We recently connected with the hosts of Movies That Raised Us, Mo Cruz And Christina Schmidt, and have shared our conversation below.

Mo Cruz and Christina Schmidt, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

We met as college freshmen studying Drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and became fast friends, bonding over our love for film. This flourished when we became roommates after graduating, and spent countless nights watching our favorite rom coms. We had always wanted to start a podcast, and when the Covid-19 pandemic hit we both found ourselves laid off and craving a creative outlet. We kicked around a few ideas for podcast topics, but nothing felt authentic until we discussed doing a movie review podcast- and that’s how Movies That Raised Us was born.

Since we’ve always been so passionate about acting and film, it was a natural fit. We didn’t want it to be a typical film review podcast, but rather give the listener the feeling of being at a virtual sleepover with us, watching our favorite movies. The movies we choose to cover didn’t always get the critical acclaim or appreciation that they deserved at the time. One of the cornerstones of our show is highlighting female centered stories. We love getting to reexamine these movies through the lens of our own enjoyment, their rewatchability factor, and the lessons we can take away from the narrative.

As we began to develop our audience, we gained feedback from listeners that our show was able to bring back memories of movies they enjoyed in childhood, and provide a sense of joy in an ever changing, tumultuous world. We feel incredibly honored to be able to bring laughter and joy to people’s days, and pay homage to previously overlooked stories.

Mo Cruz and Christina Schmidt, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We are the co-hosts of Movies That Raised Us, a weekly podcast covering primarily movies from the 90’s/2000’s. We modelled our brand and aesthetic after the sleepover of our dreams- hanging out with your best friends, talking through your favorite movies, dissecting each juicy detail, and getting lost in the laughter. We want our listeners, lovingly called our Sleepover Squad, to feel like they’re all invited to our sleepover.

When we started the show, neither of us had any experience in the world of podcasting so we really had to learn along the way how to build our show and brand from the ground up. This included learning how to use recording equipment and editing software, as well as figuring out how to carve out our own space on social media.

We were able to find our community on Tiktok and Instagram, as we connected with other creators in the nostalgia niche. Our marketing approach became creating sharing episode clips, edits, screencaps, and behind the scenes content about the movies we cover- turning our social media presence into a companion to the episodes. On Instagram, we’re able to connect with listeners on a more personal level, whereas Tiktok became a valuable outreach tool to spread the word about our show.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

In our social media strategy, we use Instagram to connect on a more personal level with our listeners. We’ve learned about our listeners’ interests, what they like about the podcast, and what they hope to hear next. Through polls on our stories, we’re able to perform litmus tests on what our audience wants- even giving them voting power on future episodes. It’s important to us that their feedback feels heard and included, and we believe that mission is felt by our listeners too.

It’s not unusual to find out that many of our listeners have been fans of the podcast for years, and we really enjoy hearing from them weekly after an episode drop- keeping the lines of communication between hosts and audiences open. We believe that our approach has cultivated a dedicated community focused around joy, laughter, and empowerment.

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

We were approached by Patreon about creating patron-only exclusive content, which was a really big change for us as previously all our episodes were freely available. We didn’t feel comfortable putting all our content behind a paywall, as inclusivity is really important to our brand. We decided to have one low cost tier, where all members would have a say in one bonus episode a month, rather than taking away our typical weekly release.

This caused us to restructure the way we make the show, as we now had another episode per month to account for. Previously, Christina had done all the editing but with this additional workload Mo got the chance to learn how to edit and now has full responsibility of putting out our Patreon episodes. It was a challenge adding this new element to our recording schedule, and learning how to balance the extra workload. Ultimately, this venture really paid off as we were able to drastically increase revenue, as well as continue to connect even more personally with our listeners. One of our Patreon perks is a subscriber-only Discord chat, and it is so special to have a dedicated space for our listeners not only to chat directly with us, but with each other. It’s really allowed our listeners to become a community, so much so that they’ll often coordinate votes together for particular movies to be chosen as the bonus episode of the month. We feel incredibly honored to have such a dedicated audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://moviesthatraisedus.podbean.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviesthatraisedus/
• Twitter: https://x.com/mtru_pod
• Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moviesthatraiseduspod?lang=en

Image Credits

Photographer: Jack Davidson