Outlier's Edge Podcast with Niiamah Ashong

Outlier's Edge Podcast with Niiamah Ashong is a conversation show recorded live and set up as a roundtable with anywhere from one to three guests. Niiamah Ashong greets the audience as outliers and thanks them for letting the show be part of their journey. Then comes the question behind almost every conversation here: tell us about you and the game you are currently playing. It doesn't have to be pickleball, he tells Ross McDaniel. The game framing matters. It asks guests to say what they are building and what they stand for in the same answer, and the answers vary widely. Al Schuster lays out a sample finder platform that would reward people with points for signing up, referring friends, answering trivia, checking in at stores and writing short reviews, then pass brand-experience survey data on to suppliers. Ashok Bhattacharya talks about managing the Empathy Clinic for many years and about spreading the idea that empathy can improve relationships at home and at work. Dr. Marty Trevino introduces himself as a cognitive scientist who wants to bring neuroscience and the cognitive sciences into technology for the benefit of human beings. Ross McDaniel reacts differently, saying the opening question is uncomfortable for someone who battles imposter syndrome. In 'You Cannot Create New With Old Identity', one guest describes a hard pivot: a business that grew through personalized coaching and close relationships, now trying to go online and international without losing that personal touch. That guest calls the stretch very uncomfortable and says the results are only starting to show. Niiamah Ashong's own style is warm and openly enthusiastic. He promises one roundtable will be a banger, admits he was dancing to a Clean Bandit song right before going live, and at one point repeats back his understanding of a guest's business before asking how he did. He is quick to acknowledge people, too: in one closing he tells a guest he respects how that guest keeps finding ways for several people to win. Some of his framing comes with its own vocabulary, such as what he calls the 3% collective, a mix of being exceptional at your work and letting your uniqueness show. Milestones get a moment. When Lodro Rinzler congratulates him on passing 900 episodes, he stops to take it in and says the catalog came together one conversation at a time, over roughly ten years of podcasting on and off. The episode titles show where the talk tends to go: 'Build the Plane While You Fall', 'What Happens When You Stop Hiding', 'Staying Hungry After You’ve Won' and 'The Soul of a Business' all point toward identity, visibility, ambition and purpose. Conversations here often end on the same sign-off, a reminder to be you on purpose and journey on. A listener gets a live room of people describing what they are building, what it asks of them, and how they see themselves while they do it.