If you’re starting podcast what equipment do you need? How do you set up your systems? How soon will you have to monetize it and how? Where and how do you start to build your audience?
Today’s episode is set up a little different, and we get to listen in on Brandon T. Adams’ podcast with Amanda Boleyn as the guest! On Brandon’s podcast, Amanda shares her entrepreneurial story with four aspiring entrepreneurs: Christina, Rob, Mandy, and Nicole. For the most part, they have all recently quit their jobs and have begun pursuing various projects. Mandy has begun the process of launching her own podcast in about four weeks, and Nicole and Rob are working on filming a documentary and turning it into a podcast as well. Mandy plans to interview young thought leaders and non-profits on how they incorporate generosity into their businesses and lives, and Nicole and Rob want to interview people in foster care across America. Christina aims to help entrepreneurs build physical products, and sell them through brick and mortar stores, as well as Amazon and other direct consumer services. She’s also working on launching a book, and two product courses. Through their conversation, Amanda arms them with all the tips and tricks they need, plus advice on saving money, keeping themselves organized, and staying strong while pushing through the rough patches as they embark on their transitional period.
Amanda’s story began once she left her comfy job at Target and started working for Wells Fargo through a third party agency. Wells Fargo offered very little stability, PTO, benefits, or retirement plan at the time, so the jump was a huge risk for her. She was ready to shake things up, though, and branch out on her own. It was at the company that she met a guy named Chad, who owned a business centered on sales training, leadership development, and employee engagement within other companies. He soon offered her a job doing sales training at AT&T, and from there she started working on behavior change projects with independent contractors like JP Morgan, and Weight Watchers. From there she began working for a staffing company that does high-level technical staffing for large tech companies, such as Intel. It was here that she began doing tech shows about marketing, branding, and messaging technologies.
She and another employee started out staging highly interactive 3-day training seminars that got people reflecting on their attitudes and thoughts at work and got them connecting with each other in order to break down the barriers of miscommunication. She would also help them work on methods of self-improvement. Now she works with Intel to learn their technologies, shares that message at tradeshows, like the Consumer Electronics Show and GSMA Mobile World Congress, where she spoke about Intel’s autonomous driving. Through this job, she has been able to travel across America, and other countries like Asia, and Spain.
The opportunity to travel and network with people like Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, is Amanda’s career dream, but she felt needed to share her wisdom and experience with others so she could help them avoid the obstacles that she did. Always loving podcasts, she set out on the mission to create one herself but found that there wasn’t any that explained a female’s perspective down the bumpy entrepreneurial road. Deciding that would be her niche, she turned to her friend who had a successful podcast of his own, and he helped her get She Did it Her Way (SDIHW) off the ground. The podcast started with two other girls, but after nine months Amanda was the last one standing.
Now that SDIHW has been up and running for a while, she has been able to hire on two other contractors to outsource certain aspects of the company. This is an important step for entrepreneurs because it allows them to clear their mind and save them time on processes that may be repetitive, time-consuming, and take away from aspects of the company that needs their personalized attention.
Once an entrepreneur has gotten to the point of having a small team, or even if it’s just them, Amanda recommends developing a highly organized system and schedule, and shares how using Asana has revolutionized her project management. It has saved hours of her time, as well as her virtual assistant and producer’s time, and has helped increase their productivity through reminders, and letting everyone know where they are at with the tasks and episodes assigned to them.
For recording episodes, she suggests batch recording, especially for entrepreneurs starting out. She told Mandy that recording 6-8 episodes before she launches will help her work out any technical or interview-style kinks, and also let her know if her target interviewees will be responsive and reliable.
When reaching out to interviewees, she tells all of them to be persistence and to not be intimidated by potential interviewees. Sometimes all they will have to do is ask, and find that people are more than willing to help them and their podcast. She also tells them to set up a strong referral system via networking, and how that can be stronger than the status of their business and themselves. The biggest tip is not to get discouraged. People are busy, and sometimes following-up is a good reminder for them. If that doesn’t work, it’s okay to move on.
For Amanda, the connections and the networks she’s built through SDIHW has been the most rewarding and meaningful outcome for her. The women that she’s inspired keeps her striving for more and expanding SDIHW’s brand. Her end goal is to have SDIHW be a seven-figure business that offers monthly content like webinars and podcasts.
Hear more of Amanda’s advice and story in today’s episode!
In this episode, you will…
Learn the financial and personal investments needed to start and grow a successful podcast
Know what programs to invest in to record your podcast
Hear different ways to set up your interview schedule
See how to obtain guests on your podcast
Figure out ways to monetize your podcast
Find ways to streamline your system
INSIGHTS
“In order for us to move and to get to where we want to go, we have to break down the behaviors, and [see] what is the behavior that I’m doing that’s going to lead me to where I want to go.”-Amanda Boleyn
“It’s the whole outsourcing process of entrepreneurship. Figuring out what are the things that you’re doing on a daily basis that is repetitive, and can, therefore, be outsourced to other people, and what are the things that you need to be doing that you can’t necessarily outsource, and then also generating revenue at the same time so that you can outsource by moving it forward.” –Amanda Boleyn
“Whatever you do, things take time to really hit that point where they start building. It’s [about] being patient and persistent at the same time because it’s so easy to jump ship on whatever we want to do [when] we’re not seeing results…the waves when you look at an ocean may not be doing a whole lot, but the underlying current [is] what most people don’t see…there’s a current moving in the direction of what you wanted to do because you’re doing the activities to get you somewhere.” –Amanda Boleyn
“If you’re disengaged and you want to be engaged, how do you become inspired, and how do you change the story to get it to a place where you can start taking action to get it done.” –Amanda Boleyn
“As an entrepreneur…if you want to excel, you cannot excel having the mindset of a victim. I played the victim a fair amount…[and then] you start uncovering and unpacking and realizing that whatever thing you feel bad for doesn’t matter if you want to grow and you want to kick ass in life…You need to let go of that and work through it.” –Amanda Boleyn
RESOURCES
Brandon T. Adams Website
Brandon T. Adams Facebook
Brandon T. Adams Instagram
Brandon T. Adams Twitter
Asana
Slack
Acuity Scheduling
SELF Journal