Blueprint for Effective Networking and Business Growth

Introduction
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[00:00:00] 

Jim Banks: So, hello and welcome to the podcast today. My guest is Melissa Snow, who is coming to us from snowy Colorado, I believe.

Melissa Snow: Yes, it is very snowy. 

Jim Banks: It's great to have you on the show. Melissa is the founder of the Powerful Women Rising Community, I guess is probably the best way of describing it. Would that be the right way of saying what it is?

Melissa Snow: Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Banks: know if it's an initiative.community initiative. I don't know. How would you

Melissa Snow: All of the above.

Jim Banks: Okay.

Melissa Snow: So my company is called Powerful Women Rising. That's also the name of my podcast. and really what I'm all about is helping people and females specifically learn how to use networking more effectively to grow their business. And I say networking, which is really just any opportunity you have to connect with other people.

so as part of my business, I actually run an online community for female entrepreneurs, that's called the Powerful Women Rising Community. So. Yeah, it's, it's all of the above.

Melissa's Background and Journey to Entrepreneurship
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Jim Banks: And, and before you started doing that, I mean, what was your background? What was, where did you come from to get to that point? [00:01:00] 

Melissa Snow: high school English teacher. I went from there to working as a personal injury paralegal. So I worked mostly on like car accidents and things like that. I did that for a long time. And then I. Sort of became an entrepreneur on accident.

I, during the time that I was working as a paralegal, I was also working on the side for a guy who had a company, essentially doing medical record summaries for attorneys. And so he had a great gig. He would charge these attorneys $60 an hour. He would pay people like me $25 an hour to do the medical record summaries.

And he would just go between. And when he decided to take his business in a different direction, he asked me if I wanted his clients, I said, sure. And, became an entrepreneur with a full client load making money overnight. And I was like, man, entrepreneurship is great. Why didn't I do this sooner? didn't know anything about.

Sales, marketing, none of that. I just overnight [00:02:00] became an entrepreneur with a business. And, a few years later, I finished with my life coaching certification and I started a business as a dating and relationship coach in 2017. And I very quickly realized, I mean, I'm sure we'll get into some bad decisions later on, but very quickly realized there was a lot to growing a business that I didn't know.

I, I really thought I would just get that certification and be like, all right, I'm a life coach who's ready to change their life. And everybody would show up and give me money. And it didn't really work like that, surprisingly. so I learned a lot building that business. I had that business for, about seven years.

And then. 

Founding Powerful Women Rising
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Melissa Snow: two or three years ago, I started Powerful Women Rising. I wanted to take my business in a different direction. I really wanted to focus more on empowering women and female business owners specifically, and I really wanted to help people get back to the basics of just like connecting with other people, creating genuine relationships, [00:03:00] providing value to each other, supporting each other, Because when I looked back on my business, growing my life coaching business, I realized I had tried so many different things, but at the core of what always brought me clients and made me money was connections and relationships.

And so I really came to believe that that is the simplest and most sustainable form of business growth there is. And it is incorporated in a lot of different Parts of business too, right? Like you, you can't be, I don't think you can be successful in digital marketing without knowing how to connect with people and build relationships.

So, it spans a lot of different areas and I just love talking about it in, in all different contexts.

Challenges and Strategies for Female Entrepreneurs
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Jim Banks: So what would you say the biggest challenges that women that start out, like, again, I think a lot of people get into, running a business, sometimes it's accidental. and, they find, you end up doing something, all of a sudden, I've got a business and I've got to do this, I'm [00:04:00] gonna do that.

And you realize all the things you didn't know you needed until the first time you needed them. And then you're like, God, what do I do now? Right? So, but obviously, your, your community, right, is probably the driving force behind everything that kind of goes on. it's about the relationships that people can forge between each other, right?

So, as you say, helping each other out. I think one of the biggest challenges is a lot of businesses don't take the time. They just think it's like, I'm just going to go out and sell my stuff and that's going to be enough, right? Whereas I think, in your type of arena, it's very much, it is a community driven initiative.

So how do you,ensure that people keep coming back and getting involved in the community? Because that's always one of the biggest challenges. 

Melissa Snow: Yeah, I think, in my experience, a lot of entrepreneurs, when they're first getting started, tend to do things backwards, and I understand why I did it the same way, because we don't know what we don't know, and so we [00:05:00] assume, that the first things that we need are a logo, business cards, Branding photos, an expensive website.

maybe someone told us that we need a funnel or we need to start out doing Facebook ads or we need to learn SEO, right? So we start with those things partly because we don't know any better. And someone somewhere sold to us that that was the thing we needed. Also partly because we are struggling with imposter syndrome.

And so we're like, If I have a website and photos that look like I know what I'm doing, maybe people will think I know what I'm doing. And really what I emphasize is doing it the opposite way. All of those things are really important in a time and a space. but when you're first getting started, especially if you don't have funding, if you don't have a ton of money to And right off the bat and growing your business, the best thing you can do is just go out and start meeting people and talking to people and making connections.

[00:06:00] And generally that costs little to no money. 

The Role of Community in Business Growth
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Melissa Snow: So my community provides women an opportunity to do that, to connect with other female entrepreneurs. And we have an opportunity to do it in a lot of different ways. So we have coworking calls, we have mastermind calls, we have networking calls. so there's a lot of different ways for them to get involved.

But all the focus of all of them is for the community members to get to spend time with each other, to get to know each other as people, to get to know each other's businesses better, to find ways to support each other. And then obviously, organically, the referrals and the growth and the, you know, cross promotion and collaboration and all of that flows from there.

So I think. In any community that you are building, and even if it's just one on one, us having a conversation, creating a connection between the two of us, people keep coming back if they're getting value from it. And so if you and I sit down and have a conversation and [00:07:00] I'm just like, Hey, here's all the stuff that I sell.

Here's why you need it all. Even though I know nothing about you, which of these things do you want to buy? And where's your credit card? You're probably not going to come back for another conversation. But if we have a genuine conversation and I'm actually curious about how your business is going, what challenges are you having?

What are you excited about coming up? And then I realized there's some ways that I can provide value to you. Maybe we get off this call and later I send you, an article that I saw on LinkedIn. That's about launching a, I don't know, a TV show, and you just told me that's one of the things that you want to do this year, right?

So, then I'm providing value to you. Every time I do that, that's going to make you want to come back for more. And I think that's true, whether that's a large community connection, or it's just you connecting with one other person.

Jim Banks: Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, like in the green room, we were talking about sort of, another kind of group of guests that I had on the show previously. I had [00:08:00] three ladies from Link Unite, and Link Unite is a, again, it's a female community of executive leaders in the digital marketing space that, realized that there wasn't enough women in leadership roles in some of the bigger companies in our industry, 

So they set about, well, let's do this. Do something about that. So they set up this initiative, this community, like, so they put, they put a post out today on LinkedIn to basically say there are 3, 600 members on, LinkedIn, right? And they're trying to grow their community on LinkedIn to 4, 000, right?

And they're asking for basically help and support from their community to do that. And they've also cited and stated, even though it's a female led initiative, There's no reason why men can't get behind it. And I'm, Totally behind it, because I have two stepdaughters that work in our industry, and for me, I'd be completely hypocritical if I decided not to support women getting on in our industry, because, again, it's a beautiful industry because there is no physical limitations as to why A woman wouldn't be able to do the job, 

I was watching the news today here in the [00:09:00] UK, and they were talking about, we have a kind of a Marine Corps here in the UK called the Green Berets, And they've never ever had a woman be able to pass the physical exam, and they haven't dumbed down the standards to do it.

Make it so that they can, Because they basically said, this is a standard that they're adhering to. And what's happening is the women are rising up to the standard rather than the standard coming down, Which I think is the right way of tackling it. I don't think, you should address, dress it by, you Dumbing it down.

You need to again, just, just make it so that, women are even more committed and striving to make sure that they achieve whatever it is that they need to achieve. and like I said, some of the most successful people I know in our industry are women that started off as maybe affiliate managers and they worked their way up and some of them are running their own businesses, and they're doing sort of 50, 100, 200 million dollars in sales a year, which is phenomenal.

But at the same time, they're still wives. Mothers, daughters and they're still trying to balance all of those sort of [00:10:00] things I know that a lot of the chauvinistic old 1960s men would just frown at immensely, But I think we live in the 21st century.

it's definitely a more level playing field. 

Podcasting and Its Impact
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Jim Banks: So where does the podcast fit in in all of this in terms of like your, your, your community and what role does it play in, in helping support your business? for

Melissa Snow: it was really to just kind of be like a resource library for people. initially I was only doing interviews. I wasn't doing any solo episodes, till I hired a podcast coach and she was like, what are you doing? Stop it. You're spending a lot of time on commercials for other people.

I still do interviews because I love them, but I, I mix in some, Solo episodes too, but I, I like talking to people about all different areas of business and really having conversations about things that are actually helpful. Like, I like to ask the questions that if I were listening to the podcast, I would be like, ask her that.

Right? Because so often [00:11:00] you listen to a podcast and the person that. This being interviewed is like, Oh yeah, so I did it by doing this, this, this, and this. And I'm listening and I'm like, okay, but how did you do that? Like, how did you do that? And so I really like having an opportunity to ask the questions that I want to ask and get real, like actionable, feedback.

real value, real strategies, and be able to share that with my audience. And we've talked about things ranging from LinkedIn strategy to time management, to, balancing self care with growing a business. We've talked about Facebook ads. So we talk about all different things. And,really the goal is just for women who are building a business to have somewhere they can go and scroll through and be like, Oh, that's what I want to know about right now.

the other goal of it obviously is to create that community element. So I run a virtual speed networking event for women once a month, and you don't have to be part of the community to come to that. You do have to be a woman, so you can't come, but, we, we [00:12:00] love you anyway. and so a lot of times the people who will listen to the podcast will come to the speed networking event and connect with each other there.

And so it's really just all part of creating the community. You know, you know, as a digital marketing expert, there's ways that you are bringing new people into your circle. There's ways that you are nurturing those people and there's ways that you're converting those people. And so the podcast really just is another way to bring people into the community.

And,Help, help them connect with other entrepreneurs.

Jim Banks: Yeah, it's funny,you mentioning about the, your podcast coach saying that, doing interviews and solos and everything. my very first podcast guest was a guy called Jon Loomer. phenomenal, phenomenal guest, great, great knowledge. He's just, restarted his podcast, he's doing audio only, 

So no video, even though he does like, he does a TikTok video every single day, he has done for a good few years. So he's not shy of being on camera. That's, that's not the reason. But he does, Audio only. [00:13:00] Each episode is typically like 8 to 10, maybe 12 minutes long, and it's solo, right? he could probably sit down, and the time that it'll take me to record this episode with you, edit it, chop it up, send it out, and whatever else, 

He could probably do like six episodes, And I'm not, again, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that That's the right way or the wrong way. I just think you, you kind of, had you known if you are thinking of starting a podcast, it's probably better to start with solo and move on to guests rather than guests and then move on to solo.

Cause I think, you know, I think, once you've sort of said it, I mean, I, again, I've, I've, I've loved doing it because in some respects I'm almost like a, I get the opportunity to be on the front row and, and pick the brains of the people that I'm kind of. Talking to, right? And for me, it's been great. I've had some, some great guests.

Some of them have been very, very old friends that I've known for forever. and some of them are people I've never met before, like yourself, right? And, you know, but, but for me, the thing we have in common is we're entrepreneurs and we're trying to help support [00:14:00] communities that we're involved in, and I'm at the point now where 26 years into being a digital marketer, right?

I'm definitely the latter stages of my career on at the beginning. and I, I really like the whole premise of having my community now with the podcast is, you know, I'm trying to encourage new entrants into the industry to grow and develop and evolve, Because when I first started out. I would probably say in total around the world, there was probably a couple of thousand people that worked in something that you would class as being digital marketing, 

Whereas now, I don't even know how many. It's like it's a, it's a really, really highly sought after industry, but there's so many different ways in which you can Cut it up, You can do it in so many different ways. and so much of it is, it's about learning from the mistakes you made, right?

And, I've made probably more mistakes than most people, Because I prepared to put myself in a situation where, you have to make a decision, and it could be a good one, or it could be a bad one, right? the podcast started out [00:15:00] as bad decisions with Jim Banks. I used to do things, and people go, what on earth are you thinking doing that, 

And, I just did it right and because you know I just I just did and it's it's funny like you know you mentioned about you being a a sort of a relationship coach like a I guess for want of a better way a dating coach right and I always remember when I sort of first started in online I mean One of the very first clients I had was a, you know, a client who, who was a coder, right, and he'd moved to a new area, and he wanted to, to kind of meet girls, and he didn't know the best way to do that.

So he basically coded a dating website, right, and the only profile that was on there was his. And,

Melissa Snow: That's genius.

Jim Banks: know, and, and obviously he sort of put it out there and it just kind of evolved from there. But, you know, what tends to happen with that is that, that, you know, again, I, I've always said when you're running a dating business, there is usually one massive database.

And then people's interest helps you to spin it off [00:16:00] and to say, here's a dating site for this and this, so you'll have, Christian dating and Muslim dating and, trying to think of some, some of the other

Melissa Snow: kinds. There's an online dating website for clowns.

Jim Banks: and, and there's, like I said, there's, there's so many different ways in which they chop it up. And usually it's just a case of, There's a questionnaire that people fill in and it's like, what about this? What about this? And then based on those answers, that's how you end up in the database of people that do that.

And what tends to happen is that the, if people join up to a community like that, there's always this sort of situation. They'll try and encourage people to pay for a year, rather than paying month to month. Because what tends to happen is if somebody is in a particular location, eventually they run out of people.

Right, to see, so they, they can, they go, I've seen this person, seen this person, seen this person, not interested, they run out of people that, that, that, that, you know, they, they want, right, or they find love and they don't need a dating site anymore, right, because why would you need a dating site if you found what it was you were looking for, [00:17:00] right, and generally speaking, right, there's a lot of people that are, again, they're looking for The long term lasting relationship.

A lot of people are just looking for casual stuff.it's funny what so that one of the sites I worked with, they they run a UK site, it's called Date the UK. And then they fired up a new site called Sex in the UK, Because what they found was they had a drop down. And one of the things that, or the drop downs, what are you looking for, and it was sex, and that would take them off to this basically an adult dating site.

And, again, what you tend to find is that on a Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, from 11 o'clock onwards, that's when that site got incredibly busy, Because people were looking for a hookup, at that point, right? They were looking for it nearby, immediately.

even though they were all doing the same thing, they had different reasons and purposes for using it in that way, And not everyone has the same goals and objectives, Some people are looking for, a part time just to keep them busy, rather than it being a [00:18:00] full time, six figure, seven figure job.

They don't want that. They just want, something that will keep them occupied, and yeah, just think. have you done any sort of research or analysis into the breakdown of your, your community in terms of, like age ranges? Are they like old, young? I mean, what was the kind of the mixture?

Melissa Snow: I mean, they're kind of all over the place, especially when we do the virtual speed networking events. We have women from all over the world who come, which is awesome. and even in the community, there's a lot of diversity in terms of age, experience, where they're located in the world, the types of businesses that they have and.

I actually think that is really important. 

Networking and Building Relationships
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Melissa Snow: That's one of the things that I talk about when people are, are trying to figure out their networking strategy is knowing what you're looking for, to go back to the dating reference, right? Like, what a lot of people think that the purpose of networking is to find clients.

It's not to find clients. It's to build relationships. Grow your network. And so knowing exactly what you're looking for, who you're looking for when you're growing your [00:19:00] network, it may benefit you to go to a group or an event or a community where everyone is in a similar field. Like we're all healers of some type, right?

Like there's energy healers and massage therapists. And, past life regression people and counselors, and we're all healers, there's a lot of benefit to that. And then there's also a lot of benefit depending on what you're looking for to being in a group or at an event with people who do a lot of different things from what you do.

And so, yeah. I read somewhere they, that, there's three people that every business owner needs to have in order to be successful. They need a mentor, a peer, and a protege. Usually we end up with more than one in those categories, but at least one in each of those categories. And I think that's why the diversity in the Powerful Women Rising community works so well, is because we have women who have been in business for six months.

We have women who have been in business for, you know, 26 years. and so the people who have been in business [00:20:00] longer, I think they learn a lot from the people who are newer, because It's a very different world than it was 28 years ago when they started their business. And there's some ways that we need to change and pivot and start thinking about some things differently.

I think when you've been in business a long time, you start using language and jargon and, talking like someone who's been in business for a long time and your clients don't talk like that. So a lot of times my newer members will be like, yeah, I definitely wouldn't say it like that because I don't know what half those words mean and nobody talks like that.

And so then there's also benefit for the newer entrepreneurs to be with the more experienced entrepreneurs because they can learn, you know, what they don't even know that they don't know. I mean, I was in business for at least three years before I had a conversation with a friend of mine and she mentioned something about business insurance and I was like, business what?

And she's like, please tell me you have business insurance. So I'm like, I didn't even know that was a thing. So like, That's one of the things, like, one of the values that people find being, you know, [00:21:00] in a community with people who are further along than them, and then also being able to mentor, and be in a community with people who are at the same, at the same place as them.

So, there's a lot of benefit to, to it being all over the place.

Jim Banks: Yeah, and I think probably like, I guess it must have been about 15 years ago, I was working with some people and they were running, they were lead gen offers that were Basically, I guess you would class it as a biz op, right, business opportunity. and again, what they were doing is they were helping people set up a business.

Right, so a lot of people would kind of go to this website and say, yeah, I want to set my, set up my business. And they had, they would have a sort of checklist of all the things that they needed to do, right? So you needed to kind of set up an LLC, you needed to kind of, you know, have accounting software for, you know, bookkeeping and, and invoicing and everything else.

You know, you needed a website, as you say, Business cards. I mean, that was always the thing. I think most of the people I know from the very, very early days, when you talk to them about how they got into the industry, it's like they got in, I mean, I got [00:22:00] involved with a web design company. And when you finish building a website for people, they go, so what do we do now?

And I'll be like, well, you know, you need to kind of do sort of SEO. And they go, what's SEO? And I'm like, well, You know, at that particular point in time, I had no idea, right? I'm like, well, maybe let me go and find out. So we go and find out, you know, and then I'd learn what that was. And, you know, it, again, it sounds very much kind of like emperor's new clothes, right?

So you need to have a website and you need to have a business card. And on your business card, you should have your email address. And on your website, you should have a, a map that shows you directions, how people can get to the office. And when they phone to speak to you to say, you know, how do I get to the office?

Go to my website and look at the, look at the map and that will tell you how to get there. And it sounds really sort of stupid now, but back then, I mean, it was like really cutting edge. And, you know, I remember with the web design company, we, we had a kind of a boardroom and in the boardroom we had a 42 inch plasma TV, right?

Which, you know, you think a 42 inch TV now [00:23:00] is like tiny. Right? But, you know, 42 inch back in 2000 was massive. This thing cost us, I think it was something like $15,000 for a 42 inch plasma TV. Because we were basically showcasing the website that we built for clients, so we were inviting them into the office.

To show them what we've done, right, and if we were showing them on like a really sort of old, decrepit, sort of like old, old, sort of colour screen, that didn't make it look good, it would look bad to the client, right, so we, we invested heavily in that, that monitor to kind of make it look phenomenal, even though when they left, and most people out in the world had the old screen, so their experience wouldn't be anywhere near perfect.

But it was still important that, you know, we had to kind of do that showcasing and, and, and then it became the marketing piece of it became like the upsell effectively. So we'd sell them the website and then we'd sell them the [00:24:00] ongoing marketing for the website, and then, and that was the whole thing with the BizOp.

It would be, you know, it would lead to, right. So we would have. accountants that we'd refer them to, we'd get paid a commission on every referral we got through to an accountant and every referral we got through to, you know, people that would do web design and whatever else, right? So, but one of the things that we used to do is we would send the people through to a coaching, coaching floor, right?

So there was, again, it was like a, almost like a boiler room, people with headphones on talking to these people who just basically set up a business. And. I mean, when you look at it sort of now, you go, well, it was kind of a bit unscrupulous, but there was almost like a, there was a list of all the people that they could get coaching from that had different sort of price ranges, right?

So some of the people were brand new coaches. So, You know, they were much cheaper. Some were far more well established and would be more expensive, right? Cause they were more in demand. And, what you, what you found was that, you know, most people wanted to kind of go with the, the more [00:25:00] established, more expensive, right?

Which ultimately then meant that it was kind of more expensive for them to go into that. coaching program and I sort of sat through a few of them and I was again I was amazed at how bad some of the coaches were right which made me feel very uncomfortable doing the bizop because I just thought you know I'm sort of getting people in and I'm giving them sort of false hope and it's costing them a lot of money to get to that point right so I kind of spoke to the people that were running the offer and said look you know we need to do something to try and do a bit more validation of These coaches and what their sort of skills are, right?

Melissa Snow: Because to me, it's, you know, it's people's livelihoods and, you know, it's their, in some cases, it's their life savings that they put into this to try and get, get off the ground. Yeah, and it's not good for your credibility to be referring people to these people who aren't doing a great job. I mean, you want, Your former clients or your current clients to trust you, and if they don't trust you, they're not gonna keep referring people to you. And your clients or your [00:26:00] former clients are generally your best referral partners. 

Jim Banks: 

Future Outlook and Final Thoughts
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Jim Banks: one of the things I always try and ask podcast guests is where they see the next three to five years going, What are your sort of thoughts in terms of, You've obviously got a new, a new government in power in the States, right? There's all these wars still going on, what do you sort of see in terms of the kind of the next three to five years for entrepreneurs that kind of are setting up business and you know, should they be, I know I always say, let's be optimistic and enthusiastic, is that sort of foolish to think that way or 

Melissa Snow: I mean, I like to be optimistic and enthusiastic. I tend to be the kind of person, I think like you that's like. People always joke about me and my husband and they say, Melissa is the one that will like, just run and jump off the cliff and she'll figure out what she's going to do halfway down. My husband's the one who stands on the edge of the cliff and is like, well, how are we going to get down there?

And what's it going to be like down there? And should we pack a snack? And what happens if we fall? And. You know, I'm already like half [00:27:00] gone. So, I, I tend to be more on the, on the optimistic, everything will work outside, but, I do think we're going to see a shift, especially in the online space, and the coaching space, because I think during COVID, when no one could leave and people realized that they could work from home and then were forced to come back to work and didn't want to, there was a huge upswing in online entrepreneurs, people in the digital space, people trying to sell, you know, passive income courses and, digital products and things like that.

There was a huge uptake in coaches of all kinds, business coaches, life coaches, wellness coaches, all the coaches, completely unregulated. And I think that we are starting to see now the effects of that people are talking more about. for lack of a better way to put it, the bad coaches, the bad people in the online space who are really good at, so [00:28:00] much, everyone, for joining us today, and we hope to see you again soon.

Got into that space in the beginning thinking, Oh, I'm going to make so much money so fast. And maybe they did. but now have realized that that's not sustainable or years later, they're like, I still haven't made money. I think there's going to be kind of a mass exodus from that space. but I also think that in terms of businesses like mine, I think my business is right on time because I think after, And that's all the time we have.

so much for joining us. Bye. Networking is going to become. even more important and even more valued. And I think AI is going to play a [00:29:00] big role in that too. I love AI. I'm not down on it by any means. but I think that the bigger AI gets, the more people are going to long for that real connection with other humans.

And so I think that's going to be a really important aspect of a lot of people's businesses moving forward.

Jim Banks: Yeah, it's funny, I remember when, when I went to my first, live event after having been sort of locked up for what seemed like an eternity. you know, I mean, we definitely had a longer lockdown period here in the UK than I know you guys did in the States. and then even when things kind of opened up, right, we still had restrictions.

So like, I think the event I should have been going to this weekend, I think a few years ago when COVID was on, I couldn't go to it because. We weren't allowed to, we weren't allowed to travel, right? And as you say, like it is sort of you, I almost had forgotten how to network, right? And I kind of got back into pretty quickly, but you know, but I was very good at it.

Right. And usually, [00:30:00] the reason I'm very good at it is because I'm good at introducing people. So I would say, hey, you know, this is, yeah. Melissa, you should meet Jim, and Jim does this, and I think it would be beneficial, right, and, you know, and I've always tried to, to, you know, do my best to understand what people do, so that when somebody says, hey, I need help with this, I can say, oh, then you need to talk to Melissa, she'd be the perfect person, because that's right up her street, she can help you immensely, right.

And I'm doing it. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to do it if I'm not going to get kick back. I mean, I'm a, I've always been an affiliate marketer, and I believe in affiliate marketing, and I love affiliate marketing, right? But I'm not going to not recommend something or somebody's business if I'm not getting paid for it, right?

I want to do it because it's the right thing to do. It'll be beneficial to everyone involved in it. And, you know, again, that whole law of reciprocity, usually kind of what goes around comes around, right? So, generally speaking, people come to me with, with things when I've not looked for them, right? Again, I've had so many people that have hit me up [00:31:00] and said, Jim, I want to be a guest on your podcast because so and so, so and so said it was great.

I listened to it and, you know, they're right. And for me, that's great, right? I haven't had to go out there and hustle to try and find people to listen to it. My kind of community and friends have done that for me, right, which is great, right, and it's to me I don't think there's any better endorsement you can get if that's how somebody has found you.

If they've found you through somebody who's had a good experience of it, that can only be a good thing, right, and there must be loads of people in your community that have brought other people into the community because they've got great value from it and they know that other people will get great value from it as well.

Melissa Snow: Yeah, yeah. And I was really smart early on, not to pat myself on the back, but I added a question to my application to be a guest on my podcast. And the last question was, who else do you know who would be a great guest on this podcast? And so, to go back to your earlier question about how that podcast 

[00:32:00] I always reach out to those people that are recommended to me, even if they end up saying, yeah, I don't think it's a good fit or I don't know why she recommended me. I do appreciate it. Something totally irrelevant, but it still has given me opportunities to connect with so many different people that I never would have known otherwise.

And yeah, I find that good people know good people. So your community just keeps building.

Jim Banks: Yeah, and it's, it's, it's quite interesting. I think, you know, I think a lot of people that are involved in podcasting and make their money from sponsorships and things like that, I've always said the metrics are wrong, right? So, a lot of people they get paid by their sponsors based on the number of downloads they have.

To me, I think so many people, again, I'm looking at my own Spotify account, my Apple account, I have probably 50 to 100 podcasts on auto download, every single episode gets downloaded to my phone, or whatever, like all the devices I've got, and I never listen to them, right, just, again, generally speaking, if I go out with my phone, I was talking to somebody [00:33:00] earlier on, and I was saying that one of the things I've added to my list of things to do, so, in addition to listening to music when I go out walking, I'll listen to podcast episodes, and what I've done now is I've added to that using, Eleven Labs, 

And what I do is I actually, they have a kind of like, they'll read a blog post, right? So you can just type in a URL for a blog post, and it will dictate or read the blog post to you as you walk, right? So I don't even need to kind of Because, you know, you think about it, let's say there's a new, a new article on Forbes, I mean, I don't know if Forbes is a completely kind of paywalled site, right, but let's say it's not, and you can kind of get the whole article.

Might be a great article. I might say, well, I'll read it, but invariably I tend not to. If I'm sort of sitting at a computer, I will tend to just work and read it. Not to get immersed in that. Whereas if I'm out walking, I mean, let's say I'm going out to walk for an hour, I could probably listen to 10 to 12 blog posts, right, where it's just read for me.

And I can choose the accent, I can choose the [00:34:00] voice. So that, you know, it's not just a case of, you know, it'll sound like a complete robot, it'll sound like a human's reading almost like an audible book, right? So it's almost like audible, but for blog posts, when you're out and about, which to me, again, I,

Melissa Snow: Yeah. I've never understood the obsession with podcast download numbers. I'm just like, cause I'm like you, I download tons that I don't listen to and I listened to many that I don't download. So you really can't tell, How popular or who's listening or how much of it they're listening to, just by looking at your downloads,

Jim Banks: Yeah, and every episode that I do, I put it through sort of AI to give me the sort of soundbites of what was discussed. I timestamp everything on YouTube. So, You know, again, I'm appreciative and respectful of the people's busy time, right? So if it's a 40 minute episode, I don't expect for one second, every single person to listen to all 40 minutes.

So there may be three bits in a podcast episode, right? They'll go, I'll listen to that one, three minutes, listen to that one, two [00:35:00] minutes, listen to that one, a minute and a half, right? I don't want to listen to the rest, the intro, the outro, the Call to action, whatever. They don't care about that. They just care about the sort of small piece that is relevant to a particular challenge that they have or a particular point of interest.

And, and that's great. I love, I love the fact that that's how they do it. That's how I consume podcasts. I look at chapters and go, Bing, bing, bing. And if people don't put chapters in, it's almost like I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to have to go through the trouble. I mean, I can do it now.

I can use AI, download the transcript and just say, give me a summary of that, right? So I don't even need to listen to or watch to watch a video to get a summary of what they actually talked about, right? So, you know, so there's this inherent danger. I think so much of it is about authenticity. And again, I think uniqueness, right?

If you can be, you know, unique in the way in which you kind of conduct your podcast episodes, That can only be a good thing and more and more people will, will sort of listen in and that's what I'm finding. Every time I put new podcast episodes out, [00:36:00] more and more people come along, listen to it, give me feedback.

Not that I'm, I know that everyone's egotistical and loves it, right? Me probably more so than most, right? But it's sort of, again, I just, if I help one person, As far as I'm concerned, I've done my job. That's kind of what it's about. You know, the podcast, I know that everyone would aspire to be a Joe Rogan and everything.

I think I said to somebody, I don't even think Joe Rogan aspired to be Joe Rogan when he first started out, 

Melissa Snow: Yeah,

Jim Banks: of like ended up where he is. And, you know, again, I've never watched a Joe Rogan podcast episode ever, right? I probably should, right? But I can imagine like it's two and a half, three hours or whatever it is.

It's, I can't even imagine, I couldn't last two hours on a podcast episode because I'd need to go to the toilet probably three times. So I just don't know how they do that. so Melissa, I think, like, I really appreciate you taking time to come on and talk to me today. If people wanted to Reach you what would be the best way for people to get in touch with 

Melissa Snow: easiest way is just through my website, [00:37:00] powerfulwomenrising. com. through the website, you can find a link to the podcast. You can find all my social media on there. You can find, information about the virtual speed networking events that we have every month that are open to the public, and then also information Joining the Powerful Women Rising community.

So it's all in the one place.

Jim Banks: Fantastic, so thanks again so much for being on and at some point in time in the future I'd love to have you back to to talk some more and see how things have gone through the rest of 2025 and beyond.

Melissa Snow: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on. It was great.