Why Major Media is Investing in Podcasters | Episode 119

Welcome to Seasoned Women, Serious Business, the podcast for entrepreneurs

aged 45 to 75 and beyond who've changed lives, challenged status

quo, who are wise enough to want more and gutsy enough to create it.

Join me, your host, Isabel Alexander, a seasoned business owner, as I

serve up the Knowledge and best practices for life and business,

along with unfiltered wisdom from other women entrepreneurs and leaders.

Whether you're looking to reignite your passion for your business,

unlock new ones that build your legacy or simply shake your head at the

folly of underestimating ourselves.

You are in the right place.

We're serious about business.

And we're serious about loving the life that we've worked hard to create.

Stay tuned and be part of a community built on collaboration and collective

wisdom that dismisses old paradigms and celebrates vibrant women just like you

and our limitless potential at every age.

Okay, let's take this away because this is a double or maybe

even a triple award for me today to be having a conversation with my

guest today, Jennifer Henczel and the three reasons why I think this is

spectacular is that, she's a Canadian.

She is a podcaster, and she shares my first and highest value, and that

is lifting as she climbs, because Jennifer is supporting, encouraging,

and celebrating other women like me and like you in creating podcasts, sharing

their wisdom, sharing their passion, sharing everything so generously.

So welcome to Seasoned Women.

Serious business, Jennifer.

And you are obviously just lightly seasoned, not as seasoned as I am,

but no doubt at all that you are very spicy and quite delicious.

Thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome.

Now, before we take it away, because I want everybody to have the benefit

of hearing about your journey and this evolution to bring you to

where we are today, I want a full disclosure and full celebration.

This podcast is being recorded in the month that we are voting, it's a People's

Choice Awards, Women in Podcasting Awards, and I have been nominated in the

category of business, and so that's how I came to be aware of Jennifer and have

the opportunity to invite her to my show.

If it so happens that you are listening to this episode before October the 1st,

and I hope that you are, and you will share it with your friends, please vote

for Seasoned Women Serious Business in the Business category, and you're

darn sure that you will find the link in all of our podcast show notes and

in the YouTube description, because we're offering you this in all formats.

All right.

Jennifer, please wind back a little bit from today and tell me what did

you do in your life and how did it bring you to where you are today?

Yeah, thank you again for having me.

And I do hope people vote for your show because it's an amazing show.

You're doing great work.

Yeah.

The thing is for many years, I was a part time entrepreneur, and I was working

full time, so I had my business on the side, and it always seemed like success

was just around the corner, I was always trying to turn it into my full time gig

so that I could do my business full time.

And then finally in 2012, I was able to break free and turn my side

gig into my full time income and my full time business, and a big part

of that was fine tuning my mindset and learning how to build thriving

communities around my message.

And how to leverage my message and expertise and turn that into extra income.

One of the main things about that was the first thing I did

was I had to build a community.

My journey started, I was at work one day and I got a phone call

that nobody wants to receive.

It was a phone call from my husband's boss.

He said my husband was in a really bad accident and I should

come to the hospital right away.

And I got there.

I didn't even recognize him at first.

He had been crushed by 12, 000 pounds of wood, at work.

12, 000 pounds of wood.

He was unrecognizable.

He survived, thankfully.

It was a really long recovery and it really blew up our lives.

But it really made me think that I was tired of living not the way I wanted

to, I wanted to start living and thriving in my passion and my purpose.

And what, one of the things that really spoke to me, was his courage.

He was so courageous through the whole thing and, had a long recovery

and still has multiple injuries.

But, one of the things that really struck me was the communities that he was

involved with in before his accident now rallied around him and they would show up.

He was a volunteer football coach, for example, and we would have football kids

and other football coaches come along and go, we're here for you, coach Paul.

And that just really warmed my heart.

It made me realize that I was missing that in the business world, that camaraderie.

And so I invited other business owners to lunch one day.

I wasn't very organized with it back then.

I just was like, Hey, any business owners who wants to join me for lunch?

To my surprise, 50 business owners showed up to the lunch and the little

room I had reserved was overflowing.

And to my surprise, of course, I wasn't the only one that was feeling isolated.

That's the thing, I had become stuck.

I had become isolated and stuck.

So I recognized that much at that point at least.

And that one meeting turned into a group and that group turned into a full network,

and I had multiple chapters all throughout my region in different cities every week.

I ended up doing over 600 events in the time I had that network,

big and small events, we'd have conferences and things like that too.

With the platform I had created, I also helped my husband go from an injured

miil worker to an international speaker.

He wrote a book about our story that I published, and then he

did a TED talk called Silencing Stigma Through Storytelling.

So now we both specialize in storytelling.

His story was a big piece of his recovery and building a

community around that story.

So we really experienced that firsthand in our own personal life,

and then in the network I created.

Since then I've created several other thriving communities.

I'm blown away!

I'm blown away, and now even more honored to have you here to share some of this

story, because that's truly inspiring.

I'm so connected with you on the fact that we do tend to function very much

in isolation and in silos, particularly as small business owners, so bravo!

I didn't know about this part of your journey, but it makes complete sense

now; to where we are here today, and I'm very glad to hear that your husband

triumphed over something that was Wow.

That's interesting that you say that.

The book is called Crushed Alive, A Story of Tragedy to Triumph

so yeah.

It was, it's amazing.

I found out one of the things I really had to fine tune was my mindset

and I found out that you can't grow a community unless you learn how

to become part of a community and for anything to work you need to

build a community around it, right?

And you need to build your circle of support around yourself because

it's not going to build itself and people will show up if you show up.

And you need to show up as yourself because, you need to put yourself

in the position of experiencing the value of being connected and supported

and being part of a community.

And, the myth that the one who teaches the most, the one who builds the most

brilliant website, the one who, hustles the most to exhaustion is the one that

makes most money, but that's not true.

It's not true.

I found out, like you said, I was trying to do everything on my own island,

hustle alone, hustle myself to death.

I really was injuring myself, my physical body and my mental

body, it just was not good.

And I learned that when you are operating in your passion and

purpose, It makes a huge difference.

It really opens doors instead of closing doors, because

that's why I was stuck before.

So that mindset, that change in thinking of community and how community is

and what role that plays in my life, which it plays a huge role in our

life now, really changed everything.

Yeah, there's I think what comes out of what you're saying for me is,

thinking back to my similar journey, is that it creates energy instead of

depleting your energy in those situations, so if you're building the community

that also wants to support you, which apparently you are very good at doing.

I love it.

I love communities.

I love connecting with people.

So now I've created the Women in Podcasting Network and I created

that because I wanted to connect with other women podcasters.

So it's a total joy for me.

It's an absolute joy for me to meet with you and to go on interviews

and to meet other women podcasters.

All right.

I was very keen to talk about this because I love doing this and this

has been a journey since COVID.

I hadn't thought of myself being a podcaster or a YouTuber, but

my strength is communication.

According to the Gallup StrengthsFinder, that's my number one.

So Duh, it doesn't seem as a surprise now, right?

And I grew up in the era of television shows and talk shows.

So I always had a bit of a fantasy about this, but to be able to have this

virtual platform and create my own show and do it my way, authentically is wow!

It's an advantage today to have this technology, right?

Absolutely.

It's easier now more than ever.

I actually studied, you won't believe this Isabel, but I studied podcasting for 10

years before I started my first podcast.

No way.

Yeah,

for 10 years.

Whenever I have a student go, "Oh, I've been studying for a year or

two and I still haven't done it."

I'm like, Hey, I've got beat!.

Can tell you the technology now is so amazing and simple, if someone

has a message, I highly recommend it.

I really believe that podcasting is going to become bigger and bigger

because every community is going to have a podcast and every podcast is

going to build a community around it.

And it's just going to grow and grow.

All the media companies are still investing in podcasting.

What a marvelous idea to think it will be the way that people can

be reconnected again, because I think generally in society and certainly in

families, we've rather than being the close knit nuclear families, because of

mobility now in our lives, we've become these disparate, extended families.

Not knowing my neighbors like I did when I grew up as a kid, you just touched on

a great idea that why couldn't we have a podcast for our high school reunion?

Why couldn't we have a podcast for cooking grandma's recipes?

Whatever, it's all possible, right?

Totally.

Totally.

Love it.

Okay.

I haven't gone back to finish the series yet, but I caught one of your podcasts

where you were talking about Descript.

And I went, Oh my God, I must have done something right because

Jennifer's talking about it.

There is, there's a plethora of options, tools out there, and

I know that you provide some training and support and coaching.

Is that something you suggest to people to find their forum to learn which

products or which technologies to try?

Yeah, things are moving so quickly.

You really need to be around someone who's keeping up with the pace of

things and knows what's working or what's not working, or even sometimes

when I haven't tried something yet, I'll be honest about that.

I'll say, I'm trying this tomorrow.

I just want to let everybody know about it.

You might want to check it out now while it's still fresh and things like that.

I'll let people know where I'm at with it.

You don't have to be an expert in a whole bunch of technology

before you start podcasting.

It's just a matter of having a message and just start recording with what you have.

I've probably had six or seven different mics.

I just kept changing them or upgrading, I started with a less expensive one.

I went up to really expensive ones.

And now I'm back down to this one, for example, this is called a HyperX.

It's actually a gaming mic, but I love it.

I love it even better than the really expensive mics that I have.

Podcasting is one of those things you have to learn by doing it.

And your first episode is never going to be as good as your 10th episode.

So it's one of those things you have to take the leap and try it.

And get over your own bad self that, Oh my God,

somebody's going to laugh at me.

We talked about this, in the green room, my 70th birthday is coming up in two

weeks from this recording, and one of the things that I just so love about

this stage of my life, this age is I give way less fucks for so many things now.

And whether somebody is going to be making fun of me, laughing at me, criticizing,

critiquing me, it doesn't matter.

This is your mindset conversation you began with.

I am doing this because I think I have something that is valuable to share to

at least one other person out there.

And it's that person that I'm talking to, not all the other

people that aren't doing anything.

Okay, off my soapbox.

I love it.

We're jumping around a bit, but, that's because I'm so enthusiastic about

everything I could ask you to share.

Go back to more like the business side, the statistics side of podcasting.

When did podcasting become a real thing?

It's really gone in different waves.

So it started in about 2003, 2004, . There's a number of

grandfathers of the industry all in 2005, 2006 that you can see.

I started studying it around 2010 One of the larger celebrity podcasts,

that kind of got people into listening to podcasts, was Marc Maron.

That was in 2009, I think, 2008, 2009.

All the ones you've heard of that are really well known,

started up around that time.

And then what really kicked it off in the teens was a series called Serial.

Have you ever heard of that?

It's a murder mystery type.

It was one of the first, real crime drama type podcasts.

And so that picked up again, all the podcasting numbers.

And then, we've seen lots of waves since then, of course, the pandemic.

So before the pandemic, there was a million podcasts.

Four years into the pandemic, four million podcasts.

So it quadrupled within three or four years, right?

Now we're stabilizing out at 4 million.

Not all of those are really active, but just to give you an idea,

there's billions of websites.

But only four million podcasts.

There's a big opportunity still, right?

And then, and there's much more than four million or billion,

billion topics, interest areas, niches.

Languages, communities, et cetera, right?

So I know that is often a concern with people that I talk to that,

oh it's too late for me to start.

We've reached saturation.

How would you respond to that statement?

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are wise enough to want more.

How I would respond with it is; you need to have the courage to know

that, your ideas alone are not enough.

You need to take the leap.

You need to take action.

You need to take inspired action and at least try something.

For my 50th birthday, I went skydiving I had never been skydiving

before, but I thought I'm going to try it for my 50th birthday.

And by the way, I love my fifties.

So this was a great way to kick off my fifties.

I think my fifties are my favorite decade so far, for sure.

We can talk about that but I was, so I went skydiving, we went up

in the plane, higher and higher.

I was doing fine until the door opened and people just are rolling

out and falling out and jumping out.

You've probably been on lots of planes like I have, and I wasn't used

to seeing that on a plane, right?

So it was my turn and we nudged towards the door and then you have

to stand on a little step on the outside of the plane on a step.

And so you can see the curve of the earth and everything.

And that was the only time really where I felt filled with

fear; right before the leap.

We took the leap and only for about three to five seconds.

I don't know if you know this, but only for about three to five seconds, if it

feels like falling, Oh, I'm falling.

And I was probably hollering, but after that you take the position and you

don't feel like you're falling at all.

You feel like you're floating.

No, I didn't know this.

Then the view became beautiful and I could see all the locations in my

town and it was absolutely spectacular.

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

We landed safely, but I use that in my life all the time now to

remember if I get that feeling of fear, or I'm saying, "Should I do it?

Shouldn't I do it?

Or should I take the leap and have the courage to do this?"

Yes, because it's always just the most frightening right before the leap.

You take that leap.

On the other side of that fear is a beautiful view.

Love the image that you have painted with that!

Not to be a spoiler alert for you, but I believe that we will have

this conversation in your 60s.

You will say it's the best decade ever because you have that attitude to make

it and like me on the cusp, the 99.

9 percent edge of beginning my 70s, I strongly believe

that's going to be even better.

It's going to top all the other decades before.

This is just so great, especially because now we, women, if we choose,

have these opportunities to grow and expand and influence in ways

we'd never thought of doing before.

Totally.

And you know that community part of sticking together in

a rising tide lifts all boats.

And, because a football community kind of inspired me to start my

communities, I like to say, drop the hustle and join the huddle.

That's going to help you through all of these things.

That's going to help you when you want to take the leap to charge up

a new idea or to anything you want to do in life, you're going to have

that support system around you.

That's so fabulous.

So what do you think the ratio of male to female host podcasts is?

You know what?

I haven't looked up any stats lately.

At one point it was just, mostly male.

And of course now since the pandemic lots and lots of women have come on.

So I'm not sure what the stats are.

I know it's still not 50 50.

It's still really overwhelmingly male dominated and so that's one of

my purposes, one of my missions with Women In Podcasting is to raise our

voice in the podcasting industry as well as globally and in general.

Thank you for doing that.

Because, there are occasions where we all just need a cheerleader with

a good boot to push us forward.

So that's really great.

And what areas do you see women are stepping out in podcasting?

What categories, I guess I'd say?

Oh, I am so amazed!

I've seen every kind of category you can imagine.

I am just amazed.

I'm always surprised at the new niches that I hear.

There's no end to ideas.

You can take any niche and niche down or, create it, make it your own.

And it is thrilling to me how creative women are, how what we're seeing come out

of podcast now is just incredible, and I'm not just talking about quality alone.

I'm talking about the ideas that are being ignited are astounding.

My breath is taken away every day with what I'm seeing.

It's just incredible!

It's all about tapping into your passion and that's all about clarity.

When we have clarity about ourselves and what our passion is, then we can

help others in the world that have similar problems that we've encountered,

or they need to overcome something.

When you put your passion into the world, that becomes your purpose because

you're putting action on your passion.

You've taken the bold leap.

That's the thing, that's what all of us women podcasters have in common.

We've taken the bold leap to use our voices.

and to get out there and express our message and share

our message with the world.

And that, to me, that's just incredible.

I just I adore that.

I agree with you.

It excites me every day and it gives me a lot of confidence that the world

will become a better and better place.

Because again, what we talked about earlier, you're not in isolation, nor

are you being fed a orchestrated filtered story by some media outlet who has an

agenda based on sponsors or whatever.

That's the other thing about the rise of independent podcasters is that we tell

our unfiltered version of the truth.

It may not be everybody's truth, but it's our truth and that's where

you're attracting the community that shares that feeling with you, right?

Totally, yes.

Maybe this is an unfair question, but I'm going to

put you on the spot anyway.

Is there an area of podcasting, let me say a category or a topic of podcasting

that you go, darn, we really need this, but I haven't found a woman

who wants to lean into that yet?

There's not a lot of people teaching how to monetize.

When I started Women in Podcasting Network, I specialize in monetizing

and in ways other than sponsorship.

I found that was lacking.

That is a very specific slice of it, right?

When I started my Women in Podcasting membership, I had 100

members within the first 10 days And because there's such a need.

There's lots of people out there teaching podcasting.

I actually, if someone's wanting hands on, I've done, a master class on how to start

and I know the things of how to start, but if someone really wants hand holding

and step by step tutorials and things, I refer people to my coach for starting.

But for monetizing, I've helped thousands and thousands of people through my

programs, through my tools and templates to monetize and to grow their podcast.

Thank you for that, because having been at this now for more than

three years, I fully understand why Podfade is such a big thing, because

it does require an investment of not only time, but money to deliver a

podcast of quality and consistency.

Background you may know more because you're a fellow Canadian, but I

was one of Canada's top 100 women business owners for multiple years.

And so I have this very pragmatic side of me.

The other side is the passion and the enthusiasm, but nothing can continue

if it's not sustainable financially.

And certainly, It's also not sustainable if you are feeling stressed and

drained financially, that takes away your passion for doing it.

I really, what you're offering is extremely valuable.

And for anybody who's listening, if you're got a podcast or you're

thinking about getting a podcast, for God's sakes, be realistic about this.

Set it up with the end in mind that this is going to be rewarding,

if not financially, at least it's not going to be causing you stress

and sacrificing on the other end.

Totally.

I totally agree.

Tell me, you're looking back on this path that you've

taken, is there anything else that you would say, I wish somebody

told me that sooner in my journey?

Yeah, there's a few things.

When I was going to networking and things like, when I was still stuck in that part

time gig, I would say things like, Oh, I can do marketing or I can do training.

What kind of marketing or training do you want?

Here's a whole list of things.

That's not how to go about it.

I don't doubt when people say they have lots and lots of experience for sure.

I had lots of experience.

It's not about that.

It's not about telling everybody everything.

It's about solving one problem.

You get your foot in the door, you explain the solution, how you're going

to solve just that one thing, and then you'll have an opportunity to, explore

it and help the person explore the depth of your services that you can provide.

But you need to just solve one solution.

And I've seen Thousands now, thousands and thousands of introductions through

my business network, which was all entrepreneurs, men and women, and

then through the other communities like Women in Podcasting that I've

created, I've seen thousands of introductions, elevator pitches.

And the mistake people make is when they mention more than one thing,

the people that mentioned one thing, Get lots of people lined up

to talk to them afterwards, right?

But the people that say, Oh, I can do this.

And then I can do that.

And then I can do this.

A lot of times I'll be thinking, Oh, that first thing is amazing.

But then they'll mention five things and I've lost what that person's about.

It's not that you're narrowing yourself to that one thing.

It's just that you're attracting people into your world.

And then you can introduce them to the other things that you may have to offer.

Excellent.

That is a really laser focused point.

As part of the invitation to the show, I asked my guests to be prepared

to share a pearl of wisdom, which I like to share with my audience

and on my social media platforms.

I was very impressed with yours, which I'm now looking for in my notes,

it had to do with building bridges.

So I'll have you share that yourself correctly, but there's

another one that you just shared a brilliant pearl of wisdom.

And that is to really be very crystal clear about that one solution that you

provide when you introduce yourself.

Yeah, know your audience and create that avatar.

Sit down, spend the time.

I've done training for a government funded entrepreneurial type place where people

go through entrepreneurial courses and so I'll go in and teach once in a while.

One of the main things, people want to always skip that

step of creating the avatar.

It's difficult because you might not know exactly the person but

you can generalize at first and you'll get better and better at it.

No companies know it.

That's why people spend millions, billions on advertising because

they don't know a hundred percent, but you can know somewhat.

Create that avatar of who your ideal client is and then just serve them.

Serve that one person!

Do you think that it's connected perhaps to fear of missing

out , something or not being enough?

Is that it?

So we're trying to jam as much as possible in, but if you are very

clear on your purpose, then you can be clear on your introduction.

Absolutely.

Yep.

That's exactly, I remember feeling that way.

Totally.

And I've felt that way every time I started something new.

I've had multiple businesses and I've run other people's businesses and I work with

other clients, but it's the same thing.

It's " oh yeah, but maybe that's the favorite puppy."

right?

So how do you send the others off to camp while you invest your time in that?

All right, I wanted to go double back because I feel badly

about your Pearl of Wisdom.

I'm going to just pop back here into my notes because it is such a good one.

And I loved it because you say that this is your birthday

wish that you post every year.

"Build Bridges, Not Walls."

I truly identified with that because my first podcast was named for my life's

mantra, which is Lift As You Climb.

Those bridges are that form of helping people get to their destination.

Before I let you go this time ,And I'll underline that point this time,

I'd love to hear about the experience and the outcomes and celebrate the

winners of Women in Podcasting Awards.

And I would like to hear more about how you figured out the ways that you

support other women to really grow and flourish in podcasting and just in

confidence and in their own businesses.

I'd love to end with one fun fact.

You are a very Public Person but there must be something we might

not find easily about you on Google.

What would that be?

Oh yeah, I think one thing is; I was an Extra when I was

younger, in the movies and TV shows.

I didn't have ambitions to be an actor.

It was literally just extra work.

I was on 21 Jump Street, MacGyver, a bunch of things like that in the early nineties.

And then my kids became extras and they've done extra work.

They've done way more extra work than me throughout the years.

That's not their main thing either.

My daughter is an actor, but does background work too.

And yeah, so we're a background Family!

That is so cool!

Now you see I would not have guessed that!

If you ever look at old 21 Jump Street, and you see someone with

giant blonde hair, it could be me.

There's lots in there, but one of them could be me.

All right, Jennifer, thank you so very much for taking this time with me

and warming up my birthday celebration.

I truly wish every woman who has been nominated for Podcasting Awards, absolute

highest and best outcome and keep on delivering messages out there to us all.

I look forward to talking to you soon.

Thank you so much.

Bye bye.

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