When I had the idea to release an episode of Influence By Design every day for 30 days, I knew we were in for one big adventure. In this episode of the Influence By Design podcast, I’m joined by my co-host Tim Hyde to share my insights about the rewards and challenges of releasing 30 episodes in 30 days.
Nothing beats the feeling of accomplishing something you worked so hard for, especially when you are thrown an array of unexpected hurdles.
Tune in as we share the lessons from overcoming the numerous challenges thrown our way, and how it became a valid affirmation of the beauty and significance of striving for your goals.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Why we chose to release 30 episodes in 30 days (01:47)
- The unexpected challenges I experienced (06:22)
- The impact of ‘30 in 30’ on my personal growth and business (13:27)
- The best way to position yourself as the authority in your industry (17:42)
QUOTES:
- “Sometimes the hardest moments give us the greatest outcomes.” -Samantha Riley
- “If you want to be seen as the leader in your industry, you need to stand up and BE the leader in your industry.” -Samantha Riley
RESOURCES MENTIONED
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW THE INFLUENCE BY DESIGN PODCAST
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If the information in any of our conversations and interviews has helped you in your business journey, please head over to Apple Podcasts, click the 3 dots in the top right corner of your smartphone screen, follow the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver valuable content but will also help us reach even more amazing entrepreneurs just like you!
BOOK AN INFLUENCE AUDIT
If you want to be known as the leader in your industry, book a quick 15-minute Influence Audit.
We’ll work together to identify:
- Your current situation and immediate opportunities for growth
- Uncover the #1 thing holding you back from not being booked as an industry leader
- Develop a 3-step implementation plan to increase your authority and visibility
WHERE TO FIND TIM HYDE
- Website: https://winmoreclients.com.au/
- Facebook: Win More Clients
- LinkedIn: Tim Hyde
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
- Facebook: Samantha Riley
- Instagram: @thesamriley
- LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
- Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Tim Hyde Snippet (00:00):
The more you can design your business around the lifestyle you want, the more flexibility it gives you to have. And I think one of the reasons we become entrepreneurs and business owners in the first place is the power to choose.
Samantha Riley Snippet (00:13):
We talk about freedom, we talk about more income, we talk about all of these things. But they all lead to that one thing. And that’s choice when we’re able to choose what we want our life to look like. That’s what we’re after.
Samantha Intro (00:27):
My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for experts who want to be the unapologetic leader in their industry. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing, and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and out. It’s time to take your influence, income, and impact to the level you know you’re capable of. Are you ready to make a bigger difference and scale up? This is the Influence By Design podcast.
Tim (00:58):
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of influence by design. I’m your Thursday co-host, Tim Hyde and I’m joined by the amazing Samantha Riley.
Samantha (01:07):
Oh, Tim, you’re so kind. Thank you. It’s great to be back. I’m loving that we’re recording again.
Tim (01:13):
I know. Well, I had to take the reins here because today we’re going to talk about your recent experience recording 30 podcast episodes in 30 days. Now, last week, we talked about undercover billionaire, and we were talking about how shit goes wrong for everybody. Let’s be real.
We’re going to talk about what worked for you. What didn’t work for you so much? And you know what your experience was? Some share some fun stories and anecdotes, and, and some maybe not so fun stories and anecdotes as well.
But before we do, just share with our audience why you did 30 podcasts in 30 days and what you were hoping would happen as a result of that.
Samantha (01:57):
Yeah, so I decided to do it for quite a few different reasons. We were having a team meeting. And there were a few things that came up and I went, Hey, I’ve got this idea. What if we did 30 episodes in 30 days number one was to increase listenership because when you’re showing up all the time, more people here, I wanted some content for the book I’m writing. And so that’s why it was around a specific topic. And I just really wanted to increase my brand and get at like that real solid brand presence of this is what I talk about. And this is what I do.
So that’s why I decided to do it. And I thought that you know, I wanted that real brand penetration, I guess from showing up every single day. And you know, I wanted to experiment, I’m always experimenting with ideas of, okay, I’ve had this idea rather than go and teach it, which is what some coaches do.
It’s like, well, let’s try it get the takeaways, you know, come up with the ideas, did it work for me in the way I thought what you know, and get the data because I’m all about data. So that was why we did it. That was Okay when I told the team, let’s do it. They went alright, we’re gonna back you. Let’s do this. I went alright, we go.
Tim (03:13):
I’m sure that’s what they said it was not. Oh, my God, she is crazy.
Samantha (03:17):
Well, yeah. They did say that first, podcast editing. They did say that first. Yeah. Because I probably need to add here that the first of September came up, I think, on a Tuesday, I had this idea on Thursday before.
So we didn’t have a huge lead in we didn’t have episodes recorded, and I didn’t have content ready to go. It was I had this idea on Thursday afternoon. All I really had was, you know, Friday to reach out to a few people and say, Hey, these are the topics that I’m trying to fill. Are you interested? And also that time to prepare what I was going to talk about? So I was a bit crazy. I didn’t give myself much leading time.
Tim (04:00):
Now, would you have done would you give yourself more lenient time in future? I mean, even if it’s just a socialized The idea with the team and say, stop what you’re doing. We’re going to do this for 30 days.
Samantha (04:08):
What was really interesting is we’re all busy. We all run businesses, right? We’re super, super busy. But what I found interesting that there was a few times where I just thought, Oh, my goodness, what have I done. But I don’t know that if I had have planned this out a lot earlier whether it would have been much different. Because I think when you’ve got a lot of time, you always spend time or whatever is the most important thing. I’m not sure it would have been much different.
Tim (04:39):
So so maybe not overthinking it was probably a good idea.
Samantha (04:42):
Totally and the way and I’ve got a specific methodology for how that I use with my clients called the authority model. So all I did was go to my authority model. I pulled out my 30 topics for those 30 days. It only took me between five and 10 minutes anyway, we filled it straight into a spreadsheet. I went through with my project manager and went, Okay, these are the topics, then I matched names to the topics reached out to them. So it actually worked. I didn’t have a problem with the time or the lead in time.
Tim (05:12):
You had guests, you had guests on each episode, didn’t you?
Samantha (05:13):
Wait no. So out of so there was three episodes per week that I had guests for, and they were specifically chosen for their topic. So none of those guests, you know, three days before the first of September, none of those were locked in. So all of my guests in September were absolutely amazing. And they accommodated my franticness lack of time. So I guess from that side, I guess giving guests a little bit more time probably would have been better. But the people that are going on the show were like, Oh, my goodness. And I think that that was probably one of the biggest takeaways that there was a couple of people a couple of big names, that when I told them what I was doing, one of them in particular went, you know what? I’m going to come on, because you’re doing what I don’t know. Anyone else would do.
Tim (06:07):
Yeah, yeah. Well, interesting thing. My takeaway for me already is that you know, we all think we’re busy. And yet you managed to find time to not only record a podcast every day, but organize one and publish it every day as well.
Now, let’s go back to Episode One. Now, I know some shit went really wrong. A couple of sites, can you share some of that with our listeners?
Samantha (06:30):
Yeah. So this is something I haven’t talked about publicly. And it’s taken me a little while to, I guess, unpack this and decide if I wanted to talk about it. And I’ve decided to talk about it. Because what happened is, I was 10 minutes before us about to record my very first interview, we got a phone call saying that a very, very close family member has only got a few days to live.
So I this person shows up on screen, and I am just like shell shocked, because I wasn’t expecting this news. And I even had to what I let that person know, hey, I’ve just received this news. I’m okay to go on with the interview. But my hubby Leon wasn’t home, and we were communicating over what do we do now kind of thing. I even had to sort of stop recording in the middle of that interview, and just take a phone call and say, you know, far out, what are we going to do? I’m trying to get my head around, you know, are we driving into state we’re flying into state, how do we make everything happen? And that guest was amazing. And, you know, they just held the space. And we jumped straight back in and kept recording. So that’s what happened on the very first interview of that month. And, yeah, that’s how we started the month.
Tim (07:45):
Yeah, I think there’s some valuable lesson in this, then, you know, even when we do things, I mean, would have been very easy for you to quit. But it’s a, I can’t do this right now. You know, yes, he got the listeners and say, Hey, sorry, guys, I was doing this thing. But we’ve had to postpone because, you know, some stuffs happened, you know, and you can even just leave it as Vegas. some personal stuff, right. And that happens to everybody. I think this is the thing that we kind of lose sight of that we listen to people like you and I on podcast.
And I know you’re an avid podcast listener as well as a guest and host that we only see the video, we only see the stuff that goes on. We don’t necessarily see the stuff that people are having to juggle and overcome. Sometimes that’s quite momentous, behind the scenes, you know that that’s happening. And it was not just the case of death in the family as well. It’s it’s other things just as simple as the dogs walked in and was barking or, as you said, with just before we recorded this, you had to record an episode in your car.
Samantha (08:55):
I did. I did. So just going back. This actually was a very close family member of Leon’s, obviously we’re married is still a family member of me. So I sent him down to Sydney straightaway, what ended up happening was four trips down to Sydney just in September alone of going down and coming back going down and coming back. One of the trips that we went down, we were staying in the house, and the house was full of guests, because a lot of people were around the family. And we were in a little, a little tiny room out the back with a tin roof. And Sidney had the storm of all storms that night. And it was thunder and it was lightning and it was heavy rain. I couldn’t record the episode for the next day.
And I didn’t I wasn’t batch recording because so much was happening. Because we were taking phone calls. We were travelling, you know, I still got deliverables with my clients. There’s all sorts of things happening. So we were cramming recording in and the most ridiculous times. So we stayed up till 11 o’clock hoping that the rain would stop it didn’t we decided we’d go to bed. We would record early in the morning. The next morning we woke up and the children over the fence we’re having a screaming match for over half an hour. And I’m like, this is not going to work. What we did was just had a quick shower, we got in the car, we drove to the local shopping centre, we parked in a corner of the car park where there was no one around, and I recorded in the car.
Tim (10:17):
Portable podcast booth.
Samantha (10:20):
In actual fact, you get really good sound quality in your car, there’s a little tip.
Tim (10:25):
As long as you’re not parked next to a major highway, but there is this stuff that I guess that things go on. And we have to be flexible and adapt. And as you say, right, it’s not like you didn’t have other things going on. It’s not like you don’t have any clients, you know, with their own demands, this is something on top of your day to day to go, we’re going to do this thing, and we’re going to show up every single day, right to build our brand and, and build our brand presence on top of right, this, you know, deep, personally challenging thing that’s going on for you as well. Tell us what else was going on? You know, I guess during this month, we’ve got this lots of trips, we’ve got the sick kids screaming over that all week recording in the car. What else did you learn? That was a surprise to you.
Samantha (11:10):
So there was there was a few people in my circle of influence that knew that was happening, not very many, but just as a small amount of people. And I was really surprised when one of them said I couldn’t have done that I would have chosen family. And I’ve got to tell you at that moment, I was super hurt. Because in her eyes, I chosen the podcasts and not our family. We’re an actual fact. And this is something that I’m big about as an entrepreneur, we don’t need to choose a or b, we can choose a and b. And even though all of this stuff was happening, because of the way that Leon and I have created our businesses, we were able to be there more for the family than we would have been if we had jobs.
So I think that that was really important to see how that played out that we were there. And we were able to support and we were able to do what we did. That was one of the biggest takeaways is that I’m very big on you know, I had created this and it was lovely to see it play out that I always knew I’d created it for something and to see it happening in such an impactful way at a time that people needed us was really good.
Tim (12:25):
I think that’s something you and I have spoken a lot about over the 300 400 episodes, or whatever we’ve done together is that if you could, the more you can design your business around the lifestyle you want, the more flexibility gives you to have and I think it’s really warming to see, for me anyway that, you know, when it happens, that you’ve got this flexibility that you can do the thing you can take the business with you if you so want to.
And you’ve you know, like, you know, I think one of the reasons we become entrepreneurs and business owners in the first place is the power to choose. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s massively demonstrated through what you just shared with the same. So thank you for thank you for that.
Samantha (13:09):
I think that one word that you said is the word that we all want. We talk about freedom, we talk about more income, we talk about all of these things, but they all lead to that one thing, and that’s choice, when we’re able to choose what we want our life to look like. That’s what we’re actually really after.
Tim (13:25):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let’s roll forward to, you know, day 25, day 26 day 27. What are you? What are you discovering, when obviously, you’ve, you know, some of this stuff has happened, and you’ve had to sort of emotionally adjust to it, but let’s look at it from, you know, the, I guess the promotion itself, you know, coming towards the end, but what are you what are you learning? A about the exercise itself would be more importantly, what are you learning about yourself?
Samantha (13:52):
I learned a lot about myself, it was a huge month of personal growth and personal insights. Because when you’re really under the pump like that, like wish you don’t, let’s say when rubber really hits the road, you really understand, you know what it is about yourself. There was a couple of days right at the end, I’m not gonna lie, there was tears. I don’t want to do this. It got to be it got a lot, because obviously, you know, would say goodbye to someone really close to us. You know, we’d gone down and supported family and been in a funeral and all of this had happened in that month. But I guess at the end of it, I was really proud of myself that I did push through and commit to finishing what I’d started. Because it really could have been easy just to drop the ball and say I’m not doing it because I was starting to feel a bit fragile.
But in actual fact, pushing through that and doing it when I didn’t feel like it had a far greater positive impact, because it got to the end and I went far out. I did that I’m even you know, I’m even stronger than I thought I was and You know, I don’t think of myself as flaky. I’ve, I’ve been around for almost 30 years in business, I know that there has got to be some resilience there.
But that, I guess, you know, the takeaway is that sometimes those hardest moments will give us the greatest outcome. I would not have thought that coming out the other side that I’ve been that it would have buoyed me up that much to say, far out, I did that. That was so good. That was, you know, one of the personal insights. Actually, let’s not talk about how, you know, sort of what happens in the future, because I think we can talk about that separately. But one of the beautiful things, we’re seeing the data from that month,
Tim (15:39):
Yes. Share with us about that archives, we talked about the personal transformation that you went through, talked about the business transformation. Let’s talk brass tacks, let’s talk numbers because I know you’ve done analysis. Right, what happened to downloads?
Samantha (15:51):
Yeah, so we had our biggest download month in September, which was our 30 and 30. It was really nice to be chatting to people over the month because we see these big numbers. And this is a super vulnerable moment, every now and again, I look at the numbers and go, is that real? Are those numbers real? Or, you know, each month of that? Yeah, they fake numbers. Like, because we sit here behind a microphone, we don’t get to see anyone I don’t know who really listens to my show like some people reach out, but certainly not the amount of people that you know, that the downloads are showing.
Tim (16:25):
It’s a very small percentage that doesn’t even equal one, a very, very tiny percentage, but please reach out and send us your encouragement we love
Samantha (16:33):
Exactly I really want to hear. So it was very nice, where there was a particular call I’d had with someone and she said, Well, you know, I’ve heard from so many people that listen to your podcast, that I should reach out to you, how do we not call and who are they thinking that they were going to be the people that I know, listen to my show. And she rattled off a whole heap of names. And I was like, wow, I actually don’t know any of those people. You know, these are real people listening to the show. So September, we had our biggest month ever. Now, this is what has surprised me. We have grown it again in October, because that momentum has continued. So if you are listening to this show now, thank you so much, because, in October, we have had over 26,000 downloads. And that is our new record on the show. And I’m very, very grateful for you to be listening. And PS would love you to reach out and say hi.
Tim (17:25):
Yeah, I think that’s amazing, Sam, and, and certainly, you know, my congratulations to you and your entire team that came together to pull this off. It’s definitely a feat that’s, you know, should be applauded and envied. Would you? You know, my I guess my parting question, as we sort of wrap this episode up is, is this something that you think people should try and do in their business, whether it be podcast, or Facebook Live, or whatever, you know, showing up to create content, you know, every day for 30 days? And, you know, what sort of mindset do you need to be in to go? Yep, let’s do it.
Samantha (18:07):
I really liked this question. And my answer is that I think, and we did cover this in, in last Thursday’s episode, is that if we want to be seen as the leader in our industry, we need to stand up and be the leader in our industry. And we’re going to have to do you know, we’re going to have to zig when everyone else is zagging.
So I don’t necessarily think you should do 30 episodes of a podcast in 30 days. But I think there needs to be something that you actually put your back against the wall and really show up and become super visible, and really, you know, ensure that you’re positioning yourself in a certain way. I think that you do need to do some of these things that make you stand out or set you apart from the rest of the people in your space.
And I know that before we started recording, you asked me would I do it again. I’m not going to do it anytime soon, mind you. Who knows, I do change my mind quite quickly. But I will definitely do it again. I actually, when push comes to shove, I actually really did enjoy it as a whole. I actually really enjoyed the momentum. I enjoyed the personal challenge. I love challenges. The piece that we dropped the ball on a little because I just could not make everything happen due to the circumstances that we lived in that month, is that we weren’t able to promote it in the way that I had wanted to promote it. And because the team were helping out in so many other parts of our business to support Leon and I and doing what we had to do. We weren’t able to do you know what we had planned to do. So I guess that you know, that makes me think of the quote of when you reach for the stars. If you know if you land at the moon, you’re still better, better off than you were if you hadn’t aimed for the stars.
Tim (19:57):
Shoot for the stars and you may hit the moon.
Samantha (20:00):
Thank you, reciting quotes isn’t my strength. So you know, it was awesome for us. It wasn’t as good as what we were hoping. But it was still in other ways. For me, it was probably one of the biggest personal challenges that I’ve ever had to be able to do that. And conversely, on the other side, it was probably one of the biggest personal accomplishments I’ve ever had to endure because of the circumstances.
Tim (20:30):
Yeah, look, I think I said, you know, my heartfelt applause. And congratulations to you and your team on such a, such an amazing accomplishment, even one created off the cuff, but to see it through a head of, you know, in front of all those challenges that you face personally, during that same month, absolute testament to your grace and determination. And I think that’s something that if you’re listening to this and think that would be hard, yes, it is. But the rewards are clearly there, both on a personal growth, but definitely, obviously, from a business growth standpoint as well. So, you know, what have you got to lose? Really?
Samantha (21:07):
Exactly, exactly.
Tim (21:10):
Just say it through, ironically, as aptly titled by these podcasts that, you know,
we’re designing how we create influence. This is definitely one way of doing it. Sam, thanks for sharing that story. That was inspiring and insightful. Guys. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please like, share, follow, and we look forward to seeing you on another episode really soon. Ciao for now.
Samantha (21:32):
Thanks so much.
Samantha Outro (21:33)
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
Leave a Reply