Julie Fry is the founder of Your Expert Guest, a podcast guest booking agency for female founders and entrepreneurs looking to expand their reach and grow their client base. Julie is passionate about helping mission-driven females find podcasts to guest so they can connect with their target audience while showing their expertise.
In this episode, Julie talks about why business owners need to consider becoming guests on podcasts and how podcasts can help you as an entrepreneur.
In this episode, Julie also discusses:
- The ultimate goal of podcast guesting 9:51
- Why podcast guesting is a long-game when it comes to getting clients 12:53
- Which industries have the most success on podcasts 17:12
- Creating a scorecard to track your success on podcasts 18:48
- The downsides to podcast guesting as part of your business strategy 23:39
- Finding the best shows for you 26:02
Connect with Julie:
Website | https://yourexpertguest.com/
LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/fryjulie/
Checklist | https://yourexpertguest.com/checklist/
Connect with Danielle:
Website | https://www.kickstartaccountinginc.net/
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/kickstartaccountinginc/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/kickstartaccounting
Twitter | https://twitter.com/KickstartAcct
Book your FREE Discovery call: https://kickstartaccountinginc.com/book-a-call/
Test your Financial Health: https://kickstartaccountinginc.com/checkmyfinancialhealth/
Learn how to pay yourself as a CEO – https://www.kickstartaccountinginc.com/getpaid
Full Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:00
Welcome to entrepreneur money stories, the podcast for women entrepreneurs who want to dig into their money stories so they can break free from limiting beliefs around money once and for all. Hosted by Daniel Hayden, owner of kickstart accounting, Inc. This podcast is a series of real conversations about money mindset with valuable and action packed takeaways for the entrepreneur who's building their abundant empire. Danielle is a reformed corporate CFO who's on a mission to help real female entrepreneurs understand their numbers and gain the confidence to create sustainable profits. And now here's your host, Danielle Hayden.
Danielle 0:40
Welcome back to another episode of entrepreneur money stories. Today we are talking to Julie Fry and Julie and the founder of your expert guest, a podcast guest booking agency for female founders. That one visibility without spending hours on social media. She and her clients could track hundreds of 1000s of dollars of business back to being podcast guests on top radio shows. When she's not being a guest and host matchmaker, she loves spending time with her family, watching SNL sketches and of course listening to podcasts. I am really excited to have Julie on the show today. We are diving into the metrics that you can use to track advertising and marketing strategies that are outside of the p&l. So you have heard we talked about this before. Our clients ask us all the time. I've seen p & l What else do I need to be tracking to understand the success of my expenses. And one strategy that we see our clients using is being a guest on other people's podcasts. However, there is a cost to your time, or hiring an agency to help pitch you to podcast hosts for you. So we want to make sure that we're creating a scorecard that will help us measure the success and the value of the return on investment. I know this is once again a heavy topic, get your pen and paper out because Julie gives us some nuggets to keep track of as we move forward with this advertising or marketing strategy. So here's my conversation with Julie. Hi.
Julie, welcome to entrepreneur money stories.
Julie Fry 2:34
Thanks so much, Danielle. I'm really excited to be here with you.
Danielle 2:38
And Jill, you and I go way back. We've been in each other's circles for a long time. So this is an honor for you to be on the show with me. So I really do appreciate it. Oh, me
Julie Fry 2:49
too. I know. It's crazy. We do go way back. It's amazing how much time has passed?
Danielle 2:54
I know Yeah, I remember when we first launched the profit planner, our book series, I got on a plane to Seattle to think you were hosting. And I've loved all these books with me. And so yes, it has been a long time in the making. And I know you've you've transitioned in your business. So tell us a little bit about who you are. And what your current businesses are and what your mission is in the world.
Julie Fry 3:20
Yes, yes. So I am the founder of your expert guests. And we are a podcast guest booking pitching and booking agency. And we focus on serving primarily female founders and impact driven business owners. And so at the bottom of it is we help get you more visible on podcasts.
Danielle 3:40
What is an impact driven business owner? What does it mean?
Julie Fry 3:43
So I started using that because I was using the term B Corp founder and a lot of people don't know what b corps are. So basically, where you're concerned about more than just the bottom line, you care about the environment, social causes, the happiness of your employees so that there are a variety of different components that go into making a successful business. We love representing those types of entrepreneurs.
Danielle 4:13
That's beautiful. I know that we all as business owners have a Y, right, because that's why we came into business. But that takes your Y to a whole nother level.
Julie Fry 4:24
Yeah, we're actually looking at getting certified as a B Corp just so that we're walking, walking the walk.
Danielle 4:32
Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, how does somebody if they have been thinking about all of the umbrellas under their advertising and marketing strategies? How does somebody determine if this would be a good fit to be part of their advertising and marketing
Julie Fry 4:51
strategies? That is such a good question. And it's one that we always start off with with potential new clients and a discovery call is looking at a few different criteria because as someone who has done a lot of podcasting, your podcasts guesting yourself, you know that it's a long game. So the first criteria is looking at? Are you looking for immediate new clients? Are you expecting that you're going to have a podcast interview, have the episode air and your email inbox is going to blow up with all of these potential new clients? If so, this is probably not the strategy for you. Or you might need a little bit more education on what it really what's the reality of podcasting. So we look at folks that are looking for a long term game, both in building relationships with podcast hosts. And knowing that because the episodes are evergreen, that people might find you on a podcast that they just discovered, and then they decided to go back and binge listen. And there you are episode five. And so you might get a return on investment a year down the road after an interview that you did. So looking at more of a long term strategy, rather than a short term strategy is definitely something to consider. I would also say that you should have consistent revenue in your business and have marketing as a line item in your budget in whatever form or fashion you might need to borrow from a different marketing activity or strategy that you've been doing. And apply that to podcast guesting. But I do think that having consistent set revenue, so you're not worried about how to pay your bills, if you're hiring an agency, obviously, if you're doing it yourself, it's just your time, and knowing that you have the bandwidth to be able to do the outreach yourself. So those are a couple of things to consider. Yeah,
Danielle 6:50
which should still be a long game, because it's your time. I'm really glad that you made that comment that having an existing revenue in your business, not that there's a revenue marker, that's right or wrong. So it's not like get to 100k. And then this is right for you. But it is that you are an existing business, that you have revenue to be able to support expenses in your business and to be able to support your time. In doing something like this. We see a lot of different areas. When I look at the advertising and marketing line, it has a profit and loss statement, right? There's a lot that can go into this, this bucket or this category, social media, social media, anybody who might be supporting you, and that's paid advertising. So Facebook ads, Google ads, and anybody who might be supporting you in that all of our branding exercises website. So just wanted to give some context for listeners about, you know, we might be shifting our budget away from one of those other areas, maybe like a paid Facebook ad to invest in a long term strategy, like building a brand. And speaking on other people's podcasts to help you build that brand. Oh, and another, you know, area that might be is your own podcast, right? So you might have the expense in that same advertising and marketing category of your own podcast. So understanding what your other numbers are, and your other expenses that are too just to determine how much you have to be able to invest in this.
Julie Fry 8:21
Yeah. The other piece, I think that goes along nicely with having established revenue is, as you know, when you first started business, like you're kind of experimenting a lot and testing like, okay, are these the services that my ideal clients need, and maybe they're not, and then you pivot and you try something else. So I think it's really important to have clear messaging, and know what the pain points are for the clients that you serve when you're going on. And, again, either investing your own time to pitch yourself or podcast, or you're hiring somebody else to do it, so that you're using those resources effectively, rather than going all in on this, and then six months down the road, completely changing all of your service offerings. So that would be the other piece to having established revenue and that are coming from consistent service offerings.
Danielle 9:11
Yeah. What about knowing what your messaging is? Is there anything around that? And I can speak a little bit about my own story in this, but do you have to know specifically what your message is and what your what you're delivering? Or do you help your clients figure that out? As you're working with that?
Julie Fry 9:30
Yes. So I think there's two ways you can look at that. Yes, we help our clients with that piece. Sometimes. They have a very strong idea about this is what I want to talk about, but it's kind of just talking all about them and they're not speaking with the context of how they're helping their clients and the people that are listening. So that is one shift that we help with. The other approach is that you can use podcast guesting to test and experiment with What resonates and so you might try on a certain interview topic and find that it's not really hitting like podcast hosts aren't saying yes. Or if you do get on shows, it's just sort of crickets when it comes to what sort of feedback you're getting. So it's a great way to test different topics.
Danielle 10:18
What is the ultimate goal of podcast guesting? Is it to sign to build your email list to get a social media following? Is it to get people to book to schedule calls with you? What's the goal? Why, like for as a listener, like why the heck would I even consider it? And
Julie Fry 10:40
so it can be all of those things that you just mentioned, it really comes down to what do you want it to do for you? We worked with a client for about 18 months, who was a celebrity divorce attorney. And he had found that really, his business came from making relationships with other family lawyers. So his goal was really building relationships and a network with family lawyers who had podcasts. And he certainly didn't have the time, nor did His team know how to get him on podcasts. So for him, it was building a referral network for other folks that we've worked with. It's launching a book for one of our other clients. It's building a social media following. So it really does depend on what you want it to do for you.
Danielle 11:24
I just want to encourage anyone who's listening who might be thinking about this, that you don't have to have this all decided at the front end, I am a kickstart is a story of this where you can pivot. Right, so around the time that we started podcast guesting was right around the time that we had launched the profit planner book series. And we were doing a lot of opt-ins around the Prophet planner, and building the email list. And back to your point of the long game, after a few months, we said, let's continue to experiment with this and shift and just try new things, right? Maybe a call to action would come to talk to us. And that is what we started to say and and we over time built a brand and built a community of people who are listening, and we're actually getting on the phone and talking to us. And that today our messaging came and talked to us. However, had I been willing to see anything other than what I came into it with, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to see it unfold in another beautiful way. So I'm always encouraging people to embrace the pivot.
Julie Fry 12:41
Isn't that so true? in all areas of business, you can't get too attached to one way of doing things because you might miss out on all of these other amazing opportunities.
Danielle 12:52
So when we talk about the long game, even when we're playing a long game and building our brand and building our business, we have to continuously measure the success of it to know if we can continue to invest in this area. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about what what do you track with your clients to ensure that this is successful one that they're, you know, getting bumped, and then once they're showing up on shows, isn't working for them and then tracking them pivot like what do you look out? A lot of good questions. Sorry.
Julie Fry 13:25
Yeah, no, it's a great question. And one that hopefully the people that are doing it themselves are doing all of the steps because step one, obviously is, you know, getting on the podcast. So that's kind of a metric. Number one is what's the percentage of podcasts that we're getting yeses for our clients. So I've heard all sorts of targets of what to aim for as a firm, we shoot for at least a 30% conversion rate for our clients. If we can't get that then we feel like maybe we're not a good fit for them, or something else is going on. We've also seen as high of a conversion rate as 55%. So it just kind of depends on the client industry. What's hot to talk about right now. There's a lot of different factors that play into that. What's the timeframe?
Danielle 14:17
Sorry to interrupt, what's your timeframe that you're looking at? So when you say 30%? Obviously not 30%? On month one? Yeah. Right. So when you work with a client, how long do you work with them? And what are you looking at? Are you looking at it weekly? Are you looking at it monthly? And then you're benchmarking against this? 30%?
Julie Fry 14:35
Yeah, so we work with clients for a minimum of six months. And it's great if we see that 30% month one, but to Daniel's Point, that doesn't always happen. So the first 90 days is when we take that really good first look of are we on average, getting a 30%? Yes, right for them. We do review that monthly and you know by the end of the six month OS we generally will see that or higher. But yes, depending on the host schedule, sometimes they only review pitches quarterly, we've actually seen some hosts that only review twice a year. So we just got a yes from a pitch that was sent, I don't know, like six months ago. So it just depends. And then there are hosts that are like you send the email, and then they ping you right back with a yes. So it really just depends, also, and Danielle, I know you and your team do a great job of tracking this is actually looking at which podcasts are driving discovery calls, and ultimately, clients. So you have a really simple way of tracking that. But I know it works for you, and it works really well. So that is something that we strongly encourage our clients to do. We keep an air table, which is just a tracking tool, kind of like a hyped up Google Sheets, that then they can also use that to tag in what it looks like in terms of discovery calls and clients for them. So I definitely recommend tracking those topics. So we like to track what topics are actually converting into yeses. Most of the time, if you're a guest on shows you're gonna have, say, three to five things that you might pitch yourself for, we also kind of have that same number for our clients. And so if there are certain topics that nobody ever bites on, then it might be time to archive that one and come up with something a little bit more relevant. That is exciting. And then this is something I wouldn't say that we track specifically, but we pay close attention to it for the shows that you're pitching. What's the occupation of the house, like what do they do? Because most of the time, you're not going to want to pitch a host that does the same thing that you do. Business Coaches, a lot of business coaches utilize podcast guesting as a strategy. And there are a lot of podcast hosts that are business coaches. So you want to just notice that when you're pitching, look at the website, make sure you understand what the host does, because you're most likely to get the best return if they're in a complementary industry to you,
Danielle 17:12
that even can be worth tracking long term: are you having a higher success rate with business coaches or having a higher success rate with XYZ? Yeah, what within the industry is working?
Julie Fry 17:28
Yeah, we have a client who is a business strategist, but her ideal clients are in the health and wellness space. So oftentimes, she will go on shows that are hosted by business coaches, to folks in the health and wellness space. And it works because she's coming in talking about something really specific that the business coach isn't an expert in like sales. So it's just something to pay attention to. And to your point you can create a metric and a tracking system around that to see what really works.
Danielle 18:08
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So I love the idea of building out scorecards for every area of our business. So metrics live outside the p&l And so this is one area where we can have a scorecard that lives outside of our QuickBooks system, it's outside of our profit and loss, but it's a scorecard to measure the success. I'm thinking this would be best tracked on a monthly basis, not quarterly or would you agree with that I would get? Okay, so building a scorecard on a monthly basis to look at all these trends. Do we have or do we have a success rate and number of accepted acceptances or yeses? Yes is by occupation of the host discovery calls or whatever your end goal is, right? So if your end goal is a discovery call, it might be building your email list or having you know, having a subscriber and asking Where did you hear from us? It might be a follow on Instagram, which isn't you're not gonna be able to ask how did you find it? But it's a trackable way like building an email list or number of discovery calls. You can easily track that by When the host is and and looking at the value, right? So if you are pitching yourself, what is the dollar value of your time? So if it's taking you eight hours a month to do this activity? What is the success rate of all these different tasks? And does it equal the amount of value of your time? And same thing if we're working with a company like yourself, measuring the sex success rate of all these different scorecard metrics to the value of what of working with your with your company think really helps us determine do we want to do this on our own? Or do I? Would it be a better use of your time to use experts
Julie Fry 20:40
like yourself? That's such a great way to look at it. And you express it in such a financial, like astute financial way of looking at the end game, because the other piece that we didn't really touch on is podcast downloads, so that's easy to track, right? Like, you know, you have an episode that airs on October 1, you see a bump and your subscribers, then you're like, Okay, you know, likely due to that podcast guest appearance. So just another way of like, that's for some people that's really valuable. That's why they're guests on podcasts. So just another piece to track.
Danielle 21:19
Yeah. Any clients that have ever gotten frustrated with the long game piece of this, like, how do you wrap around your money mindset or your patience mindset? long game, you know,
Julie Fry 21:36
yeah, I will say that. So I started this business in March of 2020. And with the first couple of clients that we got, they heard about, you know, potty, oh, you should pod guest on podcast, it's been great for me. And I didn't do a great job of pre-framing expectations. And so we did have one person who was just like, you know, after her first three shows, like she hadn't seen any movement of the needle or any impact that it had on her business. And so that was like, Aha, okay, we need to start pre framing this in our discovery call conversations, even with clients, if they haven't guessed it on podcast before, and this is a whole new strategy for them. So I think in terms of, you know, setting your expectations, what are your goals, like setting a timeframe, I'm going to do this for x number of months. Here are some of the things that I would like to see happen to Daniels point, you know, track it and measure it on a monthly basis, see how you're doing? And then at the end of the time period, evaluate, like, did this work? Do I want to continue? If it doesn't work, you know, do what changes or adjustments we want to make to the process, and then again, try it for another period of time. We had a client last year, who we worked together for six months. And then she wanted to extend just a little bit longer. And then a podcast that aired during that, you know, final three months that we were working together, she had a podcast episode that aired that brought her like five new clients, these are five figure clients each and so like, boom, it just completely, the return on investment was huge. So that and then she just came back to us and wants to work together again. So it's those types of things that especially if you are selling a higher ticket service, that all it takes is one usually that can kind of create that return on investment for you.
Danielle 23:38
Yeah, you just thought of another thought, as somebody is thinking about if this is something that they might want to explore, is this something that they should think about doing for six months? Or is it because I'm throwing six months out there? Or is it a really long term game like it? Can it be something that you make part of your permanent strategy? What would be the drawback or the advantage of doing that?
Julie Fry 24:06
Yes, so it can certainly be a long term, ongoing strategy. We have a client that's been doing this, I think, since 2018, maybe 2019. I know you've been doing it since 2019. So the pros are like, You know what to do. You get really good at interviewing and you build up this amazing referral network of people that know about you and can refer business back to you or refer you to speaking opportunities. I would say that the downside is even though the number of podcasts keeps growing, there's still only about 500,000 active podcasts out there. And so, depending on your niche, that number takes a while for you to see movement and the numbers growing there. So in theory over time, if you're guesting on shows and specific industries, the shows might get fewer and fewer of that could be potential opportunities for you, you might need to change, you know, like, maybe you typically only wanted to go on shows that had 50 episodes, and maybe you'd have to look at shows that have only 30 episodes. So you might need to change your metrics of what you're looking for. It's also a great kind of Sprint strategy. We have clients that have been launching a book or launching a new program. And so they just want to go hard for like three months. So there's also that side of it as well.
Danielle 25:29
Yeah, I think I've heard that a lot of our clients use it more as a sprint strategy than the long term strategy. Yeah, let's still understand, does it work? Right? What's the ROI? So the next time you need to sprint? Again, you learn from what worked and what didn't work, and re implement that? Yep. Is there anything else that you would suggest the audience reflect on? Or understand as they determine whether or not this might be an effective tool in their business?
Julie Fry 26:01
Yeah. So one other piece of advice that we didn't really talk about, is that the, you know, bigger shows are not always the best shows for you looking at, again, looking at who are your clients? Who are your favorite clients? Who do you love working with? Look at shows and those industries, and they might be smaller shows, but typically, they're really engaged audiences. So I'm a fan. And I know you like going after those industry specific shows, rather than the more general entrepreneurship shows, you're more likely to have a better return on investment there.
Danielle 26:38
Yeah. Let's talk about your business. You have a growing business? It's your two and a half years now. Right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. What are some of the strategies that you're using to keep your money mindset strong? You know, it's not easy to be a growing business. I know you're adding on team members? What strategies do you use that maybe the audience can use? In your money mindset?
Julie Fry 27:05
That's such a good question. I've had businesses and two different businesses over the last 10 years. And I think having owned a business previously, really helped me have a healthy mindset about this business and the importance of investing in one person. So we have a team of five now, and they are compensated, you know, by clients. But then they're also given bonuses based on hitting certain metrics based on client retention, based on our company hitting certain metrics. So really, I want to invest in my people, because I know people are at the core of my business, and will help it be healthy long term. I also know the importance of investing in things that I either don't like to do or don't do well. So obviously, bookkeeping, accounting, and tax preparation, those are all things that it's like, get that off my plate, but like growing an agency, that's something I've never done before. So I invested in a program last year, to help give me some foundational tools around that. So and books and podcasts I love, you're a badass at making money by Jensen cero. That's a you know, like a regular read of mine. Podcast. This is a great podcast, I listened to it even before you were a client of mine, just because I think that checking in like a money mindset is not a one and done. Like you have to keep working at it. And I know that when you hit different levels, like new level new devil that comes in, so it's something that I do actively work on, I could probably do a better job. But those are some of the things that I do.
Danielle 28:49
Yeah, we all could do a better job. Let's pick what we're working on right now. We can go to that same spiral. Are there any other metrics that you're looking at in your business? You know, you mentioned how you're compensating your people that you're looking at to say, hey, shoot, wait, that's not working. I don't, I don't want to continue to invest there. Or I've expanded my team too fast or any other metrics that you might want to share. Again, you're your new business that's growing, and I love being able to share that wisdom with other audience members, because there's so much you can track, right? So these are all just ideas for people to think about. Not that we have to track everything because it can be overwhelming. So maybe one or two that have worked for you.
Julie Fry 29:42
Yeah. So one thing I did want to point out is you've been talking about EOS on your podcast, which I love because I don't use it. I haven't yet read the book traction. It just reminded me I need to order that but you did mention some of the things that you could track and From the beginning, I want to say it was from the beginning. So I've tracked a number of discovery calls. I should probably just pull this up and see what else we track. Obviously number of converted discovery calls, number of podcasts guest appearances for me, number of like, private group, you know, if somebody invites you to speak to their group or do a training for your group, I track where each of our new clients comes from. So what was the referral source? And I review that quarterly. That's been really interesting, because it's been kind of surprising. What when you because you think you know, things in your mind, but when you actually look at it on a spreadsheet, you're like, huh,
Danielle 30:47
you're gonna write it, you know, right. You know, there's trust in your gut, but there's also trust in your gut double checked with metrics with what you think.
Julie Fry 30:58
Yeah. Is there anything else that I track? I feel like that's it. But you know, there's something that you mentioned, that made me think, oh, I want to start tracking that. And I put it as a note in my phone when we're out of town this last weekend, and I haven't come back to that yet. So that'll be like as when, when this episode goes live, I'll share with
Danielle 31:22
you share it with us. I think you just recently started a podcast as well. Right?
Julie Fry 31:27
Well, I did it at the end of last year, and it's just six episodes. And it's really just a tool for people that are interested in the idea of podcast guesting. So it's kind of what to do before, during and after your podcast guest appearance.
Danielle 31:45
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Julie, I really appreciate you being here. Are there any last nuggets of wisdom that you would like to leave our audience with?
Julie Fry 31:55
I would say if you are thinking about podcasting, and you have that mindset of, oh, I don't know, I don't have a book. I don't have a podcast. I'm not an expert enough. I would encourage you to listen to podcast episodes where you can start learning about it, and take the leap. Because business is all an experiment, right? And so you try something, see if they work. And if you have a business that has paying customers, you are expert enough to go on a
Danielle 32:24
podcast. And another B finds your voice. So I've talked about this before. But podcast guesting and having hosts ask me questions, helped me learn what are people interested in? What do people want to know more about? And so it can be a learning tool of its own, that will help you become more of an expert and learn what people need. So this this avenue might even help you become a so true,
Julie Fry 32:53
so true. Because if you hear the same questions over and over again, likely that's an area where people really need help.
Danielle 33:02
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. All right, where can our audience learn more about you and stay in touch? Great.
Julie Fry 33:08
So our website, which is your expert, guest.com. We also have a checklist that helps you be the best guest ever. So if you want to check that out, that's at your expert. guests.com forward slash checklist.
Danielle 33:22
Awesome. All right. Thank you, Julie. I appreciate you being here.
Julie Fry 33:25
Thank you so much, Danielle.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
