We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marie Walker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marie, thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think first you have to define success to YOU. To someone else my success looks small, but that’s because their idea is different than mine. For me most of my twentys was shoving dirty dishes at restaurants, serving successful creatives at hotels, and then doing one selling out corporate job. I knew I wanted to travel, work online, but HOW? I truly did not understand how I could get out of this rut of working jobs that were bad for my health and dreams. I did not understand how you could even make $1 online without hitting the gold mine of winning a remote job. Frankly , I suck at corporate jobs and I was never going to outshine other people’s LinkedIn profiles or resumes.

Then I followed a girl on Instagram who had my dream life, working remote, clients, and travelling the world. She posted about her coach who helped her get to where she is now and short story short I spent $6k with BARELY any money in my account on this coach. I made all my money back in 3 months and have been travelling since.

So I say all this because success to me, is not coming home with tired feet and mystery food all over myself. Success to me is that I make a living ( not rich yet!) and get to rent apartments around the world. Success to me is that I get to work with incredible and fun clients and never have to work with a negative person again. I am not Forbes billionaire, but just not having to clock into an 8 hour exhausting shift serving other successful people is my success.

Also investing in education/ coach WILL lead to a faster success.

Marie, 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?

1. What do I offer? I am a podcast producer and I specialize in storytelling. I love making my clients stories come alive with music integration, effects and good editing. My most successful clients are coaches and that is what I am niching down in. Podcasting for coaches is a gold mine and my clients are seeing triple in their client sales funnel through podcasting vs. short transient social media clips. So I really get to help coaches connect with their ideal clients through story-telling.

2. My services: My strength is as an editor and I am niching down to only editing. I have incredible partners for marketing and video services for my clients.

3. What sets me apart from others? My style of editing. I am great at comedy cuts, adding flare, and emotion with music and giving a F*** with my clients. I am 100% their cheerleader and my relationship building with my clients is special.

4. What am I most proud of? Getting to watch my clients tell their story, have fun, gain more revenue and clientele through podcasting. I am proud of all the work we put in and how much they love their shows.

5. My brand: With my podcast editing we get to the point. I cut out the fluff, we serve value and entertainment first.

6. Problems I solve with my clients: For my clients with entertainment shows, they don’t want to be just an average podcast so my editing style and spice that we add make their shows bingeable and unique stories. For my coaching clients they are looking for my depth and revenue. By depth I mean they don’t just have 30 seconds and a hook on social media to connect with their ideal clients, they have up to a full hour. They get to create trust and show value to their clients before their clients buy their high ticket items. My clients see a huge uptick in their revenue because podcast listeners are 100% more loyal and will buy from a coach they can hear from and trust vs. a social media post.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Love this question, because I cornered myself to not be able to have this business as a side hustle. This is the ONLY way I make my income, the alternative is going back to restaurants which is not an option. I think if you corner yourself and come from a past that you don’t want to return to you will do everything in your power to make this into your full income. I made a lot of sacrifices that still sting today. I left the only place I felt at home in , L.A. I knew I couldn’t live there try to survive and pay rent with building my business. I have moved home for the past two years travelling 6 months of the year, but moved home to hit my business goals and then create the life I want. I work on this business daily, including weekends. My brain is always thinking how we can pivot and improve until I hit my financial goals.

So, with this said if you want to make this a full- time thing you will need to WANT it. If you have a cushy job and kind of like where you are then keep this as a side hustle. No problem with that. It’s when you are cornered and you know you can’t go back will you do everything in your power to make it work and that will mean leaving parts of you life behind until you do.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

This is happening as we speak. I think your first year in business you are catching any fish, setting any price. I am now at a plateau where my ideal client has changed. I only want to work with 6 figure businesses, and specifically coaches because those are my most successful clients. I know I can bring revenue to them, therefore keeping my job.

That is all great to say… but how to you pivot? How to do you niche down? That is the hardest part for me, changing my website, messaging, pitching. But with this change I can charge higher prices. So I am in the middle of this change now!

Also my first year I pitched, did Upwork and did a lot of outward energy. I now need to pivot and creating a sales funnel and marketing where clients come to me. This means working a medium I despise.. social media. I am going to have to create videos, content and get in front of my ICA and this is a major block for me. So I would say I am currently in a pivoting stage and I don’t know where it leads yet but the minute I get over my fear and ego good things will pour in. (:

Contact Info:

• Website: www.anarie.net
• Instagram: @podcastingbyanarie

Image Credits
In the second photo in the middle is Katy from history podcast, Queens Podcast. And on the right is Christina Conner from My Worst Date