Transcript

Molly: Welcome back to the next 100. It’s me, Molly. Back again. I’m still getting comfortable with this whole idea of being on camera. Just myself, in this whole bag. But here we go anyway because I think I can bring some value to your day. So as I mentioned in the pilot, this podcast is going to be short and sweet and hopefully full of valuable, valuable information, practical and tactical information, things that help you in your business to get to the next 100. So what are the next 100? Well, it could be the next hundred days, the next hundred emails, and 600 push-ups. It could be anything. But what it’s dialing in on is the next hundred thousand dollars in your business.

So getting to 100,000 can be such a hurdle, right? Such a huge hurdle. But then the next hundred gets a little easier. So I wanted to kind of do a little bit more deep dove on who I am and what it is that I do. So I told you a little bit about my history, right? But I want to tell you more about what it is that I do every day. So I have a little bit of an issue. I had a bit of an identity crisis if you will. I was trying to figure out, you know, what am I, who am I? What do I do? Because I’ve worn a lot of hats in my time. I’ve owned a multimedia company for 23 years. I’ve done a lot of grassroots marketing. I’ve done a lot, right? So what am I and what do I want to do? So first and foremost, I’m a podcast producer. You know, I own Heartcast media.

We are branded podcast producers. We produce podcasts as a business, developmental I, I’m also an artist. I have an artistic side. I love graffiti, I love design, I love web design, graphic design, all of that. I’m an artist. I got that in my genes for sure. But what I am not is a coach like I am not. I don’t identify with that word at all. Like it doesn’t resonate with me at all. I don’t want to be a coach and maybe that’ll change, right? Because Lord knows I’ve said real definitive statements about things before then changed my mind. So that certainly is a possibility. There’s a probability now that I’ve said it out loud, but the coach just didn’t resonate with me. And in the end, it finally dawned on me I’m a brand strategist, and that I think just really nails it at my core. I am a visionary like I’m a big picture, broad strokes, kind of a gal. I can if you let me know what you’ve got and where you work and where you’re trying to go, I can see that path so clearly. I have created jobs. I like to consider myself a modern-day muse.

I’ve created and envisioned and dreamed up jobs that didn’t exist before, which, you know, friends of mine have started. Businesses like I just love solving problems. I love providing that other perspective for people. It’s really what I do. And after 23 years of owning a multimedia company, making tons of mistakes, creating all kinds of content, producing events, I mean, you name it, I’ve done all kinds of things, right? So what I’m I, I’m not the person who’s going to see the thing all the way through. I’m a broad, strokes, visionary kind of gal like I said. So I can help you reverse engineer your goals. First of all, let’s start. What do you want your life to look like then? When we figure that out, then we can say, okay, what is the goal post? And then we can reverse engineer the steps to make sure that you get there. And a lot of it is through automation, a lot of it is through strategy, and a lot of it is branding.

You know, it’s a lot, but it’s the core. It’s a brand strategy. Where do you want to talk to you? Who is your target client, audience, whatever? You know, what is your demographic? What is your avatar? It’s all about having a strategy. I’m super, super big on being intentional because I think so many of us live our life just going, going, going. We don’t even have that option to be intentional or think about what it is we’re doing. We just go, we just figure things out, right? It’s like that’s on Instagram when it’s like, you know, maybe for one season to just sit down and not do everything. And then the response is like, Well, who’s going to do it? And there’s, there’s truth in that. Like, it’s nice from a privileged standpoint to say, you know, oh, self-care, take the day off. But that’s not super real for a lot of people. Right. So be intentional with your time and what you’re going to do. So if you want to start a podcast, make sure you know why and what is the goal. And don’t just interview entrepreneurs because you think people want to hear the stories. What’s the point?

What do you want the podcast to do? Imagine a perfect scenario. What does success look like? So I’m able to do that in a lot of different ways. So I figured the best way for me to tell you about myself and who I am is can talk about what I’m working on right now. So I have two different businesses. I own Heartcast media, which is a podcast production agency. It’s branded podcast podcasting as a business development tool. So we have nine employees. We’re hiring our 10th and 11th this week. We are a one-stop white glove, full-service. You know, podcast production agency. But what sets us apart is the strategy. What sets us apart is me. You get my 23 years of marketing experience and we dial in on the strategy or podcast and how to make that work before we start recording. So we’re not just another shop where you’re going to have a different guy or person work on your podcast every week.

They’re cranking out audio grams through some software, and it’s a churn and burn warehouse. It’s the exact opposite. You get all my experience, all my attention, we map the thing out. And then I have a team of amazing people who execute. Full-time video guy, audio engineer, copywriter, graphic designer, social media, SEO, website design, and development. I mean, I have a full-time person for each one of those things, and then I’m the brand strategist. I am the person that builds the business, builds out the systems, and kind of teases up some clients to send to the salesperson, Anthony, who’s also our relationship manager. And so that is my job inside of the company. And so we build websites at Heartcast media. We also record audiobooks. So what I do every day is get in front of people to talk about what it is that we do well, which is create branded podcasts. So part of my mission with this podcast, you know, obviously is this is also a branded podcast. You know, the best way for me to get in front of people and have an opportunity to talk passionately about the stuff that I love is through a podcast.

So, you know, here goes nothing, right? You got to put your money where you’ve got to put your mouth where your money is. Got to put your money where your mouth is. I don’t know which one of those is correct, but I’m probably going to get flagged as explicit for that one. So the goal of this podcast is to try to help you with some great information, right? So we’re going to cover all kinds of stuff. We’re going to cover website design and development basics. How Does Blog Post Matter for Your podcast? We’re going to touch on a lot of these things. And then the idea is to give you a tidbit every day, every time, not every day. And I’m Roman and every time you listen to this podcast, you’re going to get one gem, one little digestible bite of a gem that you can implement in your business and see results. That’s my goal. So what am I working on right now? Well, we have a high-profile podcast, Spencer Haywood. He was born into indentured slavery in 1949 in Silver City, Mississippi, played in the Olympics, and the NBA sued the NBA. We took him to the Supreme Court and won. And because of him, he created generational wealth for countless athletes, because he’s the reason why people don’t have to go to college anymore for four years before they can go pro. And if you’re into sports, you understand why that’s a really big deal. And if you’re not into sports he was very predatory and ultimately racist.

The practice mandated that professional athletes went to college for four years. So what was happening is a lot of people didn’t get to go to college for a lot of obvious reasons. And so that knocked them out. And then the ones that didn’t get an education. The colleges made a ton of money off of them and nine times out of ten, after four years, they were not going anywhere and had health problems and no money and no education to show for it. So what Spencer, hey, we’ve done has been amazing. So talk about storytelling at its core. I am kind of obsessed with this podcast. I love being the producer. I love being able to show all of our things like editing and video and everything that we do well. I’m also building a couple of different websites for clients right now. One is a company that’s doing certifications across the United States in Saudi Arabia on taking companies. Green In this corporate space, I’m building a website for a client of mine who also owns a podcast production agency because I’m all about collaboration, man. Like there’s enough room for all of us. So I’m building his website kind of looks like mine because, hey, man, we can all eat. It’s cool. We’re doing an audiobook for the Scowcroft Center and it’s an audio drama, and it takes place on the moon. And so our audiobook engineer Mike Moxham is doing all these amazing voices. And AI is super cool, man. We’re flexing our capabilities in a lot of different ways.

So my average day is, you know, I have a few meetings with people. I’m usually working on at least one or two websites. I’m coming up with some strategies. I’m looking, of course, at all of the content that my team is creating. You know, I don’t like to bird dog my staff, but I do like to just, you know, kind of check things out, make sure that everything is looking good and it’s and it’s like what I would, you know, want to see of my content and make sure that I’m pleased with the work that’s being done. So I do a lot of quality control, but mostly I just let my team do their thing. And the reason why is because I build a business and I build systems for them to work in. That makes sense. It makes it easy for them to do that. And so I try to keep just a high-level view on things, but at the end of the day, like I built this business, I built these systems, and then I hired people and trained them how to do things the way that I wanted. But then I let them do it their way because they’re better at it than me. So I told them what the goal of their position was and what the intended result needed to be. But I don’t dictate how it is that they get there. And so my staff is all over the world. We are in Vietnam, Dubai, the Philippines, Brooklyn, Costa Rica, and Washington, D.C. We’re literally across the world and we’re steadily growing every day, very excited about that. And so we do a lot of communication on Slack and Trello and we do all our bookings through acuity and we’re going to talk about all that stuff. Like every time we do an episode, I’m going to unpack a tool that I use, show you how I use it, and do some screen shares.

We’re going to give you the nuts and bolts of how this business runs because you can implement it with your business, right? My other company is my brand. That’s mollyrulland.com, and that’s more like a passion project. So if you want to talk about branding or strategy or anything along those lines and you don’t have a podcast and it has nothing to do with a podcast or even if it does, but you just want to hire me and not Heartcast media you can do that there. And so I do something called Focus Sessions where we do two meetings, we meet for 15 minutes and we talk about what it is that you want to talk about in your focus session, and then you fill out this detailed form. So I get all kinds of information and then I meet with the clients for 90 minutes and we solve whatever problem it is, whether it’s naming the business or coming up with a brand strategy, coming up with a marketing plan, whatever it might be, whatever the client needs some clarity on, I’m here to help make that happen. And I love that shit, man. I do. Well, now I’m explicit, but that was just a matter of time anyway. But I love that so much. I just love that I can’t put into words how much I love sitting with people, understanding their problems, and solving them for them.

I can’t always do it for myself, especially in my personal life, but man, I’m super good at doing that and other people’s businesses. So that for me is like actually really enjoyable. Not that Heartcast media isn’t, but I really, really love that side of things and I think that’s where I’m at my best because I get to take on these collective years of experiences. All the mistakes that I’ve made. The failures. The mishaps, yeah. You know. Right. And I get to take the conclusions of everything that I’ve learned and then give that back to somebody. And not only say, here’s how you here’s a way that you can get it done, but I did it and it worked right? Or I did it and it didn’t work right. And so I feel like I’m bringing a little bit more to the table there. And so it’s exciting, but I don’t do coaching, I just do these focus sessions. And so that’s what my life looks like right now. I’m about to launch a new program where we offer TikTok account management and reels and shorts and all of that for our clients as a standalone product or if they want to do that to support the podcast that we’re producing.

So that’s exciting because that’s a new product, that’s a new situation, and frankly, it just allows me to watch more reels and see that it is research. Ding, ding. So, so yeah. So that’s what I do every day, right? So it’s a lot of, you know, having meetings, coming up with strategies, sending out some proposals, making sure the team has what they need. We do twice-week staff meetings with my two head guys, Anthony and Matt. We just make sure everything’s cool in the beginning, the week we know what to focus on, and then on Fridays we check-in, we recap the week, and then we just kind of hang out and bullshit a little bit and wish each other well for the weekend. And then we do it again on Monday morning. And so that’s a little snapshot of my life. As you know, I live in Costa Rica. As you can see, in the window behind me, you know how to move some stuff around and get the dog crate out of the shot.

You know, it wasn’t easy to make the song look so smooth, but I’m trying to deliver a good product to you and make sure that it looks and sounds good. So I hope you’re enjoying it. And if you’re listening to this on iTunes, let me tell you, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. Right. So thank you for tuning in. You know, I want to keep these super short and super sweet and like to keep coming back. Right. So I’m going to end it here. I just wanted you to know, there’s a lot of people who are like, I’m this and I’m that, but like, what do you do every day? Right? Like, I’m a firm believer that you are what you do every day. And so I think the best way for you to get to know me and to know that I’m not full of shit is by just talking about some of the case studies, the things that I’m working on, what I’m excited about, strategies I’m taking with certain clients. You know, some of them will remain nameless, of course, but hopefully, this will give you some, some, you know, light bulbs for your brand or your business or your problems or whatever that’s happening. You know, a lot of people tell me that I’m brave for moving to Costa Rica, and I don’t know if I would consider myself brave, but I sure am grateful for this opportunity.

And it was a hard-earned opportunity. It came from making a lot of mistakes for a lot of years. And it took humility to know that I was getting it all the way wrong and the willingness to at least have it in the all the way right direction. And I had humbled myself and read a lot of books and challenged myself. And I was one of those people that was like, Oh my God, you know, I can’t read. My neck is bad, you know? You know, audiobooks are my attention span. Well, you know, that’s bullshit. If you want something bad enough, you’ll get good at it. So hopefully you know what I went through and can save you some time and energy. And more importantly, hopefully, I made you laugh and I gave you some good gems. And you look forward to this podcast and you implement it in your business and keep it moving. And you look forward to hanging out with me for 15 or 20 minutes once a week because I’m going to look forward to hanging out with you. I’m always open to some feedback. Let me know what you want to know. Right. And I’m going to do a few interviews here and there, but mostly it’s just going to be short, sweet, and tons of value and keep it moving to the next episode. So on that note, I will catch you. On the flip side, kids, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for tuning in to the next 100 sponsored by Heartcast media. We are a digital media creative agency focusing on branding, marketing, strategy, and amplification for personal branding to podcasting. We’ve got you covered and to continue this conversation, join me on Instagram. My account is @mollydruland and of course, you can also find us at Heartcast media. That’s where the really good stuff is going down. So join me there. Let’s continue the conversation. And until next week, have a good one.