100th Anniversary Episode with Bertrand Tento

100: 100th Anniversary Episode with Bertrand Tento

Welcome to episode 100 of The Determined Mom Show. I am so excited to bring this episode to you, and I will reflect on the last two years of my podcast with my husband, Bertrand Tento. He will be helping me to talk about where we came from and where we are today. 

I also am curious about your perspective. Back two years ago. When we talked about the idea of a podcast, what were your initial thoughts, what you thought it might amount to, what you thought the result might be, and how far you saw me sticking it out?

I have high confidence and know that whatever you put your mind to, you always find a way to make it happen. That’s a trait that I know of you. So whenever you met this path, you knew the project. I was sure you would find a way to do just as well and exceed as you’ve done with all the other paths you have taken before this one.

I want to ask you some questions. Looking back, when you decided to leave the banking industry and start this business, what is it actually that made you go, an industry where you had a serious position serious for a career? What is it that made you leave that all on the side to come to start this business?

100% are family, achieving the goals we’ve set over the years, being with our kids, and being the kind of mom I would be. Like to be every day and being there for the kids and being involved in things. I remember when I was little, I had all these Girl Scouts friends.

There was no way I would ever be a Girl Scout because my mom had zero time for that stuff. So I remember that kind of thing, and I just want to ensure that you know our girls have that opportunity.

Understandable, and I can help but think that the fact that you were a small business owner yourself before working in the banking industry, I can help but think that the fact that you had that experience being a business owner, that somehow maybe it gave you an outlook, better outlook on how you could help other businesses. 

It gave me a lot of inspiration because I knew the weaknesses that I had in my own business, and I wanted to be able to help people to solve those problems. In a much easier way, especially mom-owned businesses, because there is a whole other element to being a mom, owning a business, and doing everything moms do. There’s an entirely different element to that than any other entrepreneur.

A hundred episodes later, having worked as hard as I’ve seen your work, taking your mission so seriously, you know, doing all the research. I see you are doing. How do you feel hundreds of episodes later? Are you making the impact that you want to be making? 

I am because I get a lot of reviews and a lot of emails from the out with each episode, and I get a lot of feedback from people being like; I love that episode. Please open my eyes to this or whatever it is. And I enjoy those emails, and I want to know those things. And also, in The Determined Mom Show community, getting feedback from the members there and seeing how they’ve all become friends in and outside of that community.

I’ve seen a lot of collaboration and overlap and that kind of thing, and the thing that lights me up the most is seeing those women even, just former guests on the show and people that I’ve met through other networking avenues and people that I’ve met through other people. Just seeing them come together, collaborate, and work on their businesses and just forming our community. That’s my favorite part, for sure. 

Back to the podcast, in each episode, you probably have something different from the next or the previous episode. 

They’re all different, and I try to keep them separate because we want to avoid repeatedly hearing about the same thing. So definitely trying to get new information out there. And also from new perspectives because I know what is coming up.

I have a few new episodes that will be airing this year about eating, and they’re all from different perspectives, and no one thing works for anyone. I am entertaining all those different perspectives to allow people to choose the one they resonate with the most. So while there are some repeated topics, there’s always a different perspective.

Do you have some favorite episodes or, at least, from the listener’s feedback?

 I think episode two is about the anxiety of maternity. That one is really important because that highlights how I felt before I started the business. And that struggle that we were going through. That anxiety of that period before your maternity leave begins before you have the baby. 

That’s a really important episode because there are many moms in that position right now, thinking about leaving their job, and that’s a great place for them to start and go from there. I love Google My business, and the first one that I did was 21.

What is it that they’re missing for people that are out there? They have a business and they’re not using Google My Business or whatever service you offer. What is it that they’re missing? What can you tell them in a few words that open their eyes to how you can help them?

You’re wasting time on social media hosting. That’s the biggest thing because people aren’t searching on Facebook for your business. They’re not searching on Instagram for your business. They go to Google, and they want to find whatever it is, whatever your business is near me, and if you’re not showing up in the top three, then you’re, you’re not going to be getting that business, but you can quickly get into that top three and start showing up and get those phone calls, website visits, and requests for directions very quickly.

All that energy you put into posting to social media every month, every week, every day, as we all do it, can be redirected and focused on Google My Business and change your revenue.

How do they reach out to learn a little more? 

On the TDM Marketing website, which is just tdmmarketing.com. There are lots of free resources on there. There is a lot of paid help. There’s a course, and every single level of learning about Google My business is on our website.

You can also go to the Google My Business Facebook group, which is called Mastering Google My Business, to increase your Revenue. That is facebook.com/groups/learngmb.

What advice can you give them on your own experience?

If you’re looking to work from home, That would be a different answer than if you’re looking to get into a brick-and-mortar business. I’ll answer both. So if you want to work from home, start as a VA. And that’s how I started. And the reason for that is that you can work in other people’s businesses, find out what you do and don’t like doing, and then narrow it down. 

You won’t come out of the gate knowing exactly what you want to do forever. My venture into Google My Business could have been a lot faster. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else because I love the impact that it has, and the simplicity of it. It’s simple. It’s easy to teach people, and I love helping as many people as I can.

This is something that I’ve found my way accidentally through one of my marketing clients, my very first virtual assistant client, and I still work for him in Tacoma. I definitely appreciate his guidance. He has paid for me to take SEO courses, and that went off on a tangent, so that’s how I got into Google my business.

What was it like in your first episode?

It was nerve-wracking. It was me recording the same thing over and over and over and deleting, and deleting and deleting, and just really being generally nervous and unsure how to speak and not sure what is best. Just being generally unsure, and that’s probably true for all podcasters. We all start somewhere. 

If you listen to episode one, which I haven’t listened to for a long time, and maybe I shouldn’t, but, if you listen to episode one and then you know some of the latest episodes, you’re going to see a clear difference in my style and my nervousness and all of those things.

After the first year and the first year after the Business Mom Summit, I went through 40 interviews with different people. I had gotten very comfortable talking with people at that point because not only had I done probably 40 podcasts, Interviews at that point. But I had also done an additional 40 interviews for the Business Mom Summit.

What would you say, the things you feel comfortable with and what you probably feel less satisfied with and still working on today? 

I feel comfortable with recording, editing, and creating posts. And I feel uncomfortable with consistency in my social media and creating stuff like headliners, like tiny audio snippets with the podcast cover. I want to be more consistent with those. But it’s just a lot of effort to put into it after you like to record, edit, post, and then make the show notes. And there’s so much that goes into a podcast that you don’t realize when you first get into it.

There’s a lot more work that goes into it than that. Those are the things that I don’t feel comfortable with consistency in my messaging. I have improved in the last six months through the wonders of AWeber with automatically sending out my newest episodes because they have new RSS features in the program or their email system that allows me to automatically send those emails without having to do a lot of creation.

I use Libsyn for my hosting, and then for recording, I prefer using Zoom because it has a lot of different audio settings that help with the echo and help just make your podcast sound better. I used to use Audacity for recording, and I realize you can use many different settings in there, but I don’t know them, so I figured it’s easier to use Zoom. 

I love using Zoom for that. And then Audacity, I do use to edit the podcast, so that’s something that I’ve just started doing recently, and hopefully, you can’t tell, but if you can, I could do a better job. It’s not that hard, and I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the last year or two having someone edit the podcast. That can be reallocated. And so I’m relocating that to a VA.

How much microphone is essential in podcasting? 

Very important. For a long time, I used the Samsung Go Mic, a portable mic that was good. I don’t know how much it was. I think. It’s either 30 or $60. Somewhere in there, it was less than a hundred dollars, and I used that for probably the first, almost two years. And then recently, because of the episode I recorded with John Lee Dumas, where I wanted to have the best audio because I know his standards, I needed to upgrade. I got a Blue Yeti. I will probably upgrade beyond this soon. 

Thank you for your support over the last four years because it’s been four years since I started my second entrepreneurship journey. You’ve been supportive of everything and every decision and helping me to talk through things, counseling me on them; you’re like me, my counselor and my sounding board and my biggest cheerleader and my Mr. Fixit making me new offices every time we move. 

I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me. Over the last two years with the podcast and the previous 12 years, you could do this with me. I definitely appreciate you.

In the past couple of years, I’ve been proud to see how well you work with people, how satisfied they are with what you do, and the great feedback they give you. It encourages me. It makes me, and I’m sure you, feel like you are paying off and are also well-appreciated by people who come across and fully understand what you don’t. 

I only have faith and confidence that as more people get to discover what you do and get to make you part of the team, you are only going to make more and more, you know, impact and help people more and more do what I can to be supportive in that regard.

I appreciate that and looking forward to it as well. I love helping people; if you know me personally, then you know that. I want to share with the audience that next week on Wednesday, May 12th, I will be participating in the Pod Fest master course series for the Pod Fest organization. If you are unfamiliar with Pod Fest, it is a very supportive community of four podcasters.

That helps to educate them, that helps to teach them how to expand their reach, grow their podcast, and do technical things with their podcasts, and I am very honored to be a part of that. If you would like to attend, a ticket is $99. However, I do have a coupon code that you can use to get that ticket for free that coupon code will be in the show note and will also be on The Determined Mom website and the TDM marketing

Have you discovered how many countries people have listened to your podcast so far?

 There are different countries that I have been on the chart, like India and Canada and just some countries where I didn’t think people were listening, but Hi, everyone. I wasn’t aware that, you know, there were, listen, All over the world, but I know that I have clients all over the world, so it makes sense.

Thank you for making me part of this special 100-anniversary podcast event, and to any listener out there, thank you for listening. I want to thank you for being here and celebrating this with me. Thank you. Awesome.