How to make podcasting work for your business with Samantha Cusick

0:00Samantha Cusick:Today, I'm joined by the award-winning hair expert, Samantha Cusick, to talk about how starting a podcast can support your business as well as build a community. Samantha is one of the most recognisable voices in hair and uses podcasting to deepen brand trust, create community, as well as accidentally open doors commercially, plus position herself as an authority in a crowded market. Now that all sounds like perfectly worded marketing spiel, but the truth is Samantha started a podcast because she admits that starting a business can be really lonely. So keep listening to hear why she started the podcast when she has so many other things to do in her business, why she loves it, and what success looks like to her ultimately makes you feel less lonely as a founder.

0:41So who are you? Who am I? So I'm Samantha Cusick. I'm an award-winning hairdresser and the owner of four salons now, as well as a brand ambassador within the hair world for companies like Odorplex, Redken, GHD, Authentic Beauty Concept, Hello Clean. And I also started a podcast, the Silly Little Girls Club, which launched November 14th, 2024. So yeah, that in a nutshell is me.

1:11Samantha Cusick:I think actually that is the most succinct introduction that I've ever had in all of the episodes. So you are a reward-winning hairdresser, a podcast host, but very good at introducing yourself as well. You can add that to your list. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's a very tricky one introducing yourself because you know when you wear so many hats, you never know what to go with. But ultimately, I'm a hairdresser. That's who I am. That's what I do. And then everything else has been like an evolution of that, if you like. Yeah. So why did you start a podcast? Because if you look at City Little Girls Club, you might not automatically realise that you're an expert in hair.

1:46Samantha Cusick:So join the dots. So it's interesting because being a hairdresser, you're very much underestimated all the time. I play this game a lot with people and I say to them, right, think of a famous hairdresser. And the first name they'll give you, I'll play it with you. Think of a famous hairdresser. Sam McKnight. It's a man. Every single time. Every single time. It's always a man. And that is really annoying because 78 % of the professionals in hairdressing, especially those that own a business or manage a salon are female and we're massively underrepresented. And I think there's a stigma around it.

2:22And that is something that I've always wanted to challenge and show people externally to the industry that being a hairdresser is a valid career choice. It's an exciting career choice. And you're actually only limited by your own imagination and drive. And being how I got into hairdressing and went through all of those things and opening the salons. And now I obviously have four salons and people just don't assume that you have that many salons and they don't take you seriously until they know your bottom line and what you're doing. And it's really annoying. And when I first started like wanting to open a salon, it was because my Instagram had started to get big and take off and I was getting followers and new requests and I was working for another salon and it just wasn't working.

3:07I couldn't control the experience that my clients were having. I couldn't control the experience that I was having and it didn't sit right. So I went off to make a business plan, figure out what I wanted to do. And it was very challenging. And when I went to sign the lease for my first salon, I had to send over a business plan, a whole proposal, like so many things to the letting agent who took one look at it, didn't believe that I would be turning over what I said, even though I was self-employed in the other salon so I know exactly my bottom line and he called me a silly little girl that dreams too big and made me pay yeah unbelievable right to your face or in writing my face and he's all my letting agent to this day and my lease is about to expire because it's been 10 years since that happened but that really hit home and it really drove me to be like you know what I'm not a silly little girl I'm a hairdresser and I can be a businesswoman and I can do all of these things and that's sort of when I started taking the business aspect really seriously but it's nothing

4:07Samantha Cusick:like a bit of anger to get fuel. That's when I started to really be like, no, I can be a hairdresser and a businesswoman. And even over the last 10 years, it was so much more sort of underestimating and much like just a lot of challenges to overcome as a woman in business and within hair, which you would just never think. And I got me thinking about doing a podcast and, you know, talking to other women that have been underestimated in their fields or in their industries or in themselves. And I wanted to do like an evergreen podcast. So something that the episodes are always relatable because I know a lot of podcasts, you know, focus on launches or they have people on that are pushing an agenda and things like that, which, you know, is fine.

4:51But for me, I wanted each episode to delve into what it was like and get real tangible advice and real like stories from these women that have done extraordinary things, but never really spoke about how and why. And that's how the podcast was born, like the idea for it. And then the rest came from a chat at Soho House, which we can get into as well if you want.

5:14Samantha Cusick:Well, I love this. I'm still flabbergasted that someone said that to you, but then I'm equally not surprised because I grew up in PR and communications and often had CFOs wave their hand at me like, oh, well, PR will fix this. Like it was a magic wand. and the PR girls. I'm like, I'm in my 30s. Don't call me a girl. Don't even put any gender up. Like, no. So I'm not surprised, unfortunately, but I love the fact that, hang on, he still gave you the lease. I had to pay double the deposit than was advertised. And he put stipulations in the contract that I had to do a certain turnover. So I had to turn over three times the annual rent for three consecutive years to get that extra deposit back.

5:54And I got it after year three first three years done back and so yeah and he still to this day won't even really talk to me he goes either through an assistant or he speaks to my other half greg who has nothing to do with my business bizarre like just a misogynist but anyhow oh god yeah oh there's

6:11Samantha Cusick:so much i want to i think we're gonna have to do a whole series with you because there's so much in this because you're right barriers to entry to starting businesses are high and low takes 12 minutes on company's house but the knowledge base is not there and i think women are not encouraged or empowered and i know that alice and rose review is now being questioned but that 250 billion i think missing from the uk economy because women are not encouraged to start businesses at the same rate as men i certainly didn't think i was ever going to be self-employed i was just made abruptly redundant in lockdown i was like well fuck you i'm gonna do my own thing then yeah it was a culmination for me of i had lost my father six months previous i'd been bullied in a role 12 months before that i was like you know what i work really hard and i'm really good at what I do I'm gonna do it for myself and now I'm kicking myself I worked so hard for other people for so long I was like I wish I'd saved that energy for me because you need it experiences that you wouldn't get and you wouldn't be the business owner that you are now without them and that took me a long time to realize that having gone through all the trauma that I went through my early career as a hairdresser I wouldn't have built businesses that I've built now and so you have to kind of weigh up the positive and negatives yeah experience that my favorite ever expression and I saw it on the back of a loo door in a hostel on my gap year traveling was experience is what you get after you've needed it and it's so true and I thought I'd rebrand the podcast that because I am grateful for what I've learned from these other brands and the jobs I've had but I wish I could learn or do good things not from the trampoline effect where you hit rock bottom and you get your answers it's like can I not do it when I'm like flying really high and going woohoo because you know yeah you you hustle um for you it's a podcast you're sort of two years into it now what has it given you what are the pros the cons loves hates talk me through it I actually started it as I wanted a passion project so because you haven't got enough to do that kind of thing now it's got a team it's got systems it's got everything it needs to run I love podcasts I love listening to them and you know I love being a guest on them and I just really wanted to do my own and I have such an incredible client list of people's hair that I do so I was like right I only ever was going to do it as one season like just to do one season get all my clients on there have the conversations that we have behind the chair but have them so people can listen in a bit more of a you know an orchestrated setting if you like better audio quality as well presumably than a hair salon yeah exactly no hair dryers and I just really wanted to do it as a like I said a passion project so I set about doing the one season got all the clients in and had it all filmed and I just loved doing it the conversations that we had and just the way people that had listened to it came and messaged me on Instagram or on DMCA how amazing they found it like they never knew this about that person and like it just how much they'd taken from it it made me feel really good because as a hairdresser you always just want to make people feel their best.

9:10And this is another avenue to do that as well. You know, the conversations that we have on the podcast are raw and real. There's nothing contrived or they sometimes go, you know, quite deep and dark and people relate to that. And they're like, oh God, it's not just me. These people that are perceived as being super successful and like really put together have the same inner turmoil as I do. So it's given me that community and that sort of just sense of we're all in it together, which is what I really wanted.

9:40Samantha Cusick:Well, I think that's it. And I was going to ask you why podcasting in particular, you're very good at social media and Instagram and clearly very good at building in real life communities through your salons, your teams, your clients. Adding another thing to your plate could be seen as another stress or constraint or time commitment. Why podcasting in particular? I think with social media specifically, I don't do a lot of YouTube And social media is very short form content. It's very quick. You don't hold people's attention for very long. I think you get like three seconds. And if they're not into it, they scroll past.

10:13Whereas for me, a podcast is something I go to if I want to, you know, spend a bit of time listening and learning. And that kind of really spoke to me about doing my own podcast, because that's what I seeked from podcasts. But I was like, if I could give that and people must be like me wanting some longer form content and things like that. So that's what it really was about. And it wasn't like it was going to be too far away from what I was doing. I felt comfortable on camera. Yes, you do have to very much learn the art of conversation again. But I feel like being a hairdresser behind the chair has been like 20 years of grooming to be a podcast host.

10:49Samantha Cusick:I was going to say, it reminds me of all my friends who are stylists because we're basically therapists at the same time because you're getting someone who's quite in a vulnerable state and you're helping them move forward into a position where they want to be, but they tell you everything at the same time. So I imagine you can get stuff out of people that they didn't even realise they were going to verbalise, which is fantastic for a podcast. But I'm with you on that because podcasting is that gorgeous, long form storytelling and you can't doom scroll a podcast. It can't be served to you. You obviously market them through social media, which you will come on to, but it's something that you elect to go to.

11:23Samantha Cusick:And I love the fact that you're electing to have that person in your ears. And they've done studies around how information going into your ears goes into your brain in a different way to your eyes, and that your ears have 360 views, whereas eyes only have 180. So it's a very different form. And also the fact that I kind of, when I speak to clients, because we train people how to start podcasts, because it is relatively easy but can be quite overwhelming at the same time you're having a conversation and you know that someone's going to eavesdrop and everybody's okay with that format so people I find I mean I started mine going I just need shit loads of advice how to start a business and I started and I was like oh god I have no idea what I'm doing and then started calling people for advice didn't know how to take notes quick enough and thought I should share this but that means to be able to share that information at scale is what's so exciting I think as a business owner, but it isn't obviously just about the business.

12:11Samantha Cusick:It's about those conversations. Have you ever done an episode that you've regretted? No, I've had episodes where you get somebody on and you think the conversation would flow, but it's challenging. And then that takes a little bit of, you know, patience and that little bit of skill of like mirroring them and getting them to feel reassured to open up. But every episode, every guest I've had on has had a different story. And some of them have been crazy from like one girl, Humeri, we did where she spoke about getting married in her mom's living room during lockdown to a husband that her family didn't approve of, to having like my one of my friends, Tanya, talk about like her journey through YouTube and like how she's done.

12:57And it's just so varied. And that's what I love about speaking to the women is we are so powerful and we do so many different things, but there's nothing. They've all been underestimated though. They've all been underestimated.

13:11Samantha Cusick:Everyone's had a silly little girl moment. You're so right. You're so right. With your podcast, given that you're running four salons and you, I think, are renovating a house as well, am I correct? Yeah, I'm with you on that. And hence, Matt Johnson came and was like, have you been kidnapped? And I was like, no. It looks like you've been kidnapped. I was like, yes, I have my own podcast because I haven't renovated this room yet. So there's a curtain that hides. It looks very good. It was a kind of, let's just do something rather than nothing. Given that you've got a successful business, you have your four salons, you have an amazing team, fantastic community.

13:42Samantha Cusick:What does success look like with your podcast? Are you sitting down and attacking it from a business perspective? Are you doing it just for the love of a conversation? so it's a tricky one because it started off as a passion project so I fully self-funded the first season because we were filming in person and I have a little production team that comes in and they film and edit them because I haven't got the time or the capacity to do that like it's very challenging and a lot of time consuming thingy so it was only ever meant to be that one season and it went off really really well so season one launched we actually managed it's so wild to and think about how it launched it launched a Soho house at White City on their rooftop with Mel C DJing like it was one of those nights where you're like pinch me yeah like if I ever get married it's never gonna live up to this like ever like sorry Greg but it's not like it was just I had this room full of amazing people like everybody came to support me like on my team from the salons my friends my family and then Mel's a client of mine so and I couldn't believe it when I asked her and she was like yeah yeah I'll do that and she literally came and did a set like it was amazing she's an incredible woman and her episode of the podcast is it's amazing so yeah it was only meant to be that and then I got approached by Redken to sponsor season two and at that point I wasn't even considering a season two so we picked up sponsorship for a next season which wasn't a lot but it paid for the company that I used to produce it which meant I got another free go and I was really enjoying it.

15:15So I was like, well, I can't grumble at that. So again, I thought that was it. That was the end of it. And then season three got sponsored by Sephora.

15:23Samantha Cusick:Oh my God. I get it. So these brands would know that your audience are not only super engaged, but they are their target client. So for them, it's a no brainer. You've delivered them a whole community of people that will shop their product. And a lot of people ask me all the time about how to get sponsored. It's like, make the podcast brilliant and sponsorship will come. So congratulations Congratulations. That's huge. And Sephora was just signed for season four as well. So we're doing season four with Sephora as well, which is just, so when you think about like what success looks like, it's like that I never even dreamt of.

15:54And looking at it as a business, now I kind of have to look at a bit more at the data and the drilling in because we've got sponsors and things like that. But ultimately it helps my other businesses because it gives me more like profiles. So people will be like, oh, someone's the hairdresser. Because we talk about it, obviously on the podcast, people know I'm a hairdresser. so then they look at the salons and then it helps like it helps the whole ecosystem really

16:16Samantha Cusick:100 but i love that you've come at it with and again when we speak to clients about starting if there's any sort of ego involved we're like don't do it because no one's going to listen you did it because you wanted other people to feel empowered to start businesses and that was the rich and the raw story within it and then good things have come but if you've gone into great like right this is going to be part of our marketing strategy it's going to promote our it probably wouldn't have worked I love this so much and so season four when's season four launching we're gonna start recording in April we're gonna do a little rebrand of like the branding I think because it's really funny with everything in my business it's sort of things snowball and then things get bolted on so we're actually looking at the minute of doing like because like you said you would look at the podcast and not know that I'm a hairdresser and I think so we kind of need to do a bit more of like a an overall rebrand of everything to make sure that it's all you know you look at one thing and be like oh that's samantha kusick that's so we've got to do that so we've got a bit of time before we film it in april and then we'll release it maybe june i think having a little bit of a like time to reconvene and get guests and because what i've been doing is i film every episode over two days so we do like five episodes a day for two days bloody hell because i'm short on time it's very intense but it's but actually people say it's intense but when I'm doing hair I could see 10 clients a day and talk to each one for an hour so for me it's not intense to actually chill but for other people it's quite intense but again like I say being a hairdresser grooms you into a great podcast host so that's kind of where we're at with that so it'll be coming this year but we're just yeah I love it you're doing all the right things and getting your ducks in a row to dovetail into the bigger brand of Samantha Cusick so everyone when I started a podcast in lockdown there was this ABC skit in lockdown saying we know it's really tough at the moment.

18:02Samantha Cusick:Life's really hard and da, da, da, but whatever you do, do not start a podcast. And so when I was like, I'm starting a business and a podcast at the same time, everyone kind of eye rolled a bit. And still now people, when they say, I'm going to start a podcast, there's a lot of people going, really? A, you're going to follow through? B, what are you going to say? C, how long is it going to last? So I can now see it on the other side of the fence because I'm in podcast production and from a comms background, I'm sort of familiar with it but for you what have you seen in your world are the common misconceptions around founders starting podcasts that they'll instantly have an audience that you know you know it's tough with a podcast like you have to make sure that you are pushing it on social media you have to honestly audio only podcasts you can't have them anymore you need to have visuals with them because that's how people are searching and scrolling you and making sure that you have a plan and you commit to it because I can't remember the stat actually off the top of my head but there's not many podcasts that make it past four or five episodes yeah they go into pod fade which is such a sad thing there's something like 3.7 million podcasts out there and only 330 000 active ones which could say that means continually publishing I think they go into pod fade if they haven't published a new episode after three to six months so yeah people do it and then realize how much is involved and then stop it's such a shame it is a shame and it's like you know because we do it in seasons is slightly different because like we're not doing weekly but that's intentional because again that's how I look forward to something on Netflix like I like a season I like to binge a season and then I like to have a break then get something else so but I really miss my favorite shows when they stop I'm like come back and you're dming them like when are you starting again so it works yeah and that it does work you keep people interested but it gives you time to sort of reflect on what you've been doing in the episodes and listen back and you know align with new guests and new direction because it's hard to keep it fresh honestly it is but yeah and I think that's gorgeous thing about podcasting there is no right nor wrong there's no dictated 20 episodes equals a season you have to publish every other week you can do whatever you want which I think also when we find with new clients they get a bit carried away with that and sometimes they need a boundary and they need a they need a publishing cadence and to be consistence with that.

20:15Samantha Cusick:For you, do you feel now looking back at that first leasing agent, it has changed how people perceive you professionally now that you have the successful podcast and sort of complimenting the salons? I think so. I'm quite often told like when people meet me or we talk, it's like, well, you're nothing like I thought you would be. And I never know if that's a compliment or not. It's a bit weird. It happens a lot. But ultimately, I try not to pay any mind to what people's perception is anymore because that's something I can't control so that's another problem it's not a me problem and you've proven it to yourself and that all yeah and it took a long time and a lot of getting over imposter syndrome like that's a real thing to get to that place where you just feel like right this is what I'm doing and the people around me know who I am and what I do and you know the podcast challenge a light more on the guests than me which is quite nice because within my business world it is like hairdressers called Samantha Cues at London I have to be the face of it and that's the other thing I love about the podcast is I'm able to I'm actually as the host able to sit in the background a little bit and let them take it and like you know and I love that and that's been a real like epiphany moment when I realized that I like doing that too well you're the conduit for them you're the means and you're bringing them to a platform that where they get to shine and when we in our team when we edit all the podcasts we chop most of the host out because it's about the guest and that's what's the joy it's letting them shine what happens when a podcast host interviews a podcast host I know well this is what's quite fun because it's talking to someone that speaks your own language but in a completely different industry which I absolutely love and we met at farmhouse when you did your talk and recorded that and turned that into a podcast and I was like and I'd already followed you and I'd seen it on the farmhouse app and I was like oh my god I want to meet this woman and then I had a work event which meant I wasn't going to be here and then it got cancelled like yes I can meet someone because I love the fact that you put it out there silly little girls club and it tapped a nerve for me because I'd always been oh you're a PR person and you're a PR girl.

22:07Samantha Cusick:And I was like, fuck that. I'm a professional. I work bloody hard. I get great results. I should be respected. But there's something about automatically being a woman in business that you feel a little bit a run down. And then coupled with friends who run businesses and have children, and I don't, and I'm very grateful that I don't have kids, but the invisible labor that they're doing and not being cherished or rewarded or applauded for is shocking. So the fact that you're shining a light on this is incredible. What else can I ask you about podcasting? I've kind of got a sort of fangirl moment of like, there's so many things I want to ask you, which I haven't got to yet.

22:42Samantha Cusick:With the workload management, given that you're wearing many hats, how have you systemized managing a podcast as well as a business? So it's one of those things, because again, like we burst it out in seasons and we like do it in a whole thing and I outsource to have the production company. So they come in, they set up the podcast room, they film it, they edit it. And then I get the finished product back, basically, after we've gone through and I've gone through like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I won't change all this. And then I obviously just use like a platform hosting. So I then upload everything and I spend a day just scheduling everything, putting it all in, doing all of the descriptions, all of the things, the thumbnails, putting it all on YouTube, again, scheduling it.

23:22And it goes out and I don't have to think about it. Yeah, that's the joy of it. Time blocking. And then obviously on social media once there's a few different ways of doing it but like we use I think it's cap cut I'm giving all my secrets now but once you've got the video onto YouTube on the computer you can give it the URL and it will make you shorts it will make your shorts for you so then you can use them as your click baits and all of your things to promote it on socials and I've got Poppy who is our digital marketing manager across the salons that helps me on the podcast and she does that for me because again I've got all these other things going on and together we brainstorm and strategize but like the fundamental bits of that is taking care of with Poppy so this is it and with podcasting as

24:05Samantha Cusick:long as you're organized anyone could do a podcast and with clients we meet quite a lot of neurodiverse people who are doing podcasting and we give them our podcast production tracker that keeps them straight and narrow of like do this then do that then do this oh yeah it's like with drop downs I I love a spreadsheet. So I have all my episodes, all my links, all my guests. And then I'm like drop downs. And then like, have I done this? Have I got the social clips one to five? Have I got the thumbnails? Have I got the, you know, the transcript? Have I got everything? Show notes, linkings, all the things.

24:35And SEO stuff. And then have I got the right tags for YouTube? And we do, that is mad. Yeah. It's doable, right? Yeah, it is doable. You just got a time block and you've got to research what works for you. Like what platform works for you? Like, are you going to be a Spotify only podcast? Because, you know, those ones do really well. because Spotify like it if you only host on Spotify, right? But I wanted mine on all platforms. So then it's a little bit different. So you have to use a hosting site that distributes like with your RSS feeds.

25:01Samantha Cusick:Yes. So you can set up, we use Buzzsprout that we love, but you could use ACAST. In fact, I'm interviewing the head of communications at ACAST at Farmhouse for a panel in April. So if anyone's listening, let's come, DM us. Lizzie's amazing. She's also a podcast host and director of communications at ACAST. So she's just a mine of information. But yeah, you can use ACAST, you can use Buzzsprout. So you can load up your episode and then it'll RSS feed and link out to Apple, Spotify, all of the directories. And sort of suddenly you press one button and then it's on all of the different directories.

25:30Samantha Cusick:Schedule it. So you wake up in the morning at 5am, it's gone out. It's there. And then you may have forgotten to put the season number or the episode number and you can quickly go back in and change it. Yeah. And this is the hilarious thing people don't realize with podcasting. You can replace the audio at any given time and update it and it doesn't harm your download numbers, which... Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah, it's weird though, because for example, when I send you this episode for approval, and we do that with all of our guests, and most people don't have to do that, but it's a nice gesture.

25:57Samantha Cusick:You could listen to it and go, yep, fine. And then I could upload it. A week later, I could change it completely. And you wouldn't know. No one would know. There's a few different, yeah, there's a few red flags, I think, with the podcasting. It's like, you know, finding analytics is a minefield. So obviously when the sponsors and things like ask what your download rate is, or your listeners and your average, there's no real collation place so you have to go so basically i'm pulling stuff from spotify i'm pulling it from youtube and all these things and then aggregating it together to try and like come up with what it is i think you can in buzzsprout you have a total and that will pull from all of that but it won't give you the drop-off rate it won't give you any demographics podcasting is a very safe place in terms of mining things for data which is great sometimes but also frustrating from an advertising sponsorship perspective you can go into apple connects and you can see more data but that's just for apple it's not all the 14 other directories that you'll be on.

26:48If you can get in the charts, then you know you're doing a good thing. Well, exactly. But there is no charts.

26:53Samantha Cusick:You have to manually go through the chart to see where you're ranking. And Chartable folded a couple of years ago that used to tell you where you're ranking in the charts. But it's such an exciting place to be because it's all changing all the time. And it's very, very new. I think Apple invented the podcast 23 years ago for the iPod. And that's why it's called a podcast or something like that. So it's relatively new we've got lots to learn it's changing all the time and our editing software itself updates itself every day we're like great but can you just not change the interface all the time what's it about with ai coming in even more behind it because that could only have that might even help us like edit things it absolutely does and then there's the debate of what content's generated because you could say to an ai create a podcast with two voices that says this conversation it will generate the audio which i find quite terrifying but also incredible in equal parts so yeah and then we'll start declaring what's natural what's not and all that kind of stuff but just on sponsorship because you are the mecca of podcasts because so many people want to be sponsored and they always think that's the metric of success my argument is if you're having a wonderful rewarding conversation that should be the metric of success but for you obviously you have secured sponsorship how has been negotiating that sponsorship deal been for you has it been difficult easy so I'll be honest with you I don't do that bit so I have obviously as part of being an ambassador for brands I have a talent manager I have a company that do that and so they're able to help do those sort of negotiations and talk with them and then actually go out to the brands and be like look we're doing this this is what we're thinking and presenting it to them it's about being proactive because obviously it's four didn't come to us enough from sponsorship we went to them and we were like we're doing this and like we'd already got a relationship through doing certain things throughout through the hair part of it.

28:36And it all came about because I actually did an in-store event for them where we did a live recording of a podcast for Sephora. They work very closely with Face Equality International, which is a charity designed around helping people with facial differences. And so I was there to have interviewed Nikki Lilly, who ended up not being very well. She came on later in the podcast, but we had another girl, Matilda, that works at face equality international and it was such a lovely conversation and performed so well and it was such a nice community building thing that then was able to approach for and be like would you be interested in doing a season and then that's where it came about and you know renegotiated back and forth and again it's not a huge amount it's enough to cover the production of it with maybe a little bit left for extra promotional bits but it's not generating me an income it's still paying for

29:25Samantha Cusick:thank you for sharing that because there's so many people like oh we need a hundred thousand pounds so it's like you haven't even started you have no community you've got to build Rome and then get people to come to Rome and then people want to sponsor Rome so thank you for being really candid about that because you have a very strong Instagram presence an incredibly successful business and for you to say it's breaking even or it's a bit more than that it's really honest and I think people need to hear that so thank you honestly because transparency in these things like I've heard things people getting paid like a hundred grand an episode different I've actually seen pitch decks like I don't even know how of some people's podcasts have gone out for sponsorship and what they're asking per episode and you're just like that is insane like insane I mean don't get me wrong put my hands up I'd love to be getting like exponential amounts an episode and it'd be my full-time job but ultimately this is still my project my passion project and so doing it to break even and having a name attached to it automatically helps the podcast you know people sit up and they're like, right, this must be something special if people are taking a notice in it.

30:27And that's really important to me as well, is that people take podcasts seriously because a lot goes into it, as you know.

30:32Samantha Cusick:Yeah, so much goes into it. And the fact that you are well-known and your guests are very well-known, have you tactically gone after people to get them on, to get more download numbers? No, I've gone after them because I want to meet them. That's the only reason I interview people. It's not about download numbers. You know when people are going to get good download numbers but ultimately I invite people that I want to know about like people that I aspire to be because again running a business is so lonely I'll be really honest it's terrifyingly lonely you always you think you're building friendships and then it doesn't work then they're after you for something else or it's quite a mind it's a roller coaster of people yes so having conversations with other female founders and people that you know have that same experience it's so nice and so that's why I like the guests that I get on is because we have you know selfishly for me I get to ask them things that I want to know and help educate myself and build like a nice rapport with people and that's how I choose who comes on the podcast oh it's brilliant again because you'll have that rich real conversation and it will resonate with listeners and it's that full circle that will go back to that's why it will perform well because it's a genuine conversation i remember that hearing i listened to the podcast about podcasting i am that person someone had taylor swift on they said it was one of our least downloaded episodes because they're not searching for that particular conversation in that context yeah and also there's how many ndas they had to sign and what they could and couldn't ask yeah exactly exactly and i think going back to our comment earlier you were eavesdropping on a conversation it has to be real it has to be special i think that's where sephora has seen the light and gone yeah of course it's going to be valuable to them as a sponsorship deal.