Resources mentioned in this episode:

👉 Start The Profitable Practice Free Course Here

👉 Learn About The Profitable Nutritionist Program

👉 Apply for The Mastermind

Episode Summary:

Links Mentioned:

Hire My Amazing Podcast Producer Sharon Tousley

Podmatch To Book Guest Interviews (as an interviewer or interviewee)

Power Up Podcasting Course by Pat Flynn

Upwork For Finding Freelancer Podcast Producers or Editors

Buzzsprout Podcast Hosting

This week is the official 1 year anniversary of this podcast. 

52 weeks straight. Never missing a week delivering valuable tips and insights for you to grow a more profitable, impactful, and fulfilling health and wellness practice.

I have so much to share about this whole podcasting process from what I have learned over the last year and a half while creating this show.

So today’s episode is jam-packed with equal parts STRATEGY and MINDSET as I walk you through the decision to create this podcast, the execution of it, and what I've learned over the last year so you can decide if taking on a production like a podcast would be a good decision for you.

Hint: Podcasting is NOT for everyone!

But if it IS for you, you’re going to get a lot of useful strategies to maximize your time and create the best possible podcast for your people.

Let’s dive in.

Transcript:

Note: The transcription below was provided for your convenience. Please excuse any typos or mistakes the automated service made in translation.

Andrea Nordling 0:00
Hello, my friend we are celebrating today, just straight up. Celebrating this week is the official one year anniversary of this podcast 52 weeks straight, never missing a week delivering valuable tips and insights and all of the things for you to grow a more profitable and impactful and fulfilling health and wellness practice 52 weeks, I have so much to share about this whole podcasting process. So today is going to be equal parts strategy and mindset as I walk you through the decision to create this podcast on my end, the execution of it over the last year well more than a year because there was of course, the planning, and figuring out what this show was going to be for you. And then actually executing it. What I've learned over the last year, all of the things that have been brewing in my brain, I've been taking notes along the way knowing I was going to create this episode for you. And so I'm just going to break it down what I've learned over the last, let's say a year and a half of preparing for and then executing this podcast. So you can decide if taking on the production of something like a podcast would be a good decision for you and your business. Sounds good. Okay, I'm sure it does. That's why you're here. But first, before we dive in, please rate the show and leave a review. Pause right now, unless you're driving and just click the leave a review link or in whatever podcast player that you're listening to and give some love to the show. Every single review. It tells the almighty podcast platform algorithms that control all of the things that this is worthwhile content. And then it gets shown to more people, which ultimately helps more and more holistic health professionals just like you to make more money and more impact in this world. The ripple effect is a big deal. And your review even one review truly does have a tangible effect. So thank you very much. Love you long time for giving some love in your review to the show. Really, really I do appreciate it. All right. First, a background on me in podcasting. Because you did leave a review, right pause, leave a review. Okay, come back. Alright, perfect. I have to say I've been saying this the last few weeks, I have not very diligently asked for reviews over the last year. That's something that I definitely have been evaluating and am changing as we move forward into the first year because it has been evaluation time around here. There's more one year into the podcast. I'm going to talk about this extensively on this episode about how much time I gave myself to figure out if this was actually even producing any results in my business. So at this one year, Mark, I'm doing a lot of evaluating and realizing hmm, I probably should be reminding people that their reviews help. So that's what you're hearing me do these last few weeks. And I'm just shamelessly asking for reviews, because it really does help. Okay, so back to our topic at hand, which is podcasting and me podcasting. And I have to do a true confession here that this is actually not my first podcast. In fact, my very, very good friend and business bestie Amy tell absurd. And I had the good food good mood podcast, which I have to say with that exact tone, because that's how it is in my mind. Because the good food good mood podcast, in 2016. We were very excited about all of our business things. We were paleo profits. And we were like, we have to have a podcast. Let's do it. Actually, Amy had had approached me with this idea. She's like, I'm thinking I want to do a podcast, you want to do the podcast with me? Like I have no idea what that even means. But yes, because I listen to podcasts. I like podcasts. Sounds kind of hard. But it sounds kind of fun. I'm in let's do it. So we did, we created the good food, good mood podcast. And we learned a lot about podcasting in general, which was quite different in 2016 than it is now. I mean, the technology was different. The editing was different, the platforms were different, the listenership was different. Obviously, podcasting will maybe this isn't obvious. So I should just say podcasting is really, really has taken off in terms of popularity and how people like to consume content. And of course, there were diehard podcast listeners in 2016. I was one of them. But for sure now as it is becoming more mainstream for businesses and for people that have something to say, to be sharing it in podcast form, or to be taking videos and repurposing them into audio podcasts or, I mean people call videos podcast to like a recurring video show a podcast not really sure how that makes sense. But we'll talk about all of it today anyway, is becoming a lot more popular. It's much more accessible. The technology is a lot easier to do it than it was in 2016, figuring out how to do podcast art that actually made sense, a lot easier now than it was in 2016 when he and I were doing our own podcast cover art in Canva and had no idea what we were doing. That was just one of the many things that we didn't know what we were doing when we were creating this first podcast, but we did it. We got it out there into the world. We learned a lot and it was very stressful. We had a lot of fun doing it. I want to say I mean and I don't

Andrea Nordling 5:00
Even honestly, no, I tried to look back to so I could give you an actual metric on how many episodes we did, and how often we were releasing episodes. And there isn't a lot that exists in memory and tribute to the good food, good mood patch. It was kind of fleeting, in my estimation, I but we did it for about six months, we were pretty inconsistent on episodes. And maybe we did 10 or 15 episodes at the very most, I bet it was like 10, or 12, something like that. And we learned we learned many things. So Amy has a podcast. Now I have a podcast. Now we both obviously really liked the medium. We like the format of it. But we just had no idea what we were doing. And there was no real intention of what the podcast was supposed to be doing. We just honestly had no goal. So we were talking about random stuff to random people. And to be honest, it actually worked. People still tell me that they listened to that podcast, and they loved it. But we didn't keep going. We didn't have a format to improve it because we had no direction. So every episode was a struggle. It was not simple or doable, long term for us to keep producing the show. Because we will honestly we had two of our schedules to consider Amy was living in Hawaii at the time I was living in the Midwest. So our timezones were quite different coordinating when we were going to do our episodes, was getting to be a little bit of a headache for both of us. And we just were like, what, why are we even doing this? What is the purpose of it? We're not seeing any tangible results from this podcast. And so we just decided, maybe we'll pick it up back later. We obviously didn't the podcast died and abrupt death. I think I could speak for Amy due at this point, we both made a mental note to do another podcast in the future. And we've even talked about collaborating on one we decided to do our own. But like way in the future for me, I decided because I wanted to be more focused after the end of the good food, good mood podcasts, when we rest in peace put that to bed. I wanted to be more focused and intentional on making money in my business and not just doing things because they sounded fun, or because other people were doing them or because I wanted to learn a new thing. New that sound familiar? Yeah, I'm on to because I've had those same thoughts. I didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to make decisions on how I was going to be spending my time and my energy and my business. For those reasons. I wanted to be very intentional and not just take on projects for the sake of doing them baby steps. This was a work in progress. Because believe me, I was still doing way too many things for the sake of doing them even though that was my goal not to do it at this point, believe me, but the infrequent podcast episodes and the stress of what are we going to talk about? That was no longer one of those things. Because as up until this point, or while not up until this point, when Amy and I were recording these episodes, we would take ideas that we had things that we thought people might be wondering about or like a random question that someone had asked us and we will create an episode about it. And that actually did work well. But we had not worked with enough clients ourselves to really have strong opinions or processes or philosophies or just like confidence in what we were talking about. So these episodes involves us looking a lot of things up. We were researching a lot. We were probably again, I can't I'm sure I could dig up the episodes, but I didn't do it. I'm sure in these episodes, we were very wishy washy. I'm like well, it could be like this, or it could be like that. And I'm sure we were not really taking a stance on anything because we were unsure of ourselves and our own knowledge at that was stressful creating any type of content from that place of being unsure of yourself and unsure of who's listening to it. And who if they even want to hear it. And if you're talking about the right thing, and then if you are talking about the right thing, am I saying the right thing? Is this going to be helpful to them? Do I really believe this? Am I giving them false information? All of that uncertainty was stressful. That was not fun. So we're taking that off of my plate. I can say from my own perspective, it was helpful. I was like okay, yep, love podcasting. someday in the future, when we're not going to be editing the episodes ourselves. It's more streamlined. I know what I'm saying. I'm going to talk all about that format in a minute, but I just knew Okay, someday in the future, that's going to happen, I'm not going to do things just for the sake of doing them and I'm not going to rush the timeline. So this is 2016 ish. Then as my holistic nutrition practice was transitioning into a full time holistic business coaching in mid 2019 And I've talked all about this evolution of my business and what I would do differently if I was doing it again so you can certainly go back and look at those episodes if that is something that you're interested in. That's specifically episodes 26 and 27. If you want to go back and listen, my business was changing a lot at this point so just to speed up the timeline here 2016 podcast died first podcast was like, oh,

Andrea Nordling 9:38
okay, but put that to bed that was done had the idea. Yes, I would like to podcast again in the future, but it's not a right now thing. I really want to focus on making money. I want to figure out how to make more money, not just do all of the things and spread out all of my attention in various ways. Even though in retrospect, I was still doing that in a lot of ways I was making progress. So by the time I translate Send out of my holistic nutrition practice and into full time holistic business coaching. Again, I talked all about that in episode 26 and 27. This was about mid 2019. And I was ready to revisit the podcast idea. Because I was, I was basically starting a new business at this point, I was shutting down my nutrition practice. And I was really going all in on what I had been doing kind of on the side, which was holistic business coaching for my colleagues that were like, how do you get clients? How do you keep doing this? I don't understand how to market and get clients. And I was like, Oh, well, I would way rather talk about this than about snacks, and about what to take hiking, and about digestive issues. So I had fully committed to holistic business coaching in mid 2019, and was reimagining what my business was going to look like from that point. Moving forward as an online business for someone who didn't want to be on social media or be relying on social media at that point it was I don't want to be relying on social media since then, I have completely deactivated all of my social media, and I'm not on social media at all anymore. But at that point, the vision was I don't want to be relying on social media, I want to be selling via email, I want to be communicating with my people via email. And I want to be working part time, I want to be working 20 hours a week ish or less. And I want to be very, very focused on exactly what I'm teaching and coaching. And I want to be really laser dialed in on what that is because I had learned that I had a tendency as I was learning all things online business and online marketing. For the last few years, I had been spreading my attention very thin and doing all the things like starting podcasts and then shutting them down. For example, I didn't want to do that anymore. So the idea of starting a podcast for the holistic business coaching practice that I was now starting from 00 email subscribers, zero clients with this, my brand new website knew all of the things I knew a podcast was at some point in the future, something I wanted to do. So I revisited this idea, I started making some plans. And then I patiently put this future podcast on the shelf waiting. It just was sitting there, it was waiting. I knew mentally metaphorically that it was there and it wasn't going anywhere. But it wasn't time for me to go pick it up and bring it to light yet. So for me what that looks like is I started a Trello board. I love me some Trello started a Trello board of podcast topic ideas and name ideas. And basically anything future podcast related that popped into my head, I had a place to put all of those ideas and it was just a big brainstorm board on Trello. So anytime I had anything podcast related that I wanted to make sure I didn't forget, I jotted it down and just left it there. Because the time was not right to create the podcast yet. I knew it was coming. But I was not in a rush to do that. Okay, so this is 2019, mid 2019. And the reason I was not in a rush. And so I really want you to hear this is because I knew that I didn't have something to say, don't get me wrong. I had a few things I thought I could say. And that's what was going in this podcast board of ideas of things I thought people wanted to know about and things that I had been talking about with some clients and concepts that I thought would be good to teach. So that's what was, you know, percolating there. And this brainstorm list was growing. But I knew that I had not delivered my concepts and my philosophies and my process and my ideas in my own way, enough times to actually own it and know what I had to say, like capital letters, what I have to say was that it was just too early for me at that point, to feel confident that I had something to say, which brings me to consideration number one that I would like to pose to you, if you're considering starting a podcast of your own. Do you have something to say? Truly, do you have something to say? Do you know your people and their problems? Like the back of your hand? Could you just help them in your sleep? Have you worked with enough clients that you know exactly what objections they have? What stumbling blocks come for them? What they've tried in the past that hasn't worked? What they think is the problem that isn't actually the problem? And then what the real problem is? Do you know how they phrase this? Do you know the questions that they ask when they get to a fork in the road? Do you know the results that they really truly want? Do you know how they explain those results? This is sounding familiar to you, you've obviously listened to lots of these podcasts episodes, because this is what we talked about, like really getting into the mind of your easiest, best, most perfect clients, understanding them understanding their problems, articulating the solution that you offer, really, really evaluating how you talk to them and how they talk back to you and getting really nuanced and granular about those words that they use, which helps you to formulate your processes and your philosophies and your stance and your concepts that are like your intellectual property that you teach to them in your very specific way. Like what is that? Do you have something to say? That's what I mean by having something to say. And if you don't know what that is, it just means you haven't delivered to enough clients yet. You just have not worked with enough clients to know those things. So don't do a podcast yet because you can make money, a lot of money in your business without having that so solid, that you can create a podcast every single week, you can make a lot of money you can. And then you're working with clients. And you're getting that Intel. And you're building out your own brainstorm database of what a podcast or YouTube channel or blog or whatever would look like in the future for you. But there's no rush, because you just haven't worked with enough clients yet. Keep working with clients, keep making money, build the resources in your business, which we're going to talk about in a second about how I have invested in this podcast monetarily. And I don't do all of the editing and all of that myself, which is so helpful. But I have the resources in my business to do that. Because I took the time to really and I kind of am getting ahead of myself, I just want to foreshadow. This time when I created the podcast, I had the resources to invest in it timewise energy wise and monetarily have the resources to make it easier on myself. But I also have something to say because I wasn't in a rush to start creating this content for you and I have delivered this content. So many times I have worked with clients, I have coached them extensively. I have gotten their emails I have gotten their comments sent to me in our Member community, I have worked with a lot of people. So creating the content on this podcast right now is not a burden. To me, it is not hard. It's not something that I need to stress about every week, like I did the first time I created a podcast where I didn't feel like I actually could just off the top of my head off the cuff answer questions that people had, I do not feel like that, because I've worked with so many people, which means I also have made a lot of money in my business. And like I said, have the resources to invest in this platform, which is cool, much different experience than last time. So this is brings me back to this first consideration for you. Do you have something to say? The subtext here is have you worked with enough people that you've delivered your philosophies enough times? Do you know what that is? Do you know how you're a little bit controversial? going against the grain about what some people think and art? Do you feel solid in your stance for things? Okay, I didn't for quite a while which and I knew this from having an experience doing a podcast before. So for me, I just knew I had to leave the podcast idea on the shelf for years actually. And I didn't feel that urgent need to bring it to life. Because I was willing to have that constraint, you probably have heard me talk about constraint quite a bit. This is actually a key component of what I teach in the profitable nutritionist program. And to my mastermind, just constraint constraint of focus constraint of time and mastering one thing before you take on the next level, I always tell my mastermind students to just relax, you are an effing genius. So am I, which means that all of our ideas are 10 out of 10 ideas. They're all great. So take these thoughts for yourself. We talked about this in the mastermind all the time. But seriously, your genius of course, your ideas are 10 out of 10 ideas, your podcast idea, your vlog idea, your blog, idea, your YouTube channel, all of these ideas are 10 out of 10 ideas, that it's not even a question because you're a genius. Of course they are. It doesn't mean that you need to take all of these ideas into the world. They're all 10 out of 10. So what's the urgency, you just pick one constrain your focus to one and go all in, which is why and I take my own advice on this. This is why I waited until my business was consistently bringing in a quarter million dollars a year through email marketing. Before I diverted my focus to the podcast, I want to say that again, I waited until my business was consistently bringing in $250,000 a year through emails, because that was what I was constraining my focus to before I diverted my focus into anything else, which meant birthing this podcast now for you. And it took me years to get to that point. So I want to be very clear, the intention to create this podcast was started in mid 2019. It did not come to life until fall of 2021. So let it sit on a shelf for years just totally fine. Because it wasn't my priority to do all of the things, it was my priority to make money in my business to get better at serving my clients to get them better results to get more serious, serious, the word more had serious is not the word to get more convicted about what I had to say. I wanted more practice at that before I created the podcast. So take that thought and run with it. Of course your ideas are 10 out of 10 ideas. Just because you have a good idea doesn't mean you have to execute the good idea. We will never as entrepreneurs quit having amazing ideas. I have a few of them a week where I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's a million dollar idea right there. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to create it or I'm in any rush to do it. It goes on the someday maybe I'll pick that back up off the shelf. And really I probably won't, because I'm so focused on executing the 10 out of 10 idea that I'm already in process of. Hopefully that makes sense. So like I said, for me, that was $250,000 a year I made this agreement with myself that when my business was at that stage, it would be time to revisit the podcast idea and take it off of the shelf. Now for you. The exact number might be different than mine was but I want to just be very transparent with you About the thought process for me, hopefully that's helpful for you. Like I kind of said, I was making this decision from the very future vision of my dream business. And this is something I've talked a lot about as well on this podcast I highly recommend that you do is really think long term. What is your long term dream business vision? What does that look like we make decisions today, based on where we want to be going, that's going to make things so much more enjoyable, so much easier, and so much simpler for you, rather than what most people do, which is make decisions on what is going to get results this week, or this month. And then you end up with a very scattered very chaotic, very incongruent business that's not in alignment with what you even want. That is what happens when you launch a podcast without really knowing what you're even talking about. AKA, Amy and I in 2016. So my dream business when I sat down in late 2020, to define it, which I think are the probably the first time to look long term in my business. And I really thought about this and defined it for myself, and then believed that I could create exactly what I wanted. And I could create this dream business, not a version of what I saw other people doing. No, my business, my dream is a business that runs on email marketing, and selling via email, no social media, whatsoever, I could see that. So clearly, when I asked myself high quality questions about my dream business in the future, I could see, there was no social media whatsoever, I was not on social media, I was just communicating with my people, and telling them how they can work with me and delivering value to them through email. So since that was very clear, and that's the business I want to run long term. It's 100%, the bread and butter of my business. Of course, I wanted to increase and get better at the skills of copywriting, and writing better sales copy in my emails before I introduced anything new, like a podcast, that's the thought process behind, okay, I want to get to 250,000 a year. And at that point, I just made this, I just made this deal with myself. The numbers are arbitrary, but I decided for me if I'm making quarter million dollars a year consistently, and I track my revenue in rolling 12 months, so I know what I've made the previous 12 months. So when I knew consistently that that was the level that I was selling at via email, I made this strategic agreement with myself, I call it a strategic agreement that that is when I would feel like I was really proficient at selling via email. And it would be time to uplevel a new skill or bring something else on now for you a strategic agreement could be something like 10 clients, if it's in terms of launching a podcast, it could be I want to work with 20 clients. And then after working with 20 clients, I'm going to revisit the idea of a podcast I'm gonna see if I feel like I really have something to say, and I'm ready to take that on. If I have the funds in my business, if I have the time in my calendar, all that that might be a strategic agreement. Or I teach strategic agreements for things like raising your prices, maybe you work with 10 clients at your current price, and then you revisit raising the price, same concept you master what you've decided to do now, before you introduce a new variable. Now your brain is going to resist this like crazy. But it comes back to the constraint again. And it's so worth it when you do constrain your focus and just let the later on upgrades. And those ideas sit on the shelf, while you improve the most important things, work on the most important things and make them the most important things. And you'll quickly get to the point where you can introduce the new stuff. So when I was getting close to the 250k metric that I had set for myself, and like I said, I know when that is because I know my numbers every month I look at my numbers and I track my rolling 12 Month Number. Are you doing the same? I highly recommend that you do. What I saw that we're getting close there I prioritize gestating and burning the podcast, I gave it a due date that was months in the future. I think that this is about four months in the future, if memory serves. So I was getting close to that point. I'm like, Okay, I think I think we're there, I think we're going to start creating this thing, launch date for months in the future luxurious amounts of time. And I do want to mention that I think that it's really helpful kind of pro tip here, give yourself luxurious amounts of time to do anything like this, instead of rushing, you are going to enjoy the process so much more, your creativity will be so much greater. And you will probably actually get the project done even faster, because you won't feel so pressured. And it's going to be fun, it's going to be enjoyable. And that's how your mind wants to work. That's how your creative genius wants to actually come forth, not in a time crunch, hustle, pressure bubble. That's not when you're going to be doing your best work. So this time, instead of going in blind, I wanted to have a really solid podcasting strategy. As you can imagine that made sense for the kind of business I want to run long term. So with that in mind, and being in learning mode and student mode, and just going back to the beginning, I bought a course on podcasting, actually about a few courses on podcasting. And then over a few weeks I watched those modules. The course that I purchase is called Power Up podcasting by Pat Flynn. I will link that in the show notes of this episode if you're interested. It was great. It was a great course. is a very, very beginner focus on exactly how to take an idea and create a show out of it all of the considerations for tech and editing and how long your episodes should be. And platforms like all of those basic setup things,

Andrea Nordling 25:13
it takes you from honestly, conceptual idea to publishing and lunch. So I wanted to know all of those things, I wanted to know how things had changed in the previous five years, because obviously, technology was way different. And this is just kind of my process, even though I had podcasted. Before I like to be able to see the big picture strategy. Like I want to know all of the things first from kind of a high level, I don't need to get in the weeds on it. But I kind of want to know where like what the big picture is, before I started a project like that. So like I said, even though I had podcasted, before, I wanted to be able to see where we had gone wrong, and have an actual strategy. This time, it also wanted to understand all of the little pieces of the puzzle on that big picture level. So my brain could get to work subconsciously on figuring out exactly what I was going to do with that information and what this podcast was going to look like. Remember, I gave myself a luxurious amounts of time to add this in. I was not hustling. I wasn't like watching eight hours a day of this course. And like pressuring myself, it was just something that here in there, I was consuming some information and letting my subconscious mind just chew on it for a while, gave myself luxurious amounts of time. And that's why the creative flow of it was so good. And that's why I actually came together faster. Imagine that what we could treat ourselves really well and have fun along the way. And it goes faster, huh, weird who would have that? So before I bring you through more of this podcast production process, I want to address the second consideration that I think you should be asking yourself if you're thinking of doing something new like this, which I assume you might be if you're listening to this episode. So again, this could be creating a podcast or a YouTube channel or a blog, or basically anything that's going to be a learning curve for you, and a considerable time investment for you. The first consideration I want to remind you was Do you have something to say? Like can you say it? Do you have a stance? Have you worked with enough people and said it enough times that you have something to say second consideration here is are you willing to do it consistently for one to two years without seeing any results? I imagine right now you're just rolling your eyes like oh, what? Oh, you're supposed to be helping me get the result? Of course I am. Which is why I want you to be willing to do it consistently for one to two years without getting any results. Are you willing to do that? If your answer is no, then I would strongly reconsider taking on this big project. And I would get really curious with yourself about why why you aren't willing to do it consistently without seeing results. Now remember, I'm all about giving myself luxurious amounts of time. And that also means luxurious amounts of time to get something right. I put that in quotes, because do we ever get it right? Does it really matter? I don't know. But in my mind, I want to get it right. So I give myself luxurious amounts of time to do that. It takes the pressure off, it helps me stay a beginner and a learner rather than racing to produce huge outcomes, and putting enormous pressure on myself that it has to be perfect when I've never done it before. It's not going to be perfect. This extends to your business as a whole, my friend, this is a very meta concept. Are you in a hurry in your business to see results and prove to yourself that you're doing it right? Or are you willing to work on your business consistently for one to two years? Let's say without seeing any results? Are you willing to be a beginner? Are you willing to keep going? What comes up for you around that? I'd be very curious, I was willing to give myself a luxurious amount of time, one to two years consistently podcasting, learning how to be a great podcast or learning how to deliver a high quality podcast and use my brain in this different way for one to two years without seeing any results. That was a deal I made with myself. And I will offer that if you are willing to do something for one to two years, a luxuriously long amount of time, without seeing results, you're going to enjoy it so much more, you're going to be in it for the long haul, you'll quit doubting yourself every step of the way, when something goes differently than you planned, or you have a massive flop and a huge failure and fall on your face. Yes, that happens to all of us all of the time. That's called being an entrepreneur. And when that happens, you're going to be okay with it. Because you've given yourself a luxurious amount of time to get it right. What comes up for you around that. I'm going to just pose to you that you're going to get those results you want so much faster. When you approach a project this way, because instead of operating out of the pressure and urgency, and the oh my gosh, I have to figure this out. It has to be perfect. I have to be as polished as these podcasts I listen to now. For example, you're going to be operating out of curiosity and patience for yourself. I wonder what isn't working here. I wonder how I could do this better. I wonder what this will look like in the future and patience for yourself as you create it. I'm telling you, it's so much more enjoyable.

Andrea Nordling 29:51
So to recap, the two questions that I would suggest you ask yourself if you're considering starting your own podcasts are first of all, do you have something to say truly do you And too, are you willing to do it consistently for one to two years without seeing any results. If it's yes to both of those, then you should do it. And here's why. Creating something like a podcast or like I've said, a blog, whatever it will make you get so much clearer on your processes, your people, your personal philosophies, your unique concepts, your goals, it's going to make your brain think at a totally different level about all of these things. Because you're forced to really articulate your thoughts in a new way. And you have to simplify them. And you're going to be just truly using your brain differently, to be more concise, and to be more clear, and then you're doing that consistently. Because the key here is consistency, you're making a deal with yourself, you're not going to just do this a couple times, you're doing it consistently, right. And when you do that, it's going to make you such a better practitioner, it's going to take your expertise level up exponentially, and just gonna do it very quickly, because you are using your brain differently. Now, like I said, consistency is very, very important. And this is important with anything that you're doing. Like I said, it could be vlogging, or blogging, or podcasting, whatever. In the beginning, you don't have to be doing any of that consistently, you are getting clients and you are making money you are working with people you are telling them about what you do what your business is all about. And you're saying the words I can help you, that is what you were doing. And then they are paying you to help them you are learning, you are making money. Basically, paid r&d is what we think of at the beginning of your business, you are getting paid to figure out what your business does, it's the best. So in the beginning, you don't need to be in a rush at all, to get to the point where you're consistently producing content, I want to be so so so clear about that. And in the profitable nutritionists program, we don't talk about creating content like this at all, there are resources for amazing copywriting and producing content, that's a bonus course, it's not the nuts and bolts of the program, because the nuts and bolts of the program is how to make money, how to get clients, how to get them amazing results and how to do it on repeat, so that you are making money in your business. And when you are making money in your business and you're working with clients and you're generating this expertise level that is coming with it as a very great byproduct of your client work, then you're at the point where you're probably thinking about this, how do I reach more people? And how can I create content like this on a weekly basis, or whatever frequency that you want to increase what I'm already doing, that's who I'm talking to at this point. But I just want to be really clear. In the beginning, this is not you. But if it is you at this point and you're ready for it, hey, it is going to push you it is going to use your brain in the most genius way and make your ideas just like I wish you could see my wish you could see my hand motions. Yeah, that joint is like just drilling everything down to laser focus when you do something like a podcast. So alright, I just want to say that now my business was bringing in, I want to remind you a very comfortable quarter of a million dollars a year before I added in a podcast and took on this project that was very comfortable. For me that was strategic, it was in line with my goals. But I also have students who successfully launch podcasts much sooner and they kill it. So it's going to totally depend on your business goals. And what you want long term, there's no right or wrong here, I just want to give you that, like the full scope. I don't recommend taking something on in the beginning. That is a big project like a podcast, especially when you haven't delivered your concepts enough times to real people to really, really hone them. But you know, it's up to you. So those are the two considerations. Do you have something to say? Are you willing to do it consistently without seeing results? My first podcast, like I said, was a no to both of those, by the way, which is why it flopped. And not only did a mean, and I not really have anything to say we did, but we didn't really we had to go research it first. And it was flippy floppy. We didn't have strong conviction, I guess is where what I want to say about that. But we also weren't consistent. And we didn't even have results that we wanted to get from the podcast, we hadn't even defined what those are. So you definitely want to know what the results are that you want to be getting from a podcast in our podcast episodes. And on the good food, good mood podcast. There were no calls to action on the show. I don't even think that we were telling people to join an email list. I don't think we were doing any of that. So you know, you live in your learn. But if you pass the test on both of those considerations, and you do want to launch a podcast, and I'm going to kind of transition into the nuts and bolts of things that I have learned over the last year, that's going to help you a lot as you get it set up. One question I know that you're probably wondering is does the frequency matter as in how often you publish? Yes, and no, you get to choose whatever frequency you want to publish at. I do weekly, weekly on Tuesdays, for example.

Andrea Nordling 34:40
Some people do every two weeks. Some people do daily, some I mean monthly, whatever. You get to decide what that frequency is. But make it a strategic agreement with yourself that you're going to be consistent. You are a business this is not a jabi that's a job hobby or this is not a job be treated as such. This is a business. I publish this podcast once a week on to His days, no exceptions. That's it. That is a professional agreement that I have with myself internally. And with all y'all that you're going to get an episode every Tuesday, no exception. So does the frequency matter? Ah, I don't know. I think that weekly is the perfect cadence for me. It pushes me to be every seven days to create something new, I do batch the content sometimes. So that kind of changes. I know, that's gonna be a question as well. Do you batch this stuff? And do all podcasts at once? Or do you do them every single week, I've done both. And it honestly just depends on what the workload is, in other parts of my business, if I'm preparing to be launching the program, if I'm creating something in one of my programs, so it just depends. I've done both. But I think that the consistency and just having that agreement with yourself the integrity that you will stay consistent for one to two years, even if you don't see results, that's going to make you treat this as a very important project that you prioritize you prioritize the creation of this content and maximizing it making the best that you can. This is a business right? Another question I know you might have is does the length matter? I do not get too hung up on this. In the courses I've watched, and I have watched a few courses on podcasts and listen to the podcast on podcasting. In the beginning, when I was kind of figuring out all of this for myself, I don't anymore, this is not something that I spend time worrying about. But when I was setting up the podcast and gestating, getting ready to launch, these were things that I thought about, and it seems that the almighty podcast experts want you to figure out how long your episodes are going to be and stick to that. I just think that's dumb. I don't get hung up on it at all. Some episodes are 20 minutes, sometimes I can take a concept and I'm like, boom, I teach it, we're done. And sometimes it's an hour like this one will be much longer, I have a lot more to say. It's much more comprehensive, no big deal. I think trying to hyper manage the time could and would deteriorate from the content. So for me, that's a huge No, and I don't worry about the time one bit, I listen to podcasts that are 10 minutes long, I listen to podcasts that are three hours long. And I figure that out. I'm a very resourceful person, I know how to push pause and come back to it later if I need to. And I think the same about you. So as far as length, no, I don't think that that matters at all. Another question that I know I have bullet points here that I'm going through to make sure I cover everything in my outline, which actually, sidenote, do I outline and script things? Or do I just go off the cuff for me, I have a pretty comprehensive outline for most episodes of what I want to teach. So they don't forget anything. But I am very comfortable to go down rabbit holes, and to kind of just let it flow as well. So I do have a pretty structured outline. And then we just see where it goes. For me that works well. In the beginning, I will say and you probably would notice this if you go back and listen to early episodes, they are much more formulaic I've I did feel more comfortable at that point scripting things more, I probably sounds more scripted or more or less free flowing because it was and that is just something that over the last year has really kind of changed. And I've gotten into a groove that works for me and for my brain and for my content creation process of figuring out a loose outline. And I don't have too much pressure for myself when I recorded I just let it go. And I figured the way that it comes out for you is the way that it was supposed to be. All right back to that. See that was just a free flowing. That didn't that wasn't on the outline, but it should have been. Okay, back to my next bullet point, which is, I know that there are questions about how to format the actual content, like what are the episodes going to be made up of? And I found that all the ongoing experts in the podcast field want you to really figure this out? Like are are they going to be solo episodes? Are you going to be interviewing people? What is this just going to be you? What is it going to sound like and what's the format of these episodes.

Andrea Nordling 39:00
So I had a basic format in mind when I started the show that I knew would be mostly solo episodes for me teaching the concepts that come up with my students consistently in the profitable nutritionist program, the things that we coach on a lot. And so that is how I started and I would recommend doing the same making a list. Honestly, this does not have to be hard. When you're brainstorming the first podcast episodes like the first 10 I would say, I just asked myself, What is it that I would want everyone to know, every student of mine? What would I want them to know? And I honestly just could quickly come up with the foundational concepts that I would want everyone to know. When they come into my program. What do I want them to know? When they've worked with me for a long time? If they don't work with me at all ever? And they're just out in the world using the concepts that they learned on this podcast, it will make more money and help more people? What are those concepts? What do I want those to be? So for me that was like okay, what do I want everyone to know? That was just a light way to figure out what I wanted to do in those episodes and most of the time and most So the things that I ended up creating those initial episodes with, and all of the episodes since, to be honest, come from questions that people asked me, my students asked in the program, things that we coach on, and just basically frequently asked questions that come up. So I knew that that's what it was gonna be, it was going to be me a lot of the time talking into the mic and teaching. Then I started experimenting. After a few months of creating episodes solo, I started experimenting with interviewing some of my students about their experiences, which I quickly found was something I loved doing interviews were really, really fun to create was totally new. I love it. So then I started bringing on some of my coach friends that are experts in certain very nuanced areas that were helpful to my students as well. And I interviewed them. So fun, because people were emailing me constantly like, oh, my gosh, that was so so helpful. So I got to do some interviewing of my students, I've interviewed some of my coach friends and done some joint teaching episodes with them, which has been a blast as well. And a lot of solo episodes where I teach myself, basically, what I want to say here is you get to play with it and not be too uptight about figuring out in the beginning how this has to be in a rigid format. Lots of podcast teachers will tell you, you have to pick a format and stick to it. I don't think that that's true, that hasn't been my experience at all. I think that any type of content that you create is going to evolve as you evolve, it's going to change as you change as your ideas get more high level, the content will get more high level, just let it be an evolution, let it grow, just let it happen, I don't think you need to be too rigid about any of that. If your dream client that is listening to your podcast is going to get value from the episode that make the episode. That's the Guiding Light basically, for me, this show is for them, the show I create is for you. If you're gonna get value from an episode, I make it whether that's me interviewing someone else, interviewing a student just talking to you, and teaching for my own experiences, my own concepts, doesn't matter. If you're going to get value, I'm going to create that show. And I highly suggest you do the same. Along that same line. We're going to our next bullet point here, which is make the content creation easy on yourself. Use what you've already what you're already doing what you're already good at what is the low hanging fruit for you? This doesn't have to be so hard, we tend to want to make things so hard for ourselves. Why do we do that? Why does everything need to be a punishment? I don't know. But we need to stop. Okay, make it easy.

Andrea Nordling 42:25
Here's a hack that I think has been super helpful is to use what I'm already doing an already spending my time on. So I coach at least once a week in the profitable nutritionist program. And I coach my mastermind once a week as well. So that's two hours that I am spending at least sometimes we go over on time. So at least two hours a week that I am spending are really, really in it with my students. I'm answering their questions. I take notes on those coaching calls, if you're one of my students, you know, I'm always taking notes while we're coaching. Because I don't want to lose my train of thought when someone's asking a question. But I also want to come back to things later. And I review those notes after my coaching calls. And I take 10 minutes and evaluate the coaching calls. And I take any thing that I mean at this point, it's very easy to see when something strikes a nerve because someone will ask a question. And the chat during the coaching call will go crazy with other people like oh my gosh, this happens for me, this is what I did, I totally am right there with you that at it, I will see when something strikes a nerve. And I will outline a quick podcast episode on it in that moment, right after I've coached on it and put it in the pot, I kind of have a database of upcoming podcast episodes. And I'll put it in there with a rough outline. And that is what an episode comes from. In the future. I don't need to make this any harder than that. And I highly suggest for any content that you're creating that goes for emails that you send to your people every week for something like a podcast for videos for blogging for a post on social media, if you're on social media, just for conversations that you have for people make it easy for yourself to take what's already something that you're you're good at or that you're spending your time at which for you might be working with one on one clients, it might be doing workshops and presentations might be just the conversations, the marketing conversations that you have with potential clients or discovery calls or whatever it is, take those and turn them into content. Because if one person is asking a question, there's a very good chance that a lot of people have that same question. So the workflow behind creating podcast episodes for me, I hope that this is helpful for you as well, is to take a little bit of time after something I'm already doing, which for me is coaching. If I was working with one on one clients, it would be after the one on one calls. Or if it was doing discovery calls or console calls with people it would be after those. And I would just evaluate what we had just talked about look at my notes and create a resource around the questions that people have been asking me turn that into content. Okay, make this easy on yourself. And again, it goes back to what is valuable for your people. If you're answering that question for one person. Like I said there's pretty good chance that many people have it and would like to hear Are you talking about it, don't fall into this trap of thinking, I've already said it once, I'm not gonna say it again, repetition is so useful, our human brains need to hear the same thing over. And over and over again, it is not a problem to say something multiple times, in a little bit different way with a little bit different example with a little bit different context or story with it, repeat things over and over and over again, I people say this all the time, I think I was gonna talk about this, probably in one of my other bullet points, but I'm gonna jump to it. I create this show for my my existing students, as much as I create it for future students. And for people to become aware of what I do. And the program that I run, my students still listen to all of these episodes, maybe not all of them every week, but I know a substantial number do because they reference them a lot, especially in the lounge, which is our private member community, people will post about episodes of like, oh, my gosh, this week's episode, hit me, I know, I've heard this 100 times, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they'll do a screenshot of something, or have a whole, you know, paragraph of like, I heard this, like, it seemed totally new information, even though I know it isn't. And it just landed for me. So incredible. This was so good. He's so my students that have heard me coach for hundreds of hours. So just think about how useful it is for your current clients to get consistent content from you. And reminders, we need to remind much more than we need to teach, remind your people of what they already know and their inner genius and the skills and tools that they already have. Remind them of those every single week, think about how transformative that is for them to keep hearing from you over and over and over again. So good. And then of course, the strategic byproduct of that is that new people will find you and find that content and will become clients of yours as well. So that's, of course, a result that we're looking for when we're creating something like a podcast. But think about it for your people to your existing clients. You we'd like to tell ourselves, I've already taught it to them, they already know it, of course they do. But they can know it even better when they hear it from you more and more and more. All right, I'm looking

Andrea Nordling 47:03
at the clock. And I see we're going long on this one, guys, because I have a lot to say about how incredibly valuable it is to have a bank of content for yourself. That isn't on social media. And a podcast is a great way to create this bank of content for yourself. Now just zoom out for a second, you own your podcast, you own the contents, you own the recordings, you own all of the collateral that you've created for your podcast. And if necessary, you can even create your own podcast platform at some time in the future, if you had to, as well, as long as you're storing everything on your own servers. From a strategy standpoint, this is very important because a podcast platform could go down, you could get banned from something you could get banned off of social media you could have, wherever you are, you know, currently delivering your content could be taken away from you if you don't own it, but having the intellectual property and this content that you create on your own platform is vital from a strategy standpoint. And you can leverage it in lots of different ways. So from a just, you know, being savvy with how business operates. You want to have everything backed up for yourself. But also I want you to repurpose it from a strategy standpoint for getting more organic traffic to your website, which is the platform that you own. Are you following me here. So for every episode of the of the podcast, and this is not something that Amy and I ever did in with our first podcast in 2016. Didn't even know about it. But I wanted to be strategic. Remember with this new podcast, I wanted to really maximize what I could do with it. I have since with this podcast, I created a blog post with for every single episode. So it has its own blog post on my website with Transcripts of each episode. So this is huge for SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. And basically SEO is how reputable your website is in the eyes of the big search engines. And if they're going to be sending organic traffic to your website to answer answer people's search questions. So somebody types in a question in the search bar and Google is Google sending you to your website because it has crawled your website extensively and knows that you are an authority on answering this question. You want it to think that I'm emphatically nodding my head as I say this, yes, yes, we want that to happen. This is free traffic to your content. And to repurpose your podcast episodes with transcripts. And to have them embedded on your website is a really good way to do that. It's huge for SEO, doing the transcripts is free. I use a service called otter o TT er and just upload the audio. Well, I don't do it, but my producer uploads the audio to otter it generates a transcript, and we put that on the website. Now at some point in the near future. I'm going to actually upgrade the system a little bit and I'm going to bring on a contractor to go through that big vault of pages. Now. There's 55 pages of episodes from the last year and a lot of transcripts and content on there and they're going to optimize it even more for SEO and turn them into some pins to pin on Pinterest probably, maybe, who knows, maybe even repurpose some of them for articles to go on medium, which is a website where you can post written content, for example, more people find things on medium and then come back to the website and the podcast, all roads leading back to my website. Okay, so I want to be very clear that all roads lead to Rome. For me the strategy behind this podcast is for the people that listen to this podcast, however, they find me whether that is through a Google search, or the Apple algorithm shows them this podcast is something you might like because of lots of reviews from you and all of that, however they find the podcast, they're going to understand. And you're going to understand that the way you take these concepts to the next level is to be on my email list because that is where the juiciest, the juicy comes out. So all roads lead to Rome to my website to people getting on my email list. Okay.

Andrea Nordling 50:54
I think that that's clear. So I'm gonna move on from that one. But I do want to say those transcripts, it's a lot of words that have been said on this podcast, they can be repurposed in lots of different ways thinking strategically here. Do you think that any of those transcripts get turned into email broadcasts? For example, I email a lot. Do you think that any of those make it into email broadcasts, of course, they do even have the rough outline going for a book that's coming from these podcasts on transcripts. So just imagine of what like, really take yourself years on the road, what a huge asset you're creating for yourself, for your business of things that you own. This is your property that you own, when you're creating over time, consistently, little piece by little piece, this database of content, that's such a good use of our time. As business owners, these weeks are gonna pass by either way, if we're doing a little bit every single week, we can grow such an immense asset to repurpose in our business in the future. So good. So I love the podcast for that. I think that it is an insanely valuable resource to be building for website authority. Should be honest. Now video, I kind of said this already. Some people consider video productions as podcasts. I'm not really sure. I don't get that. That doesn't actually make sense to me. But some people call a recurring YouTube show a podcast, it maybe it is, I don't know, I think of podcasts as audio only. But this is a consideration that you need to make. Are you doing video? And are you putting it on something like YouTube? Or rumble or your website or all of the above? Are you just doing audio? How do you decide my answer is this Do what you will consistently produce. That's the only factor here as far as I'm concerned. I don't do video, because I don't watch me or that. Let's just be very clear. I also liked the freedom to record podcast episodes at 5am. With bedhead or from our RV we travel a ton. So I'm recording episodes from a random Airbnb closet sometimes, or an RV. The commitment to do video would stress me out endlessly and caused me to probably bail on it just because of the logistics of that. So it was never a consideration for me to do video. But if video is really simple and streamlined for you, and that's what you'd like to create. Of course, then it's even more purposeful for you as YouTube videos or rumble videos or on your social media or on your website, whatever if that's low hanging fruit for you. Or if you're already creating videos on any of those platforms or any videos like that you can repurpose them as podcast episodes. So if your videos are good or informative and are valuable to your dream clients, you should be repurposing the audio as a podcast, in my opinion, make it easy for yourself, what is the low hanging fruit for you? What will you consistently produce, make it fun for yourself, don't make it a grind. Of course, to some degree, learning something new and undertaking a project like this will be not fun every minute. But we can make it as fun as possible by you know, playing to our strengths here. That's what I'm trying to say. All right. Now when it comes to platforms to host your podcast on and outsourcing and all of those logistics, I am going to tell you what I have learned in the last year and a half. Like I said, I wanted to learn how to do everything myself so that I could outsource it. Meaning I want that's my process. For me, I want to know the big picture here. I want to know what the components are are going to be for the project so that I can, from a bird's eye view, kind of wrap my mind around how that is going to go. And then I can get to work on figuring out how I'm going to tweak that to work for me. That's my process in my brain. So for me, like I said, I bought some courses on podcasting. I watched them. I let my subconscious mind kind of work through the I think of it like a like a Candyland board. Because I think about it. I like let my mind go through the Candyland board and figuring out like where the little mud holes were gonna be where we were gonna get stuck so we could go around them. It's as a dorky example but seriously what I think I have in my mind, and I had an idea of all the moving pieces, but I knew how I could do that myself if I had to. So then since I knew I wasn't going to do most of this myself. I had great quote Questions to ask to potential podcast producers that I was talking to about bringing on and hiring to produce the show. So what the heck is a Podcast Producer, you might ask? Well, let me tell you a Podcast Producer is an angel from heaven. That's what the Podcast Producer is. Because they know how to set up all of the platforms, how to get your show indexed with the different platforms, they

Andrea Nordling 55:23
know the timeline of that. They know how to edit the episodes, create the intros and the outros, and make it sound professional and take out all of your arms and ahhs if you want them to, and just make it sound good. So for me, that was definitely something I wanted to invest some monetary resources into outsourcing, I didn't want to do any of that. I love to know that I can do it. And I want to be very clear that I know how to edit an episode if I need to. If it comes into a pinch, and I have to do it, I can do it. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to spend my time doing that every single week. In fact, I have outsourced this entire creation of this podcast from the beginning because I knew that that's what I wanted to do. But since I knew the different steps of the process, and I knew what was going to be happening, I could ask good questions to these potential producers. So I'm gonna give you an example to my current Podcast Producer who's amazing. She brought me through what a setup is for a new podcast for her clients, typically. So on one of our first meetings, she said, step one is this step two, is that so three? And I understood where she was going. I said, Okay, well, I know that you usually use she had told me that she uses the platform Libsyn li B S O n, which is a very common podcasting platform that most people use. And the way that podcasting works is is kind of different than most other mediums in the fact that you have your podcast host platform. And then that is where you upload your content to. And it gets distributed to all of the other apps basically, through that platform. So it'll go to Google podcasts. And it'll go to Spotify. And it'll go to Apple podcasts. And it'll go to Pandora and all of the places from this one central hub that you set up one time, and then you set up those accounts. This is getting a little bit in the weeds, but you set up those accounts with with Apple and get approved through Apple and you get approved through Spotify, and you get approved through Google and all of that. And once you have done that, which is what a Podcast Producer does for you if you need them to then you just are uploading to this one host platform every week. And it's automatically dispersing at the frequency that you want it to when you want it published to all the other places, which is where your listeners will then be subscribing and getting the show. So she talked about Lipson being the platform, the host platform that most of her people use, but I because I had gone through some courses and had dug into this a little bit knew that I wanted to use Buzzsprout bu ZZ SPR o UT, which I will link to and you don't need to write this down. I'll link to all of these links in the show notes of this episode. But I knew that I wanted to. This is funny, as I'm realizing this, I'm like, oh, Sharon, you're gonna be listening to this. As she edits the episode, so I'm telling I'm talking all about this process of working together, and then you get to edit it. I love it. So insurance amazing. By the way, Buzzsprout was the platform that I wanted to use. And the reason I wanted to use it is because it my brain had been noodling on something that really bothered me about podcasts. And it had been plaguing me for a few months as this was gestating. Remember, we had a long runway luxurious amounts of time for this podcast to be gestating in my brain. And the thing that was really bothering me was that I don't like it when I listen to a podcast episode that talks about something that's happening in real time. And I can't do the thing, like, how do I wanna explain this, like the intro, the outro, or whatever call to action is in that episode is timely. And it doesn't make sense for the time that I'm listening to it, like I'm listening to an episode from a year ago. And the host does not adequately explain the timeliness of it. I don't know if I'm articulating that very well. But here's what was bothering me. It's like, I do very specific launches. I do webinars, I do free trainings, I do things that I want to talk about on the podcast that are very time sensitive. And I don't want the podcast experience in the future if someone listens to it a year from now to be different, because I'm talking about this time sensitive thing. It was something that was really bothering me, because I was like, how do we solve that there has to be a way to solve it. And since I had that intention to solve this problem, I came across somebody talking about Buzzsprout. And they were talking about how it had this feature called dynamic content. And what dynamic content is, is it is an intro and an outro which is what I use it for that you can how do I want to explain this Sharon uploads the raw or like the finished episode content of where I'm starting from saying hello until I say goodbye. And then the the intro and the outro that you hear with the music on the front and the back end. We can change at any time.

Andrea Nordling 59:54
So what Buzzsprout allows us to do is it allows us to upload an intro and an outro and any time If we want to change it, it will change it for all of the episodes. So for example, when you hear me talking about an upcoming free training that I'm doing, or an upcoming webinar or a workshop, or that the doors are gonna be opening for the profitable nutritionist program, whatever it is, that is coming up in real time, I will have probably mentioned it on the episode as well. But you'll hear the exact specifics of it in the outro at the end, because when that is over, then we change the outro back to the original, which is usually how to get the free course and how to get on my email list. So that makes so much sense in my brain. Because if somebody finds an episode, that's from a year ago, and they love it, and they're listening to that episode, I want them to know about something that I have coming up in the future, if I have a free training coming up that they can register for I want everyone listening to any episode to be able to hear that stuff in real time. Does that make sense? I feel like I might not be articulating this very well. But hopefully you're getting what I'm saying here. So because that was a problem that I knew I wanted to solve, gave myself lots of time to think about it. I had found Buzzsprout I had looked into that a little bit. And so I said to Sharon, have you used Buzzsprout? She said no, nobody that I work with uses Buzzsprout. I said, Well, I want to use it. And here's why. And so I introduced that to her. She's like, Oh my gosh, that sounds really cool. I haven't used that. And we've been using Buzzsprout ever since. So my point in saying that is first of all, it's an amazing, it's like a really it just maybe I am way too OCD. And maybe other people don't care about that. But for the way that my brain works and my personal neuroses that I hold dear, I really appreciate the dynamic content in Buzzsprout. So I love it. It's been great as a user. But also, I want to just point out that because I knew some things about the process already, I knew what questions to ask to potential producers. And I feel like that whole process has gone a lot smoother, because she wasn't having to explain to me every step of the way, exactly what we were doing. I had in broad strokes an idea of what we were doing. So there you have it, I think it's good to know how to do the things if you have to do them, if you're gonna hire them out. Not to say that you have to do that either. I know a lot of people that edit their own podcast, and they do all of this themselves, which is also totally fine. But you know, I think in the long term of your business, you probably don't want to be the person that is spending an hour every week editing your episodes, I don't think that that's probably the best use of your time and your bandwidth. And so I think that investing and having somebody else do it for you, from the very beginning is really a way to make this a more approachable project, because there's still going to be plenty and creating a podcast, there's still plenty on the back end for you to do. Even if you're not the one editing the episodes, you are doing the description and the title, and you're outlining them and you're figuring out what episode is coming out when and for me, I'm figuring out what do I want to be teaching that correlates with what I am doing in other aspects of my business. So if I'm launching the mastermind, I want to be talking about podcast episodes that are higher level for higher earning students because that's who the mastermind launch is going to be for. If I am coming up on a profitable nutritionist program opening enrollment period, then I want to be talking about concepts that are going to be for that person that is ready to be starting to make money to work with clients and consistently generate $10,000. That's who that program is for. So I am even though I'm not the one editing the episodes and actually doing the nuts and bolts of it from week to week, I'm still spending considerable time and bandwidth, planning the episodes planning the order of them figuring out exactly what I want to be teaching, and that so all that to say you will have plenty on your plate. When it comes to creating a podcast, I would suggest making it easier on yourself by having a professional that knows exactly how to make it sound the best to do the editing and the uploading and the scheduling and all of that. So our current workflow is that I record the episode. And then I upload it in a shared folder that goes to share in the producer. And she has a form for me to put in all the specifics like what the description is what the show notes page is the link to that what the title is, all of that stuff goes into a sheet that we both have access to. So I upload it, and then I don't think about it again. She takes care of everything else and makes sure that it goes out on schedule. And then it sounds great. Which is wonderful. Because I that's just gold. Solid Gold saves me hours each week and for sure. The quality of the show is way better on your end, I promise. So to find a producer, here's what I did,

Andrea Nordling 1:04:25
because I know you're gonna be wondering this, how do I find a Podcast Producer? Well, first of all ask around to other podcasters that you might know on who they use because I just got a personal recommendation from a friend who said, Sharon's amazing. This is what you need to call and that's all I need to hear. So I did. You can also however, look on upwork.com I'll have this linked up in the show notes as well up W O RK upwork.com Which is where high quality freelancers post their hourly rate and projects that they're looking for. You can also post a job on there and invite people to look at it and then they can apply if it's something they want to take on. There are a lot and lots and lots of really experienced good quality freelance podcast producers on Upwork. So that had I not had a fabulous recommendation from a friend, I would have gone on to Upwork. And I would have spent a little bit of time posting a thoughtful job description, and interviewing a few people and test driving them. I would recommend if you hire someone that doesn't have a recommendation, that you know, personally, I would have them edit a few episodes, and do some testing for you prior to actually publishing so that you know that you trust them and that the quality is what you want. And again, if you're giving yourself luxurious amounts of time to create this content, that shouldn't be a problem. Right. Okay, hour and eight minutes in. That was a lot. I have a lot to say about podcasting, this has been such a fun year, I have to say, if you're considering starting a podcast, I'm sure you just got a lot to think about in this episode. So like I said, the show notes will have links to everything that I mentioned. So refer to that page for anything that you need to go back to. If this is something that's on the shelf for you. Just let it marinate, let it percolate for a while at the ideas come forth. And then you can always come back to this later, listen to it again, and go get the links on that page. But seriously a year of podcasting, I am just celebrating over here, I have had such a huge idea bank brewing for these episodes, and I have an even bigger bank of future episodes coming your way that I'm really excited to be working on. So there's no stopping this train, I know that I said I was willing to do it for one to two years without getting any results. And you might be wondering if it's been a year of podcasting without results, of course not know, many, many new students in the profitable nutritionist program have come from this podcast, have told me that this is how they found me this is how they found the program. And then like I said, my existing students tune in many of them every week and get even more efficient at making money in their practice as well, because of the repetition of what we talked about here on the podcast, which is a lot of times a another repetition of something we've coached on recently, because I shared with you that workflow as well. It's just it's always good to remind, we don't always have to be teaching something new, we can be reminding the same stuff and a new way a little bit, a little bit different lens that we teach through. And that's not a problem either. So of course, there have been incredible results that have come from this podcast. And I was totally willing to do this for a year or two without having that happen without having the listenership grow, and the subscribers grow. And without having people coming in and being raving fans, and I will just continue to get better. And I would have if I was getting no results keep evaluating that. And being curious about why it wasn't growing or why it wasn't getting results. And I would iterate the strategy behind it accordingly. So luckily, and happily, I'm very ecstatic that this has been a very fruitful use of my time for the last year. But if it wasn't, I still wouldn't be quitting. I would just be getting better at it. And I offer that to you as well. Like I said, it's kind of a meta concept. It's you could apply this to a project like a podcast creation, or your business as a whole. If it isn't working. Do you quit? Or do you figure out what isn't working and you fix it, I highly recommend you just figure out what isn't working, and you fix it. Sometimes our timeline is just a little bit off on how long we project or think that it's going to take for something to happen, versus how long it actually takes. So don't quit. Okay, your timeline just might be a little bit off. Just no big deal. All right, let's land this plane. What else? Anything else I needed to say? No, I think I said everything. As long as you actually have something to say, then I suggest you making a podcast too. kind of full circle there. If you have a stance on something, you're ready to talk about it consistently.

Andrea Nordling 1:08:44
Even if you don't have results for a year or two, go for it. Seriously, podcasting is amazing. It's a great way to reach people, it's a great way for people to be able to easily on their phone, revisit the concepts that you teach and the things that landed for them. You'll be amazed at how many people will download an episode and listen to it over and over again. And then they will tell you oh my gosh, this one thing. I've listened to it five times. It's my go to when I'm having data issue. And you're like, oh my gosh, you Wow, that's incredible. I created this thing one time, and it's helping you over and over and over again. And your clients will tell you this, your potential clients will tell you this, it's the best feeling. So if you're considering a podcast, and you have something to say you're willing to do it consistently go for it seriously the way that you articulate those concepts to your clients and uses your brain in a new way it's going to make you get so much sharper, and your marketing in general is going to get so much better. And you'll be so much more direct and compelling in the way that you speak to your best people when you consistently do that, and you speak to them every week on your podcast. So do it. That's what I'm saying. One last reminder. There'll be top of mind for you when you create your podcast as well and you'll be thinking about which is reviews. So please subscribe leave a review for the show. Oh every single one helps so much and then let me know when your podcast launches and I will be the first one leaving a review for you as well happy podcasting my friend cheers to another year