We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Molly Knuth. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Molly below.

Molly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

In 2016, I was a stay-at-home mom of three (soon to be 4!), and I was looking for a way to make some additional income for my family while I stayed home with the kiddos, so I started doing virtual admin work for a local manufacturing business. As we were talking about advertising their new business, I mentioned this “new” feature on Facebook called Facebook Business Pages. In 2016, these were not yet widely used by small-town small businesses and when they were, it was rarely more than a newspaper-style ad that businesses were sharing with their followers. Instead, we told stories of client projects, took followers behind-the-scenes to see how the products were made, and introduced team members. It TOOK OFF! Pretty soon that small business told another small business who told another, and by March 2017, I formalized this fun side project into a business called Molly Knuth Media. I honestly didn’t know whether it would succeed or not until about a month later when I attended a workshop on the topic of better Facebook marketing. About halfway through the day’s events I raised my hand and asked a question of the instructor: “so you’re telling me, I can make a living from sharing on Facebook?” The instructor looked me dead in the eye and said, “Not only will you be able to make a living, but business owners will seek you out for this help.” And the rest is history!

Molly, 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?

Molly Knuth is a marketing strategist, owner of Molly Knuth Media, and host of The Found Podcast who is on a mission to help women in small towns rewrite how they live and work on their own terms. She’s helping women find businesses, find themselves, and get found online through holistic online marketing practices.

In the past 8 years Molly has gone from a high school teacher to stay-at-home mom to a freelance social media marketer to a #bossbabe managing her marketing client needs, talented team members, and my husband and four kiddos and our little farm in Eastern Iowa.

What she’s learned in that time is that it’s not just about going full force or any one-size-fits-all strategy as a business owner. It takes a woman who is willing to lean into her unique gifts, intuition, and goals, and learning about who she is as a person along the way.

Today MKM, focuses three products:
1. Consulting: Our mission here is to help small business owners see the power of their story and the unique products and services they offer customers and clients. We take these stories and create a plan for legacy content that can get repurposed across multiple platforms. This helps small business owners know A: what to say and B: when and how to say so they reach their business goals and don’t feel super sales-y.

2. Content Creation + Management: A bulk of our clients are with us for done-for-you content creation and management. We plan and post to Instagram, Facebook, blogs, and podcast platforms on behalf of our small business clients.

3. Education: Right now, MKM offers workshops and programs on specific marketing topics to help small business owners on a budget DIY their marketing. In 2024, we will be offering more of these educational opportunities in a course format.

Have you ever had to pivot?

An excerpt from a Google Doc of short stories and essays on entrepreneurship that I’ve been compiling along the way. This story in particular was drafted and shared with my email list.

Let’s get real for a second.

If you’re on this list, you’re probably here for business and marketing tips and advice.

Which means, like me, you probably follow business mentors and coaches of other email subscriptions, podcasts, and social accounts too.

Often, as I’m scrolling through my phone on Monday mornings perusing these coaches’ content, I’ll get a nugget of gold that I can incorporate here at MKM to improve my own marketing or customer experience.

I LOVE that we live in an era where growing and scaling business is so accessible.

But in following these people who have “made it” and are 10 steps ahead of me, I can be paralyzed sometimes by their “don’t ever give up” and “just keep pushing ahead” narratives.

Can you too?

I mean, I get it. Marlin and Dory didn’t turn around after the jellyfish canyon in Finding Nemo. Ted Lasso hung “Believe” above the doorway even when he didn’t know the first thing about playing professional soccer.

We have to have that grit, tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness if we want to build something that lasts and provides us a legacy.

But in the same breath, there are times in our business where it just makes sense to make a change:
Stop offering that program
Let go of that client
Raise your prices
Change your billing systems
End a partnership
Sell a property
Change is ok too.

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Earlier this year, I made a commitment that above all else this year at MKM my goal was to increase profitability (not just revenue – but that’s a story for another day!) and streamline current services and offers.

So in January, I took a fine-tooth comb to my current offers and services to see which were best to continue and which I needed to change.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, it was clear that Social X MKM was one of the first offers I needed to address.

Throughout the second half of 2022, I put a lot of time, energy, and relationship building into the MKM Social School Program. I had approximately 10 people in the program each month, and I had built up a library of content that was truly valuable. I WANTED this to be my signature offer.

But when I looked at my weekly schedule to see how much time I was committing to this program and its subsequent impact on my profit and loss sheet, I knew something had to give. So I decided it was time to sunset Social School.

I felt so nervous and a tad bit ashamed as I rolled out this news to current program members, but the feedback was really great. Would they see me as a failure? Would I be betraying them or leaving them feeling unsupported?

The truth was, the feedback they gave me was really great. They understood, and they encouraged me to make the decision that was going to help me and MKM going forward. After I officially closed up the Social School shop, I felt lighter. I didn’t realize this program was taking up so much space in my calendar and in my mind, and I saw a surge of creativity come through as a result.

Sometimes it isn’t a matter of “just keep going” to make your business more successful. Impactful change can be a matter intentionally letting some things go instead.

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Change is not comfortable.

But change is necessary.

Change is easier to make when things aren’t working.

Change is harder when things are working just fine, but you see the opportunity for something greater.

As a business owner, remind yourself that change is ok, and you have what it takes to make the changes you see best for yourself and your business.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Consistency.

I can hear the collective groan arise from the audience.

Consistency is the most boring, generic answer in the world, but to build trust with an audience, especially in today’s fast news/scroll cycle, you have to show that you are dependent and consistent.

In the second year of MKM, Facebook Live video was brand new. I didn’t yet know how to use it, but I took a chance and created a weekly appointment with my audience called “MKM LIVE.” I showed up each week to teach on a topic that would be helpful to small business owners looking for marketing help, moms who were also raising businesses and babies, or people living in small towns who had big vision.

I did this for a year. Often, my kids would crash the show by being in the background or my rural internet would crap out but I still kept showing up week after week. I didn’t have a podcast or an email list to speak of, just a few hundred Facebook followers. That consistent value built the foundation that my business used to build up to bigger offers, additional platforms, and a 7-year legacy that is still going today.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mollyknuthmedia.com
• Instagram: @mollyknuthmedia @mollyknuth_mkm
• Facebook: @mollyknuthmedia @mollyknuth_mkm
• Youtube: @mollyknuthmedia
• Other: The Found Podcast on iTunes and Spotify

Image Credits
Jade Boyd Photography