The Last Episode.....with Lisa Mulligan

The mic turns inward for a final time as we trace how a remote‑recorded show became a global home for honest stories about inclusion. 

Host Lisa Mulligan shares the spark that started A Dog Called Diversity, the WhatsApp brainstorm that shaped the name and cover art, and the scrappy, reliable tech stack that kept conversations flowing across time zones. 

This is a frank debrief on what worked, what was hard, and why ending now is the right call.

We walk through the big themes that defined the feed including: 

• Disability in its many forms, 
• Gender and sexuality, 
• Indigenous identity
• Being an immigrant
• Data‑driven inclusion, 
• Employee resource groups, 
• Flexible work, 
• Inclusive leadership, and much more. 

Along the way, Lisa highlights three unforgettable conversations and opens the ledger on time and cost: pre‑chats, editing, hosting, social posts, and why video raises the stakes for independant creators.

There’s candour about surprises and sharing of stats that add colour to this creative medium.

If you’ve ever wondered how to start a podcast, how to keep one going, or how to end gracefully, this send‑off offers insights and practical tips.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Final Episode Setup
• 2:09 Why The Podcast Began
• 5:23 The Name And Cover Art Story
• 7:25 Tech Stack And Workflow
• 11:32 Guests, Topics, And Reach
• 16:20 Surprises And Hard Truths
• 22:10 Favourite And Unusual Episodes
• 26:28 [Ad] Making Good: Small Business Marketing Podcast
• 27:15 (Cont.) Favourite And Unusual Episodes
• 27:46 Listener Stats And Milestones
• 32:06 Impact Stories And Reflections
• 36:06 Closing The Chapter And What’s Next

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity. This is the final episode of A Dog Called Diversity. Hi everyone, this is Lisa Mulligan. Uh yeah, it's a bit weird recording um the last episode, but but it's okay. It's all okay. Um so in this episode, I thought I would share with you, I guess, an overview of the podcast, um why I started the podcast. So often people ask me why I did that. Um and answer the most asked question about the podcast, which is why, like, how did you come up with the name? That's a really cool name. So I'll share that. Um, I thought I'd share a little bit about the tech um that I've used for my podcast. Uh, and since I've started, the the technology for podcasts have really accelerated. Um, but I'll but I'll talk to you about what what I use um and then you know some of the the admin and the setup that made it possible to create the podcast. Uh then I'm gonna talk a bit about um the episodes, um, you know, some of the topics, my favorite episodes. Uh yeah, a bit about that. Lots of interesting things in there. Uh, and I'll share what surprised me about podcasting and and maybe what's not surprised me. Uh and then a bit about what I've learned and and share with you some of the the stats from the podcast, which are pretty cool actually. Uh yeah, so I hope you enjoy this episode. It's a solo one. I don't do many solo episodes, but uh yeah, let's get into it. So I thought I'd start with the the origin story. So why did I start the podcast? Um so at the time I I loved podcasts, I loved listening to podcasts, and I knew I wanted to start one. Um but there were there were two really clear reasons for me. I had started a new role. Um, I had been in, I had applied for and been appointed to the global head of diversity and inclusion for a global engineering company. And when I started that role, I thought I knew a lot. I I knew a lot about being a woman working in a male-dominated industry. I I was often the only woman in the room, so I thought I knew a lot about gender, and I thought I knew a lot about how to drive more gender or more women into these male uh dominated businesses that I was in. Um I also have a son who has a disability. So Aidan is now 16 and he has ocular cutaneous albinism. That just means he doesn't have any pigment in his hair, his skin, or in his retina. And that actually means that he's incredibly sun-sensitive, he has no protection from the sun in his skin, like many of us do. But it also means when you don't have um pigment in your retina, that it makes it harder to see, you can't see as well as everyone else, so he um is vision impaired. So, you know, I thought I knew a bit, had some gay friends, and I very quickly realized when I started that role that there was so much to learn, like so much to learn. And the podcast gave me a chance to speak with people who who might not be considered normal, which is a terrible, terrible word, but people who are showing up in the world with things that set them apart. Um, and in organizations, these people are often underrepresented. So uh that was that was the first reason. It was really about me learning and being able to speak to people directly about their personal stories and to understand their perspective. Uh, so super helpful, super helpful. Um, the second reason was that I knew in the future I wanted to start my own business, and then I knew I needed to build my personal brand, my personal profile, and the podcast has been really successful for that. Uh, over the years I've been running the podcast, uh which I started in 2021. I'll I have got the date, I'll tell you the exact date soon. Um, but it has been really successful from that point of view. People have said to me or contacted me and said, Lisa, I listened to your podcast, I feel like I know you, you probably don't know me, and so it's been really helpful from that kind of no like trust perspective that that people felt like they knew me, and so you know, that was that had sort of dropped a barrier when people were contacting me to work with me. Yeah, so I'll also tell you, um most people say to me, Oh, I love the name of your podcast, A Dog Called Diversity, and and how did you come up with that name? And it was during COVID in 2020. I was living in Singapore, um, and I have a friend in Singapore, Charlotte Wilkinson. Hi, Charlotte, hope you're listening. And she is a pretty creative kind of a person, uh, has worked in um marketing, also worked in diversity and inclusion, and we brainstormed the name over WhatsApp during lockdown in Singapore. Um, and then if you look at my podcast cover, it has a dog at a podcasting microphone, and that was really about a throwback to a brand called His Master's Voice, which I believe is now HM. And the logo for that business is was a dog at a gramophone. Actually, I don't think it was a gramophone, but it was an old-fashioned uh record player, and so I kind of liked that connection to something in the past. Um, and yeah, that's how we we came up with the the podcast cover and with the name, uh, which which I've loved. So um in terms of the purpose of the podcast, I feel like I've been really successful. I have learned so much about people's stories and the challenges that people have when they're not the same as everyone else in the world. And it's also been successful in terms of building my brand and building my network. So, you know, if those are the kinds of things that you're wanting maybe in your business, um, I would I would really encourage you to start a podcast. It's been uh really helpful for me. So, in terms of technology, um look, technology has hugely shifted since I started the podcast, but initially I did a few things to make sure I had an okay setup. So I purchased a podcasting mic, a road podcasting mic. I think I spent maybe$130 on it. I didn't I didn't buy the best in the market, but I didn't buy the worst. Um, and that has held me in really good stead, both for my own podcast and for appearing on other people's podcasts. Um I also it's important to have headphones so that you don't get echo back through the microphone. I have either used um just uh Apple headphones with a cord, or now I use Apple AirPods that are Bluetooth and they work absolutely fine. Of course, you can get much better headphones, but that's what I've been using with no issues. Uh when I started, I recorded on Zoom and I would record the audio and the video. The video was really just so that I could see my guests. I've basically never done a face-to-face or in-person podcast, it's always been on Zoom, and that was really helpful in terms of being able to talk to people all over the world, and I'll share some stats uh at towards the end about where my listeners are from, um, which are all over the world. Um, it's meant that I haven't had to hire podcast studios, which are an expense. And it's only probably in the last year or so that podcasts have been recording on video and sharing their podcasts on video. And if that's something you want to do, I wouldn't recommend Zoom. The quality of the video is not good enough for that purpose at all. Um, there are much better products out in the market to do that with, but I've kind of stuck with Zoom all this time, um, just for consistency, really. Um so, and then so that's the technology. Um, you need a recording platform, you need a mic, you need headphones, and you also need a hosting platform to upload your finished podcast to. And for the the whole of the podcast, I've been using BuzzSprout, which has been great. Um, but again, there are many other platforms that you could use for that purpose. And when I start my new podcast, I will potentially move to a different platform just because I think some of the technology in some of the other platforms has improved over and above maybe what Buzzsprout has. Um, but yeah, just do your research. There's lots of stuff out there for podcasting now, which is really, really cool. Um, over the time of the podcast, I've had a couple of different voiceover artists introducing at the start and closing out at the end. Initially, I used a uh one of the platforms that you can put your job up and people bid for it, and then you can choose someone from there. So I had someone, uh a consistent person in the US I was using that cost me uh maybe$50 or$60 an episode to do that, which was great for a while. So he would do the voiceover, he would also add the music at the start and the end, which was really cool. Um, I actually purchased some music from a site that creates music for a range of issues. I I can't remember what the site was, but uh the the music wasn't wasn't that expensive. Um, and there's lots of sites you can find music on now. Um I then when I moved to New Zealand, I had a guest manager, so someone who would help me find guests for the podcast, and she would uh find people, set up a pre-chat so we knew what we were going to talk about. She would then set up the recording for them and then send a thank you at the end. She would also send them a document that I created for podcast guests, giving them all the information about the podcast, what was expected of them, what they should expect from me, just you know, and then recording tips, microphones, headphones, all of that kind of stuff. Um, so that was really, really helpful having a guest manager and helped cut down on the time it takes to create a podcast, which I will talk about. Uh, then um I also had a I moved away from the voiceover artist in the US and had an editor and a voiceover artist in Singapore. Shout out to Megan Kinder. I should also say my uh editor or my guest manager was Kim. Kim, I'll put her full name in in the show notes, but then I had an editor and a voiceover artist, which was Megan, who was fantastic and also helpful in giving me feedback about my voice and how I was coming across on the podcast. So that was really cool. Right, so the first episode that I released was on January 5, 2021. Uh and so pretty much five years ago, wow. And my the ideal guests that I always looked for were kind of in two categories. One was people who were maybe a bit different in the world, who were willing to share their personal stories, and people who were working on diversity and inclusion inside organizations and having them share their tips and their challenges about working in this space. So I I pretty much achieved that. Um, my first episode was with a beautiful French woman called Marylise Carmajan, and she came and talked about her son. Uh her son has a chondroplasia, and that is a form of dwarfism. So she came on the the show and shared the challenges of having a child with a disability, and with that particular disability, you know, many people look at people with dwarf dwarfism and just think they're smaller, but they actually have some significant health challenges because of that condition. And I'm so grateful she was my first guest. She is still the most downloaded guest on the podcast. Closely followed by Andrew Kinder. He's in a bit of a competition. Um, and the last episode, which I released late 2025, was with Dr. Amanda Sterling, who works in a similar space to me, but she came on the podcast to share her research about what um what helps and what prevents women from moving into leadership roles. Um and that's a really great episode. So over the over the course of the podcast, I've spoken to people about so many topics. So many topics, it's um quite incredible. So I thought I would share some of those with you. So I have talked to people about well-being, about being indigenous to the country that they were born in. Um many guests talked about disabilities. So I've had people who are blind, people with MS or multiple sclerosis. Um, I've talked about intellectual disabilities. Um I have talked about careers, so people who work in diversity and inclusion, about neurodiversity, about different cultures, about gender equality, about breaking barriers, about uh being gay or transgender or transition transitioning gender. Um I have run a survey for people who work in diversity and inclusion about salary and other challenges in the industry. So I've talked about that on the podcast. We've talked about challenging gender stereotypes, uh, employee resource groups, we've talked about AIDS, breastfeeding, culturally diverse leadership, um, weight discrimination, and size inclusive fashion, talked about healthcare, generational trauma, uh data-driven diversity and inclusion work, mentoring, uh, midlife women and menopause, resilience, uh being bipolar, having muscular dystrophy, talking about being an immigrant to a new country, workplace inclusion, flexible work, inclusive leadership, supported decision making, um, and diversity in customer experience. And more, so much more. Um, and I've had feedback from listeners on how some of those topics have been so helpful for them for where they are in life. So I thought I might share some of the things that surprised me about podcasting and maybe some of the things that didn't. So I thought it would be really hard to find people to be guests on the show. I thought it would be really hard, but in fact it wasn't. And as I was meeting people just out in the world, and if they had an interesting story, I would invite them onto the podcast. And most people would say yes. I was surprised how willing people were to share their stories. It was so heartening to learn that. Um I was also surprised, I didn't realize when I started, and you might not realize now, but there are possibilities. Podcast agencies, mainly in the US, but there are others in other countries. But podcast agencies help people get on podcasts. So at least once a week over the time I've had my podcast, I've had an approach from a podcast agency representing people who want to come on the podcast. Now, who are these people? They tend to be authors who might be releasing a book or wanting to promote a book, or people running a business who want exposure to different audiences. So that was kind of cool. But some of the some of the approaches I get are quite unusual and not suitable guests for my show. I guess some of the things that maybe didn't surprise me, or maybe you mightn't understand until you have a podcast, is that they are very time consuming. They take a lot of time to produce. So I always set up a half-hour conversation beforehand just to get to know each other a little bit for me to take some notes and to think about what questions we're going to ask. So that's that's half an hour just there at least. The recording is usually an hour or an hour, a little bit more than an hour. We don't use all that that content always, but that's that's about how long it takes. Then there's time um downloading the recordings, if they're going to be edited, making that happen, putting on the voiceovers and the music, um, which I never did. That that was too uh wasn't too technical. It I just didn't have the time to be able to do that. And then uh uploading the episode to the hosting platform, and then sharing uh uploading it to the platform and then being sharing it on social media, um, creating marketing around the episode, um, you know, all the social media posts, all that kind of thing. So um, and then thanking the guests. So, you know, that's that's pretty time consuming. Um when I had a really good rhythm happening when I one year, um, might have been 2023, I was, I think I did something like over 40 episodes that year. So I I basically was dropping an episode a week, except for January and December. And I had a really good system happening, um, it was working really well. Um, but I had lots of help. I was paying people, I was paying a guest manager, I was paying an editor and a voiceover artist, and I was paying someone to help me with the social media. So the time was a little bit less, but the cost was higher. So that year, those episodes cost around$500 to produce, not including my time. So um, while there's lots and lots of great stuff about podcasting, it's not cheap. And now more and more podcasts are producing video episodes, and that is an additional expense because you need somewhere to record, you need video editors, and so it's become a little bit more complex. Um and you know, those episodes at a minimum would be costing if I was doing it, probably 1200 to 1500, maybe more an episode to produce. So uh great marketing tool, but can be time and money intensive, I guess. So um, but I learned a lot. I've I've learned a lot about people and about podcasting. So I guess the first thing I learned is you can't know everything in the space of diversity and inclusion. You just can't. And even if you have someone on your podcast who has a particular condition or disability, they will often say, I'm just talking about my experiences. The next person with that same or similar condition will have a different experience. And so, in terms of the work I was doing in corporate roles and the work I now do consulting, I think it was really helpful to understand you can't know everything. And it's taught me that we just need to be more inclusive across the board in our organizations and in our communities, and that everyone's experience is different, and so understanding an individual's experience is really important, particularly in an organization if you're managing a team. Uh, I also learned that people who might have been discriminated in one area don't necessarily understand or have empathy for people with other challenges. So, for example, I I've had a guest on my podcast who spoke to me during 2020 when Black Lives Matter was a really important thing happening in our community. George Floyd had been killed in the US by the police. And so I spoke to a a beautiful black man about his experience as being black, which was really helpful, and he he shared so much of his personal experience, of his personal experience, which I I really appreciated. But then uh one of the episodes I remember challenging him around his business because his business was very male-dominated, and I was, you know, how are you supporting women in your business? And I'm not sure it was something he had thought about that much, and so you know, I think I had an assumption that if if you had been discriminated against for something, then you would have empathy and understanding for how other people who've been discriminated against the different aspects, you you you know, you might understand that, but but actually our biases are very personal to ourselves and our and our own experiences, so um that was really helpful to learn. And I've seen it play out at diversity and inclusion conferences where we might be learning about a particular group of people's experiences, and then someone in the audience will almost put up their hand and say, but what about me? What about me and my experiences and the people like me who've had similar experiences? So yeah, I call that what what about meism? That that diversity and inclusion work is hard often to be universal because we don't always understand everyone's experiences, and the podcast, in a way, was trying to build some of that empathy across different people. Anyway, that was a really good lesson for me doing the work I do. Um sometimes people will say to me, What's your favorite episode, Lisa? And it's like asking which is your favorite child, which I mean, obviously we shouldn't have favourite children, but depending on which one is being more obnoxious at that point, maybe the other one is is the favorite at the time. But there were three episodes that I really enjoyed recording. I I don't know if they're my favorites, but personally the one they're the ones I've really enjoyed. Um so they are How to Be a Real Man with Scott Stewart, which is uh I think it's episode nine, although I don't think it was that early that I recorded it, but it's called How to Be a Real Man with Scott Stewart. Scott is a writer and illustrator of children's books. His son loves to wear dresses, and he, you know, he talks about this thing in society that boys shouldn't wear dresses, and he talks about the challenges of that, both in his family and more broadly. And he writes books about helping children be more, I guess, open and and also saying to children, you be you, and and if you want to wear a dress and you're a boy, that's fine. Um for me, that was a really funny episode. I don't know if it's come across that way in the recording, but um, I really, really enjoyed recording that one. The second one I loved is called Making Love Not Porn with Cindy Gallup. Um, Cindy is really well known on LinkedIn and more broadly. Her she has a business called Making Love Not Porn, which I absolutely adore because she is trying to change the way that boys in particular view porn, and she wanted to create a site where people could upload their um videos of real loving sex as an antidote to the highly produced uh often highly fake porn that and and violent porn that we're seeing in the world. And yeah, to be able to to show something that's actually real and loving um versus highly produced. And what was fun about that episode was I I really wanted to ask questions of Cindy that hadn't been asked of her before. And like I I wanted to be a really good journalist, and I can remember I had my sister and my friend Wendy staying with me, and at the dinner table, I was saying, look, I'm gonna I'm interviewing Cindy Gallup, this is what she does, and what are some questions you want to ask her? And my sister and my friend were very uncomfortable with the conversation and not much help in coming up with some great questions for Cindy, but I just love what she's doing, and uh I really I really enjoyed that episode. She is uh just a fantastic guest to have on a podcast. And then the third episode I'll talk about is one called The Power of Women in Midlife with Kate Billing. I enjoyed this one for a couple of reasons. One was when I when I first moved to Auckland and I'd go to networking events with women and I'd get talking to them and they'd they'd say, Oh, have you have you met Kate Billing? And I was like, No, who's Kate Billing? And then I'd go to another event, and someone else would go, Oh, you should talk to Kate Billing. So it became my mission to hunt Kate down. And uh I approached her and said, Look, you know, pitched my podcast, would you come on as a guest? And at the time she was too busy, and could you get back in contact a number of months later? So I put it in my calendar, contacted her again, and uh she she may have joined reluctantly, potentially. Um, but I just I just loved having her on the podcast and the topics that she talked about, and she's someone I really admire for her creativity and and the work that she's trying to drive in midlife women. Um I've also got to know her sister who is even more creative. Um and yeah, so it's been a really it's been really great to meet those both, and and it's an episode I really love. Uh I've had some really unusual episodes. So one, it's episode eight. It's called Act for Alana, and it's with a beautiful woman called Tony Catton, who I worked with many years ago, and she talked about her daughter who passed away very young with a mitochondrial disease, and Tony now works or leads that an organization that that undertakes research and promotes awareness for this particular disease. But what was unusual about the episode was Tony recorded the episode from her car. She parked her car and had her headphones and a microphone and everything. Um, we were both really worried we were gonna cry. Um, it was a very sensitive topic, and yeah, I'm so grateful she came and and shared. Um, I felt very trusted that that she was willing to share her story, so maybe go check that one out. It's called Act for Alana uh episode eight. Okay. I thought I might share some stats uh from the podcast. I've actually got my my Buzz Sprout uh deck, or not deck, website open. Um it's really I've been I've loved looking at the stats on my podcast. So over the time I've had the podcast, um I've recorded a hundred and forty five episodes, I think. Gosh, I shouldn't know that. I'm a little um uncertain about the number because there was one episode I had to delete from um from the the hosting platform. It was an episode with a beautiful woman in Singapore. Um her and her boss came on the podcast and shared her experiences being transgender while living in a very conservative family, uh Singaporean family. And I probably spent more time on that episode than any other one before. I went and met her and her boss. We spent a number of hours talking about her experiences before we even got near a microphone, and her story was so uh sensitive and sad and also resilient. But I knew that when we released that episode, that would it might be really hard for her. So I spent a lot of time understanding her. Um I asked her to go away and think if she wanted to be in the episode. I didn't I didn't want to force her, I wanted it to be her decision. Um and she did make the decision to record the episode, and it was a really beautiful episode, but she experienced so much bullying from her family and friends, not strangers, from her family and friends. Um, and we had to take it down, and that was it was a really hard thing to do from a technology point of view because I would take it down and it would still be up, and so it took me quite a while to work out how to take it down um so that people couldn't listen to it anywhere. It wasn't a hard decision from a guest decision. I've always said to my guests, if you're not comfortable, if there's something you don't like, we will fix it, we'll take it down, because some of the topics we've talked about on the podcast have been really difficult for people. So that's why I don't know the exact number. I think it's 145. Um, so of those 145 episodes, we've had over 26,000 downloads, and which is kind of cool, and most of those episodes have been uh downloaded through Apple Podcasts. So 51% of people listened through Apple Podcasts, followed by a web browser, say on a laptop, uh, was 15%, and then people listened through Spotify 13%. Most people listened to my podcast on their iPhone, their Apple iPhone, 67%, and then the top category overall um was mobile devices. So 75% of people listen to or well listen to my podcast on their mobile phone, which is um incredible. To me, that yeah, most people listen to their mobile. I suspect in their cars or when they're walking, that's when they're listening to uh podcasts. Um, in terms of locations, like where do my listeners come from? The um the biggest country is Australia, so 29% of listeners are in Australia, and 23% are in the United States, um, and then 16% in Singapore. So um, but I had a really global audience. The the top 10 were aside from those three I just mentioned, were the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Germany, uh, and France. The top city for listeners was Sydney at 13%, followed by Singapore at 11%, and Melbourne 5%, which is pretty interesting. Um I'm kind of I'm really proud that we've got people from all over the world listening to a dog called Diversity. Um then to finish, I I just thought I would share a couple of things with you. So um some really nice things that happened um from the podcast. So the first one was when I first released the podcast, um, the further probably the first couple of episodes, I was in the top 100 for Apple podcasts, probably in for Singapore, uh, which is really exciting being just a little podcast and competing with lots of big bigger podcasts. So uh that was pretty cool, pretty cool. And then um one story that I was oh, it was so nice to learn about. So I talked about that very first episode I dropped uh with Mari and her talking about her son with dwarfism, and we were both living in Singapore, and Singapore's an interesting country. You don't when I first moved there, anyone with a disability or a condition that might be a bit different, you didn't see a lot of, and it and it's not because they didn't exist, it's it was because often they were hidden. And so we released that episode on dwarfism, and Mary Lise told me maybe a year or two later after we dropped it, that a woman had got in contact with her who had given birth to a baby with dwarfism, a form of dwarfism, and had somehow found the podcast episode, got in contact with Mary Lee, and they became friends. And this woman with a new baby had like no support, didn't know what she was dealing with, and you know, she talked to me about how helpful it was that there was this resource that someone could go to who didn't know anything and then could contact that person and they could form a friendship and support each other with their children. So that was really, really nice. Then yesterday I was talking to my friend Katie. Um, and she said, you know, Lisa, you're the person that got me into listening to podcasts, and she said, I only listen to about three three podcasts, and yours is one of them. I was like, Oh my goodness, that was so nice. I that was so nice to hear. Um, but she said, Oh, do you feel sad? Do you feel sad that the podcast is ending? And you know, it's okay. It's okay because I started the podcast for a particular reason, and it has really served its purpose. I have learned so much, and I've built networks and connections and my personal brand in the space of diversity and inclusion. Um, but things have changed, things have changed in the world, things have changed in the market, and it's not serving the same purpose that it was. And so it's it's time to say goodbye and to close that chapter. And I've been feeling a little bit tired with the format, and I'm looking forward to doing something new. I'm not really sure what that is yet in terms of podcasting, but um, I'm considering a number of things. Um, and so while I am so proud of the podcast, I'm so proud of everything I've achieved. Yeah, it's it's it's over and it's time to move on. And there's a relief. There's a relief in that. Anyway, I want to thank all my listeners. It's it's been such a cool ride, and thank you for all your feedback. Thank you for letting me know when you've listened and something's really resonated with you. I've absolutely loved hearing from you. And if you want to know anything more about the podcast, you are very welcome to reach out to me. Uh, my email address is in the show notes or my website's in the show notes, you'll be able to get in contact. And I look forward to hearing from you. And I hope you come back when I have a new podcast, something new to share. Um, I can't wait to let you know what that is. When I know what that is. Anyway, thank you again. This is Lisa Mulligan and a dog called Diversity.