The pandemic put a wrench into a lot of plans, and for me, one of the plans that it impacted was the filming of my Spotlight Series. As things are opening again and I’ve been traveling to pick back up where I left off with this project, I thought it would be a good time to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about my Spotlight Series.
Get comfortable and listen in as I share all the details on how the Spotlight Series was born, why I’m so passionate about it, and what you can expect over the coming months (and years!). I also share how to apply to be featured on the Series if you are an entrepreneur or impact-maker who is eager to highlight and share your inspirational story with the world.
What You’ll Learn:
Where I started with HillenBRAND Media.
Where the Spotlight Series came from.
How the pandemic affected the Series.
How I pivoted the Series to overcome pandemic challenges.
What you can expect in the future.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“I am an introvert who is living an extroverted life.” - Molly Dare
“There is not one person I have met in my whole life who does not have a talent or a genius.” - Molly Dare
“This podcast has opened so many doors for me.” - Molly Dare
“I want to make sure that I’m enjoying the journey.” - Molly Dare
Resources:
TRANSCRIPT:
Molly Dare 0:07
Hello and welcome to On Air with Molly dare. I'm your host Molly dare founder of Hillenbrand, media producer of the Spotlight Series and single mom to two amazing teen girls. Today I am solo it is an episode with just yours truly talking to you, I've been getting a lot of questions, because I've been traveling a lot filming the Spotlight Series, and a lot of messages about people wanting to know what the Spotlight Series is what it's about what I'm doing, who am I interviewing? How could they get on? And so I thought I would take this time to answer kind of all of those questions and explain how the Spotlight series came about why it's so important to me what the heck I'm doing traveling all over the place. And who am I featuring? And where's this going? Where Why am I doing this? So all valid questions. So for those of you who don't know my background, I started Hillenbrand media back in 2017. Now when I started Hillenbrand media, it had come after a big upheaval in my life. And I used to own retail stores in both New Jersey and Chicago, I was going through a divorce. Once the divorce was final, it ended with me long story short, having to move to Florida, close my stores, and kind of start all over. And at the time, I was trying to figure out what to do a lot of us I'm sure I'm not the only one listening who has had to start over more than once in life. And sometimes life throws us some curveballs and we have to figure it out, we have to pivot and that's exactly what I was thrown into. back then. And what I realized when I looked back at all my, my various careers and businesses, for those of you who have been following me a very long time, you know that I worked on Wall Street, and then I, my brother and I had a record label and we promoted singer songwriters. And then I had retail stores. But the one thing that I really loved most about what I did was the PR the marketing and helping others get started, I was just kind of helping on the side as I really saw the value and social media, the Instagrams and Facebook and all the things of really getting your voice yourself your product, your business out there for everyone to see. And for you to be the face of your business people loved seeing me in the store me with my kids in the store. You know, I loved being a voice for the singer songwriters who are notoriously shy and not really great at marketing themselves. I loved being able to represent them and get them in the door of the biggest stages and the biggest venues in New York City. And I realized the power with that of, of being the voice and sharing your passion and your why. So you know, cut back to 2017 newly divorced single mom, two girls forced to close, you know, my retail stores, which I absolutely loved and moved to a town where I knew not a soul. And I was like alright, so this is what I know how to do. This is what I love to do. And I'm going to figure out how to do it. So I was already kind of helping some friends of mine, you know, with their social media and getting them started and giving them the other tips and tricks and really getting their Instagram started and their Facebook and showing them how to post and how to do the hashtags, all that fun stuff. And just through word of mouth, it started spreading and a local TV station down here, EyeOn South Florida brought me on and they wanted me to be a host on TV, which again, anyone who knew me before 2017 It's laughable to think of me in front of the camera.
I am an introvert who is now living an extroverted life. And anyone who has known me a long time knows that that is true. And so a little bit out of my element. And they also wanted to expand their reach and their business. And so I said to them, Listen, if you want to be if you want to grow when you want to be bigger, you can't just be Eye On South Florida, you have to be Eye On New York, Chicago, LA like I on everywhere Eye On Dubai, London. And you know, as I've said before, in a previous episode, I only see things and I can't help it. I only see things in the vein of world domination. That's the only way I see everything that I do, I want to dominate worldwide. And so that made perfect sense to me. And they said great, go do that. And so, you know, I was launched trial by fire into learning how to be an on air host how to produce these segments in these different cities. And we and I had a blast. I absolutely loved it. And I dove in headfirst learning all about finding amazing videographers in each of the different cities and finding the people that you know everyone would want to know about in each of the cities. So the segments that we were producing at the time, were all about featuring the best of the best of whatever city I was in, you know restaurants, businesses, people, celebrities, whoever you should know in that city. That's it we were featuring, and they were cute little segments, featuring, you know where these people were now and what their business is about. And that was great. But what I loved most was when the crew was putting the cameras away and packing up, and I was sitting there just, you know, shooting the shit with the person that I was speaking to. And they really let their guard down. And they really, we really just started having amazing conversations about their journey I started really digging into, you know, how did they get to where they were doing today. And more often than not, these very successful people had a lot of amazing stories of just struggle and hardship and things that didn't go right and lessons learned. And I'm like, Man, why are they packing up the cameras? This is what we need to be getting this is the juicy, interesting stuff that people like me would want to hear about. I love that people are successful, successful. And that's great, right? That's awesome. That's inspiring, too. But what I really love is how they got there, and their journey and their mindset and how they got through tough things. Because all of us were watching these amazing, successful people like, oh, there's no way I can do that. There's no way I could reach that level of success. And when I started hearing story after story after story, I'm like, oh, that's just like me. I've been through that too. Or I'm going through that now. And then I start asking, Well, how did you get through it. And then they started telling me what they did, or how what their mindset was, like, man, that's really helpful. And it's always been my goal in life, to use my talent, my genius, whatever that is, to positively impact others. I think every single person, there's not one person I've ever met in my life, who doesn't have a talent or a genius. And it's up to you to decide how to use it, and how to effectively use it to, to affect positive change, and to to positively affect a community or the world or a business or whatever that is for you. And so that started this idea in my head of I want to create a series, where I really dive a little bit deeper into the journey into the mindset of these amazing people, not just you know, their successful business now. But the journey to get there. And I think I was just getting really tired of like the reality TV and the superficial TV, I was watching and it was boring to me. And I just felt the world needed a little bit more inspiration, motivation, more than seeing jets and yachts and designer wear and don't get me wrong, I love all the things, I love all the things, but I don't need to be shown it 24/7 And more times than not the more I researched, the more I looked into it, it's not even real. It's not even real. These people are broke. And they're living. I mean, they're spending every dime on ridiculousness. And then there's people who live, you know, a little bit more of a modest life who are billionaires millionaires. And you would never know, because they're not flashy, and they don't show it what they have is an incredible mindset. And all they want to do is share it and and teach others how to do what they did. Those are the people I want to feature not the flashy, you know, look at me, look at me, it's the people who really care, they've had success in their life, they're looking to share what they've learned and their knowledge with others. And so the Spotlight Series was born, now cut to the pandemic happening. And, you know, which really put a bit of a damper for all of us right on our businesses, but, you know, I was unable to travel and unable to film. And, you know, I had been, luckily we had started recording, you know, people, a lot of people obviously want to be interviewed, they want digital content, it's great, great content, these interviews make great content to put on your website so that people get to know you, they get to know the CEO, the founder behind the business, it creates long term loyalty from your community, from the from your buyers from your audience. So a lot of people that I was filming for would use it as literally the video on their landing page, a lot of them, you know, would use it for their social media, they would, you know, crop it for, you know, little 30 seconds here. 15 second here, little snippets of like really great words of wisdom, you know, in these videos, there's so many different ways to use them. So I saw immediately the market value of having this done, we do it a very professional production. It looks like it's you know, a Barbara Walters special and it looks very high end. And that's how if anybody knows me, I don't go small, I go big. And that's how I wanted to come across because I have the utmost respect for every single person. And I want them to be shown in their absolute best light. So we get hours of footage, just for a quick 10 minute feature. But it's because I want the best of the best and I want you to sound the best. And so you know the Spotlight Series was born and then it quickly got shelved because of the pandemic and that's when I switched to doing it as a podcast and sharing incredible people and entrepreneurs. and their genius and their stories and their journeys through this amazing podcast. And I'm going to stop right here. Because what I what I really want to highlight is the fact that I think every single person, every single one of you who is listening, should do a podcast, there is enough room for all of us to be in the game, I want all of us to win. The reason why the podcast is so, so helpful, doesn't matter what industry it doesn't matter what business you're in, doesn't matter. You know what field you're talking about. There's so many ways this podcast has opened so many doors for me, first of all, it's a great way to start a conversation with someone to engage somebody interest that you are wanting to work with, that you look up to that you want to talk to great gateway into that engagement. Okay, so first of all, you're going to meet incredible people, you're going to have access to incredible people, it just opens those doors for you. Second of all, it is a great feeder into your business, because a lot of people that you align with, whether it's your podcast audience, or it's the people that you're featuring, or having guests on, they are going to be interested in you and what you're about and what else you're offering. Right. Because if they like you and what you're about, they're going to be interested in anything else you do. So now you're creating a really loyal audience, you're growing a community. So whatever ventures that you do, from that point on, people are going to follow you. Right, you've now earned their their their trust, their respect, they feel like they know you, because you're talking to them every week, about you know, all different topics and all different subjects. And now you feel like, you know, they're in your corner, and we're all cheerleading each other and we're all wanting everybody to win. It's also creates amazing content, amazing content, you know,
I have a separate podcast page, some people do it on their personal page, I do both, I put it on my personal, I put it on my own podcast page, I just make sure that the images I use are different on each because you don't want to repeat the content, you want it to be different so that people follow you on both. I, I can't say enough about the amazing content that it does, which of course then attracts more people. It grows your community, it grows your followers, you get and then their community, whoever you're featuring, when you have guests, hopefully they share the episode. And now you've attracted some of their following and their communities. It's been wonderful and amazing for my for my business growth, for my personal growth for the inquiries into my business, my guest list is very long, we have so many submissions, and we only have x amount of spots every year of podcast episodes, right? We only have 52 weeks a year, and I do some solo episodes in and out as well. So really, it only comes down to like, you know, 30s to low 40s amount of spots I have every year to feature people with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of applicants. But that brings me back to the you know, Spotlight Series. So once the world started opening back up, and I thought that I could travel again, and and film again, I reached back out to the people that I was really watching during the past few years that really caught my eye that I thought pivoted amazingly well, during some difficult times, who are doing amazing things in this world who are using their genius in a really positive way and who I just think are quite honestly just very interesting people, and that they all think differently. It's really important to me that I have a whole scope of people from all different industries, all different backgrounds, all different ways of thinking. Because I truly feel that for First of all, I'm a lifelong learner, I will never know everything. Okay, I'm just gonna point it out there because a lot of people feel like they know everything about a certain topic, okay, I don't, I never will. I feel like I'm a lifelong learner, I can't learn enough. I want to be inspired and motivated to learn something new every single day from someone and I'm lucky enough that I have picked a career path where that's exactly what I get to do every single day I am talking to and meeting and filming and recording with incredible minds. And all that does is expand mine and grow mine. And so I feel incredibly thankful. And I think feel that should be a goal for everybody is to constantly have conversations with people, you don't have to agree with them. I don't agree, by the way, with everything everybody says in any of my interviews, but I'm learning how other people think and why they think that way. And I think how we grow as human beings is by being open to that, being open to the conversation, being able to be respectful when someone feels differently than you or thinks differently than you do or looks at a topic differently than you do. That's okay. That's how we learn that's how we grow is by listening to other people's opinions and why they have that opinion. I think we have a little bit more understanding than unless animosity if we just listen to why they feel that way and think that way. Again, you don't have to agree you're not gonna agree with every single spotlight I do. You're not gonna like every single person that I spotlight, that's okay. But you can at least learn from them. You can at least be intrigued by them. You can at least acknowledge that people think differently than you do. Not everyone thinks like you. And I think that's a really important lesson. Some people get very stuck in my way is the right way. And you should only think as I think so the Spotlight Series is very passionate, it's a it's a passion project for me, because I really believe so strongly in the content that I'm bringing to you in the people that I'm featuring. And I hope it's something that you enjoy. Now, I'm still doing it, it's kind of twofold, the Spotlight Series. So I have people that I produce these features of them in these interviews for them to use as marketing content. As I said previously, they use it on their website, they use it as content pieces. There's also a group of people that I handpick that, you know, have a little bit more notoriety, they have larger followings, they're kind of public figures, and I am doing kind of a special capsule, you know, I don't know what you call it a capsule collection of those people that I'm also featuring, I'm putting it together kind of as a for a bigger project, and hopefully for bigger eyes that are very interested in what I'm doing. I can't say too much. Do you notice I'm trying to speak without saying anything, but there are people who are interested in the series interested in me and what I'm doing. And so I'm putting together specific ones that I can use to to pitch to these various networks and people and that will To be continued. I guess I can't say much more than that. But you know, again, going back to I've got big plans, big dreams, just like all of you do. I am so passionate about what I do. I work really hard at what I do. And I know each and every one of you who are listening to this podcast, are doing the same. And I think that's why community has as grown the way it has is because we're all in it together. And I think we all feel that way. And why I try to choose guests on this podcast that will hopefully inspire, elevate, motivate, give you tactical tips and tricks, so that you can keep pushing forward in your dreams and your passions so that you too can have world domination, and that we can all celebrate and high five together. Because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. I'm not in competition with anyone I know none of you are,
we all want each other to win. And at the end of the day. That's what it's all about folks. So in closing and that is kind of my spiel about the Spotlight Series, why I'm so passionate about it, why I'm running all over the country, filming these people there, there is an endgame and an end goal. I do hope you watch and enjoy not only the features as they come out, but the behind the scenes and the journey because it's not so much the end goal for me, that motivates me, I hope I get to the end goal, my end goal, I hope it all happens. But it's also more about the journey. Because I know a lot of people who get to the end goal, they've reached that success, they hit whatever milestone or marker they had of you know, that's my end goal. And a lot of them have felt empty. And I'm going to tell you why. It's because they didn't enjoy the journey along the way. They were so focused on getting to their end goal, whatever that is for them, that they missed out on a lot of life and living and the enjoyment of the ride. And I want to make sure that I'm enjoying the journey. That's what's really, really important to me that I'm creating a life that's filled with memorable moments that are just ingrained in my head that are you know, those core memories. That's how I want to live and feel as many days of my life as possible. And I feel very lucky that I get to say, on most days, not all on most days, that's what I'm doing. And I really am enjoying the journey of getting there. And if I get there at the end, amazing, great, but if not, it was one hell of a ride. And I hope we can all say that. And so if you're looking to watch these features, or be a part of the Spotlight Series or apply to be on it, you can go to mollydare.com and you'll see that there is the podcast, you know area and there is the Spotlight Series area. There's also the shop area because I'm coming at well I've got all my swag in the shop area, the T shirts, hats and all the things the daring and fearless, and all that fun stuff. But I'm also coming out with my jewelry line of cuffs and bracelets that say also fear less and daring because I truly believe in life. We need to leave us lead a somewhat daring life and learn it to not be fearless. I don't believe that's possible. I don't think we're ever without fear. You shouldn't be because you should be you know, trying new things and doing new things. But we should fear less and learn to dance with fear, learn to use it to your advantage. So go ahead and check out this series. There's gonna be a lot more coming out. We're editing a whole lot. I was just in where was Orlando? LA, Chicago filming some amazing people. We've got a whole nother lineup next month in Miami, la and New York City. And I'm going to keep doing it for as long as you all keep supporting and keeping interested in it. I do it. You know for all of you to inspire and motivate all of you and I just so appreciate the amazing feedback that I get you guys are amazing and I will hopefully be able to to give you that same support in return for all of your ventures going forward. Thanks so much for joining me today you guys and I'll see you next week with another powerful conversation
thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of On Air with Molly dare Your support means everything to me and my guests. The best way to support this podcast is with a five star review on iTunes. The best way for this podcast to keep growing is by word of mouth so if you love this episode and got a meaningful takeaway, we'd love for you to share on social media tag me and the guests and we will be sure to share as well. You can also head over to our new website at Mollydare.com check out our fun shop with fun merch along with our Spotlight Series filmed features and all of our podcast episodes. If you do get your hands on some on air with Molly their swag, and of course our line of daring fear less and aggressive like or sweatshirts and hats and coffee mugs. It just gives me all the biggest smile and field as always, please tag me when you receive your items. And I'll share on my social media as well. Nothing makes me happier than seeing all of you daring and fearless aggressive likers out there wearing it loud and proud. Thanks again for listening and look forward to next week's episode.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
