Brianna Ansaldo Just Keep Learning Summary

Brianna, AKA Bamby Media tells us how she became a professional singer, and how you could too. We talk about her current big passion, podcasting, and how it has led to building a very successful business.

Episode Notes

Brianna Ansaldo is an audio, music and podcasting genius. Shes share her experience through this life journey. Brianna went from learning guitar as a little kid, creating music, becoming a singer, editing audio, and eventually podcasting. Even though podcasting came later, she was always into the audio world, right from when she was a little kid. She now owns a podcast production and marketing company called Bamby Media.

Brianna, known also as her company name Bamby Media, explained how being a creative person is a lifelong journey. It is ok to switch mediums. It is ok to take a break. Following your intuition and giving yourself permission to make what you want to make, when you want to make it is underrated. 

One of Brianna’s strengths is understanding that we should not overthink. Instead, build systems, or habits that allow you to have little creative bursts throughout your day. Focus on the inputs, what you do, the actions you take. 

If you focus on results you can be persuaded from doing the things you truly love. Or the things that are more in line with your values and desires. By focusing on what we do, how we do it and above all why we do it, all things that we can decide, we are able to create with more vitality.

Audio And Music Masterclass

Brianna shared some great insight for those wondering how to become a singer. She gave us honestly a mini masterclass in how to start singing and pursue that dream. She shares some tips on how anyone can get good at singing at any age if they want to.

She is multi-passionate, so we took the opportunity to discuss a bit about each of her skills. Entrepreneurship, freelancing, how to make money for yourself, and building her own successful business, dealing with it growing and still finding balance were all important themes.

Brianna never gives in to excuses. She multitasked as a new mom, lives away from family, and had a busy husband. But, she simply decided that she wanted the goal of podcasting and entrepreneurship enough to get it done no matter what. 

We talked about time management and building a business during nap cycles as she put it. How do we pursue our big dreams when we have so many other responsibilities? Clearly, it worked out as her partner actually left being a doctor to come work together on the Bamby Media brand.

Naturally, we talked a lot about podcasting. She is definitely an expert in everything from creation, and production, to distribution, marketing, and monetization. So we talked about podcasting for quite a while. One of the most interesting topics was the metrics you can expect with a brand-new show and how to grow.

 10 Tips For Singing And Music

1. When starting to sing, focus on the breath, posture and warm-up exercises making sure our facial bones are in a healthy position and that our diaphragm is effective is half the battle
2. Practice with drills, because repetition will help you intrinsically understand your vocal range, how high and how low can you make sounds, and what it feels like to sing from a more intuitive, deeper understanding that will hold up under pressure, or nerves.
3. It’s all about a willingness to be patient, to look stupid, to try and fail, but learn and keep going.
4. Once you feel like you understand the basic concept of singing a great way to practice can be to make a list of your favourite songs you’d like to sing, use a music player, with headphones on and practice singing them, progress to having half headphones on and then finally taking headphones off. Don’t stay attached to one song for long, be sure to practice with various songs at the same time. 
5. To start songwriting, practice writing poetry because it doesn’t have to be attached to music, or limited by bars. It can be so helpful to explore short-form storytelling, when do you want something to rhyme?
6. Don’t be attached to an outcome. Perfectionism will creep in if you worry about how something will sound, or what people will think. Don’t limit your creativity. Get good at noticing things and create from a place of genuine curiosity.
7. Once you can write in general, shift some of your activity to creating some simple chord progressions on instruments like guitar, piano, or humming and while you create a beat in your head, start to think of themes that come to mind, topics you could write about and then slowly start adding words to compliment the melody and turn poetry into song.
8. There are many benefits to singing, songwriting and creating music as a hobby, however as a career, it can be very difficult to succeed. If you want to have it be a career, you should be so passionate about it that you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else. You also, depending on financial situation may need to make a lot of sacrifice and find ways to pay bills while you continue to put in the work.
9. If you do want this to be an actual career, then you have to learn to market your music. Beyond improving your skills and creating good songs you need to learn to put yourself out there often and continually create in a way that builds your audience. 
10. Remember that confidence is most of the battle once you are beyond the basics. Continue to be brave, build confidence and don’t give up.

11 Tips For Starting Your Own Podcast

1. What are some similar shows that you appreciate that you would model your work after?
2. Do some market research to make sure that people are interested in this topic. You can create an entirely brand heavy, unique show, but that is much more difficult than validating the idea by seeing if people search for this, or if other shows already successfully create on that topic.
3. What are the themes, topics and styles that will be the foundation for your show? How is your show better, or unique in comparison to shows that already exist?
4. Your marketing strategy should be individualized, but in general, if you choose to create a show with a well searched for topic, then you can use strategies like SEO and partnerships with other shows to get on their episodes and cross promote, as well as connecting with direct audience to share and partner with. If the show is less specific and more general without a clear topic, then strategies can be more about creating micro content for social media, advertising the show, optimizing keywords for search engines and getting on similar shows, or blogs so people find your show through a similar audience, community, or group.
5. When it comes to social media, you should appear on the major platforms, post if you can, but always have a primary platform. Test out the different platforms to see where you show up best. Where do you connect with an audience best, where does your audience appreciate your content most and which platform do you prefer to create for? Focus 80% of your resources there to grow.
6. When it comes the micro marketing it is helpful to create good assets, effective micro clips and posts that can be shared. It’s about finding a balance between quality and quantity, consistency and virality. Use effective hashtags, join communities that appreciate your posts and continue to produce a great show while you share it as much as possible. 
7. Decide how you are going to record your show. What equipment do you have access to? Decide on a recording platform free like zoom, or paid like squadcast. Ideally you will capture audio and video so that you have access to clips that can be shared. Practice setting up and recording. Solve any problems with creating your first episode.
8. Choose an uploading platform that will create your RSS feed and ship it out to all of the major podcast directory and distribution sites.
9. Don’t overthink the external brand elements like a logo, colours, mission and design. That can come later, it will naturally evolve and develop with the show’s growth. 
10. Who you deliver to, what you deliver, how you deliver can pivot and evolve over time, so don’t be too attached to specific people, or content, be open to a gut feeling and intuition, but keep going.
11. When it comes to monetization it is an individual journey based on goals and values. It makes sense to build to 5-10,000 downloads per episode and then partner with specific, niche brand deals, or sponsorhips, as opposed to making small amounts of money on cheap ads from day one. You can also sell your own products and services to guest, and or audience members.

Memorable Quotes

“If you want to be creative, you need to give yourself space to be creative.”

“Never be attached to an outcome.”

“It was really me deciding, I want this enough. So I am going to create time and space that I get it done.”

“You get there. But, it is a journey.”

“My biggest driving force in life is asking if I am having fun and if I’m not, then what can I borrow from my way of living in childhood that can make my life more fun now?”

“We are all leaving a legacy, so be conscious of others and the impact you make on others.”

Guest Bio

Brianna is the creator and CEO of Bamby Media. She is an award-winning songwriter, audio producer, musician and all-round big doofus, as she puts it. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Audio Production from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Brianna loves the techy side above all else. And she is becoming a force to be reckoned with as it relates to both entrepreneurship and marketing for podcasts.

FOLLOW Brianna

LinkedIn – Brianna Ansaldo
Instagram – @Bamby_Media
Website – Bamby Media