Jill Koziol - Co-founder and CEO of Motherly: Growing to 40 Million Visitors a Month, Creating the Largest Study on Mothers, and Building a Brand

Jill Koziol  00:00

So we decided to go content first, and to again connect with her, and to build a brand. And so we organically grew from mom-to-mom sharing of our content to like thirty million women a month, engaging with our content, organically, no money to Facebook or Google.

Callan Harrington  00:18

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Jill Koziol. Jill is the co-founder and CEO of Motherly. Motherly is a well being destination, empowering mothers to thrive, an Inc. 5000 fastest growing private company and a parody.org best company for women to advance. Motherly is built for mothers by mothers, engaging an audience of forty million readers and viewers a month. Motherly offers on demand parent education classes, Webby Award winning videos, the Motherly podcast, essays and articles, and a highly engaged social media community. Jill is also the co-author of The Motherly Guide to Becoming Mama: Redefining the Pregnancy, Birth, and Postpartum Journey. And This is Motherhood: A Motherly Collection of Reflections + Practices. This was one of my most interesting interviews to date, Jill gave some great frameworks on how to have difficult conversations, and how to get smart quickly on a subject. These were both things that she had learned her consulting background, and she gave us the full picture on how she uses this in Motherly Today. Just in case you missed this, Motherly gets forty million readers and viewers a month. What's even crazier is how fast they got there. Jill gave a full breakdown on how they did it, and I was blown away. And typically, you would think that is going to be the most interesting part of the interview. And it was incredibly interesting. But then she went on to talk about the State of Motherhood Survey. And if you haven't heard of this before, it's the largest, statistically significant survey and study on mothers. And Jill told us exactly how they built it. More than that, how they use it to drive their entire content strategy. I thought it was so interesting, and it made me completely rethink my entire content strategy. So with that, let's get to the show. Jill, welcome to the show.

Jill Koziol  02:59

Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here.

Callan Harrington  03:01

I've been looking forward to this episode. And the place where I'd love to kick this off is, tell us about your first long haul trip at Motherly.

Jill Koziol  03:11

Work travel, as any working parent, especially working mom, knows can be very challenging. This was in, I believe, 2017, maybe 2018. I had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter. And I had to go to Hong Kong and mainland China as we were starting to look into Motherly branded and produced products. When you go on a trip to China from the West Coast, it's an overnight trip typically. And so I had the ability to tuck my children into bed at night and you know, pass the reins over to my husband. And I thought I'd nailed it. I thought they're in bed, they're gonna wake up in the morning, they'll see my husband, smiling faces, all will be good. And I had prepared them. I was gonna be gone for five days, which was the longest I had been gone in my work experience for my children. I'm boarding the plane, everything seems to be fine. Suddenly, I receive a phone call from my husband. And before he can even say anything, I hear what sounds like an absolute night terror scream from my youngest daughter, my two-and-a-half-year-old, and he's trying to talk, but she's screaming so loudly that, of course, all she wants is me, right. And I am literally boarding this overnight flight. And so I'm trying to calm her down over the voice, but she doesn't understand why mommy isn't there in the first place. I typically sing, still do actually, with nine and eleven-year-old daughters. I won't put your listeners through hearing me sing, but but I sing to them every night, and so I started singing lullabies. And as you know, when you get on a plane, they close the door, like cell phones are off, but she's still screaming, and I'm still trying to get through. I'm frantic. I have the same visceral response any parent has, like, I actually want to get off the plane, right? And so I feel really torn in two. I want to get off the plane and go comfort my child, but I also know how incredibly important this trip is for our business, for Motherly, and the flight attendant was like just go ahead, I get it, I'm a working mom too, just keep on singing lady. So I was actually able through the whole takeoff process, until the phone like actually cut off and didn't have signal, was singing my daughter to sleep, taking off. And that separation time is always really hard, like the actual separation. While I'm gone, she was thriving and was great. But the return back was challenging, those five days. I mean, feel like she was in this prime moment and stage of attachment. And you have to like really attach with your caregivers to be able to separate from them effectively. And so we did, we dealt with some like attachment and separation anxiety and issues after I came back from that trip. And it truly took a couple years really to come back from that, like dropping her off at preschool became more difficult for a while and things like that. So that's one of those stories that's like, deep inside me as a working parent, that I'm sure others can relate to.

Callan Harrington  05:53

No question about it. You answered a question that was on my mind is, what did you come home to? Like? What was it like Animal House that you came home to?

Jill Koziol  05:55

You know what is the most important decisions, a mother, or a woman who wants to have children, can make for their career is who they marry. And so I made a good decision in marrying my husband, who has been incredibly supportive and incredibly capable of helping with our children and leading with our children. And so yeah, there was, you know, things weren't exactly how I do them, when I returned, and my children were very, very happy to see me. It wasn't the initial response, because that was like joyful and wonderful. It was the realization that then when I was leaving, had to leave her again, whether that was preschool or for date night or something else, that it was harder for a while. She was just so little that it was a pretty traumatic experience for her in that moment. I actually, she's nine-and-a-half. Now, I actually said to my husband, less than a month ago, I said, I feel like for the first time- because she's always been like way more attached to me, and it almost felt like that was this like defining moment. And I said for the first time, I feel like Katherine's really fully attached in a good way that she can really start to be like, much more independent and separate. And so not to scare any working parents. But it's a hard thing that we do as working parents and having to travel and having to balance those things. It's really challenging for a career that in today's connected world requires business travel.

Callan Harrington  07:18

Yeah. And your dose, you couldn't have been any stranger to travel just a general because your background was largely in consulting, is that right?

Jill Koziol  07:25

Yes. However, my consulting was largely in the Washington, D.C. area in my career, because it was for a lot of defense intelligence organizations and defense contractors that tend to be more based there. And you know, children have really short term memories. So even if I had traveled a little bit and wasn't available as much for different periods of time, I believe I had been home and not traveling for probably a year, right, or six months. I hadn't really had a business trip, for whatever reason, probably because, you know, Motherly, had no money to cover any yravel at that time. This was different. Kids can, they can acclimate and get adjusted to things, but they also have a short memory. So if you haven't done it in a while, it feels more jarring.

Callan Harrington  08:04

Tell us a little bit about the career that led up before Motherly?

Jill Koziol  08:07

Oh, yes, it's a stark comparison. I'm still surprised today that I've landed in this woman-centered industry and space around motherhood. Going way, way back. I am a first generation college student from a very rural area in Maryland. I was always interested in international relations and government and had a vision of a world that was bigger than what I grew up in. So I went to a state school in Maryland, and I majored in political science and economics focused on more international political science. And while at undergrad, I had an internship working in international relief and development, which I loved working a lot in Western Africa, not me working there, but supporting development efforts in Western Africa. And I absolutely loved it. The challenge, which my father was very smart, and I felt at the moment cruel, you know, helped me realize was that I was not going to be able to support myself, in the way that I wanted, in the nonprofit world, in the nonprofit sector. And so I made a bit of a pivot, and I started working in consulting, and started because I loved government and feel like I could make an impact there. But my worry was that sometimes change coming from inside is actually slower than bringing it from the outside. And so I started doing some consulting work with the United States Institute of Peace, working there. I also went to grad school for International Security Studies in parallel, and then went to a small boutique consulting firm called Toffler Associates in the D.C. area, and through them, taking a very future oriented lens on international security and issues, started working in defense intelligence. So that's basically all of the three letter agencies, that's NSA, DIA NGA, you know, all of those three letter agencies, as well as the defense contractors that support them.

Callan Harrington  09:54

So one of the things that I'm super curious about is did you have this entrepreneurship bug your whole life, or or what drove that? Where did that come from?

Jill Koziol  10:02

So I definitely believe that if you see it, you can be it. And so while not quite a woman, my father is a small business entrepreneur and Maryland. And so I was exposed to entrepreneurship for as long as I can remember. The dinner table was conversations about business. I saw the highs and the lows of business throughout my entire childhood. But I also saw as part of that, how it enabled him to be a leader in our community, and the impact that he could make, and the respect that that garnered for him as well. And so I think it's something for me that I aspired to, in the back of my mind, and that always felt within reach to me, because I'd seen it. But I didn't go out, and I didn't go in the business degree, like it wasn't what I was, like, focused on or thinking I was going to do. Consulting, really empowered me, from a real world experience way, to get the skills that I believe are critical in entrepreneurship. So I didn't feel like there was a barrier to my own mental ability to see myself as an entrepreneur because of my father. And then through consulting, you're solving new problems every day, you're getting smart, fast, there's a lot of context switching. And that is like the foundation of entrepreneurship, because you have to feel empowered to go do something no one else has done. Right? And so you have to feel like you're really capable of learning and figuring it out. Right at every step of the way. And I learned that through my consulting work.

Callan Harrington  11:29

Yeah. And so what I'm hearing you say is, it was kind of a foregone conclusion, you were going to do this at some point. And almost what you didn't expect was when I went to consulting was like, oh, okay, now I've got all the skills. I've already had the mindset that I wanted to do this. Now I've rounded this out with the skills. Is that right? Or am I wrong on that?

Jill Koziol  11:47

No, it's not that I wanted to do it. Again, I didn't go decide to major in business or do something, I wanted to be working in international security, like I wanted to work for the UN or, you know, be having major impact at like the governmental international level. But I think when the opportunity presented itself to me later, I did not feel intimidated by it, because I had seen it and been there. And then I had also had all of this, I had the framework, the consulting frameworks that you get that in many ways are like a business degree, right. But like in real world, you know, applicable business degree skills that I gained through consulting.

Callan Harrington  12:23

Do you have any of those frameworks that come to mind where you were like, this was a framework that helped me a ton, that I highly recommend?

Jill Koziol  12:29

So one is getting smart, fast. I think so often, people are overwhelmed by what's out there. And they try to either- they're either paralyzed by the amount of information that's available and don't know how to actually synthesize it and get to an answer, and so they just freeze. Or they try to boil the ocean, as we say, and so they try to like learn all the things. And what I learned through consulting is that when you just go out and talk to smart people, and ask questions, you can learn really, really fast. And so leveraging interviews, which ultimately led me to take a design thinking approach with Motherly, which is very user oriented and interview oriented to get to the heart of the problem that you're going to try to solve for. So that's one. The other is, it seems crazy now, but I was in my late twenties, you know, and was doing an executive coaching- I ended up building up an executive coaching area within our consulting firm, and I was a business director around organizational change and large organization transformation. And I went and became an executive coach, and I developed a coaching protocol, that I used on middle managers moving into the Senior Executive Service in our government. And so that meant that as this late twenty-something person, I was providing executive coaching to much older and more experienced, frankly, people than I. And so one, that taught me not to be intimidated by people. We're all just people. And you know, if I'm going in and talking to a captain in the Marine Corps, I actually have value to add in that conversation. But that executive coaching framework that I then actually taught and trained our other consultants on is something that I still use with my own team, whether it's you know, how to have fierce conversations and things or how to help people with delegation as an example.

Callan Harrington  14:17

Yeah, I tell people all the time, if people are interested in doing a podcast, do it for that reason alone. You're going to talk with so many people that are highly successful. And one of the biggest takeaways you'll have is, these are just people

Jill Koziol  14:27

A hundred per cent.

Callan Harrington  14:28

These are literally just people. I know I keep diving into this, but I'm so curious. When you say the fierce conversation, what does that look like?

Jill Koziol  14:36

So it's a confrontation model. I think there's even a book around fierce conversations. It's been a long time since I've read it, but I believe I pulled a lot of that model from this book around fierce conversations. And so it's a confrontation model. A lot of people make mistakes in how they have difficult conversations, and one is the sandwich approach. They'll say something really nice, they'll give the feedback, and then they'll say something really nice And the person is left very confused. Other people will be so intimidated by the conversation that they will come in and, like a machine gun like mentality, and like, leave the person like left like, whoa, I don't even know where to go from here. Right? And so not really-

Callan Harrington  15:15

No confidence.

Jill Koziol  15:16

Exactly. Yeah, there is a confrontation model that I use and have, you know, my own team, you know, talks about how to do this, where you come in, and you start off immediately with, like, I'm concerned about X. Right? Like, very clear statement, and you prep this beforehand. Right? You come prepared to the conversation. So I'm really concerned about X. This I've heard X, Y, and Z, or I've experienced or seen X, Y, and Z, that kind of validates that a little bit. This is important because of why. This is impacting the business in some way. Or me in some way, right? I'm concerned about this for this reason, this is why it matters. And then also adding in this is how I've contributed to this. Looking at the situation, I can see how I've contributed in this way. And I really want to hear from you. How are you seeing the situation so that we can determine where to come from here? And then you listen. So often in a confrontation, people are coming with a predetermined outcome at the end. And so instead, there's an opportunity then for this to be a real feedback conversation. And the goal at the end of those confrontations, of sorts, is that they don't feel confrontational in the end, that you feel like you've really come to a place of understanding with a true path forward. And sometimes a true path forward is, this isn't going to work for us. But you're not stuck in this limbo land. Like there's real clarity that can come out of that conversation. Because after you've listened, a really key part of it is to reflect back what you heard. You said that in this conversation even. You said, "so what I'm hearing you say is X," and that gives the person an opportunity to validate, and that makes them feel validated, or to put a small nuance or different points into what you've relayed back to them.

Callan Harrington  16:53

Well, and if you think about this, what I just mentioned there, I replayed that back how I thought I heard it, and I was wrong. Right? When you came in, you were like, well, no, it's not exactly that. It's this. But one of the things that you mentioned in particular, that I think is super important, and I'm always blown away by this. When you ask somebody two things: one, you lead with kind of, hey, here's how I'm taking accountability in this situation. And then two, what do you think? And nine times out of ten, they know exactly what to do, they've got the right answer. And it's kind of just say it's listening, validating, make sure you heard it right. And then you go, you don't need to have somebody buy into whatever the vision is, they're already bought in.

Jill Koziol  17:33

Exactly.

Callan Harrington  17:33

And it's nine times out of ten the right way. Have you found that to be the case in your experience?

Jill Koziol  17:38

A hundred percent. Most of the time, I mean, nine times out of ten, to your point, this is not a surprise that a conversation needs to be had, right? We're all pretty intuitive, right? When it comes to doing these things, if something's not working for me, in a situation, it's probably not working for the other person in some way. And so it really is like, who feels empowered to lead first to start the conversation, but anticipating that both parties want to have the conversation and have value to add in the conversation. And again, I think the challenge can be when you're a manager or a leader or even in other relationships, like with my own husband, is making assumptions about what the other person thinks should happen. And having a predetermined outcome in mind, that really closes off the options available for a path forward.

Callan Harrington  18:24

It's amazing how many times that my assumption has proved to be wrong, like real fast, and how different I come at it, which is something I try to remind myself of, but I'm not always the best at it. I will say that for a fact.

Jill Koziol  18:34

And to be clear, I have these skills, and I know how to do it. I screw it up all the time. But to the point, like, when you've had an experience where like maybe I've like totally botched this, right? Being able to go back to the framework and to know that I didn't do it right. But reminding myself geez, Jill, like you know how to do this. I really live by like, just do the next right thing. I am not going to get it right. Even just culturally, our society is evolving so quickly, which is a challenge, I think for leaders these days. And so I am going to get it wrong. I'm going to put my foot in my mouth. As soon as I realize it, I will claim it, I will- Even in like an all hands situation, there have been times where I have said something, and I have realized, oh my gosh, that is not going to be perceived well, that is not what I meant. And rather than waiting until a week later, or later that day when someone calls me out on it, even if the conversation has moved on, I will actually say, guys, I just want to- one moment- I said, you know, three minutes ago, this thing that feels off. Like, that's not what I intended. I want to try that again. I'm really sorry if like that came across or hit someone in a certain way. The closer to the incident, the better, and over time I think you get to the point where you just don't botch stuff as much.

Callan Harrington  19:48

Oh I am- Considered "do the next right thing" stolen. I am 100% stealing that!

Jill Koziol  19:53

Well, I stole it from Frozen. One of the trolls-

Callan Harrington  19:56

(laughs) Yes!

Jill Koziol  19:56

The troll king, or is he a troll? I don't know if that's the right word, but the king of like the trolls- I think he was a troll. That is what he says in one of the songs. And so it's become like a mantra at Motherly, since it came out in Frozen. Everyone thinks that like Anna or Elsa said it, but it was one of the troll kings.

Callan Harrington  20:11

I love it even more now. That is fantastic. All right. So how did Motherly start? What's the origin story of how Motherly came to be?

Jill Koziol  20:22

So my co-founder, Liz Kennedy, was an award winning journalist and editor from the Washington Post, total genius in content strategy and such. She and I had led parallel lives for a while, without ever meeting. Both of our husbands went to the Naval Academy, we both went to Georgetown, we lived in the D.C. area. I was there for grad school, her for undergrad. We lived in the D.C. area when we had our first children. I think we had our first two children like within six weeks of each other, even, and never met. Both of our husbands served overseas in the military, and so we were away from them at different points when we were raising children early on. And then they both went to business school at Stanford. And that is where we finally met. We both had two young children, we were working moms, and so we didn't have time, really, to meet or to see each other. But a couple years later, after we met maybe two times socially, I received a phone call or an email first from Liz, saying that she was feeling entrepreneurial, while- you know, when in Rome- in Silicon Valley. And she had some ideas around motherhood, and how to portray it in a more modern way, and to better serve the new digitally native audience that was coming up and becoming parents. And every time she was talking about it in kind of the Stanford - Silicon Valley area, people kept saying, oh, you should go talk to Jill Koziol. Because I too, while my husband was at Stanford, felt entrepreneurial, and I launched my first company with another co-founder. We invented patented and brought to market a baby goods product that converted regular playground swings into baby swings. So patented our venture, learned how to market to moms, got it placed in every Babies"R"Us around the country, and then licensed it to an outdoor adventure company. And so, while I didn't see myself as an expert at the time, in mother's or in motherhood, I had started to get a reputation as someone who understood the space. And so she called me, and I'll never forget, I was in Tribeca, at a little cafe, and it was like falling in love, is the only way we both describe it. It was this moment of like intellectual professional falling in love, where we were left breathless, we were finishing each other's sentences. It just felt like the universe had kept us like in parallel for a while, until this was the moment we were to meet. And we launched Motherly because it didn't exist. Everything was so outdated and antiquated around motherhood. And you had a generation of millennials that was coming of age that was digitally native, that the mothers were super educated for the first time, more educated than men, and that was very diverse. And so the legacy players out there just were not speaking to her, were not speaking to us. And so we felt really compelled to build a next generation brand that could redefine motherhood with and for this generation.

Callan Harrington  23:09

So one of the things I'm super curious about is- everything you said makes total sense as to why to build it and why people would be interested in. It didn't exist, it wasn't modern, you had an opportunity to come in here and build just a much better resource for people. What was the original business model? Was it that we're gonna get a ton of eyeballs, and we're gonna sell, and we're gonna have ad sales? Or what was kind of that, that- I always struggle with this personally, because I do something similar as well.

Jill Koziol  23:38

No, no, it's a really good question. Because this is back in 2015. This is when like Facebook had just figured out how to monetize, right? Like, in Silicon Valley, venture backed world, like, people didn't think about this back then. I mean, we now are already accustomed to the venture world and business-as-a-whole thinking a lot more, rightfully so, about profitability. But that's not the way it was right, in 2015. We were both kind of drinking from the firehose of what it was to be in Silicon Valley at that time. But many companies pivot and change over time, their strategy, or their overall vision, for better or for worse. I'm hoping it's for better later. If you go back to my initial slide pitch decks and the such of like what we were doing with Motherly, it's the same as it is now. We were building a company that would sit at the intersection of content, community, and commerce. And I liked Cs at the time, I guess. And our strategy, which gets to monetization, was to connect, condition, convert. And so that meant that the first thing we were going to do, without thinking about monetization, was to build an audience organically through content and emotionally connecting with her and to build that brand. And because Liz had all of those contacts, we could have started with product. This is back when like Warby Parker and all these others were like focused on building product first, and then building a brand around that, and then doing it. My perspective then, and still is now, was that all of those, not to put a fine point on like Warby Parker specifically, because it's been a massive success, but a lot of DTC brands were coming up. And what I was witnessing was that venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, were going to venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road, which is on one side of town in like the Menlo Park area, in California, in Silicon Valley. They were picking up their suitcases of cash, right, and their investment. And they were effectively driving it across town, and giving it to Facebook and Google. And so what that meant is that Silicon Valley, and all of the VCs, were effectively still investing in Google and Facebook. And to me, what I was seeing was that customer acquisition costs go up over time, not down. And so what all of these DTC brands that were just paying for all of this, like the piper comes do, right. And so they ultimately had to find a way to authentically connect and build an ongoing relationship with their audience. And so we decided to go content first and to again, connect with her, and to build a brand. And so we organically grew from mom-to-mom sharing of our content to like thirty million women a month engaging with our content, organically, no money to Facebook or Google. Then our strategy was to monetize, first as a digital media platform through- less ads, like on the programmatic way, like indirect way, but more custom content, top of the funnel, brand awareness stuff. And through that we were not only getting some revenue in the door, but we were also conditioning her that we Motherly have earned her trust and credibility that we are now influencing and driving her purchase decisions in a powerful way. Right. And then the last piece now, which we're still in process with, and COVID kind of upset for a bit, but we are now in the process where we are moving forward with the final piece of this which is to convert. And to convert this large, highly engaged audience into a loyal Motherly consumer and ambassador, and that is, again into the commerce.

Callan Harrington  26:58

So many questions. Okay, I want to go back to thirty million a month that quick. Was it starting with just creating blog articles? Or was it Instagram and Facebook? Like organically posting, not paid ads? How did you get to that many that fast?

Jill Koziol  27:16

So the answer was yes to all of those things. Liz says that like, she gave herself carpal tunnel, like that first, like before we launched, you know, writing, like pressing all the buttons and writing all the articles. It was a lot of content, writing, we were hitting a real- there was a whitespace. To your point, like, this needed to exist. Mom was so thirsty for this. Motherhood until Motherly was, in many ways, was treated as cartoonish. Right. It was, media was feeding into these mommy wars, instead of focusing on these things that are really universal pain points and challenges. And it was not acknowledging that motherhood is aspirational, that this generation of women was having children later, and like, yes, it's hard. But it's also beautiful. And there's so much more that unites us than divides us. And so our content really reflected that. Mom was sharing these things on Facebook initially. A lot of it was driven by Facebook at the time, because it was 2016. And so sharing our content, because they felt seen for the first time. And so we were doing, not only content that was around motherhood topics from a news and trending, or service oriented, from like child development or parenting perspective. But we also did Motherly stories, which are first person essays, that would really get to the heart of an issue. And then what really happened for us, from an audience trajectory standpoint, really kind of that hockey stick that you want to see, is we would take those Motherly high performing content, written content, and we turned it into video. And we created a social format. And Motherly was really one of the leaders in this, around taking a personal essay, and turning that into a video format. And it went bananas, because that is the time when Facebook and the algorithms really incentivizing that. And the user, we've always been multi-platform. I didn't care that she was coming to our website only, because of my ultimate goal, right. I really wanted to meet mom where she was. And so we've always had a really multi platform approach to that.

Callan Harrington  29:13

That is so interesting. And that's still- I mean, if you started out written and moved to video, if you started out video, take your best videos and turn that into articles. It's still a great strategy, but in there that was like kind of groundbreaking really?

Jill Koziol  29:25

No, that's it. Yes, it was. It was very different. And again, Liz is a genius content strategist. And she had done some video work. And, you know, this is one of those things where we were both our audience. And so we had great gut instincts on things. But back to what I mentioned before, leveraging a design thinking approach, where we got out from behind ourselves, and really, really tried to understand our audience and where they were, and using what we call Motherly insights as this like predictive analytics engine of sorts, which was very manual, frankly. But it's a constant- like, social provides a really quick feedback loop. And so in the very early days, we were also trying to define what our voice is. I'm very much a brand builder. And getting that voice in that tone, right, was very, very hard. And I believe that you have to create really strong like guardrails and constraints. So that now I would offer, people know Motherly, when they see it. If they're scrolling through their feed, they'll know. If you were to like, read them something, they'll know it was Motherly, and others over the years have certainly borrowed along the way, like some of our approaches. But I think that we've stayed really, really true to who and what we are. And because of that, people reflect back to me the values and what Motherly stands for, and they associate their own identity with that.

Callan Harrington  30:42

How do you get to that point? Is it something that just organically comes as you start to build your own? Like, for example, stand up, right? Stand up, they say it takes seven years, which makes sense. You gotta go up over and over and over and over again. And then you start to find it. Or is there a process or a framework in which you've used to get to that point.

Jill Koziol  30:58

This was, for me pretty intuitive, I have to say. And again, little bits of bits of your past, you know, and your experiences kind of come together. And I remember Liz actually saying to me, at one point, she's like, "you keep saying brand, and I'm not sure I know what that means," right? Like coming from a content perspective. And the way I describe it, is that a brand is almost- not almost- a brand, ultimately, is a belief system. And you are conveying through different mediums and methods, the beliefs, right, that you're trying to convey to this audience, and you know that you've got an actual brand, again, when that is mirrored back to you by your audience, and that they start to identify, the same way they do with the belief system, with the brand. So to start to feel like I am a Motherly mama, right. And so that starts- it can start at different points with it for any brand. Like some people can think of it from like a visual perspective, but you have to take a systems level approach with it. And for us, because we're starting with written content, the voice was most important. And so in the very early days, we were republishing some content that was good, because we couldn't create it all ourselves in the early days. And so Liz would be reading through an article, and she would come to me and say, is this Motherly? Right. And that's how you figure it out. Right. Like, is this Motherly? And that would start a conversation between us, and I would say, well, she's using curse words in that. That doesn't feel Motherly. And curse words is an interesting one. Because I've got a pretty hard line, that cursing offends some, but the absence offends no one. So let's just not do it. We're trying to build a big business, right? So curse words. So I'd be like, that doesn't feel quite right. And then it would be, this is really funny, but like, she's making fun of her kids. It's like funny at the expense of her kids, right, in the way she was writing, or their partner. I was like, nope, Motherly is not going to do that either. Like, we're going to like find humor in motherhood, but we're going to take motherhood seriously. And we're certainly not going to denigrate our children or our partners in this. The guardrails started to get tighter and tighter, so that about three months in, when Liz would ask that question, like, oh, what do you think of this one? And I would say, if you have to ask, you know the answer. And that's how it started, right. And then, now we've got a very extensive editorial guideline, and brand books, and all of these things that align. And we used to have, I still do a brand bootcamp for any new employee coming on, so they can hear directly from me about it. But frankly, when we hire people now, they have seen Motherly out in the world, like they get it already now.

Callan Harrington  33:27

Yeah, almost like they would have a feeling of I can't believe I just turned that in. Like if I wrote a piece, like an article, it's like, I can't do this, because I know this is off brand. So that's one of the things I was super curious about, is it because at some point, when you're putting out the type of the sheer volume, and to maintain that quality, I have to assume that editorial guidelines are very crystal clear, where somebody can come in and fairly quickly be able to start writing. One of the things I'm curious about is, and maybe this gets back to what you mentioned earlier about, how do you continue to stay on top of what's relevant? What content to build, does that come from surveys and interviews and things like that? What does that look like?

Jill Koziol  34:09

So one is definitely still the feedback loop. Right? With, I mean, the one thing about social media and the internet as a whole is like, if you err off, like people will tell you. And so yeah, we definitely we have those moments, right? Where like, we're like, oh, we missed it on that one. And so you know, they'll bring you back right where you need to be, but also yes, so we, for six years now, have run the largest statistically significant study on mothers. It's called the Motherly State of Motherhood Survey and Study Report. We survey ten to twenty thousand women every single year. And this is not a small survey, this takes like ten to fifteen minutes to take, and we get that many women, so that just goes to show like the commitment and dedication to our brand and to their belief that we can be their voice for them. And then, unlike most, this comes from my consulting days, too, we don't just like deliver the roll of results out. We actually do the hard work to weight the data to the US Census, which is what makes it the largest statistically significant study. I did a lot of surveying work, and the such, in my consulting days. And so there were some things that stay the same. And so now six years in, we're able to see trends and changes over time. And then there's things that are more topical, like, obviously, two years ago, we were asking a lot of questions about COVID. This year, we were asking a lot more questions about the economy, because these are things that are relevant. And with our team from a content perspective, I offer two things to them. One, this is how the country as a whole, that's like our fully like weighted data, how that is, this is important for you to know, and this is what we're reporting on, ultimately. But then look at the raw data that hasn't been weighted yet, and that data tells you about our audience. And so it's finding that place between those and to understand what does she care about? What does she want to read about? And where is mom today? And making sure that we're meeting her where she is.

Callan Harrington  35:56

I think that is so interesting. Here's a question I have on that. Do you partner with a third party on that? Do you hire the people internally to be able to handle that? What does that look like?

Jill Koziol  36:07

So it's evolved and changed over time. You know, six years ago, when we first did it, you know, I was the expert that knew how to do it. So I led it and worked on drafting out the initial one, and then we- we really just send it out to our own audience. Like organically, over time, it's become more and more robust. I'd say the last like three, four years of it are top top notch. And so we have one, partnered with others to ensure that we're actually getting it right. Motherly is very broken out across the U.S. We're not a coastal kind of thing. Like there are Motherly audience members are all over the country. But we still want to work with partners to have them ask questions they might want to ask. And in return, they will distribute this to their audience on our behalf as well. And so we get a broader cross section of the world, so we have partners through that, and then the analysis, and then we do a lot of the distribution, we do all the report building ourselves. But we do for the analysis side of it, take it to a third party group, that actually goes and runs that. And so it's been the same group, actually, that we've used the entire time. So they know the data themselves, they do all the weighting for us, and then they do an initial report. And then we look at it thematically as well. And by the way, we make all of this data 100% open source. So it's all available on Motherly, and just got off an interview with Bloomberg, talking about a lot of the research that came out of this years. And so we're trying to empower mothers, and their allies, and others with information to drive forward the conversation about motherhood in America.

Callan Harrington  37:32

What impact has this had on Motherly, just as a whole?

Jill Koziol  37:35

So one of our core company values is that we take motherhood seriously. And that's a differentiator for us. And this is one way that we live that value, you know, in and of itself. And I didn't set out to really like run a media business, frankly, with this, it's taken us a little longer to get to the commerce part, than I would have liked. But it's so important, the media is so important, as like a mechanism to drive forward the conversation. And it's been really critical and important to me, that Motherly not contribute to the polarization in this country. And so the data helps me to keep our team aligned on where our mom is, from an advocacy standpoint. So we are going to create a safe space to talk about things that people are not aligned on in this country. And we're not going to actually have a position or advocate for something unless 75-85% of our moms are aligned on it in the U.S. And so it's been really important to make sure that Motherly is leading the conversation, and also not polarizing people, as we grow and scale. So that's one important way. It also has raised our visibility. You know, we do monetize still, with brands coming to us. And they come to Motherly one, because they want us to help translate their brand through ours to reach our audience, but also because they want data. And they want to understand, they want to work with a partner that understands, this demographic they're trying to target. And so this raises our credibility there. And then increasingly, it's putting us more on the national stage as well. A lot of companies do surveys and studies, most do not do the hard work of making sure it's statistically significant and really valuable data.

Callan Harrington  39:10

That is so interesting. And that what I love about this, probably more than anything is, well with the exception of the the impact that this data can have, but one of the things, and this is probably one of the hardest things, is it's so easy to get stuck in your echo chambers, because the people that are the loudest, and people that have the most controversial opinions are typically the ones that are getting eyeballs. But what I'm hearing you say, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, it's we are picking specifically based on what the data is telling us. We're not saying, like this isn't a almost kind of like, for lack of a better word, a dogmatic view on the point. This is what's real, this is what we're actually seeing. And because we have the numbers, we can confidently say that that's accurate, is that correct?

Jill Koziol  39:54

100%. Things seem to be getting worse, not better, when it comes to discourse in this country. And I've said, truly, like I would rather shut Motherly down, than contribute to that in a negative way. And part of it comes from our mission, we believe- and by the way, I should note, that when you have a founder CEO running a business, the brand is the founder, right, in a lot of ways, and I've been very purposeful, as I said, to get out from behind myself. But this is not changing as long as I'm founder, right, and CEO in this role, co-founder in this role of CEO and so, we believe that when a mother thrives, families and communities can thrive, that mom is the foundation of society, and increasingly our of our economy, as our study shows. But that means that every mom needs to feel like she can come to Motherly to get the information, the inspiration, that she needs to thrive. And so I use a really radical example. But this is about like gun control, right. So of course, in this country, we have an outsized number of school shootings, and of really tragic events that happen. Gun control is really, like divisive conversation in this country. Motherly always leans into the experts, and so we empower mom with information from the American Academy of Pediatrics around gun violence, being like the number one cause of death of children. We talk about ways that you can, if you are home, a gun owner, how you can protect that, if you want to advocate, these are the ways to do it. And the reason that we're doing that, is that mom is not aligned on this in this country. Despite all of the things, she's not aligned on true like, or what her understanding is of what gun control in this country looks like. And I use an extreme example, that I want that Mom, I don't know who this mom is, where she exists, but like living on a militia in Oregon as an example, to still feel like she is welcome at Motherly, because her child deserves to have a mom that has been empowered and educated by Motherly. And so this is not a place for Motherly to stand and to take like a massive stand on. We will share, and empower, and educate, you know, through things, and hopefully drive the conversation forward in that way, and create a safe space for there to be discourse around this topic. But then on things like affordable childcare, where moms have said that they will cross party lines to make that happen, we will advocate from the rooftop for, because we're her voice.

Callan Harrington  42:07

Such a good strategy for-

Jill Koziol  42:10

Refreshing, for media?

Callan Harrington  42:11

Yeah, it's interesting. I wasn't even thinking about this when I was kind of just doing my research for the interview, just in general. And I was looking at the survey from a totally different lens. But I would tell you, now you've got me thinking of, I would love to partner with somebody to do something in my world. It won't have nearly the impact yours will but-

Jill Koziol  42:30

Yet. It might.

Callan Harrington  42:32

 Yeah, well, it's just so interesting. And I think that that's such a better way to drive the content strategy, than just kind of what's going to drive the most eyeballs. I think that's- I love that.

Jill Koziol  42:45

It gives you the trust. Trust and credibility is earned over time. It gives you the trust and credibility to be leading the conversation. And that's what we want to be doing at Motherly. We believe we have earned the right to be leading the conversation, because of the hard work that we've done.

Callan Harrington  42:59

I love that. I love that. Jill, last question I have for you is, if you can have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Jill Koziol  43:10

So I thought of this the other day, actually. I said, before we started recording, how- I think it was before we started recording- how kind of shocked I am that I've ended up in this world of parenting and working with, you know, an outsized portion of our staff is women. Like I work with women every day, all day. I also have two daughters. And if I could talk to myself, as high schooler, when I found it really hard to connect with other girls my age, and if anything, I was really turned- I have three brothers too, so that might have been part of it- but I was really turned off by just the culture of women, and of girls at that time. If you had told me then- Or the advice I would have given myself is like, be open to that changing and evolving. And honestly, it was something that saddened me, it was something that like I didn't feel like I had real female support and power and love, right, in that way. And if I could tell myself to just like, hold on, you are going to not only, you know, experience the joy of like sisterhood, and womanhood, and through motherhood, and motherhood is going to be an opportunity to actually, it's gonna give you superpowers through this. I would have been shocked and surprised. And yeah, I would I would tell myself just to like hold on and be open to the power of like, female, just women in general, and the role that I could ultimately have in that.

Callan Harrington  44:27

Would you ever have thought you'd be where you're at now with that comment? Do you almost kind of look back and just kind of look like wow,

Jill Koziol  44:33

I mean, it's so bizarre actually, to me. I mean, it really is, like having three brothers, like no sisters, like all of these things coming the way that they have, I actually credit, it wasn't really until college and then grad school, that I started to like really bring in women into my heart and into my life, and in a powerful way. And then being blessed with having daughters has been just like the ultimate gift for me, and I think really has given me wings in a way. Because of that concept I said before, like if you see it, you can be it. I feel a responsibility to leave this world better for them than it is for me and to show them what's possible.

Callan Harrington  45:10

That's amazing. Jill, this has been a ton of fun. I'm so glad we can connect.

Jill Koziol  45:15

Thank you so much for having me. This has been an awesome conversation. I've really enjoyed it.

Callan Harrington  45:22

I hope you enjoy Jill and I's conversation. I took a ton of notes from this episode, personally. And if you want to learn more about Jill, you could find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, and I'll see everybody next week.