In December 2017 I took a journey into the unknown as I’d launched the #SITN Strength in the Numbers Podcast to create more influential finance professionals who solve meaningful problems for their organisations and to have more fun & rewarding careers. A year later, having reached 115 episodes and 15k downloads/views a month, I have learned a number of things a long the way both about our finance profession and me personally.
Here are 5 of them:
We’re a truly global finance profession and willing to learn
Embarking on this journey I’d asked a question on Quora to validate my own research that there are roughly 5 million qualified and nearly qualified accountants globally. And within this large number we have our own smaller networks, however, as of writing, the #SITN show has been listened or watched in 135 countries in its first 12 months, these are visualised on the map above.
I’ve always fundamentally believed that our profession has already within it a lot of the necessary answers to ensure we remain relevant in this age of increasing expectations, digital disruption, cognitive computing, geopolitical & demographic shifts to keep up with these changes.
We’ve had on the show so many guest mentors from across our worldwide community who have donated their time to share with you their great stories, to reduce some of the uncertainty for us, by helping us learn and benefit from what works well or not so well in the real world, particularly around how to better leverage those traits that are softer & less technical skillsets, that we need to become more influential and create more value around what we do.
CALL TO ACTION: Think of who in your network might be a good guest mentor to invite onto the show so others in our community can also benefit from some of their lessons, ideas and wisdom and comment below their names so I can follow up with them.
We’re a curious bunch but some more so than others
Okay so we’ve been listened to in 135 countries, from the larger more darker shaded ones in the map above, to some which much smaller populations (in brackets) like Greenland (56k); America Samoa (56k); Bermuda (61k), as well as areas going through civil unrest like Syria, Sudan and Myanmar. Despite the many challenges around some of us I take it as a positive that our finance profession continue to be a curious bunch, continually looking to develop and learn.
I calculated what I’ve termed a Audience Learning Intensity (ALI) metric by adjusting the #SITN downloads for the relative country populations sizes (based on 2017 levels) to show the relative interest from audience members interested in learning from the guest mentors on the show on how to become more influential in finance by country, here are the top 10:
CALL TO ACTION: See if your country is on the list and do you think it should be higher or lower? Who in your network or country might benefit from some of the lessons, ideas and practical advice our guest mentors have shared. Send them this link https://lnkd.in/dmijAhn to check out some of the past episodes from our show.
Conversations lead to opportunities
One of our previous guest mentors Martin Gilchrist in episode #056 commented:
Conversations Lead to Opportunities
And the meaningful conversations with guest mentors as well as listeners from the show over this past year have been full of amazing opportunities. I’ve had the chance to make life-long connections and friendships, take part in debates, travel to new countries, speak at events, edit and review books, meet CEOs of accounting associations, get a promotion at work, it’s been unreal.
CALL TO ACTION: The next conversation you have at work listen intently on how you can possibly help that person and at the end ask how can I help you to see what opportunity it presents you?
Worthy goals aren’t always as easy as a walk in the park
Another guest mentor Paul Sweeney in episode #078 challenged us to figure out:
What is our extra?
Building a podcast from scratch, setting up the right equipment, arranging and researching interviews, editing the shows, the first one with Anders Liu Lindberg took 15 hours to record, edit and produce end to end was not easy. Whilst it’s much faster nowadays there are times where it gets difficult behind the scenes with competing responsibilities but going that extra mile is worth it in the end.
CALL TO ACTION: Figure out what is your extra for the year ahead and who can you talk with or learn from to start making it a reality today?
Knowing your why continually leads to results
I suppose this saying is a bit obvious because if it was easy everyone would be doing it and actually there are a lot of finance & accounting podcasts sprouting up at the moment. Getting going is the easy bit, maintaining and building it is much tougher but showing up because you know your why, will keep you going and will leads to results. Some weeks we hardly had any listeners and there were other times we had no guests for the following week, but we preserved and having the commitment and expectation that we’d release a show every Monday and Thursday meant I had to keep showing up and deliver.
I also continually draw from the purpose of the show:
To create influential finance professionals worldwide who solve meaningful problems for the organisations they serve and so have fun, rewarding and successful careers in finance.
CALL TO ACTION: How are you going to show up this year? If the going gets tough feel free to follow my LinkedIn profile as I’m there every day sharing updates on our profession from the rest of my network, articles, podcasts, videos and updates that help us become more influential.
Let’s make 2019 an amazing year for our profession, let’s build on our strength in numbers, not just in our major countries, but some of our up and coming ones too, so we can leverage our skills, literally, our strength in the numbers to become more influential and have more fun careers in the year ahead.
The author Andrew Codd is the producer of the Strength in the Numbers Podcast.
