Celebrating One Year of The Ambitious Introvert

[00:00:00] Emma-Louise: Hello. Welcome to the big celebratory every episode of the Ambitious Introvert’s joint celebration. In fact, firstly. The ambitious introvert podcast is now one. It had its first birthday on the 19th of October. So we have officially been going for a full year, which is a celebration in itself. And we also hit a huge milestone of downloads back in September.

So I figured that I would put these two episodes together. All in one delicious place of celebration. And I’m going to share a little bit with you about the story of why I started the podcast in case you’re not familiar, what I’ve learnt from a year of creating a podcast and how it’s helped me grow within my business and as a person.

I’m going to let you know why the milestone in downloads really, really matters and also white doesn’t. So stay tuned for that one. And also I’m going to share with you how you can help me celebrate and be in with a chance of winning a prize. So let’s get going. Firstly, this podcast. Was one of the first things, one of the first things that I had as concept, as soon as I decided that I was going to work with introverts.

So if you don’t know my story, I’d been coaching for years and I’ve been kicking around online for a while with very insipid messaging without a clear niche. Very much feast and famine for my business. And I knew that I needed to get clear on who I served and I worked with a brand strategist and it came through as clearly as anything.

It was like introverts. And the second that I got that everything changed for me because I have my own real clarity and confidence in who I was serving and who I was talking. And it just changed the trajectory of my business, like hugely and I got excited rather than trying to create content going. I don’t really know what to put.

I was like, yes. Okay. What should I talk about today? So, That excitement really sparked off the idea of doing a podcast. I adore podcasts myself had been listened to them for years, and I thought this would be a really great medium to get in touch with my new audience of introverts. And I’m also all about using our strengths and skills.

In our business, like don’t waste time on the things that we are not good at trying to get better, concentrate on the things that we are really, really, really good at and capitalize on that. So I knew that I sounded articulate on audio because I’d been an air traffic controller for 17 years. I had literally sat behind a microphone talking to people for 17 years.

So that was never an issue. Another slightly reason is not long before I started the podcast, maybe about six months before I started to get into human design. And one of the things that we have in human design is a life purpose and it turns out the, my life purpose is asking questions that I don’t know the answer to that enable others to grow.

So I just say that again. I ask questions that I don’t know the answer to. To enable others to grow. So in coaching, this makes complete sense. Um, because yes, I do business strategy and mentoring as well. But as a coach, as an actual pure coach, you are asking questions of the other person, and they’re not questions to say, let me check your knowledge.

Is this right or wrong? You’re asking questions that make them ask the question of themselves. And then, you know, they came up with that. And that does enable them to grow. But what I really love is that I can bring this into the podcast. So I don’t have set questions. You know, when a guest is coming on, we don’t go, right.

I’m going to ask you this, this, this, this, and this. We always have like a loose topic, but I really go with the flow and where I’m called to go and what I’m called to ask them. Um, and quite often, I don’t know the answer. So again, asking those questions that I don’t know the answer to, to enable you guys as listeners, to be able to learn from it and grow, and then the final kind of ping from the universe that like, yes, this is the thing to do is a couple of months after I done the brand strategy work and decided, you know, yes, I need to be working with the introverts.

Um, I started working with my one-on-one coach Lacey. The first question, she asked me in the very first call with two minutes in, because she was like, tell me about your business. I said, I’m a coach for ambitious introverts and paths and highly sensitive entrepreneurs. And she goes, oh, I love that. Do you have a podcast?

And so I was like, no, but I’m thinking about it. So literally from that moment, that was, the focus was getting the podcast created and that was in the July. And I released in the October. I said, that’s a little bit of the backstory about how habit occurred. Well, I’ve learnt from creating this for a year now.

That’s helped me grow the business and as a person, um, so many lessons, I I’ve distilled it down, but so much learning and so much growth from it. Um, I created the podcast myself. I didn’t hire anyone to help me. Um, with the launch or anything like that. So I really had to dig deep and learn, learn quite a lot there, which is really interesting because I’ve now supported a couple of clients through launching their podcasts.

So I’m really glad that I, I actually did go through that myself. Um, some of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way one is that I now only have guests who are either new. Or I’ve had a call to vibe check beforehand, just because of the energetics. So I’ve recorded a few episodes with people who maybe I’ve been connected with on social media.

Maybe they had reached out and cold pitched me, but I looked into them and I thought, oh yeah, that, you know what? They actually offers really great and really relevant to my audience. And then when I got on to record the interview, it just didn’t flow. It just didn’t gel. And I didn’t feel that they were good enough to put out basically.

Um, and so with respect to everyone’s time, I now always, always say, Let’s jump on a call and just have a quick five check before we schedule in to record, because it’s really important to me, especially as audio, only the energy that comes across has to be right. Otherwise it just sounds so, so flat on that similar note, I have learnt to stretch myself and to invite guests that I think may seem.

Uh, which happens less often than you think. So I have reached out to a number of people and in the back of my mind, I’ve thought this person’s got a big following. This person’s probably really busy. They, they may well say no. And in fact, two of the people, um, they, I haven’t released their episodes yet.

Their upcoming, two of them that I thought, Hmm, this is a long shot, but you know what, I’m going to go with it. Instantly and said, I’d love to be on, I can’t wait, sign me up. So the lesson there is sometimes we think people may say no and they say, yes, they surprise us. So don’t be afraid to ask. Also I have had actually, I’ve had only two people say no.

And they, they are pretty popular. And with big audiences, I am still trying, I still, I’m still going to try because I’m not the kind of person to give up, but what I realized is that they’re saying no, isn’t personal. To me. It doesn’t mean anything about me. It doesn’t mean anything about the podcast. Um, and one of the cases, it probably means that my email list size isn’t big enough, because I would imagine this person gets invited onto a lot of podcasts.

That’s one of the questions that they ask, probably don’t think it’s worth their time. If they’re not going to be exposed to enough of a person’s audience, which, you know, absolutely fine business decision on their part. Um, and the other person. Isn’t actually doing any podcast interviews at the moment.

So maybe that’s another one to try again in the future, but either way, neither of these things mean anything about me. It’s not personal. Uh, how I would apply that if you’re listening is don’t be afraid to ask because quite often you’ll get yes. Rather than no. And if you do get a no, just understand that it’s just par for the course and don’t make it mean anything about you, because it absolutely does.

Not. One of the other areas for growth is I have gone from setting the podcast up. I decided that. I would do on average. And I do still follow this to this day, very loosely three guest episodes a month and a solo episode. And that’s what we do there or thereabouts. So I started off by inviting friends, peers, people that I was in a mastermind with some of my clients, some of my coaches.

To really make sure that, you know, I had batched in advance, which I’ll come to in a minute to make sure I’d got these episodes ready, ready to go out. And those early episodes are actually still some of my favorites because they’re all people that I knew really, really well. Um, and I do think it has a different energy.

So I’ve gone from that to reaching out to people, as they say, uh, to invite them on to now receive an application. Um, almost daily, which is just insane. Like when I started this a year ago, I never thought that people would be reaching out to me to be on the podcast. And that I’d be say no to the majority of them either because they’re not a good fit or just because I already have enough amazing guests.

So that’s a lesson in really how quickly things can change and how quickly things can turn around. Um, As I said, I thought that I would still be like asking people and you know, what if people say no, why I might have to record more solo episodes and here I am being able to pick and choose, which is amazing.

So the lesson there is things do change and turn around. They can change very, very quickly when we are in online business. Another decision that I made on that, uh, on that thread is I decided not to monetize the podcast. So some people do make podcasts for that reason. They want to monetize them. And I’ve had a number of companies reach out now about sponsorship, probably about six or seven.

Um, and the first one I considered it was, it was quite a big company, but it’s not something that I use myself. So that didn’t feel good with me. Um, I decided that no, maybe if only if it’s something I use more. But then as more options came in, I just decided that the podcast wasn’t here to make money.

The podcast is here as one of the avenues that I get free value. And it’s also here to attract new people into my audience. And so I wanted to keep it. And then the last thing where it’s really enabled me to grow as a person and in my business, it’s taught me the importance of batching and planning ahead.

Obviously a podcast goes out every Monday, which means that everything has to be set up and done a couple of weeks before. And I can’t rely on being last minute. So that has really helped with my consistency, consistency, and being visible is something that I struggled with very, very much in the early days of my business.

Uh, if you don’t know the story, then scroll back. I’ve got a. All about my own visibility journey, which was highly inconsistent. Um, but making that commitment to releasing the podcast really helps me plan my time. It really helped me understand how far in advance I need to work when I needed to batch, especially with guests, because with time differences, people’s schedules, understanding that I needed to get organized.

It was also the thing that prompted me to make my first team hire in my business. So when I was put in African together, I chose my music. I’d recorded my intro. Um, I used someone on Fiverr to overload. The track over the intro. I was like, yeah, this is great. And then I thought, oh, I just get this person to edit the episodes for me.

And then I sent one in and he was like, oh yeah, I’m not taking any work at the moment. And I realized that I needed someone on board that was going to do a very consistent job because I needed everything to be the same, all the way. So it felt very scary. It was a big stretch, but podcast manager was the first hire that I made in my business, which means I didn’t have to get involved in the editing.

I didn’t have to get involved in the tech. I didn’t have to get involved in the graphics, the show notes, any of that, none of which in my zone of genius. I simply have to record and pop it in a Google drive and then it magically appears on the internet. So, um, that then went on to give me the confidence to hire more team members.

We’ve got another three since then in various areas of the business. Um, so I will always look fondly that the podcast, um, enabled me to have that growth and take that leap, um, because the first hire is always the scariest. Okay. So. Big milestone alert. The podcast had 10,000 downloads on, I think it was the 23rd of September there or thereabouts.

And this is a big milestone in the podcasting world. Um, a little bit like, you know, 10,000 followers on Instagram or 10,000 pound month. I don’t know why this figure in particular keeps coming up, but it’s like seen as a big thing. So we’re going to celebrate it because. We love to celebrate, but I’m going to tell you, like, why, why else this really matters.

And also why? Absolutely doesn’t matter. Um, So I’ll tell you why it doesn’t matter. First of all, the reason it doesn’t matter is the downloads mean nothing about how many people has actually listened to my podcast. So all downloads tell us is how many people have gone and downloaded the podcast from something like apple.

I don’t know about you. I very rarely download podcasts. I only ever downloaded them, actually, if I’m going on a flight or somewhere that I won’t have internet access, when I listened to podcasts, usually I stream them and podcasts that are streamed. Don’t. Don’t count towards that statistic. Also, all of my content pushes people to the blog post.

So within the blog post, for each episode, we have a player that they can, um, which is embedded in the blog post, where you can listen to the episode there and then to save direct and people elsewhere. Um, so people listen there and I can see that reflected in my Google analytics for the website as well.

How many people go onto the page? 10,000 downloads sounds amazing, but it’s actually way more than that. Like way more listens to the show have happened than that. So that’s even more exciting to me. Another reason. It doesn’t really matter is as I’ve just alluded to vanity metrics, which also doesn’t account for the quality of the show.

And it doesn’t tell us anything about how well it works as a marketing or conversion tool, 10,000 people could download an episode and think it was rubbish and never listened to Ken. But I really don’t want that. I want people to listen over and over and over and over. So the reason that this is exciting, and this does matter to me is I did a bit of serious manifesting with this.

And I set a goal in June and the goal was to have 10,000 downloads of the podcast by septic. Now the reason I chose this, I have to just discern all the vanity metrics. The reason I chose this is when I track my stats every month. What I noticed is that at the current growth by September, I would have hit 7,000 downloads.

That’s what I was on track to hit. And I decided that the podcast is. Really good media. And I decided that I wanted more people to hear it. I put lot of effort into it. I know it has a lot of value for people. So I decided to set myself the stretch goal. Oh, okay. It’s going to hit 7,000 by September. If I do nothing, how can I make that 10,000?

So what it really forced me to do was look at how I could really utilize the podcast and drive more traffic to it. So one of the things I did is I hired a new podcast, man. And this was a more significant investment than the one I worked with before. But this person does SEO show notes that they also create graphics.

They create content for me that I can share multiple pieces of content, which meant that I changed up the marketing and promotion of it quite significantly. Which has obviously had the correct effect because here we are. And I hit that goal, which looks like ridiculous. If I, when I looked at it in June and the other thing I did is I decided it was happening.

I know I talk about this a lot with mindset, but I was just locked in on it. This has been written down. As part of my mindset journaling every day, since June, the podcast has 10,000 plus downloads by September. Like it was just a, given it rolls off my tongue as if it was fact before it even was. And it now is, and I just decided it was happening.

I even decided it was happening in August, which was the only month since I launched last October, that there was a dead. In podcast downloads. So right the month before we had a dip, I had a dip in all of my stats in August. I know a lot of people did. Um, a lot of people took time offline, which is amazing even when that happened.

And I saw, you know, negative growth. I still, I was still locked in. I still absolutely believed that we could hit that 10,000 downloads. And we absolutely did so. Celebrated big proponent of celebrating here, because what I see so often is we set a goal. We hit a goal and it’s okay, next, next, next, move on.

And it’s so important to really celebrate what we’ve achieved and you know, to really feel that energy of first of all, being proud of ourselves. And secondly, like knowing that we’ve created something and allowing ourselves to celebrate. So I am going to ask you guys to celebrate with me and I’m going to offer a giveaway and I’m offering something that is not available anywhere else.

So by entering this giveaway, this is the only place that you will be able to get this. What I’ve put together is a session using two of the new skills that I’ve acquired from my conscious consultant certification. So, what will happen is we will have a one-to-one session. And first off you will get a full business audit.

And what this will do is highlight exactly where you need to focus for your business growth. We’ll be able to pinpoint the exact areas, um, based on how your business is performing on your concerns. Do you need to focus on meaning that you won’t be throwing spaghetti at the wall? You wouldn’t be trying a little bit of this, a little bit of that, or sat that overwhelmed and indecision, like what do I do next?

You will know exactly the things that you need to concentrate on to get great. And then in the second part of the session, and this is really exciting, you will get a personalized energy clearing. What this will do is it will help you move forwards in that area that we’ve identified. And it does this by clearing out negative energy.

And in terms of supporting your mindset around it. So bill lump business audit highlight the area that you need to concentrate on to get the most growth in your business and a personalized energy Clare, and that will help you to move forward and support your energy and mindset in that very. Which is the perfect combination for success.

Like I say, this isn’t a service that I offer. So this is going to be the only place you can get. It is by entering the giveaway to help me celebrate podcast birthday and 10,000 downloads and to enter I’ve made it super, super simple. It could not be any easier. You’ve had two options. The first is. Please leave me a review for the show.

So if you are on apple podcasts, please leave a review. Tell us why you love the podcast. Importantly, screenshot it before you press submit and then send it to me by email or as an IgE direct message. Quite often, when we send a podcast review, it gets lost in the ether for a few days and doesn’t pitch up.

The other thing that happens is no one. ITunes account, it’s actually their name. So I get them and I’ve got no idea who sent it. So type it out, send screenshots to me before you submit so that I will know it is from you. If you’re not an apple user or you’re someone that has already submit review, then please share one of my episode posts on your Instagram or Facebook.

So on Instagram you can pop to the grid. Um, they’re all there with the audio clips. So. That really easy for you to reshare it and your stories on Facebook, head over to the ambitious introvert network. They get posted in there and also on my personal profile every week. And simply reshare on your Instagram, on your Facebook feed tank me and tell us what you love about the podcast.

Like tell the people that you’re sharing it, why they should listen. What is it that you enjoy so much about it? Uh, make sure to tag me so review on apple, screenshot me and send it to me please. So that I know that it’s from you or share an episode posts on one of your social channels and tag me in it.

It is as easy as that, and this will be open until the 30th of October. So you’ve got until the 30th to submit that. And then I will be announcing the winner on November the first. So thank you so much for coming along and listening to this. Celebrate your episode. You can probably tell I’m very excited by all of this.

Um, I appreciate you. I appreciate you as listeners. I appreciate you taking the time to tune in and hope that you are getting all the value that you expect from the show. And I look forward to putting another year’s worth out starting now. Thanks guys. Take care.