Relationships, not reach
Why download counts keep founders busy and broke, and what to measure instead.
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Business media kit
Molly Ruland
Founder and CEO of Heartcast Media. Twenty five years of building companies, more than a thousand episodes produced, and one unpopular opinion: downloads are not the point. The relationship is.
Twenty five years of building companies,
most of them the hard way
Molly Ruland is the founder and CEO of Heartcast Media, a B2B branded podcast agency in Washington, DC that works globally.
She ran One Love Massive, a DC creative company, for twenty years, managing 160 artists and 18 employees out of a three story building, before closing it and starting over. Heartcast came out of that reset in 2018 and has since done more than $3.5 million in sales. Molly drove every dollar and built every system behind them. The automations she set up eight years ago still run the business today. She built the company to run without her, then moved to Costa Rica and proved it.
Her argument is that most podcast advice measures the wrong thing. Downloads are a scoreboard. Relationships are the business. One of her clients landed a ten million dollar contract off an obscure show almost nobody listens to, which is the whole thesis in one story.
She is a number one Amazon best selling co-author of Speak Your Way to Sales, with a chapter titled Relationships, Not Reach: The Real ROI of Speaking. She is a frequent speaker on the business of podcasting, guest booking, and content that compounds.
By the numbers
- 25+ years in multimedia
- 1,000+ podcast episodes produced
- 100+ B2B clients served
- $3.5 million in sales at Heartcast Media, every dollar driven by Molly
- 20 years running One Love Massive, 160 artists and 18 employees
- 200 percent growth through the pandemic
- Multiple client shows in the top ten percent of downloads
- Number one Amazon best selling co-author
Six topics she can carry
for a full hour
The obscure podcast play
How a show with a tiny audience produced a ten million dollar contract, and how to find the equivalent for your business.
Systems that outlive your energy
Automations she built eight years ago still run her business. What made those survive when everything else did not.
Closing a company on purpose
160 artists, 18 employees, a three story building, and why she walked away from all of it.
Guest booking without the spam
How the outreach actually works, and why her team pauses billing when it falls behind instead of offering a refund.
Being yourself as a filter
Not a personality post. A mechanism that decides who signs with you and who never calls.
What should a founder track instead of downloads?
Her case against the metric everyone reports, and the one that actually predicts revenue.
What does a successful looking company hide?
She closed one. What the inside looked like while the outside looked great.
What makes a small podcast worth more than a big one?
The client, the contract, and the show almost nobody listens to.
What survives when you stop pushing?
Eight year old automations, and the difference between a business and a job you gave yourself.
Everything you need to book Molly
Contact
mollyruland@heartcastmedia.com
Scheduling
calendly.com/mollyruland/discovery
Format
Video or audio, remote
Equipment
Broadcast microphone, hardwired connection, professional lighting
Response time
Within one business day
Topic tags
Podcasting, branded content, guest booking, business development, systems and automation, AI in small business, entrepreneurship, women in business, leadership.
Book Molly
Twenty five years, a thousand episodes, and no interest in giving the safe answer.