Episode 074 - Work Less + Make More with Podcasts

When you think about growing your business with podcasts, naturally you're thinking about having your own podcast, but there's other ways to do that, like being a guest on other shows. Today's guest is Kristen Molinar. She is the founder of Yes Boss. This is a podcast booking agency that helps businesses get booked on top-rated podcasts to help them grow their business. And we had a great discussion all about podcasting, what to do when you are a guest, how to bring value, and really how to grow your brand as a guest. So it was a great conversation. I'm so excited to share this interview with you today. Let's get started.

All right.

Are you ready for this?

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. So, Kristen, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I'm excited about what we're going to talk about. As I read through your intake form, there was something in quotes about work less and make more, and that was very appealing. And I think anyone that's in business would love to know what you mean by that. So that's what we're going to cover today, and we're going to get into your ability to uncomplicate entrepreneurship.

That sounds awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation.

Perfect. So you are the CEO of Yes Boss. Let's start there. What is Yes Boss?

Yeah. So Yes Boss is a podcast booking agency. So people come to us that want to be guests on podcasts. So literally what I'm doing right now on your podcast, Shaun, this is what people come to us for.

Yeah. And like we work with in our agency a lot of people who are starting a podcast and they immediately think podcasts and they think, 'Okay, I need to have my own,' right? And they don't naturally think about, 'Hey, I can go out and be on other podcasts, and that's a great way to get my message out.' And you guys help people do that. What would you say is the most important, uh, factor or benefit of being on someone else's podcast?

Yeah, so my answer is going to be different than I think a lot of people, um, realize. So I think a lot of people go into podcast guesting and think like, This is marketing, this is PR. And so marketing would tell you, get in front of the biggest audience that you possibly can to share your message. PR would say, get in the front of or get on the biggest name podcast so you can plaster that logo on your website and show everybody how cool you are, right? But we have seen, and the analytics will prove this, that the biggest benefit to being a podcast guest is the networking that you're able to do with podcast hosts. And as a podcast host, I think you can attest to this. Somebody that decides to become a podcast host is a pretty darn serious person about their passion. So, you know, you're podcasting about marketing, you're serious about marketing. Like, you have decided to bite off this big project of having a podcast, to show up, you know, day in and day out, to be a podcast host, to do all that production and stuff. And so the, the cool thing about being a guest is being able to meet somebody who is so serious about their craft and is such a passionate business owner. And so what I have found to be the greatest benefit of being a podcast guest is being able to meet hosts. Yes, there is that marketing and that PR benefit. Absolutely. I'm not saying that that's not the case, but I have found that the biggest impact that you can have with being a guest is treating this as a new connection so that you can get the benefit that goes beyond just airing an awesome episode.

Absolutely. I can attest to that. You know, every guest that I've had on, being able to network with them and then also know what they do. So, you know, there's a lot of times I have clients that will come to me for a service that a guest would provide, uh, and I just send that referral over and it works really well that way.

It's like a pre-sold referral, like a pre-sold introduction, and those are my favorite. I think that's like one of the biggest shortcuts to business. You know, a lot of people are going after, cold audiences, people that don't know them. And the nature of being a podcast guest is you're introduced to a new audience that doesn't know you, but that nurturing happens really fast. And I, my favorite is when I'm able to get connections straight from the podcast. You know, there's an email that comes in and it's like, you know, hey Kristen, I have this client or I have this person in my networking group or whatever. They need what you offer. And I get on the phone with them and they're ready to purchase. And I'm not having to do any of that selling. So, you know, the key here for me is like relationships really help you shortcut a lot of stuff in, in business.

Definitely. Now I'm going to ask you the chicken and egg question here. You're, you're in business and maybe you're a coach, a consultant, or even any type of business owner, and you want to start to, to grow that business. Should you look at starting your own podcast first or start to be a guest first? Is there one that probably would give you more benefit?

So for me, um, I'm all about, like you said, like work less, make more. So for me, I felt like being a guest was the best first step. I still don't have my own podcast. I am firmly in the camp of never say never. You know, there is— there are definitely things that I want to talk about that I won't get to cover as a guest on a podcast because you're— it's very specific what you talk about as a guest, right? You you need to have that messaging consistency when you're showing up on podcasts. I'm not wanting to confuse all these audiences by talking about a million different things, which as a host you can do. Um, so for me and my personal objectives, I have gone to being a guest first. Now I will say though that people hear me as a guest and they'll, they, they'll ask me, hey, what's the name of your podcast? I looked for your podcast after I heard you as a guest on so-and-so's podcast and I will admit, like, there's this aspect of it that I'm not capitalizing on because I'm not a host. But you've just gotta figure out for yourself, like, well, what am I trying to do? Is, you know, do I have a— do I want to produce a lot of my own content? Do I want to put in my own marketing strategies behind this? It's another thing as a guest, like, I share the podcast that I'm on, but I'm not responsible for the whole marketing strategy about growing everybody's podcast. That's firmly lays in the hands of the podcast host. So you've just kind of got to evaluate, you know, where, where your priorities lie. And I will say the two complement each other really well. Um, podcast hosts that are not utilizing being a guest, like, I think that that is a missed opportunity. Um, because, you know, to keep people on the same platform, you know, if they hear you as a guest, they're looking for you on a podcast, and they hear you as a host, they're looking for you other places. There's that fluidity that's really easy um, when you're staying in, you know, within the podcast app but appearing on different shows.

Yes, for sure. Now let's talk about some practical things. You want to be a guest on podcast, what should you, you start getting in place for that? Now I know you guys, you know, book people and help people get on shows, but what, as a business professional, what should you have together before you even start to look to be on a show?

Yeah, there is definitely a PR prep piece to this. And that's what we call it internally is PR prep. And you really have to know, you know, what message am I going out there to share? This is not a, um, flippant, let me pitch myself and try to prove to a podcast host that I am amazing so that they'll just want to have a conversation with me and highlight me. That, that's not profitable podcast guesting. And that's, that's the key here for us is we want to focus on profitable podcast guesting. So at the very root of this, you need to know, you know, who do you serve and what do you do for them? That's kind of where it starts. And then from there you have to craft two very distinct things for your podcast pitch. And so the first one is your bio. The second one are talking points. Now where I see tons of people go wrong, and I hear from podcast hosts that other agencies are doing this wrong, you know, PR firms are doing this wrong, people in general are just doing this wrong, is they're making their pitch all about themselves. This is not about you as the podcast guest. It is not about your accolades. We're not looking for, you know, hey Shaun, have me on your podcast so I could just talk about me. I need to align my objectives with your objectives as the host and your objectives as the host are to provide value to your audience. So how can I show up in such a way that I'm helping you create content that your audience is going to love? You know, I, I, as the guest, want people to hear this podcast and go, oh, Shaun has some pretty great guests. I should continue listening to Shaun's podcast. Like, that is the goal here for me, and that aligns me with your goals. So the way that we do this is through, number one, talking points. We'll start there. So how can your talking points showcase the value that you provide to other people? I like to think about talking points in terms of like What would like your blog headline be? Or like if you're posting on social media, what's that first sentence or two sentences that you're putting on social media that really like attention grabbing stuff? Now again, if, if you're talking about just accolades, we're not getting it yet. This is like what most people are doing that's inefficient at podcast guesting or why most podcast guests are inefficient. Like that's the kind of, um, angle we're going for. If you can be controversial, if you can be, I hate this word, I know everybody hates it. If you can be kind of clickbaity, if you don't know what that is, look up clickbait, learn the structure of clickbait. Those are really great talking points. But again, the focus is on what value are you bringing to the audience? That second part is your bio. So that's something that is typically read by a podcast host. And so it's gotta be really pithy, concise. Um, you know, and what you have to write your bio in such a way that it tells the audience what value you're bringing to them as well. Now the place for your accolades is only in proving that you know how to talk about the value that you're bringing to the table, not irrelevant. Like I have a, and this is not true, I have a master's in business, not true. Um, I have a, you know, however many people on my social media following, I have so many, you know, my revenue is XYZ. Unless that is proving, um, that you can bring the value you're saying to the table, there's no place for it. And you know, I'll, I'll add this. I know that these things work and it's not about like my accolades because when my team first started pitching me, I didn't have any social media presence and we had a crappy website and I thought like certainly nobody's going to want to feature me. Nobody knows who the heck I am, but we focused on For me, it was like, I want to talk to entrepreneurs about how to uncomplicate entrepreneurship. I want to talk about like what I've seen as an agency owner people are doing that are like really shooting themselves in the foot. And so it was, for me, it was all about how can I bring value to the table? And podcast hosts didn't really care about me and my business and like, you know, my vanity metrics that, that became a moot point.

Yeah. And What would you say, like, that entrepreneurs are doing that, like you said, shooting themselves in the foot? How are they complicating their life that they don't need to be doing?

Yeah, so there, there's a lot of, a lot of complication going on. And I think that at the root of complicated entrepreneurship is that we're bombarded with all of these messages as entrepreneurs that we need to be doing all the things. Like, if you spend 5 minutes on any social media platform, you're going to get hit with an ad that tells you that you need to have, you know, 100,000 Instagram followers and you need to be doing webinars and make sure that you have a YouTube channel. Don't forget to start your own podcast. If your email list is not at least 5,000 people, you're doomed. And the list goes on and on and on and on. And what I have found is that these messages that are getting pushed out into our industry focus on what I'm calling vanity metrics, and they don't look at all the stages of— stages that each business needs. So for me, vanity metrics, just to kind of be clear here, a vanity metric is something that doesn't actually produce profit in your business. So like no results, right? Um, and every business— I wish that somebody had told me this like 6 years ago. So for any new business owners, like Listen up. Um, to have a successful business, you have to be able to attract a new audience, nurture that audience, sell to those people, and retain those clients. And vanity metrics are this focus on just top level attract, attract, attract, attract, attract, and attract more. We're not ever nurturing people. We're not ever turning them into sales. And so It frustrates me that so many people are just focused on all of that top-level activity, but not showing entrepreneurs how to really bring people through their whole pipeline so that they can have money in their bank account. And so I have found that, um, you know, that focus on vanity metrics has really overcomplicated entrepreneurship. And the way that I've cut through it is by focusing on connection. So for me now, obviously this is being a podcast guest. You know, I see the person on the other side of the mic as somebody that I want to connect with. I want to provide value to what you're doing. Um, I want to align my objectives with yours because I want this to be, um, a relationship that goes beyond just dropping one episode together. Like there could be things that happen like collaborations or introductions or all those other great things that happen on the backend. And I have found, like, found that focusing on those connections really shortcuts the process to success. Um, so, you know, again, we were talking about how when you meet somebody on a podcast, there can be an email that happens afterwards like, hey Shaun, I know this person from my networking group. They need what you offer. Like, you guys should talk, you know, friend, you should hire Shaun. I didn't have to go out and like, and you didn't have to go out and attract and nurture and sell that person. We've made a connection with one another and basically done that for each other, leveraging the trust that we have with the people in our network. So I would challenge people that in whatever marketing platform that they're doing, how can you focus the most on that connection aspect of the marketing? Strategy or whatever. You can do this in a lot of different ways. It's not just podcast guesting, but where we complicate things is where we just shove people in the top of our funnel and we realize like you've got to nurture them. There's a relationship, there's a connection aspect here that if you don't nail it, you are just going to be spinning your wheels and getting nowhere fast.

So yeah, so like if you're a guest on a podcast, you're providing this awesome value, you've got a great personality, like the listeners are like, wow, this is very much resonating. How do you, how do you get business from that aside from the, the relationship with the host? But what should you bring to the podcast to, to be, you know, magnetic almost where people are going to like, hey, I'm going to go check out and see what Kristen's all about. I'm going to Google her name, um, and then go there. Like, like, how do you capitalize on that?

So there's, there's a couple little tips that I like to share, and, you know, I have found that the best selling tool for me is just giving I've always kind of shied away from sales. It's been a big hangup in my whole business life and trying to figure out, okay, how can I sell? And I've gotten better at it, but it's like, how can I sell but still be authentic to myself? So a couple things. When you show up, be willing to just talk about everything that you know. So the talking points that we write for our clients, we always make sure that one of those talking points talks about your methodology. So as an entrepreneur, there's a certain way that you're doing the things you're doing. Um, so the way that we get people booked on podcasts is a little bit different from the way that other people get people booked on podcasts. And I want to come to the table a complete open book. So any questions that you ask me about that, I'm just going to tell you and I'm going to provide value. I want the audience to be able to walk away and be able to implement the things that I'm teaching. And, you know, I think that sometimes when we shy away from that, we're kind of fooling ourselves into believing that we have some kind of secret sauce. You know, you can Google anything, you can YouTube anything at this point. The objective here is to really show that you know your stuff. Um, the other thing is making sure that you're speaking about what you do in such a way that you're not coming across as salesy, but you're you're getting the message into people's heads about what you do and who you serve. So one of the tips that we provide to clients is it's not about the plug at the end of a podcast, because oftentimes podcast hosts will say like, where can people find you? Do you have a freebie offer? Any of that. Honestly, I don't care if I can give away the freebie offer. I don't care if I can talk about the sales plug at the end. The reality is most people are like done with, you know, pushing stop on the podcast and they've moved on. Like, nobody's listening to that. But what you can do throughout the conversation is you can throw in some, um, like hints about what you do. I feel like they're like subconscious things. So when, say, you're a coach and you are— your big thing is that you love doing like VIP days with your clients and and you help them get over some really big mindset blocks in business, right? When the host asks you a question about what you do, say, you know, I love doing this with my VIP clients. I feel like we can cover a lot of ground in that one day. This is what we do. And then talk about the methodology. So there's like this really quick reminding of the audience or letting the audience know like, hey, my thing is VIP days. But you didn't just go into this big spiel about VIP days. It was just this very quick aside, and then you moved on and provided value. So you can get really creative in these ways of making sure that the people listening— they— two things. This is the objective here: what do you do and who do you serve? And so you want to make sure that that information is coming out throughout the conversation.

Yeah, and I, I'm sure that our listeners have picked up on this. You've been doing this throughout the show. You've been saying things like, when we book you know, podcasts for our clients. You've put that in and then you explain it. So everything that you just told us, you have been doing that through the show, and, and it's great. And I think that's, that's a great way to really showcase what you do as a professional. Now I want to talk a bit about your journey into the Yes Boss company. You've been doing this for 5 years. Was there a tipping point where you, you felt that you were doing stuff prior to that that was overcomplicating and there was a better way? Like, what led to this company being formed?

Heck yes, there was. I have spent a lot of time, a lot of time overcomplicating things. And you know, I guess that's just par for the course with people that are passionate about stuff. It's like, please don't do the dumb things that I did, right? So I, you know, my journey really started when I left my last regular job back in 2014. Um, I thought that because I was a fantastic employee, I would be a fantastic entrepreneur. You know, as an employee, you do all the things and you prove your worth by being a jack of all trades. And so I brought that into entrepreneurship. I thought that, you know, I could do it all. I fell flat on my face. And for 14 months, my husband and I lived in a guest bedroom in my in-law's house. And it was, it was awful. It was a huge blow to my ego. Um, and I didn't know anything about business. I was trying to do everything and do it for myself and try to figure out everything. And so fast forward, you know, that 14 months. So like at the end of the stay with my in-laws, I realized like, I've just got to make some kind of money. Like, this is crazy. I don't want to go back to a job, but I still need to have this freedom. Like, I just, I'm, I don't know, I couldn't give up. And that seems to be who I am. Like, I just don't give up. And so I became a virtual assistant and I thought, you know what, I could be a jack of all trades for other people. You know, I'll be a virtual assistant. And I actually, 20, uh, January 2016, I became a virtual assistant making $15 an hour, which was, Another huge blow to my ego. And, um, so what happened from there is I was unable to stop thinking like an entrepreneur. Um, I got the first task that was blog writing and I looked at it and I thought I could do this. And then I started doing it and thought, this really blows. I hate this. And so I found somebody who I could pay less than $15 an hour to write the blog for me. And I realized then like, oh, this is just about like leverage, you know, bring in more money than you have to spend to get the project done. And so I built that up to a 6-figure virtual assistant agency and that taught me so much. You know, I was able to see inside the lives of other entrepreneurs and I noticed the trend that the most successful clients that we had were super focused. The people that were not successful and didn't stay with us for very long because ultimately they couldn't afford us, they were all over the place. They were micromanaging, they were trying to figure everything out themselves. And it became this super obvious thing for me. So in 2018, I told my team like, hey, I want to start talking to people about what I've seen in my life overcomplicating and our clients' lives. I feel like there's a lot of lessons here. That it would be really awesome to get out and start talking about. So let's just try to get me booked as a podcast guest. That seems like the best entry point for speaking about this. And then I had all kinds of mindset issues. I had lists of podcasts to send my pitch to and I didn't send my pitch to a single one because I thought, nobody knows who I am. I don't do social media. I have a terrible website. This is just going to go nowhere fast. I don't want to put myself out there. And so my team jumped in, which is my biggest mindset hack. When I have an issue that I can't overcome, I tell my team and my team moves it forward because they don't have the same hangups that I do. And that, that's been a godsend for me. So my team started pitching me on podcasts and I think because I went into being a podcast guest with this very like philanthropic thinking, this to me was never marketing. It was never PR. It was just like, I just want to help somebody not step in the same messes that I stepped in. That truly was my motive for it. What happened was we started getting referrals like crazy. People, you know, from podcast hosts— podcast hosts started hiring us. The people listening to the podcast started hiring us because they saw the value in what we were doing. And, and, you know, the way that I was seen went from being a doer to the few people I was connecting with to being established as an expert expert. And it really changed the whole trajectory of our business. And so I had been looking for a niche up to that point. It was like I didn't want to do the general stuff anymore. I realized that I wanted my business to be more lean. I wanted it to run with more processes and not need so many people to have to run it. And I realized, you know what? I think that we're onto something here. I think that maybe we just need to get people booked on podcasts. I didn't even know that podcast booking agencies were a thing. I remember coming up with our first like iteration of like packages and I didn't, I was just kind of trying to figure it out on the fly. And so that's how we ended up where we are. We just reverse engineered what worked for me and what was working for a handful of our VA clients. And now this is all we do. We don't do any other kind of work. Super passionate about it and we love it.

It sounds very passionate just hearing you talk about it. So let's talk about like what a podcast booking agency would do for you if you were somebody who wanted to get out there.

Yeah, so there's a couple different things that we do specifically. Number one is we set you up for that profit— profitable relationship and that profitable appearance. So we do your PR prep for you. This is a very strategic piece that Um, I feel like you just cannot skip over it. You know, we want to work with our clients to make sure that we're writing talking points that are going to set them up for the right kinds of conversations. And then, um, we work with clients in two capacities. So if you have a VA, we do all your PR prep and then we teach your team how to pitch for you. You know, I come from virtual assistant background. If you've got an internal team, equip them to do all the things, you know, you don't necessarily need to, outsource to somebody like us. We just need to teach your team to take over. Um, but we also offer a complete done-for-you service. So this is for a lot of solopreneurs that we work with. They love this package because they give us a link to their calendar and we literally just put people on their calendar. So just like I needed when I started, you know, I couldn't see the rejections. I couldn't see the list that I was being pitched to. Like it was just too much for my mind to handle. We now do that exact same thing for our clients. And then the last piece that makes us a little bit different is that we show our clients or highlight for our clients how to leverage the opportunities of being on a podcast guest. So if a podcast host has a course or a paid membership or a mastermind or a really great Facebook group or something like that, we include those details with, um, the podcast booking so that our clients know there's additional opportunities to leverage here. And this is why we feel like this is a really great relationship for you to have. And so there's a bit of that resource and educational component to what we do for our clients as well.

So what would something like this cost? What type of investment is somebody looking at to, to have an agency book for them?

Yeah, so we book— our prices start around $1,000 a month. And so we're expecting that our clients are going to show up at least to one interview week. That's kind of our plug, is, you know, increase your visibility in 1 hour per week. So that's the expectation from the clients that they're going to be showing up at least that often.

Excellent. That's not too bad. I mean, if you can monetize that and turn that around, I mean, I, I think anyone could, could get a return on that. Absolutely. Especially with what you said, you help them formulate their, their, like, their offer and how they present themselves and everything like that. So that's really awesome.

It's been my favorite thing about pivoting in business is being able to sell, is like Okay, this is how you get a return on investment versus, versus the virtual assistant services. It's like, well, you've got to give us the strategy. I can't make any guarantees here. So it's very refreshing to finally have a business that we know how to get results for clients. And it's not just at, at the whim of their ideas.

Absolutely. Now, before we wrap up, I want to ask you this. You know, as a business owner, somebody who's built this business, you know, very successfully, On the content side, because that's the name of our podcast, what are some of the things or a tip that you can give somebody about something you've learned along the way that, um, you know, has, has really kind of taken you to the next level when it comes to the content that you put out there that might not be podcast, right? Is there something else that you've done, uh, that, that's helped you?

Well, I don't do a ton of stuff outside of podcasting, to be honest, because I have found that this is a really great way to produce content. So as you can hear in, in a lot the stuff I'm saying, I'm all about like, how do I delegate? How do I leverage this stuff? How do I make the most out of, you know, what I am doing and how I'm showing up? And we have found that there's a number of things that come out of me recording a podcast. So there's content for social media that comes from being a, a podcast guest. You know, there are times when my team has been more on top of that than others. Right now we're not as on top of it as I would say would be best practice. So we'll, I'll just admit that. But the other thing that I've found is through the conversations with the host, I, I'm able to find like frequently asked questions and things that our clients need education on because, you know, the host asks me different things each time or they, they highlight different things that I say Whereas if I were creating content just by myself, I don't know that I would know to ask those questions or know that those were the intriguing things that I say. You know, I'll have somebody read my bio and they go, oh, I like this thing that Kristen says. And I'm thinking, huh, I didn't know that that would resonate necessarily. And so I guess what the biggest thing for me has been is having that, two-way communication when I'm creating content has given me so much more insight into what powerful content for me looks like. You know, I would be just kind of guessing as somebody who would be creating all my own content, and I, I've been able to utilize, um, the person asking me questions to pull out those really awesome nuggets.

And I've always been a fan of your ability to listen is where all your content ideas come from, right?

Oh, I like that.

And ideas are just coming at you constantly, and if you just open your ears and listen, that's where you can find it.

That's so good. I've never thought about it that, that way, but that's so true.

Absolutely. Now let's talk about, just as we close off here, some more added value. On your website, yesbossva.com, you have a 10-minute masterclass that people can sign up for here for free, and it's called 3 Steps to Increase Your Visibility and Credibility as a Podcast Guest. What will they get out of this 10-minute masterclass?

Yeah, so we tried to keep it under 10 minutes because I know that people are busy, especially people wanting to be a podcast guest. They're like, how can I get the most out of the least right now, right? So we, we cover 3 distinct things in that podcast. How do you find podcasts? How do you pitch podcasts? And how do you keep them? So how do you keep the relationships? How do you leverage it on the back end? And we talk about that, get through all of it in 10 minutes. I, you know, no fluff, right to the goods right there.

Well, Kristen, thank you so much for, for sharing your, your passion, the knowledge, your experience. Um, you know, if you want to check out what you're doing, it's yesbossva.com. Um, and I'm assuming you're also on some social channels as well?

I kind of sort of hang out on LinkedIn, so I do engagement. I engage with people on LinkedIn. Like I said, we've been pretty terrible about publishing new content on the platform, but there is some content that's highlighted there, and that's where I just— that's a big communication channel for me.

Excellent. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Running your own business is hard. Those long hours, the doubt, the challenge to meet demands. But you're resilient, strong, dedicated. You do all of this for more than profits, success, or money. You do it because you care. You care about the people who shop here, eat there, drink here. You care about your community. You care about your team. Despite all else, you care. No matter what life throws your way, you power through it with grit and perseverance. You are the epitome of dedication. You are a small business owner. For this reason, Blue Cow Marketing salutes you.