Healthy N Wealthy N Wise

Beyond Podcasting – 8 Big Benefits of Running an Interview Series with Cathy Demers – powered by Happy Scribe

Are you living your best life as a salesperson or entrepreneur, or do you find you’re working all the time on this hamster wheel of life while stressed out and not financially free, which is the exact opposite of what you had signed up for, especially now in this global pandemic? If this is you, you are not alone. I found myself there in 2008 when I lost everything, including my health, and had to pivot. Working from home for the first time with no money.

I rebuilt my life from scratch, juggling motherhood and marriage to get my life back and be recession and pandemic proof today. Now we live laptop lifestyles with our kids and are poised to travel the world together. How did we do it? Join me as I share my health and wealth and wisdom secrets, tips, tools and expert interviews to equip you to be recession proof and live your best life. My name is Lois Coffey and this is healthy and wealthy and wise.

Well, all right. All right. All right. Happy Friday, guys. It’s that time again. This is Coach Loess with healthy and wealthy and wise. And we have amazing content in store for you guys today. So I’m going to keep this short and sweet as a reminder, if you’re tuning in live, go ahead and comment below hashtag Leive if you’re watching on the replay. Go ahead and turn your phone off. Won’t that be a good thing to do as well?

That never happens during the show. It’s always fun. And anyway, we’re going to be talking today about some really, really powerful stuff that you are not going to want to miss out on. So make sure you have something to write with and to write on, because I have an amazing guest and a friend that I met this year thanks to the online world in online networking. Otherwise, Kathy, I don’t know how else I would have met you, but each week, guys, I bring experts on health, wealth or some kind of innate wisdom that they’ve learned through this journey called life.

So today we have Kathy Dimmers, who has been running the Business Success Cafe. You guys are on my emails. You know, I was on that earlier this year. That’s a weekly education program for small business owners. She’s been doing it for eight plus years. So if you do the math, as Kathy reminded me, that’s over four hundred shows. Four hundred episodes. So she knows how to have a show, an interview series, which is what we’re going to talk about today.

She also took an Internet company public. She co-founded it and then listed on the stock exchange. And she was also recently the winner of Canadian Women Entrepreneur of the Year award for Western Canada. So, Kathy, I’d love for you to dove in. I know you’re going to deliver eight big benefits of running an interview series and going beyond this world of podcasting. But tell us a little bit more about how you got to be so successful.

Well, I want to mention, first of all, that award was a long time ago, many years ago. I also I also won the top 40 business in Vancouver, top 40 under 40. I do not qualify for that award anymore and have not qualify for a very long time. So I don’t want to give anybody the wrong impression. But, you know, I’m really excited about being here today, Lois, because I have so invested in figuring out how to make ongoing expert interviews like this one, like the one you’re doing here today, really work for my business and for other small business owners.

And it’s been fantastic. And running the Business Success Cafe every week for all these years now has taught me a lot. But there’s also some really big benefits that I don’t think are really obvious from the outside. And so if people are running an interview series like this or like the Business Success Cafe or they’re thinking about it and they’re like, hmm, that kind of seems like maybe a lot of fun, but maybe there’s a lot of work and I’m not so sure all the benefits are there.

Then then I thought this would be a really great thing for you and I to talk about because we both do this and have done it for some time. So sound good.

It sounds wonderful. I’ve got my notes ready to take. I’m going to be taking copious notes. And guys, don’t forget, we do normally have live Q&A during this show. We will probably not have as much time to answer those questions, but do still comment. And as always, I don’t want to forget this. If you see value in this on live or replay, please hit the share button. OK, I’m going to go take it away and share away.

So yeah, good point. First of all, everyone listening, get a pen or paper or whatever it is. You used to take notes these days because I’m going to go fast. There is a lot to cover and you’re going to want to write these down so that you can explore them a little bit further than we have time. And yeah, I’m going to try and leave some time for some questions as well. Lois, this is great. I want you to hop in at any time because you’ll have some comments.

So so the eight big benefits that I’m going to talk about, they vary a little bit depending on the format, my format. The Business Success Cafe is a bit different than a podcast, and every time I think about changing it up, I go, why it’s working. It’s working well the way it is. So so some of these may apply and some of them won’t. But first of all, I do want to say that I have yet to find a niche or a market where running an ongoing expert interview series won’t work and give you at least the majority of these benefits.

There isn’t one that I know of. I’ve had clients who’ve done interviews on dating, on finding Mr. Right, for example. And on that note, my my husband’s name is Mr. Right. My girlfriend can’t believe that I passed up the opportunity to wear the label of Mrs. Wright because they know how much I like being right all the time.

Well, and the women are always right. Right.

Exactly. And I you know, I could have I could have had the label, you know, Mrs. Wright, all my cards, my business cards. But anyway, that’s another story. So so there isn’t a niche that I’ve come across. Well, this will not work. So it doesn’t matter if you’re your market niche is having to do with teaching autistic children or, you know, anywhere where there is content being published by people who have some expertize this will work for you.

OK, so there you go, right out the can in my market is a small business owners, my topic areas around small business development. So let’s let’s get right into the eight big benefits. Eight. All right. So No. One list building social media is fantastic. Here we are. This is great. But when it comes right down to it, you want to build a list of engaged followers, an email list. And that’s one of the things that that I use my interview series for, is for building my email list and building my engagement.

And so every week when I send out messages to my list subscribers about what’s coming up, I get engagement. So and the experts, they interview, they assist me in, you know, building the list. Oh, Lois, you’re typing each of these out. This is fantastic news for people. That’s great. And so, you know, I got to say, that is across the board one of the biggest benefits. And when you build a list of people who are in your market and they’re following you and they’re interested in what you’re doing and they open your email and it’s completely separate from the whims or algorithms of any social media platform.

You have an asset. You have an asset that done properly. You could just dip right into and bring revenue out. So so that’s number one. And I think it’s probably, of all of them, the most lucrative because you’re building an asset. So when you build a following on Facebook, you’re kind of at Facebook’s whims as to whether or not that’s going to work. And when you post something, whether or not they’re going to show it, but when you own your email list, you determine what is sent, when and how and the messaging and you can track who’s opening following all that kind of stuff.

So, you know, I think a lot of people, because social media is, you know, so broad, there’s so many different platforms are kind of thinking that email’s dead. Right. And, yeah, there’s some challenges with getting people to read emails and open emails. But it is still one of the very few places where you own the asset with social media platforms. You can build a following, but in the end they own it. So did you have something you wanted to say about that loess?

You read my my facial expression and I’ve heard this and I can’t remember if it was I don’t know who said this, but this was over a decade ago. It might have even been Seth Godin who talks about permission based marketing and getting options and all that kind of stuff. And they said that if you have a list, a quality list, right, of one thousand people, that could be as much over your lifetime of business ownership, a million dollar asset.

Have you heard that before?

I haven’t heard that particular number, but I believe it. I mean, I have people who have been on my email list for over eight years opening my emails. And not every email includes an offer, obviously, or a chase them off my list. But, you know, they respond to the things that are there. And so. Yeah, so if you’re not building a list, having an expert interview series is a really great way to do it.

It’s a it’s a really great leg up. Yeah. So I haven’t heard that. No, but it’s it’s enormous. It’s huge. And yeah. What I have heard people say time and time again is I wish I started building my list sooner.

I can, I can attest to that. I just started building realized last year and if I can throw this one more thing and then I’ll zip it is I don’t know if you would have had me on your show had I not told you I had to for a list at that time of 4000 of actual paying subscribers. I mean, that that’s an asset that also is an energy exchange of saying, hey, Cathy, I’m here to give you value and give you my list more or less right.

To of giving an exchange. Would you say that that’s also true?

Yeah, that’s also true. But for me, I mean, I didn’t start this way. I mean, before anybody who could forgive me or I’d have on my program if the content was a good fit, because you’ve got to start somewhere. But now I’m at the point where I do have a minimum list size. But for me it’s more about if you have been building a list, then you’re in business. I mean, it demonstrates to me that you figured a few things out and you really seriously in business, and so you’re more likely to have some of the other pieces in play as well where the people don’t have a list.

I’m like, well, are you really serious about this whole online marketing thing? So does that make sense? Great. OK, so we’re going to we’re going to I’m looking at the clock. You’re going to whip through the rest of it. But we’ve alluded to this a couple of times. Number two, relationship building. Relationship building and in two areas, one is relationship with people who have opted in, they’ve said, yes, I want to hear from you, I want to know what you’re doing.

I want to be part of your community. But the other relationship is the relationship with the experts who you bring onto your program. And a lot of people are fearful about this. They think, oh, you know, I don’t have a big enough email list. They won’t be interested in me. You know, they’ve never heard of me before, you know, that type of thing. But the truth is that these experts are looking for exposure.

They’re looking for places for people to feature them. And the other thing is, once they’re on your interview program, you can see some other cool things together. I have developed some really great relationships with people over the last few years, and I keep going back to them and we keep doing things together. So when you have a venue by which you can feature them and put a spotlight on them and their expertize and what they’re doing, again, no matter what market, you develop a relationship with them and you have a reason to do it, rather than just reaching out to them on LinkedIn and say, hey, do you want to chat?

You know, you seem like a person I’d like to get to know now, like, well, why? What’s in it for me? So so that’s number two. Do you have a comment or question on that? I mean, I think you’re going to get to 100 percent, 100 percent. I like being able to to swap that energy exchange, that value exchange. It has made my life so much easier. And and then you deepen the relationship so much faster because you get to the heart of the matter.

It’s it’s it is relationship building and business and making money together, almost like a joint venture at the same time. And it’s a beautiful thing. Do you have a number of interviews that you do per week? Is there can you overdo too many interviews? I just know that well, for me, the Business Success Cafe happens every Thursday, every week. I do have people who have started their expert interview series with less like once a month. The problem is it’s difficult to get the momentum on some of these benefits if you don’t do it often enough.

People people want to hear your list, wants to hear from you more frequently, social media more frequently, so the minimum might say twice a month and then move up to twice a month and then move up to once a week. Once a week is a lot. Until you have your systems in place, it can be a little consuming. I will tell you. I’m going to talk about that in a sec. So let’s get into number three, right?

When I built the company that I took public, we got investors in place because we need to go in an Internet business unit to grow really quickly. So we brought investors. We use what we called OPM, other people’s money. Because we didn’t have any. We started with ten thousand dollars, right, so so we use other people’s money. Well, one of the great benefits of running an expert interview series is that you don’t want to be creating content every week.

I mean, that’s all you would be doing, is it takes a lot of content to run an online business and to do the marketing. So when you have an ongoing expert interview series, you’re using what I call OPEC, other people’s content and, you know, and not only very ethical ways. So you’re using my content today, Lois. This is my content and I’m delivering it to your people. And, you know, you’ll thank me for it.

It’s like, how cool is that? Because here we go. You don’t have to create content for this week’s episode. You invite someone in who is content that your list would be interested in. So OPEC is huge, huge benefit. Now, I’m not sure if I just lost you, Lois, but your video is gone, so. I don’t know if Lois is gone, I can’t see her, so I’m sorry that it was a freak accident, you’re still going.

So that’s the most important thing.

Let me just keep talking about this all day. I wanted to clarify. So number three, because I’m taking notes, guys, and I hope you guys are taking notes was OK.

Other people’s content about it. Yeah. So this building relationship building other people’s content. Number four, reusable content. This is so cool because you can use the content that is is used in your interview series in a number of different formats. You can use it in video format, you can use the audio format, you can send it to your list, you can post it on social media. I mean, there’s just so many things that you can do.

And typically, depending on your arrangement with the expert, I need to put air quotes around that. If you’re a content, it becomes your content. You can do what you want with it. You can put it in a membership program. You can put it in a number of different places. You can label it however you like. Now, there are some caveats. Obviously, you don’t want to, like, rip it off, right? Just take the words and create your own content kind of idea, because that would be plagiarism.

But, you know, the fact that you can reuse this content is a really big benefit of these expert interviews. So number five, my personal favorites, it doesn’t take much money to start and run your own expert interview series. Right. It’s a really low cost to get in and get started. You don’t need many tools. You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment. And, you know, there’s not that many things out there where you can actually get started with a really small list, a really small engagement and a really low investment in dollars.

And getting this all set up. You’re nodding your head. Well, if I’m going to get you to make a comment on that, I’m excited because I was just telling my coaching clients this morning, I started a list from zero zero. And one of the ways I did that, by the way, so did I. We all do.

Yep. So one of the ways I built it was having these live streams. I use streaming and I even use the free oh, by the way, membership or free tool. Now, I upgraded to the paid membership because I wanted to have all my colors and my logo and blah, blah, blah. And oh by the way, I built that list from zero to two thousand doing expert interviews on Stream Yard and I didn’t have a microphone. I didn’t have all the shiny objects.

Oh by the way I traveled. I’m in Minnesota right now. I’m not in California where I normally reside. So I took my studio for my interview with me and it’s perfect. So you’re right. Yep.

And, you know, it’s it’s a lot less expensive now than when I started. It was inexpensive then. It was a low cost, but it’s even less now because there’s all these free tools available that weren’t available to me when I started. So, yeah. So that would be what where are we at. That was number five.

Yeah. We just had numerous sinco. So no, this is the last one I want to spend some significant time on. So No.6 credibility and visibility. OK, well maybe that’s, maybe that’s two separate words, but I put them, put them together at one. And here’s the interesting thing about credibility. Now, I’ve been doing this expert interview series now for a very long time. And and typically the format is fairly similar. I introduce the expert.

They teach some content. I think the expert sometimes in between. I’ll ask a question or make a comment. Usually I do. That’s it. And guess what happens? People think I’m an expert in all these different content areas. They think I’m an expert at building small businesses. Well, I have a lot of knowledge, I’ll admit that. But it’s interesting how it’s like this borrowed credibility. It’s like I bring these experts in and because I’ve been able to source them, I’m elevated in my credibility in the area of building businesses.

So it’s just it’s amazing to me that I’m given so much more credit than I probably deserve because I actually add very little to each of these interviews. Does that does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, the job’s important, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not adding to the content. But, boy, do I look smart.

Well, it seems like Alex Trebek and game show host right there. You’re there. Alex Trebek, you know, rest in peace, Alex. But he was just like everyone. He’s like this big, amazing, visible, credible dude. And all he did was have people ask questions. You know, I think it’s a really good example. You know, Alex Trebek, great man, don’t get me wrong. But he’s almost been elevated to genius level, has been surrounded himself with all this.

Yeah, I think that I think that’s a really good example. I think it is so good. All right. So visibility the. Other piece of it, oh, la la kind of goes without saying, because, you know, when other experts are saying I’m on her program, all right, so I’m on Lois’s program. I mean, that’s just credibility. More credibility and visibility for you. When I tell people about it, it’s like fantastic as the host.

So a really big benefit, credibility and visibility. And if you have to sort of build it on your own by posting your own, you know, how to videos on YouTube or tips on Facebook, yes, you can do it, but it’s not nearly as fast. And you don’t get that extra credibility boosted when someone else thinks you’re wonderful enough to be on your program. Yeah. All right. So No.7. I keep saying this is my favorite, they’re all my favorite, but this one is so important from a business perspective and that is that when you have an expert interview series and you run it weekly or biweekly, as the case may be, it’s highly systematize a bowl.

If that’s an English word, I don’t really know. But you can create these systems excuse me, once sec. Now, when you create these systems, the other side benefit of that is then you can outsource parts of it. Right. Without systems, it’s really difficult to get a team involved to help you with running this thing. So I have a small team of part timers. They help me so that this doesn’t completely absorb me. I like my sanity sort of relatively intact.

But I do have this motto, too. When you’re looking at different business opportunities and strategies, you know, think to yourself, if I can’t systematize it. Get good at it, put a system in place and then replicate it over and over again, should I even do it? So if it can be systematize, should I even do it now? The answer may be yes, but it may be no. So when you have an ongoing expert interview series, I mean, I’ve run 400 episodes without a system, this whole it wouldn’t be doable.

It just wouldn’t be doable. But it also allows me to have this really clean, well designed system. My team knows what to do, when to do it, so I don’t have to do it all myself. The experts know what to expect makes me look professional to the experts. Several times they’ve they’ve told me, wow, you know, that was just an easy process. Thank you for making it so clear and easy. And, you know, it’s not without its complicated bits, but when you systematize it, then you can scale it.

Then you can scale it, it’s so important.

Can I say something to you, you run a really tight ship and I so appreciate that about you. I knew you had a system and I was like, whoa. And I referred you people to be on your show. Right. So when you have a system, you get more referrals, you a system, you get things done in an efficient way. So you’re not bogged down. There’s a statistic out there, I’m sure you’ve heard it, that 70 percent of the people who start a podcast, which I know that there’s different ways of doing live streams, it doesn’t have to be a podcast with 70 percent of them quit in their first three months because it becomes an expensive hobby and a time suck.

And it’s because exactly what you said they didn’t have they probably didn’t have help outsourcing the technology part and and they were overcomplicating it and not running it through the system. So that’s great. Wow. That’s an astounding number. That’s really an astounding number. And I think part of it is that, you know, maybe they some people think that just do the fun part. You know, somehow the rest of it sort of magically takes care of itself.

But, you know, when you when you look at it from a business perspective and all the different benefits of it, I think really keep those in mind, which is I think it’s one of the reasons why this is important that we talk about it today. You know, then then you have the stick to witness to to keep moving through it. And, you know, things were messy when I first started. There was no system. Nobody had been doing this quite the way that I was.

And so I had to build the system. But I was focused. And, you know, just yesterday we had a little part of the business success cafe that didn’t go particularly well. And in talking to my team, they’re like, well, you know, this didn’t get done. I’m like, OK, well, it’s got to go on our checklist to get it on the checklist.

And you’re still learning. You’re still learning after four shows.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But those systems are so important. It’s like, OK, well, how do we how do we deal with this so that it’s less likely to happen again. And I don’t have to check on it.

I don’t check on that.

Yeah. So, so, so when you’re doing something consistently like this, it’s highly systematize able and if it’s highly systematize able then it’s scalable. And that’s important also. So how are we doing for time, we’ve got time for the last one.

Yeah, we got time for the last one. Bring it on, Kathy. Bring it home.

This is the one I think most people are waiting for, as I felt like a lot of work so far, Gabby. But number eight, multiple revenue sources. There are multiple ways that you can earn revenue from your own expert interview series. Now, you may choose some of these, you may choose all of them. Probably not a good idea, but let me go through them really quickly. OK, there’s six lowest knows how organized I am.

OK, I’m ready for this guy. There’s six of them. I’m going to go over them quite quickly so no one feels pretending. I mean, depending on who your experts are and how you sift this out there, people are used to paying to learn from particular people. They are. So so if I had someone like I don’t know, I’m just going to pick a name. Elton John coming to talk about how to how to write songs.

I could charge for that I can write. Heck, yeah, right. So don’t discount that. Right. Fees for attending and you can do them on an ongoing basis and people learn that these are coming up. Another one is a feast for replays. That’s fairly common. And so for me, for example, my replays are free for a particular period of time. And then after that I charge a fee for them, the membership program. And, you know, that’s a convenience for people.

But so I have to have a combination of these. So but don’t discount charging for the replays, for the people’s ability to watch them at their own convenience whenever they like. Again, depending on the content and what market you’re in, if you’re in a highly skilled market where people pay top dollar for consultants, maybe it’s legal. For example, there’s a lot of content there you wouldn’t necessarily give away for free and people would be more than happy to pay for the replay to get the content right.

So in these days of everything seems to be free. That’s not so. Let’s see, reselling content in multiple formats. So I’ve seen people sell their replays because they included the replays, a complete transcript. So maybe it’s the audio. And then if you pay, you get the video and then you pay more, you get the transcript. I mean, people will pay a little extra in order to get the format that they really prefer. So there’s that as well.

Let’s see referral fees from the experts who you interview. And this is a common one, call, referral fees, affiliate commissions or whatever it happens to be. But if you’ve introduced an expert to a new audience that they would not have had access to otherwise, then, you know, asking them for a reward for introducing people to this new this new group is it’s not uncommon. I do it all the time. You probably do it as well.

Although I’ve paid you I was happy to pay you. I’ve gotten some amazing clients as a result of being on your show.

And you’re very welcome. And I appreciate you for sending me some revenue that helps to fund what I’m doing over here. So, so really good example of just one of the revenue streams that are available as the offering your own products when you use your expert interview series to build your list. And it gives you an opportunity to people who are interested in your subject area. They’ve come because you’ve done some interview or something. They they’re engaged with you. You have things you can sell them, your consulting or coaching your other programs.

So this is a really, really important side benefit, not even a side benefit. It can be the primary reason why you run an expert interview series. I think that can be it. And then the sixth one, which I don’t do as much of as I probably should and could be doing, and that is sponsorship and advertising. We see this a lot in podcasting. The popular podcasts are getting like huge amounts of revenue from sponsorship from particular brands or companies, but also from advertising revenue.

So that is a good one. So there’s six different ways to monetize your expert interview series, and there’s probably a few I haven’t thought of and we don’t have time to cover. So, yeah.

And what made me think of something there is because of interview series or even just live streams, expert information, content being shared, whether it was podcast or not. That’s how I hired both of my coaches male. So just throwing it out there.

That’s how that’s how you found your coaches and hired your coaches, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Wow, wow, wow. Wow, guys. Well, we’re we’re at the the tail end here. I know that. I already asked one of the questions that was was shared. Guys, if you aren’t already inside of my Facebook community where you can find Kathy and all of our expert guests and to be continued to be wowed by wisdom like this, go to health and welfare and Wired.com and please jump in. The water’s warm with the.

To have you learn and I hope you guys took notes, please, please hit the share button. Thank you so much, Kathy. That was that was tremendous value. And I hope you guys hit the share button so more people can learn about this, because there’s a lot of people out there struggling with this building. They’re struggling with sales. They’re struggling with how do I create content that gives value? How do I be consistent with all of those other things?

And Kathy pretty much gave you everything. Now, I want you to talk about this link that I’m putting up on the screen right now. And we’ll be in the show notes. What is the business success? Dotcom, forward slash loess. What will they find at that link?

What they’re going to find is an opportunity to take a look at the Business Success Cafe, which is my ongoing expert interview series that happens every Thursday and opt in. Right. Take a look at the topics that are coming up. It’s a rolling markese. We always have new topics coming up every week. But there get an opportunity to opt in to that for free. And I’d love to have them come in and learn from myself and other experts at the cafe.

Awesome. And if you guys go back, I think I was in March. And if you sign on to and pay Kathee right. To have access to the content, I’m still better somewhere. So, yeah, you’ll see, once you opt in, there’s an opportunity to take a look at what we’ve got on the backend for membership.

So awesome. Well, sometimes, guys, it’s it’s a people don’t want to say, well, I don’t want to be a copycat. But here’s the thing. If you copy the right cat and Kathy AMR’s, I got to tell you, you’re going to have a lot of business success. So thank you so much, Kathy, for being here today. I have one last question that I’d like to ask you that I ask of all my guests.

And I love all of the unique responses because healthy, wealthy and wise, the title of my show has a huge amount of depth and meaning for me. And when you hear that phrase happy, healthy and wealthy and wise, what does that mean for you?

Oh, you know, that’s a bit of a challenging one, because when I took my company public, I really let my health slide. I you know, the wealth part kind of got taken care of. And, you know, I think I think it really can be a real challenge to find a balance. And I think that if you’re lacking in the healthy part or you’re lacking in the wealthy part, I think taking a look at the wise piece is important to really invest yourself.

And we’re so lucky with this technology and figuring out where you need to invest in order to in order to find a balance between the healthy and the wealthy, because you can have both. But if you’re not investing in your own knowledge in doing that in both and I think I think that’s where to look. Wisdom, wisdom, wisdom is so important.

Awesome. Which is why I loved having you here today. Again, guys, you’re going to want to watch this a few times and save this. I know this will be one of my top five and I’ve done one hundred and fifty episodes, so I’m slowly catching up to Kathy. Not that it’s a race, right? I’m just teasing, but I’m inspired by you and guys. I hope you did as well and just wanted to wish you guys an amazing week ahead.

This is a first time next Friday. I won’t have a show we’re going to be off for. That’s our holiday weekend here in America, Fourth of July. So I want to wish everyone a happy Fourth of July a little bit early. We will be off next Friday only to return back the following week, same time, same channel. So until then, everyone, we love you and just want to wish you the best health, the best well and the best wisdom journey that’s possible.

Bye bye for now.

Hey, guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe. Refer a friend and please drop me a rating or review. If you do that, I’ll reward you with a free twenty minute free coaching session on crafting your journey to your best self. Reach out to me at Loess at Loess CofI Dotcom to claim your twenty minute slot until next time the healthy, wealthy and wise.