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John Lane and Will Barfield expand their reach with mmhmm video

Ganda Suthivarakom

Apr 18, 2023

John Lane and his co-host Will Barfield are both based in the Raleigh, NC, area, but they have yet to be in the same room to record their video podcast, Work in Progress. Instead, they use mmhmm to simultaneously record themselves, along with a special guest, while sharing slides on their guests’ strengths and weaknesses behind them.

“mmhmm allows us to banter and vibe with each other as if we were literally in the room together, and that's really important,” Lane said.

Both hosts have built their careers helping businesses of all sizes grow, and they clearly know how to pick a winner. They recorded the first few episodes of the Work in Progress podcast with another video recorder, but were disappointed when the other software lost two pre-recorded episodes. Looking for a more reliable solution, Lane discovered mmhmm, and the duo has recorded every episode since using mmhmm desktop.

“mmhmm allows us to banter and vibe with each other as if we were literally in the room together.”

John Lane

Co-host of the Work In Progress podcast

In each episode of Work in Progress, Lane and Barfield invite an executive to take an Organization Analysis and Design work personality assessment to show superpowers (strengths) and kryptonite (weaknesses). They use the multiplayer feature in mmhmm so both Lane and Barfield can be onscreen at the same time as their featured guest. When they reveal the assessment results, mmhmm lets them stay on screen with their slides so they don’t have to break the flow of their conversation. “It allows us to have vulnerable leadership discussions with people,” Barfield said.

Work in Progress still with John Lane and Will Barfield

In addition to being a fun, creative outlet, Lane’s videos have helped him expand his network. The format has been so popular with guests that they’ve had no trouble booking guests through the next six months. “When I go to my Shield Analytics or even just look in the native app, I see second- and third-degree people in my feed,” he said. “It's telling me we're starting to pull in people who aren't just the 10,000 people in my network already, but other interested folks.”

Lane and Barfield are using Work In Progress to show a fuller picture of who we all are at work. “We're going to try hard to bring good content that is valuable to people and show the scuffed knees and scraped elbows along the way,” said Lane. “Our unofficial tagline is ‘no humblebrags.’”


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