Blythe Brumleve:
0:05
Welcome into another episode of Everything is Logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. My name is Blythe Brumleve, and this episode is presented by SPI Logistics, and I call it an episode, but it's not quite the regular, normal episode that I do. I'm actually answering some questions from an aspiring podcaster who is working on a paper, and these list of questions were asked of me, so I thought that if a lot of the teachings that I have within my content is that if someone is asking you these questions, then typically other people have these questions as well, so I thought that it would be very helpful for anyone who is interested in starting a podcast. I'm also the co-founder of the Jax Podcasters United, which is a local group in North Florida helping creators audio creators in particular level up their game or even get started when it comes to podcasting, especially if you are a five to nine podcaster or a nine to five podcaster or probably most of us are aspiring to be a nine to five podcaster if you're listening to this, so hopefully you will find some of this insight helpful. I'm going to start off with question one, and it is what was your entry into podcasting and podcast production?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:20
I got started with podcasting back in 2014. I was a former radio broadcaster, or at the time I was a radio broadcaster for a local sports station here in Jacksonville. It was the first radio station in the entire country to give a football show to all women, and so now I'm proud to say that that show that I was originally on is now on every single day, or Monday through Friday, here in the local Jacksonville market. Shout out to my fellow helmets and heels alumni current hosts and also the listeners, of course. So I got started with radio broadcasting there, but we didn't have a podcast for the show and, in fact, the radio station just at the time just didn't. You know, for a lot of the folks working in radio, they didn't really see a ton of value in podcasting at the moment. It was more of a secondary thought where, rightfully so they're focused on their bread and butter, they're focused on their everyday business, which is, you know, traditional radio broadcasting that you know goes across your airways. That has in, you know, airs in your car. That goes across your airways. That has airs in your car.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:29
I thought I felt very strongly that we needed to have a podcast version of the Helmets and Heels show, and so what I would do is I would get the producer after every night that, or each Tuesday night when we were on air. After the show was over, he would hand me a thumb drive and it would have the show files on it. And so what I would do is I would take those files and I would send the show files on it. And so what I would do is I would take those files and I would send them off to either I would do it or I would send it off to my podcast editor, who I have worked with for a decade now, which it is 2024. So, yeah, I've been podcasting for 10 years and I've been working with him for close to 10 years as well, and so what I would do is I would send him that file and he would edit out the local commercials to make it so that it's a good file to upload to a podcast. And so that's how I really got started with podcasting.
Blythe Brumleve:
3:14
Now, with doing a once a week show, I did move up to two shows a week for the local station, mostly because I didn't go to broadcasting school. I kind of fell into it. I was working as editor-in-chief of a local magazine called Void Magazine. Rip to that publication. That magazine is since no longer operating, but it was a very big cultural movement here in North Florida for a long time I think close to 10 years that that magazine was in operation very good, full color, high quality mag, and I worked with them for years and got introduced to the radio team at the station. And so I, when I made the transition to start to cover sports more full time because I was also a blog owner on the side covering sports and entertainment, so that extracurricular activity or that side hustle of the sports and entertainment blog helped me land the gig for a magazine and also helped me land the gig within radio broadcasting.
Blythe Brumleve:
4:19
I never went to school for journalism. I never went to school for broadcasting. It was just sort of learning at the hands of Google and YouTube and even back in those early days of the internet God, it sounds ancient, but that's how I got started into podcasting is because I felt very confident that our show needed to be on podcasts and then, when I was thinking about the future of my career, what I wanted to do felt very strongly that podcasting was going to be a part of it, and so I used podcasting as a mechanism to get more airtime in addition to the two shows that I was hosting per week. Those two shows I typically hosted per week where the extra show was only during football season. I don't know why that's relevant, but the rest of the time, the rest of the year outside of football season, don't know why that's relevant, but the rest of the time, the rest of the year outside of football season this is probably why it's relevant is because I was had that extra bandwidth, that extra time to be able to work on other content that I was really passionate about. You know, fast forward 10 years and I have a logistics podcast now called everything is logistics, and a lot of that skill set that I learned very in, like the early internet days and the early content creator days, early social media days, absolutely helped put me on the path to where I am now as a full-time podcaster.
Blythe Brumleve:
5:36
I feel very lucky and blessed to be able to say that, and it was podcasting put me in a position where I was able to be the almost the, the, the captain of the ship. Whereas you know traditional employment, um, especially traditional radio broadcasting, you kind of have to sit off to the side and wait for your moment to be given to you, whereas I liked to. You know, as a business owner, firstborn Capricorn, you know all of the, I guess, the associations with those different aspects of my personality, those definitely. It was an incentive to be the captain of my own ship, and so podcasting allowed me the flexibility to be able to do that and pivot in ways specific to my career that I would have never thought possible. And so I use podcasting as a way to communicate to my customers, to leads and really just to connect with the guests that I'm also talking with as well, to be able to learn from other very smart, talented people and hopefully, you know, become a little bit smarter in the process.
Blythe Brumleve:
6:46
Okay, next question what is your educational background and has it been helpful in your endeavors? I graduated high school Santa Barbara high school in 2002, which I'm obviously going to be dating myself here. Um, I graduated with a full ride to go to college, but when I got to college I realized how quickly that college wasn't for me. I lasted about a year and a half and it just felt like 13th and 14th grade to me even back then, back in those days, 2003. No, I started in 2002. But really by 2003, I realized that this wasn't for me. It felt like 13th and 14th grade. I knew that I wanted to be a business owner, um.
Blythe Brumleve:
7:30
And so what I did instead is I found a local program here in Jacksonville, florida, called the um Jacksonville small and emerging business program. It's called JSEB for for short for the acronym, and JSEB teaches it's nighttime classes. They I don't know if it's still free, but it was free when I did it but they teach you all of the basics of running a business so your taxes, your marketing, starting up an LLC versus a sole proprietorship, legal issues, even just overall business planning, what you're going to sell, why you're going to sell it. And so that was probably the most important educational journey that I went on, because it surrounded me with other business owners that were like-minded, that were in my shoes as well. And so the goal of that JSEP program is to get you familiar with running a business, the best metrics, the best way to do that.
Blythe Brumleve:
8:24
And then that next step hopefully in JSEB's mind was to do business with local governments. Learn the government contracting, things like that that would benefit your business. Especially if you're a minority business owner woman-owned business you have access to additional government contracts that only minority and women-owned businesses can have access to. So that was definitely enticing, and so that part of my educational journey was very important and very pivotal for me to continue to learn more, and I learned more through Google, through YouTube and, honestly, just trial and error. I built my first website back during that time because I couldn't afford to pay anybody else to do it, and so it was trial and error of learning how to build your own site.
Blythe Brumleve:
9:12
And now that's a very significant part of my diversification when it comes to my income is that I don't necessarily want to rely 100% on podcast sponsorships, which is where I get probably 70% of my revenue to this day. Percent on podcast sponsorships, which is where I get probably 70% of my revenue to this day, is from podcast sponsorships, and but I it's very important to also diversify your revenue sources. You never want you know all of your revenue to come from, especially as a business owner. You don't want all of your revenue to come from one client, cause if something happens to that one client, you are um, so you know pardon my French, hopefully you don't use that the person who's writing this paper. Hopefully they don't use that in a quote, but it's neither here nor there.
Blythe Brumleve:
9:52
But yes, that's my educational background and I would say it's definitely been helpful in my endeavors. However, do not discount the power of having a supercomputer in the palm of your hand, and so being able to not only learn those things early on but stay astute for life has been. The most important piece of advice that I could give to aspiring podcasters, aspiring business owners is to use the tools that you have at your hand to solve problems and to learn things that you never thought that you would have to learn. Or if you get to a certain place where you're making a lot of revenue, you can hire the experts to do the same. But I still would advise you to learn the basics of anything before you hire somebody, so that you know that they're going to be competent at what you're hiring them for. So definitely, be a student for life is probably my biggest answer for number two. Now number three.
Blythe Brumleve:
10:51
Going on to this question what is the most helpful skill you've brought with you into your projects and how has it assisted you? I would have to probably divert to number two. I would have to probably divert to number two be a student and also embrace the power of curiosity. I think that that is also a very important skill that I don't know that can be taught. Hopefully that curiosity is just kind of burning inside of you and you develop the courage to seek out those answers, seek out a variety of different answers, and be able to be flexible in your opinion as you learn more. Your opinion and your perspective should evolve with the more you learn. So I would say that that's probably been the most helpful skill because it helps me in a variety of different ways. It helps me not only with my work but in personal life as well Family, friends, close relationships, things like that being able to stay curious and being able to go into things with an open mind and allow your opinion to change as new information is obtained but also walking that fine line of holding strong in your opinion or your perspective If you've done the research, if you've done the legwork of learning all of the nuance and all of the other things that play into just sort of navigating everyday life in this world.
Blythe Brumleve:
12:22
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Blythe Brumleve:
13:12
All right, next question what does your day-to-day look like as a podcast producer, both individually on your own project and in your role at JPU? Day-to-day is a constant balance. I will say that I have found what works for me, and I know that not everybody can do this because they're not a full-time podcaster or a business owner. You have to navigate working on side hustles in addition to your full-time job, which I've definitely been there and that's how I got started in. All of this is that I had full-time positions with other side hustles and I was very lucky to work at a company where my mentor was also my boss and he understood my other passions besides just being an executive assistant. I was an executive assistant for five years. My former mentor he's still my mentor and my former boss really believed in me. He invested in me and he sent me off to all of these different marketing conferences, social media conferences, web design applications, things like that. He invested in me to learn those things because he saw that I had those side hustle passions and so he really just put gasoline on the fire because he knew that by investing in me because I was already interested in these topics that those things would help him and his company. And he was right.
Blythe Brumleve:
14:44
I was able to learn very early on. We were one of HubSpot's first customers for people who are familiar with that marketing software, we were one of HubSpot's first customers in that regard. A very, very staunch believer in inbound marketing and that's creating messaging and putting it out into the world and hopes that you're going to attract the customers that make the most sense for you. I have been an avid believer of that since I first heard about the term, and so being able to have that as sort of an investment strategy early on has then helped me, from the day-to-day, be able to transition a lot of what I learned back then to what I do today, which is kind of like what everybody does.
Blythe Brumleve:
15:31
You should be learning from your lessons in life and so, day to day, I'm very fortunate that I can time block. So what I do is I take the most difficult tasks that I have to accomplish that week and I really splice it up. I'll splice it up even further. I use a project management tool called ClickUp. I swear by it. I manage my entire life through it and all of my different projects that I work with. But it helps you be able to take an eagle eye view of what your schedule looks like, live view of what your schedule looks like on a yearly basis, on a quarterly basis, on a monthly basis and then on a daily basis, also on a weekly basis as well. So it basically you know, if you think of your entire year, as you know, sort of a big calendar. What are some of the big personal things that you want to accomplish throughout the year? Write those down. Then I go in and I think about from a business perspective, what are some of the big business perspectives or accomplishments that I want to have or goals that I want to pursue throughout the year. Write those down and then I look at it from the lens of okay, how do we make these actionable? How do we turn these ideas into action? And that's where project management software really comes into play. That's where managing your schedule really comes into play.
Blythe Brumleve:
16:54
Where you're time blocking the first parts of the month, you're time blocking the first couple of days of the week If you have that luxury, you're time blocking the first few hours of the day so that you can get those important tasks done, and then you just try to tackle the most important things first. Sounds very simple, but it's also very challenging at the same time because things come up. There's also sort of the optimism bias, where you think a task is going to take you. You think it's going to be done in an hour and really it's going to take six hours. So that's sort of the optimism bias. And so being able to time block where you are taking care of the first, most important task of the month, you're taking care of that in the first week and you're taking care of it hopefully within the first few days of that first week when you have the ability to check things off of your list. It makes you feel good and it makes you feel like you've accomplished something. There's actually psychology behind that, that when you are doing tasks like that, when you are crossing things off of a post-it, that it is really impactful and it really helps your self-esteem and your confidence level and things like that. So I recommend time blocking whenever you can so that you can have a distraction-free zone and it helps you to get into that sort of zone of creativity, zone of problem solving. You can get rid of the distractions and put your cell phone off to the side, ignore social media and you can really start tackling what those things look like.
Blythe Brumleve:
18:29
Now me specifically from a podcast perspective and this is taking a long time to answer this question but from the podcast perspective, what my day-to-day looks like. I think about it in more of weeks and months because we're dropping two episodes each week. So I have to think about booking guests, I have to think about research for those guests. I have to think about the type how I want the conversation to flow when I'm actually talking to them. So on a very typical week, I have an electronic schedule, but I also have a printed calendar that I write everything in for the week, so I know where the most important tasks are taking place.
Blythe Brumleve:
19:08
The time sensitive tasks are taking place during the week and then I can fill in the gaps throughout everything else of everything that needs to be done when running a business, when running a podcast, the little things that you don't really think about, such as, like you know, transcripts. Uploading a large file to YouTube time consuming. Uploading, you know, a file to get transcribed also time consuming. Uploading a file to get transcribed also time consuming. Trying to find social media clips from that broadcast or from that recording time consuming. Scheduling those social media messages time consuming. So all of those different things.
Blythe Brumleve:
19:45
I can then block in or use time blocking to tackle the biggest problems of the week and then use the rest of my schedule for the time sensitive things and sort of the admin tasks that aren't necessarily glamorized in a format like this, where you see the end result but you don't see all of the other things that are being done as far as management, as far as editing the show, coordinating with guests, figuring out what the hell you're actually going to talk about on your show. So I use time blocking and I look at it from the lens of on a quarterly basis and I break it down even further into a monthly basis. For example, analytics for the podcast what shows are doing well, what shows aren't doing as well, what really popped off on social media, what didn't, how many people opened up our latest email that we sent out things like that that I look at on a quarterly basis and then I can break that out into a monthly basis where I'm regularly checking that we're collecting that data and that I'm able to, when the time comes, be able to dive fully into all of the analytics, of all of the marketing that we're doing and be able to make decisions quicker and faster that are based on actual ways that people are interacting with my show and my content. So time blocking is key, project management software is key, and then also just really writing out what you do and why you do. It is probably the biggest missing piece from a lot of podcasters and a lot of just business owners in general, and if you want to see your podcast be successful, you have to treat it as a business and so being able to write down all of those different processes when they need to be done and how they need to be done is a major, major breakthrough key, because once you do that, then you can figure out where you need the help, where maybe you could hire someone to help, maybe you could use an AI tool to help, maybe you could find different freelancers, whatever. But you won't know where to solve those problems until you map it out yourself. And so from that point, from that point then, I'm able to break down, um, what I'm going to do on a yearly basis, all the way down to what I'm going to do in the morning of tomorrow, for example.
Blythe Brumleve:
22:04
Okay, next question is what is your favorite aspect of this work? Problem solving, um, and curiosity, and and curiosity. I've kind of already mentioned a couple of those reasons why, but I feel very blessed that I can learn from some of the smartest people in the world. Now, my podcast is definitely different from what I used to cover, and that was sports and entertainment. I wouldn't say that there's definitely smart people that are obviously working in those realms as well, but I am a person who likes to tinker. I'm a person who likes to figure things out, and that's why I have a logistics podcast, because I like to figure out where stuff comes from, how it gets from maybe a little farm in China to your house on your front porch or maybe it's some textiles that are in South America and different fruits and veggies and where those things come from and how they end up on your front porch. All of those different things are very interesting to me and I just think that there's a thirst for that kind of knowledge and I love being able, through my podcast, to be able to talk to those smart people who are on the ground actually solving those issues and being able to help other folks learn along with me. So that is my favorite part of having a podcast. If I did not like that part of it, I would hate every other part of the process.
Blythe Brumleve:
23:34
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Blythe Brumleve:
24:22
Next question is what is your least favorite aspect? Oh goodness, I am a firm believer that you have to not only love the conversations you're having, but you have to sort of be obsessed with the process in which those conversations are happening. And I don't know, I would say probably least favorite. Goodness, I mean, it feels weird to say, but I don't know, that I have a least favorite part of this process. Well, maybe some of the manual things. Okay, it's starting to come to me now, I would say, thinking that software will solve all of my problems. It most of the time does not. Software typically will solve a very specific part of your problem. I'll give you an example.
Blythe Brumleve:
25:20
It is very, very time consuming to create those video clips that you see of people's podcasts that float around all over social media. We create the same kind of content that float around all over social media. We create the same kind of content. But that kind of work is very tedious because not only do you have to do all the legwork of figuring out the topic, finding the guest, having the conversation, editing the interview, getting it out to social media and all of that jazz promoting, uploading you have to do all of those different things. And then you have to do all of those different things and then you have to go back through and the good ones do it. What they will do is they'll go back through and they will listen to their show and they will find out the little moments that make us huge impact from a social media perspective.
Blythe Brumleve:
26:08
And some AI tools are trying to solve this problem, because it takes a lot I've done this manually. It takes a long time to sort through a clip or to sort through an entire show, because you're not just listening through, you're pausing, you're stopping, you're taking notes in order to find those little moments throughout a show that are going to be worthy to share to social media. And so, knowing that um, we have used AI tools, um, opus comes to mind. Um is the best one that I've used so far that you can take a YouTube link, you can paste it into it, into their platform, and then from there, what they will do is. They will find you know, using, you know powerful words or finding those good moments in a conversation that would be shareable for social media. That has sped up our content distribution process tremendously.
Blythe Brumleve:
27:06
However, the technology is not perfect. None of these AI tools are perfect. It still requires a human to go in and make sure that names are spelled right, that companies are spelled right that a quote that someone said during the conversation was that they actually said it, so you have to go through. It's the trust and verify method. So I would say that that's probably my least favorite aspect is that I would love to just be able to take a YouTube link and plug it into human to go in and to verify that there is actual takeaway in the clip that they're giving you, because a lot of times the software will pull the question that is posed of what is X, y, z and why it's important, but they won't include the part that made it important. So that's a little frustrating.
Blythe Brumleve:
28:11
I'm assuming that that's going to be fixed, you know, pretty soon, because the team at Opus honestly is very good. They're former, you know, board members of TikTok, I believe, and so they're very invested in making sure that you know micro bite-sized clips from you know, your longer form video or audio content actually looks good, sounds good in making these different social media clips, so they are invested in making it better. I just, you know that is a bottleneck for us right now where I wish it was just a little bit more fluid, where it captures the full totality of the point instead of you know some of the you know more important words that are used to find that moment, if that makes sense. Okay, so that was my least favorite aspect. I'm trying to think, if there's more, I'm sure there's more, I would say, maybe from like a people standpoint too, the folks who just see a headline and they don't actually see the full content, or they don't listen to the full content but they got an opinion on it. I don't know there's much anybody can do about that, but that would, I would say that was. That's definitely more of an annoying favorite aspect of podcasting and just being a creator in general, but I also think it comes with the territory, so there's not much you can do in that regard.
Blythe Brumleve:
29:26
Okay, next question what are some challenges you've met throughout your career journey? Oh, this could be related to logistics, financing or personal life, whichever sticks out to you. I would say the biggest hurdle that I have dealt with is being able to turn it off, being able to turn my brain off. Since I work from home and I've worked from home for years, I find it very challenging to step away from work, to be able to turn it off. When I worked in an office, that was very easy, because when I left for the day, that was turning it off. But at home, when you have a home office, it makes it challenging. You're working a lot more by nature, and I'm lucky that I call it work, but I genuinely enjoy it. However, I also genuinely enjoy my downtime as well, and so being able to shut off work and not feel guilty because I go into the living room and watch a show. So I think that that is probably one of the bigger things that I struggle with is being able to separate work from home and then also being able to say no.
Blythe Brumleve:
30:42
I know that, as a business owner, I used to be a one person team. Now we are a three-person team and I have different responsibilities now, and so knowing that I have to be able to put the priority of the business and the people that work for me first, and putting them first means that I have to say no to other things, but I think of it in the lens of whatever I say yes to, I'm saying no to something else, and so it's very much vice versa in that regard as well, where if someone is asking for a meeting for me hey, I want to find out more about your podcast I don't need to necessarily get on a meeting with someone to tell them about my podcast. They can go read the damn website or they can go and check out some of our past episodes to learn more about the show. So that is an example of just people. Will you have to protect your time? I talked earlier about time blocking and prioritizing that Last minute meeting hey, let's jump on a call. I can't stand it. I think that we are so quick when I say we, I think just corporate work culture in the US I think we're so quick to hop on a meeting for everything, when a meeting is not necessarily.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:09
I am a firm believer that a meeting is not necessarily a time to brainstorm. A meeting is designed to solve goals, actionable goals that you are going after, and who is responsible for those goals. I think too often we invite people who have no business being in that meeting just because it's a recurring meeting on the calendar can't stand it. Also can't stand people who are just kicking the tires and hey, maybe I want to do business with you, I'm not sure, maybe we should just hop on a call. Well, a call takes a lot of time. Call takes a lot of it, takes perspective and it takes insight. Also, meeting for coffee, things like that I'm not 100% opposed to it, but it is something that I struggle with saying no.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:53
But it is something that I struggle with saying no because I still am a firm believer that you'd never know who is going to be the next. You. So entertaining those having those conversations, opportunities for consulting, opportunities to help someone out. I genuinely want to say yes to all of the time. However, I need to be able to put the goals of the business and the people who work for me first and foremost, and doing that requires telling some people no because I have to have other priorities that I am saying yes to. Because if I say yes to your meeting and it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense for both of us, we are both wasting each other's time. So those are definitely things that I struggle with. To this day. I have put in mechanisms to try to avoid telling somebody no and telling them politely no. That's still something I struggle with, to be honest. But then, also from the lens of knowing when to sacrifice your personal life for your business goals is something that I have struggled with a lot, especially in the early days. I think you have to give yourself permission to work those extra hours to say no to the birthday parties and the things like that that you have to give yourself permission to say no to when the time comes. It's a fine line to walk. It's a balancing act. You're never going to be perfect at it, but I'm going to strive to be a little bit better at it each day.
Blythe Brumleve:
34:18
Okay, next question Ooh, this one I could do an entire show on. It's already 32 minutes into this one, but this is definitely one that I could speak for hours on. What does your marketing mix look like? What kind of marketing has been the most successful for your brand? My marketing mix. And first I want to say you can probably tell a little bit of what my marketing mix looks like, because I've already kind of briefly touched on it throughout this conversation. My marketing mix is the most important part of the entire podcast journey.
Blythe Brumleve:
34:54
I want to be thinking about where I'm going to put that show on social media, on email and YouTube, and I'm going to reverse engineer it from there. So I have to think about it from the lens of begin, with the end in mind, and you have to think about what those takeaway points, what that central topic is going to be. You have to have a kind of an idea of where that end is in order to reverse engineer it, because that a certain kind of message is only going to work on a certain kind of platform. You can't take one social media post, despite what these software tools and vendors will tell you. You can't take one message and send it out to LinkedIn, to Twitter, to Facebook. If you tried to say the same thing from Twitter as you do on LinkedIn, it's going to be a weird time for you and vice versa. So you have to think about the end in mind of where this content makes the most sense.
Blythe Brumleve:
35:57
I know from a podcast production standpoint that I am likely going from every show I am going to put it up on YouTube. That requires its own set of nuances. I'm going to need a thumbnail, I'm going to need an SEO friendly YouTube title, I am going to need to add chapter markers, I'm going to need to link to other relevant videos on my page, and that is specific for YouTube. And so knowing that I can then reverse, engineer, right out those processes and then see how the marketing is going to fit in. So not only do we have, you know, say, like a YouTube, but we also have different podcasts platforms. We have Buzzsprout as a hosting provider. Shout out to them. They are a local company, 904 corporate headquarters right here, one of the largest podcast hosting companies, right here in our own backyard of Jacksonville, florida. So we cover the long form content, but then we have to also think about it from the short form content, because no longer I've been building websites online for more than 10 years no longer are people coming to your website to binge your content. They are going and distracting themselves in social media channels and you have to be able to think about how your content is going to look there.
Blythe Brumleve:
37:18
Now, a mistake where a lot of people make is that they try to spread themselves too thin. They try to be everywhere and everything to everyone. You're going to drive yourself nuts if you do that. So my advice is to start out with one or two social platforms, the ones that make the most sense for your audience, and that's how I think about how we promote the podcast. So not only do we think about it from the lens of social media, we also think about it from the lens of email. So I collect emails. I collect them on my website. Also, we have social media messaging that goes on on a regular basis, asking if you want to stay updated on the podcast, to sign up for our email. So that's also something that I put at the very forefront. There's only three properties online that you will ever own. That's your website, your podcast and your email list.
Blythe Brumleve:
38:02
Social channels are going to come and go. They're going to evolve. Seo algorithms are going to continue to grow and evolve with the introduction of the mass adoption of AI, these large language models that's going to continue to adjust to how we consume information online. So you have to think about it from the lens of where your audience is hanging out, and that's how I think about it. So I know that. You know, for my podcast it's very like business focused. So LinkedIn makes the most sense. I love Twitter, slash X, so I know that my messaging on that platform is going to be a little bit different.
Blythe Brumleve:
38:40
So, just thinking about it from that lens, don't spread yourself too thin and then post to the channels that make the most sense for your audience and post to those channels with the goal of consumption. Do not post to those channels and this is our philosophy and this is my philosophy that if I'm going to post a clip from a podcast, I want a takeaway, a nugget in the nugget of information from that show. I want somebody to be able to watch that and learn something. And so if they learn or they laugh or they find value in that post, then they're more likely to go to their podcast app of choice or to go to YouTube to find my show, to subscribe and to listen. Hopefully they listen to that particular show, but that's not the goal. Too often, especially podcasters, they will take one link to their show and they'll say, hey, I got a new episode and they'll put it out to all different platforms. That's the exact opposite of what you wanna do.
Blythe Brumleve:
39:36
Number one these social media algorithms are created where they want their users to stay on their platform. So if you are creating content that is sending users away from their platform, they're gonna deprioritize you in their feeds, in their algorithms. So the way that you have to think about it is I want to be able to provide value and I wanna be able to do this on a variety of social channels, and so the way that you do that is you provide value with the goal of consumption within that channel. I want to upload a video and I want people to know something from a recent episode. I'm going to upload that video clip to LinkedIn. I'm going to write out the text, because the text is also very important, and I'm going to make sure that somebody learns something from that post so that when they're scrolling through their feed and they see something from me, hopefully they learn, and then, when they get done scrolling in that feed, hopefully it entices them to go back to their other platforms, either to YouTube or to the podcast player, and reminds them to listen to my show, to subscribe to my show. So that's what I have a goal of.
Blythe Brumleve:
40:40
Then we also have email marketing as well, and that helps out a lot of reminders, because you really have to remind people to listen to your show and you have to remind them all the time and you have to be really comfortable with reminding them. Best piece of advice that I ever heard is that no one remembers your content like you remember your content, and so get over the fear of posting the same thing twice, post it regularly and get used to saying the same thing a hundred different ways. That's the best advice I can give you. As far as, like you know a marketing mix and what kind of marketing that you should be doing for your show and how we kind of think about our own marketing mix with our team and how we deploy it. Okay, oh, I guess the second part of that question what kind of marketing has been the most successful for your brand? Posting to social media with the goal of consumption? Very easy, just explained it so I won't go over it again. Next question Do you feel you're able to maintain a good work-life balance through your work?
Blythe Brumleve:
41:40
It's a work in progress. I explained earlier that I struggle with turning work off and that's because I genuinely love what I do and I love problem solving and I love learning new things, so it can be very challenging to turn that off. But coming at it from the calendar perspective, not to go back to the calendar. What really has helped me this year in particular is I bought there's this entrepreneur called Jesse Seltzer that's not Seltzer, something like that, something along those lines. His wife is Sarah Blakely, who is the creator and founder of Spanx. She's a million dollar or a billion dollar, excuse me, entrepreneur. I love her, but her husband is also a very good entrepreneur in his own right and he created a product called the big ass calendar. And the big ass calendar is just exactly what you would think. It's the calendar, that's the pretty much the you know it's. It's very large, very large, but it helped me over the, you know, like the two weeks between Christmas and new Year's where it's just that kind of just weird period where you don't exactly know what day it is.
Blythe Brumleve:
42:40
So I took this calendar and they give you little post-it notes and I have them right beside my office right here. So they give you little post-it notes and the advice is to color code them. So I use purple for personal yellow for Jacksonville podcasters, united. Um, I use, you know a, different colors for different aspects of my life and I took this. The purple one is the thinnest one. I took the purple and I wrote down all of the personal goals trips, um, maybe big anniversaries, uh, conferences I'm going to events I really want to go to and I mapped them out on the calendar. So I have less of a guilt factor because I'm treating my personal life and the things in my personal life. I treat them first and I'm tackling them first. Then I can go back through the calendar and see where all of these other business goals fit in. That has been the biggest game changer of balancing work and personal life. I still very much love my work, but now I feel much less guilty when I'm turning it off for the day, because I know that I accomplished a really big goal just based on how I time blocked my calendar for the year and then how I time blocked my calendar on sort of a daily versus a weekly basis, and also a monthly basis as well.
Blythe Brumleve:
44:05
Another, another quick tip that has helped me a ton is blocking off the last week of every month, so I can be able to catch up on up on just other business skills that I need to refine. One of the bigger things that's made an impact is learning how to read a profit and loss statement, learning how to better my financials for my business. It has single-handedly strengthened my business acumen by learning how to do a profit and loss statement, taking additional training, learning these different AI tools, things like that. I set aside the last week of the month where I don't take any meetings and I don't do any podcast interviews unless they're very, very like VIP important, unless you're pretty much paying me to do it. I, you know I block off that entire week so I can focus on, you know, some of the bigger picture goals when it comes to the business and things that I need to learn, things that I need to get better at and thus will hopefully help my team get better at and, you know, hopefully that has ripple effects for our customers and clients.
Blythe Brumleve:
45:04
Okay, next question is how does today, compared to your first day or first few months of entering into podcast production? It's night and day difference. I've kind of broken down exactly how my day-to-day has changed, where now I'm a firm believer in learning how to edit your show, to uploading what works best. Treating podcasting like an athlete watches tape is probably the largest unlock that a podcaster can have, because you're not just watching the end result of the content. You're watching how they write out the titles, how they structure the titles of their show, how they structure the descriptions of their show, what they include in the show notes, what they include in the links, how they start off an interview, what question are they asking. All of these little tweaks you learn along the way.
Blythe Brumleve:
46:02
I did not know everything that I learned. I mean, obviously I've learned a lot over the years and as you should with any profession, so it is absolutely night and day difference. But I would say the little tweaks by studying other creators and other podcasters has helped tremendously because it's all out there for you to see and you can learn how people do things and why they do them just by studying their actions that they're taking. So that's definitely a big learning unlock because it is night and day difference of me doing everything and working into a space where you know I have enough revenue from the podcast to be able to justify hiring someone to take on the task that I don't need to do be directly involved in your goal of process management, a project management.
Blythe Brumleve:
46:55
If you don't write out your processes, then you can't figure out the things that you need to do that only you can do. And then the next phase of that is figuring out what are the things I want to do. Maybe you like editing, maybe you like doing the social media clips. You don't necessarily need to do those things, but maybe you like doing it. And then the next phase is figuring out what you don't like doing. That still needs to be done, and then you can just hire someone to take care of it or hopefully find you know a software tool that can do it you know, in the same amount of time, maybe less, or maybe you can find somebody that uses a combination of you know a tool and their expertise. But you won't be able to do any of that unless you write out your processes and figure out where your biggest strengths are. Okay, any recommendations for those aspiring to enter into a role like yours, I would say probably my biggest takeaway is to learn the business side of whatever you're covering with your show.
Blythe Brumleve:
47:58
Who is doing it successfully right now, who is sponsoring that show right now, and then figuring out if you can replicate that. Figuring out where the money comes from is the biggest unlock and I think for a lot of podcasters they don't quite understand that unlock yet. Now I will say this with a caveat that not everything has to be about revenue. Not everything has to be about a monetary line item on a profit and loss statement. Roi is different and ROI return on investment has evolved for me over the years. Roi used to look like meeting my favorite Jaguar players. Roi used to look like getting invited to different restaurant openings around town. Roi looks vastly different to me today, but I wouldn't have been able to get there if I didn't realize supply and demand.
Blythe Brumleve:
48:55
I work in logistics. I have a logistics-focused show, so being able to understand supply and demand and where the money comes from is the biggest I'm going to say it again the biggest unlock for podcasters. Studying how other similar shows make money, because chances are, whatever paths, that they're making money. You could probably replicate that for your own show. Another great example I like to give is and what's helped me a ton is now I go to a lot. You know, working in the business world, I go to a lot of conferences. Some of those conferences have all. Conferences really have a ton of sponsors. They have a sponsor page on the conference website. Being able to look at that sponsor page and figure out who I can meet at that conference, that is already spending money. If you're sponsoring a conference or if you're sponsoring a show, you have money to spend.
Blythe Brumleve:
49:49
And so we did this back in the void days as well, with the magazine. We would look through our competitors' magazines. We would see who purchased ads in those magazines and that would be the signal okay, they got money to spend. So let's go talk to them and tell them why we're a better option or maybe just another option. Maybe you don't, you know, maybe you like your competition. You don't necessarily want to wish them ill will. So thinking about it from that lens of who is already spending money, who is already successful here, how are they making money and who is spending the money, is the biggest lesson that you can take. And so I did that in my early days by looking at and I still do this to this day.
Blythe Brumleve:
50:28
I will look at and I will study other shows, especially shows that are very similar to mine, and I will look at who's spending money with them. If they're, it's almost like an automated ad I don't really care about. But if it's a host read ad, if it's something that it sounds like it's a close partnership, a host read ad is when the host actually reads the ad copy that's on that show. So sometimes there there will be programmatic ads that fill a show and then a lot of times it's host read ads Programmatic ads, like you know, those types of like a HelloFresh or a Casper Mattress or something like that I don't particularly care for Because I know that they are playing a numbers game and that kind of advertisement just wouldn't make sense for my audience.
Blythe Brumleve:
51:11
What makes sense for my audience is having one or two advertisers per show or throughout our variety of social and email channels. That makes sense for our audience. So technology, software, things that are solving big logistics problems, those kinds of people are looking to access my audience. But I have to do it in a way. I have to get advertisers and sponsorships in a way that's going to make sense for my audience. It's have to do it in a way. I have to get advertisers and sponsorships in a way that's going to make sense for my audience. It's going to be valuable for my audience. Otherwise, why am I even doing this?
Blythe Brumleve:
51:41
You always have to think about your audience first, because without them you're nothing. I wouldn't say you're nothing, but without them you don't have access to additional opportunities. So you always want to be protective of your audience and serving their best interest to wherever they laugh or they learn, they're educated, they're entertained, because that's the only way they're going to keep coming back. If I were to start feeding my audience, you know, like this little shitty, like mobile games, that wouldn't be a good fit for my audience and so they would probably get annoyed and it would be a slow churn of losing an audience instead of building it. So my advice would be to be hyper-protective of your audience but then look for similar shows and how they're making money, who's advertising with them, and then look for different associations, different industry level conferences, industry level conferences, industry level events, where people are getting together in person because chances are they're going to have sponsors for all of those things.
Blythe Brumleve:
52:43
And then you can use that as sort of just an indicator that, hey, maybe this is a list of sponsors, let me find which ones make the most sense for my audience and let's go have a conversation with them and let's see if that makes sense, where they would want to partner up, because I'm a firm believer in partnering with companies that make the most sense, because if they're not going, if that sponsor or that advertiser is not going to see value in getting new business. That's why they're sponsoring you is because they hopefully will get new business out of it. That doesn't make sense and they're not going to be a good long term partner. And so as long as it makes sense for both sides and as long as it makes sense for your audience, then that can be a good sort of a blueprint game plan of who to target to help make your show more sustainable in the long run, because it is very challenging to balance a podcast in addition to a full-time job. It is a constant bandwidth struggle and you're going to have moments where you question why am I doing this? Can I still do this? And obviously the answers are yes, you're just having a moment of weakness, but getting paid to do it helps a ton too.
Blythe Brumleve:
53:53
So that is one of the bigger unlocks that I hope more podcasters sort of recognize and that's sort of the goal that we have with a new show that we just launched for JPU Jacksonville Podcasters United is. We're hoping to me and my co-founder Bottermillion, we are hoping to give you access to this insight and this education over the years that we both have been doing this and we're both sponsored shows and we make a little money off of it without having to sell our souls, and so we use the JPU show in order to help other podcasters be able to navigate those waters a little bit more clearly, a little bit more effectively and hopefully get you to your end goal much quicker than it took us, because it took us a long time to figure out all of those things. Anyways, hopefully you found this valuable. I hope that this is a situation where there were nuggets of information that you can apply in your own business and in your own podcasting journey. Happy to answer any follow-up questions or any other questions you might have based on this conversation. But that about does it for me. So again, thank you guys for listening, thank you guys for your time and for thinking of me for this conversation. Hope you found it valuable.
Blythe Brumleve:
55:11
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Everything is Logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B.
Blythe Brumleve:
55:21
Subscribe to the show, sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everythingislogisticscom.
Blythe Brumleve:
55:27
And, in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let y'all know about another company I operate, and that's Digital Dispatch, where we help you build a better website.
Blythe Brumleve:
55:40
Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a coworker's child, a neighbor down the street or a stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website.
Blythe Brumleve:
55:52
Well, that doesn't happen at Digital Dispatch. We've been building online since 2009, but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as $1,500, along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digitaldispatchio. Just check out the pricing page once you arrive and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and Go Jags Bye.
