Grow with Podcast Guesting

Speaker 1: hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in Margie Feld Hune is the co-owner and CEO of interview connections the first and leading podcast booking agency their in-house team of booking agents are the podcast powerhouses behind their rapidly growing catalog of hundreds of successful entrepreneurs and businesses she is also the host of her own podcast we get it your dad died a show that shares the stories of other high achieving business owners and how they found resilience success and joy after profound loss thank you so much for joining me today Margie thank you so much for having me Melanie we'd love to know more about who you are and what gave you the idea and the courage to make your leap to interview connections my business partner Jessica who has been a guest on this show founded interview connections so she launched the business back in 2013 and then when I came on and I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to this the business has gone through many iterations so while I didn't found the company that was all just's amazing work we definitely collaborated once I came on as a contractor in 2016 and then the first employee in 2017 and in 2017 we worked really closely to basically launch a new model of the business which was we let go of all the contractors all around the world who had been the ones fulfilling the service and moved to in-house employees in Rhode Island in our office which was a very steep learning curve and we had I think at least 80 clients so we had to make sure the service wasn't interrupted as we were basically letting an entire Workforce go and then bringing in and training this totally new type of worker that we were not familiar with at all so that was really the next iteration of interview Connections in 2017 where we switched to the employee only model which was a move that we made to improve the quality really we knew what we wanted we knew we wanted to have the most hight touch service out there and we realized that while our contractors were absolutely amazing because of labor laws and we wanted more stability for our clients so that they would have a team member who was always available to them and and have that high touch effect so then in 2018 I became 50% co-owner and we did a lot of restructuring then as well we really looked at the way that we package the service and our offerings we used to be very month-to-month and then we realized people weren't really seeing enough success because there is sort of a Tipping Point for how long you have to be guessing on podcast to really get the results and we're like okay we're doing them a disservice by not having our program length take that into consideration so we've been through many Journeys and then of course with covid we went from having everyone working in person in our office to now being a fully remote agency and I remember Jessica saying that that transition was one of the best things that you could have done for the business is bringing on full-time employees and making that transition and it's interesting when you say I think your Agreements are year long you're right I think you have to commit to being a guest on shows to see that value yes it really does take a year and I think that's an important thing for all entrepreneurs to look at when they're creating their services in their packages it's like how long does it really take for someone to get the result and the transformation that you want and we realize for being a guest on podcast it's so incredible it it it works magic in people's business ouris are incredible but it takes time you have to build up that momentum it's not a quick fix strategy how should entrepreneurs and leaders leverage podcast interviews to grow their business so everyone should be out there guting on other people's podcasts if you're an online service-based business owner you should be out there guesting on podcast interviews 100% if you're a product business owner you probably still should but it's really those online service-based business owners that you would be crazy not to be but if you work with people online especially if you can work with people all over the country or all over the world it is such an amazing organic lead generation strategy and especially ads are wild we run ads and anybody who's putting a lot of money into ads right now knows that it's chaos it's crazy and it's changing every single second and we have no control over it we don't own these platforms but with guesting we know that those interviews that we've done even years ago are still out there they're Evergreen we have clent and leads coming to us saying oh I heard you on this show I want to learn more about working with you so it's so invaluable and for people who have services that are multiple thousands of dollars where it's not high volume right you don't need to be in front of a million people to get great clients if I go on a show with a hundred listeners and they're all my ideal client they're all service-based entrepreneurs who know they need to get visible and get out there on podcast that is an incredibly good use of my time and just this month I we had a client who signed up heard me on a show and the same the same week that the show went live she signed up as a client she was like oh I heard Margie on this podcast and I was like and that's how you do it so it's such an incredible strategy we're we're talking a lot about getting clients from the audience but also relationship building anyone can think of at least one relationship probably more that totally transformed their business right you really are one relationship way from an incredible breakthrough in your company and by guessing on podcast not only am I getting exposure to the audience and all those potential clients but I'm able to intentionally build relationships every single week with a new entrepreneur who's hosting the podcast I'm on and that leads to these magical collaborations and referral Partnerships and it's so powerful and the last thing I'll say about it is it's just so deep and that's what I really like about it there's a lot of surface level marketing where people are just blasting stuff out everywhere and it's kind of empty calories like it's all Sizzle and no steak there's not like real heavy content or anything really meaningful it's just kind of generic you're seeing the same thing from everybody but when it's an interview format you have the opportunity to go so much deeper about who you are as a person and your journey and what you believe in and and people really get to know you and it builds really high trust and the people that you end up attracting are people who truly are in alignment with you you are so right I recently hired someone that I listen to on a podcast and what I liked about them is I have twins and I growing a business I don't have a lot of time and they seem like they were very straightforward with the information and then listening to their story you're right I felt like I knew them and so reaching out to them and becoming their client happened relatively quickly because I I already felt like I knew them and I liked what they were about and interview connections for the Sheila podcast I love how detailed you are in making sure that the guest is aligned with the podcast and the podcast listeners which I'm sure also translates into clients and I've actually hired someone that you have sent my way also I told Jessica this I hired happy self-publishing that's amazing yes GNA yes yes so you're so right when you say that and I think working with a company like interview connections makes all the difference because you're going to make sure that they are on the right podcast to find the right clients yeah and I'm so excited that you're working with GNA we absolutely love her and and that's a great example like you're saying of an Roi we booked y on your podcast and now you're a client at first so even before sometimes before the interview goes live we have clients see an Roi because the host becomes their client what types of business businesses can benefit from a guest expert strategy and what would you say to business owners and corporate leaders who want to test out the strategy we touched on this a little bit but it's really service-based online business owners who are the biggest no-brainer for like you need to be doing this yesterday for other types of businesses product businesses it's still a good strategy for brand building but it's not the best strategy for volume sales so if you have like a 10 or $20 product and you want to sell it on podcast I really wouldn't recommend that strategy necessarily a lot of the shows we book on are like mid-range shows so they're targeted audiences of maybe a 100 to a thousand people which if you have a hight touch service and you need High trust for people to invest with you it's so perfect and you see a really huge Roi if you need to sell $100,000 $10 items for this to be a win for you then I wouldn't I wouldn't go the podcast guesting route so it really depends on your goals but if you have a product business and you're serious about building your brand which you definitely should be then it's a great long-term investment that way so dabbling we get this a lot and honestly no judgment at all because there's definitely things that I have dabbled in I'm like should we be on tick talk should we be doing this there's so many shiny objects it's so hard it's so hard because there's so much much there's what's this new app or what's this new podcas or what's this new social platform so so right yeah there's so much and for every shiny strategy there's somebody saying that it was the one thing for them that caused this huge breakthrough so then you're like all these things are giant breakthroughs like I need to do all these things but I mean as we've all learned from experience if you just dabble you don't really give something the amount of time it needs to work and not everything is the same right I think it's really important when you're saying okay I'm going to test this how much time am I going to give it is that an appropriate amount of time for the strategy where I would even be able to see if it's working or not yet and then what does success look like so being really intentional with those filters of testing I think is really important and there are certain things that you can test for a month or six months you can do a split test AB test and really determine is this working or is this not working podcast guesting is not like that it is very much a long-term strategy and it's not to say that people don't get an Roi and get clients after just a few interviews they do it happens all the time but it's not a one-off thing that I'm just going to do for a month or a couple months or during my book launch we really recommend that you're doing it all the time so I'm doing at least four interviews a month every every month forever it's just an ongoing builtin part of my strategy and because of that it's sort of insurance right because I'm always visible I know no matter what happens with ads and everything else I'm consistently building new strategic relationships with other entrepreneurs and I'm getting in front of new audiences every single week really really good advice you are the host of your own podcast we get it your dad died tell us about your podcast and the motivation behind sharing the powerful stories on your show yes so this show is very much a passion project that really was born out of podcast interviews because yes I get clients from podcast interviews I get opportunities a host who interviewed me is now interviewing me for colum and Forbes that she has so there's like all that fun like exciting obvious Roi stuff but I'm a messaging nerd I love messaging I love language I think that the way we talk about our story and our business has power I think the words that we use actually create the future they don't just reflect it and in these conversations on podcasts things have evolved so much it's been so incredible and we see this with our clients too you come on thinking that these are your topics but once you get on the court and you're in live conversations with entrepreneurs they start asking you question questions in a way that maybe you've never thought about or you find things that just start to come up again and again and so for me my story and my entrepreneurial Journey had so much to do with losing my dad to suicide in 2015 and it really created who I am as a person who I am as a leader it was a huge loss we were very close but it was also this incredible Catalyst for me growing as a person and growing as a leader and I don't think I would be a business owner at least not a successful one if I hadn't been through all that and everything that happened after like all the therapy and the personal development that as a direct result of that I did all that work on myself which is what allowed me to show up in the business as an employee who could ask for 50% equity and actually get it so I found that being a guest on other people's shows I was getting a lot of good responses to this story because they just kept telling it because people would keep asking you know how how did this happen and it was such an integral part and then I started getting feedback I started having people say thank you so much for sharing this I went through something similar or I never hear people talk about this and then I started getting messages from other seven and eight figure entrepreneurs super high Achievers who are like you know it's so interesting because my mom died and actually that's the whole reason I started my business and it's stuff that they never talk about and it's literally the root of their success and why they started this business and I was like this is crazy we need to get these conversations out there because I wanted people to hear the show I wanted people to know that they weren't alone and I wanted it to be a space for healing but also sort of a research lab right of like what is it about these super high performers and how they deal with law and grief that makes them successful and so in interviewing all of these high achieving entrepreneurs it's been so incredible to see their bravery and their cander and their willingness to share things that they've never shared publicly before but also there's all these similarities once you start listening to the different episodes and once I started interviewing them I found that there were a lot of common themes in what people were saying and specifically how high Achievers frame their grief and profound loss in a way that is empowering instead of seeing themselves as a victim they see it almost as a responsibility to serve others to take that pain and use it as a way to contribute good to the world and it was so interesting to see how similar they all were in the way that they thought and I believe by getting these conversations out there it can help people to start thinking the way that high Achievers do so that they can be generating the same types of results in their life it's so interesting cuz often times beautiful things come out of loss and when you're in it you're not thinking about that but as you come out at times we think okay I'm at such a low what do I have to lose or I can give up or fight it's so interesting and when you think about losing parents it's going to happen to all of us at some point so it's interesting to start really thinking through those moments and good for you for taking that moment and turning it into something positive and amazing oh thank you so much and and yeah and it does apply to people even if you haven't had like my business partner Jessica who's been a guest on the show she listens to the show and is such a great stage mom and supporter but she hasn't had a profound loss knock on wood but it's helpful even if you haven't because there's so many losses that we truly do grieve in life whether it's the loss of a business the loss of a job the loss of a relationship that really is profound they really are true losses and these tools and and these stories can be applied no matter what's going on because it's a universal Human Experience that we have those lows we have those traumatic moments and those losses you have said you went to prove that there are ways to turn setbacks into positives in our lives and I love that if someone has experienced a significant loss and I understand that every situation is different how can someone start to turn a setback into a positive great question so first of all I really want to always preface this with it's okay to feel terrible like I don't want people who are in a fresh loss to feel like I'm saying put on a happy face no it's a mess I it's not like my dad died and I was like now I will develop as a leader I was a hot so that would be my first thing you just have to be present with what you're feeling and there's nothing wrong you don't have to feel like you have to grieve successfully I would never want to put that pressure on somebody so I think that's the big thing especially early on feel whatever you're feeling don't feel pressure to be on any timeline or do anything besides just keep going right like Finding Nemo just keep swimming that's really the Mantra of early grief you don't have to do anything besides that I never want people to feel like toxic positivity I have to be happy or I have to be successful but what I have found with losses like this is yes it's messy yes it's incredibly painful but if you can just start to look at opportunities for growth so I would recommend seeking professional help for me I got a therapist who specialized in trauma reprocessing so all I had to do was drag my sad self to the therapist's office every week it wasn't like I was like doing this incredibly powerful thing but I did find a therapist who was good and just go to her and I worked with her for at least a year and a half so I think it's just seeking help is a big one and then looking for opportunities to heal loss and grief kick up all the stuff from your past that you haven't dealt with like I really was surprised to find that when my dad died that every issue I had flared up and that's really tough it makes it really tough to function and have healthy relationships go about your day but it's also an opportunity because all this stuff is coming to the surface and you do have the opportunity to actually work through it and clear it once and for all and when you face that opportunity head on even though it's a hot even though it you know it sucks like it's not this like great empowering thing but if you're really willing to show up and face what's there and work through it you just find that one day you know you look up after you've been looking down and so in it and you really feel different you really are a different person you're really handling things differently and you'll never be perfect you you'll always be human but when you're willing to face things and put in that work and really just try to improve and try to heal these parts of you you you find after a while that it compounds and you've really accomplish something amazing that's such good advice to seek help and also to keep showing up because sometimes that is that's half the battle and I always think of it as marinating in my feelings sometimes we have to make decisions and move forward but other times you know we can marinate in our feelings a little bit until we feel ready to like you said look up and decide to look up yes marinating is good and sometimes it's good to wallow not forever but like you know if you want to take some time and watch TV all day in your sweatpants like do whatever you have to do yeah why not so good I know because in that those downtimes that's when sometimes we get the best ideas or the best motivation because we've given ourselves the gift of a break and permission to have a break or you're right to not feel good because it's completely normal I'm pretty positive person but I have days where I don't feel great or something you know terrible has happened it's great that you're sharing those stories and that you're bringing guests on and giving them the opportunity to tell theirs thank you so much magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip that you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy I love that you focus on this that you help entrepreneurs do this because this is so important and I think like what you help clients with is the number one thing that will keep you in business long enough to actually achieve success because if you don't focus on those things that you love people burn out and they quit so I just think the work that you do with that is so amazing and so important thank you it's hard to pick just one thing I really love business just how Dynamic it is how different everything is from day to day that type of novelty and solving new problems and going for new goals right now what I'm really loving is improving as a leader of my team so in order to do that I've been reading a lot of leadership books and working with a coach and really taking a very humbling look at my gaps as a leader and being like okay there's examples in this book of what a good leader does and what a bad leader does and I was like sometimes I've done this bad leader stuff sometimes I think I am too critical in a micromanager or whatever it is and so I've really been focusing on becoming a better leader being more collaborative talking less and making sure that my team is able to share more of their ideas and I've really been loving that because it's one of those things that even though it's not super tangible like a revenue goal every time I'm like I'm really changing I'm really growing and I I love that that personal growth aspect that's great CU so often we can get focused on like you said the business and the revenue goals and not think about those other areas of Our Lives where we can improve that aren't just driven by analytics yeah and honestly to be fully transparent I'm very revenue and numbers and goal focused and it was really through failing at the same goal for two years that I finally went deeper and was like how are these other things that seemed important but not crucial to hit this goal actually crucial to hit this goal the fact that everyone on the team is collaborating and sharing ideas and feels fully self-expressed so the goal was to have our first 500k month and we've had months at like 300 something K and not bad right like there a few years ago it would have been mindblowing but because we have this goal this ideal of 500k because we haven't hit it and we've been setting the goal for a year to it has been tough but it's been such a gift because it really has forced me to go deeper because just driving for the goal the way that I used to drive it worked up to a certain point and it's just not enough anymore and I think that's kind of an amazing gift in terms of personal growth good for you for having the confidence to turn and look inside because not everyone would have done that it takes like you said humility and and most importantly confidence to say I really want to make this happen I'm not going to give up on the goal but I'm going to look for other ways to try to make it happen and accomplish it I think it's helpful when we don't get what we want or when we have those losses and those failures because often times if everything's just going okay and it's comfortable you're just not motivated to go really deep and do that difficult work on yourself and but every time you do it it's such a gift so such good advice thank thank you so much for joining me today Mary thank you so much for having me can you please tell our listeners how and where they can contact you and find you yes so if you are an entrepreneur who knows they need to get visibility and get out there in front of new audiences every week and and do that strategic relationship building we talked about our website is interview connections.com and you can go to interview connections.com apply to speak with a member of our team about your goals and about what you're looking for if you are new to she built it we'd love for you to join us we offer a community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our sheb built it shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer Sheil it business Consulting and the shilp blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave