Alicia Butler Pierre
All right, welcome, everyone. This is our end of the season wrap, quote unquote party. We have some of the amazing people behind the scenes that help make this podcast possible. It’s funny because whenever there’s the end of the season, I usually record a monologue episode. But there’s no need for me to record a monologue episode because I’ve been recording monologues throughout this particular season of the Growth Strategies Masterclass.
But, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to invite my friends behind the scenes to this episode so that you all can get to know who they are and all of the hard work that they do to make this podcast possible. It’s always funny to me whenever people ask me, “Alicia, how do you do it? How do you do it all?”
I always tell them, “I don’t do it all! There’s so many people that help me,” and you all will get a chance to meet them today. So, with that in mind, let’s quickly go around, and if you wouldn’t mind, when I say your name, unmute yourself, introduce yourself, and say exactly what it is that you do as it relates to this Business Infrastructure podcast. Erika, I’m actually going to start with you.
Erika Ve Revilla
Hi, everyone. Good morning. Good evening, whatever your time zone is. My name is Erika Revilla, and I am from the Philippines. I’ve been with Equilibria for more than three years now. I am Alicia’s human organizer. I am helping Alicia manage her hectic schedules and keeping with the correspondence.
Alicia Butler Pierre
I always joke that Erika is my right hand. She literally does keep me organized and make sure that I show up to places that I will oftentimes forget where I’m supposed to be. So, Erika is a critical, critical part of this team. Grant, I’ll go to you next. And really quickly, the reason Erika said, “Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Night, Good evening, wherever you are,” is because we are literally in four different countries. So I think that’s another really cool and unique feature about our show as well. So, Grant, you’re up next.
Grant Revilla
Hi. My name is Grant Revilla. I’m the production assistant for Business Infrastructure podcast. I help with the podcasts, having the episode go live from scratch until the episode goes live. I post the videos on YouTube, but the one editing with the YouTube, you’re gonna meet her soon. I also keep track with the show notes and resources for the podcast.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Grant is being very modest, but Grant actually does a lot of research behind the scenes. He is in charge of resourcing different guests, keeping in contact with the guests, letting them know when their shows go live. He collects all kinds of information for the guests, so he does quite a bit in making each episode possible. But as he mentioned, as you’ll hear at the end of every episode, I say, “…and a special thank you to Grant Revilla for creating the show notes.” This is Grant Revilla. Ruj, you’re up next.
Rujuta Jamgaonkar
Hi, everyone. My name is Rujuta, all the way from Pune, India, and I’ve been associated with Business Infrastructure for the past six months, and I’m responsible for managing the social media for the podcast. My job is to make sure that the podcast reaches as many people as possible across the globe and to make sure that people are aware of the great work that is being done here across various platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. We regularly update stuff about the podcast. So that’s what I’ve been doing, and it’s been great so far.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Thank you, Ruj! Ruj didn’t mention the fact that she is the co-founder of Black Panda, which is an amazing digital marketing agency. They do a phenomenal job with our social media graphics, the posts that they do for us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and most recently, posting shorts on YouTube. We could not promote the show without their assistance. Simi, you’re up next. I know you’re very new to the Black Panda team, but please, we’d love to hear more about you.
Simi
Hello, everyone. My name is Simi and I work at Black Panda. I assist Rujuta for handling social media, YouTube. Nice to meet you all. Thank you.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Thank you, Simi. Let’s head on over to Leena. Leena is the other co-founder of Black Panda.
Leena Nair
Hi, everyone. As Alicia mentioned, I am one of the co-founders of Black Panda Enterprises, and we’ve been working with Alicia since the beginning of this year on promoting the amazing podcast of Business Infrastructure. And I particularly play the part of doing digital metrics analytics and publishing inferences from the data that we have to understand how the podcast is performing.
It has been thrilling to work with someone as talented as Alicia and through her meet so many wonderful people, not just in this room here, but also on the podcast. We’re very grateful to be here. Thank you so much, Alicia.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Oh, Leena, thank you for that. And everyone who’s listening or watching us as well. Leena is a masterful data analyst. She pulls together these numbers for us. It’s amazing what she does. Looking at the numbers is important because it helps guide our decisions about the types of topics that we talk about and how long we should talk about them. So, we would not be able to have that kind of direction if it weren’t for those analytics that she’s providing for us. And we have Gladys in California. How are you, Gladys?
Gladys Jimenez
I’m great. Yep. It’s early morning here in Los Angeles. So nice to meet everyone that I see their names and am able to work with all of y’all and it’s just a pleasure to work with Alicia. And I think we’ve been working together since, I want to say, 2020 or 2021. We’ve done wonderful season after season, and I really just enjoy editing the content. I learned so much for my own editing business and apply it, and I’m always speaking her praises to people who are in small businesses. So, it’s a pleasure to be here. And I really just love working with this team. It’s awesome!
Alicia Butler Pierre
Gladys is also being modest. She is an Emmy-nominated video editor. If you ever take a look at our company’s YouTube channel, that is Gladys who is doing all of that amazing editing work for us and really bringing the audio of the podcast to life in the form of video. We also have another really important team member and that is Clarence.
Clarence provides the sound design. He created his take on the Smooth Operator song. But we also have another digital assistant that’s in the room that we should give a shout out to. That’s Fireflies, aka “Fred.” And Fred is always listening. Fred is taking a detailed transcript of every meeting, every recording that we have. And Fred has been an integral part lately in helping us really streamline our note taking processes, as well as the transcription process of each episode. Clarence, you came just in time. We were just talking about you.
Clarence Levy III
Okay. I’m Clarence Levy. I’m the sound designer for the group. So, basically, any of the music that you hear behind everything, the musical and audio landscape behind the podcast. That’s really what I’ve been in charge of doing.
Alicia Butler Pierre
I have a question for all of you. I know what value I get from listening to the guests that are on the show. But I’m curious, was there anything this particular season that stood out for you?
Gladys Jimenez
Well, I like that you applied the guests’ advice to your own company this season. I really thought that was a fantastic idea. I always looked forward to seeing how you were going to apply it. So, I thought that was a really, really, really nice theme.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Thank you for that. I received more feedback in that regard because people are able to learn about a particular tool that one of the guests may talk about. And you’re right, Gladys. They’re able to then figure out how to apply that tool to their businesses through listening to me figure out how to apply the tool to my business. Anyone else?
Rujuta Jamgaonkar
Okay, I’ll go ahead. So for someone who owns a small business here in India, I found a lot of value in some of the concepts that were discussed in this season, like the “Freedom 2.0.” That was really, really helpful and how the dependency trap kind of like holds you back and it sort of stops you from spreading your wings and gets you into a firefighting mode. And you’re less strategic and more execution-oriented when the entire team is depending on you and you don’t have a backup plan. So, I think that’s something that I face as well sometimes. And it was really helpful to, like, have the concept of Freedom 2.0. That was my favorite thing.
Alicia Butler Pierre
That was one of my favorite things, too, Ruj, because I never thought about it as Freedom 2.0. So, thank you for bringing that up. Leena, I think you had something you wanted to share also.
Leena Nair
Yes, absolutely. So, I want to just add the word Gladys was saying earlier about the tools. For small and medium sized business owners were so busy keeping the show going on, it’s really hard to stay on top of market disruption. To have a podcast like this where you simplify so many of these concepts and make it easy for people like us utilize in our day to day. I think it’s super helpful. And you make help us be cutting edge in that sense. And I really appreciated that about this particular one. I mean, I appreciate that about all of them.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Thank you, Leena. So, I have a question for…my next question for all of you. Now that you’ve been doing whatever it is that you do to help this show, is there anything that surprised any of you about what it takes to put the show together and then, beyond having the show go live, the actual promotion of the podcast?
Grant Revilla
I’ll take that question. If you just listen to the podcast or if you just watch the podcast, you might think that, Oh, they just did the interview and put all the sound together and some edits. But to be honest, just the producing side – 40 hours is not enough. Alicia keeps on telling me 40 hours is not enough. And, yes, indeed, it’s not enough. 40 hours is not enough.
So that’s what surprised me. Just to be honest because I haven’t worked with podcasts before. This is my first podcast show, and I was thinking that I just have to put some show notes, and for the sound and video editing, it’s not mine, but that’s why I thought it’s just easy. But now I know there’s a long process, and that’s what surprised me, that there’s a long process behind it.
Alicia Butler Pierre
And, Gladys, I know it takes you a long time to convert an episode into a video format. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because… or is there something about editing a podcast related video that maybe surprised you?
Gladys Jimenez
Well, everything is new. This would be my first podcast in 20 years of editing. So, it’s been really enlightening and it’s something I really like to do. It’s as hard as everything else. Like, you get your assets and Grant helps me with that, Alicia helps me with that, is just bring all the elements together, the sound effects, the music, the licensing of the images.
I mean, you know, legally on YouTube, we want to make sure everything’s clear, the music and all that. So that’s been helpful to have Clarence is a composer and a mixer, so it sounds really professional, which is really nice. So, I feel like you’ve created a high standard by being so organized, getting really good podcast interviewees, and just assembling a really great team. So it makes it easier for me because all the chips are in place. Everything is there when I need to go there and get it, which is so unusual in this world of crazy editing. So it’s so nice to have a structure.
Alicia Butler Pierre
And I’ll share something that I know only because you’ve told me this, Gladys, is what may appear as a 15-minute video may have taken you hours to actually put together. I’m always amazed by the amount of time that it takes you on the video editing side to put something together.
Gladys Jimenez
Yeah, well, you want it to be a story. You want it to flow, you want it to entertain people. And, you know, that takes time. If I were to slap it together quickly, you would feel it, you know? So it does take time to build it.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Let’s hear from the Black Panda team. Is there anything that surprised you as far as providing social media content for a podcast?
Leena Nair
What really surprised me is the amount of work that goes behind the scenes to make these podcasts happen. I thought there must be like a simple thing like, you know, just shooting a reel or something like that at your desk. And you have an editing expert, you have a sound engineer, you have this planning that you do. You have to manage the guests. It is not a joke. It takes real expertise to do this. That was surprising for me.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Thank you, Leena, for sharing that. Ruj, was there something you wanted to say?
Rujuta Jamgaonkar
Yeah. On similar lines to what Leena said, I had a little bit of an idea of what goes behind putting a podcast together, just because I listen to a lot of podcasts. And what I’ve noticed with the Business Infrastructure podcast and what helped me make the social media content is how organic the flow is of each episode.
Alicia, the way you lead those conversations, the way the guests respond, everything is very natural and organic. Other podcasts, kind of, like, sound a little bit scripted to me. So sometimes it gets boring, especially if it is a business-oriented podcast or some really dry topic. But in Business Infrastructure’s case, that’s not true. And that also helps to make such variety of content because there’s so many perspectives and there’s so much that happens in every episode. So, it’s very easy to write about it, actually.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Oh, that’s good to hear. We’re going to start wrapping this, is there something that you want to ask me? Maybe something you’ve been curious about particularly as it relates to how I prep for an episode or anything like that? Because you never know. People who are listening or watching may even glean something helpful or useful out of your question.
Leena Nair
So, Alicia, my question for you is, like, how do you network so well? How do you have so many variety of people in your network who have so much knowledge, and how do you know how to ask them those questions? Do you meet people and you’re like, “It’d be great for my podcast,” or does it just happen?
Alicia Butler Pierre
There’s a number of ways that guests come. But you’re right, Leena, I do have a very expansive network. But you have to remember, the show started in 2018. So by the time the show started, I had already been in business for 13 years. I already knew a lot of people up to that point. Podcasting actually opened the door.
If my networking world was this big, podcasting made it go even bigger. And then Erika came on the scene, and Erika started to book me onto other people’s podcasts. A lot of times when I would be a guest on someone else’s show, I would then ask that person, “Hey, would you like to come on my show?”
And then there’s networking. But as Grant can also tell you, there are people who ask to be on the show. So, a good portion of guests have also come that way as well. So there’s three primary ways that we source the guests. But thank you so much for asking that question. Anybody else? Any other curiosities before we wrap up?
Rujuta Jamgaonkar
So, who’s your favorite podcaster and why?
Alicia Butler Pierre
Oh, my favorite podcaster. And, Clarence, you probably know this because I’ve told you about him so much…he’s shaking his head “Yes.” There’s two. My favorite podcaster is a guy named Glynn Washington. He’s so good at storytelling. I would say they’ve pretty much provided a blueprint for me. As far as an actual show there’s so many podcasts that I like. But in the business genre, I would have to say Business Wars.
I really like Business Wars is because it tells a story. I think you would find it to be very interesting because each season features a different war. So there might be a war, for example, between Coca-Cola and Pepsi or a war between Nike and Adidas. So it’s these brands that most of us have already heard of, and they actually tell the story about how these two companies fight.
And at the end of each of each season, you’re trying to figure out, Okay, who will emerge the victorious one? So, those are my favorite podcasters and podcasts, but there’s so many people that I follow and admire and shows that I also love. So thank you for asking that Ruj. Anyone else?
Grant Revilla
Yeah, this is more personal. So how do you keep yourself, like, sane with all the clients and with the podcast? And you’re also teaching, so, like, how do you keep yourself sane?
Alicia Butler Pierre
Well, I’m crazy. Number one, I don’t get a lot of sleep, which is not recommended at all. But the good thing is, I have all of you, and you helped me, and the more I figure something out, the more I’m able to delegate. And we’re going to just keep adding to the team more and more people. Erika is a huge part of helping me out on a day-to-day basis, because, as she will tell you, if I don’t write it down, I will forget. And it’s not because it’s not important.
Throughout the day, things just get really, really crazy. But, as you all know, as we’ve been advancing through this particular season for growth strategies, we’re shifting the business’s model from consulting to training. And so that, again, is going to help free up a lot of my time so I can have, Ruj, that Freedom 2.0! That is the goal. And then I can go to California to visit Gladys and Pune in India to visit Black Panda and go back to the Philippines. So that is the goal.
But it is not easy. I will say that, Grant. But, when you’re passionate about what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. So that’s another key part of it as well. But, guys, I just want to say, because I know Gladys has to get going, I know Clarence is en route, and I want to be respectful to Erika, Grant, Leena, Simi, and Ruj, because I know it’s nighttime for you guys. I don’t want to extend this any further but thank you all so much for all of the hard work. I’m so excited about what we’ve been able to accomplish together.
It’s good to see all of you here on camera, and I’m just so excited about what we have in store for our listeners. So thank you again for all of the hard work. I wanted to make it official by having you all convene together in one place at the same time and express my gratitude. Any parting words from anyone? Clarence, you want to say something.
Clarence Levy III
Music is my first love. So I want to thank Alicia for helping me to find something I can do where I can actually do what I love. That’s the most important thing to me. And then at the same time, I’m able to learn from the show because I have my own business as well. And so this show. Has been a class for me. And every single episode that I’m editing, I’m going to school as well. So thank you, and I’m looking forward to working with the team even further.
Alicia Butler Pierre
Thank you so much! Again, more good things to come, guys. And I think, on that note, we will wrap this up.
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