Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Shaheen Samavati and Tiffany Hart and Tanya Garma from GrowGetters Podcast, on insights into creating a podcast on a limited budget:

Shaheen Samavati 0:00
Welcome to The Content Mix podcast, where we publish interviews with content marketing experts across Europe every week. We record many of our interviews live and simultaneously broadcast them across VeraContent’s social media channels. Join The Content Mix newsletter or follow VeraContent on social media to find out about our next live session so we can answer your questions on air. Today’s episode is a replay of a live broadcast. We hope you enjoy it.

Hi everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix. And I’m excited to be here with Munich-based Tiffany Hart and Tanya Garma, who will tell us about how they created their successful podcast GrowGetters on a shoestring budget. Thank you so much for joining us, Tiffany and Tanya.

Tanya Garma 0:17
Thank you.

Tiffany Hart 0:18
Thank you. Thank you.

Shaheen Samavati 0:20
So Tiffany is a startup founder, coach and mentor and was included as a Forbes top 100 female founder. And Tanya is an award winning digital brand and experience strategist, their podcast, GrowGetters offers advice on how to grow in your career and expand your business and it’s a really professionally produced and well done podcast with the fast growing following. So I’m really excited to hear their tips on how to win at the podcast game. As we go along, I’d like everybody in the audience to please ask your questions in the comments. They will show up on the screen and we’re eager to answer your question. So as soon as you have a question, go ahead and put it in the comments. We’ll make sure you get it answered. But just to start out I’ll ask a couple of questions. So could you tell us maybe Tiffany to start, how did how did you two meet and how was GrowGrowers born?

Tiffany Hart 1:09
Well, we’re both experts. We’re both Australians living in Munich. And we both have a love of coffee. So we headed to a coffee shop in Munich, and we didn’t know each other. And I heard Tanya talking, and I could hear her speaking in German but with this really strong Australian accent. And so yeah, we shared a cappuccino, and you don’t meet many Australians, in Munich specifically. And then we discovered that we have like a mutual love of innovation and that really led us to discussing potential synergies. And then I started working for the same agency that Tanya works for, which is called 19:13. And yeah, so that’s how we started. So we met through our love of coffee and our love of innovation, and also mutual backgrounds of being expats. And then, yeah, so and then how the podcast was born was, we were really involved in doing lots of client work together, brainstorming sessions. And you know, we would chit chat, you know, in every other moment that we had to try and, you know, connect and share. And we discovered that we had so much in common. And then we also had so many things that we didn’t know that we could share with each other. So we had such a mutual synergy together. And this is the reason we started the podcast, because we really believe that there’s a genuine gap for future skills, content for women delivered by women, because it mostly it’s sort of delivered by men. And you know, for women that really want to stay on their journey, upskilling, remaining relevant in their careers and who have a thirst for knowledge in the world of business, tech and leadership. So that’s how we started GrowGetters, and, yeah, we have a big ambition to make more women get to the decision making table, and we want to see more women crush it in their careers. We want to see more female-led startups and side hustles, and we want to see women absolutely do what they’re born to do. So that’s where GrowGetter has started. And that’s why we do what we do.

Shaheen Samavati 3:03
Awesome. Yeah, it’s a really awesome podcast. I’ve really enjoyed listening to it. Maybe, Tanya, you can explain to why you chose podcasting as your platform.

Tanya Garma 3:16
Well, we started GrowGetters back in well, we started the seed of what GrowGetters is today back in 2018, and podcasting was probably not quite as prevalent as it is, or ubiquitous as it is today, and I was and am still a complete podcast junkie, like audio content is the way that I personally love to consume content, whether it be books, podcasts, even news, daily news, I have not opened a newspaper or opened digital news in a long time—I listen to it. So we thought this is the way that many millennial women are consuming content. It’s the way that we consume content, because we’re all busy, and we’re all multitasking and juggling. So that’s why we decided on podcasting as a platform. And it is still a continuing growth platform, but at the time, it was growing significantly. So we wanted to ride that crest and, you know, ride that wave while it was really exponentially growing at the time.

Shaheen Samavati 4:21
One thing I wanted to ask was had either of you started a podcast before or had been involved in podcasting? Or was it your first experience?

Tanya Garma 4:28
I actually had—I’ve wanted to do a podcast for a long time, and I had all these ideas. I even, you know, mocked up artwork and you know, wrote a couple of intro scripts about non-business related podcasts I completely other topics. And then I think it was when Tiffany and I, like Tiffany mentioned, we came together and we had this mutual passion to see women rise in their careers and we had both had so much experience in the innovation and startup world. We had a lot of complimentary skills, we thought, “Hey, why not bring this together?” And I think without Tiffany, I wouldn’t have had the balls to push through and actually get one of the concepts live and through the door.

Tiffany Hart 5:13
Well one of the things coming from that aspect was, I’m a head pitch coach for several accelerators here in Europe. And this pitching is training to speak. And this was really like something that I was doing all the time. And so, you know, I think this this ability to be able to speak and present and present your ideas is such a, such a cool skill anyone can learn. And so yeah, this is one of the reasons why podcasting was kind of easy to flow into, because if you’re kind of normally pitching and speaking, then podcasting is basically speaking and pitching all the time. So yeah, but one thing just to mention here on this point is that, you know, we’re all content marketers, probably tuning into this, or marketers tuning into this live stream. And I’m sure you all know about Gary Vee, and Gary Vee’s harped on about audio and audio is a platform for the future. So we’re also aware of that, and you know, back in 2018, we were aware of that, and you know, look what’s happening with Clubhouse now. It’s now like an audio social platform. So audio is the way and it’s a great way to get digestible, snackable, easy-to-consume content, especially for women, you know, in our demographic.

Shaheen Samavati 6:26
So, I’m going to just remind people that they can ask questions in the comments, and we got a first question from Daphne. So thanks for this question. But just what’s one of the hardest parts of creating a podcast? And how do you deal with it?

Tanya Garma 6:41
That’s a great question. Thank you, Daphne. I think the very hardest part for us was taking the first step and really nailing our idea. I think, when you can think of who your dream listener is, and really describe, in our case: Who she is? You know, what are her pain points? What are her needs? Then everything really flows from that. So, for example, our dream listener is time poor or time is precious to her. And she has a real thirst for knowledge for, you know, getting her career or side hustle up and running. And she’s really desiring the latest information. And she wants to know what the latest tech and business trends are, and the latest tools she can use. So that therefore our podcast is more on the educational or informational slant, but they’re very short, snappy and frequent episodes. So this isn’t the type of podcast where you tune in for an hour and listen to a meandering conversation about pop culture or something. But it’s really like short, snappy, we know you’re time poor, we’re going to deliver it in a fun way, by women for women. And so when you really think of your idea and nailing your dream listener, then I think that really helps you craft, the podcast concept, everything from you know the name to the artwork to the length of the episodes to the frequency of the episodes. I mean, what do you what do you think Tiff? What do you think was the hardest part?

Tiffany Hart 8:15
I think you hit the nail on the head. I think it was actually us taking the first step. We deliberated and hummed and hawed for several months. And we’re like, “No, no, no, we should definitely get this perfect” and “No, no, no, we should definitely have that online. And we have to have our website up. And we have to have all the things in place.” And I think this, this perfectionism that we both have, that kind of held us back from getting it out there. And I’m sure that many people have the same situation—they’re kind of scared to put something out that might be half baked or not fully refined. But you know, just remember that podcasting is a marathon, not a sprint, and it takes time. And sometimes you might have the perfect persona, the perfect…the perfect positioning, but very often you don’t and you learn as you go. And it’s like, you know, it’s just like lean startup, you have to iterate and iterate and iterate. Every single podcast episode is one iteration. It’s one new learning, it’s one new, new way of doing it. Now we’re up to season three. And we’ve learned where we are and how we produce episodes today is through three seasons, you know, so don’t worry, don’t be perfectionist and get yourself out there because it’s more important that you share what you have and what you can—not what you know and what your expertise is and being afraid.

Tanya Garma 9:34
That’s probably my one regret actually we that we should have and could have started six months earlier than we did. We should have just gone gone out there with a minimal viable product and just learned and learned out lessons from the get-go. So like Tiff said, just get it out there.

Shaheen Samavati 9:51
I think you already answered Mary’s question she was asked, “What would you do differently if you could go back in time?” So, well, anything else?

Tanya Garma 10:06
One thing, I think we also could have done differently differently apart from starting six months earlier, and not humming and hawing and making in perfect, I think we, in our case, and this won’t be with every case, but we did launch as a podcast. And now after some time, we’ve realized, well, actually, this is such a cool concept—we want to get it out there to more women and more people, and we believe it’s a lot bigger than just a podcast, and it’s actually it’s a platform with many legs and many channels. So in our case, and maybe it’s just specific to us—we launched as GrowGetters podcast, GrowGettersPodcast.com, @GrowGetterspodcast on Instagram. And now we’ve had to pivot slightly, and we’ve had to change our URL and our handles to GrowGetters.io, which is our URL. Because we’ve realized, “Oh, we actually don’t want to be pigeonholed as just a podcast.” So maybe our piece of advice here would be if you want to be potentially more than just a podcast in the future maybe think about that. Think about the naming conventions you use on your social platforms on your website. So it’s just something to consider.

Tiffany Hart 11:23
And one thing, one thing on that point, too, is thinking about your business model. Because it’s very, it’s very often that people either start with a business and create a podcast to help accelerate and amplify that business, or they start like we did, which was for a passion-creative project, which was you know, really about refining our skills as marketers and refining our skills as writers and refining our skills, and and creating something, you know, for us that we could also share with others. But, you know, thinking about a business model that works. And you know, very often, the indie podcast don’t have enough reach to get sponsorship. So what else can you do to leverage your time? Because time equals money at the end of the day. And if you’ve produced 100 episodes, that’s 100 episodes. How much time does it takes to produce a normal 30 minute episode? Normally, around 12 to 14 hours, it’s a lot of work for one person. So you know, time equals money. Figure out a business model that works for you, if that’s sponsorship, or if it is partnership collaborations, if it’s speaking arrangements, or if it’s getting into the content game, creating courses, creating a membership, or developing a totally new business for it. But thinking about that business model.

Shaheen Samavati 12:33
Definitely. I’m going to put my own question up on the screen because I want to go back to the topic of like, you know, how to create a top 20 podcasts on no budget. So we’re going to the budget aspects. And I mean, how much did it cost you to set up this podcast? And how much…yeah, what do people need to think about investing? Or is it possible to do it for no budget?

Tiffany Hart 12:56
Yeah, okay. No, I think that you can do it on a very skinny budget. You can even use your Apple iPhone headphones or your phone headphones to record—one of our good friends actually recorded her podcast just on her phone onto voice memos, then she cut it in GarageBand, at the start. Then well now she’s handing it over to somebody in Canada, but you know, you can do it on the skint. You can find a platform like Wushka, back in the day, we’re now having to transition out of Wushka, which is like a aggregating platform, but you can do it on the absolute smell of an oily rag, it’s totally possible. But if you want to step it up a little bit, you can go into microphones, which are, you know, hidden, sitting around the 60 to 80 euro mark like an ATR 2100. You can step it up even more up to something a bit more professional, like a pod mic or RØDE NT-USB Mini—like there’s many options you can do. But you can start right from the basics with your Apple phone, or your phone and headset, or you know your thingies that go in your ear. And it’s totally possible, how we started, we spent money on Adobe Audition, because we knew that we were really in it for the long game, and we wanted to kind of get everything right. So we spent a little bit of money on Adobe Audition that cost us 200 euros. And our podcasting microphones cost us originally at the start 60 to 80 euro, and then we did upgrade as we went along. But yeah, it’s starting small, and then building.

Shaheen Samavati 14:35
Absolutely. I agree with that advice of kind of starting out with the basics. And then if you find that it’s really working and you’re committed to doing the podcast in the long term, then investing.

Tiffany Hart 14:45
And one thing to add to that as well. So because our podcast was our primary product, that we really did want to have good sound and I really am a fanatic for good sound. So we wanted to make sure that the sound was crisp and clear. Because people can get put off by roughly sounds or microphone sounds or anything that kind of distorts the experience. So we wanted to have a really clear audio experience. And we’re really passionate about getting that and making sure that we had that with all of episodes. So that T’s and the clicks and all that kind of stuff is taken out just so people can easily listen to the episode.

Tanya Garma 15:23
I just want to add to that we were lucky enough to interview on our podcast, Australia’s number one TV podcast, and Megan Pustetto, who hosts the So Dramatic Podcast—it’s all about reality TV. So it’s good fun. And she said, for her, this was a career move. So she was pivoting from journalism, which is dying in Australia, unfortunately, because of the economy, to podcasting as her source of income. So for her, it was absolutely paramount, that the production was top notch from the get-go. And I think like Tiffany said, I think all of us have listened to a podcast and been completely put off by the sound quality. And just to add to the shoestring side of things, one must not discount the importance of awesome intro music, and really nice artwork. So cover artwork, and—

Shaheen Samavati 16:21
I’m having technical difficulties, I’m gonna try to go closer to my router.

Tanya Garma 16:24
No problem. I hope you guys are okay hearing us!

Shaheen Samavati 16:29
Anyways. I’m sure, hopefully everyone can hear you fine.

Tanya Garma 16:33
I hope so.

Shaheen Samavati 16:35
So let’s just go—talking about technical things—we can go to the next question about this from an anonymous Facebook user—you have to be logged into StreamYard to see your picture. But they ask: “Do you find different podcast hosting platforms better than others, for example, Spotify vs. Apple?”

Tanya Garma 16:55
Were on everything!

Tiffany Hart 16:57
Yeah, but we see different results on different platforms. And I think, I’ve been listening, I try and follow lots of different podcasters and just listen to how they do things because that’s how, you learn. You know, like, once you’re kind of in the thick of it, you want to learn as you can. And we we have a lot more information, we have a lot more stats on Apple, versus Spotify. You know, Spotify is a much smaller platform for us. But for some other podcasts, Spotify is a bigger platform, and Apple is maybe a smaller platform. So it’s really dependent on the audience. And well for us, it was quite surprising that the amount of Apple users or podcast listeners is so much more than just Spotify or other platforms. But it’s so dependent on your audience. It just differs to who’s who’s listening in.

Tanya Garma 17:43
But I think our strategy was always to be on as many hosting platforms as possible, which is why we use Wushka, which is like Tiffany said an aggregator or distributor— distributes to every major hosting provider. But there’s also—

Shaheen Samavati 18:00
I can’t hear you guys very well, but—

Tanya Garma 18:02
There’s also Libsyn and a number of others. A lot of them were free. Unfortunately, Wushka was free for a couple of years since we’ve been using it, but now they’re actually turning to a paid model. But yeah, it’s up to you. If you really want to get out there and be on most of the hosting platforms, that’s the easiest way to do it. Would you agree Tiff?

Tiffany Hart 18:24
Totally. Yeah. I think we’re going to hold the show for now. Because we’ve just lost Shaheen! But I completely agree. And Podbean is another one, which is a great post hosting platform. It’s based here in Europe. So yeah, I think it’s good to look for different aggregators. And on a shoestring budget, one thing as you are marketers, you probably tuning into this group, that you have a large and a large amount of skills that you can use to actually help accelerate your podcast. So one of the things that Tanya and I did was we tried to make sure that we knew what we’re doing first before we asked for help. So you know, we made sure we did our own our own artwork on Canva and our own in a video snippets using Kapwing or Wave, using our own kind of marketing tools at our disposal without having to hire somebody, because that becomes a huge expense. So you know, whatever you can do yourself to start off with and to get in the groove and know you can do it and once you get to a point where financially it makes sense, hand it over to somebody else you can accelerate other parts of the business or podcast.

Shaheen Samavati 19:34
Well, so, sorry about my technical difficulties. Thanks for keeping it going. But when I like unplugged the headphones to move, the sound disconnected anyway, it’s all good. We have a couple of similar questions about just what your favorite podcasts are to listen to when you’re not creating your own? And then also, Mary asked earlier, like what podcast inspired you when thinking about how you will to structure yours?

Tanya Garma 20:02
Well, we I think both of us—but especially me, because I’m an absolute podcasting fiend, I’m such a podcasting junkie—originally back in 2018, I was heavily inspired by a pop culture—two—pop culture podcasts by women. One was a British based podcast called The High Low podcast from two female journalists. And the other was a also a journalist duo from Melbourne, Australia called Shameless, and they are both extremely popular podcasts, like worldwide now. And even though this subject matter was completely different to what we talk about, what I was so influenced by—what we were so influenced by and inspired by—were these two women in both cases who have great chemistry, you know, it literally sounds like you’re chatting with friend when you’re listening to them, you could be having a glass of wine, of vino, with your with your own mates. And that’s the vibe and the feeling that Tiffany and I wanted to bring to the airwaves. So that was more in terms of our delivery and our tone. We wanted to make, you know, these are quite hard topics that we talk about, we wanted to make it really friendly, accessible, we want to take the ego out of it, the elitism out of it and really deliver it to women like you would be talking to friends. And in terms of bite size, I think in terms of bite sized podcasts at the time, there was a podcast out of Australia called Socially LIT, and she is continued to run. She’s all about social media marketing. And she was doing these five minute three times a weekly podcast and we thought that’s a novel idea. So we kind of brought these two concepts together and mashed them because we thought “This is what we want to listen to!” We used us as our litmus test to what would we tune into every week? What do you think Tiff?

Tiffany Hart 22:00
One thing to add to that mix was The Squiz, also an Australian podcast. So we’re inspired by Australian content as you can imagine, and the squares is co-hosted, co-founded by a friend of mine from primary school, from my hometown in Australia. And The Squiz is I think, one of the number one news podcasts in Australia, one or two, for several years. And what we liked about The Squiz was how informative it was, how easy they unpacked big topics and made it super digestible, super easy to understand, in a really short amount of time. So that is why we were inspired by those I think those three really as a core to help us you know, make it snackable digestible, big topics really easy to consume. But short and snappy, like Socially LIT, but also conversational and fun and friendly, like Shameless.

Tanya Garma 22:51
And I love Mar wrote: “Do we know Girls Gotta Eat?” Yes, we we’ve heard of it! I haven’t listened to it yet, but I have heard of it. And it’s definitely on that track. Absolutely. It’s got that vibe at least—not the content, or subject matter—but the vibe.

Shaheen Samavati 23:07
Very cool. So kind of this plays into this next question from Kyler. He asked: “How do you differentiate yourself from other similar podcasts?” Now, there’s so many podcasts for different things. right, so how do you stand out?

Tanya Garma 23:20
Well, there’s no other as far as I know, there’s no women that are covering our subject matter. I think there are a lot of similar podcasts which cover maybe the tech side, maybe the business and the marketing side, but we’re kind of bringing it all together into this future skills umbrella. And as far as I know, I haven’t I have not come across anything like it that is for women and delivered by women. An old colleague of mine in Australia has a YouTube channel, which is similar-ish content, but again, it’s delivered in a completely different tone. It’s very masculine. It’s very like “tech bro”, you know?

Shaheen Samavati 24:00
Yeah.

Tanya Garma 24:01
“Silicone valley bro!” So we really wanted to give it that, you know that nice, you know, I hate to say it, but a bit of a female touch, you know, a bit a bit more gentle, a bit less elitist, a bit, very much less ego. That’s what we wanted to come across.

Shaheen Samavati 24:17
So it’s kind of finding your niche and finding your voice as well. And that’s kind of what makes you stand out.

Tiffany Hart 24:22
And to be honest, actually, at the start, we weren’t fully clear on that. Like, you know, coming from a startup world or an as an entrepreneur, I thought we’d kind of throw in startup people and founders in there. But actually what we realize is, there is so much content for people that are starting a business or founding a business or looking for venture capital. It’s great, it’s an amazing topic, and I consume it in my free time as a passion but as a podcast, actually where we are, where we are at the core and who we are as people, we’re really multi-high finance, you know, multi-passionate people and we believe that we can have many strings to our bow. So that’s where we kind of got into this entrepreneur role/side hustler/career climber and that kind of fusion of person, which we know exists because we are there. So that we kind of just went, “Okay, who are we?’ and if we can want to consume it, then we’re sure that others want to also consume such such stuff, because we looked at ourselves also as a persona. So it’s also good to look at that persona become clearer and clearer and cut off your darlings sometimes.

Shaheen Samavati 25:34
Definitely. So we have a couple more questions on here to squeeze in in our last five minutes. And yeah, also, if anyone has any more questions, get them in now, because we’re going to be wrapping up soon. But we have a question about what do you think is the ideal publishing schedule?

Tiffany Hart 25:50
Well, it’s really dependent on you. Because, you know, if you’re a one-person podcaster, it can be very time consuming. And so depending on your audience, so if you can deliver a weekly podcast—short and easy and small, then it’s great to be consistent and in the ears of somebody. Fortnightly is also cool, if it’s a large podcast. Once a month—it’s really dependent. It’s good to stay frequent with your audience, but at the end of the day, it’s really about who you’re who you’re actually targeting, is it a news podcast, hen it has to be daily. You know, if it is a educational podcast, it could be weekly, it could be fortnightly, it could be monthly. If it is a romance fiction, podcast storytelling, it could be monthly—it doesn’t matter. So it’s really up to what kind of content you’re delivering, and who are you delivering that content for and how they like to consume it. And the more you go into that, the more you can see how frequently you need to produce an episode. But at the end of the day, make sure that you can do it consistently. Because consistency, the day, the time is key, and that’s a big learning for myself with dropping the episode at the same time on the same day. That’s really, really important.

Shaheen Samavati 27:07
Yeah, and I’ve definitely found that in my podcasting experience. I mean, I have a lot to learn from you guys in terms of the production aspects of it. So but I think we’ve done well on the systemization part, I guess. It’s like, you really need to have a system down in the to be consistent, basically. Yeah. So, well, we have so many questions, and so little time! So but well, let’s see if we can answer this in about the graphic design elements and how important that’s been.

Tanya Garma 27:41
I think it’s really important. I mean, it’s the especially if you’re getting discovered, if you’re on Apple, and you’re looking for similar podcasts are the ones you’re already listening to, it’s really important to stand out. And I look at our journey of cover artwork, starting from our first Canva one that I designed and it was pretty bad. And I think, well part of that artwork, if you do want your photos on there, by the way, please do invest in a professional photo shoot. That’s what we did. We have friends who are photographers thought, so we had a bit of…

Tiffany Hart 28:16
“Mates rates.”

Tanya Garma 28:17
“Mates rates” there, exactly. And we have also used a friend who is a graphic designer to spruce it up. But when you are just beginning Canva is absolutely fine. So design it up yourselves, use bright colors, try and stand out. Big bold lettering, as little text on there as possible, I think other keys, the key things there. But it is important, unfortunately, it is very important.

Shaheen Samavati 28:18
Yeah, definitely. Especially to kind of stand out in the sea of all the little covers that show up in on the podcast platforms. Well, okay, and this question: “Do you need to be extroverted to be a podcast host?”

Tanya Garma 29:00
No!

Tiffany Hart 29:07
No!

I couldn’t even say if Tanya is an extrovert or introvert or myself, actually, because I think we have both sides. I think you can have both. And as the older you grow, I think you harness either side of being an extrovert or introvert. That’s my personal feeling, experience, but you don’t have to be at all, because you know, the cool thing is that this podcast is being recorded live—it’s a live session as a podcast—but for us, we can do it from the comfort of our home at 12 o’clock in the morning, you know, whatever time we want to do it. So you can kind of huddle in and you can do it in your own sanctuary. So you don’t have to be an expert at—or sorry, an extrovert—at all to podcast.

Shaheen Samavati 29:50
Yeah. What do you think there are like personality qualities that are necessary though to to be a host?

Tanya Garma 29:57
I think personality wise to be open and to be receptive…to be a listener, not only talker, but a listener, because there are lots of great podcasters that just talk talk, talk, talk talk, but actually to be able to listen, especially if you’re interviewing someone to be really listening, and really listening into the nuances of how they’re talking and what they’re saying, and to kind of jump on that part of what they’ve just mentioned, and take it into the next question. So to be a really good listener, and to, I think, really, at the end of the day, to be open to talk to want to learn to want to share to want to give, because it’s a giving, it’s a service, you know, like your, every week, or every month or every fortnight you’re giving, you know, from what you know, and giving your energy, and very often it’s unpaid. So, yeah, it’s being generous, I think, as a personality type.

Shaheen Samavati 30:53
Awesome. So I just had, we’re like, pretty much out of time for questions, well technically, we should be ending now, but if you have a minute, I just wanted to ask about like measuring the success of your podcast, because that was also one of the topics to touch on, like becoming a top 20 podcast. I mean, have you achieved that yet, and how do you know when you reach that point?

Tanya Garma 31:16
Well, we we had a number of downloads in our mind that we wanted to reach. And so that was our key metric. And we did reach that recently, which was awesome. And we had also a number we wanted to reach on Instagram, which we reached. But to be honest, it was an absolute surprise when we saw that we had episodes that were ranked number three in New Zealand, number 11 in Australia, number 11 in Finland. When you learn that you’re resonating with countries that you weren’t even thinking about with listeners from all over, that is the coolest thing. But for us, our metric has always been downloads and hitting a certain number of downloads. Because if you do want to end up monetizing your podcast and gaining sponsorship as an example of that, that’s what brands want to see. They want to see downloads, and they want to see where people are listening.

Tiffany Hart 32:13
And there’s one thing just to say to that to take 30 seconds more, I listened to a really old woman on Clubhouse the other day and what I really liked about what she said about sponsorship, because it’s one of the things people talk about, and are very kind of concerned about “I don’t have the downloads and I don’t have the listenership,” because very often it’s it’s like 100,000, or 500,000. It can be huge numbers that you can never really reach. But what I saw and what I liked about what you said, and I hope that this may, might give you some inspiration as to get out there if you have a podcast already, or once you get to that point is just put a number on what you think it’s worth. So what do you think your episode, your time, your value, the energy you’re putting into this—what do you think that is worth? And then just get it out there. Like ask a brand—can you, will you pay $200 $500, $1000—how much for this episode? Will you sponsor this episode, will you sponsor a season? Just get out there, be bold. And I think that’s that sometimes something that we’re working on actually of just being more bold and and just stating what we’re worth and what we feel that we worth.

Shaheen Samavati 33:19
Yeah, that’s a great, great advice. And well, just to wrap up, could you, are there any like resources you would share for the community?

Tiffany Hart 33:28
Oh, lots! But I would say if you want to stay abreast of podcasting news, subscribe to Podnews. It’s a really cool aggregator offering news around podcasting. If you want to check out where your podcast is sitting, so you don’t have to kind of log into all the different Apple stores. Check out Chartable. Chartable is a really cool tool. It’s free for the starting package. And you can look at your reviews. You can look at your episodes, you can look at where you’re charting in the different countries. So it’s a really cool aggregator and it costs nothing basically the start off. Other Facebook groups like She Podcasts are cool to kind of just connect with other fellow podcasters to give you, give each other support, you know, shout outs because it can be a big…it’s a big journey! And once you get into it, it’s rolling and you keep it moving. Because it is a process of developing your voice and getting your voice out there and developing an audience and developing that trust. So yeah, those are three things a group, a news newsite and also a site, but there’s so much we can we can share. We are doing a podcasting masterclass in at the end of March. If you check out our website, we have a Linktree up. We also have an event events page but we’ll put the Linktree up—Linktree is on our Instagram so you can check out we’re doing a podcasting masterclass. It’s a full hour hour, hour and a half on how to podcast in much more detail. So if you want to check that out check out that podcasting masterclass.

Shaheen Samavati 35:08
Awesome. Those are some great tips and then well as we wrap up just how can people follow GrowGetters and get in touch? I put your website there just so it’s on the screen people can easily find it. But yeah.

Tanya Garma 35:20
You can find us on Instagram @GrowGetters.io and that’s also our website URL, GrowGetters.io. You can subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter, which you can also subscribe to via our website. We’re also on LinkedIn at GrowGetters. We are on TikTok, although we’re not using it as much as we should @GrowGetters. We’re on Twitter at @GrowGettersPod, is it Tiff?

Tiffany Hart 35:47
Yeah!

Tanya Garma 35:48
Okay, so, @GrowGettersPod. So we’re on the major channels there. And we’re on Facebook, of course, as well. So @GrowGetters.

Tiffany Hart 35:55
And if you’re on Clubhouse we’re also running a weekly Clubhouse starting, we’ve done several Clubhouses—we took a break, but we’re going to start running a weekly Clubhouse session just to connect with audiences around future skills, around future proofing, about being a multi-hyphenate life. So that, those types of topics we’re doing a Clubhouse on on a weekly basis. So you can follow either me Tiffany Hart, or Tanya Garma on Clubhouse to sort of stay abreast of that news. And we have a pilot project starting in April. So be basically, if you’d like to work with us and learn more from us and connect with our like minds, on the website at the bottom, we have a /skills and that’s where you can sign up to join the pilot project.

Shaheen Samavati 36:41
Awesome. Okay, well, we’ll definitely when we publish the podcast also published the show notes. And we’ll put links to everything there so people can look out for that. But otherwise go to GrowGetters.io In the meantime, and find all the links, too. So well. we’ve reached the end of our time. So thank you so much, Tiffany, and Tanya, for taking the time to join us on this live Q&A. It’s been a lot of fun!

Tanya Garma 37:03
Thank you!

Tiffany Hart 37:04
Thank you very much for having us!

Tanya Garma 37:05
Thanks so much.

Shaheen Samavati 37:06
Yeah, thank you. And thanks to everybody for listening in. I’ll also remind you all that we have a twice a week podcast with content experts across Europe. I will also be doing more of these live interviews and we’ll be repurposing the lives like this one for the podcast as well. So look out for that if you want to hear a replay on our podcast and also just thanks again everyone so much for your awesome questions. And thank you again Tiffany and Tanya for for sharing your insights and advice.

Tiffany Hart 37:35
Pleasure! Reach out to us if you need anything, guys.

Tanya Garma 37:38
DM us!

Shaheen Samavati 37:40
Definitely. All right, well, bye bye!

Tanya Garma 37:43
Bye!

Tiffany Hart 37:43
Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai