Louise B.

My name is Louise Buckley, and I am an Irishwoman (34 years old) currently living in rural Portugal. After spending some years travelling while working remotely, I have settled in the Castelo Branco region, where my partner and I have purchased a home together. I was travelling when COVID hit, and the lockdown began. This led me to reflect on the skills I had developed in my previous retail and teaching positions and look at the possibility of online and remote work. In January of 2021, I was offered a position with Interview Valet as a Client Account Manager. Interview Valet is a Podcast Marketing Agency. My role as a Client Account Manager was to get my clients set up on their systems, understand their needs, guide them, connect clients with suitable podcast hosts for their specific needs, and ensure their success in their campaigns and podcast interviews. One year after I joined the company, I was promoted to a leadership role as the Captain of the Client Account Managers in the Business POD. I still had my own clients, supported my team, and helped with day-to-day company management as the company grew. I believe that one of my most important roles as a team lead was to support my team and to help them grow. When a company invests in their team through training and support, then they will see the quantitative results in more focused and driven employees. With my leadership, the Business POD at Interview Valet was able to help countless clients get on podcasts in order to promote their services, book launches, and programmes. We also saw client success in the form of renewals, where our clients decided that they wanted to continue using our services after their initial campaign. In my previous role with Interview Valet, I helped my clients and team to drive results in Podcast Interview Marketing. Part of this entailed assigning the right team member to the right personality of our clients. We used our systems and databases to find the best podcasts and hosts for our clients to appear on so they could promote their services, book launches, and programs. During my time at Interview Valet, I gained a high level of knowledge about multiple support systems, including: Hubspot, AirTable, Asana, Sweet Process, Hubstaff, WorldTime Buddy, Fireflies, etc. My role required a high level of attention to detail, researching the client’s expertise, and listening to and incorporating their feedback. We used policies and procedures to gather the necessary data to get results, but it was the personal touch that drove clients to return. I really enjoyed building a rapport with my clients from all over the world, with different cultures and life experiences. I used my industry knowledge to bring add-on services that benefit our clients’ campaigns and achieve an overall higher level of success. I created revenue through knowledge, data, and trust. At the end of April 2025, I left Interview Valet, and then in June 2025, I joined Lead-Lag Media. Joining Lead-Lag Media brought a new and exciting challenge. They wanted to set up a podcast and media branch for the company to help their clients get more exposure for their products. The clients at Lead-Lag Media were very different to the clients I had at Interview Valet. Their clients are financial experts and ETF issuers. This means that they are constantly having to keep up-to-date on current financial markets, and they’re not looking for media engagement that is evergreen. So, while I was working to build a database of shows and create host engagement from scratch, I also had to make sure that nothing fell through the cracks as hosts and clients were looking for quick turnarounds when it came to interviews or journalistic opportunities. As most of my clients have been based in the US, it was my responsibility to create my working hours so that I could be available as much as possible during their working day. With my clients at Lead-Lag Media, I had to educate myself on the world of investing, which is a field I knew nothing about previously, but I’ve enjoyed learning and expanding my knowledge on the topic. Through my work at Lead-Lag Media, I learned to work with and not against AI a lot more. Because I was doing all the facets of building the media outreach and database, I had to manage my time more efficiently, and AI has helped with this. I, of course, read through everything before I send it, as AI can sometimes be wrong, but it definitely speeds up my processes and helps keep everything more organised. I’ve used tools such as PodEngine, Chat GPT, and Perplexity, but I am a quick learner when it comes to using most new platforms and tools.