Episode 107: Pitching, Connecting, and Creating Community with Chelsea Riffe Podcast Strategist
Podcast
Episode 107: Pitching, Connecting, and Creating Community with Chelsea Riffe Podcast Strategist
“It can be hard to feel creatively energized when you don't have anybody around you to… talk about it, discuss it, debate it, or have some type of two-way street going on.” —Chelsea Riffe
Tune in to this episode to remind yourself that you don’t have to be tied to social media 24/7 in order to grow your business, brand, or mission!
I'm joined by Chelsea Riffe, host of In My Non-Expert Opinion, a top 1% podcast known for transparency around business, creativity, and travel.
I attend her recent event, Pitch-A-Palooza, where I was blown away by the community, connection, and collaboration happening in the chat.
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform while you cook, clean, or create.
What’s in This Episode:
Chelsea explains how she doesn’t feel the creative activation happens until it comes out of her, whether that is verbally, through writing, drawing, creating pottery, or movement.
Chelsea defines creativity as an unbound sense of self-expression. Her current relationship to creativity thrives on expanding her community by interacting with what she calls other people’s “orbits”.
She compares the frustration of speaking into the void of social media algorithms where the conversation isn’t a two way street to the richness of a podcast interview, Substack feature, or guest teaching.
By tuning in you’ll learn how Chelsea overcomes creative blocks, how you can use pitching as a tool to boost your confidence, and how to think of IG more as a digital billboard (rather than a daily to-do).
Question: What’s an event, podcast, or brand you’d like to pitch yourself to? Tag us on IG @chefcarlacontreras & @chelseariffe to put it out into the Universe!
xo Carla
PS: When two people’s galaxies collide, a whole new orbit is created! Want to create this magic for yourself? Join this round of Chelsea’s Pitch Perfect and do it alongside me. As a sweet bonus, I will give you a 30-minute 1:1 Quickie Content Audit.
Disclaimer: Always seek the counsel of a qualified medical practitioner or other healthcare provider for an individual consultation before making any significant changes to your health, lifestyle, or to answer questions about specific medical conditions. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Note: Some of these are affiliate links, I receive a small percentage of the sales. I appreciate your support of my small Latina & women owned business.
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About Chelsea Riffe
Chelsea Riffe is a world traveler and the host of the hit podcast In My Non-Expert Opinion, a Top 1% pod known for bringing transparency around biz, creativity, and travel.
She's also a dedicated Podcast Strategist, helping women take down the patriarchy one episode at a time.
For all the spiritual peeps - she's an Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon, Virgo Rising and 6/2 Reflector in Human Design - a VIBE.
You can catch Chelsea on a flight, working at a local cafe, or running her podcast weekly!
FIND + WORK WITH CHELSEA:
Website: https://www.chelseariffe.com
1:1 Podcast Coaching: https://www.chelseariffe.com/podcast-coaching
Podcast Launch Course: https://www.chelseariffe.com/mic-drop
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelseariffe
Pitch Perfect: https://www.chelseariffe.com/pitch-perfect-program
Full Transcript:
Carla (00:01):
Welcome to Nourishing Creativity. The cycle of the last few years has left you and me feeling mentally, physically, emotionally, and creatively drained, nourish your very full life through interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs about how they create and move through their creative blocks. If you don't know me, I'm Chef Carla Contreras, a food stylist and content strategist. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras, across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. Chelsea, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited for this conversation. I met you through one of my friends and previous podcast guests, Megan Williamson of Pin Potential. Can you share with us who you are and how you serve your community?
Chelsea (00:59):
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and what I do, I am Chelsea Rife, like you said, and I'm a podcast host of the podcast in my non-expert opinion, and I'm also a podcast strategist, and I really help people find their point of resonance so that their voice can move themselves and their people.
Carla (01:17):
Let's get into food. I'm a trained chef. What was your last meal?
Chelsea (01:21):
Oh, as a trained chef, you're not going to be impressed. It was three hard-boiled eggs with olive oil on top and salt and pepper.
Carla (01:28):
Okay, but let's talk about the salt and pepper because some people skip that stuff.
Chelsea (01:32):
I also think people skip the olive oil. This is a new thing, and the only reason I started adding it was I'm really obsessed with old ancient beauty secrets
(01:43)
And grandmas are like, I just put milk on my face every day. And you're like, what are you talking about? And I remember I went to Greece and these two women, they were sisters running this Greek retreat that I went on and one of them just had this glowing skin and I'm like, what do you do? And she's like, I put hard boiled eggs in a mug and I filled the mug with halfway of olive oil and then I mash up the hard boiled eggs and put 'em in there. And originally I was like, that sounds disgusting, but then I was like, wait, I love olive oil. So then I just started dumping olive oil on my eggs and I have never stopped doing that since then. It's my favorite breakfast meal.
Carla (02:22):
This sounds delicious. I can't wait to try it.
Chelsea (02:25):
It's really good.
Carla (02:26):
Let's get into creativity. How do you define creativity?
Chelsea (02:30):
For me, I think creativity is expression. So I don't feel creative unless I am expressing something. I can be in my head all day long and I truly don't feel like that creative activation happens until it comes out of me, whether that is verbally a written piece of content drawing, creating pottery, but I don't feel in touch with my creativity until there's some type of movement or expression. And so that's really what it to me is like an unbound sense of self-expression.
Carla (03:02):
I know you're a reflector and you talk about this on your podcast too. Does that have any part of this creative definition?
Chelsea (03:12):
1000000%. It's so timely that you just asked me this because I got back from a staycation yesterday, so I took myself within staycation Sunday, so Sunday to Wednesday. And the reason being was I was feeling so creatively stifled because I just work from home every day and I don't have a desk. I live in a beautiful little apartment, but there's no space for a desk, and so I'm always working on my couch or in my bed, and I started to feel this sense of I need space and I need a change in scenery, which is really interesting because reflectors are the shapeshifters and chameleons of human design. So when I started to think about, well, how can I get my creativity back? I was trying all these things, maybe I'll walk down the promenade every day or maybe I need to change my schedule around.
(03:58)
Maybe I'm more creative at night. And I kept tweaking these things and nothing has really felt like it's shifted. So I was like, what if we just literally change locations? So I took myself in this staycation and instantly I was like, this is what I needed. I completely rewrote an email for one of my sales sequences going out. I did a video. I have five new podcast episodes and I really think that speaks to being a reflector is that we don't have any defined centers, and so we're often getting inputs from all these different places, which in my opinion starts to water down your creativity. I don't think it erases it, but I think it waters it down. And I knew I need to get rid of all these inputs by just putting myself in a new place. And that is essentially what changed my point of view on how my human design plays into my creativity.
Carla (04:45):
And this kind of answered what's your current relationship with creativity, but I want to ask this question in terms of your most recent podcast, because you talk about community connections orbits. Can we get into what is that and how does that relate to creativity?
Chelsea (05:08):
Yeah, it's so interesting you bring this up because I saw this question and it really got my wheels spinning, and originally my answer was going to be movement and action and all these different things, but I think it can be hard to feel creatively energized when you don't have anybody around you to either talk about it or discuss it or debate it or have some type of two-way street going on. This is often why people use the phrase shouting into the void because they're like, I'm creating and I'm expressing and I'm doing all these things, but it's going into a void where the orbit thing that I was talking about for anybody that hasn't listened and wants the 4 1 1 is I talk a lot about you have your own orbit, which is your solar system. So you're basically the sun, your offers, your people, your community, your platforms.
(05:57)
These are all the other planets circling you. And so you can get really caught up in your own system just circling yourself like a satellite over and over. And that's when you start to feel, I am just shouting into the void where when you orbit jump or pitch yourself to go in someone else's orbit, like a collaboration like we're doing right now, podcast interview, a substack feature, guest teaching, like you said, you found me actually through guest teaching in someone's course that allows you to now essentially have your galaxies collide, which now has created a whole new orbit. So now your orbits are either circling on top of each other, they're overlapped in some way, and to keep going with the space reference is like now you've made this constellation of connections so you're not just circling yourself over and over again. And now as we're speaking to it creativity, this is why people get frustrated with algorithms and other platforms, is there's no two-way street of communication and they don't feel like they're being seen or heard or that anyone really gets it.
(06:56)
And I think when we're talking about creating these new orbits, you're now talking to people that get it. You are putting yourself in orbits where people can conversate with you, they can debate with you, they can have a critical conversation with you where when again, you satellite your own orbit, you're kind of just having that conversation with yourself in your head or creating it on your platforms. And that's when you start to get really frustrated. This is the moment where business owners start to be like, I'm done. I'm going to shut down my business, or I think I'm going to launch a whole new brand and offer. And they just have that tower moment where they want to break everything down and rebuild. And in reality, I'm like, I don't know that you always need to rebuild and rebrand. You might just need to put yourself in new orbits to feel that creative surge again, which has 100% been the fuel for my podcast. I always tell people, if I couldn't interview people and have conversations on my podcast the way I have the last seven years, there's no way I would've been able to keep it up. I would've been so in my own orbit, I would've been like a star that burned out.
Carla (07:56):
I agree with you about the conversations because conversations like we're having right now nourish my soul and they really, it's that spark. It really ignites things within inside of myself because again, we're having, it's a two-way street.
Chelsea (08:13):
Yes, I'd love to chat about social media because we talked about this before we got in the podcast. I used to post every single day on Instagram. It was a nonstop thing for me for years and in recent years, I've stepped back and I've focused on podcasting, substack teaching. I'd love to know about your relationship with social media, your relationship with connections as we're talking about orbiting.
Chelsea (08:41):
Absolutely. So very similar to you. I used to use Instagram as one of my main channels and just thought the more I post, the more important I am, the more people I'll drive into my world, which will become more clients, more connections, more sales, and that just wasn't working for me. Then I started leaning more into my podcast, same trajectory as you and I started becoming a guest on other people's podcasts, putting myself into those new orbits and immediately started seeing influx of one-on-one applications, lead magnet downloads, people just buying my courses. And when I started tracking the data, I started to see no one is finding me on Instagram. They're looking at my Instagram almost like a business card, but they're not consuming all the content and they're not really comprehending what I do. They get that when I go on the podcast where I can actually have a deep conversation like we are right now. There's depth, there's nuance, there's context, and what I started to do was actually track this data. So I'm also a Virgo Moon Virgo rising with a Capricorn, so I do love details and data, and I started to ask people in my applications, how did you find me? And every single one was either I heard you on a podcast or I heard you guest speak in someone's program, which is how you found me, which I find fascinating,
Carla (09:55):
Exactly how I found you.
Chelsea (09:57):
Exactly. And so I started to have all this data and I'm like, okay, well, the data shows that I really don't need to be on these platforms all the time. So then I scaled back my posting schedule, so to speak. It wasn't really a schedule, it was posting frantically all the time and decided, let me focus on what I can see not only energizes me but is actually moving the needle in my business, which was guest speaking conversations, et cetera. Now, when you ask my relationship, now, I'm still on social media, but I consider it digital billboards, and I know this is something we talked about in my workshop, but the way you drive on a road trip and you see a billboard for, I don't know, seven 11, you don't immediately jump off the road and be like, oh my God, we have to go to seven 11 unless you really need something from there, if you're like, yes, we need to get a water bottle because we are literally in the middle of the desert and we are so thirsty, then you'll jump off the road.
(10:48)
But if you have a water bottle and you're just chilling, seven 11 is kind of like, okay, cool. I'll remember it that it's on this path, but I don't think we need to drive off the road. That's exactly how I feel about posting on Instagram is no one is going to see your post and run and jump off to work with you and immediately fill out an application or buy a high ticket program or just come into your world. They need a lot of data to do that. They would need 10 billboards. So when I think about it, I just thought, you know what? This is a good place to treat it. The same thing as a billboard. It's awareness. It plants a seed. It's a little sprinkle on top. You start to get an idea of who I am and what I do, especially on my stories.
(11:27)
I have a lot of fun there. I treat it like a reality TV show of what's going on in my life every day, but I don't consider it a place to invest my time, energy and resources for actual ROI. So that relationship shift completely changed the pressure I had to show up and post three times a week and think about the marketing funnel and what goes where, because now I'm like, I don't need it to be honest. Instagram shut down tomorrow. I would be completely fine. And that is now the goal that I have for myself and other people is to show them you can have incredible conversations and incredible conversions when you realize that the algorithm based content is not the only way to do things. I also treat it like a second inbox. I think that's something that people don't think about is considering the dms like an email, and when people DM you, it's kind of like they're sending you an email. And that's how I look at it now is this is almost like a second inbox, but it's also not a hotline. So that's really important too, is that this is not a 24 7 open for business hotline. It's the same thing as an inbox. I'll check it a few times a week, I'll respond, but it is not my end all be all, and it's definitely not the place that I see a lot of traction in terms of business growth.
Carla (12:42):
The inbox is the key secret here, and I feel like I recently started to use this with networking with connections because it's an easy win. Yum me, dm me, it feels really easy. Email me feels a little bit more like work.
Chelsea (13:01):
It does. And then you have to find the email and then format it a little differently and dah, dah, dah, and Instagram is more casual. You can send a voice note, you can quickly type something. There's now many chat automations, which I haven't used, but I've seen them be helpful. And yeah, it's just a different relationship.
Carla (13:17):
I want to talk about how you nourish your creativity and really it's your creative process, but I want to chat about the lens of community because I attended your workshop, the Pitch of Palooza, and I'm going to be 15 years into entrepreneurship in June, and I have been through, I can't even tell you how many online programs, workshops, summits, et cetera. I have never experienced what I experienced in the chat of that.
Chelsea (13:53):
That was the most active alive chat I've also been a part of, and I think there were so many different factors at play with that. I think the first thing is that exactly what we just talked about, this desire to market and have a different way of connecting with people is really high right now. I think right now there's a big collective disconnection happening. There's a disembodiment happening. People are kind of just feeling like they're floating around and hoping to land somewhere. And I think this skill of pitching and being able to literally talk to people like we are right now, there's just a high desire for it. So I think that was number one is an excitement around it. I think number two was that there was a participation element. So I'm someone that sometimes, let's be honest, I join a workshop and I have my camera off and I'm doing emails and half listening, and I knew if people really pay attention, they'll actually be able to send a pitch by the end of these three days.
(14:50)
So I knew in order to incentivize intention, there probably needs to be a reason to want to sit through outside of sending a pitch. So then I have prizes every day, so every day, the more you participated, the more you want a prize, and no one knew what it was until the end. It was a surprise. So I think that could have been an element too, is like what is this surprise going to be? And you only know if you participate. So I really gamified it and I think games are always fun. People love games, and I think the third thing was the actual people. I don't think it would've been that collaborative if everyone was just like, Hey, I'm here. And then not really participating and not wanting to connect, but it just felt like everyone started dropping their handles and their substack and their podcasts and then people were actually reading the chat because it's one thing to drop your podcast and link
(15:37)
And it's another to say, oh my gosh, I see that you do this. You'd be a perfect fit for my platform. Or, wow, you sound like a great guest. Why don't you come on my podcast? I think there was an intention already of community building going into it because that's what pitching is. Again, you're starting to put yourself in other communities. And so people were almost using it as a practice experiment place of why don't we just start pitching each other right now? I also think there was a three day period, we don't have three months to connect, and I think that added a little bit of urgency and pressure of wait, there's 20 people in this room that have substack and newsletters and podcasts and courses. This is a gold mine of people to connect with. And I think that really clicked for people where they're like, this could be a place to just start pitching myself and it worked.
Carla (16:22):
Yeah, I mean, I have people that are coming on the podcast. You're on the podcast now. And I also want to talk about pitching energy because with this, I got asked to speak at this big food conference in LA in January of 26, and I was like, I feel like the pitching energy was flowing. Can you talk about that?
Chelsea (16:46):
Yes. I feel like there was a conversation I had recently with someone, and she's an astrologer and human design expert, and we were talking about my chart and something she brought up is my need for connecting with people on a deeper level and not just having surface level conversations. And as we were having this conversation, I had this download that I was like, what's so interesting is I wish I had rebranded Pitch Perfect to be a different name, because I think at the surface it's very clear what it is pitch perfect, you're pitching, et cetera. But what I think the name does a disservice to is talk about the unlocked confidence that happens when you start to actually believe that your story matters and that you do have a seat at the table and that you do belong in the room. And I think that's what was happening is people were accelerating their pitching and then they were getting yeses right then and there of like, oh my God, here's my link to book, here's my podcast link that all of a sudden they were getting in real time evidence and feedback.
(17:44)
Someone does want to hear from me and my story matters. And I think that's a massive issue we all deal with is who am I to talk about this? My Instagram following isn't that big. I don't have a have a podcast I just started. And we start to feed ourselves these really unkind stories, forgetting that we're human beings with a world, a treasure chest of stories that people want to hear from. And let's be honest, Carla, not all of us want to hear the same 10 big coaches and entrepreneurs talking about the same recycled content that they share on every single podcast. So I think what was happening, the flow was people's confidence got accelerated, people's energy was activated, and again, they were getting real time feedback and showing their nervous system, it actually is safe for me to pitch. And so because of that safety now I'm going to ride the wave while I have it. And that's what built that momentum.
Carla (18:35):
Yeah. Oh my gosh, so good. And I know that you've answered this, so I want to make sure that people circle back to the part where you said how you move to the creative block because that really tuning into your own energy, your own design, your astrology, if you follow that really for me, because I'm a projector, it also is can I unplug, can I unplug from that input? And recently with all of my Substack publications, I put them all to push to the app to clear out my inbox
Chelsea (19:17):
In order to create space for myself. Now, will it be like that always? No, but I really want to underline, highlight, and circle what you talked about with input.
Chelsea (19:29):
Yes. When you asked that too, I was going to say my more direct answer is space. The more I can create space for myself physically, mentally, emotionally, the more creative I feel. And I'm talking like I wake up every morning and I tidy my space, I'm now looking at my closet and I'm getting the heebie. I'm like, oh, I can just tell there's energy there that I want out and I want to make space. And I think there's something to be said about clutter, again, mentally and physically, that I mean, if you think about it, if a coffee table is full of stuff and you can't even find your notebook, that's kind of the same thing as your creativity. If it's just constantly bombarded with new inputs, it's like you don't even know how to attune to your own voice. So yeah, I think it's important to sometimes reset and create that space bubble around you and see if that helps your creative blog.
Carla (20:17):
I loved chatting with you. This was so special. How can we find you? How can we work with you? How can we support you?
Chelsea (20:24):
Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. This was such a fun conversation. And I also just want to shout you out really quick because you were someone that was very collaborative inside. You were dropping your podcast link, you were cheering people on, and like you said, that momentum built and now you're going to go speak in January. So I just wanted to shout you out because I think you were a really present person there, and those are the types of people that create change. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, of course. And then regarding where you can find me and work with me, my website is chelsea rife.com. My podcast is called In My Non-Expert Opinion. My substack is called Slight Turbulence. And if you want to join the magic that Carla is talking about, pitch Perfect is happening May 6th, and that's on my website where you can just DM me on Instagram and we can chat about this is your best next step.
Carla (21:13):
Thanks so much for tuning in to Nourishing Creativity. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. While you have your phone out, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. This is how others find this show. I really appreciate your support sending you and yours so much love.