We were lucky to catch up with Jennifer Weedon Palazzo recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jennifer thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Though I attended college for Acting and took courses in film-making, directing, editing, etc… by far, JUST DOING the thing has been how I learned the skills I now have. Working on sets, as everything from a volunteer, to a production assistant, to an actor, to a director, gave me real-world skills that no film school every could.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m Mama-in-Charge of MomCave (“An edgy alternative to mom bloggers!”–Forbes) an award-winning comedy channel and community for moms. By sharing authentic and hilarious material, we’ve built a community of over 106,000 moms who take the challenges of parenthood with a dash of humor. Being chosen for YouTube’s Women in Comedy Initiative, nominated for awards like Best Comedy Duo, Best Live Series, and Best Hosted Series has almost made up for all the times our kids threw up on us. We’re on all your typical social media sites AND over 300 Smart TV Networks including Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire!
What began as a YouTube channel has become a thriving online community. With the proliferation of mommy blogs and Pinterest-fever, moms can often feel that they’re coming up short. Being a mom is hard. We use comedy to deal with the struggles and celebrate the victories.
Our shows have been featured in (and won!) festivals like the Independent TV & Film Fest, LA Femme Film Festival, First Glance Philadelphia, Miami Web Fest, Trenton Film Fest, NexTV Web Series competition, Urban MediaMakers Film Fest, and Chain NYC Film Fest. Our weekly live show, MomCave LIVE, was nominated for an IAWTV (International Academy of Web TV) Award for Best Live Series twice. Slacker Mom was nominated for Best Hosted Series.
We were honored to have been selected for YouTube’s Women in Comedy Program, sponsored by Whohaha. We created a late-night show for moms version of MomCave.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In our business, your social media following is a huge asset. Those numbers (followers, views, subscribers, etc) determine how much advertisers and sponsors are willing to pay to be featured in our content. For years, Facebook has been our largest social media platform and driven most of our revenue.
A few years ago, MomCave was really taking off. My business partner, Dina and I, were honored to be hired for a weekend of content creation in Chicago. While we were on that trip, our Facebook account was hacked. Someone from another country gained control and deleted us as admins. They deleted ALL of our content. Years of work and millions of views. Gone.
Followers started UN-Following. Our numbers went down dramatically. By showing Facebook legal documentation of our business, I was able to get control back. But, even though some of the videos were still being shown in other places on Facebook (proving that they were still on a server somewhere), Facebook was never able to recover them. We spent months trying, hired specialists, and consulted with lawyers, to no avail.
It was devastating. We’ve since built the page back up to where it was, but had the hack never happened, we would be much father along.
We learned to never put all our proverbial eggs in one social media basket. Any platform can disappear at any time. We’ve diversified over many platforms, but also worked hard to grow our own email list, since that is something WE own.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Every so often, someone stops me in person and tells me that a video we produced made them feel something–whether it made them laugh when they were at a dark time or made a parent ready to give up know that they were not alone. Those are the most rewarding moments for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.momcavetv.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/momcavetv
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/momcavetv
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mom-cave-tv/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MomCaveTV
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/momcave
- Other: 📌 Join our email list for exclusive content, new videos, giveaways, and free nannies. (Okay, that part’s a lie…): http://eepurl.com/SJxVj https://www.tiktok.com/@momcavetv 🖥 Find the MomCaveTV App on: Amazon Fire – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BH3JHQZS Apple TV – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/momcave/id6443647663 Android TV: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=quickcast.tv.mom_cave Roku – https://channelstore.roku.com/details/6f6be4b40df791dc95eb1ab5ee7b32d8 Binge Networks: https://www.bingenetworks.tv/channel/momcave-15052 Airy TV: https://live.airy.tv/Airy_TV_3/39_MomCaveTV