103: The Power of Turning Your Blog Into a Podcast with Amy Dempster

Written By Britany Felix
 
103 Amy Dempster Podcasting for Coaches Britany Felix.png

What’s This Episode About?

Amy Dempster helps in understanding the healing power of the earth. What began as openly sharing her spiritual journey on her popular blog Following Hawks, has become a resource for others wanting to learn how to communicate with nature and share their own unique healing gifts with the earth.

Together with the Spirits of the Land in the mountains of northwest Montana, she tends seven portals on the land where she lives, along with any grid keeping work she is assigned. She also leads the Earth Tenders Academy, an immersive online journey to help others re-establish their connection with their ancient ancestors, learn to communicate with the seen and unseen forces in their environment, and respectfully offer their healing energy to places in need.

Amy and I worked together on the launch of her podcast, The Earth Keepers, and we’ve been working together ever since.

In this episode, Amy shares why she decided to turn her blog into a podcast and what that process has looked like for her, why she feels the podcast has had more of an impact than her blog has, how the podcast leads people to join her Earth Tenders Academy, how her podcast has helped her become more comfortable being vocal in a field that faces a lot of stigmatism and mocking, how thinking she had to do interviews on her podcast prevented her from starting one sooner, and more.

Transcript

Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 103 of podcasting for coaches. My guest this week is Amy Dempster, and Amy helps in understanding the healing power of the earth. What began as openly sharing her spiritual journey on her popular blog following hawks has become a resource for others wanting to learn how to communicate with nature, and share their own unique healing gifts with the earth. Together with the spirits of the land and the mountains of northwest Montana, she tends seven portals on the land where she lives, along with any grid keeping work she has assigned. She also leads the earth tenders Academy and immersive online journey to help others reestablish their connection with their ancient ancestors learn to communicate with the seen and unseen forces in their environment, and respectfully offer their healing energy to places a need. And lastly, Amy is also the host of the earthkeepers podcast. Now that's Amy's official bio. The unofficial information I would like to provide is that Amy is also a client of mine. We work together on the launch of her podcast and have been working together ever since to put out regular episodes for her show. Amy is such a wonderful soul and spirit and person and I know that you're just absolutely going to fall in love with her in this episode. And some of the things that we talk about in this fairly short interview, which is surprising we cover so much is how Amy actually turned her blog content into a podcast. Why she says that the podcast has been more impactful for her business than the blog was how the podcast is leading people into her earthbenders Academy, how her podcast has helped her become more comfortable with being vulnerable and engaging with people in conversation outside of the podcast. And how thinking she had to do interviews for her podcast actually stopped her from starting one for a while until she finally realized it's her show and she can do whatever she wants, including only solo episodes. Alright, let's go ahead and jump right on into this interview with Amy Dempster. Amy, thank you so much for being on the show. I am so excited to talk to you. We were talking in our little pre interview chit chat about how you and I have been working together for a while now. But we haven't actually like talked one on one in so long, because we have this good system down where you send me the things I need. And I get them back to you. And we communicate via email. So this is our first like, you know, IRL conversation in a while.

 

03:09

It's so true. Thank you for having me. But I'm sure you probably feel like you know me because you listen to my podcast every single day. You hear me all the time.

 

03:20

I

 

03:21

chatted a while?

 

03:23

Well, I really, really appreciate you being on the show. Because I think at least from my perspective, your podcast seems to be a really great tool for your business. So for the people listening, do you mind just kind of catching them up on how the podcast fits into your overall business? And, and really how it ties into everything that you're doing?

 

03:42

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, because I started as a blogger, even, you know, before I had a business, it was really just a space where I was sharing my personal experiences, my spiritual journey. And so I was just blogging for quite a few years. And really, you know, last year, I was really kind of getting the prompting and the encouragement to shift to podcasting. And, you know, initially I thought, Oh, my gosh, one more thing to do, you know, every week, or like, 12 more things to do, right. And so I kind of put it off for a while. And then when I did it, I was just really blown away at the reception, and really the shift of how people can connect with me in a totally different way. You know, I mean, I can write on a blog all the time, but sometimes, I mean, I was writing, you know, 567 1000 word blog posts in order to explain some times really complicated concepts. So I think, you know, that was maybe the same time commitment as somebody listening to a podcast, but when they're listening, they can do it while they're in the car, they're out for a walk, or they're doing something else. And they also really, I think, get a feel of you know, me and my vibe and you know, how I how I talk and how I teach before Potentially deciding to work with me on another level, right. And one thing that I love that you have sort of brought up, but when we first contacted,

 

05:10

you have this idea of using your existing content, your existing blog posts and turning them into podcast episodes, which is what I think a lot of people don't necessarily think about. I mean, that's that content repurposing that we hear all the time. But you have this catalog, basically. And so you started to work through that. So what was that process? Like for you taking something from a blog post and putting it into a podcast episode?

 

05:34

It really was kind of an aha moment. For me, I'm like, okay, don't have to recreate the wheel, I don't have to make you know, new and different things necessarily. But that I have so much, you know, already available to me. And so, for me, my episodes, I write them out, I script them. And so really was an easy transition to take a blog post, and then just make some edits to it. So it sounds like I would talk, right, maybe you know, how I would write, which is similar, but has some differences. But it's been a really good experience for me, partially, because I've been able to update some of these things. So many of them are personal stories. So as I pull something up from three years ago, I might be able to elaborate or add to it or say, since then, this has also happened. And so that's been a really good experience. And, you know, I think I have this preconceived notion that, well, people aren't just going to want me to tell the same story. they've read them. All right. People who are you know, I've been following for years or whatever. Like, they're, they don't want to hear these stories again. And I'm shocked at the number of people who either they never read it on the blog post, or they read it, and they've completely forgot it. Or I mean, I forgotten I, there's a blog post I've pulled up and I thought, I don't even remember writing this, or I didn't remember. Certainly nobody else is going to remember it. And so it's new, and it's fresh in it. And it feels good when I'm able to kind of repurpose it in that way. Right? And so

 

07:01

you use your podcast to I mean, obviously, get this information out into more people and connect with your audience. But in a much more practical sense. You use it to help promote your earthbenders Academy.

 

07:13

Yeah, absolutely.

 

07:15

So what has that process been like for you using the podcast in that way? To put people into something that is a paid offering?

 

07:22

Yeah, I mean, I don't have super hard and fast, you know, statistics on how many people are listening and then joining, but just, you know, anecdotally, I've gotten, you know, messages or DMS, from people that say, Well, I binged your whole podcast, might as well buy your course now. I'm certainly I think, again, it's that people are able to feel into my teaching style, and just my overall kind of vibe, and decide, Oh, I like the way she explains these things, or I, you know, I feel good about her as a teacher. And so it definitely does, I feel like it kind of warms people up, or it gets them comfortable with me faster. And they have a good idea of what they're going to get in the course.

 

08:09

Right? Absolutely. And one other thing that I want to make sure that we hit here, before we wrap up, is that the work that you do can sometimes be very heavily mocked, scrutinized all of those things. And I know, for at least one person listening right now, they do similar work, or in a field that also gets mocked and criticized and all of these things, and they're afraid they're afraid to put themselves out there so publicly, because then they know that they're, they might they think they might get a lot of negativity back. And especially for people in these fields that can really have a deep impact on their life, how they operate, how they run their business, like having so much negativity coming at them. So did you personally go through anything like that? Or have you experienced that with any other people? And kind of what would be your advice for somebody who is feeling the call to start a podcast, but is a little bit worried about any backlash that they might have to deal with?

 

09:11

Yeah, yeah. I mean, how it's a process and you know, I think a lot of us, especially in the spiritual space, like this, the reality is, is that a lot of that fear is coming from other lives, right, where we were killed or persecuted or, you know, tortured, or, or whatever. And so it feels very real to us. We have, you know, these memories held in our bodies. So it's scary. And never mind just the day to day, you know, I don't know if my spouse will believe me, or my parents will have this and those types of things. So, it's definitely you know, for most people, and certainly for me a process of kind of sharing one step and one little, you know, share one thing that feels okay to put it out there and then share something that feels a little bit scarier, and then a little bit scarier. And for me, I Haven't had an you know, any really significant backlash, there's always, you know, some version of online trolls or right you know, whatever else out there and I do a pretty good job of just deleting comments. Moving on, you know, people are really mean. But from the very beginning, when I first started blogging and I, I was still kind of in that space of, I don't know how people are going to respond to this. For the most part, I was getting really, really great feedback from people saying, I'm having these same experiences. And this is the only place I found where somebody is talking about it. But you know, thank you so much for sharing. So that's to me far outweighed the other comments I was getting, and so it's really been my policy since day one, you know, like, there's no room for, you know, mocking every anyone telling them they're wrong, or telling them that their experience isn't valid, because everybody is on their own personal journey. And, you know, we need the space, and we need the safe space to be able to explore that. And so that's really how I have approached the experience. And like I said, it's been overwhelmingly positive compared to the negative but yeah, I mean, all the time, there's things I, I've almost gotten to a point where nothing makes me nervous to share, right? Still, I mean, these are things that happened in my own personal experience. And so sometimes, you know, I'm just like, oh, people are really gonna think I've gone off the deep end now, like, this is really, I've detached from reality. But it's not people are, you know, other people are having these experiences too. And they want a place to be able to share and learn and feel comfortable about it as they're on their own awakening journey. So, yeah, I definitely encourage people to share a bit at a time, you don't have to, you know, put it all out there at once. But you know, start with one person or start with one Instagram post, or, you know, wherever you feel comfortable. And, you know, it becomes a muscle that you kind of have worked up over time.

 

11:59

Right? And now, would you say, because I know you were blogging for a while before you started the podcast, but do you feel that the podcast has helped you become any more comfortable with putting this information out there?

 

12:09

I think so. I mean, I, again, speaking it out loud is a very different experience than, you know, writing it and hitting post. And yeah, there's been a couple of them, even ones that were written on my blog that then when I repurposed as the podcast that I thought, I'm going to share this again. So yeah, it can be a little nerve wracking, but it does I mean, it definitely, you know, when you're recording a podcast, you're sitting in your room all by yourself talking into a microphone, but it helps with that practice of then when you're having a, you know, engagement with somebody online somewhere or in person, feeling like I have talked about this, I've felt the energy of having this conversation, even if it was just by myself to a microphone. Right. And so, yeah, it helps work through some of those things.

 

13:00

Awesome. And one other thing, before we wrap up, so kind of the final thing I want to bring up is that I feel like a lot of people think they have to do interviews, because that's how a lot of podcasts are, they're very heavily interview based. And you have done all solo episodes so far, which I love. And I want you to kind of talk about that, if you can, what that process was like for you deciding, you know, what your show was actually going to look like? Because I think there are a lot of people who maybe don't want to do the interview side of things, and they're a little bit worried that they're not going to have enough content to do solo, they're not engaging enough. It's not what they should be doing. So from your perspective, what has that looked like doing these solo episodes?

 

13:43

Yeah, it's really funny. And I think that's part of what kept me from doing it for so long. Because I just thought, I don't have the time to be finding people and doing setting up interviews and doing all of these things. It just, it felt like, you know, too much. And so it really was that kind of lightbulb moment where I thought, Oh, actually, I don't have I don't have to do it, like everybody else is doing it, I can I can actually do whatever I want. And so yeah, it really was just kind of an idea of repurposing my existing blogs. And sometimes I write new ones, or I kind of Frankenstein them together, you know, half the old one and, you know, new information added on. But yeah, I mean, I will say every week, I feel like I have nothing to talk. I don't know what I'm gonna do talking about next week. And then magically, on Mondays when I'm working on it, I just default all falls into place and I know what the subject is and I know what I want to do and I sit down and work on it. So I my process is a little different each time if I have a really solid You know, this week is based on a blog episode. Then I just start by copying and pasting it didn't do it Google dog and I reread it because a lot of them were written a handful of years ago and just start cleaning it all up. So I don't worry about the intro or any of the rest Kind of how I'm going to frame it. I just work on getting that to where I want it. And usually as I do that, then it comes through to me. Okay, how am I going to introduce this? Or what other information do I need to add to it? So that's usually what I do. I mean, I am not going to have old blog posts forever, start running out here, at some point. But yeah, it does also give time again, because I'm so much sharing my own personal stories, you know, every single week, I don't have, you know, some super exciting, interesting thing that happens to me during the week. You know, I do, but I don't have the perspective yet. So sometimes I just need the time for things to happen and play out and for me to have the perspective of what happened. And so that's even part of what's been good about going back to older blog posts is that now I have even more perspective than I did when I wrote it. So

 

15:54

yeah, I was gonna say some of your stories that you share are years in the making, because the work that you do is not always immediate, you know what I mean? Like it's, it takes time to, to do the healing work and the energy work that you do. And so it makes sense to me that going back these years later, and kind of reflecting offers a different perspective, and it did in the moment.

 

16:13

Yeah, absolutely. And it's on top of that, there's a lot of other things kind of with this energy piece that, that make it a little different. And what I've really come to realize, especially for, you know, what I'm doing is, I'm really transmitting a frequency, more than, you know, the stories are kind of there to hold your attention. And hopefully, you learned something. But it's really about, you know, transmitting a frequency through that space. And so since I have started, you know, deliberately doing that, and since the first of this year, I always share on the first episode of each month, an actual transmission in the actual healing. And it's amazing the feedback that I'm getting from people. So you know, I kind of joke that I could probably open the podcast and sit there, you know, in silence for a minute, that exact same thing would happen, right? But there's, you know, there's words and stories layered on top for, you know, people to learn or be entertained, as well. And so I try to keep that in mind that it has a deeper purpose other than just an entertaining story.

 

17:14

It does. And one thing I actually haven't shared with you, it's one of those things where like, I keep meaning to tell you every time this happens, and then I don't because by the time I finished the episode my minds in another place when I'm like emailing you to let you know it's finished. But there are occasional instances in some of your episodes, where visually, I can see something. So like in the audio bar, like you can see right now in the program of recording. And when we're talking like there's a volume meter that's happening, registering that there's a sound. Well, when I'm editing your episodes sometimes, and I have a very fine tuned ear, like this is why I do this. I can see visually that there is a sound registering, but there's no audible sound happening.

 

17:54

Oh my gosh, I love it. Thank you for telling me that, you know it's happening. Right? I can feel it, but it's cool that the equipment's picking it up.

 

18:05

Yep, yep. And it's not every time it's every so often. And in those moments is like, the, you know, analytical editor, part of my mind is like, oh, there's a background noise I missed, I gotta go get that and remove it. And then I'm like, no, that's not what's happening here. Just let it happen.

 

18:21

That's Amy sending energy. Right.

 

18:24

Alright, well, Amy, thank you so much for being on the show. I always, always love chatting with you. And if people want to learn more, and check out your show, there will of course be linked in the show notes. But why don't you go ahead and share that information now?

 

18:37

Yeah, my show is the earthkeepers podcast, which you can find on my website at following hawks just like the bird following hopstop. calm. Perfect. Amy,

 

18:48

thank you so much.

 

18:49

Thanks for having me.

 

18:53

And that wraps up my interview with Amy. I hope that you found her just as lovely and charming as I do. She is such a joy to work with. And I'm sure that her clients feel the same way about her. If you were interested in learning more about anything that we talked about in the show, just go to podcasting for coaches. com, click on the episodes tab in the main menu and go to episode number 103. Now really, really quickly, before we hop off here, I want to let you know that there are some major changes happening with both Apple podcasts, but especially Lipson. So if you host your podcast with Lipson, major, major, major changes coming that you will see very soon. And I'm actually going to be talking about these things in the upcoming edition of the podcasting insiders club. So the podcasting insiders club is my paid monthly newsletter. So for just $5 a month you get a monthly newsletter that includes all of the latest podcast platform policy changes, industry insights, major updates, including the ones I'm gonna be talking about about Lipson and Apple podcast, new platforms that you can submit your Two new websites and tools that are coming out to help you grow and market your podcast, all kinds of things. I spend hours and hours every single month researching all of this information and compiling it into one email for you so that you don't have to spend all of that time researching things that honestly you really probably don't care about. So it is only the relevant updates that I think you need as a coach or consultant to as podcasting as part of your business. To learn more information, again, just go to podcasting for coaches COMM And you will see information for the insider's club all over the website. Can't miss it. All right, that was gonna wrap it up for this week and I will see you back here next week. Have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches calm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world.

 
Britany Felix
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