Company: Monarch Social Media
Owners: Holly Medwid
Year Started: 2021
Employees: 1 – 10
Welcome to “An Agency Story,” a podcast that delves into the journeys of remarkable individuals navigating the agency world. In this episode, we feature Holly Medwid, founder of Monarch Social Media, an agency devoted to organic social media management. This episode offers a deep dive into Holly’s journey from aspiring novelist to social media maven, with insights that are both inspiring and practical for anyone interested in the digital marketing realm.
Holly’s story is one of resilience and adaptability. Starting as a freelancer, she transitioned into a corporate role before ultimately founding Monarch Social Media during the pandemic. Holly’s agency focuses on creating meaningful, organic social media strategies, prioritizing community building over paid advertising. She shares her unique approach to social media management, emphasizing the importance of work-life balance and mental health within her team. Holly’s belief in breaking down the job into specialized roles—strategy, communications, and creative—ensures a healthy and productive work environment, a rarity in the fast-paced world of social media.
One particularly engaging segment is Holly’s recounting of her entry into the world of social media. From writing a blog in university to managing social media for a Toronto-based company, Holly’s journey is marked by a pivotal moment when she realized she could be paid to write without following the traditional academic path. This revelation led her to drop out of university and fully immerse herself in the world of digital marketing, a decision that has clearly paid off.
Throughout the episode, Holly shares humorous anecdotes and powerful insights, such as the surprising reaction of clients who initially doubted the efficacy of social media marketing. Her perspective on the necessity of failing at least once to truly understand the business landscape is both refreshing and encouraging.
Tune in to this episode of “An Agency Story” to hear Holly Medwid’s captivating journey and gain valuable insights into the world of social media management. Discover how Holly’s innovative approach and dedication to ethical work practices are reshaping the industry, and be inspired by her story of turning challenges into opportunities. Don’t miss out on this engaging and informative episode that will leave you contemplating the evolving landscape of digital marketing and the power of perseverance.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. In this episode we’re joined by Holly Medwid, the inspiring founder of Monarch social media based in Toronto, Canada. Holly shares her journey from aspiring novelists to social media strategists revealing how the pandemic challenges catalyze the birth of her agency. Discover Monarch’s unique, focus on organic social media strategies that prioritize community building over paid advertising. One of the things I really appreciate about this story is the intentionality and focus on sustainable work-life balance within her business. Her intense dedication to results and creating a healthy workspace is no easy task, but a worthwhile and inspiring one nonetheless tune in to explore how Holly’s innovative approach and unwavering resilience are setting new standards in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today everyone. I have Holly Medwid with Monarch Social Media. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Holly.
Holly:
Thanks for having me.
Russel:
If you don’t mind start us off, what does Monarch Social Media do? And who do you do it for?
Holly:
Monarch Social Media is solely a social media agency. We focus on only that digital marketing discipline and we provide full service social media management for our clients. We’re organic first, which means we focus on strategies that create organic results and build community and we are paid second. Instead of dumping all of the money into paid ads, we focus on the hard part of social media, which is creating content that resonates and engages and really building that community behind a business or brand to create those, top of funnel results.
Russel:
It sounds like harder work, but it sounds like also the best work I’m glad you’re out there fighting the good fight. Well, we’ll have a lot more to dive into, but let’s go back and I’d love to hear I’m guessing social media. I don’t know if it was even around when you were born or not, but what was young Holly thinking she was going to do with her life?
Holly:
Oh my goodness. Okay. Definitely wasn’t around. I am 35 years old so I still remember what it’s like to not have internet, um, and then to be introduced to the internet and have it make awful sounds when it’s connecting to the dial up. Very familiar with that. however, I am in the age demographic that grew up as these platforms were developed. I would say as a child, I probably wanted to be a figure skater or something like that. Throughout school, the focus changed a lot, but it’s interesting. My guidance counselor actually suggested that I explore entrepreneurship. I thought nothing of it at the time, how many years later it’s actually what I’m doing. Obviously never thought social media could exist as a career. I remember being in high school and my friend from McGill, he was in university. Facebook was rolled out to universities first. That’s how I was invited to the platform when it was still very much in its infancy and thinking, this is such a weird thing. What do you mean we’re going to poke each other and leave like, what is this? But it’s one of those things. MSN Messenger, MySpace, blogs, all of these spaces, that’s really where I spent a lot of my formative years, engaging with him. It was a very natural skill set in hindsight.
Russel:
I had completely forgot about poking. You just reminded me. I remember now the early days of Facebook and poking, and I don’t even remember why you would do that. Well, I don’t know if we need to dispel a myth, but I mean, now that I’m just thinking, is that what all Canadians want to be growing up as either a hockey player or a figure skater? Do they teach that at school? I don’t know. Educate, naive American here.
Holly:
I grew up in Manitoba where it’s winter, more than half the year. Actually, my parents just had snow in June. That’s a reality. I think that you naturally gravitate towards winter sports. But no, actually that figure skating thing personally came from only having two channels and that was what was on TV, on a Saturday night was figure skating. It was just one of those things where I’m sure I wanted to be a ballerina too, or whatever it was, but I also grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. As those things were happening, I was also, working in the businesses or whatever it was and flexing those entrepreneurial muscles pretty early.
Russel:
A lot of early inspiration there. All right. Well, it’s never too late. If you want to go back to your figure skating routes or dreams or desires, but it sounds like you’re doing really, really well where you’re at. Well, I’m curious how you even got your start in social media roots to begin with what was your first post? Where was this light or point of inspiration that got you into social media?
Holly:
First post. I don’t even want to go back to high school because I don’t, I really don’t want to see what I posted on MySpace. I don’t even know I can access it, but in terms of how I started in social media, from a professional perspective, I was going to university to become a writer, I wanted to be a novelist. That was my career goal at the time, still a future career goal. Absolutely. I paid my way through university. I didn’t actually finish, spoiler alert, but I was working three jobs to help myself through school. To practice the craft of writing, they always encouraged you to write, to practice. I started a blog. I loved blogging. I wrote about fashion, things to do in the city events, whatever it was. I use social media as a way to drive traffic because I couldn’t just be satisfied with practicing writing. I wanted people to respond to it. That really worked well. It started picking up steam. I was getting invited to events, restaurant openings. It was the influencer before the influencer phase started. That’s what I was doing. There’s a company, in Toronto called the Torontopath.com. For those of you who don’t know, there’s about a 30 something kilometer path, underground Downtown Toronto with shops, connects all the big buildings. This website was a directory for this these businesses. They approached me and they said, we know that you’re doing this for yourself. Can you do it for us? We’ll pay you. I said yes, obviously. Really needed the money to get through school and pay rent and all that kind of stuff. The only time I had to write content was in class. I’d go to my lectures, and then I’d be in class, and I’d be writing tweets. My professor one day, he goes, Holly, if you don’t pay attention in class, you’re never gonna get paid as a writer. I just looked up, and I said, I am getting paid to write. After that semester, I didn’t go back to university because it was just, it was this light bulb moment of, oh, I don’t have to go through this institution based thing to be paid as a writer. I can do it through social media. That company hired me full time. That’s really how my career started.
Russel:
That’s a mic drop moment. This is like the first 10 minutes of a movie someday about your life, as they’re telling this very pivotal story, I’m loving this energy. It makes me wonder how many entrepreneurs have this screw you moments that sort of set them down their path. And I know you didn’t go directly into entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship after that, but what was the evolution to actually starting your agency?
Holly:
My career did not happen by planning. It happened very organically. I never went to school for social media, never went to school for marketing, never set out to create a social media agency. The agency was created because there was opportunity and need. When the pandemic hit, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Canada had very intense lockdowns, essentially for two years, we were pretty much locked down. I watched all of these businesses really suffer from only operating in a physical space and not knowing how to transition into this digital space. At the time I was head of growth for a startup in the mortgage space. Doing really well in that company, but I had all of these business owners reaching out to me and saying what do I do? How do I market myself? Because I am known for social media from previous roles. On my off time, I track my time all the time. Just constantly I’m tracking my time. I was giving advice away for free and I realized I had given about thirty thousand dollars worth of advice away for free. I had a lot of these now clients ask me, can you manage our social media for us? It was just that area going, oh, this is a need. If I was ever going to go back into social media full time, it was going to be from the standpoint to really create the framework to do this job in a healthy way. At the same time, my family bought a wild rice processing plant in Northern Manitoba.
Russel:
Did you say wild rice?
Holly:
Yeah. So wild rice, have you ever had it?
Russel:
I mean, I think so. I’m like Uncle Ben’s or something. I’m sure.
Holly:
Okay, it’s delicious. It’s really good for you as well. They want to bring it to a retail market, so they needed marketing help. I decided to get two birds with one stone and leave the startup role to start the agency and to help out with that family company.
Russel:
Was that a hard decision for you? Did you feel like you were leaving all of that security behind? Did it feel natural? What were the emotions you were going through at that time?
Holly:
I didn’t feel the insecurity and I didn’t feel the insecurity because of the family I was raised in. Nobody in my family works for anybody. We’re all entrepreneurs. I come from a very long line of entrepreneurs where, it’s actually counterintuitive to work in the corporate world or to have a boss. Actually, in my corporate position, this is going back quite a few years. I was fired without cause. Fun fact, I think that everybody should be fired at least once because it’s a very valuable learning experience. I remember calling my father and saying, dad, I was just fired. His response was, good. Now you can work for yourself. So no, that feeling of taking a risk and starting a business it’s, for me, it’s wasn’t scary. It was just a logical step because I could see the opportunity and I was going, well, this is an opportunity nobody’s really exploring. So I’m going to explore.
Russel:
Everybody should be fired once I’m kind of on board with this, it can be a real wake-up call for folks.
Holly:
It’s a good reality check to be, to even understand, like even your corporate job, your secure job is not secure. Security is something you create for yourself, whether it’s through a position at another company or through your own business.
Russel:
Well, that’s awesome. I am glad that happened. I’m glad you got fired, holly. Maybe that’s a new greeting card from Hallmark,”happy getting fired cards.” It makes me think of when we started our agency with me and my business partners, families. You know, they were like, you guys are idiots. What are you doing? Versus it sounds like that same conversation on your side of the family. Only when you said I’m going to go get a corporate job. They might’ve said you’re crazy. Why would you do that? What are you doing? Not that hopefully your family did actually say that, but, it’s great to have that entrepreneurial support.
Holly:
They didn’t say that, because before I took the corporate position, I was freelancing and I remember my father having a very clear conversation saying, are you sure? Your freelancing career, you’re about to make the same amount that you would work in a corporate, are you sure you want to do this? I’m glad I did because it gave me a lot of experience that I needed, within digital marketing. But yeah, my family is the exact opposite of most.
Russel:
Well, that’s awesome. It sounds like a great support system and going into something that has a really difficult path, you made the cut for yourself. What’s the first year. What’s your goal? What are you trying to achieve?
Holly:
In the first year, it was really to, get full time clients and support a second person. My whole goal was to be able to a support my needs and support the needs of another person and really align with the right types of clientele. I tested out specific niches, learned a lot from testing of those niches and explored the types of clients that work really well with our agency and the ones that don’t. I would say the first year was really learning about the types of clients that, I and my team wanted to work with. Then also really establishing that first hire that, that key person that was going to, help with growth.
Russel:
You’re already striking me is very analytical. Almost like a data scientist within some people might say is an artistic field. Where do you lean on that Teeter totter of creative and data? Where do you feel like you naturally fall in that?
Holly:
That’s a really hard, so I love data. I wear a ring that tracks my data and I review it every morning and every night. That’s the level of data nerd that I am. I would say I’m probably 50/50. I do have a lot of that creativity and you need that creativity to be in this world, especially when you’re forming strategy. Social media is a very emotional thing. Being only analytical and logical, that’s going to prevent you from being able to form strategy. That’s going to tap into those emotions of social media users, which are people with emotions. I would say I’m 50/50. Lately I’ve been more on the analytical side because I have an amazing creative team, which has been nice because I get to work with my creativity and other things outside of work.
Russel:
I can see that being a really great mix. We got to have a little data in our life. It’s like the fiber of the digital marketing world. You’ve been at this not a terribly long time born out of the pandemic. When you just look back at your journey so far, what are the couple of key evolutions or turning points? How do you describe from where you were to where you’re at today?
Holly:
I think any agency owner will say it’s a rollercoaster. Where I started, where we’re at right now, I would never have predicted. For the first year, I still was in that phase of convincing people that are, trying to establish why social media is such an important piece of the digital marketing matrix. I’ve worked in social media for almost, for over a decade now. That’s where I got started in my career. I’m just seeing it move more and more towards businesses going, oh, we have to have this. Compared when I started three years ago to now, like, we’re having an insane growth phase where all these businesses are reaching out, meeting social media services. Cause they’re finally coming into, oh, this is the first place that consumers are going to go to research my brand is my social media. This is how they want to reach out to me to ask questions or get customer service or whatever it is. I would say the need for it has changed drastically. Our focus has also changed. I thought when I was starting out that we would focus on small businesses. Now I find that we’re working with a lot of medium sized companies, which is great. We still work with small businesses, but more in a consulting capacity.
Russel:
That’s very interesting. I don’t know why this is coming to my mind, but I was on a TikTok video the other day. And it was something about a restaurant and people were saying how crappy it was and someone made the comment that was like, I’m so done with Googling reviews or things like that. I’m just going to come to the comment section on Tik TOK. When I want to review one place or another, I was like, all right, that’s an interesting concept.
Holly:
The space has definitely transitioned from this curated aesthetic type, and this is because of TikTok, aesthetic type of feed to something that’s a lot more authentic and real. I think that’s why we’re seeing the demand is because well, Gen Zs use TikTok as a search engine versus Google. I think that says enough in of itself that it’s one of these places where people are actually doing the consideration before they go and purchase or visit the location.
Russel:
One of the things that has really stood out in how you speak about social media. And I know just how important it is to you and the work you do. And there’s a lot about organic, but also just on the side of ethics, you really sounds important that you have a really strong. Ethical work environment. Where does that originate from? And what that actually looks like in your business?
Holly:
This comes back to the, that attitude of, oh yeah? Anybody who works in this industry is going to tell you how fast you burn out. I’ve gone through burnout more times than I can count. The reason why is social media is actually a very big job and it’s not understood by, especially at the beginning of it, it wasn’t understood by the people hiring for that position. So often we’ll see job postings where it’s like, we’re hiring a social media coordinator, must be able to update blogs, SEO, whatever, and they’re describing five job descriptions in one when social media is not any of those things. If we’re talking about just the discipline of social media itself, if we break it up into parts, it’s really hard to switch from the analytical brain to the creative brain to the communication based brain. When you’re doing that for one brand or a lot of times from multiple brands, you burn out fast and your mental health suffers. Social media is already a negative space. The platforms will always prioritize negativity because we are primed as humans to look for the danger. That’s what causes us to click. When you’re working in that for eight, nine, 10, 11 hours a day, like yesterday was a 16 hour day for me in social media. It’s really easy for your mental health to suffer. Somebody who was insanely talented when I was, in a position that I used to work, she was on my team and I watched her burnout. It broke my heart because she left the industry completely, when it was somebody that was so talented and had such potential in this industry. Because of that experience, she left. I always said that if I was going to go back into social media, it would be to start an agency and to do it in a way where anybody working with us is going to have work life balance, is going to have the support to have good mental health, and we’re going to create an atmosphere where you don’t burn out. Now burnout still happens and you still get overwhelmed, but I can honestly say that the way that we do the job, prevents that. My team gets their evenings and weekends off unless there is something that we need to address, like an emergency situation or there’s an event happening for our clients. But there is the work-life balance there. Instead of putting the entire job on one person, we break it up into its parts. We have strategy and analytics, we have communications, and we have creative. Those are three separate teams and we all work together on our clients accounts to make results happen.
Russel:
I would make the argument. That’s a smart idea unto itself. And if nothing, from a pure business perspective, I mean, even tying it in, as you’re saying the mental health sanity perspective as well. Win-win there absolutely, for folks out there listening. Obviously something you’re very passionate about and I’m sure that looks attractive to folks that are looking for a role in social media. How have you conveyed that thought process or that messaging to the outside world?
Holly:
It’s communicated directly to our clients before they start management, like that is one of the first things that I’ll put in the proposal is, the expectations that they can have around our time. The reason why is because social media is 24/7, but social media managers need to sleep. Just because those platforms are always active, you’re not paying us to be on around the clock. That being said, one of my community managers was up until 1:30 in the morning engaging with, product hunt to get the votes up. We’ll put in those late hours when it makes sense, but I’m very clear and upfront with that from the beginning. That is something that I build into job descriptions when we do hire is, I am hiring for a community coordinator position, which means your job is to talk to people and that’s it. If i’m hiring for that position and I’m interviewing for that position, all of the questions are about the social part of the job. How are you going to respond to this negative comment? How are you going to work with the algorithms to bring this niche into our community? It’s very focused on the discipline itself, and then even in our content for Monarch on our social media feeds, our whole strategy with that is to give information away for free. We’re very clear about explaining those things. One of my favorite sayings is don’t post and ghost because we see it happen with so many agencies, especially like digital service providers is, we’ll do your social media, but we’re just gonna schedule it all in a system and let it automate. You’re not going to get any results. You have to engage before post, engage after. That is what makes content do well. Part of the thing that makes content do well.
Russel:
I like that term, no posting and ghosting. I think I also need to get my son on board with that. He does a similar thing, but maybe not so much from social media, I’d say just pure texting. No texting and ghosting. I’m liking the very real-world parenting to social media example. There are no posting and ghosting folks. Don’t be like my teenage son.
Holly:
Tips in our strategy, that’s awesome. Never heard that before. I’m glad that you’re finding parenting insights in our strategies. That’s great.
Russel:
Oh, yes. It’s all works back. I think it, you know, a couple of roots there of just, I say that before that the agency business is the most people, businesses of businesses out there. I mean, our entire delivery is through humans. We’re interacting with humans. We’re trying to get other humans to do different things. And it all comes down to these mechanics of relationships. And really when you think about it, all relationships work the same. Uh, I came to this realization in the early days that there’s just really, honestly, not a lot of difference between parenting and managing you just don’t tuck your team at night and give them a kiss on the forehead or anything like that. But it’s really the same. elements. When you think about our relationship, I don’t know. Am I crazy agree or disagree?
Holly:
I get it. I care about my team a lot, so I think that maybe there’s some similarities there.
Russel:
One of the things I’m just curious about, I have to imagine just how thoughtful you are and how intentional and strategic you are. That there’s a pretty good plan about what the future of Monarch looks like. Can you shed some light on that?
Holly:
Right now we are working on a course. Education is key in this, to do social media as a job and to do it well and to do it in a healthy way. You need to learn how to do the job within a system. I recently went through a hiring round for our communications team, and I had 1, 071 people apply for the position. Out of those 1, 071 people, three could answer my questions about community management correctly. They understood it. What that tells me is the social part of the job is not really understood. That’s what we’re working on right now, is how to do the social part of the job. For our internal team to learn that skill because I don’t usually, when I’m hiring, I’m usually, it’s a new industry. It’s not like I can necessarily go to all the experts. A lot of these skills have to be taught and university cannot teach them because it changes every day. That legacy system will not work. You can’t update the course syllabus fast enough for social media. The education is needed there. We’re working on that course to teach people the social part of the job because it’s, small businesses should know these concepts as well. A niche engagement practice is going to do a specific thing to index your content within a, in a specific demographic, a location based, engagement practice is going to help their content show up for location services. Teaching those principles and those things is a focus of ours. In terms of growth, I want to create as many social media positions as possible. This is a really good industry. There’s a lot of work in this industry and it’s only really starting to blow up now. Social media has been a job for, I’ve done it for over a decade, so it absolutely has been a job for a long time, now I’m starting to see the finance companies and the law firms and the dental, all these boring industries start to go, oh, we need social media. The work is there. My focus is to create the structure and the environment, to bring in the talent, train the talent to do the work and do really good work for these clients that need the service.
Russel:
I’m 100% behind this. This sounds like an amazing goal. Amazing purpose. Can’t wait to see that lived out in the coming years. Very inspiring for the folks in your business. I don’t know that we can top that. So I guess we should just ask the question that a typically round things out with is, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Holly:
I’ve thought about this question a lot in the past. I’ve been listening to the podcast, they’re great. I have a bit of a different answer than most people. I think they’re born. I think that, okay, caveat. I think that anybody can learn entrepreneurial skills or apply them to a position, but in order to be an entrepreneur with a successful venture, which includes failure, that is a hundred percent part of it. I have a lot of failed businesses. You have to have this very specific quality of like, won’t quit, like just won’t quit. The risk and the sacrifice that you have to be willing to make, I don’t know that everybody is comfortable with that. It’s something I really do think it’s something you have to be born with whereas like, yeah, I’m just going to go for it. I’m just gonna jump and whatever I land on, I’ll be fine. I’ll get back up or I’ll find a new way of landing if it doesn’t work out. I don’t know that everybody just naturally has that feeling of being able to take those risks. I think that anybody can pursue entrepreneurship, but to succeed at it and to have a successful venture, I think that it’s this personality trait that you have to have from, birth really.
Russel:
All right. I can dig it and love it. I love a good born answer. Thank you for sharing that. If people want to know more about Monarch Social Media Group, where can they go?
Holly:
MonarchSocialMedia.com is our website. All of our social is linked in there and on most social media platforms except for X, it is Monarch Social Media. There are a few other agencies with that name, but we are the one with the butterfly, with the flowers, and then the other butterfly wing. Most people have a butterfly, but we are the Monarch Social Media that comes up first in search results. Then you can connect with me directly on LinkedIn. I love growing my network. It’s Holly Medwid. Especially if you’re listening to this podcast, like, send a message saying love the episode. I’d really love to hear from you.
Russel:
Love it. And I guess I forgot to ask. I know there’s gotta be some cool reason behind the name on what is it?
Holly:
It’s actually a family business name. I have an uncle that has a commercial building in Saskatoon and it’s called Monarch. The wild rice company is also called Monarch. It wasn’t because of the transformative nature of a butterfly. It really is because I couldn’t think of anything else and really, I wanted to honor that entrepreneurial tradition within my family.
Russel:
Hey, that works for me. Love a good legacy name. Well, thank you so much, Holly, for sharing all your wonderful insights. I love the approach you’ve taken to your business to social media. I really appreciate the candid and intentional nature of what you do and how you go about your agency business. It’s very inspiring. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today.
Holly:
Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Holly:
What makes me laugh is when my clients go, because we have six month minimums for contracts, like you have to sign a six month agreement. I love it when they go, oh my goodness, this actually works. I’m going, yeah, it works. Social media works. Did you think that I was just selling you snake oil? There’s one client in particular, we connected him with one of his biggest clients through social media. That realization I always find like really entertaining. I just like it when clients get to that point where they’re going, oh, this is worth every penny. And you’re going, uh huh.
Russel:
It is funny. I mean, the way you make it sound is like, you got people to initially buy into this voodoo or at least they thought they’re buying this boudou and someone told them they needed the voodoo, so they’re going to do it. But at some point then they get this epiphany, like, there’s a good way to go about this. This could be successful. That’s always great to surprise some folks.
