We were lucky to catch up with Jessica Hurley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

In 2017, I was working a full time job as a corporate director of partnership development for a non profit organization, and believe it or not, I loved the work. The job fortunately was 50% travel so I thought I was living the high life in my 20 somethings, working for an organization I was proud to be a part of and traveling to unique cities in the US for work. I also started dating a guy who happened to be an entrepreneur a year or so after. Once I asked him if he wanted to travel for me and he did, we would go to cities together but I noticed as I was working all day at select locations, he would find a coffee shop, beach, or hang out spot to send a few emails and then go spend time somewhere enjoying himself.

This was really intriguing to me. Fast forward, my entrepreneur boyfriend (at the time) suggests I start a podcast because he believes my speaking ability is incomparable and I should tell stories and interview guests. It was a rough start but this leads me to starting a podcast in 2018 called, The Stranded Phase. I was interviewing guests about their wins, but similar to Canvas Rebel, I wanted to hear about the time they were stuck and had to make a hard decision, maybe the time they found themselves crying on the floor and how they found their way out.

I started that in 2018, and within 6 months I had some great results. I reached out to a woman I’d been following online and asked her to be a guest. She had an enormous following in comparison to mine. I was taking a long shot by asking but I figured, closed mouths dont get fed. A few months later she reached back out and said OFCOURSE! She guested on my show and the episode released a few weeks later. While I was at my corporate job, the guest reached out asking if she could give me a call and on the call she asked, “what did I do with the podcast that made it so special?” because she’d never seen this kind of reach on any episodes shed ever done. I replied that it was likely her follower count. She said, “I don’t think you understand, I’ve started a podcast before and never seen these kind of results. Can you help me adjust mine?

As a simple gesture with no return address, I did. This was all while working a full time job, I had a 6 months old son I was parenting, etc. I helped her re-launch her podcast a week later and within 48 hours she was in the top 40 on Apple Podcasts. She called me to sing my praises and asked me to send her an invoice and start this as a business immediately because she’d never thought she’d find someone to help her like this. I sent her an invoice that evening, and she paid me triple the invoice and said, “consider it my investment into your business, now go get started.”

And I did, in 2019, EPYC Media was born (but with a different business name at the time). Our role was basically, podcast partner. We were planning, strategizing, and launching podcasts left and right, however, they were audio only. We did this for 3 years throughout COVID as the spike for podcasts rose but we were “consistent” at best, there was no scale for about 3 years.

Then in 2021, we had a client in NJ who had amassed a pretty nice weekly audience who reached out to me to let me know she could not continue at the rate she was because she had speaking gigs coming up and many events and wanted to know what would happen to her audience and that she also really wanted to try video. On a single phone call, I suggest I bring my team up there and we film one weekend as many episodes as we could and I would bring them back and my team would handle the rest, this would allow her 4 months of wiggle room.

Within a month, I found a few guys that knew something about video and charged her a very random and green price for the service and we headed up to NJ to film this podcast concept in bulk for her. It was honestly, a Hail Mary. It seemed like a good idea in theory but I honestly had no idea what I was doing, at the forefront, I just wanted her podcast not to fail after we had put so much effort into it over the years.

This was first of many of my expensive lessons. This was when my media background started to emerge lesson after lesson after lesson. We lost entire hard drives, we lost entire episodes, we screwed up audio, the guys I was hiring to do the work were not consistent, my pricing was not accurate, this was the TRUTH about falling from the plane and building it on the way down. There was a point in 2022, where I recall feeling like, “this really isn’t worth it and I may not be the one to handle this.”

However, the world didn’t see much of this. While there was certainly some apologizing to my clients happening. The podcasts were still being delivered into the world, there was alot of time effort and energy going into them, and no one really knew we were all scrambling in the background to be better and get it right.

As I was on the fence, in 2022, I remember being tagged online by quite a few people one morning when “My mentor in my head,” a woman who made over $25M during the pandemic announced she wanted to start a show and she wanted a skilled producer, and asked the internet if they knew anyone. The internet tagged me,

Within two days, we were on a call. The money that was being put out for this project was NOT life changing but the reality that I went from ideation to working with my mentor in my head lit a fire under me. THIS made me officially want to be the best. I wanted her experience to be the best. The only way I could think of to do this was to deep dive into her life the best I could, and find a way to tell that story through video. And we did!

2022 – 2023: I found an in house video team that is still with us to this day. The amount of projects we did with a low budget just to refine our process, most people don’t know we had two years where were barely profitable. This was all about good story telling and creating a system that worked. I learned over these two years to take feedback and criticism like a golden ticket and move quickly.

This was also the year we evolved the named to EPYC Media (Evolve Past Your Consciousness Media) because we’d worked with quite a few people and realized we only wanted to amplify voices of people doing really incredible work in the world. We used the name as our North Star, if the client did fit in this ethos, we weren’t taking them.

2023 – 2024: We learned our value (production value) we learned how to name what we did. I personally learned that I’d launched enough podcasts (over 350+) amassing over 6M+ views and millions of downloads, I could now call myself a producer for major podcasts. We learned to charge our worth. We learned to set boundaries and that we’d reached a place where we could create identifiers to figure out who we wanted to work with, what stories we wanted to tell, and point our fingers in those directions so we could spend our time doing the work we love and avoid burnout the best we could.

We’ve had our equipment stolen from sets, we’ve car pooled like our life depended on it, we’ve had more expensive lessons than we can count. But the true stamp of approval is the phone calls or outreach we receive from potential clients who’ve heard about our work and are excited to work with us. This is what all the work stands for.

And to this day, entering 2026, almost 8 years later, we are still 100% referral based.

From 2022 – 2026, we’ve partnered with brands like Morning Brew & Iheart Media to produce shows on their network, we’ve birthed concepts with major brands, universities, and incredible authors/entrepreneurs, and created a style and system that helps bring stories to life with soul.

If I had two ways to explain what scaling looked like for us outside of building an incredible team and scaling the way we had currently:

1. Doing good work when no one was watching. Years ago, when my mentor in my head hired me, myself and my team became obsessed with getting better with every episode, every reel, etc. We studied and implemented quickly. Our prize was always watching the work we created in, “ahhhh.” We wanted to make sure we were creating work that told stories with soul and made people stop.
To this day, when someone reaches out or connects with us, they always say they’ve heard great things about our experience and the way we edit or tell stories from someone in another room. I know this has happened because my team and I focus on, “doing good work,” for our clients always first, and everything else second.

2. Building a team that understands your values. I think one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received was actually what I heard from clients in my absence. Last year, my father passed away unexpectedly and my team took over, and many of our clients went out of their way to let me know that it was like every team member had me in them, it was like nothing changed. THAT to me feels like good work. My team carries our mission with them every where we go. Any good leader knows you’ll spend equally the same amount of time if not more, building the team you have to serve the clients in a service based business as you do finding and selling your clients on your service.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Jessica Hurley. Im a 36 yrs old mom of an 8 yr old boy. I was a national director at a non profit for 6 years before I quit my corporate job at 30 to pursue entrepreneurship. For those who are eager, I worked my “entrepreneur life,” for two years before I quit my corporate job.

I gave much of this away in the first question, but I got into this by being the janitor first. I started my own podcast that went viral in 2018 and then accidentally ended up in a scenario where I was helping other influencers do the same. I did this from 2018 – 2021 before the business really captured any wind and major visibility.

There are a few things I think as a business owner it matters to be honest about on my journey:

– we are 7 years in and while we amassed over $1M in revenue cumulatively (over the years) we still have not had a million dollar year. I am working hard this year to see us achieve this.

– While we haven’t hit our million dollar year. There are so many things I am proud of: I have a team that is COMMITTED to the stories, the deliverables we provide to clients, the look and feel of every story we produce, etc.

– While we haven’t hit our million dollar year, I’ve been committed to making sure my team culture sticks. This year each team member got bonuses during the holidays, two weeks paid vacation, and 5 day holidays each quarter. This sounds simply but this took me years to be able to project the revenue and build the team to ensure our timelines still worked while giving team members what they need without sending others into chaos.

– Craft: What makes you stand out matters. Tony Robbins always say, “everyone is noisy right now. Advertisements are everywhere. Learn how to to get people results and they’ll become raving fans and talk about you everywhere they go. This is how you build a business.” and we are STILL 100% referral based. Our clients love their experience with us and the results they get afterwards. I am honored that my team stands beside me in an effort to, always get better and that we are never the best. We also understand the internet is evolving every 6 months (less than that in fact) so we our artistic views of things and the things we produce need to always have an open mind and “always be changing.”

– Allowing constructive criticism be my golden ticket. I remember a client in 2021 telling me she had some feedback for me about her experience, and she sure did. she got me on a call and line item by line item went down a list of her recorded experiences with myself, the outcomes, and every member on my team (that in that moment I realized I was responsible for) and it HURT! However, once I got out of my deep feelings and took each one and examined it, I realized there was room for growth and accountability in each. Over the years, I turned feedback on its head – I now ask for it. I don’t let a client off board or a production happen without asking for feedback and I want the good, the bad, and the ugly.

– Doing good work is one thing but you have to learn to talk about it. Something I am still working through as a founder, is showing up as the founder of a company to the external public outside of just showing up for my team and clients. We live in a world now where if you don’t talk about what you do, it didn’t happen. So keeping “marketing your craft, outcomes, and gifts to the world,” at the top of the score board these days is equally important.

The problem we solve for our clients: We breathe life into their marketing strategy. We are often working with brands, influencers, or authors/speakers who are already doing incredible work in the world and aren’t talking about it or they do work in the world but the personal side of them or the journey is never visible. They come to us to create something fun, different, and telling in the market that amplifies them in a light often that their audience has never seen or if they have, something they want to see more of.

Things I want people to know about our brand: Our edits are good but our storytelling and attention to detail is great. While I think those things matter and that’s often while we hired, I hear often, “wow! I did not know you were going to make me look and sound this good.” I want what we are able to give clients to make them see themselves in a way that they never have before. That they don’t always have to lead with their work or their impact – they can share their journeys, tell stories, be creative and have fun and we will create a show around that that their audience loves.

EPYC Media stands for Evolve Past Your Consciousness Media and as a long time mentor, advocate for mental health (emotional intelligence and awareness) and meaningful dialogue and understand how important it is the way we use our words, Im proud of the fact that we have created a style and qualify our clients so that we only work with clients that continue to transform the world by being committed to sharing messages and creating shows that help to evolve consciousness and not to spread hate, misinformation, fear, insecurity or any of the other things we are working in overdrive to avoid most of our lives. We make feelings feel expensive.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started EPYC Media in 2019 truly, and the premise was simple and premature. We were ideating, launching, publishing, editing, and managing audio podcasts. This worked from 2019 – 2021, and truly – I wouldn’t say worked, it just brought us enough revenue to do what we loved and pay the bills.

However, in 2021, video podcasts emerged right after the pandemic and they were loud. They were taking over YouTube but the idea seemed daunting for “regular” influencers or brands. None of these individuals had major production teams and this was before studios were everywhere so they weren’t accessible to the average entrepreneur. I know I wanted to offer this to my clients, but I had one major problem….. I knew NOTHING and I mean literally nothing about video production. Im simply knew from an artistic standpoint how I wanted it shot and how I wanted it to look at the end, everything in between was a blur. However, I knew we were also running out of time as far as how long what we offered would remain something that was still relevant in the market.

So I put it out there to friends and people in my network that I wanted to find video partners that would shoot clients for me, before I even had a client that was willing to pay for such a thing. I honestly, didn’t even know the budget for a thing like this. Then I got a call Feb 2021, that I will never forget. A client called with urgency about how she was about to leave her 40k subscribers on the table because she was simply too busy this year to maintain the audio only podcast. Instead of being agreeable, I said, “what if I grab cameras and we shoot a season all in one weekend AND well emerge this season from audio to audio + video,” she said, “OMG, how much?” and Internally I froze, and externally my mouth said a number that my brain knew absolutely NOTHING about.

And I found a partner at the time who seemed to know what he was talking about and tried a thing I knew nothing about. It’s funny now, but it was beyond risky then. However, I knew we could evolve into this and I knew the standing of the future of my company was riding on our evolution. So we tried it, and while I would love to say it went amazing, it was truly us being paid to test and try something and we did less than ok. At the time, it was still better than anything the client had done but for what I expected and the process we didn’t have on the backend, it was rough. We had to develop a process as we went for video. My editors weren’t video editors, they were audio editors, our process didn’t work for video it only worked for audio so everything we did after that job was literally trial and error. I was determined, so determined that I loss a substantial amount of money trying and failing here. However, something in me just believed we weren’t meant to do this, so we kept trying and kept trying, we even did a few creative projects for free. Fast forward, 2022, EPYC was receiving calls left and right from brands we never thought we’d hear from to create a publish a show for them.

Then, in 2023, I will never forget my project manager saying these words: “Do our clients expect us to be Youtube expert now?” because were not, we are a podcast production company.” However, there was and still is a very unclear line between podcasts on audible platforms and podcasts on Youtube. People think they go hand in hand but they dont. They have completely different performance metrics, completely different algorithms, different copy that attracts the viewer/listener, and tracks the data completely separately. In order for the shows we were making video to do well, we had to almost create 2 different episodes every week. This became cumbersome and drained my team quite a bit. In a sit down meeting with my team, I asked a hard question, “If you all thinks that leading with podcasts and just uploading a video is where our expertise should lie, I am on board. But I believe the future is leading your show on YouTube and your podcast platforms will be secondary reach and if that’s the case, we need to evolve again and focus on YouTube.” and my team signed off that day on becoming students to Youtube distribution and never looked back. We now joke that we ARE now Youtube experts simply because we were open to evolution.

Pivots are required. There is a difference between being an expert in a specific industry or niche, that can last decades, ring bells in rooms your not in, and the method needing change from time to time, and in my case many of times. The YOU in everything you do matters but we have to be open to the speed at which the world around us evolves in an attention economy and be open to the creative world leading the way, which evolves quicker than we can produce in most cases.

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

I spoke about this early on in another section but definitely the way I received criticism.

It used to hurt, I use to take everything personally and internalize it as underperforming or underdelivering or not meeting expectations.

Overtime, I started asking for it. You realize a few things overtime when comparing the feedback of others. Most times, clients can only reach you at the point of where they are currently on their journey, so their unmet expectations may be derived from places they can’t even go – like their perfectionism, insecurities, or fear of success. This also isn’t always the case, many times there is good bit of truth to criticsim you receive especially if its something you’ve heard before. If you’re solid in what you provide and the energy and effort you put into it, everything else you receive is simply a mirror and an invitation to look outside of self and see how the world perceives you and for you to consider if there is anything else you can change.

It also opened my eyes to the reality that as an artist and a creative, I may lead in a way or create in a way that is suitable for me but may not be desirable for a client or their desired outcomes and adjusting as a service based business from time to time is just the name of the game.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.epyc.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicahurley__/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicahurley/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Jessicahurley

Image Credits

EPYC Media and personal images.