Diana Alt [00:00:02]:
One year ago this week was the first episode of Work Should Feel Good, and I've now hit the point where it's like I'm a real podcaster and people want to know— sorry, checking my mic. One year ago this week, the first episode of Work Should Feel Good went live, and it literally went live. It started as a livestream show, and I've hit the point now in my podcast journey where people are asking me questions. About what it's like to be a podcaster. They're asking me what my downloads are and what tech I use and all this kind of stuff. And today I want to reflect on a year of podcasting in a little bit of a different way, because I think a lot of people are— who are interested in podcasting are asking me the questions that I'm not so interested in. So I want to talk about what's— what it's meant to me to do this for a year. And the basic bottom line is that I learned more than anything with this last year that one year of sticking to something that feels kind of hard can change how you see yourself and how other people see you.

Diana Alt [00:01:07]:
And my podcast in 2025 and into 2026 has been a microcosm of that. This is episode 42, whenever it drops. Right now I'm also doing it on a YouTube Live, which doesn't really have episodes because that's not how YouTube works. But, um, I thought that was kind of cool because I was always a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan. And we all know that 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Um, I started this podcast because I wanted to have interesting conversations with people I might not otherwise have gotten to talk to. Um, I wanted a library of nuanced content to share with people and also inform my own thinking. My own blogs, like other things that I would do online.

Diana Alt [00:01:55]:
And I just wanted to meet people where they are because not everybody reads. I have historically done almost all my content in writing with some images, and this is just a different way to do it. I kind of hated video. Some days I still hate video, but I wanted to make sure that I was reaching people where we're at this year of podcasting. Isn't a victory lap. Like a lot of people ask me, how many downloads have you had? I don't even know. I don't care because I didn't start this for downloads or sponsors, although maybe someday I'll start to care about that more. I want to reflect on what a year of podcasting did for me and what a year of doing something hard, whether it's podcasting or not, can possibly do for you.

Diana Alt [00:02:40]:
So let's talk turkey about what I built. This podcast is not perfect. I often say that my work is high content quality and low production value by design because I want to work with people through some of the messier parts of life that they're wrestling with, the messier parts of their career that they're wrestling with. And the last thing I want people to feel like they have to be is perfect whenever they're doing that. We worry so much about being perfect for other people that we don't worry about living a great life for ourselves. Um, of those 42 episodes, 10 are solo episodes. The whole thing started as a LinkedIn Live. I did that because I figured out how to work LinkedIn Live.

Diana Alt [00:03:21]:
I didn't know anything about Libsyn. I didn't know anything about podcast platforms. I used my webcam and the microphone on my computer because I didn't want to figure all of that out. I just started. Um, and I didn't actually get it onto audio platforms via my podcast hosting tool, which is called Libsyn. Until July. And then a few weeks later, I actually got really excited and I got web pages set up on my website, DianaAhl.com, where I could house everything to the website. Actually was built by my team while I was on medical leave.

Diana Alt [00:03:57]:
I have a team in the Philippines. Virtual Staff Pro is the name of the company, formerly known as Smart Virtual Staff. And I have about 4 or 5 people that make sure that my podcast gets out every week. I used to always say that I would never do a podcast until I could get to the point where all I had to do was curate guests and show up. And I won't say I'm fully there, but I'm about 80% of the way there. I started the podcast to be weekly, and I've done a really good job of that. Most podcasts don't make it past 6 episodes. The vast majority don't make it past 6 episodes.

Diana Alt [00:04:30]:
So to be sitting here a year in with 42 episodes because I went biweekly for a few months while I was on medical leave, really makes me very— I feel very accomplished because I just didn't know what the hell I was doing whenever I started this. I just knew, again, I wanted to have cool conversations with cool people. I have 42 out as of this one dropping. I've got 4 more recorded and 5 more booked. And that's important to me because in order to be consistent, I figured out I had to have um, some episodes in the bank. And I really did a lot of that right before I went out on medical leave, and I've just kept up the habit. So in all of that, a lot of times people ask me how I get my guests. And there's a lot of podcasters out there that do interview format shows, but they have trouble getting guests.

Diana Alt [00:05:25]:
Like, it's one of the key reasons why they stop podcasting or they release podcasts irregularly. And in all of this, I've actually only ever accepted 2 podcast guest pitches. I get several of them. No, I'd say 2 or 3 a week at this point I'm getting. Most of the people aren't aligned. It's somebody just saying, hey, I think Joe Schmo should be on your podcast without telling me why or indicating that they know anything about my podcast. And so I don't take very many, but I've accepted pitches from a couple of authors and they were both really great conversations. One has come out.

Diana Alt [00:05:59]:
It was episode 41, Steve Jaffe. He talks about grief and layoffs. And then another one is coming in a few weeks. I didn't buy any tech until I was about 10 episodes in. So like I said, I just use my MacBook. I use AirPods. I use the mic on my computer. I use the camera on my computer in order to do this because I want to make sure I was committing to doing this for at least several more months before I invested money.

Diana Alt [00:06:26]:
And eventually I bought 2 other pieces of equipment. I bought a Shure mic and I bought an eye contact camera, which is one of the ones that has the little hangy-down thing. So you don't look like you're looking up or down or sideways. It can look— I can look like I'm looking more straight on at the camera when I'm recording. Other things that happened in the last year are that I created a structured guest system. So I had done about 30 podcast guest appearances before I started my own podcast. And I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly of things that were well organized and not well organized. I take my podcast seriously, so I wanted to create a system where people never had to worry about not knowing what they were doing, not knowing what the expectations were, missing reminders, et cetera.

Diana Alt [00:07:15]:
So I created SOPs. I have a podcast coordinator from my team in the Philippines that helps me out with things. There's reminders off the yin yang that go out to my guests. And I have never had a guest no-show on me. I've had one guest get sick and not be able to come, and that's it. And I really enjoyed that part more than I thought. The main reason that I enjoyed putting those processes together is because the podcast is mine, but it's not really about me. It is about serving the people that are listening or might listen in the future whenever they discover it.

Diana Alt [00:07:51]:
And it's about serving the people that I bring on the show because my goal is to elevate their brand and my brand while equipping other people. So let's talk about the people on the show for a little bit. This show is about inspiring and equipping people who want work to feel good, and that requires multiple perspectives. There's a lot of shows that are in this kind of career and workplace happiness space. That they almost all just have career services professionals or recruiters on. And I deliberately decided from the outset that I didn't want to do that. I wanted a healthy mix. So the mix has been between what's released and what's recorded and scheduled, 12 people in the career services space, which I call like career coaches, executive coaches.

Diana Alt [00:08:37]:
I've had some people with recruiting background and like resume writers and things like that. 14 entrepreneurs, many of which are serving people in corporate and all of which had corporate background. So we could talk about both the business owner and the corporate perspective with some of them. I've had 11 authors, many of whom are in one of the other groups that I'm describing. And I'm really proud of that because I haven't been able to read every single book all the way through before I interview people. But over half of the authors that I've had on the show I've made a point to read their book before so that we could have a really meaningful, meaty conversation instead of them trying to introduce me to what the heck the book was about. That's not good for anybody. You can read that on Blink or whatever.

Diana Alt [00:09:25]:
And then some of my favorites are the 11 regular-ass professionals who are working in corporate America and they're navigating career growth. I'm really proud of those because some of them are my clients, some are people that I've just known in my network. And several of them had never been on a podcast before. So they took the leap to actually join my podcast and talk about their experience when it felt really scary. But when I invited the people on the show, I explained to them why I thought they had something to say that might be interesting, and that just made the whole thing a lot more interesting. And then the wild card is a person who's also an entrepreneur, but I had a Survivor contestant on. Liz Wilcox is a good friend of mine. I mostly think of her as my email marketing expert friend.

Diana Alt [00:10:16]:
She has a membership for that, but she also was on season 46 of Survivor. And so we talked a little bit about surviving work and business. Career growth does not happen in a vacuum, and that's why the people that I chose were really important. And authority isn't just about authors and coaches and big name people. I haven't had anyone really big name on the show yet that tons and tons of people would recognize except for the survivor contestant. And the survivor part is probably the least interesting thing about her and her work journey. Um, I remember how scary my first episode was and I don't always know how many, how comfortable people are whenever they are coming onto my show. So I try to make it as comfortable for them as possible.

Diana Alt [00:11:05]:
And the fact that people trusted me enough to come on my show means a lot to me because they're either experiencing the early stage. I've only been on 0 to 1 or 2 podcasts and I'm nervous about speaking publicly, or they're trusting their brand to me. They're, they're choosing to associate what they're doing with their career or their business with what I'm doing. And that requires trust. So thanks to everybody who has trusted me enough to be on my show. Probably the most important thing about the podcast isn't all that stuff, though. It's about what changed internally for me. One year of public consistency creating content.

Diana Alt [00:11:48]:
I think it rewired my identity a little bit. So there's a few things that come to mind for that. Number one is that I trust my voice more in general. A lot of people would be surprised to hear that I ever didn't trust my voice because I I'm pretty good about being out there, being visible. Do I want to be more visible to grow my business? Yes. But I've never really been viewed as shy and retiring, especially not since I started my business. But I don't always trust what I have to say. And now I do more because I've been processing stuff out loud in public, whether it was livestreamed first or whether it was recorded and released later for a year now.

Diana Alt [00:12:31]:
That's, dozens and dozens of hours of doing this. I trust my expertise more because I've brought people on that are just as credible and even more credible than me in what they do, especially some of the career services people I've had in. And we can hang. I'm learning that they are learning from me just as much as I'm learning from him. Because let's face it, sometimes when you're a podcast guest, you invite your heroes on your show so you can talk to them and learn from them. And that's one of the things I've done. I have more courage reaching out to people with bigger followings. So for example, earlier this week I actually recorded a podcast episode with someone that is a soft skills and soft skills consultant and trainer.

Diana Alt [00:13:17]:
I met this person on TikTok and they have like hundreds of thousands of followers across all their social, social platforms, whereas I have like 15,000 followers across all my social platforms, and almost all of that is on LinkedIn. I had courage to reach out to this person because I had a credible show. Um, and that was really exciting because we had a great conversation that'll get released in a couple of months. I worried that I wouldn't be a good interviewer whenever I started, and I found out that I could be a good interviewer. In fact, I've had a lot of people that have done a lot of podcasts interviewing like hundreds of episodes on their own. Podcasts as interviewers and as guests, and I've been complimented on the conversation. And so that was one of the things I was most scared about when I started the show because I'd never done that before. And then I still get nervous sometimes.

Diana Alt [00:14:08]:
So there are going to be times I don't, I don't have this in the bag. I don't know that anybody has this in the bag whenever they start doing this, but I definitely sometimes get nervous either because of the topic or because of the person or because I'm having a rough day that day and I want it to be good. For everybody that's listening and for the person I'm interviewing. But my favorite thing that I've gotten out of this is that I delegate better. I have a history of being a solopreneur with an agency that I've worked with, and I haven't always delegated as much as I should to my agency. I haven't always been brave enough to hire extra people to support doing projects, and I'm much braver about that because I was able to create SOPs for my team. And have them executed and know that the product, the experience, the thing that I'm making is better than it would have been if I would have kept trying to do it. So the universal lesson in this part is that you become the kind of person that does the thing by doing the thing.

Diana Alt [00:15:10]:
So I had people that were podcasters and other forms of content creators that I admired and I recognized that I couldn't think my way into doing that. I couldn't think my way into helping people through a podcast or through video by just sitting around wishing that I was a podcaster. A few things also changed internally for me. And the most important thing is that consistency can build authority just as much as books or large stages. I started out with this being seen largely as a job search coach. And to be fair, I've done that work and focused on that work for most of the time I've had my business. It still is a major line of revenue. I still talk about it.

Diana Alt [00:15:55]:
But for a lot of people, the word career coach only means job search coach. And I've been able to have conversations that, yes, help people with their job search. But now I'm starting to be seen more that as more than a job search coach. I feel like I've gotten some authority without writing a book. I do want to write books someday. I have a couple of different ideas. I just haven't been able to buckle down for that. It has not been my top priority to do a book, but I'm getting some authority from the podcast and I don't view myself as a podcaster primarily.

Diana Alt [00:16:31]:
A lot of people, the minute they record episode 1, they start going around calling themselves a podcast. I consider myself a coach that has a podcast at this point. Um, so being able to get authority for the rest of my business while helping other people without having written a book is, uh, really exciting for me. I've had a lot of cool collaboration opportunities too. There are two people that were guests on my show that I had admired a little bit from a distance. And now we're talking about formalizing me going into their communities to help teach them some things and them referring clients to me and me referring clients to them and basically trying to support each other by being trusted partners that we can say, I vetted this person, I've talked to them in depth, and I trust that if you go and work with Diana, that she'll take care of you. And I can do that for them too. And some of my relationships that I've had online or that were more surface level have deepened because the podcast conversation plus some, you know, in the process of inviting them, the process of kind of checking in for 10, 15 minutes before we start recording and debriefing on how it went after the recording is over.

Diana Alt [00:17:53]:
Let me really feel the people out and let them feel me out. And all of this, plus I get to impact my users. So some of the bigger lessons for y'all to learn, whether you want to make a podcast or not, are number one, don't make— don't wait for perfect. Do your best to build something sustainably. So if you want to become a triathlete, maybe don't sign up for the Ironman right away. Maybe sign up for the indoor triathlon and do that in 3 months. At your gym and then figure out what is the next level that you want to do. If you want to make a podcast, make one.

Diana Alt [00:18:29]:
Do it in the easiest way possible. I picked what felt the easiest for me. I picked the frequency that felt the easiest for me, and then I went for it. And then when I figured out I could not sustain the weekly frequency, I let myself back off on it. But I didn't quit just because I couldn't keep doing it weekly. Don't wait for the perfect tech, the perfect clarity or the perfect system. Start with the tech that you have, or with the clarity that you have, and with the tools that you have to make a lightweight system and let things evolve. And that applies again to anything, whether it is a training system for a triathlon or a podcast or writing a book or starting a job search, because you know you want to move on to something different.

Diana Alt [00:19:16]:
But yeah, that's, that's basically what I was trying to do. The reminder of my mission for you is that this show exists for people that want work to feel good. You want career growth for real life, not just showing up, punching a clock and leaving at 5 o'clock, not just sitting in the same seat, feeling the same way, or even getting bored. And for people who want to both be inspired and get some actual useful tips and books to read and things. And you want experts that you can trust. I try to bring in people that I trust based on, um, my direct experience with them, experience from people in my network, et cetera. One year of sustained effort can change your identity and your positioning, whether it is for a podcast, for content, for developing skills, for getting up on stages and speaking, for networking on the regular, can make a huge difference. I'm not done with this podcast.

Diana Alt [00:20:14]:
I better not be because I got 4 more episodes in the can. So at a minimum, we're getting 4 more episodes out. This format may keep evolving. More interviews are coming. I went from weekly to every other week, and now I have a big backlog of people that I want to bring to you. So we're going to go back to doing more interviews, and I'm also going to do more YouTube because I discovered I actually like solo episodes. But I don't want to commit to producing 2 episodes a week of the podcast for any length of time. So I'm just going to start doing some stuff on YouTube here and there.

Diana Alt [00:20:47]:
Most importantly, I want to thank my team in the Philippines. There would be no Work Should Feel Good if, if it were not for Louise, Carol, Rae, Michelle, Lance. And I feel terrible. I may be forgetting someone. Steven, Steven edits the podcast. If it weren't for those people, I would not have a podcast, full stop. I probably wouldn't have a business because they run other things in my business too. And I want to thank my guests, all of them, for being part of the show, especially the ones that had never been on a podcast before and were taking a risk to have a conversation with me that was going to be published out on YouTube and on LinkedIn and other places.

Diana Alt [00:21:34]:
If you want to change how you're seen, pick something and stick with it for a year. And if you don't know what you should stick to for— pick and stick to for a year, like, hit me, send me an email, hit me in the DMs, hit me in the comments. Like, maybe we can figure out that thing that will help you, um, change your identity, become viewed as more of an authority, become more respected, and just have a little bit more fun with your life. That is it for today. Thanks a lot.