IAM660- Founder Helps People Put Learning Into Action Through Podcasts

Melinda is a serial entrepreneur who has built 4 businesses in media and tech to 7 and 8-figure success. Her 5th, as the CEO and founder of Wings Media, is the world's first socially interactive and “gamified” podcast network. Podopolo™ is a community where people gather to discover and share their favorite podcasts, interact with each other and hosts, win freebies and resources as they participate in putting learning into action to enhance their lives and engage around world-changing initiatives – all in one mobile app. It's also the first to share revenue with podcasters. Melinda also hosts the fast-growing “Wings Of…Inspired Business” podcast named by Entrepreneur Magazine as #8 of 20 of the top business podcasts for 2020. She also helps business owners and entrepreneurs launch magnetic and profitable podcasts. Melinda is a passionate advocate for women entrepreneurs and conscious leadership to use business as a force for social good.

• CEO Hack: Meditation
• CEO Nugget: Focus on the vision, not the circumstance
• CEO Defined: Inspiration who fixes problems in an innovative way

Website: https://melindawittstock.com/

Listen to her podcast: MelindaWittstock.com/WingsPodcast
Instagram: @MelindaWittstock2020 @Podopolo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melindawittstock/
Facebook: @IamMelindaWittstock and @PodopoloNetwork
Get her Podcast Intensive at https://melindawittstock.com/launch-podcast
Find out about Podopolo™ at http://podopolo.com/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello. Hello. Hello. this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and have a very special guest on the show today. I have Melinda Wittstock. Melinda, it's awesome to have on the show.

Melinda Wittstock 0:38

Hey, it's great to be with you Gresham.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

Super excited to have you on and hearing about all the awesome things you're working on and you've been able to do. So before we jumped in. I want to read a little bit more about Melinda so you can hear about all the awesome things that she is doing. And Melinda is a serial entrepreneur who has built businesses immediately and tech to seven and eight-figure success. Her fifth as a CEO and founder of Wings Media is the world's first socially interactive and gamified Podcast Network. But below is a community where people gather to discover their favorite podcasts and interact with each other and host when freebies and resources as they participate in putting learning into action to enhance their lives and engage around the world-changing initiatives all in one mobile app.

It's also the first to share revenue with podcasters and Melinda also hosts the fast-growing wings of inspired business podcasts named by Entrepreneur magazines as number eight of 20 of the top business podcasts for 2020. She also helps business owners and entrepreneurs launch magnetic and profitable podcasts. Melinda is a passionate advocate for women entrepreneurs and conscious leadership to use business as a force for social good. Melinda. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Melinda Wittstock 1:38

Oh, I am. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 1:40

Awesome. Let's do it. So I guess I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear how everything got started. Can you take us through what I call your CEO story? What got you to where you're at right now?

Melinda Wittstock 1:48

Oh, my God. It's a long story. Gresham, I'll try and keep it fairly brief. But you know, I was one of those kids that had entrepreneurial DNA, you know, so my grandmother first diagnosed it when she said you're disruptive. And I'd come back with about $100 in my hand because I'd gone door to door with my black Labrador Retriever knocking on doors to get neighbors to prepay for my show. My show involves all sorts of things like dancing and running through doing you know, flips and things through the sprinkler and all set to music, you know, it was quite a production. And so this has always kind of been in my DNA. But I went on from college where like in college, I started lots of businesses and I did all kinds of different things. But I went on to become a journalist you know, I thought like, a lot of people of my age, not Oh, I've got to get serious now I have to get a job. And, and the closest thing to entrepreneurship, for me was being a journalist, because every day was different.

I joined the London Times as a correspondent covering business and then later media when I was just 22 years old. And it was an amazing experience. I learned a lot. I was one of those journalists who wanted to understand the story and understand where the story was going next. And I had the immense privilege to be able to interview people like Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson, and all sorts of people that I really learned, you know, a lot from them in terms of how they operated and built great businesses. I also had the pleasure, I guess you could say of writing a story of Rupert Murdoch standing right behind my back, which was a little bit terrifying as a 22-year-old. You can recover from that you can you can tackle anything in the world. I went on from there to become a television news anchor. And as I'm sorry, that's my dog in the background whining at me, because of course, everybody. Everybody's home right now taking up a lot of bandwidth. And my dog wants my constant attention

Gresham Harkless 3:45

Of course.

Melinda Wittstock 3:46

Yeah, so sorry about that. Yeah. So, you know, as a television news anchor, I worked for the BBC. And I also worked for NBC, creating Financial Times television in Europe for yeah, all through Europe and Asia. Doing that deal with CNBC and creating shows that I also hosted and grew a show for the BBC to an audience of 20 million people did all sorts of different things as a news anchor covering a lot of the major stories of the time, but I got to a certain point, and I kind of blame like Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky for my really just pushing me finally, back into my true love of entrepreneurship. Because I thought, Oh, God, the media couldn't get any worse, you know, reporting on that blue dress. Yeah, I can't get any worse than that. So like, I'm gonna I'm out of here a little bit. I know. You know, but from there, I created my first business, which was a political news agency here in Washington, DC.

We were pioneering I mean, we grew this to serve 300 radio and TV stations and newspapers, and then digital properties. And we really changed the game in terms of being able to personalize news for people and localized news and to do that with a very small team through content and repurposing, which is something that nobody's ever heard of back then, I got enamored with crowdsourcing and created one of the first-ever crowdsource news apps called Ask your lawmaker back in 2007, and grew that app to serve more than 3 million people in eight months. Anybody could ask any question of their lawmaker and our journalists on Capitol Hill, would get those questions answered, for people to listen comment, and share.

And that's what really took me into technology, I got very, very interested in how not only in the media you can involve just regular citizenry, in creating the news, who often did kind of a better job, honestly, than a lot of journalists, it's hard to admit as a recovering journalist myself. But that just took me into the world of things like machine learning, and AI and all of this a lot of my businesses, most laterally with very feed, actually analyzing people's social media conversations and being able to understand by that, who were your natural customers, and also understanding, from the data, what worked in social media and what didn't. And so now with put oppelo, I feel like each one of those businesses has been my lab for this one, because it brings it all together, like everything that I've done in my life.

I'm old enough now where you look back, and you see where all the dots connect. And so that's my entrepreneurial story. I've always followed my passion. And I've always been very mission-driven, trying to use businesses for social good, which is a very big part of what the Podopolo mission is.

Gresham Harkless 6:34

Nice. I absolutely love that. And, you know, I never really thought I think when we first connected, I talk a lot about how I love journalism and everything about it. And like creating content and things like that. I never thought about how close it could be to entrepreneurship, as you talked about, but it is ever-changing because there are so many different things happening and trying to cover and you'd have that regularity to the day. But I love how you referenced that Steve Jobs quote as well, you have interviewed him, and seeing that when you start to see where a person is often, especially in this day and age, we forget about all the steps that add up to their expertise, their excellence, and all the things that they're doing to this point.

Melinda Wittstock 7:06

Yeah, I mean, I really had a ringside seat at seeing a lot of the best. And as a journalist, I mean, the one thing if you're a naturally curious person, which I think all great entrepreneurs are naturally curious, right? Because we're trying to figure out, you know, problems, but solutions to those problems, and being really good at knowing kind of what questions to ask. I was able to absorb a lot, from watching all these people and what they were doing right as well as wrong.

Gresham Harkless 7:35

Yeah, absolutely. And it makes so much sense when you try to aggregate all that information, get all that knowledge and expertise, and you really can build something into it yourself. So I know you've touched on it a little bit. I wanted to hear a little bit more about that below. Can you take us through that? And also your podcasts and what we can also find there?

Melinda Wittstock 7:51

Yeah, absolutely. Well, start with the podcast, because really what led me back to it led me to create the podcast network. So some years back, I started Wings of inspired business, because I thought women like me, who are entrepreneurs, creating great businesses were kind of invisible, you know, it's like, we didn't fit the stereotype of the startup guy in his garage, inventing something, wearing a hoodie, and sneakers, and like eating ramen noodles, just doesn't isn't really doesn't tend to be the female entrepreneurial story. I wanted to affirm and acclaim All the women who were succeeding in silence, and also draw attention to how men and women are a little bit different when it comes to entrepreneurship and specifically address some of the things that hold women back in business.

And so I started Wings of Inspired business really, as a, it was just kinda like a passion project to begin with. But it grew into all these different business lines, as I said about monetizing it. And as I said, about monetizing it, I realized some of the structural problems in the industry that prevent podcasters from making money. And I think that's crazy because there's so much great content out there. But 85% of podcasters don't make a dime. And I certainly struggled in the early days, because it takes a while to build up your download numbers to the point where a sponsor or an advertiser is going to pay attention to you. So the situation we have right now is that you need about 10,000 downloads per episode, really to be taken seriously by a sponsor or an advertiser. And that's like 2% of podcasters.

And I've known from my previous businesses, that if you knew exactly who was listening, or watching, you could prove to an advertiser that they were actually qualified for their offer. You didn't necessarily need large numbers and we had proved that out with capital news connection, getting like a quarter of a million dollars for three months of one ad airing on one program here in Washington. That didn't even have a call that action because it was on a public radio station and the rules prevented it. And we could do that because we could prove that the people who were listening were influential and relevant to that particular sponsor. So I asked about what I do to change that dynamic or fix that structural problem in the podcasting industry. So that was the first kernel of it.

And then I realized there were lots of podcasters out there, where if they pooled all their respective downloads, or listeners or whatever, together, it would be incredibly powerful, and you would be able to monetize that content. Meantime, I'd also known that gamification is a really powerful driver of audience engagement, and podcasters really struggle with how to engage their audiences. I mean, almost every podcaster has some sort of call to action to get people onto an email list. But that's not an engagement tool. I mean, you grab their emails, and maybe their first names, and that's about it. But it's still a one-way communication. The next best thing is to get them onto a Facebook group, which is great.

It's just that Facebook owns those people, it owns that data, and it makes money, not you. And so all these different trends, putting these together led me to pull up Papadopoulou. And one of the things that we're doing what you mentioned in the intro, is really creating a space for the listener and the viewer to be able to interact around the content and put lessons learned from the content into action in their daily lives. So that it can transform their lives, enhance their lives, and also take mission-driven challenges and quests and things to really improve the world. And as they're doing that, I mean, we learn a fair amount about them, the podcasts know a lot more than they can discern from download data because they know how long someone's listening, and when they jump off.

They know what interests those people, they know all kinds of things that can improve their content. Moreover, it means that they now qualify for advertising because we can say to an advertiser, who approaches us and says, we want to reach women in their 30s and have young children who are interested in clean household products and yoga. We can say write these 37 podcasts. And we're the first to actually pass that and only place that revenue, sell that but pass that on to the podcasters themselves. So they can earn money from podcasting, while at the same time giving a great experience to the listener and the viewer, allowing the podcaster to really succeed and really build those communities. And at the same time improving the return on investment for an advertiser or sponsor. So that's what Podopolo is.

Gresham Harkless 12:28

The network as well, too. I think it's something that's pretty awesome. Would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? Would you consider that to be the secret sauce at Apple? Or is it of yourself as well, too? Or is it a combination of both?

Melinda Wittstock 12:42

Well, at the highest level, you know, I'm building a media company, but I call it really a consciousness company. I mean, it is about mission and sort of elevating humanity in that way, providing the tools for people to be able to do that. So it's one thing to read a book or listen to a podcast, or watch a video, or do something like that, and then not do anything with the information. So how can you make it fun to take that learning and take that social connection and take that stuff and give people the tools and the inspiration and the reward?

Gresham Harkless 13:11

Thank you, it is an incredible kind of reminder. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO heck. So that could be like an apple book or habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Melinda Wittstock 13:23

Oh my god. Okay, so my number one hack, is really meditation.

Gresham Harkless 13:26

So now when asked for what I call a CEO nugget, that could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self?

Melinda Wittstock 13:36

I probably would have told my younger business self, this very specific thing, focus on the vision, not the circumstance.

Gresham Harkless 13:44

I love that perspective and that nugget. And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote, CEOs on the show. So Melinda, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Melinda Wittstock 13:55

It's about inspiration. To me being a CEO, is I will a startup CEO, right? Because that's kind of who I am, right? I'm the sort of innovator person who sees a problem and wants to fix it in a very innovative way.

Gresham Harkless 14:10

I definitely love that perspective in that definition. So I appreciate that and appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get ahold of you. Subscribe to the podcast and hear about all the awesome things.

Melinda Wittstock 14:23

Oh, gosh, okay, well, yeah, so you gotta be careful what you ask Gresham. Okay, everybody, if you're listening to this right now, and you were thinking like, creating a podcast was something on your to-do list or your Sunday list, right? Just a quick thing, Sunday is not a day in the calendar. The time is actually right now and I help people launch podcasts that make money and that are integrated with your lifestyle so you can sustain them. And all that, besides, you know, really finding your voice and your why and I happen to believe that at this time in our history. Our voices are all really needed. So if you have a special skill, a special perspective, teaching or whatever, some buddy, many people, somewhere in the world everywhere in the world need to hear your voice.

So now is a really good time to create a podcast, especially if you're kind of locked down at home and everything's been turned upside down. And so if that calls you, I'd love to be able to help you do that I like working with people one-on-one. And I also work with people in a group and I'm doing a special group right now. And you can find out all about that at melindawittstock.com/launch-podcast.If you're already a podcaster I'd love to have you in the Podopolo network. So you can just email me at melinda@podopolo.com Check out the website podopolo.com All the information is there. You can find me on Instagram, MelindaWittstock2020, Or Podopolo and you can find me on Facebook. The same thing with Melinda Wittstock or my public figure I am Melinda Wittstock and also Podopolo network there as well. And I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter and all the places.

Gresham Harkless 16:09

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And to make it even easier, we will have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can click through and follow up with you and see all the awesome things you're working on Melinda truly appreciate your time and all the awesome wisdom and information you gave us today. And I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 16:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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