#50: Celebrating 50 Episodes!

Welcome to The Cultivating Business Growth Podcast. With this episode, we’ve reached a milestone with our podcast. This means it’s time to celebrate! PJS & Co. CPAs has officially recorded and released our 50th podcast episode! With this milestone came many laughs and lessons learned. In this episode we share some of our thoughts on our podcasting journey and have a bit of fun with rapid fire questions.

What we cover in this episode:

00:32 – Intro and Recap about us
01:49 – Challenges and what we’ve learned
27:44 – Rapid fire questions

Recap about us

To refresh your memory in case you’ve been snoozing for a bit, we are a group of working professionals, many of whom with children at home, who love what we do and navigate our work days to help business owners grow and succeed. Our team is housed in multiple states and we work remotely at all times. Yep. We made working from home cool way before COVID-19 existed. Our podcast episodes have featured our three CPA partners, Katina Peters, Jamie Staley, and Jami Johnson, our Operations Manager, Kim Nixon, and are hosted by our Marketing Manager, Megan Spicer. A while back, Megan proposed the idea of podcasting with our fearless leaders and you guessed it, there was quite a bit of hesitation. We are, afterall, accountants who don’t necessarily enjoy being in the spotlight. But, after mulling it over, Katina, Jami and Jaime saw the value in podcasting by talking about the things that ACTUALLY MATTER to business owners. They gave the green light and it was full steam ahead.

What we’ve learned: Challenges

Don’t stress about imperfection

None of us were professional podcasters when we started this journey. We had quite a bit to learn, but some lessons came through trial and error. Now that we’ve been there, done that, we understand it’s important to relax! We had to learn to let go and just roll with the punches. As CPAs, we are used to things being precise. With podcasting, it forced us out of our comfort zone and we continue learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Instead of focusing on perfection, we try to focus on being genuine and having fun. We continue devoting time to our podcast because our end goal is to help business owners by sharing information that makes a pivotal difference in their business success. Over time, we’ve definitely gotten more comfortable because we know we are providing information that will make an impact in the lives of business owners who are in need of that information to grow or maybe improve their lifestyle balance. When we come from an educator’s mindset, we don’t worry so much about perfection, which helps give us the confidence to explain the sometimes complex topics we cover in ways that are understandable and relatable.

Background noise

As a team of moms working from home, a silent environment conducive to recording podcasts is rarely available. Since we are a distributed team, we do not have the benefit of a studio, but we do the best we can and get the information out there, which is what we care most about! We have made this work for us through the magic of editing and a few key pieces of equipment (certain microphones, sound booth boxes, etc.) that help minimize the background noises.

Operational and Administrative

Like many things, podcasting involves a large amount of work behind the scenes. Creating outlines, booking guests, editing, promotions and more create a large amount of work outside of what you hear in the end product. If you are considering starting your own podcast, please take time considering these elements before committing to a regular schedule. As with any good content, consistency is key, so choose a schedule you can commit to and have the capacity to handle.

What we’ve learned: Benefits of Podcasting

Podcasting allows a fun platform

Podcasting has given us a platform to share the extensive knowledge of our CPA leaders with others. We really do enjoy sharing this information and feel an obligation to spread the knowledge in our community of business owners, who are on the hunt for ways to maximize their impact in the world. We have tools that help business owners grow and become more profitable, while also keeping lifestyle goals in mind for a well-balanced and strategic approach to business. This is our passion and we are happy to share that with all listeners.

Growth

As previously mentioned, a group of accountants isn’t necessarily jumping up and down, volunteering to record anything to publish. But, the opportunity to create this podcast has pushed us out of our comfort zone, allowing us to grow and become more comfortable with speaking engagements.

Serving others – telling the stories of accounting

Podcasting is a fantastic outlet to show our listeners that accounting has life, applicability, and relatability. We are able to communicate how accounting can be a pivotal leverage point, when used properly, by sharing our own stories and examples. We enjoy illustrating the importance of certain topics and to sharing tips that can help you reach new levels in your business as we’ve seen in our clients.

Favorite episodes

When asked about our favorite episodes, our team answered unanimously – episodes that featured guests. We’ve had wonderful guests come and speak with us. They’ve been informative and engaging. We are extremely grateful for everyone who has joined us. Along with our guest episodes, our other favorites include the episodes linked below about productivity, passion and our Strategic Planning Series. If you missed these episodes, check them out! You won’t be disappointed.

Conclusion

As we wrap up this episode, we will leave you with a few wise words of wisdom from our team. Listen to where your heart and spirit are taking you, focus on quality of life, and enjoy what you do. We encourage you to make changes that allow you to enjoy life more and have the courage to step out. Make intentional steps to make the life you dream about a reality. Feel free to read back through our challenges and what we’ve enjoyed to see what you can take away. If you have knowledge to share, consider starting your own podcast or using some other platform because your voice matters! There is an audience out there who needs to hear your story and the lessons you have to teach. We appreciate you joining us to celebrate our 50th episode and if you haven’t listened, skip ahead to the rapid fire round questions for some laughs!