The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth: Small Town Business Strategy and Marketing

It's 10:30 on a summer Tuesday morning. I've got my phone in one hand, a baseball bag in the other, a client call in thirty minutes, a daughter down in the barn waiting on help with her 4H calf, and a son who still hasn't found his cleats (reminder number four). And I'm standing in my living room thinking...how do I do this?

Not how do I run a business. I'd been running one since 2017. The real question wa...

CHS Class of 2005. I had a plan, and if I'm being honest, it wasn't really mine. It was THE plan we were all given at that time. Get the degree, get the good job (the one with the benefits), stay until retirement, and maybe get a sheet cake in the break room on your last day. By 2014 I was teaching high school English in a Calvin Klein sheath dress and heels, pregnant, checking every single box that blueprint handed me...

Picture me on a Saturday night at the end of August: a wig with flips I can only describe as aggressive, a fake mustache I've sweat off more times than I can count, and a hanky in my back pocket assigned to one job. Upper Lip Patrol. I looked like a NASCAR driver who lost a bet.

That's scavenger hunt night in Cascade. Every year I write the riddles, laminate everything in sight, glue tiny race car drivers ...

We stopped recording...and then kept talking. (As one does.)

In this bonus clip from my conversation with Kristina Heinzen and Gina Martin, co-founders of Moms Connect Dubuque, we get into a question every nonprofit leader, funder, and community builder runs into sooner or later: how do you measure impact when the work is relational and generational?

Counting is easy for most of us. A thousand...

I'll pull back the curtain a little: I walked into this interview with my questions prepped, sent, and tidy. Then Kristina Heinzen and Gina Martin answered the very first one and the whole conversation went somewhere else entirely. (The good kind of somewhere else.)

Kristina and Gina met in foster parent licensing classes in 2019. They went in believing they'd be the ones rescuing kids from hard situations...

You probably couldn't tell me what your county auditor actually does. I couldn't either, until I sat down with Whitney Hein.

Whitney is the Jones County Auditor and Commissioner of Elections, and by the end of this conversation I had a whole new appreciation for how much of our daily life runs through that office: elections, property taxes, payroll, budgets, the courthouse itself. It's a job most of us vot...

Okay, let's just say the thing out loud:

You've seen the captions that sound like a robot wrote them. 

You've seen the flyers that look like every other flyer on the internet this month.

Maybe you've decided AI just isn't for you because of it.

Here's my confession: I use AI, specifically Claude, in my business every single day. And I still (mostly) sound like me...

Somebody pulls me aside about once a week now and says some version of the same thing: I've been thinking about starting a podcast.

It happens in client sessions, at conference tables, in DMs from people I've never even met in person. And every single time, my gut reaction is identical: just go do it.

So this week I'm pulling back the curtain. Not the polished, "look how easy this was" version...

Back in 2022, I had a marker board covered edge to edge with ideas. I'd write a launch date right next to each one, feel the rush of excitement, and sprint at it with everything I had. And then somewhere around week four, I'd realize I was building the plane while flying it. Sound familiar?

If you've ever had a big idea that fizzled out somewhere between the excitement and the finish line, this episode is ...

This week I'm bringing you another one from the Molly Invites the Boys to the Podcast series, and this one is personal. Nick Kleitsch has been my coaching client for the past two years, and I have watched him take everything he has learned in that season and turn it into his own coaching practice. That's not a small thing to witness.

Nick lives in Marion, works at Cedar Rapids Bank and Trust, hosts his own...

I have a confession. I've been bragging about our school district to basically anyone who will listen lately (sorry to my friends and acquaintances, you did not ask for this)...and today's guest is exactly why.

Dr. Dan Butler is the superintendent of Western Dubuque Community School District, and he's spent 23 years building a career here, starting all the way back at his student teaching days at Bernard E...

This month on The Found Podcast, we're doing something a little different. We're bringing the boys in for a few episodes (don't worry, we'll be back to our women founders soon), and first up is somebody I've admired for a long time: my friend Ed Raber.

Ed is the Director of Planning and Development for Dubuque County here in Eastern Iowa, but honestly, that title barely scratches the surface.

...

Back in May, I was on a Zoom with my friend Jill Carr, mapping out where this podcast is headed in 2026 and 2027, when something clicked. Not a big dramatic moment. Just that quiet click where somebody sees something about you that you're too close to see yourself, and the fog lifts.

Then I got off the call and went right back into the middle of a website rebuild, a personal brand strategy session, a disco...

We're over halfway through the year, which means I'm having two feelings at once: "how did we get here already?!?!" and "okay, let's actually get moving on the goals I set back in January."

If you're feeling that same tug of war, this episode is for you. I'm setting aside the usual format this week...no interview, no list of tactics, no client wins. Just five questions I need you to actually sit with, note...

If you've been sitting on an idea for your small town, a business, a side hustle, a project you keep circling back to, and something keeps stopping you every time you get close to pulling the trigger... this episode is for you.

This week it's just me. I'm walking you through six reasons why right now, in this economy, in your small town, is actually the best time you'll ever have to start building somethin...

I'm angry this week. Not flip-a-table angry. The kind of angry that makes you sit up and say: this is wrong, and I want to be part of the solution.

Rural America has been talked about, talked at, and politicized for years...by people who don't actually live here. So this week, I'm doing something different. Seven truths about rural America, backed by real data and real stories from my own small town of Cas...

This one is personal.

Episode 260 is a solo cast, and it's the episode I've been sitting with for a while. I'm sharing what's been happening in real time in my career this year, not as a pivot story or a comeback story, but as a self-leadership story. Because I think a lot of people listening right now are living inside someone else's version of success and just don't have the language for it yet.

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