IAM1519 – Branding Expert Helps Entrepreneurs Succeed with Strong Brand Strategy

Molly is the Founder and CEO of Bread and Butter Digital Marketing. A branding and marketing agency based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has over 9 years of experience in Education in New York City and London working in sales, marketing, and customer success.

She combines her background in the arts, including a Master’s In Art Business from Sotheby’s with my scrappy startup marketing skills to help entrepreneurs and small business owners succeed with strong brand content and effective marketing strategies. And she is passionate about creating authentic high-quality visual content that turns onlookers into brand advocates.

Molly has a passion for wine, travel, and photography that she leverages in both her personal and professional lives.

• CEO Story: After moving from New York back to her hometown in Virginia, Molly noticed a lot of small and medium-sized businesses really needed support in marketing and high-quality photos / good creatives. She dipped her toe as an entrepreneur. Started slow and growing steadily. Now with people working for her and with her providing a variety of tailored-fit for the customer’s needs.
• Business Service: Branding and website design. Organic and paid social media marketing. Email marketing. Consultancy. Marketing mastermind.
• Secret Sauce: Able to straddle branding and high-quality asset creation with strategy and implementation.
• CEO Hack: Start the morning by journaling things on her mind like meditating. Walking. Book mention: The $100 Startup – taking the hardest first steps.
• CEO Nugget: Marketing plan, you need to incorporate marketing video – social media platforms
• CEO Defined: Able to take risks. When something fails, strive for better. The steam of evolution and intersection. Be resilient.

Website: www.breadandbutterdigitalmarketing.com

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Transcription

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00:27- Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretch from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Molly Bizard of Bread and Butter Digital Marketing. Molly, super excited to have you on.

01:04- Molly Bossardt

Hi. I'm excited to be here.

01:06 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. Excited to talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we jump into that, I want to read a little bit more about Molly so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Molly is the founder and CEO of Bread and Butter Digital Marketing, a branding and marketing agency based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has over nine years of experience and education in New York City and London, working in sales, marketing, and customer success.

She combines her background in the arts, including a Master's in Arts from Sotheby's Institute of Art, with her startup marketing skills to help brands succeed by creating on-brand content and effective marketing strategies. And she's passionate about creating authentic, high-quality visual content that turns onlookers into brand advocates. Molly has a passion for wine, and travel photography and that she leverages in both her personal and professional lives. Molly, I'm super excited to have you on the show again. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:59 – Molly Bossardt

Yeah, definitely.

02:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:09 – Molly Bossardt

Yeah, so I'm kind of new to the CEO role. I started this two years ago, so this was my pandemic baby. So, yeah, it was kind of born out of this. , I had moved, I was living in New York and I moved back to Virginia to my hometown of Charlottesville. And I noticed that a lot of small Even some of the medium-sized businesses really needed support around marketing and having good, creative, so high-quality photos and those things. And so noticing that need, along with my own internal need for some freedom flexibility, and autonomy, I dipped my toe into what it would be like to be an entrepreneur.

And I started really slow. I had one client and one project, and that just began to cascade. And now I juggle anywhere From, I'd say eight to 12 clients and I have a small team of people that are working for me and working with me. Yeah. And I provide a lot of different variety of services. They're pretty tailored to clients' needs. But we can talk about that a little bit more.

03:29.- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. No, I definitely want to dive down deep into that. But I love hearing about your pandemic, baby. And I think that when we were going through all the, I want to call it hustle and bustle, but there's a lot of other words that people might use. The craziness of what was going to happen and what came about. I think one of the things I remember is that I heard or read that a lot of the sometimes most successful ventures and opportunities were started during a crazy time, just like we experienced during the pandemic. And a lot of times there were things that were going to be birthed during that time that we would kind of think about years and years in the future.

04:03 – Molly Bossardt

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd always played around with the idea of being an entrepreneur, so like, to rewind or give a little bit more background. My father had a catering company when I was growing up, so I got to see him experience what it was like to be an entrepreneur. And it's funny, the marketing came in even back then when I was like 14, 15, 16, my dad, the business didn't have a website.

And I just kept hounding him about creating a website because I was like, dad, it's only going to get, you know, you're going to need a website. So this was obviously a while ago if I'm dating myself, but you know, early 2000s maybe even. Yeah, the early 2000s. And so, yeah, that's. That I think is a big part of the journey or part of like my story too, that I wanted to mention. Having seen my father in that experience, I think was really foundational to who I am.

05:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you use that word journey because I think so many times when you see, you know, people, you know, you have your team, you have the clients and all of those things, you don't see, like that first client that you kind of talked about and getting that first client working on that. But even going farther back, how those seeds were kind of planted, or maybe I should say seeds were baked and put into the oven. And since your dad was a caterer, you see it blossom up into something really phenomenal that you've been able to work on.

05:29 – Molly Bossardt

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

05:31 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to now drill down a little bit more. Could he take us through exactly how you're working with your clients and how you're serving them?

05:37 – Molly Bossardt

Right? Yeah. So now I am working. It's funny, this summer has been quite an evolution in how I am working with my clients. So that's another thing. I think that an important nugget to being a CEO is like be prepared to evolve and change. Especially at the beginning. When I initially started, I was helping a lot of clients with branding and website design. And it evolved into, you know, my business evolved into mostly providing support around marketing. So social media, organic social media marketing, paid social media marketing, and occasionally email marketing.

So basically being the outsourced marketing person for these businesses, that's the role that I was fulfilling. As my business has grown and evolved, I've also kind of scaled and I'm working with larger businesses now. So the services I'm offering are different. So now I'm stepping into more of a consulting kind of role consulting position. So that's where I am now. I also do still provide monthly marketing services for clients. So there are many ways to work with me.

Another thing that I just rolled out and I'm really, really excited about and I can't wait to hear your feedback on this because you are in this world as well. I'm going to. I'm launching a marketing mastermind. So one thing I noticed was that a lot of small businesses, need to be marketing, they want to be marketing, but it's really hard for them to set aside the money to hire an agency. Right. To hire someone who can do this for them.

Another thing I noticed was there tends to be someone in-house who is already doing marketing. So whether that be a manager or even a marketing manager, someone who has a little bit of experience in marketing, but they're a little shaky on their foundations. Right. They're a little shaky on strategy. They aren't quite sure how to do advertising on Facebook or Google. Right.

So this program, essentially, is going to be the first time ever doing it. So there's going to be a lot of ebbs and flows, but more or less I'm envisioning people can come in and join and be in a group, work alongside peers and me, lead them, and teach them this proven, like a framework for marketing that I have done for my clients and that's working for them.

08:17- Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that, you know, that, that the concept and the idea. And I definitely, you know, think it's going to be, you know, for lack of a better term, a grand slam or home run for you to be able to kind of do that. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And this could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:37- Molly Bossardt

Yeah, I think for probably me personally and by an extension of that, my business, bread, and butter, what makes us different is we are able to straddle branding and high-quality asset creation with strategy and implementation. Right. As I find in the world of marketing agencies or marketers, you have one or you have the other. And it's very rare that you can have a person who can, you know, really have both of those qualities and traits.

And it's interesting, it goes back to, you know, my degree is mine. Well, I have an undergrad from JMU in art history, but my grad degree is from Sotheby's. I studied art business. So a lot of that, you know, I have that analytical background, that analytical brain, and those capabilities. But I also have this creative side to me. So I think that's what makes me unique as a marketer. But also by extension, bread and butter are unique as well because we can. We prioritize both things.

09:39 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:51- Molly Bossardt

Not all days do I get to this, but most days I start my morning by journaling. Right? Journaling. Any fears, anxieties, things on my mind and it just like helps. It's my form of meditation, right? Like, I'm not great at just sitting there and letting thoughts evaporate because they never do. I'm constantly running thoughts through my brain, so getting them out on a journal first thing in the morning really helps me.

I've also been walking more. That's been very meditative for me when I started the journey too. And I think, I'm not sure exactly where, you know, people listening to this might be in their CEO journey, but when you're starting one thing that really helps me, I actually have a book. It's called the $100 startup. I have it right here. I pulled it for you guys.

10:40- Gresham Harkless

Nice.

10:41- Molly Bossardt

It's an excellent book. It helps me to get beyond fears or, you know, this need for perfection and just do it. So I think oftentimes we stop ourselves from taking that first step. And those first steps are some of the hardest steps. Right? You just have to do it. You just have to take that first step, that scary first step.

11:06 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that. I love each of those, you know, those hacks.

11:11 – Molly Bossardt

As you know, being a business owner gets really hard. Right? Like, there are challenging periods, and if you can't come back to yourself and like, kind of remind yourself of why you get lost and you start to pander to. I mean, yeah, like you start to lose sight of your goal, what you bring, and you start to become inauthentic. Right. You have to continually remind yourself to be authentic as a business and as a business owner and play to your strengths.

11:41 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I love that. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a little bit more words of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell you. Your younger business self if you hopped into a time machine or potentially somebody you might tell. If you're something, you might tell somebody that's a client potentially in that mastermind or something really good that we will want to know from a marketing perspective.

12:03 – Molly Bossardt

There are a lot of things I would tell my younger self. So it'll be hard for me to condense that into one thing. So in terms of marketing nuggets, this is not new, and this is not innovative, but I think every business needs to be aware of video and that video is not going away. So they need to invest in that.

They need to figure out a way to incorporate video into their current marketing mix. Instagram is, I would say, pretty much the Instagram and TikTok are the biggest social media platforms that people are using and actively engaging in. And Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app. Right. It is a video-sharing app. So I would say you need to think about how you can incorporate that into your marketing plan. And, you know, whether that be hiring marketers to help you with that or hiring someone in-house, you need to prioritize video.

13:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I love that you talked about it. I think when we first connected, we talked a little bit about that offline about, you know, the power of video. Absolutely appreciate that. My lean. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. I'm hoping to have different, quote, unquote CEOs on the show. So, Molly, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:20 – Molly Bossardt

Being able to take risks. And within that realm also, like, you must be someone who's willing to take risks or not afraid of taking risks and making changes. And then when something fails, being able to look at that and see what you did wrong and what you could do better, you know, I think that's vital to being an entrepreneur. So again, just this theme of evolution and this theme of like, introspection, I think you need to have both of those things and you need to have a thick skin.

That's something we have not talked about. You know, when I started, I got rejected so many times, and like, those first rejections kind of stung. But what I realized is it usually has nothing to do with you. Rejections typically have to be done. Sometimes it can have to do with you. But like, typically it's not. It's typically your price point is incorrect. They don't actually need what you're selling or, you know, a combination of the two.

The timing isn't right. They could, you know, I've talked to people a year ago who are now ready to work with me. Right. The timing wasn't right. So I think if you can withstand some of those initial rejections and be resilient to all of it, you really need to be resilient in order to be a business owner. That's the key to it.

14:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Molly, truly appreciate that definition and of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get all of you to find out about your team, mastermind, and all the awesome things.

14:59 – Molly Bossardt

That you're working on so you can connect with me or follow me on Instagram. That's kind of where I live. My personal Instagram is Molly Boss Art. So it's pretty easy to find. I share, you know, a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, some of my personal life, so you can kind of understand a little bit about me outside of the business. And then Bread and Butter, obviously we have our own Instagram as well, which you can find on our website, which is Bread and Butter Digital marketing dot com.

I'm sure you're going to link it and that's going to have all of our offerings, all the ways to work with us. So again, you can work with us on a high level in terms of working with us for marketing, and monthly marketing services. You can work with me on a high level if you would like to bring me in as a consultant. So if you have any questions also you can email me. My email is [email protected]

16:02- Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Molly. And just as you mentioned, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes so that you can get a hold of Molly, connect with her, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on, and look forward to the next time. And time after that we get to connect more.

16:13 – Molly Bossardt

Yes, absolutely. This is awesome. It's so fun. Thank you.

16:16 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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