Explore how the beauty industry can become sustainable and green.
Explore how the beauty industry can become sustainable and green.
"...you should never shy away from having opinions."
Today Lorraine Dallmeier, the creator of Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica shares her story of fashion & beauty podcast.
► Tell us about you and your podcast
Hi, I'm Lorraine and I host the Green Beauty Conversations podcast. I'm a biologist and environmental scientist. I'm also the CEO of Formula Botanica, the online organic cosmetic formulation school, which has taught tens of thousands of people all around the world to formulate botanical skincare, haircare and makeup because we're on a mission to teach the world to formulate.
In my weekly episodes, I shed light on fact that the mainstream beauty industry is the one of the most unsustainable industries in the world; producing tens of billions of units of packaging per year, driving gargantuan marketing campaigns that make you feel insecure about yourself and trying to encourage rampant consumerism at every turn.
I interview industry leaders, small business owners that are making a difference and thought leaders who help put forward sustainable beauty ideas that otherwise don't make it into the media.
The Green Beauty Conversations podcast regularly hits the #1 spot in the Apple Podcast fashion & beauty category in dozens of countries around the world and is listened to by the indie beauty community, beauty industry execs, journalists and shoppers who want to make a difference.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
My team and I started the podcast back in 2018 with the intention of creating another amazing channel for sharing our content. However, the Green Beauty Conversations podcast has evolved into so much more since then.
The podcast is now a platform to share thought leadership with the world on how the beauty industry should change for the better, and our numbers suggest that these people are ready to hear my message and are on board with making that change. It's also an opportunity to set the record straight in the face of the immense amount of greenwashing issues by the big cosmetic multinationals - which I never shy away from!
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
We release an episode every week, which takes a lot of time and planning. The podcast prep process typically runs like this:
1. I come up with the specific concept for an episode and give some thought as to who could be a suitable guest.
2. My assistant reaches out to a guest I've identified so we can invite them for an interview (this can take time / tenacity!).
3. I first have an offline chat with my guest to get to know them and prepare my interview questions.
4. My assistant schedules a recording date and runs a tech check with my guest to get them set up on our podcast software (we use SquadCast).
5. I record the episode with my guest and download all the files for my team.
6. I then script and record an opinion piece based on the interview I've just done, which is released the week after the interview.
7. Once all files are ready, I work with our Content Coordinator to let her know which files are ready, tell her about any bloopers and give her the general notes that I've written per episode.
8. Our Content Coordinator then liaises with our podcast editor to edit and get the episode ready.
9. Our Content Coordinator then listens to the episode so she can prepare the show notes.
10. Our Social Media and Marketing team creates all of the video assets, which are emailed to our guests the week before the episode is released.
11. We then publish the episode and spend several days disseminating it across all of our social media platforms.
It takes a couple of weeks to get each episode ready and it's a lot of work, but it's so worthwhile given the reception the podcast gets. I typically record episodes 2-3 months ahead of release, which means I can comfortably scout around for the right guests. Each episode costs a couple of hundred dollars to prepare, but it's so worth it.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
We fund the podcast entirely through Formula Botanica and use it as an opportunity to position ourselves as the thought leader in green beauty. Our listeners inevitably end up enrolling with us for our online courses, which is why we haven't monetised the podcast by incorporating ads - I would much rather have our listeners have a chance to listen properly to my messages than get them to listen to unnecessary advertising.
The podcast has benefited me and Formula Botanica in so many different ways:
Firstly, it gives me an opportunity to get my message out that I simply wouldn't get on any other platform.
Secondly, we've been approached by the media multiple times to be able to discuss some of the topics I've covered. For instance, I recorded an episode on biodegradable beauty with one of my team members - which no one else had covered in suitable depth until we did it - and since then we've had many publications reach out to us to interview us on this topic.
Thirdly, I typically tackle topics that aren't being covered anywhere else, which means that we generate opinions / commentary on social media and get our community sharing their thoughts with us. This is a wonderful way of engaging more with the amazing people in our community.
We're generating about 20k downloads per month and are on track to reach 1 million downloads in 2023, which will be a major milestone!
► How does your podcasting process look like?
I use SquadCast to record all of my interviews, we disseminate the podcast using LibSyn and we track the podcast's performance using Chartable. The software is really easy! The biggest challenge we face is helping my guests understand why headphones are important to generate clear audio tracks. :)
Unlike many other podcasts, I don't rely on PR pitches and only choose the guests and topics I find interesting. This approach amplifies the voices that typically don't get heard, which I find much more important. I sit down with my team a couple of times a year, come up with topics that we think we should be covering and then start to investigate who would make the best guest on those topics.
We then reach out to those guests and invite them onto the show. This can be very time consuming as many of those guests aren't always 'podcast ready'. However, we help them get to the stage that they're ready to record, because we know that their interviews will be some of the most interesting ones we've published.
► How do you market your show?
Most of our listener base has been built up by sharing the Green Beauty Conversations podcast with our existing audience. We have an enormous audience at Formula Botanica and feel very privileged to be able to send them regular podcast episodes alongside our very popular blog.
Our listeners tune in to listen to us on:
1. Apple Podcasts - 54%
2. YouTube (!) - 26%
3. Spotify - 6%
4. Everywhere else - 14%
I find it fascinating to see how large our listener base is on YouTube, given that we only upload the audio files with a thumbnail. Despite the fact that YouTube would never be considered a podcast platform, many of our listeners clearly enjoy just having it open in the background on their computer or phone.
We disseminate our podcast episodes by email to our hundreds of thousands of subscribers. We then also share videos on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, using video footage from SquadCast. Although we don't release the full video interview, we cut out some snippets for social media.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
I'd say the most important piece of advice I've learned from 5 years of podcasting is that you should never shy away from having opinions. Speak up for what you believe in, spend time crafting and honing those opinions and try to have conversations that you're just not hearing other people have. There is always a new angle to be explored. People want to hear what you have to offer.
► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?
Our main website:
https://formulabotanica.com
Podcast webpage: https://formulabotanica.com/podcast
Instagram for Formula Botanica: https://www.instagram.com/formulabotanica
Instagram for Lorraine Dallmeier: https://www.instagram.com/lorrainedallmeier
Facebook for Formula Botanica: https://www.facebook.com/FormulaBotanica
Twitter for Formula Botanica: https://www.twitter.com/FormulaBotanica