What's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen and you're listening to the audio entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today. Their strategies and tests have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like a throw.

The question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it? This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen and welcome to the audio on.

Marie Larsen: Yo, what's up everyone? This is Marie Larsen. I'm so excited because today I have a friend of mine who I met through the digital marketing connections world. I guess you can say that it was through a friend from a friend, from a friend that I found this guy and he's been crushing and the reason that I wanted to bring on this specific person was because he has a relatable story that the majority of you are able to relate to. Right.

And so I wanted to jump on and have him kind of relate his story as to um, I kind of, I guess more than anything, I hope you guys understand that you guys really can be starting this now and it's not something that, especially with podcasting, a lot of people think that you need all this extra time on the side in order to do it and that's not the case.

So anyway, this is Ryan Helms. I really wanted to have them jump on. Ryan, it's such a pleasure to have you on here. I can't wait to get started with you.

Ryan Helms: What's up Marie? I'm stoked to be on here. Like you said, average guy here literally just battled traffic on the way home from work to come down here and hop on this podcast. But I couldn't be more excited. Thanks for having me on.

Marie Larsen: Absolutely. Absolutely. I saw, I, I love that. Before we jumped on here, Ryan was kind of going through and explaining the story to me a little bit and I'll have him go through, but honestly the thing that I really, really loved about Ryan's story is that he went through and explained to me that he, he has a nine to five job, right?

And that he's trying to do a side hustle in order to create the dream that he wants to. And I kind of wanted to go through that process, Ryan, as far as, what mindset you had in order to create a, a new world for yourself by living in the current one that you're in and what experience that's like. So if you could tell us a little bit about your, you know, what you can about your job and why you decided to start a side hustle, that would be awesome.

Ryan Helms: Yeah. So I work in a huge chemical company I manage are around 12 to 14 people and depending on the day and it, it can get super stressful. And for awhile there I was putting in 14 to 16 hour days every single day, Monday through Friday, working on the weekends a lot and this was probably in 2016 after about two years of working that I haven't always worked in that, you know, hectic, but you know, who was about two years where it was that kind of life and it started to catch up with me.

I wasn't at the point of burnout but I could like that was on the horizon, like I saw it coming and I was like alright. So I was literally. Yeah, exactly. I was sitting on the couch which is about six feet behind me on a Friday night. I'll never forget it. And I was somehow I got started looking at plane tickets and I came across the plane ticket to Nairobi, Kenya for like 750 bucks.

Ryan Helms: And I was like, you know, I never really looked at plane tickets. I didn't know if that was a good deal, but it seemed like an amazing deal to me and that was round trip from Atlanta to, to Kenya. So I bought it, like, didn't know what the Hell I was going to do, had had no idea about anything. So I sat on it for about three months, decided I asked your plan something.

So I went over Thanksgiving here in the...I right. So end of November of 2016. I just took a solo adventure to a Kenya and Tanzania and you know, it sounds kind of Cliche, like, oh, I found myself when I was on this trip, but truly it was, it was a life changing experience for me and you know, not only because, you know, I got to go on a safari and go to Zanzibar and be on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Ryan Helms: But, you know, I met people there that had, you know, that were traveling as well and they had these amazing stories and a lot of people were there through a lot of different paths. I mean, I met a guy who, you know, him and his best friend had been climbing the corporate ladder and then his best friend got killed in a car wreck and he like had this epiphany that he didn't want to do that.

So He'd been saved up money. I've been traveling for 18 months. I met people that had sold everything and had just like, went total nomad style. I met people that were working like digital nomad lifestyle. So they were building businesses on the beach in Zanzibar and I didn't know how I was going to do it or what I was going to do, but I realized that I wanted to be able to make a decision like that if the point came in life when I wanted to do that because, you know, I don't hate my day job.

Like by any means, like I'm not, I'm not that kind of person where I'm resentful towards, you know, the life that I have. Like I've get great opportunities and I'm, I'm grateful for it. But I knew if that point came when I didn't enjoy it anymore, I wanted to have the liberty and the freedom to say, you know, what, screw this, like throw the papers up in the air like the little memes you see and walk out. And so I got back and I decided I needed to put myself on a path to do that. Unfortunately for me, I was never good with money.

So when I started this I was about $55,000 in debt, that being student loans, credit cards, stupid ass sports car, stuff like that. So I just immediately jumped into it with the mindset that I wanted to start creating like little businesses on the side, these side hustles to help me first get out of debt in.

Ryan Helms: I did that. I paid off that debt if about, oh, I think about 14 or 16 months. I paid off that 55 k in debt. Uh, which was an amazing feeling. And now I'm tackling the mortgage and I should have my mortgage for my condo that I lived in, paid off, uh, by November of 2019. So a little over a that and being super, uh, super aware of what I'm doing with my money, so being very intentional with how I look and not like not doing things, not like eating rice and beans and staying inside 24 slash seven, but just being intentional with what I do. So, you know, that kind of brings us up to like current state in life, why I started moving this direction. And then in particular about podcasting. So actually I skipped a big part of this. So I launched a kickstarter last year.

 I created a physical product called side Hustle Journal. And when I did that I realized that it was such a difficult process because I didn't know any entrepreneurs. It's like, like we were talking Marie before this and you said you kind of grew up in this lifestyle. Like you're, you've been around like digital marketing and marketing and entrepreneurship for a long, long time. I didn't know anybody.

Like honestly, I had not one person that I could reach out to and say like, Hey, like I know you're on social media or I know you own this business. Do you know anybody that could help promote what I'm doing here? And it had no one. So I ended up spending like 500 cold emails to people like trying to promote this product. It did. Okay. I mean it raised like $14,000 and I got it made. I got it funded so I was able to produce it and put it out into the world.

 But through that process I realized that one, I didn't know anybody in to that I did want to know people so that the next time I did something like this, uh, it was such a struggle. So I started the podcast extremely selfishly because I wanted to meet people and I knew if I wanted to meet people I had to get very intentional about building those relationships. Uh, and I knew that having a nine to five job and being, quote unquote busy, was not going to be an excuse if I wanted to make this happen.

So a march, I believe it was March 28th is when I officially launched the podcast. And uh, I put out seven episodes or so, one episode every day. The first week, and I've put out two episodes every week since then, so in about five months I'm over. I met, I think we just released episode 53 today if I'm allowed to ask, what are downloads looking like because of your intentional posting or I guess publishing twice.

Ryan Helms: Yeah, no, this is a great question and it's, it's, I think it will be enlightening because some people may think it will be lower and some people may think it would be a lot higher. So going into this with no audience, no background really in this space or anything and podcasts, not having the best search seo functionality built into it. Uh, I started with like, you