It seems like everyone nowadays has a podcast. So why not you? Although one might argue that there are far too many podcasts, they are extremely popular ways of consuming information. Like blogs and videos, different podcasts attract different audiences, offering something for everyone. That makes them a great medium for marketing and building brand awareness if you tap into the right niche.

In this episode, Gail talks with Nicole Lashae Ben, CEO and founder of Thrive in Design, a web-based firm that specializes in empowering exceptional design-focused brands to tell their stories through impactful product launches and podcasts. A seasoned expert in the interior design industry with over 17 years of experience working in firms and with manufacturers, Nicole found her true calling in helping interior design firms and product companies boost brand awareness and revenue by telling their unique stories.

Gail asked Nicole why interior designers might want to consider podcasting. She said, “You should be podcasting if you want to establish yourself as an expert and authority in whatever it is that you are doing.” Podcasts are an effective way of building brand awareness, broadening audience reach, and giving value to clients and prospective clients.

Before diving into podcasting, advised Nicole, think about who the audience is that you’re trying to attract and what your goal is in attracting them. “Your podcast is a marketing tool, a sales tool,” she said. “Think about what call to action you want people to take as result of listening to the podcast.”

Whether you choose a video or only an audio format, realize that producing a podcast takes a fair amount of time and resources. You have to develop topics or themes for your individual podcasts. You need to identify, invite and schedule time with guest participants. You have to record and edit the podcast. Once in its final form, you have to upload the podcast to the various platforms that distribute podcasts. Usually, this requires a team of support and technical folks to make it manageable. However, the results can be quite rewarding.

Nicole also talked about what kind of content to develop for your podcast, how to get the most from your investment by repurposing your content in various ways, and some of the tools she uses to prepare and distribute her podcast. For all that and more, listen to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s12e4-shownotes

Mentioned in This Podcast

For more information about Nicole and Thrive in Design, go to the firm’s website at www.thriveindesign.co.

Gail and Nicole mentioned Zoom and several other software programs useful for podcasters:

Klap – This is an app used to create short videos from longer videos for use on TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms. More information at klap.app.
Riverside – This is an online studio for high-quality podcast and video recording and editing. You can use it for live video events as well as for editing text, audio and video. More information at riverside.fm.
Garage Band – This is Apple’s video editing app. It comes standard on Apple smartphones, tablets and computers.
Pod Bean – This is an app for recording, editing, publishing and distributing podcasts. More information at www.podbean.com.
Izotope – This is an audio mixing and mastering software. More information at www.izotope.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbX4CeNkQW8

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

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Welcome. Today we have Nicole Lachey-Benn. She is our guest on the Creative Genius podcast. Welcome, Nicole. Thank you So good to have you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited about this conversation today. it’ll be so great. Well, tell us a little bit about your background in the interior design industry. Yeah. So I always think this question is so funny because my background really goes back to childhood. Like I did my first interior design project when I was five years old.

My mom and I moved into a new house and I was like, I want this wall purple and this wall pink and a ballerina border. So that’s kind of where it all started. But fast forward, I ended up going to Syracuse University and getting my BFA in interior design and fell even more in love with the interior design process and design industry. Went on to get my master’s in design management from Savannah College of Art and Design. So I’ve always worked in end.

gone to school in the interior design industry literally forever. I’ve worked at design firms for product manufacturers in that evolution of just loving design, loving the strategy behind the business side of design has led me to start my own business, which is called Thrive InDesign, to really focus on design focused brands that wanna amplify their stories in the design industry.

Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing now because you’ve created this special niche for yourself and it’s helping those brands through their stories, through podcasts and product launches. And here we are on a podcast today. So tell us a little bit more about that. Absolutely. So for me, I always knew that I wanted to start my own business and I had this very vague idea. like, I want to help brands increase their brand awareness and their revenue. So I ended up starting,

with actually virtual summits before the pandemic when everybody had to do virtual and started these business summits where I was bringing together experts, I was doing workshops and just helping people understand the strategies behind business and how to increase their brand awareness and revenue. And then that evolved and I learned a lot about my customers in different conversations and services that I was providing. And no matter the type of business,

They all were saying different things, but it came down to like the same problem. They were like, hey, Nicole, you know, I want more people to know about my brand. I want to make more money. I want to be known in this design segment. Or sometimes it was international brands. Hey, I want to be known in the U.S. But even though it sounded like all completely different things, really everybody was saying the same thing that they needed to tell their brand story effectively, whether it be online or offline.

So that really became my thing. And I niche down into that about three years ago, and especially for brands in the interior design industry. Like how do I help you tell your brand story online and offline? And I think especially in the last year and a half, that has become even more niche for podcasting and product launches, mainly because those are like, that’s like my zone of genius. Like how to effectively tell your brand story on a podcast and attract that ideal audience.

convert them to a paying client. And then when it comes to product launches, whether you’re a designer launching your own product line or you’re a manufacturer, there’s a certain strategy in our industry that is different from any other product industry out there, right? The way that Apple launches their products is very different from our industry and how somebody launches like a textile or a chair. So I really understand.

the brand story that needs to be told in those product launches and what needs to be done online and offline for those things. So it’s been an evolution, but yeah, this is where I am now and the things that I love to do with my clients. That is so interesting. And we have a similar story in a way, because back in 2008, when we started our business in October was our first virtual summit. And we did it at that time without

Zoom, which today it’s like, my God, it was on audio. we literally had separate, we had interviews, some were recorded, some were live and we did 14 people in three days. It was wild, but you know, I look back to those days. had no idea that anybody was really doing that kind of thing again. So good for you. That’s awesome. That was so funny. Well,

Let’s talk a little bit about why an interior design firm should consider podcasting. think you kind of touched on it a little bit, but for a lot of people, they’re not sure that they want to go this direction. And they’re not sure if it’s worth the time and effort and money and all the things that they have to learn how to do in order to do podcasting to do that, because they’re thinking social media. That’s where most people are spending their time and effort and money.

today and maybe sometimes on SEO. So let’s talk about why podcasting. the basics podcasting is actually something that I was not thinking of before, which is so funny. I was like, why would I do a podcast? Like who’s going to listen to my podcast? It’s my audience really listening.

But then a few things clicked in a conversation that I had with another woman who I was in a business ac...