Making It Is a Way of Living (Molly Mahoney)

Episode summary: This week, we sit down with Molly Mahoney, a long-time actress who runs a business called The Prepared Performer. In her business, Molly helps experts and entrepreneurs to grow and monetize their visibility using live video, organic traffic, social media, and automation that drives more human connections.

     For Molly, making it isn’t about the money but is more "a way of living than a result.” In this episode, she shares her stories of waiting in line for early morning Broadway auditions, fully made-up and ready to go at 4 AM. She takes us through the "Starving Artist" phase (not her own, but the ones she helped others through), all the way to her trending at-home-cruise photoshoots, as well as sharing the many lessons she’s learned on her journey to becoming an entrepreneur.

“It's really about diving in and figuring out who you are, and then putting that out into the world.” – Molly Mahoney

Resources or websites mentioned in this episode:

MiraseeMolly.live/makeit 

Credits:

Guest – Molly MahoneyAssociate producer – Danny BermantProducer – Cynthia LambExecutive producer – Danny InyAssembled by – Geoff GovertsenAudio Post Supervisor: Evan Miles, Christopher MartinAudio Post Production by Post Office SoundMusic soundscape: Chad Michael Snavely 

Call-to-action: If you don't want to miss future episodes of Making It, please subscribe to Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. And if you liked the show, please leave us a starred review. It's the best way to help us get these ideas to more people.

If you have a question for Making It, put the show title in the subject line and send it to [email protected].

Music and SFX credits: 

1. Track Title: Pizzenuto

Artist Name(s): Avocado Junkie

Writer Name: S.L.J. Kalmeijer

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

2. Track Title: Sweet Loving Waltz

Artist Name(s): Sounds Like Sander

Writer Name: S.L.J. Kalmeijer

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

3. Track Title: The Sunniest Kids

Artist Name(s): Rhythm Scott

Writer Name: Scott Roush

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

Episode transcription: Making It - Making It is a Way of Living  (Molly Mahoney)

     Hey, I'm Molly Mahoney and you're listening to Making It. I run a business called the Prepared Performer where we help experts and entrepreneurs to be able to grow and monetize their visibility using live video, organic social and automation that drives more human connections. My journey as a performer, as an actor, professional musical theater has had such a huge impact on what I'm doing in business now.

 

     When I was in New York, I would get up at, I don't know, five a.m. 4 30  sometimes to walk down Broadway to sit on the street for three hours before they'll let you into the building for an audition that ends up happening at four PM in the afternoon, right? You've got to be like fully ready before you walk out of the house in case somehow you get into the audition early and trusting that things are all working out for you. Having faith that this career path is something that is worth following. I think the artist performer journey and the entrepreneurial journey, they're so similar. I feel that the definition of success, the definition of quote making it has morphed which has been really fun. And I remember one of our first big launches, big challenges that we did, her goal was to do six figures with this challenge and I remember sitting with my husband and I was refreshing my computer like Samcart to see what our sales were and we crossed that 100 K mark and I expected like confetti to fall out of the sky, which newsflash, it did not, we crossed six figures for that one little launch and I was like, okay, nothing happened. So what I realized was making it is really a choice that you make every day.

 

     I love Gay Hendricks and the book “The big leap” and one of the questions that he asks is are you willing to feel good? And I think the sooner that you can decide that you've already made it, and you just haven't maybe caught up to the you that's already made it yet. Yeah, so I'd say making it is more of a mindset and it's a it's a way of living than it is a result. It's more of a way of being. It's really about diving in and figuring out who you are and then putting that out into the world with a little bit of, like I said, an elevated version of it, but you definitely, even though my my company is called the prepared performer, it's it's about living prepared, and it's about showing up, but not in a way where you're doing, you know, this, like, show, it's in a way where you are, you're presenting who you are, and you're connecting with your community, kind of like Mr Rogers. I never felt that Mr Rogers was putting on a show, but the performance idea, it's not necessarily something that's required if that's not the direction that you're wanting to go in.

 

     Now, if you are someone who likes performing and you're interested in doing like a million Tiktok videos that are all funny little skits, you know, the idea of entertainment as they say, is helpful, if that's your thing, but if it's not your thing, it is most definitely not a requirement. Back in 2016, I had a musical theater coaching business, so it's doing in person coaching, and I was also teaching voice lessons online and career coaching, and in addition to that, I was working 10 different jobs in 10 different locations, and so I knew there was a way that I could make things more scalable. I created a program called prepared performer profits and the tagline was the “cure for the starving artist syndrome”. And no matter how many people told me, I don't know if that's a good tagline Molly because you're calling them starving artists. I was committed because I really wanted to cure this syndrome and we sold 15 spots in a pilot, It was great, people got awesome results and then I went all out expected to have like a $30,000 launch facebook ads, yada yada yada, all the things and we had zero sales, like actually zero sales and having been someone who has, you know, done so many auditions and done national tours and all these things, I was like, okay, you know, how do I recover from this? I had, you know, spent all this money in time on this launch. I decided there's gotta be another way that I can just make a little tweak to make this work. So what I realized was instead of teaching performers how to have a business, I could just flip flop it and teach business owners how to perform. And we had awesome success that first month we did, I think $3,000 in sales had nothing recorded. I recorded it all live for that month. ...