SMALL BUSINESS SISTERS

Podcast focuses on issues that affect women in business

BY RACHEL MADISON

STAFF WRITER

Christina Hobbs and Jenni Zielke have a lot in common. They’re both small business owners, they both live in small towns, they’re both moms and wives -- and they just happen to be real life sisters.

Hobbs, who lives in Liberty Hill, owns Beautiful Chaos Shoppe, co-owns a subscription box company called Just Add Jeans, and is the former owner of The Wildflower Republic, a brick-and-mortar shop that closed earlier this year in Liberty Hill.

Her old sister, Zielke, lives in Batabia, Ill., and owns Illuminate Space, a candle company, and co-owns a brick-and-mortar boutique called Light & Pine Collective.

Together, the two are the voices behind the Small Business Sisters podcast. They both started their respective businesses around the same time seven years ago, and quickly learned how much they didn’t know.

“There’s so much to learn as you go, and it’s very scary,” Hobbs said. “We didn’t get loans to start our businesses -- we just used the resources we had and had to learn how to do every single part of business on our own, from taxes to customer service.”

The good thing about them being in the same boat, though, Hobbs said, is that they experienced it all together and have dealt with many of the same frustrations, challenges and wins.

“We realized what we had together was very rare,” Hobbs added. “A lot of people don’t have somebody that close to them to gather ideas and expertise from. We aren’t experts, but we’ve had to learn, so we thought, ‘What if we started a podcast?’ Our phone calls to each other could basically be recorded and there would be our topic for the week.”

This was about a year and a half ago, and since then, the Small Business Sisters podcast has produced more than 50 episodes on a wide variety of women-focused business topics, including interviewing experts on search engine optimization, web design, photography, marketing and mental health.

“We are not super polished or professional in any capacity, but what we are doing is keeping it conversational,” Zielke added. “We are just starting the conversation.”

The sisters focus a lot on mental health as it relates to business, and specific issues that affect women as wives, mothers and business owners, because they believe those areas of life cannot be compartmentalized.

“What we’ve learned in business, is that while people love your products or what you sell, what they really gravitate toward is the personal aspect,” Hobbs said. “Our top three episodes have been about personal issues. We invited our youngest sister, who works in the corporate world, to come talk about what it’s like to be a woman in corporate America. The other two most popular episodes were about mental health awareness and our own personal diagnoses and how we navigate those, and then we brought on a life coach who talked us through thought work.”

As the sisters work to plan future episodes, they take from their own experiences to figure out the next topic. They choose topics based on the phone calls they make to each other that month, what they are personally struggling with in their businesses, and feedback from listeners on social media.

Most of the sisters’ followers are new to owning businesses and are just about to jump into the small business world.

“We don’t know how people are finding us, but we are getting messages from people all over the nation—women saying, ‘This is just what I needed,’” Hobbs said. “When we started our businesses, there were podcasts out there but we couldn’t find one that didn’t just tell us to hire out for different services. Jenni and I are filling that gap, because you can’t always hire it out.”

Zielke added that they also pay close attention to their podcast numbers and what the top episodes are so they can continue to cater to their growing audience’s needs, while also addressing the messiness of life.

“We don’t have it all figured out. We are constantly learning and growing,” Hobbs said. “But that’s the end goal. Life is messy, and that’s OK, and you’re not less than or lower because you’re not polished and successful. This is what we like to do instead of just giving advice.” The Small Business Sisters have had more than 23,000 downloads in the last year and have been surprised at that growth. They’ve heard from new small business owners from Washington to Montana to Maine.

“We started off because we loved doing this and we knew we had people in our circle that were listening, and now it’s been fun to watch it really become its own business,” Zielke said.

Hobbs added that it’s the “coolest thing” to hear from business owners from across the country. As the podcast continues to grow, the sisters plan on introducing ads into their episodes in 2023 as a way to grow this new business, and eventually, they’d love to hire someone to produce the episodes for them. But for now, they are happy to do it themselves.

Because they are small business owners, mothers and wives, the Small Business Sisters will not produce any new content from October through December, but in January they will return with a new episode every Wednesday.

The podcast can be found at www.smallbusinesssisterspodcast.com. Episodes can also be downloaded from iTunes, Spotify and Podbean.

Christina Hobbs, left, and Jenni Zielke, right, are sisters in business and in real life. Together, the two created the Small Business Sisters Podcast to discuss a variety of topics that mainly affect women entrepreneurs. (Courtesy Photo)