FYB COI 28 | Extraordinary Women Radio

 

There are so many extraordinary women out there who are living and putting their best selves out in the world. Connecting and bringing them together in her award-winning podcast called Extraordinary Women Radio, Kami Guildner showcases the stories of these women living out loud in voice, vitality, and vigor. In this episode, Kami shares how the connections formed led to more interesting partnerships and stories as well as various lessons learned. She also tackles building brand credibility through other shows, using social media to promote, leveraging partners, and more. Don’t miss this episode to discover her best practices on booking guests, increasing listeners, producing professionally, encouraging engagement, and monetizing a show.

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Connecting Extraordinary Women And Showcasing Their Stories With Kami Guildner

I have a great guest, an exciting podcaster, Kami Guildner. She has Extraordinary Women Radio. Doesn’t that sound fun? I’ve listened to some of the episodes and there are some extraordinary women. My absolute favorite was Beth Comstock. Because of it, I’m buying Beth’s books. She was an executive at GE, NBC, Universal. It’s an incredible interview. What I’d love so much about what Kami does is she brings this gentle personal side to these women. She’s bringing out not just how extraordinary they are in business and all of that, but she’s also bringing out what kind of people they are. Kami’s a great storyteller. She’s a great connector. She’s a success coach for women. She helps clients raise up their voice, their brand, their business so they can make an impact that they desire.

It’s not, “Let’s just have an impact. Let’s have a business. Let’s have one that we care about, that we are passionate about.” She weaves soulful inspiration into mindful business strategies, helping her clients succeed in business and their worldly impact. With decades of leadership, marketing, strategic planning, business growth and expertise, Kami guides for clients to master their marketing, money and mindset to raise up their business success and visibility. She’s the Founder and host of the award-winning Extraordinary Women Radio. That’s a podcast featuring wildly successful women living out loud in voice, vitality and vigor.

Extraordinary Women Radio was named the Best Business Podcast, Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards and has featured guests such as Alyse Nelson, Agapi Stassinopoulos, Lissa Rankin, Tami Simon, Beth Comstock, as I pointed out, and many more. Kami also has Extraordinary Women Connect, which is a series of intimate events. I hope we’ll get to talk about her events while we’re doing this, so we’re going to make a point of it. She’s the bestselling author of Firedancer: Your Spiral Journey to a Life of Passion and Purpose and something called Pony Pondering Inspiration Cards, which you’ll find out that she is an avid horsewoman. Kami, welcome. I’m glad to talk about your podcast.

Tracy, thank you so much. I am honored to be here with you. It’s such a blessing.

Did you ever imagine that the podcast would be as successful as it is when you set out to start it?

No. I would have never even thought about being a podcaster. If you had asked me ten years ago and told me that I was going to be a podcaster ten years from now, I would have said, “You’re crazy. That’s just not in the cards for me.” It’s something I have such a great passion for. I love my show. I love getting to speak to many extraordinary women. It’s a lot of fun.

I wish that I could get that across to aspiring podcasters or aspiring people who want to get their voice out there, especially women. Just get started because it’s astounding how amazing it is.

FYB COI 28 | Extraordinary Women Radio

Extraordinary Women Radio: It’s such a good life lesson to go out and ask and put yourself out there.

 

It is. Some of the women that I’ve gotten to interview, Beth Comstock is a great example. When I reached out to Beth, I literally emailed her off of her page, her website and she responded back, “Yes, I’ll do an interview with you.” I’m like, “Oh my God.”

I keep telling people, I’ve never been turned down for an interview. I’ve had people who may have needed to wait some time to schedule it or other things, but I’ve never been turned down. It’s the power of asking. It’s empowering when that happens again and again. Nothing’s out of reach at that point.

It’s such a good life lesson to go out and ask and put yourself out there. Because when we do that, great things happen for us.

Tell everyone the story about how you got started with Extraordinary Women Radio. How did you get into it? What made you start it? What was the impetus for that?

A few years ago, I started my Extraordinary Women Connect Events. I was meeting such amazing women all the time and I was always saying to one woman to another, “You need to meet this woman. She’s amazing.” I was always connecting one great woman to another. That concept is what started my Extraordinary Women Connect Events. At the same time I launched that, I did five interviews with some pretty cool women that I knew and I did it and it was like, “That was fun.” I was literally just capturing it. I was not podcasting at that point. I captured the audio. I found a way to upload it somewhere and I shared it with people and I thought, “That was a lot of fun.”

It was also in this space where I was about five years into my business and it was starting to grow fast. The growth trajectory of my business at that point didn’t make sense for me to be trying to start a podcast in the mix of it. I pulled back from it. My events continued and still continue now. I got to this place where it was like, “I think now is the time to start bringing the podcast back.” Because I always had this desire. I had so much fun with those interviews that I wanted to bring that back into my business and it was the perfect timing to come back into it.

What are some interesting things that have happened to you because of the podcast, because of the interviews?

It's a good life lesson to go out and put ourselves out there because when we do, great things happen for us. Click To Tweet

One of the most beautiful things is some of the partnerships that I’ve been able to create over the course of my podcast, one of the very early on partnerships that I was able to get was the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. The Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame has been inducting women into their hall of fame and they have some amazing women. Early on, I got to interview a former first lady of the State of Colorado, an astronaut. There have been some intriguing women that have come through the channel, a federal judge. Right now, we’re getting ready to do the 2020 inductees. There are six women that I’ll be interviewing in early 2020 that are being inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. It’s fun to hear their stories.

Kami and I were talking about this before, we weren’t sure how the invitation had been extended to her. It’s The Dames. Because when you said Colorado, all of a sudden it hit me. That’s why your name’s familiar to me. That’s where I first met you. It was a virtual introduction.

Meghann Conter, she’s a connector too. She’s another one that’s saying, “You need to meet this woman and you need to meet that woman.” That makes sense.

The minute you said Colorado, I was like, “Now it comes to me.” Because this is the thing. I interview many people and so do you. It gets in this blur of, how did I ask you to interview? It could have come from LinkedIn. It could have come from a referral. Unless we both remember the story or I made a note about it somewhere, it’s like, “It’ll come to me.” That’s wonderful that it is that those connections that lead to more interesting partnerships, more interesting stories. Maybe you’re finding this too that it’s also coming into being a better advisor to my clients. I’m a better coach, a better mentor because I have more stories that aren’t my own that I’m able to tap into.

We learn so much. I did my 130th interview. One of the things I have learned over the course of getting to interview some people that I would have never imagined is that there are always stories. Nobody’s line is straight and easy. Nobody just gets there. Every single one of the women, when you ask them the question, “How does fear show up for you? When does it show up for you?” they’re like, “It shows up for me every day.” They can be women running some of the largest corporations. It’s a truth that to be able to hear women that are successful be vulnerable and share their stories that their journey, there’s been bumps along the way. That for me in my own business helps me see, “Yes, our journeys are never straight.” Certainly, for my clients, to help them assure that your journey is not going to be straight, but every time you’re stepping forward into it just like these other amazing women, you’re growing and stretching.

Speaking of fear, was there any fears or things that held you back from getting started in podcasting? What were they and how did you overcome them?

It’s just your voice. When you start putting your voice out there, it is one of those things. When I was first doing my intro, I must have re-recorded that intro 50 times before I was like, “That’s a good one.” You get to the point where you be you and you show up. The beautiful part about podcasting is it doesn’t have to be perfect and we get to be perfectly imperfect.

 

FYB COI 28 | Extraordinary Women Radio

Ignite 2019 Day 1

 

We have to embrace that first.

We do have to learn to embrace that. My fear was like, “I’m going to use the wrong words. I’m going to sound silly,” or whatever that looks like. There was a big fear around that.

You’re not alone, Kami. It’s more women than men. There’s a significant number of the people that I’ve coached, the clients that we have here, there are more women than men who struggle with their very first intro episode. It’s not just the intro recording but the intro episode. That first thing that they will re-record it and re-record it to the point at which it’s no longer good that they’ve re-recorded it many times because the power of it is gone, the energy. My job is usually to call them up and go, “I know you agonized over this.” Early on we came to this practice of suggesting and recommending to our clients that they first do an interview episode versus their intro episode, so they don’t start in linear order.

They go and they do an interview because I’m going to show up for you. I’m going to have energy. It’s going to be different talking to you in an interview situation and the pressure’s on. Pick someone for your very first interview who you know well. It doesn’t have to be your absolute episode. You can move them around in the schedule but do it that way so that if the recording is terrible, they’re not going to go, “I’m never going to redo that with you.” You don’t want that pressure on yourself. That’s the first thing.

The second one is then you do your first solocast if you’re going to do those types of shows where you’re talking about your most asked question or your most important topic, the key to whatever it is that you do that makes you uniquely you. You do that second because you could talk about that for days on end. You go back and do the intro episode. We follow three questions. If they don’t have it set out to how they want to do it, we make them go through three questions to start in the place where your clients are or where your listeners should be.

Start talking about them, what they’re feeling, how they’re thinking, what they aspire to do and what they’re struggling with, then talk about yourself and why you’re uniquely suited to deliver it. It’s not your whole story, but enough of the story that they understand why you’re relevant. Because your story will come out over time. The third thing is now that you know what your show sounds like and looks like, you can talk to them. Think about the type of people you’re going to be interviewing. You could tell them that. It lays it out for you. We do have an episode in Feed Your Brand about that. That’s the reason because that fear was keeping people back, especially women, from launching the show. You’re not alone in that kind of perfectionism too.

My clients are going to love that. I have several clients on that verge of stepping into doing their podcast that hasn’t done it. This is going to be great for them to go listen to.

Our journey in life will never be straight. Click To Tweet

I hope I helped you to help them then. What about some mistakes like those hiccups that happen? We forget to turn the recorder on, all those things. Did you have something funny or something disastrous happened when you first started?

I’ve had multiple things. We had to re-record one and it was one of my speakers for my Extraordinary Women Ignite Event. I was trying to get it launched right before the event. The sound, I don’t even know what happened with the speaker. There was something weird that you’d think that you’d had the sound all figured out and I got it back and I’m like, “This is not going to work.” We had to re-record it. I have had one that does tie to the sound. It’s how you select which microphone you’re on. I didn’t do that and it was an important interview. It was one of the Colorado Women Hall of Famers and I was running the sound audio on my computer, which is not nearly what you can do with a good microphone. Now I’m diligent about checking and making sure I’m on the right mic.

Even when we check, it happens so often like something goes on and then all of a sudden you realize that it’s switched out and you panic. I’m always doing that. Five minutes into the interview, I’m like, “Did it switch or something? Let me double-check it.” I’m cognizant of that as well. I was at an Adobe event and they make sound editing software, so they have all of that stuff. I was at this Adobe event and they were talking about their future concepts. Every year, they do these wild future things to see if they’re worthwhile. They have a big Hollywood reveal. They do that and they have a host. This time it was John Mahoney and he was hilarious. They’re putting out these great, little, super cool tools and everything.

I’m watching them and thinking about them. One of them was this audio tool that if you had the wrong speaker on or if you had the wrong microphone on and it was your computer microphone, which has this echoey box sound to it, you could drop it into their software and it would automatically adjust the level to as good a quality through artificial intelligence fixed. Artificial intelligence would go through the entire recording and balance out the sound. I was like, “I want that,” because it happens. There is that, “What happens in that first five minutes? It sounds so weird.” They can make it even. It took five seconds. It was so fast.

The whole geeking out on technology. I never thought I’d be geeking out on technology. I did a podcast interview. A woman came through our state that was from The Food Network Channel and she wanted to do an interview in a brewery. A friend of mine owns a brewery. We went there but I didn’t have the equipment to do a live. One of my good friends, she had the whole getup and so she came and set it all up and I’m like, “I want all of this.”

We’re turning into microphone geek girl, I love it. You said you had been at 130 shows. What have you found that it’s done for your business success?

It’s growing my business in a beautiful way. It’s a great brand credibility platform for me because I’ve gotten to interview such incredible women. Also, it’s an expansion for my community because as I interview this amazing woman, she shares it in her community. It’s bringing more people into my community. It is definitely expanding my tribe of people.

FYB COI 28 | Extraordinary Women Radio

Extraordinary Women Radio: I truly think that I’m learning what works and what doesn’t work.

 

Have you seen that happen with your Extraordinary Women Connect group? Have you seen more people show up at the events who’ve listened to the podcast who are fans before?

My Extraordinary Women Connect Events are three smaller, more intimate events that I host throughout the year. I do a big keystone event in November every year called Extraordinary Women Ignite. I grew in 2019 by probably 50%. It’s been a tremendous year and a lot of these people were coming in that had heard my podcast in some way or another. That was their first connection to me, then they become part of my community. It’s great.

What do you do to promote your show? How do you push it out there? How do you reach out to the community besides just the interviews?

I’m still learning. I truly think that I’m learning what works and what doesn’t work. The process that I do every single week, taking it out to social media, following up with my guest, I think that’s an important piece. Also, it’s about immediately going back to your guests saying thank you for being on the show and here are some means. I do three pearls of wisdom at the end of every interview. Here are means for each one of your pearls of wisdom and here’s some copy that you can put into a newsletter and please post this out on your social channels and go follow. It’s all of that. The other thing is leveraging partners. The Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame has given me a great opportunity. When they do their induction ceremonies, I have cards that go to every person that’s sitting in that audience that gets to know about my podcast. I belong to lots of different groups like eWomenNetwork. I belong to different women’s communities that I’m sharing what my podcast is about. It’s a lot about being out there and being with people.

Have you seen some authority increases? We talk a lot about influence and authority. Influence is the community building and all of those things that you do. That’s converting into more business and more referrals and other things for you. Authority might be things like you’re seeing yourself rank on the first page of Google or you’re getting more press opportunities. Are you seeing more authority happen for you as well, more opportunities for speaking and other things?

I’m definitely getting more opportunities for speaking and that’s fun for me because I love the stage. That opens up some nice doors for me. From an authority perspective, the more you’re out there talking to having interviews with great names, it gives you this line of credibility. It’s side by side and having real conversations that we’re sharing deep stories. Part of what Extraordinary Women Radio is I say, “This is not a place for you to tell your signature’s talk. This is a place where you to come and share your personal life experiences and getting to the success that you’ve gotten to.” That’s what makes it different. To me, that’s the part that I love getting into anyway. I love to hear people’s stories.

Let’s jump into some of the tips that we do. We want to get some lessons and experiences. You can tell stories, whatever you have that might help someone. We’re looking for the best practices and the best ways and any ways that you’ve tried something that you thought, “That works well for me.” What are some of the best ways to book great guests?

The beautiful part about podcasting is it doesn't have to be perfect; we get to be perfectly imperfect. Click To Tweet

It is a lot of asking. Also, finding those key partnerships. I already mentioned Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. I have partnered with Sounds True. They’re a publisher and they’ve given me a lot of great interviews. I partnered with podcasting companies that are helping people get on podcast. One is called Interview Connections. They fed me some beautiful guests as well. Finding those key strategic partners is a good practice and it’s served my business well and just asking. I interviewed Lissa Rankin who came from Sounds True. After I interviewed Lisa, she was like, “This was a great interview.” She says, “Who would you love for me to introduce you to?” I looked at some of her people that she was connected to and one of them was SARK. I saw that and I’m like, “Would you introduce me to SARK?” She’s like, “I totally will introduce you.” By making those kinds of asks, it starts to expand.

What about some best ways to increase listeners?

I’m constantly watching my numbers. If we are out there, we’re doing our work. Speaking, sharing, building our communities and expanding our communities, that’s how we grow it. Bring great content that people love to listen to.

How about producing it in a professional way? How do you produce it so it sounds so good?

I have a wonderful team. I have a team in Manila, Philippines that does all of my backdoor work. She’s awesome. They do a great job with it. It’s essential to have somebody that can do the backdoor stuff because it’s not the best use of my time. It’s not my genius and it’s somebody else’s genius and it keeps me doing the things that I’m meant to be doing to grow my business.

It keeps your voice out there instead of your mind behind the tech side. What about encouraging engagement in that community? You’ve already been building a community already. I’m sure you’ve built some of those practices into how you engage with your podcast listeners as well.

I always post to my Extraordinary Women Connect groups on Facebook. I have a group that’s called Extraordinary Women Connect. Those guests get invited into that group, which is fun because that community gets richer and richer the more interviews I’m doing.

Kami Guildner

 

I like that, guests into your groups.

It gives people a real connection with some of these amazing people. It’s about being active in that group and inviting people in and bringing interesting topics and bringing the episodes and each week. The feedback that I get is they’re loving what’s showing up in those interviews. They’re learning from it. It feels good. I did an interview not too long ago with a woman named Monica Shah and she’s a money mindset person. I have had more of my clients and people in my communities go, “I’m learning so much from that person.” When you hit that person that your clients have been wanting to have, there’s something that they teach that they’re like, “I so needed this right now.” It’s beautiful.

My last tip that we’d go on is the best ways to monetize your show, but for some people, monetization is alternatives. You can look at that at however you look at it as being a successful moneymaker for you.

I don’t monetize with ads. I’ve thought about it and it does not feel like it’s enough dollars there to put that effort and bring that to the show. It feels to me like it doesn’t fit within the mix of it. It’s my community. I take that pride in it’s my community. It does monetize on the backside, from bringing clients into my business. It does monetize in expanding my community and bringing them into my events. It does help me build my business from that perspective. That’s how I look at it.

Your show is unique. It has a unique edge to it, a unique style that you do. I think it’s bingeable. My test of a great show is it bingeable or not? Because binge listeners are pretty discerning out there. It means that you have to bring a lot to the table. What do you think is your unique edge and what do you nurture as you are doing your interviews and prepping and asking questions?

For me, it’s totally the stories. I paused an interview and said, “We’re not ready to go into this because I need more of the story behind it. I don’t want this just to be a business podcast.” I paused it. I said, “We need to reschedule it.” It’s important that we know why ours is unique and then honor that and protect that jewel of what it is. I’m adamant about it. We need to bring the stories in. Because when you bring the stories in, it does become bingeable. I do have clients and friends who listened to the podcast on a road trip and they’ll go for hours. I have one client that was working in Kansas and every time she was driving between Kansas and Colorado, she’d catch up on all the episodes and she’s like, “I listened to this episode.” I love that. It feels good. I do that. There are certain podcasts that I listen to that I will totally binge on.

It’s because everyone has so many stories. Even though you do your three pearls at the end of each one, it’s not formulaic in the rest of the show. Everybody’s three pearls are totally different every time. That’s what my litmus test is. If I would listen to it and would listen to multiples in a row and maybe I wouldn’t choose every single one because they weren’t relevant to me. If I’d binge on the majority of them, then this is a sign that a great show has got something going on. You may not realize how much it is, but a part of it is how unprepared your questions appear. I’m sure that there’s deep research in it, because it seems like you know this. They feel very organically lead to the next question. There isn’t any of that. That’s what I think helps it. You’re drawing out the story even if you prep this before.

Bringing stories in helps your show become bingeable. Click To Tweet

I’m going to have you do three pearls because I thought that might be fun to do it. We’re here to show that it’s all about the nitty-gritty. Because a lot of times people want to get to some success solutions and things like that. I hope that I get to entice them enough to want to go listen to your show to get you out of the whole process and get something from you. There’s got to be something that you’re looking for amping yourself up and moving it into something for 2020. Thinking about that, do you do content planning? Do you put out a hit list of the great guests you’d like to invite on? Do you do that at the beginning or end of each year?

Absolutely. It’s fun when you land those interviews and you sit down. It’s a fun dreaming exercise. You sit back and you go, “Who would I love to have on my show?” When I started first started my show, I sat down and wrote down twenty names and one of them was a musical group called Rising Appalachia. I was like, “I would love to interview them. It would be amazing.” Literally, I stalked them when they came to town. She said yes and I got her on the show. It was amazing. It pays to dream on who do you want to have on there.

A lot of times when people started, they’re like, “Who could I interview?” It’s asking the wrong question instead of who would I love to have. The path is going to happen. Who’s on your future list? Because maybe we could make it happen right here.

I’m going to step back because there’s a fun story to my 100th episode. I literally sat down, I wrote down, “Who are the top list that I would love to have in my 100th episode?” I wrote down Brene Brown. Who doesn’t want to interview Brene Brown? I wrote down Liz Gilbert and I wrote down Zainab Salbi. She lived in Saddam Hussein’s farm when she was growing up. The story is incredible. I wrote her down as one of the women that I would love to have for my 100th episode. Within the week, Tami Simon at Sounds True reached out to me and said, “I know your 100th episode is coming up. How about Zainab Salbi for that?” It was so cool. For 2020, I would love Brene Brown. I will love Liz Gilbert. I will love Gabby Bernstein. Gabby Bernstein is top of my list right now. I am so in love with Gabby’s books. In fact, I reached out to her and got through the channels. She’s not doing any interviews right now and I’m like, “That’s because I’m not going about the right channel.” I’m putting it out there, Gabby Bernstein.

You don’t know who’s reading. It could be happening. I love that you take time to think that through and do that. That’s important to set a new tone and intention for the next year of content. You’ve been doing this for years, so you have this sense of that is important as you move forward. Let’s do your three pearls of wisdom. I love the idea of having you do that because you always ask everybody else to do that. This is usually how I do it. I ask for a piece of advice for someone new starting up or thinking about starting up. What would be your three pearls of wisdom for them?

One is to just jump in. Just go do it because it’s so much fun to get out and you’re going to have fun with it. You’re going to fall in love with it. I don’t know anybody who’s podcasting who hasn’t fallen in love with it. I would say one, just go do it. Two, be clear about what the why behind it, so that you’re creating the show that feeds your soul. I’m a business coach and I want to talk business, but part of the reason is I’m clear about I don’t want this to be about signature stories or your signature talk that you give on stage all the time because it becomes business talk. Find what your niche is and be clear with it and then guard that essence of what your show stands for. Three is just to have fun with it. We forget how to have fun as business people. As entrepreneurs, as business people, we can get caught up in the seriousness of so much of what we do. If we can have fun with it and stuff into it, that light is going to come through and people are going to fall in love with your show and you’re just going to build a wonderful following.

Kami, Thank you so much. I’m glad you came to share all of your lessons and to share your Extraordinary Women Radio podcast with the community here. I hope you keep going. I hope that there are multiple years more out of you because there’s something special in the way that you draw stories out of people.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it and I’m not stopping anytime soon. It is my passion. Thank you so much, Tracy. I appreciate it.

Everyone who’s reading, I’m always looking for new podcasters out there. If you are one or if you listen to one, you’ve got to share them with me because this is both publicity and it’s an opportunity for you to learn more. Make sure you reach out to me and let me know. You can do that at FeedYourBrand.co and you can also do that anywhere on social media @FeedYourBrand. I look forward to hearing from all of you and I look forward to bringing you an amazing center of influence in podcasting.

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About Kami Guildner

Kami is the founder and host of the award-winning Extraordinary Women Radio™ a podcast featuring wildly successful women living out loud in voice, vitality and vigor. Extraordinary Women Radio was recently named the Best Business Podcast in the 2018 Annual Peoples Choice Podcast Awards and has featured guests such as Zainab Salbi, Alyse Nelson, Agapi Stassinopoulos, Lissa Rankin, Tami Simon and many more.

In addition, Kami founded Extraordinary Women Connect™ a series of intimate events for wildly successful women connecting in meaning, purpose and shared support. Kami is also the Best Selling author of Firedancer: Your Spiral Journey to a Life of Passion and Purpose and Pony Pondering Inspiration Cards.

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