Mr Meaningful work Tim Olaore shares how his emerging Vodcast is engaging a growing community concerned about doing work which feeds a need to help others and nourishes the soul.

If you are seeking meaningful work, you'll love this podcast in conversation with Tim Olaore
‼️Mr. Meaningful Work‼️ is a leader in Leadership Development and connects employees, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts to meaningful work principles that make sense. We discuss how to Tim is producing content and deveeloping a community as a side hustle with 100% support from his employer, Adventist Health. Tim is in California and is building his community in America but there are many technical lessons to learn for anyone using podcasting as part of their marketing strategy.

Transcript

Tim: 0:00

I'm not an expert, but my goal was to explore how do we define and make meaningful work practical? And I just wanted to invite folks along on the journey as I, as I explored that.

jim: 0:12

Tim Olaore. I have been watching and listening to your podcast Mr Meaningful for work which is going out and you recently interviewed Kate from lately. So that also caught my eye. Tell us about your show.

Tim: 0:26

So my show is the late afternoon show. In the middle of pandemic times I was just thinking of some creative ways to talk to interesting people and have fun. And I've always been a fan of the late night shows that we have here with. No Jimmy Fallon and Trevor Noah, and you know, Jimmy Kimball and things like that. And so I've been seeing them do it remotely and virtually and having fun with it. And, but what I haven't seen in, in, in podcasts with professionals and stuff is, you know, them actually just having fun. Like I always just like to have fun. It's cool to see an interesting person, a big name person on a podcast, but we hear them all the time. So I was like, if I can have a different approach, like. A late night show where we play a game, we have fun, we have audience engagement. That would be a different take on it. So I created the, the late afternoon show, which was just my attempt to talk to smart people and get their definitions on the idea of meaningful work. And so. You get folks on the show? I do some corny jokes at the beginning. So I have somebody helped me put some jokes together about current events and politics and things like that. And so I tell some jokes, get the audience warmed up, and then we have the guests come on. We have them introduce themselves and then we play a game with the live audience that's streaming. And so when you saw we were, we were talking to Kate and we played charades. And so having her act on the screen was really cool. We've had previous guests do treat two truths and a lie Pictionary. I mean, we had somebody draw and have folks through. And so it's just a fun little time. And then we talk about what they're doing and what their goals are.

jim: 2:03

I noticed that because on LinkedIn, it had a comment about someone saying, you know, is she really supposed to be doing that? So now running a podcast but you're doing live streams as interesting in having a conversation with you. It's quite a different strategy to the one that I've been taking a much more friendly, much more fun. I think a much more lively one. It's not your, it's not your regular job though. Tim is what, what do you do for a living? And why did you get involved in this idea of meaningful work?

Tim: 2:31

Yeah. So what I currently do is I lead I work in leadership development at a large healthcare system out on the West coast, in the United States. So part of the leadership development organization, I'm lead. Leadership residency program, which is folks coming out of college into health care and being trained to enter into leadership positions. So it's a two-year program. And I also lead the internship. So for students college students that are in their sophomore, junior years, they're spending a summer with us. And hopefully coming back into our program as we build our pipeline of leaders. So that's, that's my day job. But I've taken such a. Wild journey to, to land here in different things from entrepreneurship to gig work to to at some point I was actually working for my wife. So I wouldn't want to come in. It was interesting. I'm sure she's a lovely lady and she's the best boss best boss. Yeah. And so it was just that journey of like, you know, different things and me finding out what I really love to do. Right. Because I would leave jobs or take jobs based on what I felt was energizing or what I felt was boring. And things like that. And so at the top of last year because I like creating video content that live the creative outlet that, that, you know, Gibbs. I wanted to focus on how do folks find out what it is that they're excited about in the job or the work that they're doing. And so meaningful work is a term that's been thrown out so much, but didn't really have a lot of practical application. It's kind of like this. Nebulous idea. And so my goal was to explore. I'm not an expert, but my goal was to explore how do we define and make meaningful work practical? And I just wanted to invite folks along on the journey as I, as I explored that. And so that's where Mr. Meaningful work came, which I do alongside creating executives for, for healthcare.

jim: 4:31

Tim Olaore and I, I think I pronounced that just about, okay, Tim Olaore, is that yeah.

Tim: 4:36

Yeah. That is, that is, that is good. Perfect.

jim: 4:39

Because we, English not famous for our, for our languages and our pronunciation.

Tim: 4:43

So just your accents, your accents are the best. Yeah.

jim: 4:49

The free, luckily with the passport. So wonderful. So this idea of people coming on the journey with you, it's, it's a new way. I think of treating. The podcast, because many people including me, right. I kind of have this idea with the speak PR methodology that I've, I've got a skillset that I can share with people. But what I really like about your approach is that you're really reaching out to get people, to share with you more. Can you tell us from a practical point of view, how you grown the audience for the, for the meaningful work show, because that's one of the main challenges, isn't it? The concept is lovely. Getting people to listen, who I'm sure once they've listened to all love it. How are you solving that problem?

Tim: 5:33

Yeah. And I think I'm still in the process of figuring it out and learning and just kind of experimenting. The idea came from. You know, I like, I like meeting people and I feel like I have the ability to engage and have interviews and conversations. I didn't sales for a long time. So the ability to just connect with somebody cold and find something that we're connected on. And then having meaningful conversation is a skill that I've been able to practice over the years. And still what I started off with was just inviting my friends, like folks that I knew that had some level of. Influence, whether they're a micro influencer or a major influencer and hopping on Instagram live just to have a conversation. But I also wanted to see what folks were saying at the same time. And so that was the original idea is to talk to people and you kind of get two channels of feedback, the person that you're talking to, who's helping you learn and the people that are watching and contributing in the comments or what have you. And so that was a great way to engage with the audience while engaging with the guests. And so I just kind of stuck to that model of a live interview so you can get live interactions and answer questions and add value in the moment. As opposed to, I think the traditional way of, you know, a podcast recorded, you send it out and then people can download it or send emails or send comments kind of after the fact. And so I want to kind of capture that live feedback loop. And so we just continue to build that with Instagram and then we moved it over to LinkedIn. And then we're able to multistream for not just LinkedIn, but to Facebook and to YouTube live as well. So we can get multiple feedback inputs. And then when folks can't catch it live, they can still watch it later and then add their comments or add their feedback you know, later. So my biggest thing was just how do I engage and get feedback from the audience as quickly as possible.

jim: 7:25

That's really nice to him. So are you saying that one good and stream to LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube simultaneously?

Tim: 7:34

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of different platforms. A platform that I use is stream yard as icon of little duck or a goose or something like that. So I use stream yard and you can multicast, or multistream to two, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, but there's a number of other Multistream platforms out there.

jim: 7:54

But I think for me it helps capture folks the wide range. Yeah. Right. Yeah, because zoom, we can do live stream to Facebook, to workplace and YouTube or alive custom streaming service. So using stream yard, and then you record presumably just to the one camera and that is connecting to your different platforms. Is that right? Automatically. Yeah.

Tim: 8:21

So it streams to those platforms and then it lives there.

jim: 8:23

Nice. And then in terms of getting people to come, because that's always the hard thing, right? I mean, you can, you can be there, but it doesn't mean the other people are going to be that to how have you done the marketing?

Tim: 8:38

So for a long time, it was just me. All right. I'll just put, you know invite folks on Facebook or on LinkedIn. And just say, Hey, I have the show that's coming up. We have this really cool guest come and check it out. What I have found to be more successful is if I can get the guest to promote it and they'd bring their tribe. So. Kate for example was a phenomenal example of her and her, her employees and folks that were in her. I think she's already great at just building evangelists. Like folks are just crazy excited about whatever it is that she's doing. Yeah. And so having her promoted and reposts and comments and things like that was really, really helpful. And we've had previous guests in the past that have come alongside us in the promotion. And, and that's always really cool. And then what I do is after the show, I do a recap, I'll do the three takeaways for folks that missed it. So we'll do like the highlights and I'll put, I'll do a screenshot of maybe the most exciting time of both of us laughing or, you know, whatever to show folks, Oh my gosh, what was, what were they doing? To help them be and encouraged to come and check us out. Next time and see what all the fun and the energy and vibe is about. So getting the folks to, to promote with, and for me, like the guests are coming on and then capturing really exciting moments to encourage folks to come for the next ones.

jim: 10:04

And are you sending these out as audio and video or just all video?

Tim: 10:11

So right now it is video. And then in the future we will take all the audio and then put it to an audio only on Spotify and Apple. And then the other podcast platforms So, but for right now, it's, it's, it's, it's a video, whether it be vodcasts, I think that's a new term for video podcast. That's a vodcast. And then we'll, we'll transcribe it to a traditional podcast here in the future.

jim: 10:36

Thank you for sharing. You give me a lot of food for thought, really? Because I've taken a very conventional podcast. Produce it, send it out medicine, rather British middle-aged approach. So you've got all West, West coast young and trendy approaches, right. I just wonder what game we should play. Of course, charades doesn't work with audio only. That's the problem It's funny, and what's it called clubhouse? They actually did the lion King play like completely audio. So folks were acting. And so I think there's a, it's an interesting opportunity for folks to it's like, how do we act out. Something, you know, whether it's with sounds or with, you know, whatever to have folks, guess what it is. So you might have an yeah. It's an impromptu podcast theater. Exactly. Yeah. That could be really interesting. I think that's the whole idea of new formats, but also about content. Yeah. The meaningful work. What sort of guests then are you looking for? I, I was reading that one podcast to only takes people on their podcast. If they've got a bigger audience than they do, which I can completely understand and applaud from one perspective. But that also means that maybe there'll be people that get left by the side. How are you finding. Those people in, is there some kind of piece of work or philosophy that they've, that they espoused that gets you excited?

Tim: 12:04

Yeah. I'm saying in the early days as if we've been doing this for a long time, it's only been like six months. But in the early days it was about just kind of getting that reach. So I was looking for folks with big LinkedIn audiences or big Instagram audiences just to kind of get the reach out there and then we would formulate the conversation to fit what it is that we're doing. So that's still. That's still attractive, you know, for us, as far as large audience it's to help in, in our reach. So we're looking for business leaders, tech leaders you know, communication experts and things like that. However, the approach that we're taking this season and where we're going to be doing next season. Is to get all sorts because now, because I've been able to define, okay, we're trying to figure out what meaningful work it looks like for folks that are still in the journey, right. They're still in the process. They have may have not have landed at that, you know, plateau of success, if you would like, Hey, we've reached this point, but they're still figuring it out. So this season we're going to have folks that are on their way to the like on their way, trying to get to the Olympics. Folks that are trying to graduate from medical school folks that are, you know, doing gig work and doing it. So we will get folks that are kind of like in the process, maybe haven't reached, you know, that level of success here. Like we had Jeff Hoffman who was a previous CEO of Priceline and he's doing, you know, crazy big things in the global entrepreneurship that works. So you have like that. Kind of shoe level influencer, and then you have folk that are, I'm just trying to be a pediatrician. Right, right, right. Free for medical school. What does meaningful work mean to me? Or I'm a high school student trying to swim and qualify for the Olympics. What does meaningful work mean to me? So that we can get folks along that range. So we're trying to diversify a bit and then really kind of fine tune what adds value to audiences as we go through.

jim: 13:56

Tim. That's amazing. I really love as well that you're making an inclusive platform, you know, from big and small and, it makes it accessible too. Doesn't it really in terms of it's not your data job. I mean, you've got these three amazing children you've currently shared who obviously will want as much of dad as possible, but you do go to work. How has the company that you work for viewed the podcast? Have they been receptive or do they say, you know, your meaningful work is with us in the daytime?

Tim: 14:28

I have been incredibly blessed to work in an organization that embraces you know, my personal strengths in the nuances of who I am and how I. My creative outlets and so they have embraced it. In fact my previous boss, I'm an executive that I used to work with. Kind of Cod glimpse of the show and she was like, Tim, you're doing all this stuff like orange, you inviting me. It's like, how did it know you wanted to? So she was like, put these on my calendar every week. So I can see when you're doing this. Even to the point where you know, in future episodes, I, I hope to even interview our CEO. As, as a guest on the late afternoon show. And so I think for me there, there's, there's a relationship, right? If folks see Tim, Mr. Meaningful work as a personality and they see that I'm associated with Adventist health, it's the organization that I work with. It would get, I think, especially for generation, you know, millennials and generation Z who are already kind of in that. Gig mindset, entrepreneur trying to do their own thing. And they see, Hey, Tim can work for this organization and he can build his personal brand. You know, what type of environment do they have in there that is supportive of this? That's empowering of this. And it just makes it easier. I know for me, it makes it easier to recruit because if I go to a school. Well, you know, I'm not anywhere type of famous, but I could go to a school and folks like, Oh, Mr. Meaningful work, like I saw you on a week then, and this and this and that, and just kind of helps in, in attracting talent to the organization and just paints the, the culture of the organization in a very good light. And I think my organization appreciates that and they support it. Tim, if there's one last comment, if you had to define what is meaningful work. What would meaningful work be for you to Mallory? So for me, I've, I've gotten a lot of definitions over the last little bit. The definition that I've liked the most, and I feel like I've, I've been running with for at least the last month or so is the one that I got from Jeff Hoffman. Previous CEO of Priceline. He said, meaningful work is work that is impactful and fulfilling. So you have like that internal fulfillment, Hey, I'm doing something that makes me excited, but there's also external impact there. The world is being benefited as a result of that. So for me, meaningful work is any activity that I'm doing that energizes me, but also adds value to my community. In some way it doesn't have to be huge. It could even be marginal as we're kind of progressing. So impactful and fulfilling for me is the definition of meaningful work. Mr meaningful work. Where can people find out more about you? My website, Mr. Meaningful work.com is the easiest place. And I am on LinkedIn. Just search for Tim. Oh, Laurie. And then on Instagram and Twitter, it's just Mr. Meaningful work. You can put that in and you'll be able to find me same thing on a clubhouse of folks who are using that audio drop in platform. I can find me on a clubhouse as well, so, and YouTube, Timothy Olaore on YouTube.

jim: 17:37

Perfect. And I'll put it also, of course, in the show notes, Tim, thank you so much for joining me and sharing about your really meaningful work. I've loved it.

Tim: 17:44

I appreciate it, James. Thanks for the opportunity this was fun.

jim: 17:47

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So you've been listening to the speak PR program where we try and share tools and tips and introduce you to people that are making a difference in using communications to make things better. So until we meet again, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that if you're working, I pray for you that it's meaningful work that you're enjoying during lockdown. Thank you so much for listening.