Entrepreneur Marla Isackson Is on a Mission to Help Women in Podcasting

Courtesy of Marla Isackson

Two years ago we started on our podcasting journey and we've never been happier in our careers. We love meeting and interviewing all of the strong, empowered women who have created unique businesses, working tirelessly on causes that have deep meaning to them or are passionately following their artistic pursuits. But sometimes being a podcaster can be a lonely pursuit. That's why we were excited to hear about the Ossa Collective founder Marla Isackson. After starting her own podcast Mind of a Mentor, Marla launched the podcast network with a mission to help women in podcasting increase their earning power, elevate their social and cultural influence and land more shows in the Top 100. Podcasters can add their show to Ossa platform to connect directly with advertisers. Plus Ossa offers a supportive online community and e-courses to help women maximize their success. In our interview with Marla she talked about the motivating force behind Ossa and her pursuit to help women find success in the podcast world. Here's an excerpt from our interview with Marla. Passionistas: At what point in your journey did you decide to get into podcasting and why did you do that? Marla: It was the beginning of 2018 and in a strategy session with my team and we were talking about ways to amplify Like a Boss Girls amplify the brand, extend the brand, have a touch more people. And my team suggested very strongly that I start a podcast, which I really didn't want to do, but I did. And we call it Mind of a Mentor. And again, the structure is about, it does talk about mentoring, but the woman being interviewed is actually the mentor. So essentially she's taking us through her heroic journey, which we all have and talking about challenges, issues, obstacles that they encountered along the way and how they did or did not deal with these issues. So I thought it was a great platform. I would say my first few episodes were horrendous because I was petrified. But then as I got into it, I really enjoyed the medium a lot. I just said, well this is just a really, really cool, I like the fact that I'm getting to speak with a lot of very interesting women, 'cause Mind of a Mentor does focus on women, and it just was really liking the medium. And then I did more research to learn more about podcasting and based on the research, lo and behold, huge opportunity growing channel also found out that women were not monetizing to the level that men were monetizing when it came to podcasting. I think men were involved with podcasting a lot earlier on, so they tended to have the bigger podcasts. And I felt that podcasting was a natural medium for women because I think you can get into both the emotional issues as well as the more practical issues when two women are having a conversation. So did my research, saw that there was an opportunity and decided to take Mind of a Mentor, to take the concept of podcasting, and actually go the next step, which is creating the Ossa platform. Passionistas: What types of women do you interview and what have you learned from them? Marla: I would say that I've interviewed, oh my gosh, all kinds of women. I've interviewed athletes. I've interviewed women in transition, women who have had abusive relationships, women who had seriously horrible childhood. Bottom line is they're all professional women. They all have jobs, they run a business, they have a career. But they've all gone through some really serious issues along the way. And I felt that these stories were really interesting. They're very, very helpful because what they've gone through is not unusual. So there are many women unfortunately who have been in these kinds of situations. So the objective is for someone listening to Mind of a Mentor to be able to say, well, you know, if she could do it then I can do it. And that's the framework.

Passionistas: Tell us more about Ossa and the mission and how it works for both the podcast or and the advertiser. Marla: In my mind, the best way to help women accomplish and achieve their goals. A lot of it has to do with financial goals. So you've got to make money. Making money is really important. Having that career is really important. And again, going back to the research and looking at the difference in monetization, I saw that there was a really big gap, which just did not seem right to me. So well the overall objective is really to help women podcasters monetize their podcast and extend their voice. But we actually are a matching platform, which is very similar to when you go online to select a flight. You put in your criteria and up pops the flights that match your criteria. Ossa is a matching site, so we work with brands, they can leverage the platform, put in their respective criteria, and up pops the podcast that meet that criteria. So we make the match. So we're helping brands make more money reach women that they may not have reached before because of the opportunity to speak to a very targeted group of women in these podcasts. And we're also working with women who love podcasting, but maybe had not cracked the code on how to make money. So that was really the objective. You can hear Marla’s entire interview here. And visit OssaCollective.com to learn more about Marla's mission to help women in podcasting increase their earning power, elevate their social and cultural influence and land more shows in the Top 100.