Following A Podcast Model That Helps In Transitioning Your Show With Maricella Herrera Of The Ellevate Podcast: Conversations With Women Changing The Face Of Business

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Binge Factor.

I'm Tracey Hazzard and I have got.

A little bit of a repeat in terms of bringing a show back, but.

I am bringing a show back that.

We recorded an interview in December of.

20 and so as you know, the.

World is pretty different now, but this podcast has been going on since 2016, so it's also been going on for.

Quite some times and it's got some.

Continuity and learnings to it. But not just that. I interviewed Christy Wallace of the Elevate.

Podcast back in 2019 and now I've.

Got Maricela Herrera Avilla and she's coming on and she's taken over the helm of the Elevate Network and she's now running the Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business. And that is the new Elevate podcast sort of model and title and she's taken this over, but she was involved in the podcast from the beginning, so there's a lot of continuity there. So let me do a little bit of an intro to Maricela so you can get to know her and we will link back to the original interview with Christy Wallace so that you can see the differences between where their show was and where their show is now today. So Marisela is the CEO of Elevate Network, the largest community for women plus at work focused on creating a culture of equity and inclusion in business. She oversees overall business operations, growth and strategy and works closely with Elevate's chapter leaders, business partners and champions to further Elevate's impact. As a strategy executive with 15 years of experience building and scaling teams, brands and businesses, Marisela has led the creation of impactful programming such as the annual Mobilize Women's Summit, which reaches thousands of professionals across globe and is supported by some of the world's leading companies. She is the host of the Elevate podcast Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business. And through her 10 year career at Elevate Network, she has managed the business through an acquisition, a rebrand and a full operational workforce transformation. She Prior to Elevate, Marisela held several positions in real estate banking at Banamax City Mexican subsidiary where she worked on providing credit funding for low income housing development projects in the north of Mexico. She received a BA in Financial Management and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Marisela is just off the chart with energy. You're gonna love the way they run.

The show and love this model of how they shifted their show hosts over time, which really is kind of an interesting model too because some of you might sell your podcast and need to transition your show or you might be in the business where you can't run this anymore, your job has changed and you need to bring somebody else in. And following a model like they did with the Elevate podcast is going to be a great model for you. So listen in while we hear all about how the Elevate PODC has changed.

Marisela, so glad to have you here and so glad to be talking about the Elevate podcast and how it's shifted over time and really happy to see that your podcast has made it to so many episodes. As we record this, you're well over 345 episodes I think. And that is just so exciting to see an organization say this is working for us and you continue to put.

Forward great podcast episodes week after week.

Thanks, Tracy.

I'm so happy to be here. And it's hard to believe we were talking about it before recording and I had even forgotten when we started the podcast. That was so long ago. So it was in 2016 and it's hard to believe that six years later we're still here. We're still. We've gone through different iterations of the podcast and learned what our audience likes and doesn't and all of these good stuff. But the essence is still the same and it's lovely to know that it's continued to grow and has our downloads have certainly grown in the last few years, particularly the last year.

Yeah, it certainly seems like it has because I also check out your website and I see that it's growing and, and that is just fabulous to see. Though an organization say this is a critical part of our process, it says a lot about how podcasting has worked for you. So let's dive into that a little bit and let's talk about it. You were involved in the podcast in the early days when you first started it out and you were the co host that you have at the beginning of each episode. Now I noticed that you don't always, and maybe it's just sometimes, but Because I only spot check through a handful of episodes. But you don't have the co host do the interview. So you're not tag teaming the interview. The interview is done by you alone. But you do have this sort of early discussion between you and a co host and you were that co host for Kristy Wallace, who was who I interviewed last time. That's great. So you had that transition.

The audience already knew you when you transitioned to take this over.

Yeah, it was definitely a plus that the audience knew me and they knew my voice and knew the different perspective and the different personality that Chrissy and I brought to the table. So it wasn't jarring, I don't think for people to all of a sudden here, new host. Thinking about the beginning of the podcast. Cause you mentioned and my involvement in that when we started it was because the owner of the company, Sally Krawchuk, at that point was like, let's start a podcast. And that was my cue to go figure it out. Sure, we can start a podcast. We can do anything.

And in 2016, that was a lot harder than it is today. So kudos to you for figuring it out.

Yeah, we've all tapped some really good people. Katherine Heller, who has been our producer and like engineer and producer and making sure that we sound good and edited edits. The podcast still to this day was really instrumental in us getting it out in the world, really. And we started with that idea of we're going to have two hosts at the beginning talking to each other, get that rapport and just make sure that people get to know us and then one of them will be the lead on the interviews. And we did that, to be honest, a lot of it, because we did want to have one point person that the audience would get the most familiar with. I did do some interviews throughout my time as co host with Christy, but it was usually either when there was someone who I personally knew and it was there was a built in rapport, or if she couldn't make it for some reason, I would jump in and cover.

Which is nice because you've got that consistent backup if you needed it. So that's wonderful.

So that worked out really well for us. But and many times, as you and your listeners know, it takes a lot of time to put together a podcast.

It really does. So now Megan Oliver is your co host with you and she does a fabulous job. And that early part of the episode where you guys are talking about what things, what you're thinking about and what's going on, which really Sets a tone for the interview, which I really like the way that this model works.

And I think it's great for an.

Organization to have a second touch point as well. And so how did you select her?

So, Megan, funnily enough, when Chrissy and I were doing the podcast, we went through a couple of people within our team who would help us either find guests or schedule or do different things. Megan is actually our social media person and she's also, she's our marketing associate. So she does a lot of marketing stuff, particularly in the social media world. And one of the things when she started, I was like, do you want to try this out for us? The podcast is about brand awareness. It's about showcasing the elevate community. It is about in. In our business strategy. That's where it lives. And that's the same way I see social media, the same way I see our thought leadership. It's how do we put ourselves out there for new people to find us. So it made sense for her to jump in and do a little bit of that, which she ended up being really good at. She's the one that came up with a lot of the ideas of. And it was a challenge for her, but a lot of the ideas of how do we start the episodes so that it has some structure that flows into the interviews. Who are we talking to that makes sense for our audience, like how many of our guests are from the community versus not from the community, that we can share points of view. And then at the end, she's the one that came up with us having this History Maker segment in which every week we celebrate the firsts of women and minorities, particularly women, but also some non binary individuals and transgender individuals. And it's just about can we shine a light on the fact that there's still a lot of firsts happening? And it's a. It became this cheeky way of both celebrating, but also shaming a little bit the fact that there's a lot of progress still to be made.

Yes, exactly. But I love that you're getting involved with your social media team, whether. Whether you have a team, an individual, or whatever that is. I think so often podcasters don't do this. We do this here on our show as well. And right now at this point, we're making some choices of what we're gonna do in 2023 that's a little bit different than we in past years. So there's this always this overlap that happens until. Because typically I've recorded out till February or March of the New year. So there'll be this transition period and then it starts March of every year and moves into the next year. Same timing. But this rethinking of it, how can I tie it in my social media strategy? How can I have good shout outs? How can I have good features that.

Regularly appear on social media that get good engagement?

And if you don't start having that.

Conversation, then you can't structure the show. And it's like they have to pull.

Things out of your show instead of.

Having the show just naturally do it for them.

Exactly, yeah. That's where we were at. Megan was as part of social, going through a lot of the podcast stuff to pull out and understand what we're talking about and how to promote it. She sends assets to all of our guests. She does all these things. To me, it's just again, it's anything where you're speaking externally to an audience that is doesn't know you or you want to reach broader audience. It needs to be tied together in a way so that it makes sense strategically what you're doing. And we've seen it work really well. This is one of the reasons why I think our downloads really improved since Megan took over because she was so invested in the podcast too. Then the promotion of it was second nature. It was just so easy for her to know these are the important parts, these are the things that we should highlight and it just flows naturally.

That's really interesting and great concept and I like the idea of that also. I think that it's great that it feels sometimes like when you do an introduction to an episode, it feels like all bio or all like lecture, like you're lecturing about a topic because you're alone. So having that co host and having it be more conversational I think fits of course the name of your show as well as the style of your show. So I think this really fits you. It's a great choice and I think it's serving that pod your podcast really well.

It's really the binge factor for you.

And so I'm going to highlight that right now. And the binge factor for you is that you say you're going to have.

A conversation and you do you have.

A conversation about a topic at the beginning or about what's going on in the ecosystem and in the atmosphere and in the environment and socially what's happening. And you have then a conversation that follows that with your guest and they.

Have a really great follow through for.

Your audience that I think says, I'm.

Gonna come Back for more. And that's why I binge on your show.

Love it. Yeah. We try to really make the whole show be a conversation. Like you said, it's important. Megan and I work together so closely and Christy and I worked together so closely for so many years that it was natural for us to just chat, I think with what happened with the change in host when Christy left. And it's funny, you were mentioning how you tape until March. We had a lot of episodes taped that she was interviewing people. And so when she left, there's a bunch of episodes where it's me and Megan or me and someone else from our team first having a conversation and then going into an interview where Christy's leading the interview.

Yeah, you had to have a transition.

Yeah, it was a little harsh, but it worked. It worked fine for the episodes that we did it. But I think it did teach us a lot more of how much better it is if we can really have that through line.

Yeah, I think it's the case. I didn't actually catch any of those episodes. I probably should have looked, but I didn't know when the transition happened. So as you're going through your catalog of over a year, like it's a lot of episodes to screen through. So I didn't catch that. But that's an interesting thing. So for all of you out there, if you go back to around mid summer 2022, so like June, July, right around that timeframe, this is when you'll see some of those episodes that transition. Because that's about the time that Christie left. Yeah.

So really interesting way to pivot your.

Now the name changed because it was just the Elevate network. And I actually remember clearly having this conversation with Christie at the time that I didn't recommend it, that I felt like the show sounded salesy for the network with that name. And so sometime after that you must.

Have changed the name.

And how did you come up with this new name, which is Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business, which I love that it's a long title and I don't normally recommend long title, but I think you did it really well in the way it looks on the COVID art. So I encourage all of our listeners.

To go look at the way it.

Is because there's a lot of small words in there and you highlighted the ones that are important and that makes it work.

Yeah, it's a long title. And we've still, to this day, still debate if the title should be something shorter, which probably. But we called it what it was. That's where it came from. It was like we are having conversations with all of these incredible women and some men. We actually want to change it to Women plus, which is how we refer to our community, who are making great things, who are creating their own businesses, or who are creating change within their companies, or who are doing something that is worthwhile for others to hear. Because I do think everyone is or everyone that's in the show. And it the phase of business, part of the phrase always debate, is it the culture of business? Is it something else? But when we changed that name, it was very much because we wanted to double down on the fact that leadership can look many different ways and leadership can show up in many different ways. And so that's why we went with changing the Face of Business, to make sure that we were really putting that aspect of diversity and leadership and it doesn't have to all look the same.

And now how big is the network?

So we have about 200,000 women in the community around the world. It's grown every single year. So it's a lot. It's a big community. Most of the, I would say, are active people are in the U.S. so that was, if you notice, we do talk in the podcast with people from different places. But it is a lot of the people who are focused on the US Market because that's our biggest audience within the community.

And so with a community that big, so you have the issues of serving that community as a primary importance because.

They'Re going to be your best listeners.

And they're going to recommend people to listen. Right.

So it's.

They're going to share your show. So that's going to have to be your primary direction in this. So I kind of want to touch on this, which you mentioned earlier, and let's hit into our three while we talk. Touch on this, which is that guests, the listeners and the return on investment.

But let's talk about it from the.

Viewpoint of building a community the way that you have in it and serving a network. So you mentioned that you and Megan are looking for guests that are a.

Mix between from within your community and from externally.

Why is it that you have that mix going on?

It's. We've gone through many iterations. There was a period in time with a lot of the guests were all the guests were only people with that within our community. There were other times where most guests were outside of the community. The reason we ended up being with a mix is because if we go out to a community so large, you Usually hear back from the usual, like the people that you hear back from wanting to be part of this are the same in many ways. Right. And so we have to be very, we are very aware of the diversity that we want to place in the show. Not just, I'm not talking diversity as ethnicity and sexual orientation and gender and faith, all of that, but I also mean industry and career trajectory and lessons learned that we can, that they can share with the audience. So we definitely, always, and I would say probably 80% of our guests are from the community, are people who are very much involved in elevate in one way or another, are just members who have great stories. But we also, like I said, try to bring in men, try to bring in people who don't necessarily identify as women or who have expertise in particular areas where we can't necessarily find them within our community. And those are like the 20% that I would say probably less than that, that we add. And it is more to the point of serving our community because if we can't get them content that's also interesting and relevant and valuable, then what are we doing? Right. Like you can only listen to so many of the same stories. So that's why we sprinkle it to.

That point of what you're saying here is that if you don't step outside of it, you don't grow and change your own face the way you want it to. If you want that diversity to happen in your community, in your own network, you've got to make that happen. You've got to show them why it's valuable.

Exactly. And I think the guests that we have, a lot of them, the stories that are the most powerful are the ones that come from a very different perspective because we hear a lot about success, but then when we talk about failure, it can be the most important or eye opening discussion and conversation that we might have. So having both is usually, it's usually worthwhile for us.

Interesting. Well, I love that you guys have a focus of that. And it is actually honestly something that I recommend to people who have this kind of model of they're doing all.

Their members or all their group is.

That you might do that for the first year because that's where your core is going to come from, a listener base. But as you try to start growing that beyond your initial startup of the listener base, you have to also expand. So let's talk about listener growth because you want your listener growth to align with your network growth.

Right.

So you want both. So how are you going to Outreach and bring the podcast to a broader community.

How do you grow your listener base?

It's a great question. We talked a little bit about social media, so I'm not going to go into that. But that's a big strategy for us, which is having the podcast be part of our social media strategy, which is showcasing to other people. Definitely we grow a lot by word of mouth, but that's also the nature of the network. Elevate itself has grown in the last 20 years that it existed from word of mouth because people get familiar with the community, they like it, they feel comfortable, they tell their friends. And I think the podcast has become very similar where someone listens to it, identifies with the story or feels motivated by the story and then tells their friends or sees their friend identified with the story and is, oh, you have to listen to this. We've grown a lot through that. We've also done a lot through cross promotion. Having a guest on a podcast and then me or Christy were on their podcast and do a little bit of cross promotion within that, that's been helpful. What else? I think those have been the main ways we've grown our listener base. We certainly make it easy for our guests to promote the podcast on our behalf. On their behalf.

So that's why that's so critical to have some of the outside the network. Because you don't want her to promote to the same people.

Exactly. And that's been really big. And I would say because even within the community, if a guest shares a podcast with their broader network, it still brings in listeners that are not part of the network. You know what I mean? Especially when you have a network or community that's very gender focused, you want the audience. We want the audience of the podcast to be more all encompassing. So it does help having some people externally sharing the show.

That's such so great. I'm glad to hear that. Now you guys get some decent engagement on your social media side. And I think in addition to listener.

Growth, the engagement growth is essential for.

A network because if you're not getting.

Your members engaged, they don't renew.

How do you really encourage that? Because the podcast seems, I'm going to say it's a little more passive. They're not actually involved in it. So how do you get them to engage through that model on social or.

In your network work?

Yeah, it's an interesting. The podcast is definitely more passive. We have gotten really good and I would say what are. What we do really well as elevate is create spaces where people can show up as themselves and talk about their work life, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. And I think we've replicated that with the podcast in the conversation. Certainly it's not like it's a two way street between me and the person who I'm talking to, but it's not necessarily that for the community. What we do is then we invite them and we do this at every end of the podcast episode. We invite them to join our events or our social or stuff that is on our site and website, which we host a lot of virtual events. And that's where people come in and can interact more and engage more with the community. On the social aspect, a lot of it is really little sound bites, little clips of the podcast that help with the engagement because it teases for people and helps with that. But I think the biggest opportunity we've seen is to bring them back within the fold of Elevate, where they can talk about both the podcast and we had a chapter, for example, in LA or LA chapter that for a while hosted a pod club. So they would listen to an episode of the podcast and instead of like a book club, they would discuss the episode of the podcast.

I love that.

A pod club. Oh my goodness, I love that idea.

Yeah.

And it worked out really well because we were getting more listeners, they were getting a lot of engagement from their people and we were all talking about the same thing. And I see that at our events too. In person in New York. It's been a while since COVID but still before that I would get people every time they would. There would be at least someone who comes up to me and is, oh, I know your voice.

I know. Don't you love that?

It's a little.

It's a little really creepy. And then at the same time it's really, oh, encouraging. And you want to keep going?

No, at that point I was on it for like 10 minutes at the beginning. And so it was so sweet that they would come up to us for that. But was it it? But again, it's like we are giving the content and then providing the opportunity for engagement in another channel and making sure that both those channels are connected in some way.

Do you do a newsletter for Elevate as well and recap some of the episodes?

We don't. We do an elevate newsletter. For many years we had weekly podcasts there and then we stopped because we were in our strategy trying to figure out what do we want to do with a newsletter the most. And it was getting engagement to our event. And so we took it out and then we realized this is still the same, this is still engagement. Right. Like, why are we limiting ourselves to one sort of touch point when we have many different touch points that serve different people? So that's something we started doing again and now we're featuring it. Not necessarily. I don't know if it's every week, but we put them on more. Another thing that we do that we didn't do for a while was the transcripts, like transcribing every episode and making sure it's available for accessibility and then taking information from that. And I think one of the things I want to do with the podcast eventually is bring it full circle with more of grabbing content from the different episodes and putting content together in a more structured way.

I think that that's a great future for you at this stage to shift into that. Let's talk a little bit about return on investment. So monetization, when we think about that from the podcast, in a large network and organization, retention is really important. And I do think that it's a sorely under, under measured item that the podcast actually helps with retention because they're.

Consuming something so you're front of mind.

And that helps to have something that is getting delivered to them regularly and yet doesn't require lots of one on one meetings or lots of extra events or those other things.

So it's really an underutilized tool. So I think it's great for a network like yours.

But what other return on investment measurements.

Do you look at and say this is working for us and yes, we're going to keep doing this?

Yeah, we've gone through many iterations throughout the years of like or not iterations, many moments of evaluating is it worth it? Like I think everyone does. At the beginning it was all about are we getting new people into the community? At the beginning it was actually just about downloads. It was actually just about is our community right? Yeah.

Are they consuming it?

Especially with, like you said, the first audience was the one that we already had. So are they consuming it? Then we started with are we getting new people? Which has is really hard to measure in terms of who actually is coming from the podcast. So we shifted to a lot more on just engagement with the podcast metrics and anecdotal feedback, which I know is not like statistically significant. But like I said, we do keep an eye out for people who are do come to things and mention the podcast. And we've had a lot, we have a lot of that. I Can say, probably every week I hear about one or two people at least, who are like, oh, I hear the podcast. Or I learned from. About elevate from the podcast.

And so honestly, that might be something you could measure. Does your on. Does your enrollment team. I don't know what you call it. Some people call it a sales team, some people call it an enrollment team. But does that team have less conversations to close someone into the network because of the podcast? We hear that a lot.

Yeah, that's a good question.

You know that it used to be three calls and now it's one. And things like that can happen and can be a measurement. But it's really hard, you're right, it's really hard to have a more direct line. But it does have a residual effect on shortening timelines and creating long as.

Your number of months people stay subscribed increased.

There are some measurements that some organizations.

Have the ability to take a look at.

Yeah, we have to get better about that. I would say we see it. I see it in two ways. Right. One is our direct, because we have two business lines. We have a direct to consumer business side and an enterprise. We have a direct to consumer business and an enterprise business side. When I'm talking about new people coming in and people who listen to the podcast and grow the network, we're usually talking about the consumer side. And that's the one I'm like, that's pretty difficult to measure. Our enterprise side, actually, the podcast has been extremely helpful in closing deals, which is what you're saying, which is when. Yes, they instead of having to talk 10 times, they've consumed the podcast. They know what it is. And then it's easier to understand the whole ecosystem of elevate.

Let's reveal that because I want to make sure anyone who's sitting back going, what is their enterprise model? Is that an interesting model for a network?

What's the enterprise size look like for you?

Yeah, so we work with companies in different ways. The primary ones are they're sponsors of our events or our podcast, actually. And I'm not talking about the traditional ad model of sponsorship and monetization for the podcast. We can talk more about that. It's usually we get exclusive sponsors because of the audience that we have. Because we have such a specific audience. It's very. It's much easier to be able to have these conversations with our current, current existing partners or with partners that come to us. Then another thing is companies use us as their external arm for a lot of their ergs, particularly their women's group. So they come and buy memberships into the community for the women in their company and giving them access to this external network where they can learn from other people, find advice, find clients, find a shoulder to cry on almost and make sure that they're learning and bringing that. It's part of leadership development within their companies.

And for those of you with small enough businesses, it's an employee resource group. Right. So like, it might be something that you have as an external part of your trainings or you provide as a resource to support your staff. And so depends on the size of your company whether or not you actually have a kind of named coined phrase for it or not.

But yeah, sorry about that. I'm so used to saying it. It's the employee resource group.

It makes sense in the enterprise situation that you would, you know, that it would be the catchphrase.

So I would say those are our two main ways of working with companies. And when I said sponsorship, that encompasses a lot of things. We do a yearly summit every June, and so they sponsor that or they sponsor, like I said, the podcast, or they sponsor an event or different things where a lot of it is they want to align their brand with ours. That's been very helpful with the podcast because we've seen a lot of interest, like I was saying, from companies, companies who have a very specific target audience in mind and want to be get in front of them. Some of them are actually education institutions and it makes sense. Right. This is the type of people that they want to get into when they are looking for people to go into their executive education programs. And the other thing that helps, when I'm saying the podcast helps with enterprise is the fact that a lot of companies, like, are looking for ways to have their leaders showcased and build their brand. And so when we're talking to a company, if we can say as part of this, you can be on the podcast and you can have as part of this, the people in our community, including your employees, can be part of the podcast. There's an aspect of we are not just helping our employees build relationships, we're also helping them build their brand. And we're also uplifting the brand of the company by having these people on the podcast. So that's been helpful too.

Interesting.

So you've got so many models of business in the way that you run, and a lot of this does dovetail.

Really nicely to the way that you.

Can utilize the podcast to both serve them and create revenue opportunities as well.

Yep, that's what we've seen. And it's funny for a small business. We have a very complicated business model. And I don't know if it's because we've been around for so long or what, but it can get really crazy. And one of the things we really try to do is to to put things together so that everything we're doing has a rhyme or a reason and can support some other aspect of our business. So the podcast as a portion of Elevate, supports everything else that we are doing, and everything else that we're doing supports the podcast. It becomes circular.

So one of the things that I heard on one of the episodes, which honestly, I have to say it surprised me from the fact that you're a.

Membership group in a community and because.

You have business alignments as well as individual alignments.

So it surprised me.

But at the same time I was.

Really glad to hear it because I think that it's a reason to join.

Your community as well. And that was that when the Roe v. Wade ruling came down, you actually made a kind of preamble, if I can say it, so you must attacked it on it, recorded it, and then added it onto the episodes as it was airing and made a commentary about it. And I think in a way you.

Took a position.

And did you go.

Back to your organization and say, we're going to make this position, or did you make that decision as the CEO here?

I always talk about it with our team, but in this case, specifically with Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision, there wasn't anywhere else to go. Like it was the right thing to do. It was a risk. And I would say this is one of the things that both in the podcast and through Elevate, you probably will see is changing and has changed in the last few months. Months. I'm pretty outspoken and I just bring that and do it. And not everyone liked it. And we are a huge community. So like I said, we have different opinions. And I actually we had an event with Planned Parenthood where I was talking to their head of their chief equity officer and I mentioned that there. When the Dobbs decision came out, besides the podcast, the first thing was I put out a statement talking about it and why it's important and what are the things that you can do to help, but particularly because the way I see it, it, it's just as much as an economic and career progression issue for women and for people with uterus, as it is equal pay. It affects your livelihood and the livelihood of your family. And so we put that Statement. And the truth is I got some, I got some backlash from the community. Of course, there were people who didn't like it. There were people who didn't agree with our position or were like, stay in your lane, you're in business, not in else. To which I argue. Again, men, I think it's anything we are in, whatever affects women, we are in how do we support women, and especially when it's in financial situation. It was a risk and it was a decision that I definitely made with my team, but that we're not shying away from. And that, that, that little thing on the podcast was actually, I heard it from some of the podcasts I listened to personally and I heard it and I was like, wow, this is great. And then I started looking into responses for Roe v. Wade and I realized that it was. I can't remember their name, but a group of podcasters started doing that and they put it out there and there was a whole list of podcasts. They put out the statement, they put out the wording that podcasts should use. Both of you are a us based one if you're an international podcast. And it was one of the first times where I was like, let's join this bandwagon of other podcasters that are doing this thing that I think is important, that I think aligns with our values. And yes, we might get some backlash, but let's support this movement. So that's where that came from.

It's a bold choice, but I think.

It actually is a right one for your organization because I think that's what I heard in a lot of the.

Show, that you're not shying away from being authentically you personally. Neither is Megan.

And I think that's important because part of the reason we choose an organization is because of the leadership, right? And so to hide who that is, or to lack of a better way to say it, dumb it down, soften it, like just to be politically correct.

That doesn't mean anything. It's not going to be real to.

What I'm going to get from the.

Organization later or what I expect from it. But also, I think you had a.

Conversation on one of the. You were talking about tech impact groups, women in tech. And I don't remember which episode it was, but it was one of the ones I listened to. And they were pointing out that Lyft took a stand. And actually, I think that it made a difference. They saw a lift, pun intended here.

A lift in their business at that.

Time point, because they made a statement and so that you may take a very vocal hit in your organization, but it also may be a long term.

Reason to do business with you.

Yeah. And I think that's more and more the case for brands. Right. Like in the last few years, we've seen it as a part of stakeholder capitalism movement, but it has become people want brands to stand for something. People want companies that they do business with to stand for something. And it's the old adage. Right, Right. Staying silent in the face of injustice is worse.

That's what I tell my daughters.

Exactly.

I say if you stand by while someone's being bullied, that's worse than bullying. And that's what I try to teach them. Yeah, I agree. And I think that people, especially listeners.

Of podcasts, expect their hosts to be real.

I want to hear what you really think. I want you to tell me, like, it really is, even if it's not popular, even if it's not my viewpoint. But that's also a great way to invite engagement.

Agree with me.

Let's have a talk about it.

Absolutely. And it's what we try to do. And again, that's what Elevate is and stands for. Like when I say it, as we create these spaces where people can show up as themselves, then if we are not doing that, if we are not showing up as ourselves and we're not really walking the talk, we're just saying we're building something, but it's not true.

And if you're gonna change the face, which is your title, then you gotta make some statements or it's not gonna change. And so I think that at the end of the day, you prob probably made the best choice for your community. But I think it's really hard. And I have, I applaud you for that because it's really hard to make that choice when you're representing 200,000.

Right.

It, like, it's just a hard place.

You get into almost a corporate mode of making no choices, of making generic choices.

Yeah, it is hard. And it is because you are talking about a very large group of people. But in Spanish we say, I'm not a gold coin. Not everyone is going to like me, not everyone's going to want me, and that's okay. And I think that's the stance we are taking with Elevate a Lot, which is we might not be the right fit for everyone and that's okay. But we want to be especially strong for the people that we are, a good fit and vocal for them and vocal for those who can't be vocal. I think one thing I've always understood is that there is huge power in numbers, and if we have a community that has so many people, then that's powerful voice to use, and I think it's our responsibility to do so.

Well, wonderful.

I'm so glad you've continued on the podcast and had continuity from the beginning, to be honest, because you shifted it over time. And I really applaud what you're doing over at Elevate Network in general. So thank you so much for everything.

That you do, Maricel.

Thank you, Tracy.

This was fun.

I think there was so many interesting things that we talked about today. I mean, the way they have such a conversational model I think is really important to their audience. I mean, women like me love to hear it be dialogue. I don't really like to be lectured to. It's not something that I respond well to. Now, if I want to train and.

I want to learn about something like.

How to do something, that's perfectly fine for that model. But this model of creating a network and a collaboration and a community for change, conversational model is just right for it.

It's, it's. It's.

The community's ripe for it. So their podcast model and their network model, audience match as well. That's something that I think we don't always take a look at and consider as we're testing out what's working and what's not working. We're not really thinking about is the model of our show a model for the type of thing that the audience of our business or the client base in our business wants. So in a membership model, this is essential. It's essential to provide a similar experience and be aligned in that thinking. And they do a great job here on Conversations with Women, Changing the Face of Business. I also think, even with this long.

Title, which we talked about in the.

Show, even with that, that it's the right title. It's the right title to tell me what I'm going to get. What am I going to get from their show? What am I going to get from their network? What can I expect? And then the realism, the authenticity, the authentic conversation that's happening between Marisela and Megan really lend itself to making sure that I know what I'm getting into in the organization. Even if, as we talked about, I disagree about it, I know that it's conversational and I have an opportunity to participate and engage in that conversation. And that's really important because I think.

A lot of times like this happened in Spotify.

Tom and I are the only here at Potitize. We're the only company that, that has a phone number for a hosting company in the podcast ecosystem. So we have the only phone number.

So when it came out that Joe.

Rogan was doing some things that lots of people didn't agree with, and there were people who were really upset about it, they were calling our phone number and yelling at Spotify and Joe Rogan.

And saying, I'm quitting your show. Like, I'm quitting your network. And like just doing that. The reality is, obviously they were talking.

To the wrong phone number, but we were getting the brunt end of it and hearing that. And it wasn't a dialogue saying, I want to improve what's going on here.

I want to see what you're going to do. I want you to take this and.

I want you to learn from it. And they, they didn't invite dialogue. Spotify invited cancellation. Right.

And that's something that can't happen when.

You'Re trying to build a collaborative network. I think that they've opened that up up by inviting conversation, by calling it conversation, by handling it as conversation. All of those things are going to serve their network well. So, yes, while they might lose some people, I think they're actually going to gain more in their net result. So really looking at the roi, that's the last thing I really want to mention is what she was talking about are all the different ways that they're thinking about their show. They measure their show, why they keep going with their show. Those things are essential for all of us to look at, but the measurements really shift and change.

And Tom and I did an episode.

Of the feed you'd brand because we do a weekly coaching call for anyone who wants to listen. You can join us live on Facebook, live on LinkedIn, live on Twitter, and listen to us. Every Wednesday at noon Pacific time, we come in with a topic. And the week before this, last week's topic that we came in with before I recorded this episode. And so it will air in time for you, for it to be linked here and for you to hear that. But we talking about our yearly measurements.

The return on investment and how we decide. And the essence of it is that.

I have three measurements that I look at each year and they're different every year as we go into the podcast, as the podcast is at a different stage.

After I surpass a hundred episodes, I.

Look at the podcast differently than I do prior to that. And so those three measurements and the model by which we measure is something that I think you might want to think about and adopt. And then where you look at that measurement, if you're at the that stage.

Of business that Maricela and the Elevate.

Podcast is, you might want to look at it at a very different stage and a very different set of measurements than you would if you just started out and you're within your first 25 episodes. So I'm going to link that episode in the blog post for hebingefactor.com and that way you can see also maybe some ideas for how you can take what Marisela was suggesting and find the right measure for you. So hopefully this was an incredibly helpful episode to you, gets you motivated and moving on your podcast so you can keep going and make well over 300 episodes and create a dynamic network as well. So thank you everyone for being here and thank you for being I'm going to say Binge Factor Engaged because I'm hearing from you all the time and you're telling me what kind of shows you want to hear from. So if you're not participating in that, make sure you find us somewhere on social media. Go to the website and reach out to us us and tell me what you want to hear this year because I will find it for you. I will find the right podcaster to interview and I'll bring it back to you next week here on the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.