- Kardia Media
- Posts
- Growing with purpose
It has been fun, honestly. But it’s also terrifying to leave the comfort of a job to go out on your own. Yes, I am still a State Senator. And no, I’m not leaving that job. It takes a lot of effort in that space to do it well and to honor my constituents. That effort continues.
Yet, we have a young family. So, I must make ends meet. But my mission to create a meaningful media company isn’t solely focused on making a living. It’s living with purpose. Entrepreneurship is hard, living without purpose is harder. So, into the discomfort we lean.
I’ve had a week. Entrepreneurship is nothing but a series of ups and downs. Can you withstand the pressures? How many more months of runway do we have? Varying levels of insanity, breakthrough, excitement, distraction, obsession, focus, lack of focus, bottom of the roller coaster and stopped on the tracks terror, that kind of stuff. It’s a wild ride. But it feels worth it when I have conversations with people I feel like I can serve or partner alongside.
Isn’t that what business is about anyway, service? That’s what we aim to do with the media company, beyond creating purposeful content, the point of that content is to serve those who consume it. Our why: Service & Meaning. Service to my God, my family, and my community.
Alas, enough of the mental side of running a media business. So much happened last week. Here is where I think we moved the needle:
People are asking us what we’re doing. It feels like every week there’s at least 1 new conversation around what we’ve launched.
I gave away a free tester on our video repurposing efforts. I posted on LinkedIn (Connect with me there on my profile or follow our Kardia Media page) that anyone who wanted repurposed short form videos could send me a link and I’d send them a couple nicely edited short forms to post across social platforms (these work well on TikTok, Instagram/FB reels, YT shorts). I gave away about 15-20 videos using an AI. You can use the same AI for free at www.opus.pro. Take a YT video link over there, drop it in there, and it’ll spit out several videos you can place on social media. Pretty amazing stuff.
Talked to one business about helping them with their social media plan going forward as they’re losing a staffer who did this for them. I told them I’d love to help but won’t be employed to do it. I’m hoping to get a short term contract here to help fill the gap for them. I love their work, so it’ll be a nice potential fit for both of us.
I’ve established an exciting partnership with Heritage Brands out of South Carolina. They’re an incredible business, in my opinion. They’re doing a lot of what I’m interested in doing, they’re just much further along and buttoned up. I’m encouraging all the thought leaders I’m working with to interact with HB to utilize their strategic content roadmap to plan out their next 12 months of content. Let me know if you want help creating a plan over the next year. I can hook you up with these great folks.
I shot my shot with an incredible brand this week. If we have the chance to produce their podcast it may be a breakthrough moment for us. I hope this one works out. Like, it’s a deep guttural hope. Way down in there. It’d be fun, a dream to work with this brand, and we’d learn a ton. The initial outcome to that conversation blew me away. I was terrified to ask if we could produce this podcast, honestly. But the worst answer you get when you ask for what you want is, “No.” Lesson learned once again.
Met with one of our current contracts this week. It was a great discussion and I felt thrilled that I was sitting around the table as the consultant for this group helping think through strategy and what’s to come in their big transition. I’ve already produced several podcast episodes for them, and the short form that we’ve created off of those episodes has already flown past 1,000 impressions on just a few videos. This is the proof for why we believe our media company focused on producing long form content, repurposing to short form, and distributing across channels has so much potential.
Finally, I’ve started to schedule podcast interviews for our bellwether production, my own podcast. I’m still having trouble coming up with the name of it, but hopefully, for the short term, it’ll be the model for what we can do going forward as a company. This week, I’ll be talking to the leader of an organization fighting for vulnerable children, For Others. Can’t wait!
Thanks for reading. Have a great week.
-tf