Behind the Scenes of Podcasting (Bonus EP16)

The best social sharing snippet from this interview is by far… “podcasting is vulnerable, and it’s something that will bring up a lot in you, but that’s something you should lean into rather than running away from. And so I hope that, Maybe someone builds up that courage to just put out the first episode, outline it, try it as a live, and then create that podcast and start that, that journey of owning your voice, owning that you do have something to say for yourself.”

In this episode, Isabella Sanchez Castañeda, Podcast Strategist & Ghostwriter, talks about the advantages of podcasting for small businesses. Isabella shares insights on building trust with customers through podcasting, the importance of content repurposing, and common mistakes to avoid. She talks about the significance of niche content, maintaining authenticity without oversharing, and managing the fear of negative feedback. Isabella also shares her experience in podcast strategy, her background in journalism, and her journey into the podcasting business. All the practical advice for small business owners considering starting a podcast.

Resources

Isabella’s website
Visible Podcast

Listen On Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch the Podcast

Raw Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the small business sweet spot. I’m your host Barb Davids, and this show is dedicated to helping small business owners like you get more organic website traffic and also to help create and distribute content and analyzing the numbers so that we can make better informed marketing decisions. It is action oriented, direct, and conversational. And if you’ve been looking for SEO or content marketing help, please stick around to the very end where I share about the group coaching program, small business sweet spot. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go.

All right. Welcome back to the sweet spot.

I have with me today, Isabella Sanchez Castañeda. Did I say that right? Yes. I am so excited to talk with you today and have my listeners also hear from you because Our paths crossed with a particular app networking type of thing that happened. And I just found your information and your outlook on business, like all the things just so fascinating.

So thank you for taking the time today. I appreciate it. Of course. Thank you. And thank you for coming to that first event. We’re just, we got to talk about so much and we had connected on Instagram before, but. It was, it was so great. So I’m happy to be here. Yeah. Good, good, good. And you are in the podcasting space.

You help small businesses with podcasts. The idea of podcasting. I have so many questions for you, but I’m going to start with why should someone do a podcast for their business? So on the business side and marketing side of things it’s really all about immersion is conversion.

And so we need to feel like we can trust the person that we’re going to buy from as a consumer. And it is very hard to develop that trust with someone just through 10 second stories, 30 second reels, a carousel post, no matter how much heart you put into it. And I know that I’m sure we’ll talk about blogging.

That’s also another really great medium for immersion. But the benefit, the extra benefit of podcasting is the ability to hear someone’s voice. And so we can know whether someone actually believes the thing that they’re talking about or not. It’s not even conscious. We kind of feel it. And so To build that immersion and build that trust with our customers.

A podcast just lets you do that so much more effectively and efficiently than constantly focusing on chopped up small content. And also by taking up space through a podcast, you are letting the world, your customers, your prospects. No, that you think you’re an authority and that you’re an expert and they start to see you as that.

And they get to say, Oh. They have something to say, maybe it’s time for me to listen. And so it’s, there’s also a personal component to it that I’m sure we can get into it, but for a business to really own and say, we are the experts, we’re willing to put ourselves out there and then create an immersion tool for people to, to build that trust a lot faster.

I feel like that’s what I started my podcast for, because. I’m a, I’m just a podcast junkie. Like I love listening to podcasts and I love listening to your podcast as well. It has so much great information and that is a great point about being able to, to get to know, like, it’s like that part of that know, like, and trust. I definitely get that from other people. I got that with you, with yours, and some other ones that I listen to.

Absolutely, and thank you for listening to the show. And, and it’s really just And a way to provide information to people that can really just be fun also but straight to the point. And then you’re, you’re potentially including examples that wouldn’t land just with the written word but you can be funny.

You can play with the tone of your voice. You can show when you’re being sarcastic and all of that does really help with learning. And eventually that person saying, Oh, I. Want to learn from this person even more in a program or through their services. We were talking a little bit before too about the idea of repurposing blog posts.

And I would love to hear your perspective on that and how that can work into the business and into our marketing. Yes, so I have always worked with my clients on repurposing their episodes into blogs, but I didn’t get around to doing it for myself for a really long time. So right now, I’m working backwards and cataloging probably not all 110 episodes of my solo show, but a lot of them into blogs.

And because I script my episodes, Converting them into a blog is so much easier. And so we have that foundation and now we’re putting it in my team and I are putting it in and adding the headers, adding all the things that you’re known for of like, how can we make sure that the keywords are correct?

How can we change the language? So it’s not, Oh, check out the link in the show notes, but instead it’s. The link right there. We’re spending a good amount of time on, you know, what the images are going to be, but it’s really wonderful that I have this starting off point of just the script, or maybe some people are not scripting, they’re outlining, but that has made it so much faster.

I’m just surprised by how much I have had to rewrite and kind of restructure for a read and like written format versus that audio where I am able to play with my voice. Sometimes I see the script and in just written and if it’s flat, I’m like, oh, that doesn’t land the same way. It’s not funny or it’s not it’s not clear that I’m being, you know, a little bit sarcastic in that moment.

So that has surprised me. But I’m really excited to see how All this work that I put in at the very beginning can now serve me for so much longer, not just through the episode, but through the blog, through social media content. That, so what would be an example of repurposing? So for example, I have an episode on visible where it’s about cover art.

And so I have taken that episode and repurposed it because I do video podcasting. So I have the video on there. I’ve repurposed it by chopping it up into clips and posting that on my social media, just little snippets about one specific part of the cover art. I have taken that and repurposed it into email in two ways.

One, email as an episode announcement, where I say, Hey, if you want to learn more about cover art, go ahead and go over there. But also repurposing the script itself, and just kind of stripping it down a little bit, and putting that as a newsletter and saying, Here are four tips for your cover art. Cover art, but I had already structured that, created the tips, created all of the formatting for the podcast.

And then now with the blog it’ll be an, a blog post that says do’s and don’ts for your cover art, probably a little bit more SEO optimized, but with the headers and everything, but just from that one effort of. writing that script and then recording it, I’m able to feed my social media, feed my email, feed my blog.

And also I’m sure I could put it other places. I’m trying to think of what else we could do with it, but it really just allows you to be focused at one point and then kind of spread it later. Is there any recommended length or when somebody comes to you about podcasts and how long they should be?

Cause I think that is. One of the questions I first had when I was doing it, like, how long should they be? Is there anything that you how do you respond to that one? My usual response is, I believe you can change someone’s life in five minutes. You don’t need to make it an hour just because someone else does.

So if you have a message that is clear, concise, and can be delivered in five minutes or less, deliver it in five minutes or less. If it requires a story, it requires an example, a, an interview, and that’s 50 minutes. Do it in 50 minutes. It’s really always prioritizing the listener at the end of the day and say, how much time do they need to understand this concept?

And for me to explain it well to them. And so I, I see a lot of business owners make the mistake of forcing themselves to go for 60 minutes. And that’s when you get those really fluffy, repetitive, Looping episodes where you’re like, I feel like I learned nothing, but I also just spent 60 minutes of my life here.

And I have, I think my shortest episode is probably four minutes. And I don’t remember which one that is, but I know that there’s one that’s four minutes. And then my longest ones are usually interviewing my clients for a case study style episode. And those are an hour long. Okay. What are some other mistakes that you think people make when it comes to podcasting or getting ready to want to podcast, I guess.

I think making it too broad. So making it something where you say, Oh, I’m a business owner, I’m gonna talk about business. Or, I’m a business owner, I’m gonna talk to business owners. And you’re like, About what? There’s, people are really afraid to niche because they’re afraid that, Oh, it’s gonna put me in a box.

And I understand that concern 100%. You’re probably thinking, Hey, like I’m a multifaceted person. And that’s true, but with a podcast specifically, you want it to be something where someone can say, Oh, when I go to this show, I learn about this. And the quicker you do that, the quicker you’re going to gain traction for your show because people know if I share this show with my friend, they know what they’re getting, I know what I’m giving them.

If they stumble upon it on a podcast app, they know what they’re getting, they know what they’re being given. And that’s so important just to build that trust with people. I would say the other mistake kind of also about being vague, and I’ve been talking about this a lot is treating your podcast like a diary and treating it like a, just.

brain dump because I did that. I made that mistake in the beginning because I thought that that’s what it meant to be authentic. I thought to be authentic online meant to not filter my thoughts, to be real, meant to honestly cross my own boundaries by oversharing. And a lot of people are like, I want to share, I want to document the journey.

And that’s, if you go back to the first 50 or so episodes of my podcast, I say I’m documenting the journey of building the business. I love and becoming the business owner. I want to be something like that was the intro. I’m surprised I forgot that, but I thought it was, it was documenting the journey.

So I would talk about anything and everything and no one knew what to expect. So I was actually doing more harm to my brand than building it because I was positioning myself as kind of a mess. And someone that you related to, but didn’t want to then buy from. You thought, oh, I’m going through the same thing, friend.

But you’re not going, oh, I went through the same thing. Or I am I’m not positioning myself as someone that’s saying, I went through this, I can help you now. Instead, I’m like, I’m in the mud with you. And they’re like, cool, we’re in the mud. And then I was, I was confused why no one was buying. Because I was in the mud.

So I would say those, those are the three kind of big things really just being too wide, the piece about making it a diary, and then what we mentioned before. And so just over explaining or trying to go on too long. So avoid those three and you should be pretty set. And touching on that authenticity and the, the boundary part, I know when I first started the podcast, I had to overcome some really icky inside stuff in order to do this.

I’m still processing, but in terms of somebody who’s thinking about getting into podcasting and how How, I even hate saying this word but whatever, how vulnerable you have to be in order to do this. How if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I’d like to start a podcast, but I don’t know how or what, and they’re like, I don’t know if I should do it.

How do you coach people through. that piece of it, being authentic without oversharing and or being able to do it in a way that’s real.

So actually this morning, I had a conversation with a woman who has been in business for several decades, was a professor at an Ivy league university, is, was used to speaking to a lecture hall of 200 students. It has done keynotes, has done incredible public speaking. And she’s like, I’m terrified of a podcast.

And I’m looking at her like, what? Why? What’s going on? She’s like, I just, it’s just too much. It’s just the, I’m putting myself out there in this way. And I’m like, but you’ve done all these things. And she’s like, no, but a podcast is different. And so if she feels like that, I think all of us can resonate with like, There’s something there and I really think it’s what I was mentioning earlier by starting a podcast You are claiming I have something to say and so many of us were shut down for having something to say We were told not to speak up.

We were told to not have that loud opinion We were told you know, I was always the kid in the back of the class talking so, you know, we were told to stop and Now, when we become business owners and we are starting to build a brand, especially online, we have to do the exact opposite, which is get louder, be bolder, say our opinion, do the thing in this way that puts us in front of the classroom.

And, and it’s basically like the teacher saying, all right, tell, tell us what you were telling your friend Susie in the back of the room. And you’re like, that was between me and Susie. Like, you don’t, you don’t want to do it now. And so it’s just, it’s. Not common for people to really raise their hand and say, I have something to say, and that’s what we’re doing when we start a podcast and that’s going to be vulnerable.

So I would say to, to give you a step to take is just practicing it beforehand. So maybe it’s practicing it by going on Instagram live. That’s something I encourage a lot of people to do is go on Instagram live, practice the structure that we developed together. And if you don’t want to post the Instagram live after that’s fine.

Don’t post it. Some people do, and they actually start to gain a following because of the Instagram lives, but just start there or start by having a friend and be like, Hey, can I? Can I do this to you? And actually sometimes that’s more awkward than just doing it by yourself, but finding a way to practice and then really letting yourself know, like, Hey, it’s safe to have an opinion.

It’s safe to put yourself into rooms where you are the thought leader. And. working through that very, very slowly. I don’t think it’s something that you should rip the band aid off of because it can get raw. And then that’s when you lean too heavily into oversharing. And you, it’s the internet.

You can’t take a lot of things back. That’s very true. And that might be part of What is the fear or that might be the fear of it? , what if I put something out there that I.

Don’t agree with, like, or I might not agree within a month or two from now, or somebody takes it the wrong way, for example. I mean, I do know that one time I did put out, I’ll say this, I put out a short story on YouTube Shorts, and it was about ditching the niche. And it’s a very controversial, like, some people believe in it, some people don’t, whatever.

And then I said, here’s what to do instead. And the funny thing is, is somebody responded back to it. And they said something about, oh, she must be divorced and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And that’s a terrible marketing tactic, blah, blah. He wrote, you could tell he did not even listen or see what was being said, because the full context of how he responded, you could tell that wasn’t insider and considered.

And I took it to be like, yes, I got my first negative content. So for the people that are, are afraid of that, how can we approach it? Yeah. Yeah. I still get very afraid of that often. And I think the first thing is, is taking the time to outline and taking the time to prepare what you’re going to say.

It is a lot easier to Outline, take the time, develop what your story is going to be, and then commit to it. I haven’t talked about this in a while, but I believe in the, the theory of like, committing to your concept. So I will tell my clients like, do you commit to that concept? Is that something that you’re willing to stand on and potentially correct a couple months from now?

And it’s not that I’m gonna hold it over you forever, but it’s this idea of in the moment of you recording this, Is this your truth? Is this the truth that you know with the information that you have in this moment? And if they say yes, then I’m like, okay, let’s proceed. If they’re like, well, no, I’m, I haven’t done enough research or no, this was only based off of this one thing that I heard.

Then I’m like, okay, Let’s add to it. Let’s develop it. Let’s pull in a client example and see if that holds up. And then you can commit to it so that when a negative comment comes, because eventually they will, and we’ll celebrate them. We know, Hey, I actually did everything I could to commit to this and back it up with what I can.

Then if a couple of months later, you do get new information and you do change your mind, Do another episode about it and say, Hey, three months ago, I thought that this was the way and the only way. And now I have been presented this new information and this is how I’m adjusting accordingly. But again, you go through that same outlining process and same development process to make sure that in that moment with the information that you have, you commit to that. And once you’ve released that, and you’ve put that episode out into the world, that content out into the world I have a, a client right now who is teaching me to be okay with being misunderstood. And there are people who are committed to being mis to misunderstanding you. They’re committed to misunderstanding you, and they, for example, that person that left that nasty comment, he did not want to listen to the whole video.

He wanted to misunderstand so that he could release some sort of energy, tension, anger inside of him to put it onto someone else. And so, also understanding, we read those comments and we go, is there truth in this, right? If someone’s pointing out a valid mistake in your argument, cool. But if they’re just being nasty and misunderstanding you for the sake of misunderstanding you, we can move that to the side and be like, dang, that really sucked.

We’ll, we’ll feel our feelings, but we don’t have to hold onto it. Yeah, I love that perspective. I think I’m gonna, next time it happens, I’m gonna be like, I’m so grateful I got to help you misunderstand. Exactly. And, and sometimes a, you’d be surprised by a follow up question, maybe not in that situation, but if someone’s leaving a comment that might be negative, just Which part did you disagree with?

Or which part are you misunderstanding? Or, which part can I clarify? And sometimes you can actually get into a really wonderful conversation where you do access new information that you didn’t have before that either party might change their mind because of. Yeah, I think that would definitely depend on the scenario if I feel like they would be willing to engage in a, in a, A nicely controversial debate about something.

This guy definitely wasn’t, so I just deleted him. But yeah, I like that. This happened to me with a thread actually. So I posted on threads. Why is it so hard to get 10, 000 steps? And I was just posting that because the, I, that was a couple of days ago. I had gone on multiple walks that day and still hadn’t made it to 10, 000 steps.

So I gave very little concept context there, but I have over 50 replies on it. And that’s not a flex. They’re all nasty. The majority of them are very nasty. And it’s people who are like, Stop being so lazy, get up and work, like, get up and walk around, all this stuff. There were people who, you know, were just being helpful, but in this very, like, way of like, well, you just need to learn to take the stairs instead of the elevator, go park the furthest away from, you know, the, the shopping mall.

And then there were a handful that were actually trying to be nice and trying to be encouraging. But in that situation, I haven’t responded to any of them, because I’m like, You didn’t want to actually help, you didn’t want to understand, and granted I didn’t give any context, what was going on, so I was like, okay, you can just, you put that energy out there, I don’t have to receive it.

Right. That’s right. Just put up a shield. That’s it. Or just, like, blow it away, whatever. Mm hmm. And if, if it had been someone saying, like, maybe I, if I said something different and they’re like, oh no, I disagree with you, actually, it’s da da da da da, then, then I might be more willing to engage. Because it’s worth it.

But in this situation, I was like, y’all, y’all will be okay. Yeah. Yeah. I like that takeaway. So I learned recently that you’re a yogi and I find it interesting. You talked about how, or you alluded to the fact that you use some of the stuff. I love yoga. And I think It’s just interesting how it, how it meshes with meditation.

And I never saw it before a few years ago, how much yoga by just in and of itself is a very helpful thing to do. Just personally, and even cause it then is a because it helps you personally, then it helps your business. And you alluded to the fact that there are things that you take from that area of your life and you bring it into podcasting and your business.

Can you speak to that? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So I besides being a podcast strategist, teach a 6am yoga class twice a week. And I think for me, a lot of the lessons have been from the aspect of teaching and what it means to show up confidently when I’m teaching, what it means to, I’ve noticed if I get very uncomfortable when my students are uncomfortable.

And so, but sometimes you have to put them in an uncomfortable position in order to strengthen. So for example, I’ll be like, let’s go into chair. And I know I planned to hold chair for five breaths, but we get to breath three and I’m like, I should take them out. They’re uncomfortable. Like they hate me now, you know, and just being so focused on.

not what they’re actually thinking, because I don’t know what they’re thinking, but on what I’m thinking. So it takes me out of the moment of teaching and I’m also taking away the discomfort that would strengthen their muscles in this situation. And so I have found that to be so interesting of like, what does it mean to really care for and think of and plan for your students for a class.

Without taking away the lessons, taking away the discomfort or like trying to rescue them. And so the way that that translates over to podcasting is, how can I plan this episode intentionally, the way I might plan a sequence, and also explain just enough without over explaining. give them what they need without overgiving or overcomplicating and trusting that with the material that I give them, they will be able to do what they need to do.

And then they can be guided elsewhere. And so I think it’s just like a constant back and forth of I’m the teacher. I’m teach. I have to also trust the student. I have to prepare for the student. So just a lot of back and forth with that. I haven’t, I haven’t talked a lot about that. So I’m like formulating it as we, as we go.

Yeah. When did you start becoming a Yogi teacher? I got, yeah, I got my certification in 2022. So I was already in business. But my business was not going incredibly well at the time and I needed a break. And there was a yoga teacher certification in Peru over 21 days. And it was in December.

And I know that December, January is typically slow for me. So I Took the took the month and went over and got my yoga teacher certification and then started teaching last year That’s so fun and to do it somewhere else. That’s really cool. I like that. Yeah, it just really allowed me to Immerse myself in it.

Yeah, and and it’s been it’s been really great Oh, that’s cool. What drew you to that? Did I already ask you that part? No, I’m curious like in to yoga or to the yeah Yeah, I feel like it was something where I had been introduced to it in high school for you know athletics and and very much just the physical component of it like it’s a workout kind of thing and I feel like especially here in the u.

s A lot of us get introduced to yoga in that way and then just over the years found my way back. Eventually, I think it was like 2018, I started going more regularly. And then, There are probably people from the pandemic who still do like yoga with Adrian or I love Bright and Salted on YouTube started taking virtual classes and just built from there.

But I think it’s been something that I returned to in times where like the external world is very turned upside down, much like the pandemic. And so That’s how I started getting into kind of the mind part of it and not just the physical and and coming back and there’s so many different lessons you can take from it.

In every aspect. So I think that journey of exploring the more mental, meditative spiritual side of it has been really fun. Mm hmm. Do you teach online or just in person? Just in person. Okay. There you go. And when did you start your business? In, technically in 2021. Yes. At the beginning of 2021. I graduated in 2020 in the pandemic.

So when I found myself in a job that did not suit me at all, even though I thought it was, you know, going to be amazing, I didn’t have a ton of other choices because it was 2021. And both of my parents are entrepreneurs. So they were like, You could just create your own security. And I was like, Oh, I want a paycheck every two weeks.

They were like, no, you’ll be okay. And so it was a really encouraging push that is, is usually flipped, right? Usually it’s, it’s us convincing parents saying, Oh no, this business is going to work, not your parents convincing you. So I’m really, really grateful for that. Oh, that’s cool. And you got into podcasting business for what reason?

And then maybe you can share what you do because I find your content just fascinating. It’s very helpful. It’s very actionable and it’s, it’s so transparent. It’s not like hiding anything. I want to, I want to explore that part, but yeah. So I got into podcasting almost by accident in the very beginning.

So I went to school for journalism and we did have to take a lot of production classes, like media, visual, audio production. And there was a friend of mine who I graduated a year after. And we had taken audio production together at the end of 2020. A company reached out to her and asked her to be their producer, to do recordings and editing for them.

And she couldn’t do it cause she was moving, but she said, I know someone who has the same skillset that I do. And she’s local. They said, okay, she texted me the information and she was like, call them. And I was like, okay. At the time I was not making a lot of money at the the magazine that I was working out.

So it was welcomed. And I started there and still produce their podcasts to this day. And it’s just, it was such a like eyeopening experience. But I actually went into social media management first for my actual business and just had the podcast kind of on the side. And then Over time, people started asking me more about, oh, like, what if I wanted to turn this into a podcast?

I started my podcast at the end of 2021, and then through little pivots and shifts over time have found my way here. But all of it, I think the way that I do podcasting in particular for business owners is really from a journalism preparation lens. I use a lot of those skills in how I help my clients and I really, really believe in outlining and structuring and taking the time to develop the information you’re going to share.

Which some podcast producers, podcast strategists don’t, they, they’re just like, go talk. And because I’ve done that, I’m like, please don’t, don’t go talk. Don’t do it. Talk, but with intention. And so really, really grateful for that skill set of, I know how to develop a story for a magazine. I know how to develop a story for a television production.

And now I’m like, I can develop a story for a podcast for other people. It’s so funny how people like start their businesses and where they thought they were going to go. And was there anything in particular that you wanted to do when you got out? Like a particular position or job that you thought you would be in?

So I had wanted to be a journalist since I was in elementary school. Like I was doing the TV broadcast for the elementary school. I was doing the school newspaper in middle school, school newspaper in high school. Every internship I did in college was. In different forms of of journalism where whether it was written or broadcast and it was just like who I was.

I graduated and was actually one of the fortunate few who was able to get a job. But it would just. It wasn’t what I wanted. But the great thing was that I was a digital editor. So I learned that I could take, I could use social media. I could use a website. I could use email to get people onto this magazine’s website.

So then when I started thinking, what business can I do? I was like, well, I know how to do that for a magazine. I think I can do that for a business and use social media, website, and email to get people onto a website for a business. And I started my page bilingual, so it was every single post was in Spanish and in English, which was so much work.

I’m like, we don’t, we don’t think back to those days a lot. But it was because I wanted to do social media management for Philadelphia who were bilingual businesses and they were local in the community and they needed that support in both languages. I, I also kind of fell for like the tick tock Instagram.

Like if you were just a social media manager for 500 a month and you get 10 clients, you’re at 5, 000 a month. And I was like, I can get 10 clients. Come on. I did not get to go. Did not. And, and I sold a, so because of the magazine, I was doing reels at the time. I also had a bookstagram bookstagram is very serious.

It’s like a, an Instagram to talk about books. Oh The Bookstagram community is serious about their work, and I was not that serious, but I did do a lot of reels for my Bookstagram. So I had a good understanding of reels, and at the beginning of 2021, it was still early. So I was like, I’m gonna do a reels workshop for 20.

And it was 90 minutes for 20, and I’m like, I’m gonna make six figures off of this. And I did not. I don’t, I, maybe I made 100. I don’t know. But it was just like a little bit of delusion fueling me of just like anything is better than where I’m at right now. So why not? Yeah. Fascinating story. Thank you for sharing that.

I very much appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for asking. Yeah. So you started a podcast just recently, actually the first one I think aired yesterday or today as of this recording share with the listeners that one, because I feel like it’s going to be such a good one, especially for a small business owners.

The one, the first one that I listened to was so good. And you had such good questions for the Maybe talk about your journey with getting this second podcast going and What you hope to accomplish with it and what you’re learning with it. Of course, thank you. So, I’ve had Visible with ISA Media Inc.

for a few years now over a hundred episodes, and they’ve all been solo or only interviewing my clients. And for a very long time, I have said, I only believe in solo episodes. I think that I still stand by that, that solo episodes are still the strongest way for you to grow as an authority in your industry.

But I was being asked a lot of questions about guests and how to have guests and people who wanted to have conversations and build their brand that way. And I had also found myself in a place where I was not investing in group programs at the time. And in a lot of that, like mastermind mentorship.

So I found myself very lonely in business and I was like, I want to meet people, but when I DM them, they immediately think that I’m pitching them. So they don’t want to get on a call and people on LinkedIn are a little bit more open, but they’re not all my cup of tea. Some of them are, but you know, we, we know the difference between Instagram and LinkedIn.

So So I was like, what is something that I can do to meet people, have good conversations, get to be nosy and also understand what I might be missing about guesting. Luckily I have the experience again of knowing how to interview from my background in journalism. So I’m like, I can do this. And I always start things very all or nothing.

So I was like, I’m going to do 30 interviews in 30 days. So I posted a thread and I was like, Who wants to be my friend? Thinking I was gonna get 10 people to sign up for this podcast. Very quickly that thread blew up to hundreds of responses. Wow. I’ve, I’ve capped it at about 70. I think that’s where we’re, we are right now.

And so 70 interviews. I started the first one May 28th. I believe the last one is now scheduled for August 14th. So it’s roughly 50 days. And I’m doing 70 interviews in 50 days. Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you. It’s been really, really exciting. It’s been challenging in a different way. And I’m doing them, you know, some days I have five.

In a row, like five just in one day. But the things I’ve learned from it, besides the incredible information that they bring to the episodes, yourself included is what it takes to really build rapport with people and see everyone as Very valuable. Like you don’t know what information they’re going to bring and you don’t know what connection they’re going to bring.

And so, because I wasn’t doing outreach for this, it wasn’t me hand selecting the guests. It was just people signing up. I also didn’t know what to expect with most of them. I bet. So I have everything from a vegan pastry chef to an astrologer to, you know, marketers, more traditional business owners, everything like, And it’ll range in even just one day.

And so I’m like, okay, give it to me. Like, we, we got this. So it’s just practicing that curiosity and really building beautiful connections with people that I’ve told them, I’m like, Hey, you know, we probably wouldn’t have built a, a relationship or the beginning of a relationship had we just stuck to DMs.

Had we just stuck to maybe a voice note here and there. . . All right. , of all the things that we talked about today, what do you feel is like the best takeaway someone should walk away with? I really loved the reminder of podcasting is vulnerable, and it’s something that will bring up a lot in you, but that’s something you should lean into rather than running away from.

And so I hope that, Maybe someone builds up that courage to just put out the first episode, outline it, try it as a live, and then create that podcast and start that, that journey of owning your voice, owning that you do have something to say for yourself. Beautifully said. I love that. Thank you. And where can somebody find you if they are interested in starting their own podcast?

Yes, so I’m isamediainc on all socials, so I S A M E D I A I N C. And if you are a podcast lover, I’ll point you to this new podcast, Thought Leaders. If you type in I S A M E D I A N C, isamediainc On podcasts, it’ll come up as well. And there you’ll get to hear not only from me, but from some very, very incredible guests, over 70 of them.

Fabulous. All right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. I really appreciate it. Of course. Thank you for having me. All right. That wraps up this episode on helping your business thrive online. We will see you in the next sweet spot. Cheers.

Thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’re looking for SEO and content marketing help, consider joining the small business sweet spot. It’s a group coaching program where you can get answers to your questions about your business directly and clarity around the marketing strategies that you would like to implement in your business.

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Barb Davids - SEO Consultant

Barb Davids is an SEO consultant and owner of Compass Digital Strategies. Driven by data and analytics, she works hard to get business-changing results for her clients, such as 256% more website traffic and 22% more leads. Connect with her: Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube
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