March 25, 2026 • 13 mins
Indra reflects on her podcast journey over the past year, sharing successes, challenges, and personal growth. She discusses the evolution of her podcast, technological hurdles, and how the experience has transformed her confidence and voice.
Takeaways
- Consistency in content creation builds confidence.
- Technological hurdles are significant but manageable.
- Reflecting on progress reveals areas of growth and improvement.
- Feedback from listeners is vital for motivation and direction.
More from Indra and The Messy Middle Matters
- Indra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indrak/
- Indra’s Blog: https://peopleprocessthings.substack.com
- The Messy Middle Matters on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themessymiddlematters/
- Feedback for The Messy Middle Matters: https://messymiddlematters.com/feedback
- The Messy Middle Matters Merch https://messymiddlemerch.com
- Podbean Podcast Hosting - https://www.podbean.com/messymiddle
Keywords
podcast journey, personal growth, technology challenges, self-confidence, retrospective, podcasting tips
Chapters
00:00 Reflecting on Season One
03:09 What Went Well: Celebrating Successes
06:04 Challenges Faced: Technology and Consistency
09:06 Personal Growth: Finding Confidence Through Podcasting
11:55 Looking Ahead: Future of the Podcast
12:40 Outro + Post-roll - Like and Subscribe
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Indra Klavins (00:05):
Hi. I'm Indra, and I'd like to welcome you to
the messy middle matters, wheremy friends and I explore all the
twists, turns and challengesthat arise in the messy middle
of work. Last week was episode52 of the messy middle matters.
So I thought this was a goodtime for me to call the season
one done, and for me to have aquarterly retro a tool that I've
(00:32):
used many, many times before.First created it when I was at
we work. And I think it'll workfor this. I think it'll work
from this, yes, I'm looking at afull year, and technically I
label it the quarterly retro,but a retro is a retro for a
long period of time. Same rulescan apply. And yeah, I can do it
(00:53):
by myself. I don't need to gothrough all the ground rules
that I usually have. Don'tworry, folks. I'll post a full
sub stack article next week. Sofollow me on LinkedIn and make
sure you get that, or I'll posta link to my substack in the
show notes. So you'll get thatnext week, but I'll have a
quarterly retro and talk aboutthe last year and change with
(01:13):
everyone. And go through thethree questions that I usually
go through in that quarterlyretro. So the three questions
are, what went well, what wentpoorly, and what started off
poorly but improved over thecourse of time. The first two
questions are classic ones. Youknow, it's sort of aligns with
(01:35):
the stop, start, continue thatusually happens in a classic
sprint, retro that you have. Butthat last one for me is always
where the magic is. Because whenyou're talking about a sustained
period of time celebrating thefact that you actually improved,
something that falls in themessy middle of that time cycle
(01:56):
is usually where the good juiceis. And so we're going to focus
in on all three questions. Sowhat went well? I did the thing.
It started off with Amanda,shout out to her. It couldn't
have happened without her,because when I first started the
podcast, I didn't want to do itby myself. I really wanted to do
(02:19):
it in collaboration with someoneelse. And we did. We did. Most
of the episodes are with her,right? At least half of them are
with her, and it wouldn't have Ialways talked about her like
she's the godmother. A littlebit, she's the godmother of the
podcast, and I'm forevergrateful for that. Over the
(02:40):
course of time, you know,determined that it was worth
expanding to other folks so wecould cover different topics,
different from different angles,cover them at different depths.
Um, just expand the aperture alittle bit. And that was also an
incredible set of learnings. Um,from that, and, yeah, it's even
(03:04):
through in a solo episode outthere, just to see what that
would be like. And all in all,52 full length episodes, you
know, started off on Zoom, soall the recording and editing
was on Zoom about halfwaythrough, graduated onto a
platform called Riverside, andsomeday I look forward to
(03:25):
graduating back to zoom again,because there are pros and cons
and scenarios for all thedifferent platforms, but I did
along the way. So when I wasrecording on Zoom, I learned how
to edit audio and Garage Band,learned a whole bunch of
different plugins around mixingand mastering and all the other
(03:45):
things. Heaven knows, I stilldon't use all the terminology
properly, but learned aboutthat, learned about captioning,
learned about SRT files, learnedabout how episodes can flow and
the RSS feeds flow throughthrough the various channels.
And how do you get your podcastsout on every single platform? I
(04:09):
happen to use pod bean foreverything. I'll share links for
all that stuff, just in casefolks want to use them. Of those
things figured out. Where socialmedia falls into it. You know,
still in publishing fullepisodes on YouTube, not as
great at getting the shorts outon time. Start off on Tiktok and
blue sky and Instagram andLinkedIn. LinkedIn is key, since
(04:31):
this is really around thebusiness world right. And then
dial things back. Dialed thingsback to just LinkedIn and
Instagram for a couple ofdifferent reasons, but those are
the two platforms. And, youknow, when first started the
episodes, you know, didn't knowhow long this would go. You
(04:51):
know, decided to keep going andgoing and going. And a year
later, when it was hitting theyear anniversary, I was like,
Okay, let's hit 52 52 is a goodnumber. So that's a whole bunch
of what went well. Oh yeah,guest release notes, you know, I
guess release notes, releaseforms, injured by legal error on
(05:12):
all of this. How about whatdidn't go well? Technology,
technology is so, so, so, so,so, so hard. And what I will
tell everyone so in personconversations, they can be
richer, but the technologyaround them is a whole lot
(05:33):
harder. Those consistentlisteners will know there was
that era of me having to rerecord things because I couldn't
get things to work properly. Therecordings weren't going the
right way because one mic wasconnecting, the other one
wasn't. It was a little all overthe place. And it was despite
the equipped equipmenttechnically being top notch, it
(05:55):
can go sideways so, you know,lean back in a little bit on the
remote stuff, just because it ittook one less thing to not worry
about. So I would say, I wouldstill say technology is the
hardest part of this, theconsistency, the tenacity. I
tend to be pretty good at thatstuff, but the technology thing,
(06:17):
as tech savvy as I can be, boydo I daydream about having an
engineer that's on site with me,whether it's renting out a
studio or having them monitoreverything as as as it's going
on. That would be great. Whatwould be great in the future is
having a dedicated person forsocial media. I think I would do
(06:39):
those in the reverse for acouple of different reasons, but
I'm sequencing wise, but thesocial media piece like that's a
whole nother skill set. So worea lot of hats this year number
three. What started off poorly,but improved over the quarter.
This is, this is where the juiceis for me. So started the
(06:59):
podcast for a whole bunch ofreasons. I don't know how much
I've gone into this in theepisodes. I haven't looked back
at everything from all theepisodes, but for years, I've
been daydreaming about morestories getting told, especially
the ones that don't often gettold, whether they're because if
it's from a gender perspective,or if it's from a race
(07:22):
perspective, which I can'trepresent, but I can help
champion, whether it's from askills and crafts perspective,
because I happen to be part of acraft like my core skill set
tends to be one that's verybehind the scenes, and we're not
great at stepping on thespotlight, you know. So I've
always daydreamed about thatbeing the case, that there being
(07:42):
more voices like that. Twothings happened. One, I was
like, okay, no one else is doingand might as well do it, because
I can be that person who getsjust like, Okay, let's let's
just do the thing. Let's just dothing I want, the thing in the
world no one else is doing. Letme just do it, even if it's not
my comfort zone. The other one,this is where my juice is. I had
(08:08):
a bunch of circumstances. One inparticular comes to mind, but I
had a bunch of circumstancesthat knock the confidence out of
me. Knock the confidence clearout of me. I was a shell of
myself. I was an absolute shellof myself, you wouldn't
recognize me. I didn't recognizemyself. And the reality is, I
(08:28):
wasn't walking through thisworld with the confidence of
someone who's lived through thevarious things I've lived
through, or have the skill setsthat I have, or I didn't have
the gravitas that I should have,right, given everything that I
bring to the table and bringinto this world, right? And I
needed to find my voice again.So the podcast really helped me
(08:51):
find my voice, right? Yes, I didit through the podcast. Yes, I
did it through my sub stack.Yes, I did it through networking
events, but the podcast was theone consistent thing like every
week, having to get an episodeout every single week, making
sure that the content was clear,making sure that the content was
useful, making sure that thetopics were relevant, making
(09:13):
sure that we were standing onthat edge. You know, 2025, 2026,
it's, there's, there's a there'sa careful line that you got to
walk for a whole bunch ofdifferent reasons, walking that
line as close to the edges aspossible, without, you know,
without cutting ourselves,because, you know, it feels like
a razor's edge. Sometimesfiguring that out has been a
(09:36):
gift, has been a gift. So Istand before you or I stand
whether literally, figuratively,whether you're watching or
listening, I stand before you acompletely different human being
than I was a year ago. And alarge part of that is the
podcast, and
a large part of that is y'all,you know, yes, I'm from Jersey,
and I use y'all. That's a storyfor another day, but I love that
(09:59):
word. Word, but the it's it'sbecause of the podcast that I'm
able to walk in this world withthe confidence that I do. I
rediscovered myself. Irediscovered things about myself
that I didn't even realizeexisted. And a lot of why I kept
(10:19):
going a lot of why that waspossible, a lot of why I stayed
committed was because thefeedback from all you, you know,
I often say, in workenvironments and like, I really
appreciate feedback. It's notbecause I need a pat on the
back, because I really don't,but I do like to know what's
useful, what's not right,because that lets me, that sends
(10:41):
me, that gives me the signalthat I need to know. I keep
doing this. I stopped doing thatright? And the feedback that
I've received from friends, fromformer colleagues, from current
colleagues, from strangers,right? The way that my network
has opened up is huge, and I'mgrateful to all of you. I'm
grateful to all of you. Sothat's what started off poorly
(11:02):
and improved another quarter wasmy self confidence. And you
know, episodes, technically isepisode 53 then it'll mark the
end of season one. Will everyseason be a year long? Probably
not. I can probably guaranteenot. But I'm grateful. I'm
(11:22):
grateful that that this one wasa long one, because it allowed
for a lot to take root. And sofor now, I'm going to do a
slightly longer retro, offcamera, off microphone, to
figure out what's next. Figureout what's next for the podcast.
Figure out how this evolves andgrows. How does this fit into my
(11:48):
personal and professional life,right, which is evolving and
growing along with everythingelse. Stay tuned. Connect with
me on LinkedIn, because I knowI'm going to post about on
LinkedIn when it shows up again.Connect with me on Instagram.
The messy middle matters, thewhole long phrase. Worked on
getting a trademark. That was awin for the year I got my
(12:08):
trademark. And, you know, juststay connected. Stay connected.
I'll let you all know when thenext season drops. Or stay
subscribed. Subscribe on yourfavorite podcast platform. We're
on all of them. That's the goodnews. Took that route and just
thank you. Thank you foreverything. Thank you for the
year plus. Thank you for yourattention. Thank you for your
(12:31):
feedback, thank you for yoursupport. And I do hope you'll
join us next time for anothertopic, for the messy middle.
Bye, everyone.
Thanks for taking time with usin the messy middle. Word of
mouth remains most powerful wayfor people to find us. If this
(12:52):
episode sparked something foryou, we'd love it. If you'd
subscribe to the podcast on yourfavorite app, download a few
episodes and share it withsomeone else who's navigating
the in between. Do you haveideas for future episodes or
topics you'd like us to explore?You can find our feedback form
at the messy middle matters.com,or in the show notes. Thank you
for joining us on this journey.This work is better when we do
(13:14):
it together. Until next timeyou.
Hi. I'm Indra, and I'd like to welcome you to
the messy middle matters, wheremy friends and I explore all the
twists, turns and challengesthat arise in the messy middle
of work. Last week was episode52 of the messy middle matters.
So I thought this was a goodtime for me to call the season
one done, and for me to have aquarterly retro a tool that I've
(00:32):
used many, many times before.First created it when I was at
we work. And I think it'll workfor this. I think it'll work
from this, yes, I'm looking at afull year, and technically I
label it the quarterly retro,but a retro is a retro for a
long period of time. Same rulescan apply. And yeah, I can do it
(00:53):
by myself. I don't need to gothrough all the ground rules
that I usually have. Don'tworry, folks. I'll post a full
sub stack article next week. Sofollow me on LinkedIn and make
sure you get that, or I'll posta link to my substack in the
show notes. So you'll get thatnext week, but I'll have a
quarterly retro and talk aboutthe last year and change with
(01:13):
everyone. And go through thethree questions that I usually
go through in that quarterlyretro. So the three questions
are, what went well, what wentpoorly, and what started off
poorly but improved over thecourse of time. The first two
questions are classic ones. Youknow, it's sort of aligns with
(01:35):
the stop, start, continue thatusually happens in a classic
sprint, retro that you have. Butthat last one for me is always
where the magic is. Because whenyou're talking about a sustained
period of time celebrating thefact that you actually improved,
something that falls in themessy middle of that time cycle
(01:56):
is usually where the good juiceis. And so we're going to focus
in on all three questions. Sowhat went well? I did the thing.
It started off with Amanda,shout out to her. It couldn't
have happened without her,because when I first started the
podcast, I didn't want to do itby myself. I really wanted to do
(02:19):
it in collaboration with someoneelse. And we did. We did. Most
of the episodes are with her,right? At least half of them are
with her, and it wouldn't have Ialways talked about her like
she's the godmother. A littlebit, she's the godmother of the
podcast, and I'm forevergrateful for that. Over the
(02:40):
course of time, you know,determined that it was worth
expanding to other folks so wecould cover different topics,
different from different angles,cover them at different depths.
Um, just expand the aperture alittle bit. And that was also an
incredible set of learnings. Um,from that, and, yeah, it's even
(03:04):
through in a solo episode outthere, just to see what that
would be like. And all in all,52 full length episodes, you
know, started off on Zoom, soall the recording and editing
was on Zoom about halfwaythrough, graduated onto a
platform called Riverside, andsomeday I look forward to
(03:25):
graduating back to zoom again,because there are pros and cons
and scenarios for all thedifferent platforms, but I did
along the way. So when I wasrecording on Zoom, I learned how
to edit audio and Garage Band,learned a whole bunch of
different plugins around mixingand mastering and all the other
(03:45):
things. Heaven knows, I stilldon't use all the terminology
properly, but learned aboutthat, learned about captioning,
learned about SRT files, learnedabout how episodes can flow and
the RSS feeds flow throughthrough the various channels.
And how do you get your podcastsout on every single platform? I
(04:09):
happen to use pod bean foreverything. I'll share links for
all that stuff, just in casefolks want to use them. Of those
things figured out. Where socialmedia falls into it. You know,
still in publishing fullepisodes on YouTube, not as
great at getting the shorts outon time. Start off on Tiktok and
blue sky and Instagram andLinkedIn. LinkedIn is key, since
(04:31):
this is really around thebusiness world right. And then
dial things back. Dialed thingsback to just LinkedIn and
Instagram for a couple ofdifferent reasons, but those are
the two platforms. And, youknow, when first started the
episodes, you know, didn't knowhow long this would go. You
(04:51):
know, decided to keep going andgoing and going. And a year
later, when it was hitting theyear anniversary, I was like,
Okay, let's hit 52 52 is a goodnumber. So that's a whole bunch
of what went well. Oh yeah,guest release notes, you know, I
guess release notes, releaseforms, injured by legal error on
(05:12):
all of this. How about whatdidn't go well? Technology,
technology is so, so, so, so,so, so hard. And what I will
tell everyone so in personconversations, they can be
richer, but the technologyaround them is a whole lot
(05:33):
harder. Those consistentlisteners will know there was
that era of me having to rerecord things because I couldn't
get things to work properly. Therecordings weren't going the
right way because one mic wasconnecting, the other one
wasn't. It was a little all overthe place. And it was despite
the equipped equipmenttechnically being top notch, it
(05:55):
can go sideways so, you know,lean back in a little bit on the
remote stuff, just because it ittook one less thing to not worry
about. So I would say, I wouldstill say technology is the
hardest part of this, theconsistency, the tenacity. I
tend to be pretty good at thatstuff, but the technology thing,
(06:17):
as tech savvy as I can be, boydo I daydream about having an
engineer that's on site with me,whether it's renting out a
studio or having them monitoreverything as as as it's going
on. That would be great. Whatwould be great in the future is
having a dedicated person forsocial media. I think I would do
(06:39):
those in the reverse for acouple of different reasons, but
I'm sequencing wise, but thesocial media piece like that's a
whole nother skill set. So worea lot of hats this year number
three. What started off poorly,but improved over the quarter.
This is, this is where the juiceis for me. So started the
(06:59):
podcast for a whole bunch ofreasons. I don't know how much
I've gone into this in theepisodes. I haven't looked back
at everything from all theepisodes, but for years, I've
been daydreaming about morestories getting told, especially
the ones that don't often gettold, whether they're because if
it's from a gender perspective,or if it's from a race
(07:22):
perspective, which I can'trepresent, but I can help
champion, whether it's from askills and crafts perspective,
because I happen to be part of acraft like my core skill set
tends to be one that's verybehind the scenes, and we're not
great at stepping on thespotlight, you know. So I've
always daydreamed about thatbeing the case, that there being
(07:42):
more voices like that. Twothings happened. One, I was
like, okay, no one else is doingand might as well do it, because
I can be that person who getsjust like, Okay, let's let's
just do the thing. Let's just dothing I want, the thing in the
world no one else is doing. Letme just do it, even if it's not
my comfort zone. The other one,this is where my juice is. I had
(08:08):
a bunch of circumstances. One inparticular comes to mind, but I
had a bunch of circumstancesthat knock the confidence out of
me. Knock the confidence clearout of me. I was a shell of
myself. I was an absolute shellof myself, you wouldn't
recognize me. I didn't recognizemyself. And the reality is, I
(08:28):
wasn't walking through thisworld with the confidence of
someone who's lived through thevarious things I've lived
through, or have the skill setsthat I have, or I didn't have
the gravitas that I should have,right, given everything that I
bring to the table and bringinto this world, right? And I
needed to find my voice again.So the podcast really helped me
(08:51):
find my voice, right? Yes, I didit through the podcast. Yes, I
did it through my sub stack.Yes, I did it through networking
events, but the podcast was theone consistent thing like every
week, having to get an episodeout every single week, making
sure that the content was clear,making sure that the content was
useful, making sure that thetopics were relevant, making
(09:13):
sure that we were standing onthat edge. You know, 2025, 2026,
it's, there's, there's a there'sa careful line that you got to
walk for a whole bunch ofdifferent reasons, walking that
line as close to the edges aspossible, without, you know,
without cutting ourselves,because, you know, it feels like
a razor's edge. Sometimesfiguring that out has been a
(09:36):
gift, has been a gift. So Istand before you or I stand
whether literally, figuratively,whether you're watching or
listening, I stand before you acompletely different human being
than I was a year ago. And alarge part of that is the
podcast, and
a large part of that is y'all,you know, yes, I'm from Jersey,
and I use y'all. That's a storyfor another day, but I love that
(09:59):
word. Word, but the it's it'sbecause of the podcast that I'm
able to walk in this world withthe confidence that I do. I
rediscovered myself. Irediscovered things about myself
that I didn't even realizeexisted. And a lot of why I kept
(10:19):
going a lot of why that waspossible, a lot of why I stayed
committed was because thefeedback from all you, you know,
I often say, in workenvironments and like, I really
appreciate feedback. It's notbecause I need a pat on the
back, because I really don't,but I do like to know what's
useful, what's not right,because that lets me, that sends
(10:41):
me, that gives me the signalthat I need to know. I keep
doing this. I stopped doing thatright? And the feedback that
I've received from friends, fromformer colleagues, from current
colleagues, from strangers,right? The way that my network
has opened up is huge, and I'mgrateful to all of you. I'm
grateful to all of you. Sothat's what started off poorly
(11:02):
and improved another quarter wasmy self confidence. And you
know, episodes, technically isepisode 53 then it'll mark the
end of season one. Will everyseason be a year long? Probably
not. I can probably guaranteenot. But I'm grateful. I'm
(11:22):
grateful that that this one wasa long one, because it allowed
for a lot to take root. And sofor now, I'm going to do a
slightly longer retro, offcamera, off microphone, to
figure out what's next. Figureout what's next for the podcast.
Figure out how this evolves andgrows. How does this fit into my
(11:48):
personal and professional life,right, which is evolving and
growing along with everythingelse. Stay tuned. Connect with
me on LinkedIn, because I knowI'm going to post about on
LinkedIn when it shows up again.Connect with me on Instagram.
The messy middle matters, thewhole long phrase. Worked on
getting a trademark. That was awin for the year I got my
(12:08):
trademark. And, you know, juststay connected. Stay connected.
I'll let you all know when thenext season drops. Or stay
subscribed. Subscribe on yourfavorite podcast platform. We're
on all of them. That's the goodnews. Took that route and just
thank you. Thank you foreverything. Thank you for the
year plus. Thank you for yourattention. Thank you for your
(12:31):
feedback, thank you for yoursupport. And I do hope you'll
join us next time for anothertopic, for the messy middle.
Bye, everyone.
Thanks for taking time with usin the messy middle. Word of
mouth remains most powerful wayfor people to find us. If this
(12:52):
episode sparked something foryou, we'd love it. If you'd
subscribe to the podcast on yourfavorite app, download a few
episodes and share it withsomeone else who's navigating
the in between. Do you haveideas for future episodes or
topics you'd like us to explore?You can find our feedback form
at the messy middle matters.com,or in the show notes. Thank you
for joining us on this journey.This work is better when we do
(13:14):
it together. Until next timeyou.
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