177: I’m Back! What You Can Expect This Year

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps after Babies radio episode number 177.

Hello and welcome to Biceps after Babies radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PRs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife, and mom of four.  Each week, my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel, and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in, now let’s jump into today’s episode.

 

It’s nice to be back  0:47  

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio, I'm your host, Amber Bruseke and Happy, Happy New Year. I'm recording this on New Year's Eve and by the time that you listen to this, it will be 2022. And I'm really excited to roll into this new year in the business, and in my personal life, the end of the year is always kind of a wrap up time, a time for reflection and looking back and, and seeing how much has changed in a year. And doing that always gets me really excited for what's to come and the goals that I've set for the new year. And I'll be talking a little bit more about those, particularly in next week's episode. 

 

“Best Of” Series  0:47  

But this is my first episode in a little while. Many of you may know that I took a break in December, I just needed a break. You know, sometimes we just need to push-pause, take a break, take a breath, and then keep going. And that's what so that's what I did, after three years of podcasting, releasing a podcast literally every single week, never, never missing a single week in three years, it was just time to take a break. And I'm really glad that I did. It allowed me to kind of have some space during December, we did launch a relaunch podcast that we had already launched in the past, and kind of a “Best Of” series. And I was really excited to do that. Because those episodes that we've released, the last four weeks have been episodes that as I went back into the archives and into our data, our episodes that I really love and I think are really great episodes, but they got lower downloads than I would have liked. They got like people didn't listen to them in the numbers that I would expect people to listen to like a really good podcast episode. So that's really how I picked those four, I went through and I said What are episodes that people, you know, have downloaded less have been downloaded less times. But when I look back, and I think about episodes that I feel like can really be a shift, create a shift where people are really be something that can be really beneficial for people in their journey. Those four episodes were the ones that came to mind. So if you skipped over the last four episodes, cuz you're like, Oh, they're just like the repeats, I probably need to listen to them. Or even if you did listen to them back in the day, I really highly recommend, you know, if you have a little extra time, and you're looking for something to listen to go back and listen to those four episodes, because I very specifically picked them as ones that I thought would be very beneficial for you. So that's what we did, we released the last, we just released some repeats the last four weeks. 

 

Reasons why I took a break  3:24 

And I told you I will be back in January.  And here I am. And I am excited, I feel a little bit renewed. And like I actually have a plan moving forward. One of the reasons that I decided to take a break was because I felt like the last little while it was like scrambling just to be like get a podcast out every week, instead of being incredibly intentional with the content that I was putting out and strategic and making sure that the content I was putting out was actually things that you guys wanted to hear and that I felt would really support you in your journey. And so that's one of the things I took a step back. And over the last month, I did a lot of reflecting and we did a lot of diving into the statistics. I love stats, I love numbers. I love data points. Anybody who's been through Macros 101 knows that I love being a scientist and figuring out what the data is trying to tell us. And so we did that. We went and looked through our data points for the podcast. And I thought I would share some of those with you because I thought it was really interesting. 

 

More than a million downloads for the podcast  4:31

We have now surpassed 1.7 million downloads for the podcast, which is huge. I started the podcast in October of 2018. So it's a little over three years. We've had 1.7 million downloads. And then in this last year alone, so in 2021, we had almost a million downloads. We had about 900,000 downloads which is incredible, because if you look back over how we've grown, we had 240,000 downloads in 2019, 566,000 in 2020, and then 900,000 in 2021. So that's really exciting to see how the podcast has grown over the years. And one of our goals, I'll talk more about my goals next week. But one of my goals is to hit three and a half million podcast downloads this next year, that would essentially mean doubling the amount of podcast episodes or downloads that we have currently. And I think it is something we can do. I'm really excited to continue to grow the podcast to continue to provide really amazing content, because I honestly think that's the way the podcast grows, when we put out amazing content that you want to share with people because it's so good, and it's free. That's the best way for the podcast to grow. 

 

Top episodes are solo episodes 5:48

So also, as we looked back into the archives, I, I paid special attention to the top 10 downloaded podcasts, the most downloaded podcasts, and tried to look for some similarities or some themes in them to see, you know, what do people want to hear? What should we do more of in 2022, it was interesting to me that out of the top 10 podcast downloads, only two of those were guest episodes. The other eight of them were solo episodes. And I found that interesting, because I'm always having this balance between bringing other guests on, which is really fun to expose us to different ideas and to different people. And it's a really great way also to have the podcast, reach other audiences as we bring people on the podcast, and they share the podcast with their audience. But it was interesting to me that so many of the top episodes were our solo episodes. 

 

Top episodes were basic or beginner oriented episodes  6:40

Another trend that I noticed was that a lot of our top episodes were very basic or beginner oriented. And I think that's because a lot of people are curious about macro counting, and they're interested in it. And they're at that basic/beginner place where they want to just know, Hey, what is macro counting? How do I get started? How do I set my numbers? How do I weigh things, some of those really basic things when it comes to macro counting. So for those of you who are listening, who are like, that's not where I'm at right now, it's not really what I want to hear is all the basic things, I totally get it. And I also know that there is a subset of people who are out there that we can serve that are at that beginner level. So coming into 2022, I am being intentional with creating content that can be shared with people who maybe are at that beginner level. And those of you who aren't, this will be a great opportunity to be able to say, oh, you know, Sister in law who's been interested in macro counting, let me share this episode with you. So I'm going to be creating more of that kind of content. 

 

Episodes that answer specific questions  7:44

Another thing that I noticed was that the episodes that do really well tend to answer a very specific question. So a very specific question that is asked by a lot of people, for example, how much cardio should I be doing? Why can I stay on track? How do I stick to my plan over the weekend? So it's a very specific question that we titled the episode. And then we dove into that one, like answering that one topic. So for those of you who are maybe, I'm not really interested in more macro basics, I'm interested in more of like that next level type stuff. Those are some of the types of episodes that I also plan on bringing more of. What are the questions that are floating around in so many people's minds, that I can create an episode that really answers that question on a deeper level? Because there's a short answer to some of those questions. And then there's a much more nuanced longer answer. And those are the types of things that I love to go over on the podcast.

 

Guest episodes 8:47

Also, as I go over the stats, there are some guest episodes that have done really, really well. And those tend to be the people that I bring on that I already have a relationship with. And my audience already knows, to some extent before I bring them on to the podcast. And so in 2022, I'm committed to continuing to foster relationships with other people, introducing my audience to them, and then bringing them onto the podcast to be able to share more. If there is somebody who you think just would be a perfect fit for the podcast, let us know we're always talking, you know, we're always interested in who you want to hear from on the podcast. One of my favorite things is when we share stories or you know, in our newsletter that I interviewed, you know so and so, one of the favorite things that I love to hear is you saying oh my gosh, these are like two of my favorite people getting together to do a podcast. And so if you have somebody who is maybe one of your favorite people on Instagram or someone that you follow that you really just love and think would be a great collaboration. Shoot me a DM on Instagram or send us an email at support at bicepsafterbabies.com or we're always interested in getting new faces and new people on the podcast to be able to create those connections. And just to jive with people who are freaking awesome on the podcast. 

My 2019 Goals and New Year’s Resolution 10:12

Now, another thing that I noticed as I looked at the stats, and this was really interesting to me, and I actually had posted about this in my story. So if you follow my stories, you may have seen me talking about this. But I looked at the highest downloaded podcasts. And then I also looked at some of the lowest downloaded podcasts, and our lowest downloaded podcast ever was episode number 14. And it was titled My 2019 goals. And then a very close runner up to our least downloaded podcast ever was episode 13, which was how to set new year's resolutions that actually stick. And so I asked on Instagram, I said, Are these like, like, you don't want to hear these things. You don't want to hear about my goals. You don't want to hear about New Year's resolutions or those things that are not interesting to you. And the feedback I got was really bimodal meaning that some of the people who messaged me were like no, like, literally your goals. podcast episodes are my favorite podcast episodes ever. And then the other side of the population was like, yeah, no, it's like, not really that interesting to me. I feel like New Year's resolutions are over talked about and, and over shared about. So it was interesting to me to hear such diverse feedback. But the numbers don't lie. And if that's like our lowest downloaded podcast ever, that’s saying something. And so I will be doing a goals podcast next week. But I'm going to make it a little bit different. And we're going to title it something a little bit different. And we're going to see how it does. My other goal episodes have done a little bit better. But man that 2019 One, apparently nobody cared about goals back as we're rolling into 2020. And maybe maybe that's what it was. Maybe it was like, as we're rolling in 2020. And lots of crazy things were happening in the world. And people just didn't care really about goals at that point. I don't know what it was. But again, you know, we follow the trends, we follow the data. So I will be doing a goals podcast episode next week. But it specifically does not have to do with new year's resolutions, because that was a lot of the feedback. We got people like I don't care about New Year's resolutions. And it will be more with goals and why some of you may struggle with goals. I love goals, I'm religious about setting goals, I think they're really important. And I also know that a lot of people really struggle with them. And maybe goals aren't as beneficial, or they haven't really been able to find a beneficial way to set a goal. So maybe talking about that next week. And we'll kind of weave in some of my goals and how a lot of you did want a recap. For those who listened to my goals episode last year, you wanted to recap how I did on my goals. So I'll be sharing that next week on the podcast. 

 

We will be bringing back the “I Did It” Series 12:54

Okay, something else that you can expect moving forward, many, many, many of you were really sad when we stopped the “I Did It” series. So if you remember, back in the, you know, summer to fall time, we started releasing an extra bonus Friday episode. So we'd release our normal podcast on Tuesday, and then an extra Friday bonus episode. And these Friday bonus episodes were a little bit shorter, they were like the 15-20 minute mark. And what we did was we invited past clients to come on and share about their experience, about their transformation, about the results that they've been able to get. And the whole purpose of this was to be able to showcase women from a variety of backgrounds, a variety of ages, and, you know, medical conditions and, you know, circumstances in their life, who were able to be successful with this idea that the more that you can start to see yourself and other people, the more you can start to believe it's possible for you. And I really, really believe hard in this idea that if you can see somebody else achieving it, it makes it so much easier for you to achieve. And it's one of the reasons I'm always seeking out inspiration for the things that I want to do, and finding people who have gone before me and who have done it, because it helps me to say okay, she did it, I can do it, too. And that was the whole idea of the “I Did It” series, and we did it for a while and the podcast episodes didn't necessarily get as many downloads as the Tuesday episodes. And so they can't. We kind of trailed off and didn't continue it. And then I got so much feedback. You're like you guys all missed it us or like, where's the Friday episodes, we really like those. And as I dug into the data from this last year, they didn't tend to get as many downloads as our Tuesday episodes. But some of those episodes have really made it into the top, you know, quarter of our downloads of you know of all time and so that tells me that there is interest in there to hear stories from other people. So we will be bringing back the “I Did It” series for at least the next couple of months and again, we'll watch and see if you guys download them if you like them. But we will have your first I Did It series coming back this Friday. So look for it this Friday. And each Friday, you can expect another short, just as a story, to write a story of another woman to be able to share her journey, and most importantly, her experience and what she learned from that experience. And I just, we've already been doing our interviews over the last little while. And it's been so fun for me to be able to dig into the stories of all of these different 

 

Intentional topics on the podcast 15:36

One of the really great parts of taking off the month of December other than being able to go back and kind of go through the data is being able to create a vision and create an intentional list of topics that I wanted to talk about on the podcast. And so I've spent the last month curating topics and guests that I want to bring on, and I have our podcast episodes planned out through about June. So I'm feeling really good about the content that we have coming up, I'm really excited about a lot of the content. Like I said, we'll have some beginner stuff. For anybody who's just brand new to macro counting or so that you can share it with your friends who are interested in the basics. So we'll have some of that content. And then we'll also have content where we dive a little bit deeper into some of those struggles, spots, like spots that are sticking points for a lot of people, we're going to have some episodes about that. One that I'm really excited about, we're going to have a people pleaser episode, because that's something that's come up over and over in my coaching is people pleasing. And so if that's something you struggle with, that will be coming. A lot of the topics are topics that I feel like I talk about in coaching. So they're like real life real time people are obviously struggling with this. How can we create a podcast episode about it? So we have lots of fun, great episodes coming, I'm feeling a little bit reinvigorated, excited to get into the microphone to get back to recording to get back to putting out new podcast episodes. So thank you for sticking with me as I took a little bit of a break. And I hope that you're excited about what is to come on the podcast as well. 

 

Brand new, free challenge coming out in February 17:25

Now, what are some things that you can expect this next year for the business as a whole, you know, outside of the podcast. One thing that I'm really excited about that the team has been working on is we have a brand new, free challenge that's coming out in February. This is something we've never done. It has nothing to do with macro counting, it's completely separate from macro counting. And it's a topic that I think so many of you guys are going to want to get on board with to be able to dive deeper into this topic. And we're also going to be facilitating this challenge in a new format, a format that we've never done before. I've done webinars, I've done live classes, I've done email challenges, I've done week long challenges on Facebook, it's not going to be any of those formats, it's going to be a brand new format. So I'm not going to release any more because the team is still working on putting it together. But you can expect this new challenge, you'll be hearing about it in February. And it's going to be something really fun. Like I said it's brand new to us, we've never done it before. So it will probably be a little messy. And that's okay. But we are excited about the content that's going to be provided. And it's something that you guys have been asking for. 

 

Macros 101 opening in March 18:43

We also have our Macros 101 opening in March, if you've been around for any time, you know that macros one to one is my signature coaching program. And it's where I help women to be able to create a customized and effective and enjoyable plan for you. So that you can be able to get whatever results you want. How to align your nutrition, how to use the tool of macro counting to best fit you in your life. So that's what I do inside of Macros 101, we've had thousands of women go through the program, we have, you know, thousands of reviews and testimonials of people's experience. And we only open doors twice a year. It's kind of a big deal when we do it. And the next chance to join will be in March. In fact, we actually have a date for you. So it's going to be March 28 when we open the doors. We will do a free challenge the week before that, like we always do. And we will have more information about how to take part in that challenge and as we get closer to that date. 

 

Listen to back episodes of the podcast 19:46

Now if you're someone who you're itching to join Macros 101, and you're like, oh, I have to wait, you know three more months to be able to join. Don't you worry. This time is actually really valuable and for some of those people who have been through Macros 101, one of the things that they have said that has been very valuable is to have spent time listening to the podcast a lot before coming into the program. Now, it's obviously not required to do that. I'm just saying that if you have three months before Macros 101 opens, that's actually really awesome to be able to get yourself on board and prepare and be in the right space, to be able to really maximize the amount of effort and you know, energy and results that you're going to be able to get through the program. So my best advice that I have for you, is to make time to listen to the podcast, go back and start listening to episodes, which episodes to listen to, well, I highly recommend going and scrolling through. And whichever one stands out to you, whichever titles stand out to you just starting there. There's something for you in every single episode. But when you listen to the episodes, you're going to start to learn my teaching style, you're going to start to learn how I approach macro counting, and how that is different from so many other coaches. And that's going to be really valuable for you, first of all, to make a decision of whether or not you want to invest in me as your coach. There are lots of coaches out there, there are lots of terrible coaches out there. And there's also lots of other really great coaches. And when you're trying to decide between two really great coaches, I really feel like one of the best ways to figure out who you want to buy from or who you want to learn from is just by getting to know them. What's their content, like, how do they approach it? Does it jive with you or do you resonate with the person that you're listening to. And so that's one of the reasons I have the podcast is I have a ton of free content you can go through and listen to, and you're either gonna be like, I don't really like this girl, and then you can save your money. And that's great. And then you don't have to, you know, spend more time with me and that's great. And I don't have to spend time with people who aren't really excited about my teaching style. Or you're going to listen and you're going to resonate, you're gonna be like yes, I want more of this. I want more of Amber and want more of her philosophy and how she approaches macro counting I want more of in my life. And it makes it a no brainer to come and join the program. So if you're itching to join, two things you should do: go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist and get on the waitlist, and then two, start listening to back episodes of the podcast.

 

Relaunch of the Coaching Academy 22:21

And then the last thing that you can expect this year is that we will also be relaunching Coaching Academy. I'll talk more about the coaching academy next week, because I'm doing a recap of the year. But Coaching Academy is something that we started this last year where I teach coaches how to coach. And it's been one of the most fun projects that I worked on in a really long time, it's allowed me to be creative, it's allowed me to work with a different client, if there's a difference when I'm working with a client who is trying to achieve their own goals versus working with a client who is helping other people achieve their goals. And it's just been such a joy to be able to really dive into helping create other coaches who are really effective, and who are able to coach from this really deep transformational level. And I know that if I want to serve more women, there's only a certain amount of people who I can serve personally or even with our team of coaches. And so being able to train other coaches is going to be a huge way that we're going to continue to grow and to really get our message out there and be able to serve as many women as possible.  So those are some of the things that you have to look forward to this year. My team and I are so excited about 2022 and I hope you are as well. Thanks for sticking with me. Thanks for coming back after I took a much needed rest and break from podcasting. And I am excited for what is to come in 2022. That wraps up this episode of biceps after babies Radio. I'm Amber now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

 

Outro

Hold up, sister friend. Do you love Biceps after Babies radio? If so, the best way to say thank you is to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on iTunes. I know, every podcaster wants you to leave a review, but it's because those reviews help the podcast to reach more people. And I do truly want to know what you think. If this particular episode resonated with you, will you also please share it? Either send the link to someone who would find it valuable or take a screenshot and post it to your social media and tell your friends and family why they should listen. Make sure you tag me @biceps.after.babies so I can hear your feedback and give you a little love. And you know, if you aren't already following me on Instagram or Facebook, that's the perfect time to hit that follow button. Thank you for being here and listening to Biceps after Babies radio.