We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christina Glickman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Christina, appreciate you joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

It started with just a conversation. Two friends sharing texts, late night calls and voice memos with intimate stories about success, failures, laughable life moments, sadness that felt like it could never heal, deep rooted insecurities and all the personal and professional reinventions in between that we had conquered or were desperately striving towards. Starting isn’t the hard part. Continuing to show up and breathe life into your idea day after day is the real test. And we were never going to stop.

We started I’m not dead because we were searching for more in our own lives; more community, more dialogue with women we didn’t know and more honest conversations with the ones we did know.

This brand has just launched but we have been nurturing her for over a year. Long nights, airplane miles racked up, record long sushi dinners, cases of wine, cranky kids, feisty dogs, money spent, tears shed, pee in your pants laughing and more learning about ourselves than I think we could have imagined.

Our goal has always been simple. Talk and share openly with women because it has helped us in our own lives. See women for all that they are and want to be because it has helped us feel less alone in our own lives. Learn and ask questions from all types of women because it has helped us grow to become a better person. Be humble, curious and find space for everyone. So, here we are a podcast, filming digital shorts, newsletters, creating live events and dinners all over the country…. and who the hell knows what else. I’m not dead… say it louder for the people in the back.

Christina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Christina Glickman and Sarah Clary are the Co founders of the I’m not dead media company.

We are storytellers with a huge desire to create content that is engaging and entertaining in ways we feel haven’t been done before. Coupled with partnerships with companies that are doing work in the world that mean something to us. Like MOTHER, our season 2 podcast sponsor who supported Julianne Moore’s episode and her work with Everytown’s mission on gun safety. That means something to us.

The brand ethos of I’m not dead is not one thing. Women aren’t one thing. We don’t want to talk to our audience in just one way. That’s the beauty of modern media: accessibility. We want to engage with women on various platforms whether it be through the podcast, social media, long/short form, products and, most importantly, in a way that matters. This work is serious to us, but we never take ourselves too seriously.

We are defining what that is to us and have conviction that we can present that as a work in progress–that the audience we want to reach gives us permission to work it out with them along for the ride. It feels really freeing to be open to all the ideas that are coming fast and furious towards us. The creative process is a lifeline for us and always the place we start. The small hint of an idea has us off and running and hopefully speaking to our audience in ways they haven’t been before. We are highly unmotivated by doing what’s been done and strive to create from a place of authenticity and newness.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Sarah and I both come from a place of strong work ethic and commitment. We are never going to stop and we both know that in our soul the only thing that will stop our success is us. Yes that sounds good. But that takes extreme intention to walk that walk.

As a start up everything is new, everything feels hard because you haven’t done it before. We had to get comfortable doing the things we didn’t know how to do or maybe didn’t feel good at it. We had to be vulnerable and ask for help, ask for guests on our show (from Julianne Moore to Jamie Lynn Sigler the list of asks were long and never felt easy). We both had to gently unlearn that feeling of familiarity with our work and keep trying on all the new from writing decks to investors to how to put a podcast on an RSS feed, new can be hard, and debilitating if you let it.

Thankfully we had so many great humans saying yes to us and believed in this idea of I’m not dead.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We both feel we would never have had the success of launching I’m not dead had we not shown up in our respective careers and life over the last few decades with full integrity.

And people. People and how you treat them is everything. Sarah and I are built on being kind, supportive, hard working, creative and inspiring. Years of showing up for people, lending a hand with no hidden agendas, supporting without asking for anything led to what we believe is a massive network of good humans that want to help us tell the stories of extraordinary women.

And we are just scratching the surface.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://imnotdeadx.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imnotdead.x/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-glickman-2ba5a67a/?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Other: Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/im-not-dead/id1743063239