As of October 1st the Generally Spooky History podcast can now be listened to on British Airways flights.

I can’t quite believe it’s come together after so much imposter syndrome through the whole process. But for my wife and I to have our podcast next to major Hollywood films feels incredible.

And it all came together with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck

You Never Know Who’s Listening

Me: Opens emails — “We’d love to feature your podcast as part of BA’s inflight entertainment”.

Me: Probably spam. Ignore.

My wife: Opens emails. Runs through to get me.“Did you see this?!?”

I read it again and decided it just might be legit. Shit.

We set up a meeting, and it was true. The woman who organized the entertainment was a listener and a fan. She was organizing October content, so wanted to get us onboard for spooky season.

Sh*t the bed.

I’ve always thought “being discovered” was nonsense, but it turns out you really never know who’s listening.

I had major imposter syndrome

It’s too good right? They were emailing major studios alongside us. The other podcasts they were talking to had networks behind them and celebrity hosts.

We’d get emails that started with, “Hey team”. In my head it the reply was always, “uh sure, we totally have a team here helping us. It’s not just late nights and stress for me wife and I.”

But we kept going anyway. We put our professional face forward, kept our fears to ourselves, and it came together.

Getting paid or getting exposure

I’ve always scoffed at the “we’ll pay you with exposure.” But when I was offered that or getting paid. I went for exposure.

The money wasn’t a huge amount and would have meant we were buried down several menus of content. But with exposure, we got featured in the trailer that gets played at the start of every international flight and featured on their entertainment page for October.

That’s suddenly a lot of eyeballs looking at our logo. And sure, exposure doesn’t keep the lights on, but in the world of podcasting, it’s a pretty wonderful thing to receive.

Hard work + luck = Dreams Come True

Luck played a factor. Of all the listeners to have, one of ours happened to work for the company that organizes BA’s inflight entertainment. That’s lucky.

But the two years of hard work we put in before that? That’s not luck.

And you can have all the luck you want, but if you aren’t working hard, it won’t mean a thing.

What’s going to come from it?

I honestly don’t know. I’m not expecting to go viral and suddenly have thousands of new listeners flooding in.

I’m hoping for a quieter benefit where our podcast is now in the minds of thousands of people. So when they see our logo again on a podcast player, they’ll go, “Oh, I think I know that show. I’ll give it a listen”.

Or they’ll see the name and then look it up so they can listen once they’re back from their holiday.

Maybe they’ll listen to an episode during a flight and get obsessed and become a fan. I’m not sure. All I know for sure is there’s absolutely no downside. And the feeling of having our podcast recognized is something special

Take away

You never know who might be listening/watching/reading what you do. So keep that in mind and do your absolute best work you can. Every. Single. Time. That way, when opportunity comes knocking, you’ll be ready.

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