Community Builder Spotlight: Danielle Desir

Author: Mehgaan Jones

Many of us dream of being able to pay off debt, save money and travel the world. What seems like an impossible feat can actually be accomplished. 

Join us for the second installment in our feature story series as we chat with finance and travel extraordinaire, Danielle Desir, host of the podcast, The Thought Card: a podcast where you can “hear inspiring stories from financially savvy travelers who are using their hard-earned money to creatively pay off debt, travel the world and build wealth.” She is an author, writer, speaker and founder and CEO of WOC (Women of Color) Podcasters, a community of women of color podcasters with over 2,500 members from 50+ countries!

Why podcasting? 

I feel that podcasting allows me to supplement my blog in a different way and connect with my audience more intimately and more immediately. I can hop on the mic, record an episode and release it to the world fast, versus writing [where you have to] write it, draft, and edit it. There is a process.

When did you know this was what you wanted to invest your time and resources in?

I would say July 2018 because I was actually at a WOC podcasters meetup. And by that time, the group was already formed. I was  two months in and everyone was going around talking about their podcast and everyone looked at me as the founder of the community and they were like, "So what's your podcast about?" And I'm like, "I don't have a podcast." They really inspired me and spurred me to take action. 

What keeps you motivated to continue?

I enjoy learning from people, inspiring travelers, or inspiring people who have an interesting travel and money story because I believe that when I hear people's stories there’s some nuggets that I can relate to and maybe try to implement in my own life to optimize my life. One part of it is connecting with these unique travelers, these unique money nerds who have a really interesting story and that could help me in my journey. And the second part I would say is my audience. Seeing that there are daily downloads even when I don't promote or seeing that people would tweet me with an inside joke referencing something I mentioned in one podcast episode at Disney world. Those things motivate me to continue to publish because I know people are invested and people want to hear more about travel and money.

What keeps you balanced?

I would say, trying as best as possible to batch or distinguish days where I create concepts. So if I'm editing photos, I'm editing all the photos and not just one. Having one particular task per day has really kept me focused and taking breaks. I think people think I'm this robot that doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, just constantly out there on social media. But what people don't realize, and I tell them often is that I schedule a lot of my stuff. I have to sit down once a month and schedule all of these questions that pop up in my head or social media posts and things like that at once.

What are some of the biggest setbacks that you've had on your journey?

I would say for WOC, the biggest setback is trying to figure out how to sustain the community, meaning monetization. Really how to raise funds and to be consistent so that we have funds to pay for things, even simple things like hosting a zoom call where we're doing a mastermind or brainstorm, there's a cost associated with that. I think for me, it's really finding ways to sustain the communities so that the people who do volunteer work can get essentially compensated for their time and we can grow financially.

For my personal brand, I would say that the biggest challenge for me right now is being our trifecta content creator. When I say that, I mean being a blogger, podcaster and YouTuber. I have not broken into YouTube. I know that YouTube is super lucrative at this moment. It's another search engine which means that people can find me. But it's definitely something that's on the horizon for me, and once I figure out exactly how I can be consistent that will be launching soon.

How do you kind of distinguish yourself from the others?

My platform is all about making informed financial decisions, and it comes from the lens of how do you afford to travel, pay off debt and build wealth. So money is a very big part of the conversation. Of course, we do highlight awesome things to do in places, but at the end of the day, how much does it cost and is it worth?

For my brand, travel is a very big part of our lifestyle but there are other financial goals that we want to accomplish as well[ such as]student loan debt. Right now I'm focused on paying off my mortgage so it's following my pay off journey.  Building wealth[and] investing. It's a very unique angle, but it's combining travel and money seamlessly because we need money to do pretty much everything we need in life.

 What advice would you have for someone looking to jump into podcasting?

I would say to come up with a launch plan strategy. It doesn't have to be super complex, but give yourself runway, even when it comes to writing books because that's something that I'm really passionate about right now. Give yourself time to get started. Let people know about your show, let people know and create this hype and buzz that this is coming, and they should be ready and invested. They should be eager and excited.

Where do you see the industry going, five to 10 years from now?

I definitely see more clear ways to connect with your audience because right now it's really hard besides the downloads in your hosting platform you see the number of downloads you get, but it's hard to have a two-way conversation with your audience. For example, on YouTube you can comment, right? On your blog you can comment, on your podcast you can't. I'm hoping in the future, people can maybe comment within podcasting apps and really bring your community into your enclave a lot better. Secondly, I would say that monetization will be a lot easier.

I think from five to 10 years from now, podcasts will be a very normal thing when you're working with brands just like a blog post or YouTube video or a magazine feature. It will be just very seamless.

What can we as a community do  to ensure that our stories are showcased?

We're all in the same community, we're all connected on social media in some way. And I always take the initiative to share folks' content...just getting more eyeballs on our content is just a great way for us to just really continue to grow and also not be afraid to collaborate with each other. A big thing for WOC podcasters is collaboration. We have a monthly collaboration thread, where anyone could post in there and say, “hey, I'm looking for this guest. I'm looking for this opportunity.” So really not being afraid to collaborate and pitch ourselves, I think is really important.

Danielle stressed the importance of marketing your brand and promoting your content in order to have a successful podcast. 

“I think a lot of times we're so focused on creating content, that we don't spend enough time marketing our content and anything that you're doing, you need to literally be marketing it two to three months out because people might not be ready and invested. Even if it's not monetary or anything like that, people will not be ready to do something if it's the first time you say it. So you want to continuously say it. Giving yourself enough space to do that is a good idea.”