Reflecting on Season 1 and Looking Ahead to Season 2: A Journey of Collaboration, Inspiration, and Entrepreneurship

The celebrations continue! 🎉

Today marks the official start of Season 2. Join me as I reflect on the last year and what is coming.

I appreciate your support during Season 1. Here's to an exciting and informative Season 2.

Links to the top episodes of Season 1:

Episode 25: Visualize your Data Story with Dashboards

Episode 8: Using ClickUp for Productivity, Ecosystem & Brain Building with Meagan of New Leaf Digital

Episode 3: Lessons Learned from Being an over 50 Beauty Entrepreneur with Karen Merritt of Karen’s Essentials

Episode 24: The Measure to March Series: Data-Driven Marketing, Part 4

Episode 30: Bras and Business - The Connection

Episode 26: The Visibility Factor: How to Play Bigger and Achieve your Goals

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva.

See you next time!

Are you ready to take massive action in your business and harness the power of data in your decision-making? Let’s chat 👇🏽

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:01]

Hello and welcome to Collab with Kiva. I'm your host, Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing-themed office chair, I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a Legislative Director for a member of Congress, Policy Director for a nonprofit, stay-at-home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service-based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line or full of zigs and zags, join me and my guest as we share insights, hope, and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat? Let's dive in.

[00:00:55]

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Collab with Kiva. I am your host, Kiva Slade, and I'm excited today because this episode marks the beginning of Season Two. So, let's talk about this last year. As a quick recap for some of you who may be new listeners I spoke with a coach in December of 2019, and part of the work that we went through were things that I wanted to do in my business over the upcoming years and one of the things that I shared was that I wanted to do a podcast. I loved listening to podcasts, and I just felt that when I came into the online space, it felt to me as if people followed just the big-name people, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's great. It gives us motivation, inspiration, and aspiration.

[00:02:17]

But I also found that a lot of people I spoke to were comparing their page in Chapter Two to this big-name person's page in Chapter 50 of their life, in their business journey. And that led to oftentimes feelings of, am I doing this right? Why am I even doing this because I'm not making the progress that I should? So, it was really important to me from early on in my online business journey to really put out information that inspires and encourages women business owners in particular no matter where they are in their journey. The reality is that being a business owner it's not easy work. It's not easy whether you have a team, it doesn't get easier when you have a team because there are always things that are needing to be done.

[00:03:29]

And with each level of growth comes additional responsibilities. There might be things that come off your plate at some point in the process, but that doesn't mean that your plate is then empty. Those things are replaced by other things, and normally those things are a bit heavier, a bit weightier in this trajectory of your business. And in my circles of friends and colleagues and online associates, I was always coming across these amazing women who had amazing skill sets, and amazing information to share, and sometimes there just was not a platform for that information to be shared because they weren't the big-name person.

[00:04:23]

Now, some of them have gone on to be bigger names, but that's all a part of the journey. Some people don't desire to have a big name. Some people don't desire to make six or seven figures in their business because they don't need to, and that's okay as well. For me, it's always been about what is it that you need for your business at this point in time, in your journey because that's going to look different for each and every one of us. So, I share all that to say if you haven't checked out some of these episodes I'm going to share with you, make sure you do because I'm going to go behind the scenes and share some data with you around the podcast and the last year. And also we'll talk about some things that are brewing for Season Two.

[00:05:29]

So, let's start with downloads because everyone's like, oh how many downloads? So, there's been over 2000 in the last year and I am hosting my podcast on Libsyn. So, if anyone is asking about podcast platforms I find it super easy to use. It works for me. There are other ones out there. Again, find what works for you. But Libsyn does work for me. So, there are unique downloads and then there are these IAB downloads. And so IAB downloads really refer more so to Interactive Advertising Bureau. So, that's what IAB means. And we can just get a little techie for a moment. It's delving into what that download metric means. So, Libsyn has what's called unique downloads. And so, their algorithm accounts for two important pieces of information like the IP address and the user agent.

[00:06:50]

So Apple Podcasts, Chrome, all of those different things. Whereas the IAB, again, Interactive Advertising Bureau, utilize the filters I just shared that Libsyn uses, but they also add in three, really applying an IP address blacklist. So, that kind of removes downloads that come from IP addresses that have been blacklisted for behavior not consistent with an actual website visit or a podcast listener. So like cache servers, things of that sort. Applying user agent blacklists. So, things that they know are bots, computer programs that operate as an agent for a user, or something else to kind of simulate what they call human activity. And so, they also look at one other thing, and that ensures that at least one minute of playable content is downloaded.

[00:07:48]

So, those are things that go into the stats behind the number of downloads. So again, the numbers I'm using today are the IAB numbers, which in many cases, if your podcast platform offers those they'll be fewer than your podcast platform's numbers just because of the additional filters that are utilized. So, it just allows for a more consistent metric across different platforms. So, let's talk about countries. What were the top five countries that listen to Collab with Kiva? Well, number one is the US, which is probably not surprising being that's where I'm based. Number two, our neighbor to the north, Canada. Number three was a surprise for me. I, to this day, do not know how or why or where that comes from, but its Slovenia. So, shout out to all women business owners in Slovenia. You all have my heart and thanks for rocking with me. Number four is South Africa. And number five is the United Kingdom. I will say that Ireland is a close, off by two, and its sixth place.

[00:09:21]

So, those are the top countries by downloads, which I thought was really interesting. So obviously, when looking at the platforms that most people listen to, there was probably no surprise that Apple Podcasts would be at the top of that list. But Google podcasts do really well. Spotify is starting to trend up. That didn't surprise me so I'm just going to move on from that one. So, now let's talk about the top five episodes. And I'll admit before exporting the data from Libysn I assumed that the top five would be five episodes that were super close to the beginning of when the podcast started. Just because of longevity and more opportunity and some of those first episodes, I did repeat. And so, that was my thought process and I was not right.

[00:10:45]

So, the top episode over the last year is Visualize Your Data Story with Dashboards. I'm going to put links to all the top five episodes so you can go check them out. But visualizing your data story with dashboards, obviously, people were really big on understanding data visualization, and that's super exciting for me. So that was the top episode, almost double the downloads of the next episode. That's how top it was. Now the remainder of them is very close in downloads. So, the second one is, and I believe this was the original one. I had to look at the release dates, so checking out my spreadsheets. So, Using ClickUp for productivity, Ecosystem in Brain Building with Meagan of New Leaf Digital. And if you've listened to that episode or the re-aired one, which took place on June 30th of this year, you know that Meagan is a colleague of mine. She is brilliant. And she just kicks butt in ClickUp.

[00:12:17]

And so, that episode doesn't surprise me because obviously if I compare that to my search console results from Google a lot of traffic is driven to my website based on the CEO of ClickUp and ClickUp for productivity. So, that does not surprise me that that episode is number two. I actually thought it would be number one before downloading the stats. The third episode is actually the second one that I released with my friend Karen Merritt of Karen's Essentials. It's called Lessons Learned from Being an Over 50 Beauty Entrepreneur. And that's another one that didn't necessarily surprise me because going back to my SEO results, I see that women over 50 are a search topic. Entrepreneur women over 50, things of that sort. And let's be honest, Forbes and quite a few other entities have focused on the entrepreneurial success of women over 50.

[00:13:31]

Hey, Bobby Brown is having the renaissance of her life, and it's sometimes scary to think back like, wow, I remember talking about her in my late teens when her makeup was coming out. But now that her NDA has ended and she has come out with her makeup again and really focusing on older women and makeup it's been amazing to see her transformation and her kind of star just rise back up again to the top of the makeup world. So, my friend Karen, as I said, is the owner of Karen's Essentials, and she focuses on body products, bath and body products. And really, she does great YouTube videos, especially for women of color in terms of makeup. I learn a lot.

[00:14:26]

So, the fourth episode is Measure to March, which was a series I did. And it was the fourth one, which was the Google Analytics report so what they tell you about your business. So that one was a slight surprise because the visualizing your data story, which was the first episode I shared, was a part of that but I don't think I called it a part of Measure to March. So, that was somewhat surprising, but not completely surprising for me. And Google Analytics reports obviously, as we approach the cut-off date for Universal Analytics, July 1st, 2023, all of the things that something that drives SEO is on.

[00:15:26]

So, the fifth episode is actually a tie. It's a tie between Bras and Business, The Connection. So, if you haven't checked that one out, you really have to. And it really does relate to a bra shopping experience and things I could equate to business. Based on my SEO though I think people are looking for a few different things when they possibly are Googling that one. And then the one that it's tied with is The Visibility Factor, how to play bigger and achieve your goals. And that's an episode with a friend of mine, Sue Barber, and it's based on her book, The Visibility Factor, and she really dives into how pretty much entrepreneurs, those that are working inside of a company and the rest of us can utilize visibility to our advantage and how to build our visibility.

[00:16:40]

And so, those are the top five, technically six because of the tie episodes over the last year. And that was pretty interesting to look back over. So, moving forward with some of those details it's always just interesting to me to just take a step back in order to look forward. So, as I look ahead to the rest of Season Two, I already have some amazing guests who are already booked and we are just waiting to record their episode. We are going to talk about succession planning because, hey, you're building something awesome. We need to make sure that there's a plan in place in case something were to happen to you. Also, we are going to talk about women collectives, I don't really want to call them masterminds. I'm going to use the word collective, but groups to inspire and encourage each other.

[00:17:53]

We are also going to dive into the topic of small businesses. It will be a series on how they can utilize business intelligence, also known as BI, in order to harness the data that your businesses have in order for you to grow sustainably and smartly. And there are a few other surprises that are forthcoming. So, I'm excited about Season Two. I don't know if I've thought about what it takes to do a podcast and record episodes, especially in a format in which not all of your episodes are guests. Some of them are just me. So, setting aside the necessary time to think, plan, record, and make these things happen has definitely been a learning curve that I have welcomed and I am so thankful for it.

[00:19:03]

I want to shout out Andrejs, who does my podcast editing. He is absolutely amazing. He gets me, which is super important. So, when I send him two files instead of one because my phone rang or I didn't have do not disturb on my computer. And he just lovingly splices those things together and still makes it feel seamless. I am so thankful for him and the work that he does and again that he gets me. We have this unique Google Drive folder, so there is some automation in there so I upload into the raw folder. It sends him an email that it's there. He uploads into the edited folder, it sends me an email. So, it's a pretty cool relationship that we have that's working very well. So, I am just so thankful for him and he lets me know when he's going on holiday, which puts me into get-or-done mode because I know that I have to batch record several episodes, which is something I hope to do more in the future.

[00:20:21]

In addition to that, just another shout out to Susanne on my team who just keeps the ball rolling. Make sure all of the documents are in place for the interviews and keep me accountable about the graphics and all of the things. So, I am just grateful for Susanne and also Faye, who does the graphics. She's just a gem and turns everything around. All of them turn everything around super quickly. You noticed I did not include myself in that. So, I am thankful, though, for just all three of them. And yeah, I'm just excited. I'm thankful for previous team members who were involved in the beginning but are no longer part of the journey. But I appreciate their efforts in getting this baby birthed and out into the world and I'm excited for Season Two. If there's anything in particular that you want to have an episode on, or a series on, feel free to reach out to me and send me a message. You can always find me on social or you can find me via my website. Send us a message. We want to know and give you more of what you want, but also more of what we hope that you need.

[00:21:46]

So, thank you for tuning into this episode. We are excited about what is to come and I am grateful for each of you who have taken the time over the last year to listen, share, and send me beautiful feedback on how an episode has touched you, you were able to relate, and you pulled something out of. I am grateful. Time is a precious commodity and I am thankful that you would take the time to listen to me, my guests, and what we have to share. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And tune in for the next episode. Bye.

[00:22:30]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab with Kiva. Each of us has a different path and I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. If you're a small business owner ready to start making data-driven decisions in your business, and you know that without the data, you're really just guessing. Make sure to visit my website the516collaborative.com and let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.