we're making millions of dollars — I think we're losing money on this. But how do you think about results?

RYAN: It's easy. It's exactly what I just said. One conversation, one L10, marching forward towards those things. It's a game of numbers. If you get up every day — what's the phrase? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. There's a metric.

I think it's also a game of numbers in the sense of the kid that gets out and practices basketball two hours a day versus the kid that shows up and does it two hours once a week. I'm going to be the one that shows up two hours a day, three hours a day, four hours a day, constantly practicing. And the way I measure is by just continually pushing forward in those things.

Now, if we want to be on a grander scale for the podcast — subscriber count. Sure. People like our stuff, people like the content, subscribers will go up. If we suck at this and put out crappy stuff, subscriber count will go down.

DANIEL: If we suck at making work not suck.

RYAN: Yeah. And this is another one — it goes into the Simplaphi manifesto. When we launch that site, one of the things people will be able to do is sign the manifesto, saying "I believe in the movement, I believe in this direction, and I want to take part in my own local community." I think if people are signing up for that, that's a measure of result, of people buying in.

DANIEL: Sure. Is this manifesto like the Agile Manifesto?

RYAN: Yeah, similar to the Agile Manifesto. But it's a movement of Make Work Not Suck.

DANIEL: Love it. All right. So we've been aligned on the vision, which is super important, because we tell people that every week. You've had an interesting journey. We've got some things we'd want to test out and try in the future to improve that journey. I like your thoughts on the culture. And the results seem to be more leading results than lagging — or at least that's where your attention is. I don't think you're ignoring the lagging, because clearly you're watching the metrics. But I think you're right in putting your attention and effort more on the leading indicators of showing up every day, making work not suck this afternoon for the client or for the meeting that you're in. I think that's the better place to focus your attention.

RYAN: What I would love, as this gets more and more established, is for us to have a place where we can do "plus one." I've implemented this, or I took this piece of advice, or I used part of the framework and my life is better. Almost like a testimonial — but I don't want it to be a testimonial. It's not about a testimonial to get other people on it, but how do we know the mission is alive?

Right now I get that by one-on-one conversation, or I get a message on LinkedIn that says, "Hey, two years ago I saw you at that seminar, that speech you gave, and I applied it, and here's how I've been in my job since." So I keep manual tallies like that. But this goes into our improvement section: I want to find a way to do that at scale, so that as people find value in the podcast, they can go plus one to the counter.

DANIEL: We need to keep track, once we get those resources out there, of downloads, and at least see what tools and templates are being used frequently. That'd be another way to keep track of: are we making a difference?

RYAN: Yeah. It's hard, because we have no idea. When we record an episode, we have no idea. We might think we just killed it — that was a great episode — and then we watch it when it drops and it's like, oh, only 15 people watched that video and only 150 people watched the shorts. And then we do another one where it's like, man, that one kind of sucked, and all of a sudden, bam, it's a thousand views on the whole episode and tens of thousands of views on the shorts.

DANIEL: What the hell?

RYAN: Yeah. And then people in foreign countries — I'm like, how did Liberia find this?

DANIEL: Well, this is a random YouTube algorithm, but...

RYAN: Probably. I think this is just a level of blind faith. I have no idea if this is going to work or what impact it's going to have, but every week we're going to record, every week we're going to try to improve, every week we're going to try to remain relevant. And I think we owe it to the listeners, the community, and the companies we directly work with to get some of these resources online.

DANIEL: The manifesto?

RYAN: The manifesto. I would love to see that. And I guess we're kind of talking a little bit of vision, like we're working towards that. I guess that's journey — the journey we're working towards the vision, and how will we measure the results? A year from now, when we look back, how did we advance from here to there?

DANIEL: I would love to hear from anybody who listens to this podcast. I would love their input. What can we do in the next year to make work not suck not suck? Or maybe to say that in a nicer way — to make the podcast better. Suggestions. Ideas. Whether those are guests, whether those are topics, whether those are formats, whether those are resources. What would you find helpful? What do you need in the situation that you're in right now to make work not suck?

I'd love to hear your questions, suggestions, advice. Because as you can tell, this is a pretty unstructured conversation, but this is why we do this — because we really want to help. I'm a little surprised and humbled by the fact that there are nearly 25,000 people who subscribed to this. It seems that something we're doing here is helping them. That's really cool to be a part of.

RYAN: I want to phrase it a little differently, because I agree with everything you just said, but I want to see if we can frame our mind. I've really been struggling with this one lately. When you ask people, "Can I help you?" — psychologically, you're basically saying, "I'm capable of doing something you can't." I'm sure everybody's done this, and we're guilty of asking people, and we're guilty of saying this when it's asked of us. When someone says, "Hey, can I help you?" they're like, "No, no, no, I got it." It's because psychologically you're doing that.

I think the output of what we're doing, the mission, will help people. But I want to say it this way. I am marching forward in a direction on a mission to make work not suck, and I would love people to join along with us, so that we can be side by side. Just like we talked about in our previous episode about mentorship, where we can lean on each other. There are things that people have gone through, that when we talk about it on an episode, people say, "Hey, I had this experience," that may help another listener. It may not even be the content, or what we say, that helps somebody. It could be the comment that's made on the video that helps somebody else.

I don't want to help a million people. I want a million people marching alongside, going down this mission to make work not suck for as many people as we possibly can. Not to be — and this probably sounds horrible — it's like the million man march on Washington. That's probably an unworthy comparison, but that's a pretty cool visual. If we can have a virtual million person march on making work not suck, could we make the world a better place? How do you not want to join?

DANIEL: Do we march on Wall Street? Is that who we march on?

RYAN: Maybe. I don't know where to go, but I love the idea of marching.

DANIEL: That's another topic for another day. Don't touch that.

RYAN: Not yet. Not yet.

DANIEL: All right, man. Well, good work. I've enjoyed this last year. It's been fun. Let's do it again.

RYAN: What was the number I said when we started recording?

DANIEL: 24,993.

RYAN: 24,993. While recording this — so far we're 42 minutes in — 24,997. We're about to hit the 25,000 mark.

DANIEL: That's four subscribers.

RYAN: Almost. At 44 subscribers in 40 minutes, we're on fire.

DANIEL: I'm sure MrBeast is murdering us compared to that.

RYAN: Hey, our little slice of the world.

DANIEL: Hey, we're just doing our part to make the world a better place.

RYAN: Yeah. Please provide input, comments, share the podcast with friends, families, coworkers, anybody that you think could get value from this. We would love your feedback. And thank you for being a listener, and following, and commenting, and sharing our videos, because we cannot do this without your support and help.

Outro

ANNOUNCER: Make Work Not Suck. Our podcast talks about exactly that. Our process: Vision, Journey, Culture, and Results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode, and make work not suck.