Isa Good Episode with Marketing Strategist Isabella Sanchez Castañeda
H: Welcome back to Messy in the Middle! This episode I have Isabella Sanchez Castañeda from Isa Media, Inc. Isa is a digital marketer and podcast producer here to help you share your impact in a new way. Isa, welcome to the show!
I: Hi. Thank you so much for having me!
H: Thank you so much for joining me on this wonderful Friday morning. So, a little peek behind the curtain for our listeners. Isa and I met at a happy hour last week and had a very spicy conversation about some of the trends in the online business industry, and I knew I had to have her on the pod. But other than that, we basically know nothing about each other. So, for the sake of our listeners, but also for me, tell me a little bit about your business and what it looks like today.
I: I started my business at the beginning of 2021. I was fresh out of college in 2020, (unfortunate year to graduate), and had my first corporate job. I just knew pretty straight away that it was not for me.I really had to look at what my transferable skills were and what I could do. As almost everyone in the online space, I feel like we all start being social media managers, at least the majority of us and it’s great. I think it’s a great entry point. And because of the pandemic, I was on the TikTok that said, “you can make 10k if you get ten clients for $1,000 a month.” And I was like, I can do it, I just need to get out of this job!
I started as a social media manager and probably within months was like, this is not for me. I only like the strategy part, so that’s where the marketing strategist element came in. And I had learned audio and visual production in college. So when somebody from an agency was like, do you want to be a podcast producer for us? I was like, absolutely. It was that hungry first year of business where you will do anything that anyone will pay you for, and that’s how I got to marketing strategist and podcast producer.
I mostly focus on front facing entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs that, whether they like it or not, are the personal brand because they’re the face of their business, but don’t want to call themselves their personal brand. Almost a little over a year and a half in, I feel like I’m finally getting more clarity around like, okay, this is what I want going forward and getting out of that feeling of, “oh my gosh, we have to just say yes to whatever comes to our door.”
H: Yeah, I definitely felt that hunger in business for probably my first three years because I started when I graduated college and then after a gap year, I got my Masters. And my whole time I was like, “I’m just freelancing while I’m still in school.” Then I graduated with my Masters in the pandemic and I was like, “wait a minute, what if I don’t want to get a big girl job? What if I want to just keep doing this?” And that was the first time that I was like, “okay, I need to take this seriously.”
The Breakdown
Before you realized, “oh God, I gotta get out of this corporate job,” what were you doing? What Kind of work were you doing? And what did you study in college to get you there?
I: Yeah, so I thought I wanted to be a journalist since I was in 6th grade. I told everyone literally since 6th grade, I’m going to be a journalist, I’m going to be a reporter. I’m going to either be writing for a huge newspaper or I’m going to be the person on your nighttime news. It was the dream since forever. And so in college, I studied communication and specialized in journalism. My first job out of college was an offer from an internship that I had at a magazine and it wasn’t the environment for me. It was really hard to kind of divorce that idea of “I’ve wanted this since I was in 6th grade.” How do I now change who I wanted to be when I was twelve and go forth into being an adult with more dreams, more aspirations, and different aspirations?
I was at a magazine. I was their digital editor. I was doing everything that was social media, that was website, that was things that business owners need today. I was just doing it for a publication. Then, like I said, transferable skills merged.
H: Got you. That makes a lot of sense. And I also think your experience is one that a lot of people experience when they first get out of college or even start to experience in that first job. I think we’re just taught you got to put in your time, you got to put your nose to the grindstone, you’ve gotta hustle through the parts that suck and then eventually it will get better. I feel like our generation and then especially people within the pandemic are like, what if it doesn’t have to suck? What if I can figure out a way to live my life on my own terms? Especially when entry level salaries are so bad, it’s like I don’t even need to make so much money. I could figure out how to do this on my own. I think that’s a very relatable story that I know I felt when I first started working, even though I barely ever had a real full time job. But I can definitely relate to that a lot. I think a lot of listeners can too.
More on Podcasting
You said you got into podcasting because an agency asked you to be their podcast producer. But when did you realize that podcasting was the key for you as a business owner as a main offering? And also as a marketer, something that you wanted to do to market your business?
I: I’ve known that podcasting was the way for a longtime because I’m such a podcast listener. There are periods of time where I’m listening to five podcasts a day on average, and I can’t remember the last week that has gone by without me listening to at least one podcast. And so I knew that for me, it was a medium I was really invested in as a journalist. And it was the way that people were digesting their information. Then due to the pandemic and due to us having so much more time on our hands, people wanted to fill their day with content. So we started seeing a lot more celebrity podcasts. We started to see a lot more entrepreneur podcasts. The biggest thing is that the entrepreneur podcasts that we were seeing were very hustle culture, very what one coach online calls “bro and Becky marketing.” And that’s what I was seeing. So I knew this medium was huge.
A lot of people really want to get into it, but it’s not necessarily the most accessible. And there’s a lot of rules that people think there are to podcasting that there actually aren’t. I wanted to bring it into my business outside of the clients that I had for this agency because I knew that people were getting exhausted with Instagram, people were moving over to TikTok. And TikTok is fantastic. But almost every TikToker that is huge has started a podcast because you need to move your TikTok followers to a longer form platform to be able to convert them because of the Tik tok algorithm the ability to have an intimate conversation.
Listeners today that are listening to this episode are choosing to click on this episode. They are choosing to hit play. And however long this ends up being, they are choosing to stay with us for 20-30 minutes. That is not something that is happening on social media. People don’t necessarily choose to look at our stuff. It just kind of hits them in the face. With podcasting, it’s something where people have chosen to spend a certain amount of time with you. I know I just threw out a lot of different elements of it. But to summarize, more and more people are getting podcasts.There was a huge gap in the entrepreneurship podcast space. It’s also a way to get a micro commitment from people in your audience so that they feel that much more close to you, having an intimate experience with you and just build this level of intimacy you can’t get through 30, 60, or 90 second videos.
H: I think it’s really interesting and I wonder how much of the millennial Gen Z stereotype of, like, “we can’t pay attention to anything, we need to be constantly stimulated” ties into why podcasts are such a great medium. Because I think about if I’m sitting on TikTok, there are times where I’m like, “oh, this 30 second video is too long, I’m not going to finish.” But then I’ll be listening to a podcast and I’m like, “oh, man, it’s only an hour.” Because I listen to podcasts while I’m going on walks, while I’m driving, while I’m grocery shopping. Like, they’re everything. I think that being able to carry someone with you in your day to day life like that is such a great way to fill that need to be stimulated by more than one thing at a time without being overwhelming or hyper scrolling.
I: Absolutely. And I think that it’s also a reflection of how we crave nuance more than we realize. Sometimes, the 30-90 second video is really great to get your awareness peaked and you engaged, but it’s not actually sticking in your mind. A lot of times with TikTok we’re scrolling, or with Instagram we’re scrolling. And there’s “how tos” and there’s a “how to” carousel and all that. And you think that you’re learning so much, but a half hour later you’re like, I don’t remember anything that I just saw. Or It’s a hot take that is so hot because it has no context. At least a podcast lets you get into people’s heads a little bit more and literally they’re in your head because you’re wearing headphones and you’re able to sit with their ideas.
I think it’s also a reflection that a lot of us just want more room to express ourselves, but also more room to hear other people’s thoughts and expressions and dive in a little deeper than just the big hook that we talk about with being successful on Reels.
H: I think about when I finished my senior year of college, I had this internship and it was a marketing internship, but I was the marketing person. I spent so much time on Pinterest, like learning how to do marketing because I wasn’t even studying marketing. I spent so much time on Pinterest reading blogs and bookmarking blogs and bookmarking tutorials and signing up for email lists and all of that stuff. I don’t know if it was as my education increased or just as my way of life changed, I stopped spending so much time on Pinterest and started spending more time on Instagram. Even though the same content was there, I wasn’t learning it and I wasn’t retaining itthe same way. Now as time has shifted, if I want to get to know someone better or I want to learn more about a topic, I’m going to find a podcast about this. I think it’s that shift from where blogging was really popular and then podcasting is able to fill that gap in our lives as we’ve kind of shifted how we interact with the world.
I: Absolutely. Also, there is great room for repurposing if we want to get into that. But I think that not just the “how to,” but also the ability to hear people’s thought process. The podcast that I gravitate towards and also the podcast that a lot of my clients gravitate towards, yes, it’s technical, it has to do something with their business or it’s somehow related. But a lot of it, like your show, is very much about the journey. It’s very much about the figuring it out process. I think that’s a reflection of also we crave nuance. We want this information but we’re also really lonely and having people in your ear is important.
Maybe you are in a space right now where you live in a community where no one else is an entrepreneur or you’re the first entrepreneur in your family and you think that everything in your life is catastrophic because you’ve never heard of someone getting a rejection before. Or you’ve never heard of someone trying to create a content calendar because everyone in your family thinks that Instagram is just to watch like dog videos. Then you come across a podcast like this one or like mine or one of my clients and you’re like, “wow, people are sharing their struggles. They’re feeling really excited, they are being honest. And I no longer feel so alone, so I got something out of it. But I also don’t feel like I’m a silo anymore.”
Then you can reach out and build a relationship because most podcasts are still pretty small. You can reach out to the person and say, “hey, I listened to this episode and I thought this, this and this, and you might be able to build a friendship.” So I think the loneliness factor and trying to fill that loneliness gap is also a huge reason that podcasts have exploded in the last ten years, but more specifically in the last two or three with a pandemic.
H:Yes. There’s like so much I want to respond to out of that. I’m thinking about one of my now friends. We work together on some projects, they’re like in my membership. We became friends because they were the very first podcast I pitched to. And I remember being so nervous because I was like, “they have so many episodes, they must be so big, they’re never going to read this.” Then when they finally responded and were like, “yeah, I’d love to have you on the show,” I was like, “oh my God, this is amazing.” That was just from taking that leap and feeling like I connected with someone from a show and I could reach out to them.
Another I wanted to touch on with the loneliness aspect. I think a lot of it for me and what inspired me to write this or to start this show was when I was freelancing, it made sense and people could kind of wrap their heads around like, “oh, she’s just freelancing while she figured out what she wants to do.” And then once it started getting more established and being in that messy middle, it was like any time something was challenging or I was frustrated or I was burnt out, it was met with, “well, wouldn’t it just be easier if you got a real job?” I knew that there was something in my brain that said, “no, it won’t be easier if I get a new job, it will be infinitely harder,” but I didn’t have anyone to relate to that with except for the podcasts that I listened to and the friends that I made in the entrepreneurial space.
I: I definitely agree. Especially in the last two or three years, so many more people have been getting into being entrepreneurs. We need that community in a deeper way than we realized.
Isa’s Messy Middle
H: Touching back on the messy middle side of things, as this podcast is called, the show is all about embracing the less than glamorous parts of running a business. Can you think of a time that you’re willing to share where you made a major oops and looking back, you’re like, “oh my God, that was such a rookie mistake.” Either because you’re not a rookie anymore, or just because you can’t believe that two years ago you were able to make such a silly mistake?
I: The first things that come to mind are little miscommunications with clients or not making sure your contracts are rock solid. I know that was something that we talked about in the happy hour, but I have an episode of it called “I Counted My Chickens and They Didn’t Hatch.” I had planned out my Q2 of 2022 thinking that I was going to get this huge contract. It was this contract that I was so excited about and that I thought I was a shoe in for. My client process doesn’t usually take super, super long, but this one was taking forever. And I thought, “oh, it’s because of the length of the contract, it was because of the price of the contract.” It was a difficult client that I didn’t want to accept was going to be a difficult client.
But the mistake that I want to highlight is that I turned down other projects. I wanted to make sure that I was completely available for this client that hadn’t even signed a contract. And you can guess, it fell apart. I didn’t get it. I was in such a dark place at the end of February, beginning of March, I was like, “oh, my God, my business is going to fall apart.” I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where I’m going to be in a couple of months. Why did I let myself get so excited about it? How do I deal with rejection? And I had no good answers. It was pity party central. It was something that I did share on the show. I wanted to be able to say, you know, rejection is real, and sometimes we can be smarter about how we plan our business so that the rejection doesn’t feel so devastating. But to me, the biggest mistake was just allowing it to be so devastating, because I counted my chickens before they hatched, and it was horrible.
I don’t think that we talk about those things. There are little mistakes, but there’s a lot of mistakes that we can fix through education and through knowledge. And then there are other mistakes that the only way to get past them is literally by learning through making a huge mistake. This was one of them where I was like, okay, I can never get that attached to a person. I can never get that attached to a contract. I can never enter my business around one business. Like, I might as well have become their employee if I was going to do that. It was very frustrating. It was very messy. I was not doing hot and then it took me a while to also get out of that slump for a couple of weeks. I took a break from instagram. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing, I could have prevented that for sure.”
H: I had something kind of similar happen in Q2 last year. I talked about it in the very first episode of Messy in the Middle. I had a really great Q1, then in the first couple of weeks of Q2, I doubled my client load, doubled my everything, and I was like, “oh no, I need help.” I had contracts signed, everything was supposed to be good. I hired someone to help me with HR, I brought on new employees- I was in it because the contracts were signed. But signing a contract doesn’t mean that people will pay you even though they’re supposed to. May was like pulling teeth. In June, one of the clients pulled out of their contract, and I was like, this is fine because I don’t like you. And then no one else paid me. I had over $12,000 or $10,000 outstanding invoices in June, and I was like, oh no. What am I supposed to do now?
It definitely kind of kick started a change in my business that took probably 6-9 months to even complete. I wanted to move away from that agency model. I didn’t like the uncertainty. I didn’t like that I was doing everything I was supposed to do, getting the contract signed, then at the end of the day, you’re still dealing with humans. Especially as a young woman trying to run a company,I knew I was being taken advantage of. But I also knew that unless I wanted to risk a lot more money because I wasn’t solid on my contract, I wasn’t 100% confident that if I took this to court, I would win. It was a real hit to my confidence and a real hit to, like, am I even supposed to be doing this? I think that was my most recent “maybe I’ll just get a job, this sucks moment,” because I was just like, I don’t know if I want to deal with this responsibility anymore. Like, it’s not worth it.
I: Yeah, that responsibility is something that we don’t think of in the beginning or maybe don’t factor in, and that’s fine. I think if we had factored all that in, we probably wouldn’t have started our businesses. But it’s just insane how sometimes you’re sitting there and you’re like, “wow, I am the end all, be all in every single one of these categories, in every single one of these “departments” of my business,” when they’re not departments, they’re just me. And I think that that’s something, again, that you only learn from experience. You only realize how much the responsibility is from experience. You really start to test your contracts when you start pushing for bigger clients and clients that unfortunately might take advantage of you. I think that we don’t talk about that enough in the online space, at least not from a place of just calling it what it is. I think some people will talk about the responsibility from a place of shaming, but that’s a whole other topic that we could dive into.
H: I think also when it comes to the responsibility, we look at big corporations who maybe don’t treat their employees so great or maybe don’t treat their team so great. They’re quick to lay off or quick to not offer benefits or whatever. Then we look at smaller medium sized businesses that kind of do the same thing. But it feels a little more understandable because they don’t have billions and billions of dollars. But then when it’s us, it’s like, wait a minute- I don’t feel that same, like, flippant attitude of like, “oh, well, if I don’t have the money, I’ll just lay off my people,” or “if I don’t have the work, I’ll just let people go.” I don’t feel like I have that in me. And when I realized how much I was going to cling to people that I didn’t have the work for, I was like, I need to change the way that I’m running my business because I don’t think I can change the responsibility and the connection that I feel to my people. I think that’s something I wasn’t expecting at all.
I: Yes,the human side of human resources or just running a business- I agree.
Where’s She At?
H: So, we’re all familiar with the uncertainty that comes with being a newbie. But for myself and for many of our listeners, you kind of have this moment of like, “wait a minute, I’m not a newbie anymore.” Can you pinpoint a point in your business over the last couple of years where you were like, “yes, I’m in this. I’m entering the messy middle. I’m no longer a rookie. I feel cool and confident,” but also like, “what the fuck is happening?”
I: I can’t pinpoint a specific moment. I think my instinct is to say I’m still a newbie, and at a year and a half, I am still pretty new at this. I think it’s, for me, maybe a reason why that one clear moment hasn’t happened quite yet, or that I can’t pin it down. I have gone through a lot of pivots. I kind of started talking about that before, but I started as a social media manager, I went to do content strategy, I had a reels workshop in like the height of the reels hype in 2021. I have done VIP days and then I’ve done now. Mostly I do longer term packages for strategy. Not super, super long, but not VIP days anymore. And then the podcast management/podcast production, which I consider to be very involved, is a longer term project.
Because of those different pivots, I felt like each time I learned from the past and from the previous attempt I made, but I was still new at that trial or that pivot. So I’m just getting to a point where I’m taking planning very seriously. I’m not a huge planner, and as a business owner, you’re forced to be. I’m finally getting to the point where I’m like, okay, I’m going to try to really stick to this for as long as I can and refine it rather than just jump ship. And that has been working well! But I think it’s because the way that I’m doing business now seems more sustainable, seems more enjoyable, rather than all of the different things that I was kind of jumping on because they were trends.
Like the reels workshop. Everybody had a real workshop last June. It was insane. And then the same thing with VIP days. I think VIP days are absolutely fantastic, but I’m someone who loves to just talk and go on tangents, and so do my clients, so VIP days felt a little bit too forced for me.I do them sometimes. I’m not saying you’ll never hear about a VIP day from me, but I have to know the limits of it. I think it’s only now that I’m stepping into the middle. Maybe I know what I’m doing now because I’m sticking with something for enough time. And that’s not something that a lot of people admit, because a lot of people are like, “oh, no, three months in, I know what I’m doing, I’m a CEO.” And I’m like, sometimes you don’t know until you’re five years in. I can’t tell you that if we have another interview in 2023, that I won’t be like, “oh, just kidding, I am completely new again at something else.”
H: The very first podcast that I was interviewed on, we interviewed the first week of April of 2021. So that week that I was, like, doubling my team, doubling my client load, doing HR, doing all of this stuff, and I talked all about my business, what was working, and I was so excited. And then that episode came out in the middle of June, and literally everything had changed. And I was like, oh, my God, I don’t want people to listen to this episode because none of it’s true anymore. I had a lead gen strategy that I was so amped about, and then by June, I realized the clients I’m getting from this lead gen strategy are garbage. This is such a bad idea. No one should do this. So much can change in so little time, and that was a time where I felt like I was on top of the world. And I think it took June and getting knocked down a peg to realize I’m still in that middle stage- in the beginning of the middle stage. I don’t need to be on top of the world, I can still be learning, and I can still acknowledge that I don’t know everything. I think that’s a really big part of being a good business owner is acknowledging that you don’t know it all and you’re not supposed to know it all.
I: I love thinking of entrepreneurship. I heard this somewhere on Instagram, it’s not my original thought, but we often think of entrepreneurship as like a roller coaster. We want it to be just a straight upward projection trajectory. But I heard the analogy that it’s more of like a spiral where you’re spiraling upwards and you are hitting the same kind of edge and you’re hitting the same problem each time you go upwards. It’s just a little bit more difficult or a little bit deeper. Sometimes, you have to be ready for that next wave. I’m mixing analogies, but as you go through that spiral, there are times where you’re kind of coasting and then you’re like, wow, I’m on top of the world. And other times where you face that issue. And you’re going to hit that again just in a different way or in a different facet so that you can kind of work past it or that you can get real with yourself. You just either have to get past it or you have to put something there so that as you continue to go upwards so you’re not just hitting that again and again.
H: Yeah, it’s almost like you’re doing that upward spiral thing, but you feel like you’re in a game of shoots and ladders and some of those conflicts that you hit really knock you down. And some of them are like, I can do anything after that. But you’re still in that spiral. So continuing to mix the metaphor.
I: Yeah, but I think people get it. It’s always getting us further and taking us higher, but it can feel like, what is going on? Am I about to fall off this spiral?
More on Marketing
H: As a marketer, I’m sure you have your finger on the pulse of what’s what for marketing and social media. How do you decide where to focus your energy when it comes to marketing? For your business specifically, but then also for your clients? How do you decide on that strategy? What’s your approach?
I: Yeah, so I have two different approaches for myself and then for my clients, but they converge. For myself, I very much have to follow my energy. I have to follow where I’m excited. And that might go against everything you’ve heard about consistency, but I know that consistently I’m excited to do my podcast. The way that I started my podcast was that I had a burst of energy after a really long break in December and said, I need to do this. When I started, I was doing daily episodes because my energy was so on it that I was like, “this needs to come out to the world now.” With my client load, it looks more like weekly now, but by following that energy, I was able to get a lot of listeners and get a lot of people really invested. With my own strategy, when I’m trying something new, it’s very like a flash in the pan and then I have to turn down the heat to more of a simmer and keep it consistent.
But I like following those things. I’ve done that with TikTok- I’ve done that with everything under the sun for marketing because I just want to have at least some understanding of it in case a client asks. And then being realistic, I have now the things that you will always see me on, which is my podcast. Every week I post clips from it and other marketing material on Instagram. That is my main platform. TikTok is very here and there for me because I just don’t have self control with TikTok, so I can’t have it on my phone. I try to actually record things off my phone and then you can upload to TikTok from the desktop app. I recommend that if you’re someone who also has no self control. I also recently invested in an email marketing course, so I will be trying email marketinga little bit more.
H: I’m trying to get more into email marketing too. I have a weekly newsletter, but I call it weekly-ish because it’s supposed to come out on Thursdays and I did not write it yesterday. You’re getting it Friday. It’s happening.
I: Yeah, there are not as many rules as you think there are to email marketing, to podcasting, to Instagram, to Tik Tok, to whatever the heck you are on. There are not that many rules. There are best practices, there are experiments that work better than other experiments, but we can never be certain that one thing is going to work better than the other. What people care mostly about is the consistency that you are going to show up semi regularly. I can count on it. If you miss a week, okay. But I can count on your existence in the world being there because I enjoy it, because it’s giving me value, because it’s just something I look forward to.
With my clients, I try to take that approach. I try to avoid flash in the pan strategies. I’m like, “no, please do not go on a rampage of posting every single day and then burn yourself out.” Learn from my experience, it’s not going to work out. I always ask them in my intake forms, how many hours a week can you dedicate to creating content? And in the very beginning, a lot of people who either are trying out a new platform, actually trying to follow a strategy for the first time, or they’re coming back after a long break, I tell them every single time, give yourself an hour for every single post. That might seem like a lot, but when you give yourself that hour, you give yourself room for depth.You give yourself room for really tinkering with it as much as you want until you’re comfortable with it. If they tell me I have 5 hours a week, I’m like, okay, great,we’re going to do five posts and probably we’re going to do four and stories instead of five full posts, being really intentional about how much time they’re spending. People like to say that they have more time to do things than they do or they’re just not accounting for. I say I have 5 hours, but actually, those 5 hours are like five minute bursts throughout the week, not five actual hours. It’s a lot of conversations around that.
Another approach I have is really talking to clients about boundaries and really making sure that before they ever post anything, they are clear about what they’re comfortable posting and what they’re not comfortable posting. This helps the strategy so much because once I know what your limits are and I know that this is the sandbox you like to play in, I can just keep giving you ideas and say we’re just going to play in here and I know exactly what we’re going to do. I always start them just on one platform. I don’t really start people on podcasts. I think that you have to have a pretty great understanding of your brand and what you want to be known for on a podcast because it’s so much more permanent. It’s usually like, let’s experiment on Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is, on one platform for a little bit of time. Let’s get your branding foundations down and then we can jump to the podcast where you can repurpose from it.
H: Was there one marketing tool or shifting tactic that you felt really started to move the needle in your business? Or do you think it was more about just finding the right service for you to be providing that made you the most happy?
I: I love content creation, so for me it was finding the best place to create. I know that I’m in the minority of people where there are a lot of people who struggle to want to get on camera or who struggle to want to stay consistent. I mostly struggled with focus and with knowing that it was making an impact on the other side. So for me, I think it was two things:
One, it was taking off the expert hat. A lot of people in the online space want to say building authority builds authority. When they say build authority, they really want you to put yourself on this pedestal like you are the end all, be all answer. You’re the person that everyone should turn to and if you’re not acting that way, then you will fail. That usually comes accompanied with the advice to fake it till you make it. For me, when I was trying that, it was exhausting and it was not leading to results because I wasn’t necessarily the expert that I was trying to be online. I was really afraid that I was going to be called out or that someone was going to ask a question that I wasn’t comfortable with. I think a lot of people who struggle with visibility may have that expert hat on and they’re faking it until they make it and they’re just so afraid that someone’s going to ask a follow up question or that somebody is going to ask them something and they’re not going to be able to deliver because they faked it because they thought that that’s what they had to do.
When I made the shift into just admitting, “hey, this is something I’m experimenting with, this is something that I’m trying, this is something that I’ve seen work for myself and for my clients, if something else is going to work better for you, let’s try that too,” it freed me. I was able to put out content and then be able to say the next day, if I was wrong in that piece of content, admit it without feeling like everyone was going to point at me and call me a fraud or put that cone of shame on my head. I think that was one huge thing, just being able to show up with authenticity. I know authenticity is such a buzzword in the online space, but being able to show up and not fear that someone was going to be like, oh my God, what is she doing or that they were going to snicker to their friends.
I say this not just because I’m a podcast producer, but I do think bringing people along the journey through my podcast has really changed the way that I’m able to show up and how much I share. It’s helped me be more consistent because I can repurpose so much from my show that there are weeks of time where the only content I post online are clips from my show. And they’re still getting great traction, they’re still getting great attention, and still serving people the way I want to serve them. But I didn’t have to go put makeup on. I film a lot of my videos about makeup, so I don’t even need to say that. But I didn’t have to go plan out a separate piece because it came from something that I already put all my energy and excitement into.
H: Yeah, I get that a lot. I think that just as podcasts can help establish yourself as an authority with your audience, I think they can also help you establish yourself as an authority, like, within yourself. I did an Instagram training yesterday and I wrote out a script for it and when I recorded it, it was like eight minutes long. I was like, wow, I didn’t know I had eight minutes in me on this topic. Then I was like, oh yeah, I really do believe in everything that I’m saying, and this does make sense. If people do come to me about it, I feel strongly about the way I presented the information. So it was just as affirming to me and just as confidence building for me as it will hopefully be for the people who watch the training. That’s something that I don’t think I really realized until I started getting into podcasting and doing those longer episodes just like, for myself.
I: Yes, that’s something I highlight for all of my hosts too, because I think people think that podcasting is either inherently selfish or they think that it’s such an outward platform, but it’s such a good mix. I think it’s almost like journaling. There’s a lot of times where I will record a full episode about a topic and then have to re-record because in the span of my talking, I actually completely changed my mind about the way I felt on that topic. It’s such a great reflection platform that also gives you feedback from the people listening and it’s more symbiotic than I think sometimes Instagram can be.
Favorites & Least Favorites
H: Yeah, I definitely agree. So real quick, we have some favorite, least favorite questions. What is your favorite social media platform?
I: I’ll say Instagram, definitely.
H: What is your least favorite social media platform?
I: Maybe Facebook.
H: Oh, that’s not what I was expecting.
I: Okay, what did you think?
H: Most people say LinkedIn, and I’m a LinkedIn fan, so whenever people say that, I get a spidey sense. But Facebook being the least favorite, I like for you. I also think it’s fun because Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same company, so I love that.
I: I think it’s just the chaos of Facebook. And I actually have been getting really into Facebook reels. You can jump over there and they’re so weird. I think sometimes they’re better than Instagram. I think the Facebook algorithm knows me a little bit better in terms of what’s going to hook my attention, but they’re weird. I mostly say it’s my least favorite because of the chaos on it. LinkedIn, I do think it’s a little bit boring, but it serves such a great purpose that I won’t bash LinkedIn. I think it’s a great service and it has great returns. I use LinkedIn!
H: I’m just judging you.
I: That’s okay! No, I like it. I think it’s in that neutral middle. I’m not going to put it in the favorites or least favorite. It’s just LinkedIn.
H: That’s fair. What is your favorite thing about being a done for your service provider?
I: I love the feeling of creating a strategy and then seeing it implemented and the person being really happy their vision came to life without me having to do anything. And again, that’s a little bit selfish because I’m like, sometimes I get really frustrated when people come to me for consulting and I give them a strategy and they don’t implement it. But if I can do it for them and they’re like, “wow, I’m getting such amazing returns,” I’m like, “yes, my strategy worked and it got implemented!”
H: What is your least favorite thing about being a done for service provider?
I: I think revisions. Because sometimes I’m like, “why don’t you see the vision?!” But it’s all good. I give them plenty of revisions.
H: I think I feel the same way. When I used to do more like social media, I would get so frustrated when I would submit social media copy for review, and then they would be like, “can we change this? And this and this and this?” I’m like, “Why don’t you just write it? There’s 15 words in that line and you just changed ten of them. If you think you can do this, by all means go do it.” Now that I do longer form copy it’s a little bit more like, “oh, let’s pop this word in here. Or can we use this word.” Instead, it feels less like you think you know better. But I definitely agree that revisions can be kindof a touchy subject.
I:I know this might not be great, but I’m not the most detail oriented person. When I’m really in it, I’m in it, but most of the time, I’m a high level thinker. Yesterday, I was filming content for a restaurant, and I thought that the videos were fire. Like, I was telling people, I did such a great job, and this morning I had a call with a client and they were like, “Listen, the paper on this one was the wrong color, and this one didn’t have this, and this one, we should have filmed from this angle.” And I’m like, I know that you’re so right, because you are, but wow,you didn’t see the picture.
H: Do you want to talk about not being detail oriented? I got fired. Well, I think I technically quit, but it was one of those “we encourage you to resign” situations from a job at a startup when I first graduated college for putting stickers on notebooks crooked. I got fired for putting stickers on crooked. And looking back at it, I think it’s dumb. In the moment, I thought it was dumb, but also, yeah, that’s totally something I would do. And that is why I am not to put stickers on things. That’s just not my thing. But yes, the motto, like, done is better than perfect. I’m like, yeah, maybe I live it a little bit too hard, and so people get frustrated. But it was also like I just remember in that moment, it was like, well, if it was so important for you to have them be perfect,why didn’t you get the stickers printed onto the notebooks instead of paying me $10 an hour to put the stickers on the notebooks?
All right, last favorite/ least favorite. What is your favorite part about working in the online space, and what is your least favorite part about working in the online space?
I: I think my favorite part is, if you truly look at it, the lack of rules. Now, I will add nuance there. I love regulation. I’m not saying that you have to do it this way in order to be successful, because there are so many ways in the online space to show up, and all of them can be right at the same time. And with that, I’ll transition into least favorite, which is the amount of people who are trying to sell you one solution and who are trying to tell you that if you don’t do it their way you’re going to fail. And I think that it becomes so limiting when we allow the voices of coaches or certain providers who have gained fame or who have gained a substantial amount of followers who try to tell you that if you don’t fit into this box, you will never be successful. Aren’t we just creating more corporate structure that way? Aren’t we just stifling people more? So the rules and lack of rules, favorite and least favorite.
H: Yeah, I definitely can feel you on that. I think that when we think about the possibilities of being a freelancer, being an entrepreneur, working for yourself, it’s like the only person standing in your way of being successful is your own talent or drive or ability. But on that same note, you’re still surrounded by people who say, “well, you’d be doing better if you did it my way,” or “if you did it my way, you’d be making more money,” or “you are an anomaly for being successful, for not doing it my way.” There’s still that hierarchy of people who are better than you acting like they’re better than you, which is not fun.
I: Not at all. And yes, success leaves clues, but you can still choose to take a different direction and there’s so many different definitions of success and definitions of ways to get there.
H: I think too, that the lack of regulation allows for pretty privilege, white privilege, rich privilege. There’s still so many ways that you can get ahead that aren’t based on your talent or your drive or your dedication to do well. I don’t know if those would be fixed by regulation. I don’t know what regulation is necessarily in this industry, but I do agree that it’s kind of like two sides of the same coin. The best part of it is the freedom. But also the freedom allows people with maybe less than awesome intentions to do really well and have great reach.
I: Absolutely. And also there are some people who have 100,000 followers from 2016 where Instagram used to be like, you posted a sunset picture and got a thousand likes and they’re trying to teach you growth strategies in 2022 and they haven’t grown in decades. It’s not the same. Or, hey, I don’t want to post ten reels a day. That’s not for me. You can’t suddenly tell me that I’m not going to be successful.
H: There’s a lot of absolutism in the industry, for sure. I think that we live in a world with so much nuance and we live in an industry that has so much nuance. But I guess nuance isn’t sexy to sell, even though it’s such a sexy word.
I: I do think that that’s why podcasting is getting more popular. Like, long form has always been popular because you can finally say, “hey, this is what works for me, and it might not work for you,” but if you put that in a 30 second reel, you risk losing someone’s attention just for saying results may vary.
H: All right, last question. Do you have a favorite business and non-business podcast to share with our listeners?
I: My favorite non business podcast is called Something Was Wrong. I’m not into true Crime that ends in murder. That’s a lot for me. But Something Was Wrong is true crime esque, but no one dies for the most part. I always recommend starting with season 1. It’s about people who have been deceived in one way or another, either in intimate partnerships or in friendships or things like that. I do put a large trigger warning because they do have conversations a lot about domestic violence or unfortunate situations. But listening to it is so fascinating because as you go through the season,you’re like, “well, what do I believe about this person? Would my spidey senses have tingled if I was in a relationship with that person?” And it’s so good, I recommend it to everyone. So it’s called Something Was Wrong and it’s by Audio Chuck if you’re looking it up.
And business podcast. My first instinct was to say mine. Building with Isa Media, Inc. I listen to so many. Okay, I’ll give you two. One is a much newer one, and it’s by Alyssa Hall, and it’s called the Anti Racist Leadership Podcast. Her show is fantastic. She’s fantastic, she’s fantastic. The other one is EmpowerHER by Kacia Ghetmeri, previously known as Kacia Fitzgerald. She does little pep talks. They’re Usually 12 to 15 minutes about business, about really going after what you want, and they’re super. I really enjoy them. Great energy.
What’s Next for Isa?
H: So what’s next for Isa Media Inc. Do you have any upcoming news or fun things planned? Business or personal?
I: Nothing too fun! I know I mentioned really starting to follow a path rather than jump ship all the time. So you’ll see me on Isa Media Inc. on Instagram, really diving more into podcasting, being able to share more about why I think that everyone should have a podcast. Everyone’s impact is going to be shared more deeply through a podcast. My podcast production package as of right now is called Isa Good Podcast.
And in terms of marketing strategy, I’m always going to emphasize that it has to work for you, and it has to work for the way that you want to share your impact. It gets to be free flowing, it gets to be an experiment.
I mentioned I’m getting more into email marketing. I have a weekly series called Own Your Platform, where we talk about a lot of these concepts. If you want a podcast, how to best do that in a way that is not restrictive, how to best show up online in a way that’s not restrictive. That usually goes out on Thursdays, but sometimes on Fridays because I missed it.
H: Thank you so much for joining me, and I’m so glad we got to connect and get to know each other in what will probably be the longest episode we’ve done so far!
I: Oh,my gosh. I wasn’t sure how long you wanted it to be! I really appreciate you having me on. And I love podcasts where it’s more spontaneous, where maybe we don’t know each other that well because the questions are genuine rather than sometimes you’re forcing it. So, I really appreciate the approach that you took to the interview, too.
H: Awesome, this was so much fun! Thank you to everyone who is listening. And we will be back again next week for a new episode of Messy in the Middle!
