54: Pushing Past Impostor Syndrome in Podcasting with Amanda Kingsmith

Written By Britany Felix
 
54 Amanda Kingsmith Podcasting for Coaches Britany Felix.png
What's this episode about_ (1).png
 

"There’s always space for your voice, even in a growing industry like podcasting."

Amanda Kingsmith is an RYT-200 yoga teacher and yoga business consultant based out of western Canada, although she spends much of her time traveling the world with her partner, Ryan. Amanda came to yoga from a marketing & business background, and has a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in marketing from the University of Calgary.

Amanda combined her love of business with her love of yoga by starting M.B.Om, a podcast and online business focusing on the business side of yoga. She works with yoga teachers to help them create careers they love that are both sustainable long-term and financially abundant!

She is also the co-host of a popular travel podcast and blog called The World Wanderers and she works as an advisor for a growing apprenticeship program called Praxis. When she's not teaching or practicing yoga, you can find Amanda exploring all corners of the world, hiking, reading, writing, or enjoying a cup of tea!

In this episode, Amanda discusses how her podcast was borne out of her struggles finding paying jobs as a budding yoga teacher, why she experienced fear around starting her podcast even though she was already an experienced podcaster at the time, how the podcast led to the creation of her business, why she’s okay with knowing her podcast isn’t for everyone, the main things that contribute to her audience growth in a very niche market, the lessons she learned from her first podcast that she carried into the launch of M.B.Om, and more!

Blog Post Headings.png
 

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 comm to learn more. Amanda king-smith is a our yT 200 yoga teacher and yoga business consultant based out of Western Canada. Although she spends much of her time traveling the world with her partner Ryan, Amanda came to yoga from a marketing and business background and has a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in marketing from the University of Calgary. Amanda combined her love of business with her love of yoga by starting MBM, a podcast and online business focusing on the business side of yoga. She works with yoga teachers to help them create careers they love that are both sustainable, long term and financially abundant. She is also the co host of popular travel podcast in blog called the world wanderers, and works as an advisor for a growing apprenticeship program called praxis. When she's not teaching or practicing yoga, you can find Amanda exploring all corners of the world hiking, reading, writing or enjoying a cup of tea. So Amanda, thank you so much for being on the show. I just read your official bio, part of my little side bio is that you and I have been connected for a few years now I think like three years now, you and Ryan, both were originally a guest on my travel podcast A long time ago, which you can still listen to. And I'll have links to the episodes with Amanda and Ryan in the show notes. And you and I haven't connected on Facebook. And I've been following your travels for a really long time. So I'm excited to chat with you again. And why don't you just kind of start off by giving us a little bit of a background on the origin story of nbome because it came much later than your travel podcast.

 

02:14

Yeah, for sure. First off, thank you for having me here. I think it's really cool to be connecting about something a little bit different after, you know, we've both watched our journeys evolve from this base of travel. So it's cool that you know, you've had it in the direction that you have. And I've kind of built this yoga business. And now that kind of comes together for us to chat once again. So that's really awesome. The origin story of nbome is I got my yoga teacher training pretty much exactly like four years ago, is the spring of 2015. And I traveled over to Chengdu Bali to do a 30 day intensive to become a 200, our registered yoga teacher. And the program was amazing. I learned a ton. I came back to Canada and I was like, Okay, how do I start teaching yoga? And I started flipping through my notes. And I was like, ah, they didn't really like teach me how to actually get a job in a studio or approaches studio owner. I know what to do what I in the studio, but like how do I actually get there. And at that point, I had been living in canmore, Banff, Alberta, like right near Banff National Park and I had been working a little lemon. I was a studio manager at a yoga studio. So I was like quite connected. And I was still struggling with this. I had people who were like, Oh, I know you did your training, like do you want to teach? And I was like, Okay, yeah. But if you can't like make a living out of this by people just like asking me to do this, right. I'm brand new at it. Like I need to be able to put myself out there and find other jobs and gigs and learn how to do it in kind of a it's like a professional way. And kind of right around the time that I was going through this. My boyfriend accepted a job in Atlanta, Georgia, and we kind of uprooted our lives and moved to the southern US, which I literally knew nobody who lived in Atlanta like other than Him and He was I

 

04:07

don't know anyone who lives in Atlanta.

 

04:09

Yeah, it's just like, so far from my life. Like I grew up in Western Canada. And I was like, oh, God with the wind.

 

04:19

I knew nothing about Georgia.

 

04:21

And so I moved there knowing nobody and was like, Okay, great. So I was basically only getting teaching opportunities because I was super connected before. And now I know nobody, like where do I start? And I started drawing from my business background. Like I knew how to make a resume. I knew how to do an interview. Well, I knew how to talk to people professionally. I knew how to send good emails and I was like, Okay, well, I guess I'll just draw from what I know, to try and get these teaching jobs. And I felt like as I was going through the process of starting to teach more, I was learning a little bit about these like weird idios synchronicities of the yoga industry where it's like, okay, like, we don't really do an interview, we do a teaching demo that was like, Okay, Okay, got it. Understand that now I know. And as I was going through this, my partner Ryan was like, if you don't know how to do this, and you weren't taught how to do it in your teacher training, you can't be alone. There must be other yoga teachers out there, who were also like, How the hell do I get a teaching gig? Like, how do I become a yoga teacher? And I was like, Yeah, I think you're right. Like, that must be true. And he's like, you should start a podcast on it. And I had all these, like, fears and doubts. I was like, I've only been teaching for like six months, and we're really new yoga teacher who might have started yoga podcast. And he was like, Well, why don't you just kind of frame it from the perspective of like, talking to people who are more senior than yourself, and interviewing them and learning from them? I was like, Oh, that's a really great idea. And the light bulb kind of just clicked. And I never really, like questioned the idea or doubted it. I was just like, yes, that's perfect. Like, that's such a good idea. And so I just dove into it. I didn't have a work visa at the time. So I was working entirely remotely. And at that point, I had a lot less remote work than I do now. Because I was just starting with it. So I had time, I had the ability to kind of create this thing. And so I just dove into this project. I started with yoga teachers that I knew who I thought were doing a really great job and you were, you know, popular in their communities and teaching great classes and had websites and were getting teaching gigs and making money doing it. Then my network just grew from there. And I think MBM just turned three. Amazing. I feel like it's weird to say that your podcast had a birthday, but I feel like it's such an entity to me. I'm sure you can relate to this.

 

06:50

Yeah, my my podcast just turned one last week, I think and I put a post on Instagram like happy podcast birthday.

 

06:58

I love Yeah. Yeah, I did the same thing. Like it's February 1. And so 20 February 1 2019 was MBM three year podcast birthday. And, yeah, I've put out I think like 150 episodes have interviewed so many yoga teachers now. And it's really evolved into something bigger than I think I ever could have imagined. Like, I basically just wanted to learn Africa yoga, teaching jobs. And it's evolved to like teaching other people these things that I like, really feel like I understand quite well now. So yeah, that's the story behind that.

 

07:32

So a couple of things that I want to point out there is that I love that even like when I guess I shouldn't say I love it, because it's kind of unfortunate that you experienced this. But you already had this podcast that you had been doing with Ryan, the world wanders for a while you were experienced with podcasts. And you still had some fear about starting this other podcast because it was on this like new topic. And who am I you had all these, you know, imposter syndrome and self limiting beliefs and all of these things around it, even though you already had the previous podcast experience. So that just goes to show anyone who is listening to this who is intimidated by the idea of starting a podcast, it's not necessarily the podcast that you're afraid of? Yes, the technology may seem overwhelming. But if you really take a look deeper down at what is holding you back from starting a podcast, you're gonna find that it's honestly probably more related to imposter syndrome and self limiting beliefs. So Amanda, thank you for persevering through that and pushing through and starting and beyond because now it seems like it has created a business for you. You've started with just being this yoga teacher who's going through it yourself struggling through kind of stumbling to find the answers and then thinking, Oh, well, other people must too. So maybe I'll do this podcast. And then it has evolved, like you said to something so much bigger. Do you mind giving us a breakdown on what that looks like for you now and what has happened as a result of starting that podcast or years ago?

 

08:54

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the imposter syndrome is real. Like, if anyone's experiencing that. You just got to push through. I think anytime we put something out to the world that makes us kind of vulnerable. We feel it but just got to do it. There's always space for your voice, even in a growing industry like podcasting.

 

09:13

Yes, yeah. So

 

09:14

MBM now, is still really centered around the podcast. But basically, I was doing it for a while. And I was working with a business coach to help me kind of like build my online stuff. And it was very much like the side gig and I was kind of focusing on how I could monetize the world wanders and he was like, well, isn't there opportunity with nbome to kind of like, offer services and stuff and I was like, Well, you know, on the baby yoga teacher, like who wants to learn from me? Again, like kind of this imposter syndrome, like Who am I to do this, like next step with this. And you know, my business coach really helped me work through that and helped me understand that, even though I hadn't been teaching for 1520 years that I had something to offer people and especially newer yoga teachers be cuz i was much closer to the life stage that they were at or like the career stage that they were at so it's like i really understood what it was like to be in a position where you have no idea how to do this and so i started by building a couple of online courses and i really built those kind of more about teaching like i was very much focused on like okay how can i like be as like a professional yoga teacher like all yoga teachers are professional but career yoga teacher like how can i make this my main thing that i do then i kind of dove into like continuing the podcast learning more and i recognize that yes i love teaching yoga it's something that i think i have a strength then but i also have this really unique brain where like i understand yoga and i also understand business and i have virtually no issues mixing them together which is something that a lot of yoga teachers struggle with and so i started a private facebook community and i built out another course that's kind of the signature course of nbome which is called yoga business boot camp which really helps people create grow and expand their yoga businesses so it takes them right from intention setting and creating goals for the yoga business all the way through to like building out a sales funnel and i started using nbome kind of as my sales funnel so it's like my audience comes in it's totally free and then i've got a couple different course options from you know lower price point to a little higher price point and then from there i offer one on ones if somebody wants to work with me further so kind of like consulting coaching packages and then something that i'm doing this year is actually hosting a retreat so

 

11:40

yay yeah hoping you're gonna get to that at some point because i think you would really shine and do very well with that

 

11:46

thank you yeah

 

11:47

i mean i love travel as you know like i'm super good at organization like i'm kind of type a ocd i don't know i say i'm kind of type a i'm like definitely

 

11:55

type

 

11:56

a you know kind of about it

 

11:58

yeah yeah

 

11:59

so like the planning organization stuff is something that i really thrive in something that i really like doing i love planning stuff and i'm co leading with somebody who's very much like like minded with that and we've created it as a space for yoga teachers wellness professionals to come on like a week long adventure and not only relax and rejuvenate and chill in the sun which is amazing but also get to explore that area of costa rica and then also dive into their yoga business so kind of blended like all of my loves into one place so that's sort of how i've built out the business portion of mbm

 

12:36

that's amazing and i'm seeing so many similarities between you and myself because when you were talking about how you have this unique take on yoga because you have the yoga mindset but you also have this business mindset i love that because you're right those are two completely kind of different mindsets like yoga seems very feminine business is more masculine and there are a lot of people who struggle putting those two things together because businesses analytical and there's a lot of systems and you kind of have to be type a for that and i would venture to guess that a lot of yoga teachers are not another there's anything wrong with that it's just a different personality type so i love that you recognized that you have this unique skill set of being able to blend those two together and that that has created this for you and i also love that you're venturing into retreats because that's where i am heading eventually as well oh for this specific reasons i love to plan things out obviously i love to travel and you know i want to get to connect with people one on one they're gonna eventually be i'll probably introduce them in 2020 i don't remember what you're wearing right now and they're going to be essentially more kind of like workshops i guess but we're gonna you know i'll run a big airbnb for us and we'll do their podcast from start to finish and like a weekend so it's not this long drawn out process so it's so funny that we kind of have similar personality types and we're like heading in the same direction with our offerings because i just did a course you know and i have some like one on one work that i do and eventually that's where i would like to get to are these like retreat workshops so

 

14:07

yeah that's amazing it's like it's like we started from this similar place of travel and it's taken us on these like different paths but i feel like they're like parallel to each other

 

14:17

right right i love it okay so with creating this business site around the podcast i know that you said that it's the funnel so they come to you how are you finding your audience usually or are they finding you what are your marketing tactics for that because yes there are a lot of yoga teachers but yoga teachers who want to learn about the business side of things i mean i have to think that's still a fairly niche audience

 

14:40

yeah it's 100% a niche audience and i don't get like too much actual pushback in terms of like angry hate letters or negative podcast reviews or anything like that but i'm pretty certain that there's people who are just like before even listening they're like this isn't for me like i don't want yoga to be a business Don't want to turn my yoga into a business, which is totally fine. Like, it's not going to be for everyone, I'm not going to be for everyone. And I'm totally fine with that. I really did go into it being like, not about the podcast downloads and just being like, I want to create like quality over quantity. And that's in terms of the people listening to like, I would rather have a smaller group of people who really love and are interested in growing and learning about business, as opposed to like having every single yoga teacher out there listening and having a bunch of people who are like, this is a load of crap. I don't I don't like this. It has been really cool watching it grow, though. So as much as I don't focus on downloads, I also obviously do look at them. Because I think that it's important to know, like, is this actually growing? Is it heading like, somewhere positive, and I've seen like exponential growth over the last couple of years. And it seems like more and more people are kind of thinking about like, okay, I can mix spirituality with business. And I can, you know, teach yoga and also get paid for it. Like I can blend these things. And they're starting to kind of like, grasp their minds around these concepts, which is really, really cool. But I guess to more directly answer your question, I think that some of the biggest ways that I've been able to grow my audience are, I mean, I'm in the top 200 for careers on iTunes, which I think really helps me.

 

16:19

Yeah, that's amazing.

 

16:20

Thank you. Yeah, at the first time I saw I was like, What is the job? iTunes is clearly messed up. This is not real. So I think that's been really helpful. For some reason, I've been in the new and noteworthy for like yours. Show for the friends. I don't know what iTunes glitches but I'll take it, I feel like it's helping me. So I think that that's helped my organic traffic, I noticed a big jump when I created my facebook group. I think that people really like having that kind of private engagement, I think that they're able to ask more questions, I think that they're able to also sit back and observe and actually see, like, what my business and my brand is about and how, you know, I'm very conscious of the fact that, you know, the business that works for one industry doesn't necessarily work for the yoga industry. I'm very aware that you know, of the principles of yoga, the history of yoga, where yoga came from, and I feel like because of that, I'm able to kind of, I guess, teach people business in a way that they're able to relate to a little bit more, so they don't feel like okay, it's like super greasy and slimy. And I have to go out and like, sell, sell sell all the time, right. So I think that people being able to kind of actually interact with me in that way, I think makes them more open to the conversation, which then means like, they're listening more, and they're engaging more. So Facebook group has been really amazing. I've also been a guest on a lot of other podcasts. And I feel like that has done a really good job to just kind of get my name out there. So if somebody is interested in yoga, but maybe they passed over my podcast, because they're like, I don't want to learn about business, then they get to hear me on their favorite yoga teachers podcast. And they're like, okay, she's not like just crazy all about making money, like, I don't know, ruining the yoga industry, or whatever sort of crazy things they might be thinking. And then I think that a lot of them kind of like pop over from there. Awesome.

 

18:10

So I have one final question here to wrap up our interview, if you could start your podcast journey all over again. So even going all the way back to the world wanderers. Is there anything that you would do differently? And if it applies to me, I'm sure. I mean, definitely talk about that as well. But is there anything that stands out in your mind of man, if only I had done this differently, things would have been easier? It would have grown faster?

 

18:31

Anything like that? That's a great question. And I feel like I went through that process, kind of about the world wonders when I started nbome. Like I knew, okay, like do an intro episode launch, like three or so episodes at a time. So people subscribe, ask for reviews right away. Ask people to subscribe, because that's going to help you get into new and noteworthy that's going to help you like kind of climb the ranks a little bit faster as your new starting like its own kind of brand was a big thing that I learned like with the world wanders, Ryan and I were very much like, Oh, well, it's just like, share occasionally on our personal Facebook pages. And it took us ages before we started an Instagram account for the wild wanders so it was so weird, like with nbome I was like No, its own Facebook page, business Instagram website right away, making the website look nice. Like I was very much like, Okay, I know all these things to kind of create this as a more professional entity. And then I guess looking back on nbome I think the biggest thing would be not letting sort of this fear of what other people think hold me back. Like I think that that's still something that affected me when I started nbome. Like not telling people about it as much as I could. That's definitely something I struggle with a little bit is I'll like do something that's kind of awesome, but then I won't tell anyone. So I would like tell my yoga teacher friends, or I would like share it on my business Facebook page, but then I'd have people who like knew me super well who were like I saw awesome thing about this thing like, what are you doing? Oh, you should probably know about that. Like, I should be like telling everyone and being one of those people who like sends an email out that's like, Hey guys, I did this kick ass thing come support me. See, I think that would be my biggest thing. And I think it really relates to this, like, complete terror of what other people are gonna think of something that you've worked so hard to create. Right? Well, Amanda,

 

20:25

thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing all of this amazing insight and for being so authentic about your journey and how terrifying it's been at times. And for anyone listening, please take Amanda's words to heart know that if you just push through amazing things are going to happen because of your podcast. It's not something to be afraid of. Thank you again, Amanda, and I can't wait to continue connecting with you further.

 

20:46

Thank you so much, Britney, this has been so fun.

 

20:51

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 comm 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
Previous

55: What the Latest Data Tells Us About Podcast Listeners
Next

53: Should Your Podcast Have Seasons?