PODCAST LIVE: Unleashing Your Voice: A Podcaster's Journey | EP310

Ever felt like your voice doesn't matter? That's exactly where Donna Eade started before launching her podcast five years ago. Now celebrating this milestone, Donna sits down with Catherine Chapman to reveal the transformative journey that turned a childhood "chatterbox" into a podcast host who connects with listeners worldwide each week.

Donna's candid conversation takes us back to April 2020 when, despite questionable timing, she launched a podcast for wedding vendors that received just 10 downloads in its first month. Fast forward to today, and she's created a thriving platform where entrepreneurs find guidance on mindset and business strategy. Her story isn't just inspiring—it's filled with practical wisdom for anyone considering podcasting as their content pillar.

What makes podcasting so powerful? "How many people would you let whisper in your ear?" Donna asks, illustrating the uniquely intimate connection podcasters forge with their audience. This relationship builds trust that's difficult to establish through other media, with 75% of listeners more likely to purchase from podcast hosts than from television personalities. For business owners seeking deeper connections with potential clients, this insight alone is worth its weight in gold.

The conversation demystifies the podcasting process with refreshingly straightforward advice: don't overcomplicate it, be clear about your audience, and understand your purpose. Whether you're tech-savvy or technologically challenged, Donna's three-step approach makes launching a podcast feel achievable rather than overwhelming. Her launch strategy—particularly the "Netflix approach" of releasing multiple episodes simultaneously—offers a blueprint for creating momentum and building a loyal audience from day one.

Ready to amplify your voice and grow your business through the power of podcasting? This episode delivers both the inspiration and practical tools to get started. Listen now to discover how speaking your truth can transform not just your business, but your relationship with yourself and your audience.

Catherine Chapman - Far 2 Fabulous

FREE 3 Part Audio - Access Here

www.donnaeade.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Fifth Birthday Celebration
• 4:11 Donna's Podcasting Journey Begins
• 9:24 The Idiot's Guide to Podcasting
• 12:09 Top Things for Podcast Success
• 17:48 The Intimate Power of Audio Connection
• 23:29 Branding and Advertising in Podcasts

Transcript

Donna Eade: 0:33

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. Hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I'm so glad to have you here today with me for this, the fifth episode in the live podcast event series. Today you have got me.

Donna Eade: 1:06

I did a chat with Catherine Chapman, who very kindly interviewed me. She is the host, co-host of the Far Too Fabulous podcast, along with Julie Clark. I highly recommend you go and listen to that one. I'll leave a link in the show notes for you. Catherine interviewed me about my podcasting journey, what led to the fifth birthday and what I think about podcasting over blogs and videos and all that jazz. So take a listen in to our conversation on podcasting and have a fantastic week. I'm actually in Liverpool for two days this week, which is going to be hectic for me Anybody knows me knows that I am highly introverted and two days out of the house, and it's going to be in a big place with lots and lots of people. It's going to be difficult, but I shall be back, as always, next week with another podcast episode, and so take a listen in to this, the fifth in the series, last one next week. Speak to you soon.

Catherine Chapman: 2:15

So yeah, it's my turn to do the question time and actually I think that Kat started this off really really well by just celebrating you for being. See, I like the word community. I don't prickle as much at the word network anymore, but I think for us it's our business support. That's my kind of like little comfy place. That's what we do at Business, women Unlimited it doesn't know. It's business support and you truly embody that, and so this has been an amazing event and, like many of you, you go to events often and you see the same people, and this has been a. Really it's been nice to see some different faces, been nice to see your faces, so it's just been really awesome. So well done and thank you very much for bringing us all together. Thank you so, donna. Eat. This is your life, no.

Nicola Tonsager: 3:20

Oh God no.

Catherine Chapman: 3:23

What's your name and where'd you come from? Really, the actual first question is Can you please just talk us through your podcasting journey from where you started to the amazing fifth birthday that you're celebrating?

Donna Eade: 3:38

today. Okay, so we could go back all the way to my childhood. I won't, but I'll try to keep it to the short version. But basically throughout my life I have felt like my voice didn't matter and very recently I was doing some work and I think I said earlier, the last couple of years I've really spent some time going inwards and I realised that I have felt like I don't matter and that I'm not enough and my voice doesn't matter from a very, very young age. But I've always loved to talk. I was the chatterbox at school. It was literally written on my report and I just spent a lot of time wanting to speak but never being heard. So when the opportunity to start a podcast came up, I was like, yes, that is my jam. I mean, I don't care if I'm not talking to anybody at all, I just want to talk. So luckily, I do have listeners, which is is amazing. But, um, it basically started like I said earlier.

Donna Eade: 4:37

I've been an entrepreneur on and off since I was 18 and when I decided to create a business for the wedding industry shout out to the wedding industry in the house and one of my OG members, lincoln, thank you so much for being here. I created something that I thought was going to be absolutely incredible and grow and be amazing for an industry that I loved, but my timing was shit. I decided to launch a business for wedding vendors in April 2020, yes, but what I also chose at that point was I knew I needed a pillar piece of content. I'd done blogging when I was a wedding photographer. I'm keyboard dyslexic. I've termed it um, and I just didn't want to write blogs and I didn't want to get video ready. Um, I just well, even when I do do videos now, this is how I show up. I don't put makeup on, I'm not. I'm just not fussed by it. So I just wanted to do something that would get the message out there.

Donna Eade: 5:38

So I decided to start podcasting. Been listening to Amy Porterfield since 2014 and I thought that is the the job for me, and I did it the the hard way. I did it by henpecking around the internet and finding different people to learn this bit from and that bit from, and eventually, way. I did it by henpecking around the internet and finding different people to learn this bit from and that bit from, and eventually I launched it, and I launched it on the 16th of April 2020 and five years later, I still upload weekly. I have two weeks off at Christmas because I believe everybody in this room should not be listening to business podcasts over Christmas, and that's what I do, so that is how we got here amazing and just just to make you laugh, I was dictating this into my google docs and I wrote I well, I said the society for professional wedding vendors.

Catherine Chapman: 6:26

It wrote the society for professional wedding vendors. So maybe that's the idea for your next podcast.

Nicola Tonsager: 6:33

I don't know.

Catherine Chapman: 6:37

So what made you choose podcasting? I kind of think that you have covered that, but as opposed to your blogs, vlogs, all those sorts of things.

Donna Eade: 6:47

Well, it was the new kid on the block. So, as much as you know, I had been listening since 2014, which was obviously six years that Amy had been podcasting before, and in 2020, podcasting really came to the UK in a much bigger way and I just thought that's the one for me, Like I love talking. So why would I spend 20 minutes probably more like an hour and a half writing a blog that I'm not really happy with and not sure that it's really said what I wanted to say, when I can just turn around and speak into a microphone and upload it?

Catherine Chapman: 7:19

that's magic to me was it just business podcasts that you were listening to then?

Donna Eade: 7:24

um, so, yeah, so I think it was mainly Amy. And then then I listened to some of Stu McLaren's stuff, some of James Wedmore's stuff and then, obviously, when Diary of a CEO came out, listening to that. But Corinne Crabtree, who I mentioned earlier, her no BS podcast, I listened to that as well. That was my first fitness podcast, but I don't listen to that one anymore because Catherine's got one called Far Too Fabulous, which she did by going through my program, and I love that one. It is so good, you really need to go listen to it, yeah and absolutely it wouldn't be.

Catherine Chapman: 8:01

It wouldn't be in existence without you, and you did make it exceedingly easy honestly two tech phobe. Like people that just wanted, we coined ourselves the Loose Women of Wellbeing, because we just rant and rant and rant about wellbeing and we thought we should probably just put a microphone in front of us. But we just didn't know what else to do and you kind of filled in the gaps and really so easily, just brilliantly.

Donna Eade: 8:28

And her and Julie are so good together. It's hilarious. They call themselves the Muppets. Now it's loose women of podcasting. It's the Muppets.

Catherine Chapman: 8:34

So this brings me quite, quite well actually to question number three is if you could give us an idiot's guide to um, to podcasting in three or four steps. What would they be?

Donna Eade: 8:49

and why so? The first one is you don't have to overcomplicate it, which is something that we've been saying all throughout the day. Don't overcomplicate it. Start with what you've got. You don't need a fancy microphone, you don't need a mixer, you don't need all the technology that you think, oh my God, what's out there, I need to sort this out. You just need a laptop and you need a microphone of sort my headphone microphone from my apple I you know I use those. I prefer wired to the airpods, um, just because there's a bit of delay but wired speakers. So start with what you've got.

Donna Eade: 9:25

Be really, really clear on who you're speaking to. Who is it that you want to connect with you? I hyper niche. Now my podcast. When it started, I got 10 downloads in 30 days. I am really pleased to say that Nicola got a hell of a lot more in hers after I did my launch strategy, but it is one of those things where I was in a hyper niche. So there was only 400,000 people in the entire world who was going to listen to my original podcast because it was about the Society of Professional Wedding Vendors, which was for UK wedding vendors. Okay, now my podcast Mindset in Action anywhere in the world is a potential target for that podcast.

Donna Eade: 10:07

So know who it is that you're talking to and be specific about it. Don't over niche, because I think if you hyper niche you really struggle. If you can expand it a little bit to give yourself a little bit of wiggle room, you want to attract those people that are on the outside. Your podcast is great as a funnel. That is a top-down thing. So people come in at the top, they get to know you, they get to know what it is that you do and then they're like oh, maybe I want to work with that person, but they might have been people that didn't think they needed what you sell until they got to know you. So make sure that you are just giving yourself a little bit of breathing room with it, but have that, that real core intention with your audience.

Donna Eade: 10:44

And then the third thing is why? Why a podcast? Why do it at all, like whether it's video, blog, anything why are you doing it? What is the purpose of it? Have a clear strategy on that purpose so that you don't get overwhelmed, so that you know we're not doing what we're doing with social media, where we're going. Oh, my god, I need 10,000 people on Instagram, because then you get the swipe up feature, which doesn't even matter now. But you know, it's that. You don't need to be thinking, oh, I need, I need this many downloads, I need that many downloads, and you don't need to focus on that. If you know what your core, why is I love that?

Catherine Chapman: 11:16

and I think we've heard lots of these, these things that apply to all of our marketing and all of our strategies and yeah, yeah to be able to apply it to podcasting as well. So last question well, from me anyway, what top three things do we need for a successful podcast? Do you want the list as well, that you did?

Donna Eade: 11:40

did I say something different to what I just said? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely, thank you for that.

Catherine Chapman: 11:49

That was good not that we planned this at all what did I mean by that second one?

Donna Eade: 11:58

okay, so, um, first, get help. Honestly, it is amazing if you can have help. So there are several people in the room who have either done my program or done my boot camp, um, and it makes a hell of a difference when you don't have to actually henpeck around the internet to try and find things. So, if you can get help, get help. And there are lots of different people out there that teach podcasting everything under the sun, um, that are at different price brackets that you can get help from. Um, get help, because it's just easier that way. Make it easy on yourself, um. And then I've said budget, but I'm not sure what I meant by budget particularly.

Catherine Chapman: 12:38

But I think you said it.

Donna Eade: 12:41

Yeah, no, I have no idea what I mean by budget, but I think it is really important to to look at what you're spending your money on, and one of the things that I have really enjoyed doing actually is doing what I call well, not what I call what other people call visibility ads. So if you're ever looking at doing Facebook ads, running Facebook ads to your podcast is a heck of a lot cheaper than trying to get somebody to buy your thing from a Facebook ad, and that can really be the difference between them eventually buying from you or never even knowing who you are. So the first thing you want to look at when you're doing ads is getting everybody who could potentially want to buy from you into your world in the quickest, cheapest way possible, and visibility ads is it. You can get people to click on your podcast link for pennies, so it's a really good way of doing it. But I would say, make sure that you set a budget and when you're doing your podcast, like if you have a item that you want to buy like I wanted to buy my microphone I wanted a fancy microphone. It's not a hugely fancy microphone, it's a very good microphone, um but I put it in my budget. And then I turned around and I was like, right, when I get to x, then I'm going to treat myself to it, so use it as a reward system. You don't have to upgrade all at once, just do it as you go and then finally have a launch plan.

Donna Eade: 14:02

It was what I didn't do with my first podcast. I didn't have an audience when I started the society of professional wedding vendors. I didn't have anybody on my social medias. I didn't have anybody to listen and I put it out there and I only got 10 downloads in the first 30 days, but actually nicola and katherine, both in their first. Do you want to shout out, ladies, how many downloads you got in your first week? Can you remember?

Nicola Tonsager: 14:25

I can't remember, but I did launch number 10 in the Apple UK spirituality charts. You did, and that was down to following your launch plan and doing everything you told me to do as part of that, yeah, and I think yours was in the 100.

Donna Eade: 14:42

You were 100 and something in your first week, 125, something like that. So it made a huge difference to actually have a launch plan in place. So I think if you can have a launch plan just like if you were going to launch a new program or a new product, launch a podcast in the same way because it makes a huge difference and I've always used the analogy that you know, if you push in a boulder up a hill, if you start at the bottom of the hill, it is a long way to the top, but if you start halfway up, that top comes so much easier. And that's what having a launch plan does for you. It gets you that further up and once you're there, your trajectory goes from there rather than having to start from zero.

Catherine Chapman: 15:19

So it's just a much easier, easier way to do it I think the one of the most useful bits of your launch plan was having those three episodes recorded, so you had them in the bank.

Donna Eade: 15:30

Don't give everybody my secrets.

Catherine Chapman: 15:33

You were already. What did you say? The percentage of podcasts?

Donna Eade: 15:38

that don't go past three episodes.

Catherine Chapman: 15:40

You're already past that lot, yeah, and it's just. Yeah, it's a real buzz, it's a real high five, it gets people hooked.

Donna Eade: 15:52

And that is why you can get the more downloads in your first, first week as well, because there's more for people to listen to. So the idea is that you get them in on that first episode and then you go oh, and here's the second episode. And they're like oh great, I don't have to wait a week, or however long it is, um, until the next one, and then they've got a next one. So then you, they binge, you like netflix, and uh, then they're hooked and they're like okay, I'm coming back the next time, this one drops yeah, and it's such a great way that no like and trust, so so easy.

Catherine Chapman: 16:17

Yeah, just I mean I run with podcasts going on in my in my ears. It's just a brilliant way to to get that information in well, that's the flexibility of podcasts, because you can.

Donna Eade: 16:31

You can listen to them anywhere where you can't watch a video anywhere and you can't read a blog anywhere, but you can always have your earbuds in and you can always be listening. And one of the things that I like to tell people about is the. The extra special power of a podcast over video and over blogs is that connection to your audience, because I don't know, put your hands out in front of you, everybody a little, play along, okay. And if you imagine a circle coming from the tips of your fingers, going all around your body at the same distance, creating a circle, coming back, that is your personal space and there are only a handful of people that you will allow into that space. Yet podcasters frog jump that and they go to an even more intimate place. How many people would you let whisper in your ear? I bet it's less than the people that you would let within that circle, okay. So if they are whispering in your ear on a weekly basis, they are really gaining your trust.

Donna Eade: 17:27

And I was listening to a Diary of a CEO yesterday, stephen talking to Daniel Priestley. It's their latest one they've done too. It was a really good episode and he was talking about podcasting a lot on it actually and saying how it's going to grow and grow and grow. And he was talking about that no like and trust factor and how intimate it is to, you know, connect with somebody in that way and how you're building parasocial relationships.

Donna Eade: 17:55

Now it's it's not the best and you were talking about this earlier the parasocial relationship with the chef's wife. You know, you knew her, you walked past her in the hospital. She had no idea who you were, and that's the same for podcasters, but it's building that. They get to trust you, they get to like you, just like they do with the celebrities. However, we have more value as podcast hosts because 75% of people are more likely to buy from what a podcast host tells them to do than buying from a tv influencer or a celebrity. So, and we have more power because we're more personable, I think because they can connect with us on social media and dm us and actually talk to us in real life. Then that trust is built over time as well.

Catherine Chapman: 18:35

So I love podcasting how do you feel about the um? I feel that's a bit of a new trend about warts. And also, um, when I've done the podcast, I like we do a little bit of editing. You take the coughs out and and maybe the bits where my brain just totally switches off and julie and I look at each other and I go I have literally no idea what I was saying like halfway through a sentence, and so we edit those bits out.

Catherine Chapman: 19:03

But I was listening to I don't know why I was listening to one of mark's fishing podcasts. I think it just encroached on one of my Spotify lists. I have no idea, but they were talking about their whole new thing was that they were literally just chatting. So you got the coughs, you got the laughs, you got the breaks, you got everything. Mel Robbins was wandering around her studio looking at the brain and you could hear them out and about. And then, and um, uh, dario Vienasio he was. He was like, oh you know, talking to his friends tending him to bring his vivo bare in. How do you feel about the kind of warts and all, as opposed to the slightly clipped versions?

Donna Eade: 19:45

there is a difference between a warts and all podcast and a shoddily produced podcast. Okay. So it's the production that needs to be on point, not necessarily taking out all the ums, ahs, like for me, I want to have a conversation. I want it to sound like I'm having a conversation with somebody and somebody could just join in. I. I don't want it to sound completely perfect. I don't do that. It's something that Amy Porterfield used to do and she did a podcast episode.

Donna Eade: 20:18

I think I don't know whether it missed going through editing or something. Somehow a podcast got up that wasn't perfect and she had such a reaction from her audience going oh, my God, it's so nice to hear that you're human, that you make mistakes, that you stumble, because she would take out every imperfection if she stumbled over a word, anything. I don't take that stuff out. I take some of the oh, I've got a hair. I take some of the ums and ahs out because I've got a hair. No, no, I you know.

Donna Eade: 20:44

I take some of the ums and ahs out because when people are put in front of a microphone or a camera, suddenly the ums and ahs go up all of a sudden. It's. It's a nervous reaction and we're not even aware of it half the time, but I will take some of them out because it's not natural. That's not what they would normally sound like. I've got a podcast that I edit for a corporate and, honestly, because they're not podcasters, they're corporate, they're not used to speaking like we are. Oh my gosh, the amount of times they trip over their words and say, oh, it's a nightmare to edit.

Donna Eade: 21:16

But yeah, so it's the editing. The sound quality needs to be good. What you're putting in, that is up to you. So if you decide to do that, you're walking around, people are interested. But I would say that if you're walking around looking at stuff, you've got to remember it's a podcast, mel Robbins, she has a video version so you'd be able to go and see that. But for me, podcasting is auditory. So don't go looking at stuff that other people can't see, because that's just going to frustrate them. It would frustrate me. I'm like what are you looking at? I can't see it.

Donna Eade: 21:46

So, yeah, so warts and all is absolutely fine. You've got to find your own comfort level with that. But it's more about the production level making sure that the sound quality is good, so that because, again, people are listening with earbuds in and if the sound quality is awful they're not going to want to listen. In fact, I've got a podcast for a friend of mine business friend of mine who does a podcast. I love her dearly but she does not do anything to dampen the sound in her room and it's so high pitched and squealy I can't listen to it and I have to again.

Catherine Chapman: 22:18

I'm going to bring everybody back to your course where you actually teach that stuff really really well, and I still, if I haven't done, like if I haven't done a guest episode for a little while, I still have to then go back into all the course material and remind myself what I need to do. But it's always there and it's like my podcast uniform I love it I love it absolutely. Anybody got any questions?

Donna Eade: 23:03

can I walk?

Janine Coney: 23:03

I was gonna say two jobs can you, donna, just talk through um how people can bring in their own brand into it, because we've obviously discussed, if you're having a conversation about something where you've got a guest speaker, but you can also use it as your funnel and you can have kind of adverts in the middle or you can introduce yourself or change the the piece at the end. Can't you for different um courses that might be coming up or events or what have you? What do you think about that? Do you think it is a good thing?

Donna Eade: 23:35

yeah. So obviously your podcast can be used as a tool for your branding. Like I say, it's got to be what your why is some people? They don't want it connected to their business at all, don't know why they wouldn't, but some don't. Um, but yeah, if you are using it, you've got your brand colors in your graphic. You have got your brand message, whatever. That is the way you say things.

Donna Eade: 23:55

So for me, the last year, I could probably riff off my podcast intro right now without stumbling, because every every week it's the same thing. It's reminding you. This is the mindset and action podcast. I'm your host on it. It says what it is on the tin and then there are ways to advertise in your podcast your own stuff. So that's dynamic content.

Donna Eade: 24:17

I don't particularly like mid-roll in the middle of your podcast adverts because I think it breaks the flow. They can be successful, you can try it, and I'm all about give and take with that stuff. You know you try it. If it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. But I'm all about not annoying my audience. So if I am doing a launch, so if any of you listened to my podcast in the last three months, you would have heard that I'm having an event and it was literally at the front of every podcast for the last three months before my intro started, and that, to me, is enough. Like I give people that and people who are regular listeners know what's coming when they hear that first word because they're like, oh, she's still advertising that they can skip it really easily.

Donna Eade: 25:04

But usually once people are doing whatever it is they're doing, it's not so easy for them to stop. Once people are doing whatever it is they're doing, it's not so easy for them to stop, which is good for you because it means that actually 80% of people that press play on a podcast will listen to the entire thing, which is a higher retention rate than video. But it's annoying for them if there's loads of ads, because you can put like three, I think, in the middle of your, or more in the middle of your podcast and if every five minutes it's breaking for an ad, people are going to get pissed off. So I avoid the mid ones, but you can also do one at the end as well, so you can talk about whatever you like, whatever you're sharing at the time, whatever you're promoting at the time. It's a great way of building your email list, which is really, really important. We haven't really touched on that today much, but, yeah, get them on your email list as soon as possible and use your podcast to do it. Yeah.

Catherine Chapman: 25:57

Any other questions?

Nicola Tonsager: 25:59

No, brilliant, okay, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you for interviewing me.

Donna Eade: 26:04

Thank you, thank you.