How To Craft a Podcast that Amplifies Your Mission with Andrea Klunder

Kathi: Okay, today I am here with Andrea Klunder and I'm excited to speak with her, and you guys are going to learn a lot because she's a multifaceted businesswoman and she teaches people the best way to podcast. So, we're going to jump right into it and welcome Andrea to the show.

Andrea: Thank you so much for having me, Kathi. I'm really happy to be here and I love looking out your window as we speak.

Kathi: Thank you. Yes, it is sunny here in San Diego. It is 62 degrees. What are you, 21 or something currently?

Andrea: I'm not sure what the temperature is today. It's been fluctuating between 60-some and 20-some on a daily basis. So it's a little chaotic right now.

Kathi: Yeah. I'm from Ohio and that's what used to happen in spring. It's like no wonder we got colds all the time, because hot, cold, hot, cold. What are we supposed to wear? I don't know. Every day is a new day in Michigan and Chicago and Ohio. Anyhow, okay, on to the stuff. So, talk to me a little bit, Andrea. Tell us the background story of what you used to do before what you're doing now. What led you into this new career?

Andrea: So, I started my entrepreneurial journey coming out of nonprofit arts administration, and I got this inkling, through a very convoluted story, that I needed to try to do something myself. I didn't want to continue to try to work my way not up the corporate ladder but up the nonprofit ladder, so to speak, and I ventured out and I started my own yoga studio. I had been teaching yoga and meditation on the side just as a fun thing to do. That was part of my passion, of what I was interested in. And I learned pretty quickly that you are very challenged to make a sustainable full-time income as an independent yoga teacher bouncing around from studio to studio, gym to gym. And so I brilliantly thought, I'll start my own studio and that's how I will be successful. But guess what? A storefront yoga studio in a competitive market like Chicago is also a very difficult business model to make successful and sustainable. And so I had that business for about five years, and at the end of five years I had to close that business. I was out of money. I was exhausted. I was overwhelmed. I was burnt out. I could see what it would take to turn things around and possibly make it successful, but I didn't have it in me. I didn't have the resources and I was like, I just can't do this. So, I held on to the end of my commercial lease and then shut it down, and promptly entered, in my mid to late 30s, the first experience of depression that I had ever really truly experienced. And there I was. I was broke. I was exhausted. I was depressed. I felt like an impostor because people would say, "Oh, this is my friend Andrea and she is an entrepreneur." And I'm like, "No, I'm not. I don't have a business." Or people would ask me, "What do you do?" And I couldn't say that I was a yoga studio owner anymore. I couldn't say that I was a business owner. And I didn't know what I did or what I wanted to do. And I had friends that said, "You have so many skills. You could probably just start looking for a job. You tried the entrepreneur thing. It didn't work out. You can go back to working in nonprofit." And I was like, nope. I understand. I appreciate what you're trying to do. I don't think that's for me.

Andrea: And so, I just spent some time sitting with that. And there was probably only one thing that was interesting to me at that time, and that was that I had been listening to a lot of podcasts. During my yoga business, clients would ask me if I had ever considered starting a yoga podcast, because I feel like at that time, around 2010, 2011, not a ton of people were into podcasts yet. It was still this fringe thing. The first client who ever asked me if I would start a yoga podcast, I didn't even know what a podcast was at that point. And so I had clients and friends who were giving me podcasts to listen to. And I had started listening to not only yoga and meditation podcasts, but entrepreneurial podcasts, lifestyle podcasts, holistic living podcasts, all these different ones. And I kept thinking to myself that it was something that I was attracted to, but I just didn't have time when I was trying to run the other business. And I couldn't clearly see how starting a podcast fit into my business model or into my marketing strategy. I just couldn't see it.

Andrea: And so now here I was and I had all the time in the world, and I thought maybe I can start a podcast. I still didn't know how that was going to be a business or how that was going to help me earn an income. I just needed to put one foot in front of the other. And I thought this is something small that I can probably do without a lot of startup investment, because for every business idea I had, I didn't have any money left. So I was like, how am I going to start a business when I have no capital? And so I thought this is something small. It's not going to take that much investment. I had a background. My bachelor's degree was in broadcast communication and media production. Of course, that was in the 90s, and technology in the 90s was much different than it is now. And so, I still had a pretty steep technology learning curve to overcome, but I at least knew the theory behind it. I knew how to do an interview. I knew how to craft a narrative. I knew how to script an intro and an outro and all the rest of the stuff. I could figure it out.

Andrea: So, I launched that very first show, which still exists today. It's called The Creative Impostor. And that came out of this feeling of feeling like a fraud and feeling like a fake, and looking at all these creative people that I knew in my life and in the world around me who were doing these amazing things. And I would look at them and I would say, "Why are they so confident all the time? How do they know that they're going to be successful in whatever it is that they're doing? Do they ever feel like a fake? Do they ever feel like an impostor?" And that was how that idea of The Creative Impostor started. Because over time, spoiler alert, I found out that most of us who are highly ambitious, talented, skillful, who are trying to do something different, trying to think outside the box and create our own way, at one time or another, most of us are going to feel that way, or we're going to have those voices of self-doubt. And so, we started having these conversations about how does that show up for you? What do you do when that happens? How do you keep moving forward? What are your inner and outer resources? And then from there it became a business, because people started asking me, "I would like to start a podcast. Can you help me?" And I was like, yeah, sure. And then I realized I could charge money for it. So that was how that evolution happened.

Kathi: And there's your business. A couple things that you said in your story were very interesting to me as a business owner, because I've also risen from the ashes from a failed business before. And one thing that I know for a fact is that if you hadn't had your yoga studio, you would not have had someone saying, "Hey, why don't you start a podcast about yoga?" You wouldn't have had someone on your shoulder there going podcast, podcast. And what I think is interesting, didn't you have multiple people say that to you over the years?

Andrea: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kathi: The word podcast keeps knocking on your shoulder. Podcast, podcast. And then you're like, oh, maybe I should start a podcast.

Andrea: I think that's always the power of suggestion with me. It's like, you should start a podcast. Can you help me start my own podcast? I've now started my podcast and I don't want to edit it. Can you help me edit my podcast? And so it's always one step after another of somebody suggests something to me. I don't know how to do that thing, but it sounds interesting. And so I say, let me figure out how to do that thing.

Kathi: And that is the basic path of an entrepreneur. And as you know, I rose from the ashes. I had no money to start this business as well. I had $49. I bought some business cards, made some flyers, and went out there and got it. You can start a podcast. You got whatever equipment you could scrape up at the time, right? And then you just kept building on it and building on it till all of a sudden, ah, you're the queen of impostor syndrome and you're the podcast coach and guru. I just love that. And I think that all women and all you people listening out there, there's always a way to get to where you're supposed to go. And like you had said, Andrea, one foot in front of the other, right? One foot in front of the other. Just take a little step, see what happens. And if it's the wrong step, you can always change tack and go into another step in another direction. It doesn't really matter as long as you're moving forward.

Andrea: Yeah. For sure. And that fear of failure holds some of us back so often, where we're like, well, what if I try this thing and it doesn't work? Or what if I invest this money? What if I hire a podcast coach and then I hate podcasting? Or whatever it is. There's always incremental steps that you can make. It doesn't have to be the whole big thing. I think that was one of the many mistakes that I made with the yoga studio: I wanted everything fancy and top-of-the-line right now. I wanted to offer all the services. I had this big vision and I didn't yet know how to start with the small step and make that successful and then build onto that and build onto that. And so with this business, I definitely started with the smallest possible thing I could do and then continued to build and scale on top of that.

Kathi: Yeah. Keep it simple. Keep it simple, baby. So, you'd been doing your podcast for a while. Who was your first client as a podcast coach, so to speak, and what did it feel like when you landed that client?

Andrea: Yeah, it's a pretty funny story, actually, and I've told her story many times. I had this idea because people were asking me for podcast advice and I would just give it to them. I would just have a coffee, talk on the phone, whatever it was. And so I decided to say on my podcast, if you've ever thought of starting your own podcast, I can help you. Sign up here for a free consultation. And someone who I had never met before… I'm in Chicago. She was in California, in LA, and she was a lawyer, and she wanted to get out of legal practice and get into an entrepreneurial venture, and she wanted to start a podcast. She had been listening to my show and she was intrigued because, in my corny way of communicating, I said, "If you want to be my guinea pod… I'm just learning how to do this service, and if you want me to practice on you, be my guinea pod." And she thought that was hilarious. And so that corny joke is what caused her to contact me. We had the call and she was like, "Yes, I want to do this. I want to sign up. How much does it cost?" And I didn't know. I didn't know how much it cost. I never expected anyone to say yes to this service that I had never done before, because again, there's that impostor thing, right? No one's going to book a call with me. No one's going to actually want to give me money to help them start a podcast. And I didn't expect that.

Andrea: And so I panicked when she said yes, how much does it cost? How do I sign up? Because I didn't have an answer. But I stayed calm. I stayed cool. And I said, I am going to email you within 24 hours with a full proposal of how it all works, and then you can let me know what questions you have from there. And then I started googling around: how much do launch services cost? How do I structure this? How does this work? And we worked together and we got her show launched. And I probably charged way too little money, but it's fine, because I was figuring it out. And then that was the thing. She wanted me to teach her how to edit her podcast. We started one training session online and it was maybe five, ten minutes into the session, she said, "You know what? I don't want to do this. I don't want to know how to do this. I don't want to take the time. Can I just pay you to do this for me?" And again, I was editing my own show, but I had never edited anyone else's before. And I was like, I know people do that, but I didn't think of myself as an editor. And so I was like, yeah, let me think about what that would look like and I'll send you a proposal.

Andrea: And so that's what I did. And then from there, I started doing a lot of speaking events in my community, just small, local, in-person speaking events. Most of them were unpaid. And I started just saying, I offer these services. I can help you get started. I can edit your show for you. You don't have time. You're busy. It's a learning curve. Let me take care of it. And then little by little, I started to get those cold referrals in. And then those clients were happy and they started to refer me to other clients. And now my business has totally grown through word of mouth. And now I'm working not only with individual entrepreneurs, but with medium-sized companies and nonprofit organizations. And it all just started with putting it out there on my podcast, thinking no one would say yes, having a conversation, and sending a proposal, and everything spiraled from there.

Kathi: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you had to have thought that maybe you could have some clients out there if you started to announce it. So, you thought you weren't going to get any, but I think you knew in the back of your mind that someone out there needed whatever it was that you had to offer.

Andrea: For sure. Well, I knew there was a need. That's one of the things they say when you're starting a business: not only should you be starting a business that is something that you like to do, something that you're interested in, something that you have experience with, but you also need to be solving a problem for someone, right? You also need to see a need that's out there. And people were asking me for advice. So clearly there was a need. The only gap was in my confidence to be able to fulfill that need and get someone to pay me for it, as opposed to free advice and a coffee.

Kathi: Yeah, exactly. So if you were to do it over again, what would you change?

Andrea: Honestly, I don't think that I would change much of anything. I think it unfolded the way that it needed to. I think the only thing is that maybe it could have happened a little faster if I had more confidence. Probably I would have tried to charge more money up front.

Kathi: Yeah.

Andrea: Again, because taking on the role of impostor, it's like, oh, I'm not really doing this. It's my alter ego that's doing this.

Kathi: Yeah, and I think we all have that as entrepreneurs. After interviewing several people, I'm sure we all have the impostor syndrome at some point, where we're learning to do what we want to know how to do really well, but we only know a little bit about how to do it. So, we all cross that bridge at some point. As entrepreneurs, we have to, because we're here to grow and expand and get better at what we do. The only way you can get better at what you do is if you practice something you don't know how to do that well. Otherwise, why do it?

Andrea: Exactly. And I always think of the first time I heard this, I thought it was so corny: to be considered an expert, you only have to know more than the person you're talking to, and that qualifies you as an expert, even if there are people who know more than you. And I was like, I don't know. But it actually is true, because if you're one step ahead, you have the ability to help that person shorten their learning curve, to help that person save time and effort and money. In some cases, even though they're paying you, a lot of times it'll save them money if they work with you, to help guide them more quickly and more effectively than what they could have done on their own.

Kathi: And saving money and saving time, because time is money, and time's the only thing that's finite in our life, and money can expand and expand. So yeah, I agree.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Kathi: And everybody should claim that out there. You are all an expert at something, or many, many, many things, that you don't even realize that you are.

Andrea: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kathi: So let's talk about your best piece of advice, your favorite hack for entrepreneurs who want more freedom in their life. They feel like, okay, they're bottlenecked. What do you have as a hack, or what advice would you give them?

Andrea: Yeah, it's something that I'm working on actively right now in my business, and it is SOPs. Have you talked about SOPs yet on your show?

Kathi: A little bit. Let's go into it.

Andrea: SOP stands for standard operating procedures. It sounds so dry and boring. It is not what I got into entrepreneurship for. But you've got to have them, folks. You've got to have them. So, I've been in business now for over five years with podcasting. And maybe I started hearing about this a few years ago, but it just didn't really land as something I needed to do, because for a lot of that time I was by myself in my business. It was just me, or maybe I had one contractor working with me or something like that.

Kathi: Yeah.

Andrea: But I got to the point where I wanted to grow and expand. I was working way too much and I was turning down business because I just couldn't take on any more. And it became clear to me that I needed a team if I wanted to expand. So that's the question: do I want to keep this small and just my personal thing, or do I want it to be bigger, and how would that look? So, I knew I needed to bring on a team. And you know what? It's really hard to get somebody to help you, and somebody that you can delegate to, when all of the processes and procedures and all of the information is all in your head. I am such an internal, in-my-head type of person that it took me a while. My first contractor that I was working with is my technical director, and he was doing a lot of the really heavy lifting on the technical and the audio engineering side of things, and consulting on equipment and gear and stuff like that for clients. And he was like, we really need a project management system and here's what I think we should use. And I was like, that looks too complicated. We're doing just fine with email. He was like, "No, we're not. We're not doing just fine with email. I don't know what the deadlines are. I don't know when you need stuff by." And I was like, "But I always email you." And he's like, "No."

Andrea: So, we started there. But then even beyond having a project management system, knowing: these are the expectations for this client, and this is the workflow that we use with this client. This is where all of the files for this client are stored. This is how they're organized. This is how the Dropbox is organized. Here's where every resource, every login, every password is. And not only was that necessary for growing a team, which creates some freedom and flexibility, because you have that support structure now and you can take on more clients and you can focus on the parts of your business that you do really well. But also it frees up a lot of that mental space of stuff that I was just holding in my brain, and energetically creates the space. It also creates a little bit of a safety net, because a few years ago I had a major health issue that made it so that I couldn't actively work on my clients' work for, I want to say, probably about a month, and I needed my team members to be able to step in and service them during that time, at least the minimum amount of service to keep their show going. And when you have those processes all laid out, it creates that feeling of safety, that somebody can come in and support you in that time. It's sort of like your own internal disability, short-term disability insurance.

It's sort of like your own internal disability, short-term disability insurance.

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Kathi: Yeah.

Andrea: And not only that, but it also helps you to see where your inefficiencies might be, which can also free up a lot of time, when you see, why are we using six different pieces of software to complete this one task when we could just combine everything together here? Or why do we have this many steps? When you put those processes down on digital paper, then you can start to see how you can make things more efficient, what software maybe you've been paying for every month that isn't really necessary, that you could just cut out and fill in with a different process where people can support you. It frees you up in so many different ways to have these standard operating procedures.

Kathi: Absolutely.

Andrea: No, I don't like doing it.

Kathi: Yeah. I mean, it's a drudge to do it, but it does give you the brain dump, and you're talking my language. You're talking about space and energy. If you have more space within your mind, you can actually work on your business and not be in the midst of the business. I love the way that you said that an SOP is an entrepreneur's disability insurance, because I think it's true. It allows us to actually step away and the business is still running. So that's a great piece of advice for all of you to think of. And you can't delegate until you know what you're doing. So you have to really get real with yourself: what is Andrea doing every single day? How do we make that a standard operating procedure and have other people do what she should not be doing? Or, what should I not be doing in my business? And once I know what I'm not supposed to be doing, then I know what to delegate. But unless there's a system in place, we can't tell them how. We can't delegate it out. It's just impossible.

Andrea: Yeah. It's also helpful, I think, to have an assistant help you with that process of creating the SOPs. So, the way that I'm doing it is I did hire a virtual assistant for the first time this January. And so, what I do is I take a process or a procedure and I make a video of myself doing that thing, and I talk through: okay, this is what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it. I'm moving this here. This is why this is happening. I transcribe it for her. I send her the video and the transcription, and then she creates a bullet-point, step-by-step Google Doc for that, with all the links, all the passwords, everything like that. And what's interesting is when I then look at her Google Doc, I see where the gaps are. I see where I didn't explain something very well, or I see, oh, I totally didn't describe this other internal decision that I was making without saying that I was making it, or whatever. And so it's that reflective thing: when somebody reflects back to you what you're doing, you're able to see where you can improve.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we use experts for. As a VA, she's an expert at mirroring back to you what you can't see. So, every single moving part within your business is going to allow you to see what you can't see on your own, and we all need that feedback. That's for sure. And that's another reason to delegate, because you get feedback even from people that are VAs, so to speak, and not staff. It just gives you that perspective. So, that's really good advice. So, what's one thing that your business has taught you that you think everybody should learn as entrepreneurs?

Andrea: You may have heard the saying that starting a business is the best form of personal development that you could ever hope to do. You haven't? I'm surprised. This feels like it aligns so much with your business and your show. And yeah, because I feel like, as an entrepreneur, you cannot move forward without learning so much about yourself. And so here's what I've really learned from being in business for myself. It's two sides to the same coin. One side is you are more powerful than you think. This is the opposite of impostor syndrome, right? You can do a lot. You can make a lot of impact. You can effect a lot of change. You can influence a lot of people. And on the flip side of that coin, it's okay to ask for help, because that's another one of my things that comes up frequently: I feel like it's my business, I should be able to figure it out. It's my business. I have to do it. And so I often feel that I have to be the one who solves all the problems. I have to be the one who knows how to do all the things. I should be smart enough to figure this out or solve this problem or whatever it is. And it really has taken me a lot to be able to say, I need, want, deserve, can have an assistant, and she can take on these responsibilities and roles. And though she may not do the specific task the exact same way that I would do it, the way she does it is fine. It's great. I can ask for a coach and hire a coach to help me learn, see, understand, realize what I can't see on my own because I'm too close to it. And being able to say, yes, it is okay to ask for help, and you are also very powerful at the same time, and asking for help sort of makes you even more powerful. Yeah, that is really the biggest personal development that I've learned from having my own business.

It is okay to ask for help, and you are also very powerful at the same time, and asking for help sort of makes you even more powerful.

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Kathi: I love that. Yeah, because masters hire masters. You're not not masterful. How's that for a double negative? You're not not masterful when you ask for help, right? In fact, you're more masterful when you ask for help for things that you can't do, because all of us, we cannot do everything. And knowing that we're powerful enough… I think it takes a lot of power to say no. It takes a lot of power to ask for help. And if you have that power within you for both of those things, to know what you shouldn't be doing and say no to projects or clients or whatever that you shouldn't be serving, or to say, no, I don't know how to do that, can you please help me? There's always someone who will give you a lift up and help you. And that's a masterful thing. So we should have master's degrees in personal development as entrepreneurs. Basically, I claim that. I claim that. So tell me a time when you felt like you were stuck in business and you just couldn't get off the wheel of being busy. You talked a little bit about it. What did you do to get your joy back and get your mojo?

Andrea: Yeah, I mean, it's going back to that asking for help and delegating and hiring out, which is not a quick fix. That's a process that takes time to engage in. In addition to hiring the VA and starting that process of creating the standard operating procedures, I also, at the end of February, beginning of March, hired on three new associate editors into my business. And editing is one of those things that I didn't feel like I could outsource, because I felt like my specific skill and talent was the editing part of it, for so long. That's what I thought: that people wanted me to edit their show, and they wanted the way that I would edit it, and no one else will edit their show the way that I edit it. It sounds so narcissistic when I say it that way. But that's what I was stuck in. And what I realized is that at a certain point there's some nuances to editing. If you're doing editorial choices, if you're actually editing content for your clients, which for some of my clients I do, we make choices about what goes, what stays. This piece moves over here. We add voiceover narration here. We add a music transition here. Some of my shows are complex like that and they do require that creative editing thing that I feel like is my real expertise. But then there are other shows where it's just cleaning up the dialogue. It's just removing the long pauses. It's just trimming a little bit here and trimming a little bit there. And there are a lot of people who are very capable of doing that. Probably people who are even better at it than I am, if I'm honest. And I realized that that level of editing didn't need to be me anymore. That's something that I can coach someone to do. They can do that. And then that gets me out of that feeling of I'm doing this repetitive task over and over again, which was keeping me feeling stuck and small and like I couldn't take on new clients.

Andrea: Whereas now, where I'm growing into, what my business offers is not just editing podcasts, not just launching new podcasts, but actual strategy coaching: talking with the business owner, or the marketing department of a larger company or organization, or the community engagement department of the organization, and really looking at the big picture of what is your mission? What is your purpose? What is the story you want to tell? How does this align with the goals of your department or the goals of your business? How are you helping your listeners? How are you reaching out and connecting with your listeners through this show? So hiring on support to do that more repetitive, task-oriented work of cleaning up dialogue, editing files, that sort of thing, frees me up to create an even higher level of service for my clients, that another production company or podcast editor isn't going to offer because they're too busy editing to do big-picture strategy type work, which is something that to me is even more fun than editing podcasts. And that's what brings the joy: when I see that light bulb go on with the person that I'm coaching and they're like, "Oh, we could use this audio content to launch this whole other campaign to do this," and they start to put those pieces together, and we see we're not just trying to make a podcast. We're trying to fulfill the mission of that business or organization using the audio content that they're creating in the business as a springboard for bigger and more impactful things. And that's what's really exciting to me.

We're not just trying to make a podcast. We're trying to fulfill the mission of that business or organization.

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Kathi: Yeah. And it's funny, because we get stuck in the trap of saying, "Well, I'm the one that could do it best and my clients want my way." But really, your clients just want a professionally edited podcast that sounds really great. And when you take yourself out of it, then you're able to do even bigger, better, cooler things, like the vision of the podcast and the creative part of it, because I know editing is fun at the beginning and then it just turns into a little bit of a drudge. So yeah.

Andrea: Yeah.

Kathi: So train people to do that. That's good advice. Now what's the best piece of advice that anyone's ever given you, just in life or as an entrepreneur?

Andrea: Besides telling me that I don't have to do everything alone and I can ask for help, because we already covered that. Also, this one comes with a caveat. I've always heard this from a lot of coaches and entrepreneurs, which is: start before you're ready. And this goes back to taking one small step at a time. I can get very in my head about things. I like to research things to death. I like to examine every possible angle, every possible way of doing something. This person did it this way. This person did it this way. You could do it this way. I love research, and you can research and analyze something to death and still not feel ready to do it. And so at some point you have to just take the leap and say yes to something, and then the clock is ticking. Once you've said yes and you've signed the contract, now you have to do it, even if you don't feel ready, even if you don't feel like you know enough, even if you feel like there could be a million other ways to do this thing. So start before you're ready. However, the caveat is that I don't think that you should just willy-nilly go out there and say yes to everything and try everything, and say that you're going to do something when you very much don't have a base from which to do it. So, it's also to know yourself well enough to know this is something I can bite off, and this is something that I don't know how to do now, and I might not be ready now, but I know that I can and I know that I can be. So it's start before you're ready, with the caveat of know that you have the ability to get ready once you say yes, right?

Start before you're ready, with the caveat of know that you have the ability to get ready once you say yes.

Kathi: Like your guinea pod client. Just speak your truth and say, "Well, I think I can do this and I really want to do this, but I need a guinea pod person to help me, show me that I really can do it." You can be my experimental baby, so to speak. And yeah, that's really…

Andrea: She knew she was my first client. I told her, "You are my first client. This is an experiment. Please give me feedback. Anything that isn't working or doesn't make sense, we will figure this out together."

Kathi: And that was a perfect approach, a transparent approach for you to take. I think transparency at the beginning of any career is really super important, because you are a newbie at something that you're starting, right? And just to be upfront and say, I'm a newbie, but I really have passion around this. I have the skill set for it. I'm going to develop as we grow. Just as you're starting your business, I think transparency is huge, to let people know where exactly you're coming from. And you'll find the clients that resonate with that. You'll find the clients that love to help you as you launch and love to help you fine-tune your skills, and they will be great feedback loops. Sometimes more than you want, or sometimes they're seeing the perfect thing. You're like, "You're totally right."

Andrea: Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi: Great. That's really good advice. Okay. So, is there anything that I should have asked you that we didn't cover during this interview that you feel is important to put your message out? We're going to talk about your valuable free resource here in a jiffy. But we've talked about a lot, covered a lot of ground.

Andrea: Yeah. So I think, because podcasting is my expertise and I'm working with a lot of entrepreneurs, just looking at someone who is like me, where they're like, well, I like to listen to podcasts, but I don't really know how a podcast would fit into my marketing plan or fit into my business, or where does that actually work? Or maybe somebody who has started a podcast for their business already, because we had more podcasts than ever start during the pandemic. There was a huge boom, which is very exciting. But a lot of people started because they had extra time on their hands and they were stuck at home, and now here they are and business is picking up and things are getting busy, and they're like, I don't really know if this podcast is doing what I wanted it to do. I'm not sure if it's effective. I don't really know if I should keep going or what I need to do to make it more successful. Is it successful? Is it not successful? I don't know. There's a lot of advice out there about how to start, but not a lot of advice about how to really maximize your podcast and allow it to grow and provide you with what it is that you want.

Andrea: And so I just want to highlight some of the major ways that I have seen entrepreneurs, especially my clients, but other colleagues, et cetera, using a podcast in their business. There's a million different ways you could use a podcast, but there's four favorites that I have. One is using the podcast to help you focus your messaging. A lot of the people that I work with are mission-driven entrepreneurs. We're not just having a business to make money. Yes, we want to make money. Yes, we want to have a sustainable lifestyle. But we have a mission behind our business. We have something that we want to help our clients and our followers to do. We want to upend the status quo in some area and improve people's lives and businesses. And so sometimes that mission can be so big that it's hard to describe exactly what it is that we want to do and what we're trying to communicate. So having a podcast can really help you focus your messaging. Two, it can help you claim that authority. So, what you were saying about claiming the master's degree in personal development through having a business: just in your niche, or in your space, once you have that podcast… You've probably seen this, Kathi, since you've started your show: people start to look to you as a resource in your area of expertise. They are like, she has a podcast, of course she is the go-to person to find out this and that. Third, it can help you to expand your network, because having these types of conversations, these types of interviews, connections, being in Facebook groups with other entrepreneurial podcasters, it gives you that space where we can connect with people all over the world for that virtual coffee date. That's actually even more valuable, to have a conversation like this. And it gives us a better connection.

Kathi: Yeah.

Andrea: Than just having a coffee or being at a networking event or whatever. It gives you a whole other way of growing and expanding your network. And then the fourth thing is to build trust with your followers. A lot of times people are thinking of their podcast as a way to get more clients or get more customers. And I think that that's a short trip to disappointment and failure, if you're thinking of it as being that literal. Yes, it can help you do those things. It helped me do those things. But if you think of it more as a vehicle by which you're building this relationship with your followers, you're building this trust factor with them, when they're ready to work with someone like you for your services a year from now, two years from now, they already feel like they have a relationship with you, because they've been listening to you week in and week out in their ears. And so your voice literally is in their brain. You are going to be the first person they think of when they're ready to and need to hire, or when someone else that they know is like, "Oh, I really want to hire a professional organizer. Oh, I really want to hire a podcast consultant." You're going to be top of mind, because you have built that relationship in the neurons of their brain. And that is one of the most valuable things that you can use your podcast for.

Your voice literally is in their brain. You are going to be the first person they think of when they're ready to hire.

Kathi: I love that. That is good. I'm glad you brought up those. I knew there was something I was supposed to be talking to you about. That leads us into the valuable free resource. So, what are you going to offer the listeners here that they can download or partake of?

Andrea: Yeah, for sure. So, I have a special URL for your listeners specifically, which is thecreativeimpostor.com/organizedandenergized. I was thinking about it, I should have just made it shorter. I should have just made it organized, and then I was like, nah, put the whole show. Organized and energized. And that is a free five-episode secret podcast. So don't tell… no, you can tell whoever you want. You can send whoever you want to that URL. And it is five questions you haven't asked about your podcast. And those five questions lead you to success through those four different channels that I mentioned. And they are questions that are applicable whether you are thinking of starting a podcast, you definitely are starting one and you're just at the beginning, or you've already been podcasting and you're looking for what's next.

Kathi: Perfect. That's really good. And for those of you who are even thinking about starting a podcast, I'm sure that cheat sheet's going to be good as well, because it's going to really fine-tune you into possibly what you should be speaking about and what your podcast should be, based on what you're trying to do.

Andrea: So, I think there are questions that'll really get you thinking about how to focus in on what it is that you're trying to do and how you're going to do that.

Kathi: Yeah. Love it. Okay. Well, you've been very generous with your time, Andrea, as usual, and I really appreciate talking to you, and this has been a good resource. For all of you who are thinking about starting a podcast, go ahead and hit up Andrea. Go to the link. There is a link that you can actually download from if you didn't get the actual link verbally in the podcast. You can go ahead and download that resource. And meanwhile, have a fabulous day. And thanks again, Andrea, for your time.

Andrea: Thank you so much, Kathi. I appreciate it.