The Helcim podcast was a failure

Some context here: The "Captain's Log" is our company's internal newsletter. Every week, it starts with a message from myself or someone on our exec team about what's top-of-mind in the world of Helcim. While these are typically "for Helcim eyes only", this week I wanted to share this one. It would be easy to see Helcim in the headlines and assume everything we do is a success, but that is far from the case. Entrepreneurs need to also talk about their failures, so that people are inspired to try even when it doesn't work.

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Hello Team Helcim,

As you know, we write a Captain’s Log once per week. The tradition started during the pandemic to keep the team feeling connected, and has turned into a weekly candid look at everything that’s happening at Helcim, the good and the work-in-progress. It is a tradition that I am hugely proud of as I believe it reflects the transparent and connected nature of our company.

In the spring of 2022, I decided to try something new - the Helcim Nation Podcast. The idea was to provide more ways for our team to absorb our weekly Captain’s Log and newsletter content beyond just reading an email. So we created an audio-version and published it as a private podcast, limited to Helcim team members only.

With almost a year under our belt, and despite frequent reminders to the team about the availability of the podcast, a pattern emerged. Careful scientific analysis of the listenership of the podcast, per the detailed chart below, shows that the engagement was not as hoped.

So I’ve decided to end the Helcim Nation podcast experiment, and stick to our written format instead. A special thank you to Marj, Brett, Dagan, Graham, Danny, Darren, Thiago and Rob for participating in the recordings.

There was one tidbit that was learnt along the way. Our long-form content such as our build vs. build framework and market position analysis did get decent listens from our team, so moving forward we will continue to make audio-versions for these long-form articles and host them in Slite at the top of each one.

One (of the many, I’m biased) amazing aspects of working at a startup is that you have room to experiment and try things. Some bets work out, some don’t. Some projects get shelved before they see the light of day. It would be easy to submit to a feeling of failure when this happens, but remember that success ultimately requires a willingness to try things that don’t always workout.

I’ll end this Captain’s Log with wise words that Marj wrote in her article about failing forward:

“Failing forward means that being wrong or trying something without success is ok. In fact, it’s more than ok -  it is the only way that we can keep evolving and growing as a company.”

Have a great weekend team Helcim, and see you all next week.

-Nic