We were lucky to catch up with Diane Boden recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Diane thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I began the podcast with a friend in the fall of 2015. We worked together for two years until she decided to step away and take a full-time position that didn’t allow for time on the podcast. After having my second child, I decided to go all-in and pursue monetization. I learned Garageband, web design, website hosting, and all that comes with managing guests on nearly 250 episodes. It has been a whirlwind. As for the second half of your question, I often consider whether or not I’d change the past. Two diverging roads: If I would’ve sped up the learning process, maybe it’d have led to more success. Or, maybe there was something in the learning process that led to building a more authentic, active followership. You never know. Creative work is always a gamble. How do I best position myself to get people to listen? How can I grow exponentially from the outset? You can Google the answers to these questions (or even ask a mentor); however, there is something about allowing yourself to organically experience that foundational period as you first set out in your creative project(s). When I look to the past, my goal is to seek insight rather than change the decisions I made.

Diane, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Diane Boden and I’m from Columbus, Ohio. I began podcasting back in late 2016. I had seen that a friend of mine had written a blog post about one of her goals for the year was to start a podcast. I reached out to her sharing similar goals so we met for drinks, brainstormed, and found out that we both were pursuing minimalism – but it looked very different because I was living in 850/900 square feet and she was living in over 3000+ square feet.

But we both had this common bond of intentionality and simplicity.

We began the podcast. She stayed on for almost two years and then left to pursue a full-time position. At the time, I had just had my second child. I considered, “What do I want to do? Do I want to keep pursuing this? Because it’s going to take a lot of time and effort. If I’m not starting to monetize it, I’m just going to go all in. I’m going to start reaching out to people for more of an interview style podcast.”

And I’ve been doing that ever since.

I guess you could say that it kind of took off. And again, I wasn’t expecting it to do so. I do think that one of the reasons was due to the popularity/trend of minimalism at the time. Marie Kondo was also a big household name.

It’s been really exciting to get to talk to women from all over and of all different backgrounds. But really the common thread of my show of what I want is think more and do with less. It’s more about intentional living, simplicity, minimalism, yes. But it’s kind of an umbrella of those topics.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Consistency! I showed up regularly on social media with quality content. If I’m going to take up your time reading through a post, I want that information to bring you value. Maintain the quality/value of your content BUT also, look to see what your best content is within your insights. You don’t necessarily need to pay to see a detailed insight list – just see which posts are doing the best.

I did this: found a pattern. Released more of that content and ended up having two viral (and somewhat controversial) posts that gained me 60K followers within three weeks. Organically!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

It’s fun to see where your creative work can take you. I’ll be honest and say that ego has played a role. It’s difficult to not compare yourself to others doing it “better” but you also have to stay in your lane and acknowledge what you’re currently capable of, who you’re serving, adapt where you can and accept what isn’t. Again, the ego can make this difficult if you aren’t accomplishing certain goals you have conceptualized; however, time will continue to pass so I say JUST KEEP SHOWING UP!   

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.minimalistmomspodcast.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/minimalistmomspodcast
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/minimalistmomspodcast
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-boden/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/minimalist_moms
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@minimalistmomspodcast
• Book: Minimalist Moms: Living and Parenting with Simplicity