Buzzsprout Conversations
Welcome to Buzzsprout Conversations, the show where we dive into the real-life stories of podcasters in the middle of their podcasting journey.
You'll hear stories from famous podcasters as well as everyday podcasters, just like you, share stories about how podcasting has impacted them and the things they've learned.
Buzzsprout Conversations
Sarah Li-Cain: Building a Profitable Freelance and Podcasting Career
In this episode, I am joined by Sarah Li-Cain, who has built a successful career in podcasting and freelancing. And you might recognize her from some of the videos on the Buzzsprout YouTube Channel!
Sarah shares how she transitioned from a full-time teaching role in China to a freelancer in the US. She shares the discipline and commitment that have been pivotal in her success as a freelance writer and podcaster. As well as the challenges she faced - juggling parental responsibilities and making her side hustle work.
Sarah leaves us with valuable nuggets on content repurposing and podcasting in business. She explains how to maximize the potential of each platform, providing tips on securing podcasting clients as brands increasingly enter this space. Overcoming fear when launching a podcast and the necessity of a solid strategy in content creation are also discussed. Regardless of where you are in your freelance career, Sarah's experiences and advice offer valuable insights.
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Everybody, welcome back to Buzzsprout Conversations. Today I'm joined by Sarah Lee Cade. Sarah is a freelance writer and podcaster. She's worked with a lot of financial companies and institutions that you would recognize, but if you're a Buzzsprout YouTube watcher, you've been with us for a while. You'll recognize Sarah from some of our other videos, since we've had a chance to work with her for many years now.
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about Sarah's transition from being a teacher to being a freelancer, how she got started in writing and then in podcasting. We talk about whether or not brands should be podcasting and what they should be thinking about when they enter the podcasting space. We talk a lot about repurposing content and the appropriate strategies you should use to make sure that content you're creating performs well on each platform. And then we talk a lot about the psychology of creating content online comparing ourselves to other creators, the fears that we have when we're first publishing something, or just some of those intrusive thoughts that we may have. I hope you really enjoy this conversation. I always enjoy talking to Sarah, so I hope you do as well. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me on, because I did a chat with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've been friends for a long time. We've met through the Jacksonville Podcaster, so you night meetup grew and then we've done some work together with Buzzsprout. But for everyone who doesn't know who you are or doesn't recognize you from our channel, can you tell us a little bit about your career? We got you here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was actually a full-time elementary school teacher for about a decade and then I transitioned into freelance writing. I also now produce podcasts for companies, and so I mostly write and produce podcasts in the finance and business industry. So I've been doing that full-time since about 2016,. So about seven years, which feels really long in internet years it does.
Speaker 1:Internet years are like dog years.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:What convinced you to leave teaching and start a freelancing career?
Speaker 2:So I was freelance writing as a side hustle on the side because I was just really bored.
Speaker 2:In China, you have a lot of free time, I feel like as an expat.
Speaker 2:This was before I had kids, and so I really didn't have a big commute. Things were really convenient, so running errands was pretty quick, and so it left me with a lot of free time, and so I started freelance writing for fun, and so that was the thing that I had going on for about four years before my husband decided to move to the US, and so really what started the catalyst for full-time freelancing was I wasn't sure if my teaching license would actually work in the US, and so I gave myself six months to get settled in the country I had. You know, my son was about one-ish at the time, so I was a primary caretaker, so it was really like setting things up for myself in this country that I've never lived in before, and so I thought, okay, if this crashes and burns like I just wanted to make up to pay rent, then I'll go back to teach you how to figure it out. But if it works, then it works. And six years or seven years later, here I am.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, you know. It's funny. It's recently I realized like so many of the people online who are like you should just start a side hustle, like you could do this to 10X your productivity. You can do this to, like you know, get the body you've always wanted. They're always like 24 and they're single and they don't have a kid yet and I'm like 100%. Everything you're talking about is very impressive. You're very driven, you're very motivated. I'm very impressed. I also know a lot of the tips and tricks you're giving just are very difficult to translate when you have a one-year-old and you might be waking up every few hours to take care of them, or just like there's a lot of obligations once you start having children.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of fast-forwarding to like seven years. There's a lot of work within those seven years, or 10 if you count the side hustle, and so you know, I lived in a country where services were pretty cheap, so I had a nanny that was watching my son five days a week. I didn't really have to cook dinner, so a lot of those things were kind of taken off my plate and so I did have time to devote to the side hustle and before I moved to the US I didn't actually spend a lot of time on it. I would say like five hours a week, which is which is still a lot of. You have young kids so you know in retrospect I probably could have not done as much as I did.
Speaker 2:But again, like you said, I'm a pretty driven type A person and so it really was a lot of conversations with my husband, like, especially before we move back to the US, I'm like if I want to give it, have a go at this, I do need to devote a little bit more time or be more strategic, and so there's a lot of conversations about our schedules, how that was going to work. He took on some sort of extra like errands. He watched my son, sometimes when I really needed a nap in the middle of the day. You know things like that. So, again, it's just there's a lot of conversation needs to happen and yeah, it does make it easier if you're single, but you know you can do it if you have a kid or if you're married or your partnership things like that, but it does require a lot of logistics, it requires a lot of discipline.
Speaker 2:It was really really difficult when I first moved to the US, because we knew no one in the town that we lived in and so I also was being very idealistic like, oh, my baby will sleep in my lap and I'll just type it. And yeah, you're laughing Like I could laugh at it now. But you know, seven years ago this was like my ideal kind of work day which didn't work, and so it was a lot of like lessons of, ok, this doesn't work, what can I do? So it's a lot of like self-reflection, being observant of what was happening or what was working, what was not, before I really found my stride. I don't think in total transparency, I don't think I feel like I found my stride until maybe like three years ago.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people will. I mean, we're going to talk a lot about podcasts. A lot of people who are watching probably watching this have podcasts or starting podcasts. They heard you just say you started freelancing and the first thing you did was start devoting about five hours a week to it. How did you translate five hours of focused time into actually making money? Because I mean, I think for me, hearing five hours and then actually turning that into any amount of money, let alone an amount I was feeling excited about, that seems like a pretty tall order. So what did you do to set yourself up for success there?
Speaker 2:The first thing I did was do everything that I probably shouldn't have been doing under the sun, because there's so many things you can do, right, like freelancing there's just just, and then, with podcasting, there's just the bazillion things you can do. And so in the beginning, it was a lot of things that I thought would move the needle, like, oh, let me create a beautiful logo, let me set up a website, things like that. And so it was really learning what were the actual things that move the needle? And so, at its core, if you're freelancing, what makes it successful is having a sale. Right, like you're trying to offer your services whether it's writing or podcast production, whatever it is to a client and then say yes, and they pay you. That's really basically at the core. And so it took me a long time to think, okay, like, if I want money, if I want someone to pay me, what is it that I actually have to do? And so a lot of it was starting conversations with potential clients, and so a lot of it was cold emails at the time when I was overseas, because the time differences were a little too huge for me to call. But you can call. I used to send physical postcards to different content agencies. That got a couple of responses.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if that would work now, but this was also a while Again, a lot of years in OG or in internet years, and so I did a lot of that.
Speaker 2:It was a lot of like here's a numbers game let me find people or companies or editors that were that I felt like would both likely say yes or at least continue a conversation with me and just keep doing that. And then, yeah, it was just like one email after another, one phone call after another, and then pitching my services off, like doing really good work, getting references, things like that. So it was like a lot of the same things over and over again. And then you do get to a point where you can add in the things. And so, you know, I did increase my work hours. Five hours Sometimes it's just not enough for what you want to do, and so I did increase my work hours, mostly because some projects demanded more time than others. I also started going to conferences or started getting on Skype calls or Zoom calls with people, just kind of networking that way Again, just to build up that network of referrals or people who are willing to hire me, so a lot of that.
Speaker 1:That's super interesting. I feel like one of the things I've noticed is that you also targeted a pretty lucrative niche, like you've moved right into financial services, right? Was that just a natural fit? Was that something that you knew about, or was that by accident?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not, absolutely not, yeah, yeah. So when I first started as a side hustle, I remember reading this website I think it's called Make a Living Writing, and so one of the tips was like find what you are an expert at or what you already do in your day job, to kind of transition to writing. And so I was a teacher and I was like, great, I can find some way to use my teaching skills to write for a company. And so I started writing for textbook companies. I did like test prep quizzes things, different things like that, and so that worked out pretty well.
Speaker 2:And so how I transitioned into finance writing was, very accidentally, someone reached out to me and said hey, you are overseas, I need someone who's not living in the US to write about PayPal and how to use it to transfer money from different currencies, and so I wrote about that Again. This was also the time when I was networking back, when I used Facebook a lot more. There's a lot of Facebook groups that you can kind of network and chat with people, and so a lot of the people that I was chatting with, I noticed oh, you guys are doing pretty well and you're writing about money, like maybe.
Speaker 2:And I was really just kind of curious. I'm like, okay, I don't really have any background in this, but I'm curious enough to figure out, like, is there something from here? Will someone be willing to hire me? And so I thought, well, I already wrote an article about PayPal. Is there something, somebody else or another company that might be interested in my experience overseas for me to kind of to get an it? And so that's how I started with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the reasons it stands out to me is a lot of times when I imagine this like freelance lifestyle. I think I'm going to be a travel blogger. Yeah, I'm going to be talking about like all the fun, cool, easy things I'm doing while travel, and food are like the two most difficult things to make a living blogging or doing video or any kind of content around Because so many people want to be doing it and also there's not a ton of money to be made selling more travel services, selling more food products or you know different recipes or something. But financial services, there's a lot of margin there and that means the budgets for getting really talented writers on board are often quite a bit better.
Speaker 2:I think it also depends on the type of content you want. There are some companies that are in the financial services industry that may not pay a lot. It could be because you're just starting. It could be they're losing money and they're devoted more resources to something else. But, yeah, there's definitely niches that are more lucrative than others Travel, I mean. Obviously the last couple of years is probably not the best one, but I think there are lots of industries that kind of cycle, and so food can be kind of one that goes up and down.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of other ones. Parenting can be like a good one, depending on sort of whether you're at for magazines or companies, and I do feel really lucky. Like finance does have its cycles too, but the cycles are more the product. So I remember back in 2020 when interest rates were super low for mortgages that's all I was writing was about how to refinance or when people were trying to get loans for their business. There was a lot of that. It depends on kind of what you're doing products within the industry as to what is good and what it's not, but I think I mean I don't want to obsess over the finance industry, but I am at least aware, just because I'm in it, that what's happening and what's not. And so if I feel like I need to pivot or kind of move a little bit in a different direction, I can start to make those moves.
Speaker 1:That's a really good point. I would like to before we move on. There was a story that really stood out to me in another podcast I listened to about you. Can you tell me about the day that you resigned from your job as a teacher and decided you were going to give freelancing a go?
Speaker 2:Yes, oh my gosh. So I had built up a pretty steady recurring income that would have almost replaced my teacher's salary before I had quit. So I was like this is a sign. This is a sign that I can do this. The six months is going to go pretty well. And so I handed in my vaccination, or you don't hand in your intent to renew your contract.
Speaker 2:So I was going to end my contract and so after that, I think two or three of my regular clients basically decided that they didn't need me anymore. So for several reasons one of them, I think they were restructuring. It was a lot of different reasons, not anything to do with me. And so then I remember freaking out. This was at work. I got those emails and I freaked out and I was like, oh my god, this is it, I'm done, I'm going to be broke, I'm going to be homeless All the worst case scenarios. And so it was really scary. That was my first experience realizing, hey, freelancing is going to have these ups and downs and this is literally your first one. But I committed to sticking out for those first six months, partially because I didn't have a choice. I couldn't work in the US quite yet, and so, yeah, I did stick it out. I'm happy I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too. So how did you get into podcasting? You start with freelancing, you're writing, you're building up a book of business, you take it full time. Where does podcasting enter the picture?
Speaker 2:It never really crossed my mind to do it, probably until I'd say end of 2017 or around that time. I've always been really a fan of podcasts. I think the first one I ever listened to was the Ricky Gervais show. This was back in 2007, I believe.
Speaker 1:It was an OG podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was just like I loved it. But I never imagined doing it myself and I remember beating Jared easily. So one of the co-founders of the podcast we went at another conference. He's like, yeah, you should sort of podcast it. I'm like, haha, no way. And so I remember he has his own podcast and I was a guest on it just very randomly walked by his booth and put a mic in front of my face and I started talking and it was really fun. I was like, oh, that's a really fun experience and I thought, okay, maybe I'll think about it. I'll think about it Because at the time I still had, I had a blog that's no longer.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to kind of do something other than writing. I felt like I was burning out a little bit on it, and so it really wasn't until I'd say 2017, 2018, until a friend started talking about wanting to do a podcast and he basically convinced me because he was a sound engineer in his day job, and so he's like I'll take care of all the tech and I'm like, great. I'm like, because that was actually the barrier for me was like I don't want to have to figure out what mic to use. I don't want to figure out what like recording equipment to use, how to edit. That was not something that I was necessarily interested in figuring out, but I was really good at like planning content, writing outlines, coming up with ideas. That I know are my strengths, and so it was really great because he had the technical kind of know-how and I had the content sort of strategy know-how, and so we worked pretty well together for about a year and a half and he had to leave just for personal reasons.
Speaker 2:So that was beyond the dollar, and so I continued that for several years and I remember when he left I really had a long think about what I wanted the show to be, because before that we weren't really monetizing. It was kind of an experiment into podcasting and whether or not we liked it, and so I immediately thought, hey, why not use this as a portfolio piece? Because if I really enjoy this, why not get paid for it? Like I'm sure there's companies that would want somebody to pay me to podcast, and so that's what I did, and it turned into a kind of different branch of my freelancing. So now I'd say like half would be podcasting stuff for clients and then half is writing stuff for clients.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about some of these podcast clients that you've landed. I mean a few I know of you obviously have worked with Buzzsprout. We've had the opportunity to work together. We've done some podcasts for SoFi. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that one actually it was through agency and one of the community coordinators actually reached out to me because one of the first things I did when I was more serious with wanting to be a pay for podcasting was I put podcast producer in my LinkedIn title. I was like, surely this will legitimize me, right, even though I've only done beyond the dollar, and so I think that may have led to refining me. I'm not really sure, but she's like hey, I'm really. You have a lot of experience in writing for finance brands. I see, have your podcast, are you interested in doing this?
Speaker 2:And so I really relied on the strength of the clients that I had on the writing side, because I worked with some pretty big names and so I kind of use that to my advantage. And so when I started reaching out to other brands or I talked to existing clients that I was writing articles for, I'd be like hey, are you considering podcasting or do you already have a content team that's already starting a podcast? I have this experience. We've already worked together and I think we worked really well together. You know that I'm reliable. Are you willing to kind of give me a chance and be on this team?
Speaker 2:And so that's how I did that. And yeah, working with SoFi was really great. It was a really good experience to work with the big, one of my first big brands that I've worked with. It was a good experience to actually look at what I did for Beyond the Dollar and be like, hey, I actually kind of know what I'm doing. It gave me a lot of confidence to kind of pursue other companies or existing clients to produce their podcasts for them.
Speaker 1:I think if I was watching this right now, it would be very easy for me to hear like step one decide you want to be a freelancer. Step two start targeting some companies. Step three something for profit. It feels like there's a missing step and, as somebody who worked with you before, I'll give you my side of the story and what you did to convince us like oh wow, we should definitely work with Sarah. You came to the Jack's Podcaster meetup and I think I, just in front of the 30, 40 people who are there, said hey, and if anybody knows somebody who wants to be a writer, you know I'm writing all the stuff on the blog and I'd like someone to help, so if anyone knows somebody, let me know. Afterward you came up and were like, hey, if you want, you don't need to hire someone full-time, I could do some freelancing for you.
Speaker 1:At that first stage, often, like, a lot of people will say I'm a good writer, and a lot of people now will say I can do social and I can do video and I know SEO.
Speaker 1:They say the things that they maybe even put them out of the like them profile, but you want to be able to validate it and the thing that you had that really convinced me was that you'd been podcasting on beyond the dollar and it sounded really good and you really, you obviously understood what you were talking about.
Speaker 1:And I remember, probably 30 seconds in to the first podcast I started listening to, I went, oh yeah, she's really professional, she knows what she's doing.
Speaker 1:And then you had some things on your website, the ad, a portfolio, where like, hey, here's five things I've written I'm really proud of, and I could click through and read them until I went, oh, she's a really good writer and there's something so important. And I think, as a creator, we can lose this and also because we are very hard on ourselves but creating some artifacts, some proof of, hey, here's what I'm capable of, whether it's just a paper you wrote in college or it's a blog post you wrote for a family business or a personal blog, no matter what it is, having something online you can say I'm proud of this, whether it be a podcast or videos or written, be able to put that out there is really excellent proof that I know what I'm talking about and I can actually do this, and that's so much more valuable than having nothing, even if it's not like the perfect piece of writing or work you've ever done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank you, thank you appreciate that. I was like, oh, what's he gonna say? Yeah, I think that's key. And I remember I was mentoring someone last year who had done sort of the legwork and was ready to kind of launch their freelancing sort of venture. And they were really intimidated and I said it doesn't matter what the company name is. I mean, I honestly started my podcast production, freelancing, with my own podcast, right, like you were saying, like there isn't sort of an outside entity really validating that show. But I made it the best that I could. I knew what went into a good show. I partnered with someone who was really good at the technical side and knew how to make a sound good, knew the right mics to use, and so I made sure to make it sound as professional, just as good, if not better, than some of the you know the pay, the you know NPR offerings, let's say out there.
Speaker 2:And with writing, I didn't start with much. I remember writing my own samples, like I remember when I pitched these textbook companies I didn't have anything and so I felt like, oh, chicken or the egg, like what comes first, right, but I'm like, no, I'll just write. I'll write like sample quiz questions, or I had worksheets that I wrote for my students back in the day and I use those as portfolio pieces because, at the end of the day, if you do want a freelance writing or podcasting, what a potential client really wants to look at is are you fit, are you a good fit for the job? And those are. There's two things that I feel like where you are a good fit. Number one do you have subject matter expertise? Like, are you, let's say, for example, for me, like I'm published in like bank rate, I write a lot about mortgages, like I said before, right, so that's kind of proof that I am a subject matter expert in that topic. So that's a good. That might be a good fit for another, like another mortgage company. And the number two is like do I have the skills to be able to execute on a project? Right, whatever the project may be. So if it's you're creating social media posts for a company, you're writing an article, you're trying to produce a podcast or write a script, is there some way you can prove that you have those skills necessary? And it could be a podcast episode, it could be you write your own script, you could.
Speaker 2:This is what I did a lot too to kind of grow. My freelance business was name drop companies I used to work with right. So, for example, lending Tree is a pretty big name in the finance space. So I worked for Lending Tree for a little while, and so, at the mere mention that I worked for them for a lot of other finance companies, we were like, oh yeah, like she's pretty legit If she can work well with a big company such as that, then yeah, maybe I will take a chance and hire her. So that's really I would say if you are looking to freelance, if you're looking to grow your freelance business, you wanna turn it from a side hustle to a full-time thing. That's what I would do.
Speaker 1:So you've done podcasts, you've done written work, you've also done webinars. How in your mind especially since you've done like the same type of content and all these different areas in your mind how do these fit together, especially, maybe, from a brand perspective?
Speaker 2:I would say, because I'm in the finance or business industry, all of these tie together and if you think about it, I think maybe it's obvious to me because I kind of have the insider knowledge. But a lot of these companies use all these different pieces of content as a goal to bring in audience or potential clients. And so there's clients that would prefer a webinar, there's clients that prefer downloading an ebook and reading it and then maybe reaching out to the company, or they're on a business trip but they prefer to listen to podcasts. So all of these are just pieces of the content pie to draw in audience. And so even let's say you're an indie podcaster, maybe it's just not a podcast.
Speaker 2:Maybe you do a webinar on I don't know, like if you're doing a podcast on like knitting cat sweaters, you know you could do a webinar like here's how you make a pattern right. Or here's an article, like you can use your episode transcript to create an article. So these are all kind of different parts of it. I don't feel I feel like now with content. I don't wanna limit myself to the specific types of content, because I think we live in such a like multimedia world or a world where companies are always trying to get your attention in any way, shape or form. It's really important to kind of dabble in every little thing. You can specialize in things eventually, but I think it's really still important just to say like, hey, I do webinars and they're live, but we can also record this and stick it in a podcast, right, things like that.
Speaker 1:How do you, would you determine, maybe, which of the pieces to start with I guess there is gonna be overlap between you did a video? Is that the script is gonna probably be similar to the outline for the blog post which has a, you know, similar to the outline for maybe that webinar that you may do later, but is there a place that you start when you're trying to do repurposing?
Speaker 2:I first don't try to do everything at once. I've made that mistake many, many times and I've, like, regretted it, and so I would say, even before repurposing, get really good at one part of it, and so I'm gonna assume most people watching or listening to this are into podcasting. So get really good at that first and then think of, like what is one thing I can repurpose from this, and it could be a blog post, and so a natural way to do that is to take a transcript and then repurpose it into a blog post, and then you get really good at that. Maybe you create a good template. You're pretty efficient at it, it's working for you.
Speaker 2:Then you can think about maybe like webinars, like okay, now this blog post got like a lot of attention. There's more I can say about this, and I really think that having a community discussion is much better than a podcast. Let me create a webinar from this. So I would take it one step at a time. Again, like my mistake was like I wanna do all the things all at the same time, which, if you can do that well, great. That wasn't my case, and so I really one of the biggest lessons I learned was I had to like really scale back and then kind of like step by step and kind of slowly move towards different types of content creation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I often hear people say like oh, all you have to do is film a video podcast, put that on YouTube. Take the audio, now that's an audio podcast. Transcribe that. Now you've got a blog post. Send that blog post out as a newsletter. Now cut that up tweets. Then next thing you do, turn those tweets, that video piece, now that short form video for TikTok, and Reels and YouTube. And I'm like, just repurposing that one time is, if you're spending five hours a week on your podcast or on your free lay, it's like that's your five hours, like that's not a inconsequential task to be like, oh, I just throw that up on YouTube and then I repurpose the audio as a podcast and then I make that a blog. Like that's your week. Your week is burned out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think one of the like, a very common misconception that I see is that, oh yeah, like, a blog is just a text form of your podcast. No, they're two different things. There are strategies that work for blogs that may not work for podcasts, or something that may work for TikTok won't work for Instagram, for example. And so, yeah, you're repurposing content, which is fine, but there still needs to be some sort of thought into, like, how can I make this transcript into a blog post? And it could require you putting in different you know all these are gonna be like putting in different subheadings, making a table of contents. If it's a really super long piece of content, it could be breaking up to like five part series, things like that. And then, if you translate to a newsletter, you can't just copy paste a blog post and stick in a newsletter.
Speaker 2:There needs to be some other intention behind it, cause I feel like the attitude and the intention which you put into a piece of content really kind of comes through to the other person on the other side, even though it may not be as obvious to you.
Speaker 2:Like, I know, there are times when I'm like you know, let me just get through this, let me post it, or you know, whatever it is, it doesn't get nearly as much engagement as if I put a slightly more thought into it as to how someone's gonna receive it on the other end, and so that's why I would say, like, try one thing at a time and see like there are definitely lots of like programs that allow you repurpose tweet like into tweets or threads, if you're into that now, or Instagram posts, but you know I would. I would also encourage you to have more, a little more intention behind the content, especially if your audience is in all these places, if they read blogs and listen to podcasts and are on all those social media platforms. You don't want it to sound or look the same, because then someone will know and they may not follow you much longer.
Speaker 1:I see this a lot. I think social is the place that this becomes the most obvious to me. When somebody is on LinkedIn and they're posting something that's 280 characters, you're like, oh, that was a tweet that you just copy and pasted over here Because? But LinkedIn, like longer content is much more common. And then you were over on Instagram and it's a screenshot of the tweet that they put in their grid and you start to feel like none of this is repurposed but none of it's native to the formats.
Speaker 1:And if it's not native, the downside is like you're not ever going to get that big outsized return. You know you're never going to be able to leverage your domain expertise with a piece of content that's created for a specific audience. That's why I really like the advice you gave. Like, get really good at one of these. It's not like you have to start totally from scratch the second time, but you want to be making sure. I'm tailoring this thing to be a blog post, and blog posts are easier to skim than podcasts, and blog posts have a little bit less of the personal story, even if the personality still comes through. Yeah, it's just not like a complete copy paste from one place that it gets dropped in somewhere else. It's super, you know, drag and drop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I do want to say, if we're talking about, if you're a podcaster and you want to grow your audience right, like you, one of the big advice is like, oh, I should be in all the places and yeah, you can, but you don't have to. I mean, I, if you kind of look online in my social media presence, like, my numbers are like small, right, like compared to somebody who I don't know, like Joe Rogan, or you know somebody who, like who has tens of thousands of followers, I think everybody's numbers are pretty small compared to Joe right.
Speaker 2:Like I don't have tens of thousands of followers. That's not like. Social media really wasn't my priority, but I got really good at like newsletters. I got really good at blogging back when I had a blog like I got really good at those things and so I just chose to focus my my content on that. I was not adamant. I didn't want to be on YouTube for my podcast. I just felt like videos are completely different medium. Yeah, I could again slap a video on YouTube or like slap my cover on YouTube and you know that's fine. But I wanted, like, for me, anything I create, I want to have some sort of intention behind it, whether it's for a client or my own stuff. And so I knew that if I couldn't put the time and energy into understanding the platform and experimenting with it and kind of getting feedback from it, then I wasn't going to do it, and so that's not for everyone. You know, if you want to be on the places, that's great, but for me it wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 1:I really just want to be intentional over the last few years We've seen a lot more brands kind of enter the podcasting space and you've helped a lot of these brands enter the podcasting space. What would you say to the business owner now who's thinking I probably am in my lay. I kind of been thinking about it. What questions should they be asking themselves as I think through? Is podcasting right for my business strategy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first question I think anyone should consider is are you? Are you creating a podcast because you think you should, or are you creating one because you do, you feel like it will help in your overall business strategy or marketing strategy? So I talked to quite a few people in marketing and in other brands where they just go oh yeah, because everyone's doing it. I should do it too, but but if there's no again intention behind it, if there's no thought as to how this is going to help, then I would say don't, don't do a podcast. There's no point in that sense. You're just kind of you're wasting money. You might as well spend it on something else that's working in your company. Because for bigger brands, what I've seen is podcasts are part of the overall content marketing strategy, and so there are ones where I work on for CEOs or like CFOs or kind of like the C suite, and that's really a brand building for their, for their like personal brand, and so part of it is an indirect benefit to the company. So if their personal brand is really good, it kind of goes hey, I'm associated with this company. Therefore, this company is going to look great.
Speaker 2:There's a lot, there's some that the podcasts are actually internal, so they're for their members or for people who subscribe to some sort of service or product that they have, and so it's an additional benefit as an educational resource.
Speaker 2:So that's part of that content strategy. So it is it's kind of like a paid, it's a it's part of a pay overall paid offering right. There's other ones where it's an aspirational piece of content. So, for example, I've helped work on an investing one, another investing podcast right now, and so part of their strategy is to bring on some really great guests, bring on some really great educational content so that they want to be the name that people think of when they open a Berkridge account. And so it's really thinking about like what is the purpose of this particular piece of this podcast and how is it going to feed into other parts of your business? And that does sometimes require a lot of thinking. But if, if you want to take podcasting seriously as part of your brain, as a part of, like you know, grow your, you know your profits or whatever it is, and you have to take it as I feel like you have to put that much thought into it, almost as much as like coming up with the podcast name.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of times, when people are asking questions about like, what category should I be in, or what name should I have, or what should my co host be like, when you start pulling a little bit more on those questions, what you realize is they're not 100% sure why they're starting a podcast. And maybe, if you even start pulling it even more, you hear why. I heard you can make a lot of money podcasting, maybe, or every business should be doing this. And so I just kind of keep hearing I should do it and so I'm doing it. And if you step back up for you, okay, well, let's get step one locked in, like what's the business strategy here? Or what's the personal strategy, what's the value, what's your why? And once you have that, the other things like the branding and the name and the logo and the co-hosts that there are gonna be, all that stuff starts being a lot easier once you have a clear, defined goal in mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I think, just hearing you talk about that, there's kind of two things I think about. Is one is the podcast cover art, or thinking about the host or the name. It's like a tangible proof that you're doing the work right and that's great. Right, you do need that.
Speaker 2:But thinking about the idea, thinking about the strategy, they're not necessarily as tangible as those things I just talked about before, and so I think a lot of people myself included, I've done this in the past where I go, okay, great, I need to come up with a logo because that's what you can see, and so it's really again like peeling back, like what actually? What is at the core of what I'm doing? And that is the strategy. How does it feed into this overall content creation kind of thing I'm doing? Or how is this gonna help me overall make money? Am I gonna put ads, sponsorship, whatever? That may be right.
Speaker 2:And number two and I see this a lot of indie podcasters, I'd say more than businesses is that there's an element of fear and wanting that sense of control as to why somebody would think of a podcast name before, why they want to create a podcast or the concept of it.
Speaker 2:Because for me. Anyways, if I'm gonna come up with a concept and I'm gonna think of the audience that I want to target, there's that element of fear of, like, what if I'm wrong? Or what if, like, what I'm gonna create isn't actually gonna be targeting this audience, or what I'm gonna create is not good enough to be popular or create a really engaged audience. So you know what? Actually it's more fun to think about the cover art. It's more fun to think about who I'm gonna be a co-host with, rather than the kind of deeper stuff and not that there's anything wrong with that. Like we're all nervous when we release anything into the world, right, especially companies who are putting really like big dollars behind a podcast, right, we wanna make sure that there is some element of success, and so there's always gonna be that level of fear. But yeah, that's my two cents on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, the first time I started podcasting I felt so uncomfortable. And then the first time I started doing any video content, I felt super uncomfortable. Actually, I think also when I first started writing on the internet each one of them you feel like I only want to do it if it's going to be successful, and it is very uncomfortable to imagine. I'm gonna put a lot, I'm gonna put my best foot forward, I'm gonna write the best blog post I can, I'm gonna send the very best email to this client. But what if I get a rejection? What if my first and only comment I get on my blog is this stinks and that's it? Or, you know, people say that my podcast cover art is bad and my audio is doesn't work. Those fears pop, crop up. At least.
Speaker 1:What I've noticed to myself, at least through these three different times, has been there's safer things to consider, like what does the logo look like? Now I can spend a week working on the logo, because that doesn't nothing's out there to be critiqued. I can spend two, three weeks looking at equipment and I can watch all these YouTube videos about equipment and it's almost like. That's like akin to saying I want to lose weight. So I'm going to start going to the gym and spending three, four weeks picking out my running shoes or something.
Speaker 1:You want to get your feet into this. You want to start the thing that you say you're going to do, and no amount of prep will ever make that comfortable. At least, it's never made it comfortable for me. Every time we're pressing play or pressing record or pressing publish, eventually I'm like terrified that, oh, this thing is not even close to good enough. Every time I've been shocked at how much kindness there is on the internet because you see so much of the negativity. There's also just a lot of people who are like, wow, this is really good. I really enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for putting it together, and you realize there's a lot more positivity out there than I, at least, was telling myself beforehand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pretty sure we had this conversation a while back where it was the idea about our skills don't match our tastes.
Speaker 2:We have really good taste in what we want to do. May our skills don't quite match what we want to do yet, and I was very much a victim of that, where I'm like I want to do all the things. I remember this kind of relates. I remember I was in a sculpture class in college and I wanted to work with sheet metal and I wanted to create this really elaborate, massive, six foot tall kind of structure. And my professor was like I'm sure you can do this, I've seen you work really hard, but sheet metal is the most difficult thing to weld, and especially what you're trying to do. He's like maybe start small, maybe, because one of the aspects I want to do is actually like a well-dated, perfectly symmetrical cube with sheet metal. And looking back I'm like what was I thinking? But anyway, so he's like, why don't you just start welding a line and see how that works? Get to that line, then you can do a rectangle. Well, two pieces of rectangle or squares together. And so I was like, oh okay, and so what I really learned from that? And that I kind of carry to this day is it's fine to have really good taste. I'm not going to have set the bar really high, but let's kind of maybe set the expectation of what I can do a little bit lower, so not to say I suck, but maybe just say, okay, I can do this, but maybe at this 10%, and then kind of move up and up and up and up.
Speaker 2:And I've approached this in my freelancer crew where I kind of think of it as a step ladder or a stairs, and so when people talk about how I grew my freelance income, I go okay, well, the bottom of the stairs was my worksheets, and then the next step was I got published somewhere. I'm going to use that as my portfolio piece. And the next step was I'm going to aim to get work with a big company. Next up is now use that big company to get me bigger and bigger gigs. So it was like one step at a time and I feel like you can do that with podcasting as well or anything that you create.
Speaker 2:So for this, for Beyond the Dollar, it was honestly like a six episode. It was supposed to be a six episode experiment. My friend and I were like we were really interested in this, we wanted to try it out. But if by the end of six episodes we hate it, we hate each other, we hate the process, we can say we've given it six episodes and then we can move on with our lives, and so it obviously became like three years, like three years worth of shows, right. But it really was that experiment or that thinking of like let's just start small, give ourselves that wind, and then we can kind of like keep going if we need to.
Speaker 1:The taste is always ahead of our skill level is so so true. Like we all listen to NPR shows. You know people probably listen to cereal. And then you kind of imagine like that's the type of show I want to be making. We go out to eat at really nice restaurants, so that's the type of food I want to be cooking. And then when you get the reality of getting in a kitchen and starting to cook and you're like this doesn't taste anything like what I just got out at this nice restaurant.
Speaker 1:Well, there is a stair step process you're going to go through. You're going to iterate over time. You make lots of meals and you'll learn little things. You're going to make lots of podcasts. You'll learn little things and you never get better unless you start polishing. You never get better if you don't get that first client, even though ultimately you don't want to be doing worksheets for your entire freelancing career or you don't want to be doing beginner level podcasts and you don't want to be creating beginner level food. But all of those journeys are slowly stair stepping up publishing your work, getting feedback, learning new things and eventually your skill level does start to kind of get to where your taste is.
Speaker 2:And I will say this even if you think you're doing something completely new, like freelancing for me felt completely new, but I found something that I already had an existing skill in and kind of leveraged that into something new. So even let's say you're creating your own podcast from scratch, surely you have some sort of skill, even if it's like color coding your calendar, that is a skill, right, just go with that. And I will say it's funny. People who I talked to about Beyond the Dollar it sounds really great, but I don't understand what it actually took to even produce that first episode. And I think of the podcast interviews that I'd done before my friend and I even started that show.
Speaker 2:I remember having no clue about microphones and I used my laptop microphone for a podcast interview and then you could hear my son screaming in the background and it was just.
Speaker 2:And it took a friend who was editing that person's podcast to be like listen, sarah, you sound great, content wise, but you got to buy a mic. He's like I will tell you what mic to buy. So it was a lot of like those fumbling things. You're going to run into things that you don't know. That you don't know, and for me it was don't use your laptop mic. Find a quiet spot, like little things like that, where I can confidently say, yeah, do those. But it took me how many years to be able to confidently say do this and this and this. It took me like you know, I'm thinking about if I started when I started my side hustle, like it was 10 years of like constantly doing the same things and changing my strategy, like looking at what I completely bombed at and like how do I fix you know what I need to fix to get to where I am?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's hundreds and hundreds of little things that all go into that final product and a lot of them are not doing things that don't work. So it's very hard to teach unless you were doing it. The first time I ever did a video interview that we publish on YouTube, I convinced myself to look. Natural I should stare right at the lens a whole time and I look like a serial killer. Like all the comments were saying things like man interviewer had some really good questions but like why does he look so like intense, so like what's going on? Well, it wasn't until I watched that video 30 seconds did I go oh, you got to like naturally need to look away sometimes and that's how you are real life. Okay, I'll do that.
Speaker 1:I did an interview and one of my friends she was like hey, I don't know what's going on, but your audio, there's this like snap sound. All of a sudden she's like what is that? And I listened to it and I go, that's my AirPods case, for sure. And I just sat there and I idly kind of like fidgeted with it and snapped it. And you know now I'm really cautious about making noises, I'm really careful about what things I might be doing with my hands, but you really couldn't have taught me that. I needed to kind of experience the pain of going and editing all that out to learn. Okay, I've never got to do that again. Look away from the camera sometimes so you don't look like a serial killer, like those. Things start building up over time and you'll get better and better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and I feel like there's a lot of people who do share these types of stories and there's also like a lot that don't. And something I do when I fly myself in comparison is I go look at websites on the way back machine. You ever do that. I love this, where I go, okay, like man, this podcast is so great. And then I'll like look at their website from when they first started. I'm like, oh, like their podcast art was this. It wasn't. It doesn't look like what it does now. It took them years to get to that point.
Speaker 2:And so if I look back at some of the things that I've created back when I first started publishing on the internet, I probably cringe at like how amateur it looks. But you know, but it's one of those where everybody starts with from scratch, right, yeah, you may, some people may have more advantages than others. You may be working, let's say, with some really great podcasters and you kind of get those skills, but but it's really helpful to kind of see where people have come from, to kind of go, okay, like I shouldn't compare what I'm doing now to somebody who's been doing this for 10 years, right, like, I need to kind of not level the playing field, but really but really kind of get that perspective on, like, okay, my skills are here, my taste is here, what am I going to do to get to where I need to go?
Speaker 1:The thing I do. The version of this is I will go find a YouTube channel that I really like and I'm really impressed by the quality and especially if it's like a solo person, because you can't compare yourself as an individual to like a production team. You gotta remember that's like a big group effort. But if you find like an individual, go back to you know, if you like Mr Beast, go watch the first Mr Beast video and it's terrible. And if you like smart passive income with Pat Flynn, go listen to the first episode. It's terrible.
Speaker 1:If you like anything, especially if the creator is confident enough that they've left the old stuff on there. It's really valuable to remember to get to this level they were not good. They were not good at this when they started. They were probably about the same level you are now. Go watch their first stuff and then just bring the drive to get better and the commitment to publishing and those combined. You just keep getting better and better and that's the path to getting to be a great creator. It's not by nailing it on the first try.
Speaker 2:And if you're doing this by yourself or with one other person. I remember I was talking with a friend who's kind of comparing herself to another I think bigger brand and I go, you know, there's 10 people on that team to create this Like there's a show that I've been working on and it's like me, I'm the producer, I have an editor, I have a podcast manager who manages a schedule. Then I have another content person that kind of like looks over my stuff to make sure that, you know, maybe it lies with the brand. Then I work with a compliance person to make sure, like, all the legal things are fine and we're not, you know. So there's like all of these like things that go into sort of different productions, right, and so there's a lot of companies or even brands that have a lot of money and teams behind them and we can't compare that to them as well.
Speaker 2:Even if it's sound or even if on the surface it seems like it's a simple interview podcast or a blog post, there's a lot of kind of background stuff that you may not even be aware of that they have. And so if you are, you know, doing something by yourself or again with somebody else, just give yourself a lot of grace. Like I remember, I was one who, like, created my WordPress website, like I learned, like, how to use Canva, like all of these things I'd learned by myself, whereas other people had, like teams with like so many skills behind them that, of course, I'm just going to spend 10 hours making cover art, when this person can take an hour because they've been devoting time and energy for how many years before?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great advice. Sarah, thank you so much for spending time with me today and chatting about all this different stuff about freelancing and podcasting and how to think about marketing. Is there anything you'd like to leave the audience with? Any places they can follow up with you if they want to learn more about you or connect with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can head to my website, sarahleakincom. I do have some of the podcasts I'm producing and some of the articles I write. If you want to learn more about money, just Google my name. I'm like pretty much in all the major sort of publications US money and then I'm on Instagram at beyond the dollar.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thank you so much, sarah, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
