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According to podcasters JoJami Tyler and Lana Helda, who do their show from their tour bus, listening to podcasts is still something new for women over 50. So, these two dynamo’s saw a niche ripe for the picking.
Tyler and Helda, both in their 50s, have been traveling in their tour bus, spreading the word that listening to podcasts can help you live a fuller and more meaningful life.
Tyler and Helda say they are both full of sass and nowhere near ready to roll up in a ball and retire. Helda tells PBJ 50 is the new 30. “Women at this stage in life are ready to find ways to still grow and learn and put more experiences in place.”
The duo are meeting and interviewing women who are creating and doing uplifting things and they are sharing that with their listeners. Along the way they have interviewed several celebrities (Maria Shriver and Cristina Ferrare) as well as many women doing something special like the first woman to summit both sides of Mt. Everest and sharing new experiences like Sound Baths.
To monetize their endeavor Tyler and Helda have created a lifestyle journal/workbook The Ladies Roadmap Journal. This has lead to women holding monthly Ladies Roadmap Meet ups to discuss and share their goals. This way of connecting and building community has been beyond exciting to see evolve. The stories of transformation and change has been off the chart!
PBJ: How did you two meet? It was a chance meeting over 30 years ago. We were living in Southern California at the time and were both young, stay-at-home mothers. Soon after we met we both relocated and have not lived in the same state since. In spite of all the distance, we have kept our friendship strong and experienced an amazing amount of memorable times and events together. Our connection is one that only comes along once or twice in a lifetime if you are fortunate enough to meet someone who is a true kindred spirit and soul mate.
PBJ: Why did you decide to do a podcast? We both became entrepreneurs, myself (Lana) an interior designer and JoJami an image consultant. We had been busy running our businesses for the past 20 years and now our kids are gone and we have time to think about what and how we want to spend our time. We have always been on the same wavelength as lifetime journalers, seekers of knowledge, and an on ongoing desire to stay fulfilled and relevant in life. We both loved to listen to podcasts and felt our worlds open up with such wonderful information. However, we were a bit frustrated so many shows were hosted by millennials and felt there was a need for a podcast with information tailored to women over 40 who still feel vibrant and are continuing to reinvent themselves. We got excited about the idea of connecting with other like-minded women and were ready for something fresh and challenging in our lives. We planned a long weekend with lots of brainstorming, comparing notes from our journals, and decided to put a stake in the ground and become podcasters. JoJami has a fabulous Tour Bus, so we thought how great would it be to travel around the country and create a platform for dynamic women to share their stories!
Ladies Roadmap to Living Ageless was born!
PBJ: Tell us how you got started, what equipment did you purchase, what hosting company did you go with, and how was that first show? Once you announce you are doing something it forces you to move forward. First we dug in and “Googled” and read everything we could about podcasting.
Out of the gate we learned a lot from reading John Lee Dumus’ book on podcasting and followed it step by step. We were fortunate to have JoJami’s son, Cameron, a music producer who really helped get us up and running with the tech side of things. We bought (2) ATR-2100 microphones with some mic stands and started on Garage Band. Let us tell you… we made every mistake in the book and then some when starting out, pulling our hair out of our, non-techie heads trying to learn the ins and outs of all of the different technology. We just kept propping ourselves back up, persisted, and never gave up. After much research, we felt Libsyn would be the best platform for our show, and JoJami was the “hero” taking the time to learn how to upload the shows into their system. We quickly learned about Zoom conferencing which was a game-changer for our long-distance recording. We then invested in our own Zoom recorder which has been our favorite equipment to date.
In the beginning we didn’t know anyone who was podcasting, so we were on our own. It makes us laugh now, thinking back, how just coming up with the content and then recording the opening and closing was nerve wracking and painful. However, once we got rolling, our first show turned out better than we imagined. Our guest was a professional speaker and excellent storyteller. She shared her dramatic, interesting story, which many women could relate to and made our job as interviewees easy. It was exciting to get the first interview under our belt and then we were off and running.
PBJ: What is your goal with the show? Inspiring women to embrace where they are in their lives, continue growing and dreaming, and to keep themselves vibrant and relevant through self care, journaling, mindfulness, and reinvention. We like to call it living ageless in mind and spirit.
PBJ: How do you line up guests? First we reached out via email with an invitation to friends and colleagues we felt had something interesting to share with our audience. We quickly progressed to more deliberate ideas and topics we felt were important for women to learn. Fortunately, our guests have enjoyed their time on the show with us and have connected and referred us to other interesting women. Referrals have worked well for us. One of our favorite stories is how we met and interviewed Maria Shriver. We had about 30 episodes under our belt when we started feeling ready to have a “reach” guest on the show. Someone we could only dream of one day interviewing. The first person we added to the list was Maria Shriver. She was promoting her new book and we heard this was the best time to get a high-quality guest. We put her photo and name in our journals and continued on with business as usual.
Serendipitously, we ended up – weeks later – meeting a colleague of hers, and even more incredibly and by accident, two days later we ran into Maria at one of her book signings. She was beyond gracious and when we told her we were podcasters she invited us to interview her at an upcoming event as well as asked us to write an article for her weekly online blog, the Sunday Paper. We were beyond ecstatic and to this day it’s been one of the highlights of our journey.
PBJ: What do the two of you talk about on the show? We cover a broad variety of topics from wellness, beauty, self care, journaling, reinvention, and even money matters. Soon after starting the podcast we decided to co-author the Ladies Roadmap Journal giving our listeners an additional tool to guide them to align their dreams and intentions into action to live their best life. Currently, we do a combination of guest interview shows and lifestyle/ journal shows. Moving forward we are going to focus more on lifestyle and how to design a beautiful space and life.
PBJ: Who edits the show for you or do you do that yourself? We hire an editor. Cam Tyler from Lit Loops.
PBJ: How many episodes have you done, how long are they, and what are your download and listen numbers? We have over 60 shows now and our download numbers are growing every day. Last month our numbers tripled. We have over 50,000 downloads.
PBJ: How are you growing your audience and how have you seen the numbers increase? We do a fair amount of social media and have a weekly newsletter and blog. We are also part of an over-40 influencer group called the Fashion Flash where we all share a link to our best blog post of the week with our combined audiences. Creating our own product, the Ladies Roadmap Journal, has been a wonderful way to engage our audience and help monetize our podcast. We have monthly Journal meet-ups around the country, which is a great way to bring our community together and spread the word. We also have our guests cross-promote with us and have written articles for online magazines.
PBJ: How do you market your show? We feel there are many women over 40 who are still not listening to podcasts yet, so we have been working to educate them about the benefits of listening to podcasts. We have a video on our website to explain how to get a podcast on your phone and have even been lecturing on the benefits of podcasting to businesses. We have been asked to speak at several conferences coming up as well. Again, cross-promotion with our guests is super important.
PBJ What are your three favorite podcasts? JoJami’s favorite: ~Story Brand ~Tim Ferris ~ The Life Coach School
Lana’s favorite: ~So Money ~Oprah’s Super Soul ~Tim Ferris
Check out the Ladies Roadmap website HERE. Listen to the show on iTunes.