SPI 545: The Reality of Starting a Podcast (Actually 2) with Abby Rose Green

SPI 545: The Reality of Starting a Podcast (Actually 2) with Abby Rose Green

[00:00:00] Abby:
We knew that we were onto something. We knew that people were trying to find something, they hadn’t found it quite yet, and that they wanted to hear from us.

I think so many times in this world, people are like, “Oh, that’s already been done.” Or, “I don’t want to do that. Somebody else is already doing that. Why me?”

Through this experiment, we figured out that even if it’s already been done, if it’s not been done by you, it hasn’t been done.

[00:00:44] Pat:
Hey, what’s up. It’s Pat here. Welcome to session 545 of the Smart Passive Income podcast.

I’m really excited about the show. A lot of people this year are looking to start podcasts. I’ve been podcasting for a very long time, and we’ve done episodes with other podcasters before, talking about podcasting and what that can do for your brand. It could do a lot.

But oftentimes those conversations are with people who’ve been podcasting for a very long time. We recently had Lewis Howes on the show, who started just a few years after myself. But today we’re speaking with Abby Rose Green. She co-hosts two relatively new podcasts, and they’re doing extremely well.

I wanted to bring her on to talk about what it’s been like to start new shows and work together with others. This is another component that I don’t have a ton of experience with: co-hosts. How do you coordinate? How do you work with another person who is also a voice on your show? Not just a person you’re interviewing, but a person who is co-hosting with you?

You might want to start a show with your friend or a business partner. How do you manage time? How do you decide who comes up with ideas? How do you manage business partnerships and those kinds of things? So we’re going to talk about all that and more.

So, Abby co-hosts the HERself Podcast with her partner, Amy, and together they also co-host with another person, Kat, another podcast called Pursuing Her Purpose. These are both shows you can find on your favorite iTunes, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find them as well.

These are massively successful shows that have built incredibly raving fans. I’m excited to unpack exactly how that was all done from the idea to the launch, to the marketing of it, to some interesting things that I’ve actually never heard of before that actually worked out really well for their launch, which may or may not be useful for most podcasts.

So, we’re going to see. It could be the secret ingredient you need, or you might want to go in the opposite direction. We have a lot to discuss today, but here we go. This is Abby Rose Green, co-host of HERself, and also the Pursuing Her Purpose podcast.

Abby Rose Green. To welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast. Thanks for joining us here today.

[00:02:38] Abby:
Thank you so much, Pat. It’s fun being on this side of the mic, for once.

[00:02:41] Pat:
I know. I was on your show very recently, just a month or two ago, and that was super fun. I was there with your podcast partners. Tell us about your show a little bit before we get into the origin of it and everything else that’s behind it.

[00:02:54] Abby:
Yeah, absolutely. So I have two different podcasts.

HERself Podcast started at the beginning of 2020, and I do that with my friend, Amy. And then we have. Her purpose, which is really an offshoot for the working women in our community. And that just started a few months ago. So we brought on Kat Herro to that line, and it’s been really fun being partners in all of this and just learning with our differences, but definitely the same goals that we have in mind.

[00:03:18] Pat:
And we’ll definitely talk about the dynamics of having other people on the show and co-hosting and all that sort of stuff. Tell me a little bit about the niche you’ve selected. Obviously it’s it’s women. Tell us about the specific kind of woman that you are hoping to bring in, attract to the show and serve with your.

[00:03:32] Abby:
Yeah. And a lot of this is me search. So when we were thinking about starting a podcast and that’s a whole nother story in itself that we can get into, but we knew that there was nothing in the market that was speaking with authenticity. With a vulnerability and actually shared things in real time or right after they found a solution.

So our main avatar, the people we’re speaking to are really us or the people who we were just a couple steps ago. It’s women who wear a lot of titles. They wear a lot of hats. They are wives, they are mothers, they are working women, they own businesses, or they’re starting to own a business or want to become an entrepreneur.

And those were the people that were speaking to.

[00:04:12] Pat:
Love it. And, if you look at the results of what’s been happening, I mean, we’ll get to how we got these results, but checking on your podcasts, there are so many listeners, so many refuse, just your across a hundred episodes on, on one of your shows. And there’s just so much like podcasting, it seems has become like a big part of what you do now.

[00:04:32] Abby:
Yeah, it is. And when you think about a working woman who wears a lot of titles, she’s busy. She has a lot of things going on, Pat. So when we were thinking about what, what way do we want to speak to these women? Is it on YouTube? Is it just on Instagram? And what we found is that people like to multitask.

They can go for a walk with their kids and have one ear bud in their ear. They can do the dishes while listening to a podcast. They can work out or drive to work while listening to a podcast. So we’re really able to reach people where they are. And I think that’s a big, a big piece of podcasting is making sure you meet your audience where they are.

[00:05:05] Pat:
Oh, a hundred percent. I love how you’re taking a serve first approach. Like what would be best for our person as far as when they might be able to consume And how. What are the benefits for you as the creator, as a podcaster versus like, what were some of the things you were doing before the podcast to try and serve this audience?

And how has the podcast like opened up more for you?

[00:05:24] Abby:
So HERself, that one started just about two years ago now. So this month at the time of this, Erin is going to be the two year anniversary of HERself. And my thank you. Yes. And my co-host Amy Kiefer had a blog beforehand and an Instagram account that she has a very, very engaged following. So Amy really had this awesome.

That was able to, you know, learning from her, growing with her as she had babies, they were having babies as well as she was moving jobs. You know, they were moving jobs as well. And we were really speaking to that audience through our Instagram accounts. At that time, my Instagram was relatively small. I was still very much in corporate America and I’ve now been able to retire from corporate America and do the podcasting with these full time, which has been absolutely amazing.

[00:06:09] Pat:
That’s so cool. There’s so much to unpack here. I’d, I’d, I’d love to talk more about, your partners and how it is working with them. I mean, when you guys came up with the idea to create the show together, what were those conversations like? Was it just like, yeah, let’s do it and we’ll see what happens or how much planning was done sorta beforehand with them.

[00:06:26] Abby:
So, yeah, that’s the fun, that’s really the fun story because we started off as acquaintances. So all three of us were acquaintances. Amy and I, we went to college together and we were both going to be starting our own. So they are going to be on similar topics, similar audiences, but we were kind of going through it side by side.

So I took your Power-up Podcasting course. I had the details. I’m an a plus student. I make sure that I do all the homework, check all the boxes, and I really knew how to get into the world, but I was speaking to an audience that was relatively. Where Amy, she had this incredible audience, just didn’t know those first few steps in order to get this into the world.

You know, what equipment do I buy? how do I get an, an episode onto apple? Can I get into Spotify? And I heart radio as well? Like how do I do all of that? So we were kind of trading ideas back and forth. And then finally, one day I proposed to her and I said, you know, Why don’t we do this together. And it was a little bit of a break, a little bit of a silence, and all of a sudden is like, yeah, we should do this.

And now two years later, we have built that business up. and the same thing happened with Kat, where she came to us with a proposal. We had been wanting to do a business podcast, Amy and I for a while, but just didn’t know where we’d find the time or just the extra little bit that we needed in order to get off the ground.

And. Came up to us, Amy new Kat from a previous mastermind. And it just was the really the perfect piece that we were missing in all of it. So it’s been working out really, really well.

[00:07:53] Pat:
That’s really cool. I love that story because you know, you were able to help her and she’s able to help you and together you can help serve the audience in the way that you want. I mean, it very much reminds me of similar to, I don’t know if you, I mean, you probably know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, but I don’t know if you know who D rock is the guy who follows them around with a camera.

He, one day was just like, I want to help you. I want to film you in your daily life. Like, I’ll do it because I know you don’t have the time to produce something like this, but I do. So let me help you. And that’s kind of what you’ve brought over to Amy, which I think is really, really cool.

And of course she would benefit because maybe she was too busy to kind of figure all that stuff out on her own. And she’s got this audience to take care of and that’s really neat. So, okay. You got this podcast idea and you’re putting things into motion. Was there a launch plan? How did Amy and you sort of decide to make the announcement to the world that this was coming?

[00:08:43] Abby:
Yeah. And everyone does this a little bit differently. We definitely definitely followed what you did in the course, but then we’re like, how can we add our own spin to it? One big thing with Amy Kat and I is, we don’t want to do things like everyone. We want to take the eduKation, take the learning, take what has worked well for people.

What also hasn’t worked well for other people, but then also put our own values on it. So, one thing that we did, Pat, was we kept the name a surprise until the actual day of lunch.

Yes. Because. We haven’t seen this. Right. We haven’t seen this. So we were building the Instagram behind the scenes. We were building the website behind the scenes.

We had uploaded to apple to make sure that we could get approved. We had created with our, I was doing all the editing at that point. So had treated everything as far as the introduction, but we kept the name, a secret, and one big perk. There was, we were able to get all of our episodes. Up and on a platform without having people try to find it.

So with Amy’s audience and with the audience that we were building, we knew that as soon as we said the title people would be nosy would find it. And I think on day one, we had around 10,000 downloads. So it was good that we kept it a secret because we had no idea we would be having that many downloads on the first day, but they came, they saw, they loved it.

They shared it. It was such a great way to, have a very, soft launch. And then all of a sudden, a really hard launch at the way end there.

[00:10:08] Pat:
Yeah, that’s really cool. And often isn’t recommended if you are just starting out and you don’t have an audience yet, but if you do, and they’re very passionate and you know, you have raving fans and super fans, that’s a great and really smart strategy because it’s almost like that anticiPation, you know, a podcast is coming.

What’s the name going to be? And people might be guessing you could even play some games with your audience and get them to interact in a certain way. It’s almost like if you’re having a baby in your life.

We’re going to wait until the baby’s born to know whether it’s a boy or a girl and we’ll see what happens from there.

And it’s, it could provide a level of excitement and I really love that. so when you made that Annette, like, how did, how technically was it announced? Just like email and social, or what, was there any, I dunno, is there a podcast name, reveal party? Like, how does.

[00:10:53] Abby:
Well, we didn’t have an email list at the time. So at the time he was really just on Instagram. So we shared across all three of our channels, had them follow us over at HERself Podcast. And that was really part of the initial launch plan. We did something similar with Pursuing Her Purpose, but we let people know the title beforehand.

We knew we were launching just like you said, Smaller audience. It was much more niche down. So we let people know the title and we just had the trailer up and running. So then on the day that it, that it uploaded or that the three episodes uploaded, we let them know that they could go find them there.

But, yeah, it was, it was really fun just seeing the, the account grow on Instagram and seeing those accounts grows so quickly right away at the beginning, because we knew that we were onto something. We knew that, people were trying to find something, they hadn’t found it quite yet. And that they wanted to hear from.

I think so many times in this world, people are like, oh, that’s already been done. Or I don’t want to do that. Somebody else is already doing that. Why me? And then through this experiment, we figured out that even if it’s already kind of been done, if it’s not been done by you, it hasn’t been done.

[00:11:57] Pat:
Hm, amen. I mean, that is so true. I mean, it’s really hard to reinvent. Something it’s really hard to invent something new. Right. There’s there’s always like, even like my tripod, it’s a tripod. I just did it in a different way. I put my own literal spin on it, if you will. and so did you with the show and I absolutely, love that.

And so you had mentioned that you knew you were onto something, meaning, okay. AnticiPation for it. This is, this has legs. It could be really good. How did you know it was good. How did you know after you launched it? That, okay. We got something like, for real, for real now.

[00:12:33] Abby:
Yeah. The, the number of reviews and ratings that came in right away at the beginning. I mean, we read every single one of them and they just started coming in and coming in and coming in and on apple. It’s kind of deceiving because you don’t get the reviews. The very, very second that they’re posted it kind of, it takes a couple of hours, sometimes a couple of days, but all of a sudden we started seeing all these reviews and we’re like, wow, these words are touching women in a way that they haven’t heard it before.

Like what we’re saying, the guests that we’re having on, we had our husbands on right away in episode three, and that helped out a ton. And then with Pursuing Her Purpose, we made sure that episode four was a really powerful interview that we knew everyone was. So it just was a little bit of a different way of doing things and people liked it.

They liked that we were a little bit different, but had enough of what they’d already been asking for. If that makes sense.

[00:13:24] Pat:
I love that as Sally hugs had always says different is better than better. And I love that you were like, okay, well, what can we do? That’s going to be a little bit different, but it’s also very obvious. And hopefully it’s obvious that listeners right now. it’s that? Well, you did some planning, like you were strategic about this.

You just mentioned, okay. Episode four, we need it to be really powerful. Episode three, maybe a little bit more lighthearted with the husbands on. And of course, in my course, I talk about launching with three episodes. So there’s more for people to dig into. That’s strategy seemed to work out very well. when you started to get into the teams, in terms of the numbers of episodes, was it, oh my gosh.

This is like, it feels like work now or was it like let’s keep cranking? What were your thoughts after the sort of honeymoon period after launch?

[00:14:06] Abby:
Yeah, I’m with, three podcast hosts. It’s nice because we each can interview people within our community. So you being on Pursuing Her Purpose, for instance, having you on the podcast, Pat, that was part of my community and then Kat, she has an entire new community that she can interview and bring on.

Amy is the exact same way. So with that, we’re having three separate podcast hosts interview their communities. And then we obviously are on the three of us once in a while. And sometimes just two of us jump on. So because of that, Not easy to create content. I will never say it’s easy, but the ideas start coming.

Also, Amy and Kat are incredible with their visionary skills, especially Amy with she’s. The true visionary Kat is a little bit of a hybrid in that role. So they will have these ideas. I’ll be jotting them down on a piece of paper. And all of a sudden we have a month of content. So it’s kind of like everyone is in their own roles.

I’ve okay. You create the ideas, you sit them up. You carry them out. And each of us are really strong in our own roles. None of us have the same skillset. Somebody weakness is somebody else’s strong suit, and we really try to play to our roles.

[00:15:07] Pat:
That’s really great. That reminds me of actually the very first podcast that I listened to. It was called the internet business mastery hosted by Sterling and Jay and Sterling was the storyteller. That was his skill. And then Jay was the more analytical sort of like here’s how you do this thing that Jeremy just mentioned in this story or Sterling.

And Jeremy are the same person. and I love that because that’s kind of what you need to find when you have a co-host it’s even a partner in life, right. It’s somebody that compliments you and can sort of fill in those, those gaps that might be there to create a better whole.

And I think that’s really, really amazing.

So when it comes to working with Amy and Kat, how did you determine. I mean three, the more the merrier. Yes. But also the more difficult it can be to find time was that challenging to find alignment with time and schedule to actually create this podcast.

[00:15:57] Abby:
It is, and we all have separate jobs or other businesses that we run outside of just Pursuing Her Purpose. So because of that is trying to align the schedules. So we’ve found Tuesdays, we have a reoccurring meeting that we have every single Tuesday. We use that as our recording time. And we generally try to do two episodes at a time, two or three.

And then it’s been about once every other month. I mean, our business is still pretty brand new. From the start of the first conversation that Kat brought until we launched with the first three episodes, it was only six weeks of time in between there. So we did a lot of work prepping for that. and just making sure that we have a few, a few in the queue in case people get sick or kids get sick, or, you know, coronavirus take somebody down or whatever it is.

Things always happen. Especially as working mothers, things always happen. So we always try to have a little bit of a backup plan to

[00:16:45] Pat:
I love that. And as far as like the planning that you do together to know what’s coming, do you have different times where you get together for that, outside of your recording times? Or is that kind of just. Sporadic random, maybe it’s on a slack or something like that. As far as ideation.

[00:17:00] Abby:
Yeah, we use the Voxer app. So a Voxer has become our best friend for all the businesses that I’m part of. And with faxer you can say voice texts, and then they can be saved. So you can listen to them at any time. So it’s kind of nice instead of doing a, an iPhone message, you can go back and listen to them.

A lot of times we’ll be literally creating our entire episode and these VOCs are conversations that people can just join as soon as they have some time.

[00:17:24] Pat:
Love it. Thank you for that. That’s a huge productivity tip, especially with working with multiple hosts. Now, when it comes to the recording with multiple hosts, you know, hosting is different than being a guest, right? Typically if there’s a guest, just like you’re a guest right now. You’re waiting for me to ask questions and prompt you, and then you tell a story and then we kind of go back and forth.

But when there’s co-hosts how did you determine, like, how do you determine who starts and then who goes, like, what’s the run of show? Like what do you have a agenda for each episode? And like who speaks, where I’d love to learn a little bit more about how you work together efficiently, as co-hosts.

[00:17:59] Abby:
And every, every podcast has a little bit differently. We definitely put a lot of research and a lot of time into planning each of our episodes. So we do have a script with bullet points of who is saying what that way we can talk off of each other, see what other people are bringing to the conversation and then be able to have followup points that we can pull outside of the conversation.

So everything is saved in our Google drive. That way everyone has. access to it We do use zoom for our recordings. Everyone’s on their own individual mic so that we can speak with each other and to each other and kind of have it be a conversation. But then whenever we’re in person, we do try to record as many episodes as we can.

I do find that when you’re in person, especially with three. co-hosts It’s so much easier just to be able to have that conversation instead of it sounding staged. Or are you talking now or am I talking now? So definitely still a little bit of wiggle room since Kat is in Iowa. So she’s out of state where Amy and I live in the same town.

[00:18:52] Pat:
Okay. Yeah, there’s definitely no lag when it comes to doing this in person, which is always a benefit, but, how often do you meet in person

[00:19:00] Abby:
About every other month. That’s what it’s been right now. And we tried to pull in photo shoots and we try to pull in. Yeah. We make them fun. and yeah, our next one will be at the beginning of January as we get ready for the launch of our first.

[00:19:13] Pat:
I love it. I love it. Okay. So when you’re together and you’re recording these things, what’s the setup like, I mean on zoom, it’s easy. You’re at your desk and you have your mic and you’re on zoom and it’s recording, but when you’re in person, what devices are you using? Are you each using a different mic and how are they hooked up?

If you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit about that.

[00:19:30] Abby:
Yeah, and right now I’m in my home office. So this is definitely not our podcast studio, but we have a cute little studio in downtown wonky. We have four microphones because sometimes we’ll have our husbands on. So it’s two, two co-hosts and two husbands for instance, and we’re all on the ATR 2100 and incredible $100 mic.

And. Easy because we can travel with them super easily. We’re all on different mic stands. We can, bring these with us. We can bring them home if I’m doing an interview like this one. And with that as well, we’re just using garage band as a backup. So everyone has an as an individual garage band track.

That way our editors can use each of them separately. If somebody’s breathing heavily or says something weird, they can edit it out a little bit easier. And

[00:20:12] Pat:
Are you each on your own computer?

[00:20:14] Abby:
We’re each on our own computer, but we’re all plugged into. We’re all plugged into one computer. Actually, we’re all plugged into microphones into one computer, but everyone has their own.

Everyone has their own computer for their notes and everything. That way.

[00:20:26] Pat:
Gotcha. Okay. So all three or four mikes are plugged into the same laptop and you can actually get different tracks out of each of those. So that, like you said, in case there’s an error or a sneeze or something, you can remove that. Now I know just for everybody listening that you can’t just plug and play, do that.

There are some technical things that you need to do with your device. I’m not going to go over that right now. I have a YouTube video about that, but in case people want even to have like an in-person interview, You plug two USB mics in and by default it only reads one of them. There’s like a special thing you have to do in your computer to do that.

So I’m really glad that you’re doing that because it just makes it easy. And then it’s already in garage band. You just need to kind of clean it up a little bit, export it and boom, there you go. Where are you hosting your podcast by the way?

[00:21:06] Abby:
As far as like Buzzsprout is

[00:21:07] Pat:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So.

[00:21:08] Abby:
A bus brought yet? We use the best route

[00:21:10] Pat:
Nice. Okay. So Buzzsprout good. Just getting all the technical details out and with that, you’re only needing to connect it to apple and Spotify and Stitcher and all those places once.

So literally all you have to do is keep uploading. That’s fantastic. How and where do you get your ideas for content? I know you said that you kind of work together for that, but for you in particular, Abby, what inspires you for, your content creation and just, you know, making it easy for your partners to kind of come along the ride with you on your. ideas

[00:21:36] Abby:
Yeah, the conversations I’m having with people. So either on Instagram, the front, my friends, family members, and they’re like, Hey, like I have this really great business idea, but I don’t have motivation in order to get it off the ground or I’m having this. This constant fight with my husband over and over and over again, my partner and I, we just can’t get, get around this one issue.

We keep stubbing our toe on it. Okay. Or to my kid. Like I need somebody with a sleep consultant or I need somebody who knows about toddler tantrums. Okay. Well, we know somebody who can talk about toddler tantrums. Let’s invite them on. So where we sometimes aren’t the absolute experts in every single Kategory.

We have people in our community. who are And we invite them on and they’re able to speak in a way that we learn a little bit. So we’re always learning, along the way, along with our audience, when we have these guests on as well.

[00:22:23] Pat:
When you invite a guest on, and I know this from personal experience because I was a guest on the show, which was really fantastic, and it was a super smooth process, but can you enlighten everybody who is paying attention right now? As far as the process for you get a person, they say, yes, I’d love to be on what happens next.

How do you get the process smooth? So they come to the show and everything’s great.

[00:22:43] Abby:
Yeah, we figured out a time that works well for all parties involved. So we generally record on Tuesdays for us, unless somebody is busy, may figure that out on their end. If it’s just one individual that’s on our end one, one, co-host that’s doing it. It makes it a little bit easier. And then we immediately send that zoom link.

So it’s on their calendar. They know when it is that way. If there’s anything that needs to be changed, we can change it that way. We also will then begin. And with you Pat, like I’ve been following you for years. So I knew a lot of your backstory and was able to write your script pretty easily, but we jot down ideas from the podcast.

So we’ll listen to podcasts that you’ve been on. We read your blogs, we look at your website. We figured out what’s important to the guest because a lot of times a podcast will just ask the exact same questions over and over and over again. And it’s like, you know, Been there done that have heard that interview.

I’m not going to listen to this one, but we want to always uncover the story behind the story. Like what else is important to this individual that they might not be known for? Just because somebody hasn’t asked and we make sure to ask those questions as well.

[00:23:41] Pat:
What’s been your favorite interview so far that you’ve done.

[00:23:44] Abby:
Oh, favorite interview.

[00:23:46] Pat:
I put you On the spot.

[00:23:48] Abby:
I know on the HERself side, we interviewed Molly Millwood and she’s a PhD and she is a therapist and she speaks so well on just the transition into motherhood and what that means for a person as a partner, as an individual and as a mother. And that was just a really enlightening.

I interview a lot of the interviews that I love on Pursuing Her Purpose are interviews that my co-hosts have actually done. And I’m learning because I haven’t met them. They’re in their unique communities and learning from them. I’m like, whoa, this is so interesting. This is so interesting to be able to hear this and be able to hear from somebody who was a stranger until this interview. And now I feel like we can be best friends.

[00:24:29] Pat:
That’s so cool. The Molly, I think who, who you spoke about, you interviewed her, right. what was so great about that? Like, why do you think that flowed so well, what, did you do or what approaches you have so that it actually Like besides Molly being awesome, Like, tell me about your energy and kind of how you brought like greatness into that episode.

[00:24:49] Abby:
We read her entire book. So we read her entire book and we had it. as part of book club. So We had questions from our community of what do people want to know? We had our own questions that we brought in and because of that we felt like we knew her Like we knew her from her writing. We knew her backstory.

We knew why she was doing it. And we were able to really, to draft a really good conversation based on that, right away in the beginning too, we opened up on like, Hey, these are. We’re going to be really vulnerable in this interview. And I think that that made her feel comfortable that we weren’t just asking her questions, that we also were going to be interjecting and bringing in our story into the

[00:25:26] Pat:
That was before you hit record you you set it up like that.

[00:25:28] Abby:
We did.

[00:25:30] Pat:
Nice. And, okay. So the moment Molly came on, you tell her that, and you hit record, you have this great conversation. like how do you feel after a podcast interview? I’m curious, because for people listening, who perhaps want to start their first podcast, the idea of getting behind the mic and, talking to somebody who you’ve never met, who might have accolades and all these credentials or a top of the industry type of person who, again, if you have a podcast you’re more likely to speak to them, which is cool, but what encouragement would you offer?

Somebody who’s doing that for the first time to, stay grounded and, actually be comfortable as possible to, you know, rock the show and have some good questions to ask and, knock It out of the park. hopefully

[00:26:13] Abby:
For starters, they are just. a person knowing that they are just a human being, just like you are, you are bringing value to the conversation. They’re bringing value to the conversation. It just looks a little bit different knowing that, doesn’t it make them feel like they’re on a pedestal? It doesn’t put them in this.

Oh my goodness. I can’t screw up type of a deal because if you think you’re going to screw up. Chances that you’re in a screw up or a lot higher, but if you can come to the conversation, take some deep breaths, know that you’re speaking, and that they’re excited to be there too. That makes the conversation flow a lot easier and makes it easier for the audience to hear just the back and forth instead of you being so, so nervous and all of it.

[00:26:50] Pat:
Hmm. I love that. Thank you for that. That’s huge. And when you finish the interview, like say yes, you stop recording. Maybe you can remember what it was like with Molly. Sometimes that can be awkward. That sort of like, okay, we’re done. okay, thanks. Like how do you finish and how do you keep that relationship going?

That’s really important. Right? And that’s, you know, you’re speaking with somebody for so long, you can’t help, but have the potential at least to become friends with them. And you also don’t want to be pushy with, Hey, we’ll send you the link and we hope that you’ll share it. And then like, Hey, you didn’t share the link yet.

Like your episodes out. How do you balance the marketing part of this, but also just the true, authentic relationship building part of.

[00:27:30] Abby:
Well, there’s so much humanity in it to being able to be on these microphones and asking these deep questions. Like, that’s the beauty in podcasting. You don’t get that through other channels where it’s just the, you know, one way type of street. So with Molly, I will say that was one of our first. I was nervous on that one.

So I’m not going to say, oh, we S we came to these microphones and we were picture perfect. No, I was definitely nervous in that one, but as we got into the conversation, you could even tell in our voices that it started to ease up and that if it came more natural and that’s just when you bring the humanity to it and treat each other.

Talking to human beings. That’s where it comes from. And when we got off the mix, I remember feeling so inspired from her words and right away, I said, this is what I want to implement with my husband. This is what I want to implement with my kids. Like these are the areas that I want to show up because of the interview today.

So right away, she knew that she touched my world. Like she was able to touch our world right in that interview. And I think that that definitely helps just move the relationship forward as we tagged her on Instagram and sensory emails and. Made sure to bring her up, like throughout the conversations, even in conversations like this one, like in future episodes, we’re bringing her up.

And even if she doesn’t listen to this podcast, specifically, people are coming to her and they know about Molly Millwood because of the conversation that we had on the hustle podcast or in Pursuing Her Purpose way back when

[00:28:49] Pat:
That’s so cool. She’s getting a shout out on the Smart Passive Income podcast. Molly mill out there.

[00:28:53] Abby:
Hello? Yes.

[00:28:55] Pat:
When have you, if you have ever made a big mistake in this podcasting world, I mean, I can talk for hours about all the things I’ve done wrong. I forgotten to hit record before I’ve had the wrong mic input before, like, tell us about any blenders or anything that you’ve had that, you know, possibly slowed you down, but obviously you got up and come back stronger, but yeah.

Where was it also? Not.

[00:29:22] Abby:
Oh, my gosh, how long do we have in this interview? Yeah, there’s going to be mistakes. Like there’s, there’s going to be mistakes. And the important thing is, is seeing the mistake learning from the mistake and then knowing, okay. In the future, I’m not going to do that.

But you have to make the mistake sometimes in order to figure out how much it stinks to be in that mistake, you can listen to your course, Pat, and you can watch the YouTube videos on what not to do, but until you have that gut feeling of I didn’t hit record, or my microphone was plugged in, but I was actually using my Mac book.

Microphone. I mean, I’ve done that. I’ve done that so many times when, you can listen to it back and you can’t change it because you’re on an interview. Can’t go back and have them come back on again. I’ve also made the mistake of not clearing my hard drive and having too much on my hard drive so that the interview stops like 90% of the way in and wasn’t able to record anymore.

So.

[00:30:10] Pat:
Okay. On that one. Well, what did you do after that?

[00:30:14] Abby:
So a little workaround here is it will record. And it will say if you’re saving to the, to your actual computer, we just hit record again and save to the cloud. And we’re able to record the last 10 minutes on the actual cloud,

[00:30:26] Pat:
Oh, okay. So you’re on

[00:30:28] Abby:
Together.

[00:30:29] Pat:
That’s why, and you, you are recording on your computer to get the higher quality,

[00:30:33] Abby:
Get the higher quality. Yes.

[00:30:35] Pat:
But then it stopped because it was like, sorry, there’s no more room. And then you just hit record again and then you’d like, kept it going. And you can like splice it together. Right?

[00:30:43] Abby:
You can splice together, the person that you were talking to. She was so woo. And I loved it. She’s like, I’m manifesting that this is all working on this end and it’s going to be picture perfect. And here I am, like, I don’t know if this is going to work. We had 40 minutes of this interview and I have no idea if it saved, but it all ended up working out and now.

If that were to happen again in the future, we can still save, get the best sound quality.

And then for the last couple of minutes there, it wasn’t the best quality, but we did have at least the end of the interview recorded.

[00:31:10] Pat:
So good. I’m glad it worked out now. A podcast is a great way to, as we spoke, spoken about build the relationship with the guest or guests on the other end, it’s a great way to, at least for me, it did a lot for becoming a better communiKator. I don’t know if you’ve already experienced that through, you know, your storytelling and, and whatnot.

But it’s also great for business. I’d love to know how the podcast specifically. Sort of involves the business and how you get listeners to, you know, find the other things that you have going on.

[00:31:40] Abby:
Yeah. So we do a lot with affiliate marketing. We also now have quite a few sponsors on one of our podcasts, we’re selling merchandise, and then we have a course coming out. So our main rule is always serve, serve, serve. Build the trust. And then for the people who want to buy, if it’s the right choice for them, they’re going to come and they’re going to buy. So the first year we launched one podcast that HERself Podcast in January 20, 20, and a couple months later, the pandemic happened. And with the pandemic, our listenership went down because the women who are listening no longer had to commute to. They no longer had gyms to go to their children were always around because they were homeschooling or daycare was closed.

So right away, it was a very, very difficult to number one, have listeners much less drop an offer in when our community was definitely just trying to survive at that point. So we made the conscious decision to not have any offers, any paid offers until. Slow down until things got a little bit better until things just felt a little bit lighter and we are still so glad that we did that.

The first year of business. You know, our ending, our ending bank statements are nothing that could have retired us whatsoever. But year two, it was beautiful to see all the girls that came from it because they trusted us. And we didn’t dig in. We didn’t try to sell when all our community needed was to be served and supported.

And by being able to sink into that same thing with Pursuing Her Purpose, we are in served mode right now. We are supporting our audience. We don’t have paid ads. We are giving them everything that they do. Is that when our course comes out and it’s coming out this week right now at the time of the earring, we know that our community is going to be there and that they’re going to get so much value from it because we’ve given them a little bit of the value already.

[00:33:26] Pat:
Yeah, I mean, Comes down to respect, right.

And emPathy. Right. So, so you knowing where your audiences and at that time of the pandemic, you, I mean, we were all in it together. And if you’re like, well, if they’re going through the same things as me, what I want to be promoted to right now, and we made the same decision at SPI as well during those months, we were actually in the middle of a launch for, I think it was email marketing magic, and we had all these emails plan and all like the, follow-ups and we just saw. Put

The brakes on and said, yeah, there’s some stuff going on. Like let’s just pause for right now and whatever you need, let us know. And then I started the income stream, which is my daily show on YouTube from there as a result. And that turned into something great. So I’m always coming from a place of service.

I love to hear that from you and your partners on what you’re doing with the show. Now, this course I’m curious, is this, have you launched a course before to your audience?

[00:34:17] Abby:
We have not, this is the first course that we have launched and we are so excited for it. We pulled in all of the information. From our past experience from the other courses that we’ve taken from the experts that we’ve listened to in other areas from, you know, the professionals that we’ve had on and the interviews that we’ve had on.

And we’re creating this course for individuals who really have that big idea, but they don’t know how to start. They have the objections of, I don’t have time or I’m still in my corporate role, or who’s going to listen to me and we’re debunking those and making sure that it’s possible for them to actually get it off the ground in 2022.

[00:34:52] Pat:
Love it. What’s the name of the course.

[00:34:53] Abby:
The name of the course is going to be a secret, but it will be coming out. If you,

[00:34:57] Pat:
Do that. That’s just like, geez. Okay. Where, where could a person listening?

[00:35:02] Abby:
Yes,

[00:35:02] Pat:
Who’s now even more curious. Cause they want to know where, where should they go?

[00:35:06] Abby:
They should go to Pursuing Her Purpose.com or if you are on Instagram, come to Pursuing Her Purpose. And this week we’ll be shouting it from the rooftops and have all the information there.

[00:35:15] Pat:
Sure you can’t tell us the name.

Okay. okay.

I tried it. I tried everybody. Okay. That’s cool. how are you promoting this? Obviously you have your social channels and other things, but what’s the plan. I mean, you said a beta launch. Tell us why that and what that, what that actually.

[00:35:33] Abby:
Yeah. So we’re starting the beta launch and it’s just a few months into starting this business. So we all have had businesses in the past. we’ve run multiple millions of dollars of other businesses that we’ve been part of. And we wanted to make sure that we have all the working parts in this business or in this business course.

But also aren’t leaving things behind. So the initial testers will be able to go through it at a much reduced rate. And during that process, we’re looking for feedback, we’ll be doing coaching components. We’re seeing what pieces are we missing that they aren’t getting. And there’ll be building the course based on that.

So it’s kind of a learning mechanism or learning curve, but then also knowing that we’re adding so much value from the beginning. Most beta courses, don’t have a course of workbook that starts with that. That’s kind of the second piece that comes with it, but we know that that is going to add a ton of value and that value in service are very important to us and our, and what we provide.

So that is going to be part of the beta course.

[00:36:28] Pat:
Oh, wow. That’s cool. So you know that because it’s beta, then. Book might change and you kind of want it to, right. You want it to beat its best self when it, when it comes out of, the beta launch, which I think is really cool.

So a discounted price, are you limiting the number of people that could get in during this time as well?

[00:36:44] Abby:
We’re not eliminating the number, but, the beta, the actual book will only be available for 20 individuals. We don’t want to print a whole bunch of copies of the book and knowing that they is definitely going to change. So just as a small business, we’re making sure that we keep our bottom line as low as possible so that we can serve as much as possible.

[00:37:03] Pat:
I love that. That’s really exciting. And you know, you’ve spent this time to build this audience. You’re going to get some beta testers in some of those people are going to be very, very successful, and you’re going to see some success stories. And now you have this beautiful thing called the podcast that you can invite these students on to come on and talk about their process and their struggles and their challenges and what they’ve gotten out of it.

And even without having to queue that person up, they will talk about that because you’ve helped them. Right. I didn’t tell you to say it Abbey, but you’ve already mentioned Power-up Podcasting. You’re a student of mine and here you are. And you know, this is one of those cool things. we are going to be, if not already doing this promoting power podcasting soon at the start of the. We’re going to be doing something cold where we’re going to be encouraging people through a campaign called Pitch Your Pod. It’s almost like a film festival, but for podcasts to just encourage people, to get their first episode going and we’re hosting everybody’s first episode, we’re going to have people vote on it and all that stuff it might be going on right now, have a link at the end of this episode for you so that you can go and particiPate or look at those.

And we’re going to be talking about power podcasting for anybody who enjoyed that process and wants to go further. If I ask you really quick, what, what was The best thing about that course? That helped you because you were the one that kind of went through it, and then you’ve now implemented that in many different ways.

But, if you only had, let’s say 20, 30 seconds to talk about it, how would you encourage courage a person on the fence to, to, you know, at least.

[00:38:25] Abby:
Well, I’m extremely type a and I’m the person who I want to get something done right. The first time and the most efficient way. So could you go to YouTube? Of course. Could you try to find this in blogs? Yeah, probably, but it’s going to take you weeks and weeks and months. And are you going to miss things along the way?

Also, yes. So what I liked about your course that you had every piece of it laid out in the order that you’re supposed to do it in order for it to get off the ground. And because of that, we felt so confident when we launched and we’re able to pull two very successful podcasts from, your course.

[00:38:57] Pat:
Thanks so much for that, that one I did queue up, but it was a very, very good, a very, very good testimonial. Thank you. Thank you for that, Abby. I appreciate you.

[00:39:04] Abby:
Well, I mean, it, I absolutely do.

[00:39:06] Pat:
Thank you. If you could go back and restart your shows, what would be besides, you know, making sure you have enough hard drive space and all that kind of stuff. what would be the advice you’d give yourself when you started out that could get you a little bit further than where you were today

[00:39:27] Abby:
Not being afraid of the asks. So at the end of podcasts, having the call to action, so to say, sometimes we’d be nervous about, oh, should we ask again for them to leave a rating and review? we asked them last time and that was just a week ago. Without asking people don’t know.

Even as a podcast listener, I didn’t know how important podcasts reviews, ratings sharing with a friend. I didn’t know how important that was to podcast hosts until I became a podcast host So not being afraid of the asks right away from the start. your committee wants to support you. So give them a way to support you.

Those are all free and they’re cheap and they’re cheap and they’re very, very easy to deal. It takes just a couple of minutes to do Those types of things.

[00:40:09] Pat:
I love that Abby. And then as a podcast host doing an interview, how do you get comfortable enough to ask the tough questions? Those tough questions are going to be the ones that bring the gold into that episode.

And that’s something that I struggled with initially, and I’ve gotten a lot better at and not being afraid to innocent.

The ask to the person who’s on the show. how do you ground yourself properly leading into an interview so that you can maybe push a little bit and try to get something that is different from, from that person?

[00:40:43] Abby:
Knowing your person. So knowing the person you’re interviewing that helps because then you also know, like, what are their ticks Are they going to, if they start to say it this way, are they getting nervous or do they want you to go deeper? So listening to other podcasts that they are on and maybe just, where did the.

Start to, ask the question, but didn’t ask the full question that would have actually supported the audience more. Also, we write down the question set, especially the ones that are really, really tough, and we’ll send it ahead of time. So if there’s ever a question that I know might be a little bit of a tricky spot, maybe it’s about their past divorce or about part of their business that failed.

And I’m like, you know what? I don’t know if I would feel comfortable talking about. this But I don’t also want to assume I’ll send it ahead of time and we’ll say, Hey, was there anything that you want to change or deleted from it? And only a few times have our guests said, you know what? Let’s not talk about my past divorce.

That’s not something I’m comfortable with. Let’s cut that from the, the question set then, you know, that every other question on there is something that they’re going to feel competent answering

[00:41:41] Pat:
That’s so good. I mean, just, it’s always good to do that. Especially with tougher, topics that’s out of respect. You don’t want to surprise or. The spot and I know it’s not live. Yes. You could always record it, but even then, you know, there’s going to be a change in the mood if that person’s maybe caught off guard, in that way.

And I know most people don’t want to create shows that are just kind of, you know, paparazzi style and, and you know, that, that kind of thing,

[00:42:05] Abby:
That’s definitely a thing, but

[00:42:07] Pat:
There’s a.

[00:42:07] Abby:
Are in the market for that.

[00:42:09] Pat:
Yep. That’s a style. Definitely not my style. I know not your guys’ style either. and then final question here and again, Abby, thank you so much for your time today.

This has been incredible and super inspirational, especially for those who are going through pitcher pod and starting their podcast for the first time this year. I know it’s a goal for a lot of people to have a successful show in 2022. So thank you for the advice and the wisdom and your experience and Amy and Kat.

Thank you as well for being here in spirit. what are your husbands think of this? They see their wives just rocking it on, on the microphones. How are they responding to it?

[00:42:43] Abby:
So they are part of our storyline and they’re part of our storyline on purpose because we want the audience to hear. Both sides of it. I mean, we can come on these microphones and say, oh yes, we have supportive, supportive partners and they do this for us and they make sure to pick up at home. And when we’re out at a business meeting, you know, they pick up the slack, but until they’re actually on the microphones, that’s when it becomes.

[00:43:06] Pat:
Hm.

[00:43:07] Abby:
I’ll say my husband and I, we sometimes work from home together and I can hear him talking to his clients. And it’s just adorable. Like, that’s the only word I can say of how proud they are, of what we have done. And at the start they’re like, okay, these women, they’re going to get on the microphones, talk to their friends.

This is going to be cool. I mean, I don’t even know what their beginning thoughts were, but I know that my husband, Colin, specifically, he believed in me before I believed in me, like he knew this was going to be something big before I could even see through the clouds. And he was the one that was encouraging me to leave my corporate job in order to take this full time.

And the second that I did that and like took that to heart that’s when everything really just, it was the Katalyst for, for growth. And I think it just takes that. Believing in yourself, like your partner believes in you sometimes in order to actually become the person you’re supposed to become.

[00:43:55] Pat:
And support is so key. So, so Colin, thank you, Colin. If you are starting a podcast, you’ll want to make sure that you get support from somewhere because it is going to be challenging. You’re going to be yes, challenging yourself, but there’s a lot of things that you can think about stories that you could tell yourself about why this is not going to work or why people wouldn’t listen to you.

I mean, trust me, it took a year and a half for me to, after I bought my first microphone to finally get my show up and running. And it was only after connecting with other people. Who had done this before or other supportive people, even my family who had no idea what a podcast was to really get me up and going finally.

So I, I’m thankful that you have a support at home and you also have support from your partners. And obviously now your audience. You’ve been a part of power podcasting in the community over there as well. So you’ve definitely set yourself up for success and I’m really excited to see what’s going to happen in 2022 with the course and the public launch.

And so big shout out and thank you to you, Abby and kudos again to Kat and Amy for their work with you as well. that we’ll put the links in all the show notes for everybody, but, yeah. Where one more time. Can people go and listen to y’all and, and get some.

[00:45:03] Abby:
Yeah. So that’s Pursuing Her Purpose, and then also at HERself Podcast, and yeah, we have 1.5 million downloads at this point, and it’s less than two years old. So, it’s been really fun just seeing how a couple of people on mics—you finally get the confidence to buy that mic and then actually produce a show.

You can really make a lot of impact in a short amount of time, but you just have to start.

[00:45:28] Pat:
Hmm. Thank you, Abby. I appreciate you.

Alright. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Abby Rose Green. Again, you can find her podcasts that she co-hosts with her friends, Amy and Kat. The first one with the trio is—and that’s the more, relatively new one, that is just launching, that just recently launched, which is really cool.

And that is the Pursuing Her Purpose Podcast. She also co-hosts with her partner, Amy, the HERself podcast. You can check them out. We’ll have all the links in the show notes. If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session545. Again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session545. You will see links to all the great things that Abby, Kat and Amy are up to.

I hope you really enjoyed the episode. I learned a lot. There were some really cool things that came out of that, especially in regards to the approach that you might take, and that it’s okay to be imperfect. In fact, that’s kind of required, right? I found that in the world of podcasting, it’s sort of a rite of passage.

You have to make a mistake of some kind to truly call yourself a podcaster. Like I said, in the episode, I could talk for hours about all the mistakes I’ve made, but I kept going and here we are. And you’re here today. And I appreciate for that.

Make sure you subscribe, if you haven’t already. And if you’re curious about Pitch Your Pod, and all that’s going on, and you want to know where we’re at with that right now, if you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/pyp. Again, that’s SmartPassiveIncome.com/pyp. You can follow along the journey of several people. You can even join in late, as well, and follow along and start your podcast. We’re going to award some prizes. We’re going to support everybody there who wants to start a show. If you’re curious about Power-up Podcasting, which is the course that Abby took, you can go to PowerupPodcasting.com

I recommend you start with Pitch Your Pod. You can see all the fun things that everybody in the community is up to, to start their shift. SmartPassiveIncome.com/pyp.

Thank you so much for listening, and I appreciate you. I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Got a lot more stuff coming this year, so make sure you subscribe, if you haven’t already.

Peace out, and as always, team Flynn for the win!