Decision Vision Episode 178: Hitting Pause, with host Mike Blake

Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:22] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast, giving you, the listener, a clear vision to make great decisions. This is Michael Blake, your host, and I’m going to talk to you a bit, not as a podcast delivering content necessarily, but more news, I guess, is the way to put it. So, I wanted to put this episode out there to let you guys know that I’m putting this show on hiatus for a while.

Michael Blake: [00:00:49] I don’t think it will be too terribly long, but it’s probably going to be, I’m guessing, about a couple of months. And we’ve done 177 shows, I’m not going to consider this a show, but if we are going to put this on hiatus, I think a way to pause on top with Lee Ellis, in Should I Resist, I think, was about as good a way to do it as possibly could be imagined.

Michael Blake: [00:01:13] Certainly, again, pausing on a high note, I’m being very careful to say I’m not going out on a high note, because it is my intention that the show will be back, but we do need to pause it and for a couple of reasons. The first is that, to be candid, I need a break. We’ve been doing this show consistently for about three-and-a-half years now or close to it, not missing a week, and it’s difficult.

Michael Blake: [00:01:43] This is not my day job. It’s a hobby. It’s a side gig. And in my new role as managing partner of Brady Ware Arpeggio, frankly, my time demands have become less forgiving, not more. You think as you become promoted and you serve at the top of the pyramid, you like to think you work for fewer people, you actually work for more. That’s one of the lessons you learn as you kind of go through this journey, and I’m concerned that the quality of the show will suffer.

Michael Blake: [00:02:17] And there are lots of podcasts out there you can listen to. You’ve all been such loyal listeners over the years that I owe it to you, I owe it to our guests, I owe it to my firm to make sure that the product we put out is good. Second, I want to change things up a little bit. The show format has been, for the most part, me interviewing a guest, and I think that’s fine as far as it goes, but Brady Ware & Company and Brady Ware Arpeggio, the part that I’m in charge of, is so much more than just me, but you never really get much of a chance to see it or hear about it, except on the rare occasions that we bring in somebody from the Brady Ware ecosystem as a guest.

Michael Blake: [00:03:06] And frankly, it’s not fair to the firm, and I’m not comfortable with having the brand of the show be all about me. I thought that there was a chance that we might kind of rotate hosts, somebody might take over, shove me out of the chair, and say, I’m going to take this thing over for a while, that hasn’t happened. So, I do think that creating a little bit of space for somebody else to come in and do something that they want to do, I think it’s simply the right thing to do.

Michael Blake: [00:03:40] And third, I think that we need to take a step back and we have some decisions we have to make. We have to be a little bit more strategic and intentional about how we think about the content in terms of serving an audience well. And with 177 shows, we’ve covered a lot of ground, everything from show one, Should I Get a Patent, to show 177, Should I Resist, to one of our more fun shows, Should I Get Captive Insurance, to Should I Sell my Business, Should I Buy a Business, Should I Invest Venture Capital, Should I Raise Venture Capital, Should I sue my partner, that sort of thing.

Michael Blake: [00:04:30] We’ve covered a lot of ground, and there’s an extensive library for you to go back through, and I think most of those topics are still very much evergreen. And we also stepped up our—we also stepped up our production schedule for COVID to try to give people the best information we could to enable people to make the best decisions they could, and frankly, in an impossible environment.

Michael Blake: [00:04:55] And so, I’m proud of the show that we put together, but I would like it to be a little bit more focused, because I do think maybe we’ve run too far afield. And I really do enjoy talking about business. I’m very fortunate that I’m on a job that I love to get up and work at every day with people that I love and for clients that I love in a way that makes a difference.

Michael Blake: [00:05:25] And I want to take a step back, and make sure that our show reflects that and share with you the blessings that I have in terms of doing that and share with you in a more concrete way the impact that our clients have earned and have generated for themselves by becoming better decision makers. Now, that does not mean we’re going to become an infomercial. No way that’s going to happen as long as this guy is behind the microphone. Never going to happen. But I do think we’re missing opportunities because we’re going a little bit too broadly and not as deeply as we could.

Michael Blake: [00:06:03] And I do like to go deep, maybe even Aquaman deep. I do like to go deep in topics whenever I can, which is why we do long podcast shows, and I want to do that. And then, finally, I would like to expand this show to a new platform. Video is an important platform. Now, we’re all watching video. It’s remarkable how democratized video has become. I’m old enough to remember the days of three VHF channels, and if you’re lucky, three more UHF channels, and you sort of had to do ballet in front of the rabbit ears to get Channel 68 WQTV in Boston, where I was growing up, but, man, I sure do remember Candlepins for Cash, which is a great show at 4:30 PM every weekday, candlepin is a form of bowling, by the way, in New England, but that’ll be for a different show.

Michael Blake: [00:06:59] Maybe there’s a candlepin podcast out there. There probably is. But once you record an audio, it’s hard to kind of make that video. It’s a lot easier to start with video and make it audio. So, it just gives us an opportunity to reach a wider audience. And for people that aren’t into podcasting, there are plenty of people that don’t like podcasts, but will watch videos all day long. And so, we want to experiment with that.

Michael Blake: [00:07:27] So, those are the reasons that we’re going to put the show on pause. Like I said, I fully anticipate it will come back, but it will come back after I’ve had a chance to re-energize. It’ll come back after I figured out a way to make the show more inclusive. It will come back after we find a way to make the topics, I think, more focused and more consistent over time. And it’ll come back when we figured out a way to make the show more accessible across a wider variety of platforms so that we can impact more people.

Michael Blake: [00:08:02] And I fully expect that by next quarter, we’re going to be back at it again in some fashion. My guess is it will probably be a roundtable of some kind. You’re going to hear other perspectives than mine, and probably more fun, freewheeling conversations. Maybe we’ll introduce liquor into the conversation, I’m not sure if we’ll do that yet, but it will lead to some interesting content if we do that.

Michael Blake: [00:08:25] And I think we can get people to pour themselves a tumbler of scotch when we do that, but no promises, I don’t want to put them out there yet. So, this is not goodbye. This is simply until the next time we see or hear one another. I would like to thank Brady Ware, though, for the opportunity to have done this podcast for three-and-a-half years. It’s been a tremendous opportunity and I’m grateful for it and for the support of the partners of the show.

Michael Blake: [00:08:53] I’m grateful to the guests who have come on, and given freely of their time and their expertise to share it with me and our audiences. I’ve learned something in literally every podcast, and that’s one of the things that kept me doing it as long as we did. And I’d like to thank our business partners at Business RadioX and John Ray. They’ve been not good, they’ve been great. Without them, the show would have lasted maybe an episode-and-a-half.

Michael Blake: [00:09:17] And I say that half, because I probably would have just thrown the headphones off, and turned the microphone off, and said, This show is over, I’m going back to my trailer. So, if not for them, we would not have had the listenership we’d have had. We would not have had the discipline that we’ve had. We would not have had the overall show quality. So, I’m just going to give them a free plug, because it’s the right thing to do. If you’re thinking of publishing a podcast, and by the way, they’re experimenting with video, but I’m not supposed to say that, give John a call, give his Business RadioX a try.

Michael Blake: [00:09:53] They are a terrific partner. If you believe in the medium, as I do, you really can’t ask for any better. So, with that, as I’m recording this on 29th, July 2022, it is 4:05 on a Friday, and so I don’t know when you’re going to be listening to this, but I know that I’m about to start my weekend, and so is John. So, again, I’m going to say thank you very much for patronizing the program. I do hope you’ll go back and find other shows.

Michael Blake: [00:10:25] And I guess, the last thing, if you have any ideas of what you like us to cover, what you’d like us to do with the show, or maybe ways to get you engaged, because I think that’s a way that—that’s the thing we’re missing. The thing that I haven’t figured out with podcasting yet is how to create real engagement with an audience. So, I’d really like to do that. Send me an email to msblake@bradyware.com and no reasonable idea will be brushed off. This is your show, I just happen to be the steward of it. So, again, thank you, again, for everything. I’m so grateful for the opportunity and you will hear from me again in a couple of months. Take care.