We’re still celebrating. It’s been 100 episodes of The 4AM Report! 🥂
And we’re 🎵singing🎵, of course. We love Tina Turner. We also love the Noah Reed version of Simply the Best on Schitt’s Creek. Check it out.
We still can’t believe we’re capable of such consistency and discipline✋. Our first episode was recorded in a basement on an iPhone. It was 5 minutes long. But then we realized that to talk to a guest and get to the topic, we’d need more time. And so, we evolve. But not too far, because we’re still a micro podcast for busy founders and marketers.
What’s in a name?
We came up with a hook, but thought we’d need to beg our friends to come on the podcast. But nobody said no.
I (Will) started reaching out to people on LinkedIn, with a quick intro saying I’m the co-host of the 4AM Report, a podcast on what keeps marketers up at night. I’d get a response about 90% of the time, where people would comment on the name. In the last week alone, people kept asking me, can you send your favourite episode. Can you tell me about the name? The name itself has been a gift that keeps giving for us.
It inspired 100 different weird pictures of what we would be doing up at 4am.
To people who are hesitant maybe to try podcasting, like we were, remember that it’s easy to just wing it, to try it out. We picked up our phone, we recorded our first pilot episode and did some self-editing. Perfection is not needed. I would say to people out there who maybe think there’s too many podcasts out there, or I don’t think I’d be a good podcaster, take 10 minutes and fool around a little bit like we did. That’s often how you start.
As we look back over 100 episodes, many stand out as our favourite or most memorable.
#88 – Viral social needs space with Kevin Parent (Ottawa Public Health)
This is one of our favourites. Back during the Superbowl, there was a tweet from Ottawa Public Health that went viral. It looked like a mistake.
It was intended 😊. They have a cheeky little account that regularly uses humour for public health messaging. We got the Social Media Manager, Kevin Parent of Ottawa Public Health, (the man behind the viral tweet) on The 4AM Report. And we were one of the first!
The 100th episode with Alan Gannett was a fun one to record as well. We read his book for our book club, The Creative Curve, and he talks about creativity, and that it’s not this mystical creature that only a few people can harness. There’s a science behind creativity.
#15 – What is keeping Canada up at night this week: The brownface/blackface Justin Trudeau incident.
This happened in 2019, just before the elections when a photo of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau was leaked. He was shown wearing brownface makeup to an Arabian Night’s private school party back in 2001.
And everyone started talking about it. And we decided we had something to say. It was one of our first forays into non-marketing topics and opening up about diversity and inclusion and how to apologise if you make a mistake. It was a nerve-wracking topic to tackle, but one of the more memorable ones for this very reason.
#Episode 38 Marketing during times of crisis with Martin Waxman
Right when the pandemic hit at the end of March in 2020, nobody knew what to do. We came up with the idea of a stop, drop and roll, a crisis communication framework. And we invited Martin Waxman, who specializes in Digital and Social Media Strategy onto the show to discuss what brands should be doing right now. Later, we did a mid-pandemic follow up. These two episodes ushered us into offering support for small businesses and gave us a fresh purpose to help contribute in whatever way we could (with free resources, support and cuddles when needed).
#92 – Drop the Ball (and maybe You’ll Get it All) with Tiffany Dufu
The other episode, we deeply enjoyed was Tiffany Dufu, author of Drop the Ball. This was another crossover into our virtual events space, where we read her book in our book club. Our audience tends to be women entrepreneurs, very focused, trying to do it all and getting overwhelmed. This was a leadership book that looked at this from the angle of how we must drop the ball some more! And Tiffany was supposed to attend our book club. But, she didn’t show up (yes, she dropped the ball, and we used that joke liberally. So, she offered to make up for it and we seized the opportunity to have her on our podcast. We can’t do it all so give yourself permission to say that and to delegate where you should be delegating.
So that’s our top five right there!
Hope you enjoy them!
If you’d like to chat more about your marketing concerns (or any of your content!), please give us a shout at C+P Digital – we would love to help!
Plus, if you’re losing sleep over a particular marketing/business related problem or if you would like to suggest a guest on the 4AM Report, let us know.
You can find us on Apple Podcasts – subscribe to us – you won’t regret it!
And as always, sweet dreams😴…well, hopefully!
