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Welcome to the Mind Your Pod blog!
I’m Kristi Jacobsen – the founder of this blog, the host of the Mind Your Pod podcast, and a podcast manager and launch consultant.
Through this blog and the Mind Your Pod podcast, I’m going to share with you the steps to plan, produce, launch, and grow your podcast, all with content strategy in mind.
Podcasts open the door to reach your ideal audience and customer more authentically and genuinely than other forms of content marketing.
What is Mind Your Pod All About?
Mind Your Pod is all about the strategy of podcasting – from idea to growth.
I believe with the right strategy in mind, podcasts can be an excellent marketing tool for your business and a way to connect with your audience like never before.
Mind Your Pod will have you thinking like a content marketer. You’ll understand how a podcast fits in with your content marketing strategy, how you can repurpose your podcast content for other platforms, and how you can leverage it to gain leads and grow your business.
The Mind Your Pod blog is a supplement to the podcast. Since the podcast is an audio-only medium, we needed a space to show you how to do certain things with podcasts.
I could talk all day about how to use Asana for your podcast episode management, but what difference will it make to you if you can’t see how I actually set mine up?
Expect to see screenshots, how-to-videos, links, and step-by-step guides right here on the blog.
I’ll also share tips, strategies, lessons learned, mistakes, and my favorite resources. Nothing is off-limits here!
What’s My Story?
Believe it or not, I only got into podcasting a little over three years ago.
I joke that Jen Sicnero set me on the path to podcasting with her book, You Are a Badass. While it seems odd, I wouldn’t be talking to you about podcasts right now if it wasn’t for that book.
Here’s how it happened:
For most of my life, I stayed in my comfort zone. I never took risks, put myself out there, or really tried to level up my life.
I worked in retail or entry-level roles for most of my life. Even with a graduate degree, I still felt stuck in positions that didn’t align with my goals or my dream for my life.
I’d heard about You Are a Badass for months. I saw it on bookstore shelves and at Target, saw it talked about on my Twitter feed, but thought, “Eh, really? Will it work?”
But as 2017 rolled into 2018, I knew that I need to make some kind of change in my life. So, I picked it up and started reading.
I was hooked. I powered through in 2 days, taking notes along the way.
And then I needed more. I searched online for interviews with Jen because I just wanted to hear more advice from her.
Now, to this point, I’d never listened to podcasts. I had the Apple Podcast app on my phone but never thought to give it a try.
But why the heck not? Maybe I could listen to Jen’s advice.
So I searched for interviews with Jen and came across the She Did It Her Way Podcast.
I listened to the episode, then listened to more episodes about entrepreneurship and building your own business.
Entrepreneurship to that point wasn’t something I considered, but within a month of finding She Did It Her Way, I bought a ticket to the She Did It Her Way Summit and booked a roundtrip flight to Chicago.
As I dug deeper into entrepreneurship and podcasts, I thought, “Why not try this for myself?”
Now, I didn’t have a business, and it honestly took me close to a year and a half plus a lot of coaching programs to even decide what services I wanted to offer, but I launched my first two podcasts within months.
The History in 10 Podcast launched in August 2018, and the Broken Glass podcast launched in September 2018.
History in 10 Podcast was a fun podcast. I was obsessed with NBC’s Timeless and devastated over its cancellation. So I started researching history on my own and decided to turn it into a podcast. I wanted to test the waters before I launched the “business podcast” and I started recording.
The Broken Glass Podcast was the podcast that I initially thought would be my business.
I didn’t realize at the time that a podcast was a piece of the content marketing puzzle.
Couldn’t I just make a living by podcasting?
I quickly learned that wasn’t the case, so as I pressed on with figuring out the services I wanted to offer, I kept up the podcast.
And it actually changed my life. The podcast helped me grow my network, connect with women in the music industry, and meet some incredible female entrepreneurs.
By mid-2019, I finally settled on a service offering for my business – virtual assistance. I started helping a client with the final pieces of her podcast – creating a blog post and a weekly email newsletter, and I really started to enjoy it.
In mid-2020, my job fell victim to the pandemic. It was either relocate, find a new job, or try this podcasting thing full time.
I started working with a virtual assistant coach and discussed my premium offer in one of our sessions. And she said, “Well, you have a podcast, right? Why not offer podcast management?”
And it was like a lightbulb went off in my head.
I declined the relocation offer, launched podcast management and launch consulting services, developed an eCourse on podcasting, and I haven’t looked back.
What am I planning for Mind Your Pod?
I have so many ideas for Mind Your Pod.
Seriously, I have shiny object syndrome, and my list of ideas grows literally every day.
But I learned something important from Gary Keller’s The One Thing, and that is to focus on one thing.
First up is getting the blog and podcast off the ground. Those are the two key pieces of my business’s content marketing strategy, and I’m putting all my focus on them at first.
Then, we’ll work on some video content, so I can show you rather than just tell you how to do things.
I already have a course on launching a podcast (DIY Your Podcast). Still, I want to delve deeper into integrating a podcast into your content strategy for entrepreneurs, coaches, creatives, and marketers.
I’ll soon be launching a BETA group coaching program, Mind Your Pod Content Strategy Lab, which will walk you through planning and launching your podcast with content strategy in mind. You can sign up for the waitlist here!
And there are oh so many more ideas flowing through my brain that I can’t wait to dive into, but one thing at a time.
With that, THANK YOU for reading, for listening to the podcast (and subscribing!), and for coming along with me on this new adventure!