Host of Unemployed & Afraid, Kim Kerton,
“Even if you're doing all the right things, sometimes you just don't feel confident.”
Let’s get deeply personal and under the hood of my business where, me, your host Kim Kerton, is dishing out the realities of building and monetizing a podcast brand, developing a consulting business and learning what to let go of when exploring new ideas.
I’m sharing with you:
Some recent, big, revenue stream let downs
The ins and outs of this pods financials
Deciding if and how I can continue to build my business
What [free] platforms I’m using for marketing, how I’m using them, and what results they’ve delivered
My struggles with courage in business
What it's like when you really are the only person working on your business
And being not so gently pushed in the direction you were always meant to go
This episode is all about owning my story, your story, our story, no matter how unpretty it might be, and truly appreciating that small business is very, very big.
Listen to the Online Course development mini series “Business Within Your Business” HERE
You can find the conversation transcript at unemployedandafraid.com.au/episodes.
And don’t forget to follow Unemployed & Afraid on IG , Threads and LinkedIn
And show your support for this independent podcast and small business by shouting your host a cuppa at buymeacoffee.com/unemployedpod
You can reach your host on email kim@unemployedandafraid.com.au on IG and on LinkedIn
Keep scrolling for the conversation transcript…
Kim Kerton [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Unemployed and Afraid, a podcast that explores the glorious mess of building your own business with the people doing it. I'm your host and fellow business builder, Kim Kerton. Thank you for being here. Let's get into some good, honest small business chats. Hello listener, and if you're hearing this episode at the time of its release, a very happy holidays to you. This is going to be an episode filled with my very favorite thing, realness. I'm on solo today to share some of the stories behind building my own small business, including some spicy financial things, pivot things, challenging things, as there is a lot to talk about since I last soloed, which is actually only around three months before this. So I can't actually believe how much has evolved since.
Kim Kerton [00:00:49]:
But I really shouldn't be surprised by now, because that just seems to be what happens in this business gig, right? In what I've come to learn is a typical business building cycle. I thought I was heading towards one thing when a whole other pathway revealed itself through loads of knockdowns and very confusing days, and I'm currently sitting here talking to you with nothing but opportunity. If only I could get out of my own goddamn way. Don't we just love it? But enough with the headline statements. I want to share some real specifics with you on how my business ventures are truly going as the promise of me as your host of this podcast is to show up as your business building equal, not an expert sharing the one percenter stories of business or telling you how to make a business a success in three easy steps, just like so and so did, as there are far too many variables and too many voices doing that already. I'm all about sharing knowledge, learnings and real honest experiences from the thick of business building as I think that connection to see ourselves in the stories of others is what we all need to feel somewhat normal when building a business. And can't help but put normal in quotation marks because what is normal but to know that what we experience is somewhat universal, so that more of us are truly encouraged to keep going and growing and building our own thing so we do understand then that what we're experiencing is okay, it doesn't mean that we're failing. So let's get into it as a very brief reintroduction.
Kim Kerton [00:02:20]:
I am, of course, Kim Kerton, your host, and my business ventures are this wonderful podcast unemployed and afraid, and podcast strategy services for brands, business owners, and podcast production agencies, amongst a couple of others in the background. So business number one, this pod, it just turned two years old wow. I started this bad boy in December 2021, which I was reminded of while prepping for this episode, which means I missed a socials celebration opportunity which I need to rectify with some good old fashioned content. But I started this with an ambition to connect with people who were also building their own thing and asked the questions that I wanted to know the deeper, more detail focused questions, as I had a feeling I wasn't alone in the need for more realistic storytelling in business, as opposed to some of the overly aspirational narratives that dominate the space now. It's a very normal reason for starting a podcast to have the conversations you want to have, and at the time I was assuming that there was absolutely more people who felt the same way. I was noticing a bit of a cultural insight in the space where a bit of pushback on the headline stories. It just sort of felt like some feedback was there that we want to go deeper, we want to know more. Gratefully, I wasn't wrong, and this quickly evolved into serving this need we have as a collective to feel seen and heard and inspired to do big things in our small businesses, no matter what level we're at.
Kim Kerton [00:03:46]:
Micro, small, medium, and even into a level beyond on that, the clarification of businesses and what level we're at I had a chat recently with someone, not for the pod, who was sharing with me what's happening in their business, and I said something like, it never ceases to amaze me the surprises we get in small business, to which the human I was speaking with said, well, my business isn't small, it's actually more like medium. It wasn't sassy at all, but it was a thought and it was a statement. And I got the sense that maybe they felt like the word small wasn't important enough, quote unquote. So I thought about this for a few days and let it ruminate in my brain and I thought, you know what? I really want to clarify this. For anyone who feels like the term small misrepresents them in some way for taxation purposes, the ATO says that a small business entity is one that has an aggregated turnover of under 10 million. Fairwork Australia states that a small business has less than 15 employees, whereas the ABS says less than 20 employees. And then of course, there's my preferred title of SME, small to medium businesses, which is not quite as sexy to say as small business, and requires far too much explaining in general conversation. The ABS says this includes any business with under 200 employees to be a medium business, and any with under 20 employees to be a small business.
Kim Kerton [00:05:09]:
Then there's a bunch of financial definitions that basically put anything up to 250,000,000 into micro, small or medium. So it's basically all over the shop, right? All this is to say, the term small in no way means insignificant. The way that I like to use it in the context of this pod is to capture anyone working for themselves, creating their own business at any level, basically anything that isn't an enterprise level business. And given that small businesses represent 98% of all business here in Australia, we're both broad and hugely important to the australian economy. So I'm going to keep owning this word small as an epic, epic thing. And I hope you do the same. Because with such a broad spectrum and lack of definition, it's more important than ever to hear from people at all of these levels and to see ourselves in the stories of others as we grow, or maybe even to look back on where we've grown from and to be real and as often as possible, light hearted about the challenges we all go through. Anyway, this pod, my business, it's all to serve you listener in your business building.
Kim Kerton [00:06:15]:
And that's the thing that keeps me going. I've given the full backstory of how I originally just wanted to dip my toe in with a six part pod series and how I blew that out of the water once I clearly, once I got started and realized I was just scared and holding myself back. And I've talked about that in other episodes. So this isn't that. I wanted to pick up the story of this pod from May 2023. This was when I decided the pod had grown up and needed a visual rebrand to represent what it truly was. So I invested in these brand visuals, laid out the brand tone, the audience I serve, the goals I had for it, et cetera. And this is when I got very, very serious about audience growth strategies, podcast marketing, brand partnerships, pr and everything else that's required to take a podcast from a hobby, maybe something you do with a friend, and spend just a couple few hours a week on to a thriving business.
Kim Kerton [00:07:13]:
As the business of podcasting gets me very excited, which I will talk about more when I talk about my other work as well. Since then, I doubled down on the episode content, releasing two a week. This was an audience growth strategy. As the more pods you do, particularly when they include a guest, the quicker you can reach more people who will hear about and fall in love with the pod and ultimately achieve you more listens. Achieve me more listens, which is a key metric for charts and for potential brand partners, naturally. But as you can imagine, the workload for this two long form interviews a week, particularly when you're very focused on providing the highest production value that's possible as a one woman show, learning along the way is quite extraordinary. To help me make this possible, I invested in some outsourced editing help, paying an awesome audio editor to help with sound and dialogue editing of the core interview. Before, I would tweak and review and package it all together with an intro, etc.
Kim Kerton [00:08:10]:
Less detail. Kim, I get it. Not everyone cares about the ins and outs of potting. But now I invested in this outsourcing because number one, I was building a very nice and consistent podcast consulting revenue stream. And two, I had a dream brand partner prospect that was so very positive to come on board, I thought it was a fairly safe financial risk to take. Spoiler alert, it was not. Not in any way. Just a short time later, my consulting work took a downward turn and the sponsor pulled out, citing budget issues.
Kim Kerton [00:08:44]:
Yay. Then another sponsor popped up. They were just as crazy positive about the environment and being partnered and helping each other grow and providing value, and they were perfectly aligned. Then they pulled out as they were focused purely on a different type of advertising model, and it didn't feel like the broader business was on board with that shift in direction. Think less brand awareness, more conversion. That's what they were looking for. So talk about a redirect. This last year no one has escaped the economic rumblings and the advertising market feels this so deeply.
Kim Kerton [00:09:20]:
Marketing is always sufficient to go in big budgets, right? Which is crazy because without marketing you don't have forecasted growth anyway. That's another whole conversation. But I know this from years of experience working with advertisers in commercial radio, but it hits so much harder when it's your own business and a partner can quite literally make or break. And it very nearly did break me, I'll be honest. Here's another sidebar, but it will make sense in a moment. I recently got recommended a super fun short series podcast called Shameless Acquisition Target, where a woman who's been in the podcast business as an executive rather than as a creator, starts her own podcast on a mission to have it acquired and or make her some a fabulous coin. It is a really fun, honest, deeply interesting insight into the business of podcasting, so literally a perfect recommendation for me. So thank you to the human who sent it my way.
Kim Kerton [00:10:12]:
One thing she did in this series was share exactly how much she had spent on the podcast project to date and how much she had made. So in the spirit of that, here are the hard financials for unemployed and afraid. So far, to date I have spent 12,935 dollarsventy cents on this podcast. Now, I am probably missing some numbers in there, but I'll tell you, it certainly isn't lower. To date it's made me $535 from listener donations through the buy me a coffee platform. A huge thank you to everyone who has done that. It is so generous and so supportive. And I've made around $100 in Contra deals, so think product for partnership.
Kim Kerton [00:10:55]:
So I'm in the hall about $11,300. That's not awful in the context to other business investments I've made, and I'm sure you've made too. But it is not ideal. So I have only two options in order to keep this going. Stop or find a way to continue. Obviously there is no stopping because bringing you this content is just far too important. Now, there's no way I'm going to leave you hanging in your business building, and I have every confidence that this podcast will be bigger than Ben her soon. So basically, there just has to be zero outsourcing for anything.
Kim Kerton [00:11:29]:
Right now. It's all back to me. I'd outsource like 20% of the workload and it was helping so much by allowing me to focus on other really important things like pr and marketing in order to grow the pod's reach and audience, which is a key marker in podcast success, of course. But I just couldn't continue to fund it myself to fund the outsourcing myself. So I'm back to doing all of the pod things myself. Just some of the things. This include means the sourcing of guests, the researching, the pre production, the recording, naturally, the post production and editing and the promoting of it. There is a lot to do when you produce a podcast in order to make sure that it grows.
Kim Kerton [00:12:07]:
You can't just drop them into a podcast platform and hope that they're found. It's not like social media. Some more numbers for you. I've worked out that just one episode takes me a conservative 12 hours of time, end to end. It's quite conservative. So two a week, that's around 24 hours just to produce it as is, without employing growth strategies like making time for pr, video podcast executions, writing and pitching articles, just an example. Or guesting on other pods. So there's a lot of time that's being spent in this space as well.
Kim Kerton [00:12:41]:
And time, as we know, is our most valuable commodity. Okay, that's a shit ton of doom and gloom, but it's a reality. And I think it's so important to share this stuff as seeing the true insides of other businesses is how we learn. So there you have it. If you want to build a podcast that both serves its listeners and thrives as a business as well, well strap in or get yourself some serious cash piles or some serious revenue streams to feed into it. But I've dusted myself off, and this adversity and something about being on my ass financially has reinvigorated me. It's made me hungrier than ever before to make something amazing and to see all this hard work really grow into something that I can be so proud of. And now I'm proud of it already.
Kim Kerton [00:13:27]:
I'm proud of the fact that I get so many amazing messages and emails, and please do keep them coming. About how you feel about the podcast, about how it supports you in your business. Building endeavors like that value that is being provided, makes me so, so happy. So now it's just how do I keep doing it and doing it bigger and better, and how can I make it a business myself as well? So I've been working harder and longer, but with more focus. And there are some great signs of growth forming. Things like building of audience, things like engagement in the information that I'm sharing, things like new platforms coming into play, messages from people of influence who are really supportive, and the shares that are all these little growth signs, right? But I won't lie. Month to month, the pressure is hugely on me right now. It's a bit sink or swim from a monetization perspective.
Kim Kerton [00:14:21]:
One thing I've done these last six months or so is take LinkedIn more seriously as a platform to reach business owners, brands, potential listeners, and potential clients. For my consulting and speaking, which I'll talk about a little bit more later. But I can say if you're someone who wishes to build a personal brand alongside building up your business brand, and you're not looking at ways LinkedIn can help, please do put it on the list. I've been sharing more of my knowledge and insights there, my thought leadership, if you will, and it's given me so much more confidence in just how much I have to offer as a podcast host, how much this environment has to offer for partners who are a fit for it, but also my value as a podcast strategist and small business advocate. LinkedIn has given me access to amazing podcast guests who can get to know what I'm all about and what the pod is all about through what I share and can feel safe in my hands as a professional podcaster. That just guesting side of it, apart from the more professional consulting side of it, that's something that's very important. And I can tell you there are a lot of great podcast hosts and podcast environments out there who are half asking their guesting process. And there is so much more opportunity to support your guests, to get both a wonderful story from them, make them feel really supported and happy, and enable your podcast to be promoted by them.
Kim Kerton [00:15:37]:
So not an ad for LinkedIn by the way. I wish it was. I would tell you how much I had earned from it if it was an ad for LinkedIn, but I'm a big fan of the platform. I did share some insights on there one day about some of the things I've learned about why people choose business over nine to five through the 100 plus episodes I've done and all the conversations I've had and my personal experience and talked about how the drivers and the experience of business versus nine to five are not even close to being correctly represented in the socials and mainstream media. Overarching narratives and a wonderful connection past guest and now friend suggested I flesh this post into an article and pitch it to smart company. This is something I've been wanting to do for ages, given my passion for writing, but pitching articles falls too often in the I don't have time or headspace pile this year, but this time I did it because I had tested the idea on LinkedIn and got some feedback, and I also put a short version of it on TikTok. Something else I'm exploring to some solid feedback. So it felt like the idea had legs.
Kim Kerton [00:16:40]:
It felt like a safe risk to take in terms of time spent, let me tell you, time spent. It took a full 8 hours to write it into 1000 word article and into an email pitch I was happy with. So again, these hours, they matter. We have limited time, and particularly when it's not coming into some kind of revenue generating opportunity. So it was a bit of a killer, but I sent it off and I got crickets. But thankfully I'd learned through one of my previous guests, PR educator Adet, that you have to keep trying with these things. You have to tweak subjects, tweak body copy, follow up, do a new email. So I did that three times and on the third time I got a reply and the article got published.
Kim Kerton [00:17:23]:
That was a huge win. I remember getting the email was standing in the kitchen at breakfast time with my partner will, and I saw it pop up on my phone, the email from the fantastic team there, a smart company said, thank you for sending through. We'd love to publish this today. And I was shook. I didn't even know what to do. I was like, I showed my phone, I was like, oh my God, it's going to be. This felt like such a wonderful, exciting, big deal moment. There were tears.
Kim Kerton [00:17:50]:
I was really proud of myself. And you see these things go out into the ether. You see people getting articles published. You're like, oh, wow, look like they're doing great. They're getting an article published. But I'll tell you, the experience of it on the other side. Like, I was elated. And having an author profile on smart company has just been a massive win.
Kim Kerton [00:18:06]:
It's given me so much confidence, which is a very rare commodity in this gig. So sourcing PR, a hugely time and headspace consuming thing to do. But it's truly landed for me how important it is to prioritize it. Yes, it doesn't equal money in the bank straight away, but without it, the climb is going to be even harder. It provides social proof. It shows people who you and your business are. It gets you in front of new people, so many things. If you haven't seen or read this article yet, please search for my name, Kim Kerton on smart Company and give it a read because I would really love to know if I've represented you and your experience as a small business owner.
Kim Kerton [00:18:43]:
Well, so TikTok, I talked about that before. I have finally dipped a toe to the TikTok pool and realized I need to dip my whole rig into that water asap as it simply is a great and very interesting place for growth and reach and testing ideas, particularly for those of us in podcasting. And when I say TikTok, I don't mean like dancing around, because I know it works for some people and I love it when I see you do it. I'm so supportive of it, but I can't get past myself. I just can't do it. I need to find something that works for me. Highly edited transitions or trends. I can't quite wrap my head around being able to do that with current workload requirements.
Kim Kerton [00:19:24]:
So my test has been more around simple pieces to camera, like talking head style content, sharing my thoughts and my ideas, which makes it really attainable time wise and brand wise. It fits and it's been interesting and it's been fun. I will say that the people on TikTok who provide comments are quite brutal. Like more brutal than those who do it on LinkedIn, those who do it on Instagram. I don't know if it's because TikTok feels a bit more anonymous, but yeah, they're pretty brutal. So I'm going to have to take my time getting used to bad feedback, but a lot of good feedback in there as well. A lot of interesting ideas. Likewise with Reddit, another platform I'm a big fan of.
Kim Kerton [00:19:59]:
Again, TikTok, Reddit not sponsoring this episode, really wish they were. We'll see. Maybe one day. I started engaging with posts on Reddit in the small business arena. So not to simply share the podcast, as you will get ripped to shreds for over promoting in Reddit, let me tell you. But the way to approach it, I found, was by providing value. And if in the exchange of providing value and thoughts and support, it felt natural to share the pod, I did it. It worked a couple of times, and I scored some lovely connections and conversations and new listeners that are smack bang in the demo.
Kim Kerton [00:20:34]:
I'm looking for people either building their small business or aspiring to build their small business. So Reddit is all about value and quality over quantity in these spaces. That's definitely my headline for any marketing activity. I also took the cutest marketing budget ever, $120, and tested Reddit for some brand awareness. And the click throughs to the pod were really solid. So once cash is a bit more available, I'm going to be really ripping in there and pulling out those that are interested in small business, having conversations around small business, and hopefully leading them onto the pod platform to listen. Now, these two platforms, Reddit and TikTok and three, if you count LinkedIn, have all required a heap of learning, which I say often on this podcast is exhausting us. Small business humans are constantly having to learn the ins and outs of platforms, and it does feel like we're going nowhere half the time.
Kim Kerton [00:21:25]:
And it is exhausting sifting through here's how to win on Reddit, here's how to win on LinkedIn. Here's a course that you can do on this, and I know the irony of that, given that I'm developing a course more on that in a moment, but it is hard to feel confident enough to know that you can go into it. But on reflection, it's just definitely been worth trying. And the trials have really just been when I ignored advice and just did my own thing and it worked well. Other thing in this testing strategy that I've employed to help myself grow was I entered into the Australian Podcast Awards, which you may have heard me losing my shit about on other episodes, which did cost me money to enter. I think it was around $180 or something, but I thought why not do it knowing that we don't have a lot of podcast centric awards in this market, and also knowing that award nominations and subsequent wins, if they happen, are a fantastic growth strategy for all businesses. Long story short, I made the finalist list for Rising Star and it absolutely was worth it, both for the credibility and the industry connections I was able to make. I didn't win, but I made the finalist list.
Kim Kerton [00:22:35]:
I was one of five. But I will say that paying nearly $600 just to attend the ceremony and not win was an absolute killer. But I'm still grateful for the experience and I'm adding awards to my growth strategy plan as well when I can afford it. And lastly, I started reaching out and inviting in opportunities to appear on other people's podcasts, which is a great growth strategy for everybody but particularly podcasters. The old pod swap where you interview each other if it's relevant to both audiences or just seeking to be a part of others. It is just such a fantastic growth strategy. And in the industry of podcasting, the support for each other seems to be really wonderful. And I don't want a rose color glass though that environment to be like.
Kim Kerton [00:23:20]:
Not everyone probably wants that. Maybe it's just where I'm coming from, but I think platforming each other is just a fantastic opportunity for mutual growth. The podcasting market is huge and it is growing and we can't be overly sensitive to our audiences that I don't want them to find out about this because then they'll go somewhere else. It's like, well, if you're releasing 2 hours worth of content a week, but that person wants five, well share anyway. There's a lot of opportunity there. I am so up for podding elsewhere and looking at opportunities there and stoked to be appearing on a stack of pods next year. About everything from my own journey of building a business, from leaving nine to five, the challenges I've had, the building of this podcast, the podcast industry strategy for pods and branded podcast chats. I'm super stoked for it.
Kim Kerton [00:24:06]:
So while the business side of this podcast is having a rough one, I'm making headway. And in business, you cannot shortcut that stuff. I've still hit over 100 episodes, landed initial listen targets, and all the signs are there for a huge growth period with my continued focus. And of course, as soon as there's an aligned brand partner on board to support the show financially, which will all be going straight back into growing the pod so I can reach and support more amazing small business humans. Everything will change, so put your positive manifestation hats on for me. And of course, if you have any connections at brands that you think could be perfect to partner with unemployed and afraid, please send them my way. Or if you yourself are a brand that cares about and caters for small businesses as much as I do, get in touch. That shameless hard sell is over onto business number two, which technically wasn't a business I was going to pursue directly until recently.
Kim Kerton [00:25:06]:
It's more of a passive side hustle that was bringing me joy and income too. It is, of course, podcast consulting and education for brands and businesses. Again, if you've been here for a while, you already know that I have over a decade of experience in crafting audio solutions for brands. Audio being inclusive of both radio and podcasting naturally. And so when I closed down my ceramics business, which sidebar by the way, can I just say? The number of emails I'm getting now asking for pieces and dinner sets is chaos. It was always great, but why do these have to come through now when I'm not making for sale? It is so beautiful. I just wonder if it's a universe being like, are you sure you don't want to do this anymore like I do? I just can't right now. Anyway, when I started wrapping up my making, I took on some consulting work creating show concepts podcast show concepts for brands both directly and through production agencies.
Kim Kerton [00:25:58]:
This was a personal eye opening or heart opening experience. It took me full circle back to the Kim who walked away from her media gig looking for something else. And the thing is, I've realized I was never actually away from it. I've always been passionate about audio from the minute I got my first job in radio, which is why it was all consuming for me as an industry and why I felt like I needed to walk away from it in the first place. And I've always been deeply interested in marketing messages, creative messages platforms. Interesting creative for as long as I can remember, I always nerd out on this shit and seeing interesting cultural insights and narratives develop. So maybe it was starting this pod, maybe it was the consulting work, maybe it was just the clashing of these two things that lit me up and made me realize that not only do I have a huge bank of knowledge and passion for this stuff, I am also really, really good at crafting podcast concepts for brands and integrating brand messaging into creative and just so much random knowledge about podcasting and the audio industry at large. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this realization and have been kind of letting it chill.
Kim Kerton [00:27:09]:
I've had a few ideas. I've been trying not to do the classic me thing, which is like rush it ideas and develop it and make it real. And I've just been trying to let it ruminate over the last sort of six months or so, softly putting myself out there for more consulting work, whether it be hosting and developing on other podcasts directly, crafting them for brands, speaking gigs, writing opportunities, et cetera. And if you've listened to the business within your business miniseries on this podcast channel, you already know this. But a little chat with a smart friend made me realize it could be really valuable to also teach business owners and marketing teams how to build a successful podcast for themselves and share my insights on things like the podcast industry at large, the platforms that are available to you. And I don't mean platforms in terms of technicality, I mean the genres and the ways that you can share stories and how to be really interesting with that. Just knowledge generally of the medium itself. The podcast marketing, how you go about interviewing guests and treating your guests with respect.
Kim Kerton [00:28:14]:
If that's a format you choose to use, just so many aspects on there could be really helpful to help people do more of this for themselves. So I'm now knee deep in workshop development and a self paced course to help business owners and brands understand more about the complex podcast landscape, those genre options, the realities of marketing it, building an audience, all those things you can hear all about my experience in starting to build a course, and I'm laughing because it's chaos and I still haven't finished it. And some epic insider tips in those episodes. So do go check them out. I'll link the first one in the show notes if you have ever thought about creating a course in your zone of genius, this might be really helpful for you just to get some confidence to keep pushing forward with it. So right now I feel like I'm rebuilding another business again. Which would, I think, business eight? I'm not sure. I don't know if this will turn into an agency structure, a straight education business for all things branded podcasts, a network structure.
Kim Kerton [00:29:15]:
I am not sure, but I'm feeling super challenged by the process, engaged and excited, but also really challenged. A lot of this challenge, I've come to realize, comes from a lack of confidence in positioning myself as an expert, which I know is ridiculous. But it's also a theme that comes out in loads of conversations we have here on the pod. It is a deeply unsettling experience to present yourself to the public as an expert on something, and that fear of not knowing like every single possible aspect or knowledge point or proof point or data point of an industry inside out, regardless of how much you actually do know, can be a real stop button on getting anything out there. It has been a slow burn for me, confidently starting to share my knowledge in a public forum. I probably spend far too often sense checking myself, checking data points, all of those things, and constantly upskilling and engaging in industry news and knowledge to ensure I do know enough to feel confident again. Crazy, I know, but we have to remember with this. I've specialized in this for a really long time, and if you've specialized in anything long enough, you are already far more of an expert in the area than the average person.
Kim Kerton [00:30:29]:
And I do not mean doing a one four week course on a subject than trying to teach it. Obviously. I mean anything. We've spent years engaging with its systems, processes, changes, industry ideas, trial, error, creatives, executions, whatever. We are in fact experts. And I am in fact an expert in audio concepts for brands, which, when paired with the experience of being a creator, building an audience, and my broad understanding of the audio landscape, it's a pretty fire perspective that I can offer if I can just harness it and back myself. So I'm doubling down on this. The course will be out very soon.
Kim Kerton [00:31:03]:
I will be hosting workshops with my favorite business group on the planet, Launchpad, speaking on pods and at events and building up exactly what my consulting offering will look like in terms of one to one versus workshop, regular retainers, et cetera. It's all a learning curve. I've been trying things, I've been trying different partnerships to see what works best for partners and for me. But I feel really motivated by the focus, I must say, and crafting a good concept just gets me right in the fields. Lastly, I did start exploring an ecommerce business idea recently and have even gone so far as to have a recipe created for a product. That's a very random teaser, but honestly, I don't know quite where it's heading yet. So I won't be sharing too much on that because we can play with things and just see where they go and wait. This is what I keep learning.
Kim Kerton [00:31:58]:
My partner and I really want to create something together as podcasting is kind of my thing and he has his thing in psychology, so we thought this could be an interesting way to dip our toe into something together. So we've been knee deep in development, sampling, package options, design, brand design. And I have learned so much, much more than I wish to ever know about the product and packaging landscape, which is a wild. The biggest lesson I've learned is if we're going to do something well, which is a big part of what I want to do and what I want to put out in the world, and a big part of the brand tone for this thing that I eventually want to develop. The budget needs to be comfortable and as described in previous narrative in this podcast, we're just not there right now, right? It's just not possible. So that's on hold for the foreseeable future, but has been such a valuable experience and still worth it from a financial investment perspective. It's been really valuable for a lot of things and has actually helped me with focus on some of the other areas and with ideas in some of the other areas of my businesses. Some lessons have finally landed for me through this change period.
Kim Kerton [00:33:05]:
A few years in here, like these things just don't happen. But also from the conversations I've been having here on this podcast, so I want to leave you with a few in case they land for you too. Firstly, the reason we choose to work for ourselves, whilst hugely variable and personal, I think can be brought back to two things generally, a desire for autonomy and a desire to make an impact, be it on our own lives or others lives, and to do work that feels truly valuable in some way. And courage. Courage isn't easy to come by, and rarely does it happen on the day you actually need it. The letdowns I've had recently in the podcast have made me a little gun shy in terms of going to market and reworking things, and a little bit overwhelmed, but most certainly gun shy. And I am needing to rebuild myself back up again, to go in and get knocked down again as I need to get back out there and go. Hard to make that traction.
Kim Kerton [00:34:01]:
But putting yourself out there and risking yourself to let downs is always a bit of a challenge. So courage isn't that easy to come by that without cash investment from brand partners for something you're doing like this, or at least a reliable pipeline of revenue from other areas that I can't afford to outsource any areas required to build my businesses right now. And so I don't want to waste any time thinking about how great it would be if I could, because it's just not practical. I need to just then look and be really almost aggressively focused on what I'm working on and make the maximum use of my time and make sure I'm taking care of myself through that process. And I'm resting and I'm exercising and I'm putting good food into my body. But this realization, it does challenge me a lot. As I do, of course, see people who are at that stage where they can outsource and see how it expediates their growth. And sometimes it makes me jealous.
Kim Kerton [00:34:53]:
But jealousy is one big driver of action. I really do know and have learned that building a podcast brand is really, really hard. It just is. It takes drive and it takes commitment. But there is not a medium close to the connection and value it can bring to you as the creator and to the audience receiving it. It is hard, but it is worth it. Learning only takes you. So far, this has been a big lesson.
Kim Kerton [00:35:23]:
You can sign up to all the webinars, read all the blogs, engage in all the content, but there comes a time where you have to place some trust in yourself and just go all in. Same goes for naturally, all the socials, all the platforms. There's no right way to do this stuff. You just have to test it. You have to try and you have to do it again. And you just have to suck a little bit sometimes and be a bit embarrassed maybe sometimes, or be let down by a result. And lastly, the realization that confidence is always in flux. It just is.
Kim Kerton [00:35:48]:
You can't necessarily control it, even if you're doing all the right things. Sometimes you just don't feel confident. 1 minute I know exactly what I need to do and I go hard and I'm focused and I'm so clear. Other times I distract myself away and shy away from the hard things and let too many voices get in and too much self doubt get in. I know you know the feels, but I really have just come to realize not to beat myself up about it and that I've just got to ride the wave. It's been all of these challenges and the little wins along the way that have made me rework my approach, rethink my strategies, and it is all there, all the signs and all the plans. So if this is you too, just know that our next seasons, they're going to be huge. And maybe if they're not feeling like they're going to be huge, you don't have the confidence in there.
Kim Kerton [00:36:32]:
Find your little wins, pull the little wins out, and then see how you can work that back into some confidence for yourself. Even if it's manufactured confidence just to keep going. These things take time and you will pivot and you will restrategize a million times and you will get there eventually. And I will get there eventually when it's tough and really shitty. It is you, the listener, that gets me through it. Your messages, the shares that you do on the socials, your reviews. My God, your reviews, your cup of shouts, and particularly your stories of the pod supporting you to grow and become the business owner you want to be and what it means to have a resource like this. That is what pushes me.
Kim Kerton [00:37:12]:
I can't stop. The pod has to be huge for you and all the small business owners I haven't yet reached who need to feel seen, heard, and genuinely inspired to keep going. So thank you for being there for me as I keep going and keep pushing myself to keep going. I hope something in there in this episode has been valuable for you. I really would love to hear from you. Please, please do leave the show a review on Apple Podcasts if you're listening there, you can go down, drop in a star rating and drop me a few notes in there that I will see, or you can go over to drop a star rating on Spotify. Generally for the channel, you can actually even drop me a note directly about this episode, so you'll see a little Q a textbooks in there. I think it's something like what did you think of this episode? And you can message me directly in there and that will come through on the Spotify platform.
Kim Kerton [00:38:04]:
So wherever you're joining me, if it's on some of those or another, there is a way to support the pod and also let me know what you're thinking to keep me going or just go old school with me. Send me a DM on IG at unemployed and afraid on all the things, obviously, or email me kim@unemployedandafraid.com au I really would love to connect further with you and oh, I absolutely will be paying attention to growing our Facebook group soon, which hopefully will be yet another place we can support each other. So hit join over there if you haven't already, and please be patient with me as I work out the best way to support you there. As always, thank you for choosing unemployed and afraid and growing your business alongside me. Please tell all your friends about it. You are awesome. Thank you for listening to unemployed and afraid, the podcast for small business builders with your host, me, Kim Kerton. If you love it, you can say thanks with a star rating and a review.
Kim Kerton [00:38:59]:
And of course, join the community on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn. Find us at unemployed and afraid wherever you're hanging out and I'll see you there.