Jody Colvard: Rebuilding Biz & Life After the Camp Fire
Episode #16: Welcome to the She Builds Show, I’m your host, Stefanie Olson. Today I am excited to introduce to you Jody Colvard, the Founder and CEO of FRQNCY Media Group (FMG), providing cutting-edge communities combining creativity, personal empowerment and technology to empower voices, ideas & stories through TV, Radio and Podcasting. One of the businesses within the FMG Network is the Podcast School, which has been pretty vital and imperative to helping me get my podcast going. Jody has helped me produce the episodes, she’s helped me to really discover the calling that I have felt within and to actually have it come to fruition. She has helped me and I’m super grateful to that, and I know that she has also helped many others. Jody first created FMG Network in 2004 and is in the process of relaunching after stepping back to rebuild her life after losing everything in the 2018 Camp Fire in California.
ABOUT JODY COLVARD:
Jody Colvard is the Founder and CEO of FMG Network (FRQNCY Media Group), Women in Podcasting and Podcast School, all cutting-edge communities combining creativity, personal empowerment and technology to empower voices, ideas & stories. She is also the Co-Founder of the Speaker Studios and Master Speakers Bureau. With a career spanning over 20 years in business successes, Jody has worked with celebrities and charity organizations such as Make a Wish Foundation and The Sole of Africa with Nelson Mandela, Brad Pitt and Sir Richard Branson; and with clients featured on 20/20, Good Morning America, Oprah, and Dr. Phil.
In the late 90’s, Jody and her partner Declan Dunn, who wrote the first books on Affiliate Marketing, worked together to educate entrepreneurs and fortune 500 businesses on developing online platforms, marketing and media. In 2001, with a desire to help entrepreneurs have a voice and secure their spot in this fast-growing space called the Internet, Jody created the FRQNCY Media Group (FMG Network), providing online TV, Radio and training for entrepreneurs wanting raise their voice and share their message. In 2004, Jody was introduced to Podcasting and Blogging, and quickly realized how effective they both could be in sharing thoughts, ideas and stories. She began conducting workshops and spoke on stages Internationally teaching entrepreneurs to use these new tools. Soon after, Jody went to China, becoming one of the first women to teach Podcasting in Asia, and in 2005 she created Women in Podcasting, the longest running and largest podcast directory for women podcasters.
Jody has spoken all around the world, helping individuals to have a voice, sharing the stage with; Michael Beckwith, Barbara De Angelis, Declan Dunn, Brendon Burchard, DC Cordova, Click Funnels’ CEO Russell Brunson , Yanik Silver, Eben Pagan, Zappo’s former CEO Tony Hsieh, Loral Langemeier, Mark Victor Hansen and many more…
Jody is a pioneer – an insider’s mentor – in the realms of internet marketing, new media, social networking, and business strategy development. In 2011 she distilled that knowledge into her acclaimed book and training program Be A Show Host: How to Connect Your Dream to The New World of Community, Customers and Continual Profits. This comprehensive media course has been used to teach thousands of students to develop professional, polished, and – best of all – profitable podcasts and radio shows.
An ardent supporter of various causes, from Make a Wish Foundation, where she was instrumental in making a young boy’s wish come true, in conjunction with Ron Howard of Imagine Entertainment and Robin Williams, to raising money for the homeless, American Cancer Association and the Scleroderma Society, Jody has volunteered her time and resources to help make a difference in the world.
In 2018 Jody’s world was pulled out from under her when the Camp Fire swept through her community and destroyed her home and took her loved ones. She stepped back from her media business for a while to rebuild her life. And now after the 3 year anniversary of the fire, Jody is re-emerging, relaunching a brand new TV, Radio and Podcast Network bigger and better than before.
SHOWNOTES:
• When I saw the internet come about, I thought, well, here’s an opportunity, because everybody can have that 15 minutes of fame, right? Everybody has an opportunity. So I started… Yeah, so I started dreaming about creating this online TV, radio network, I kept trying to get people to create it, they just couldn’t see it… It was the early days, everything was HTML code. And so I taught myself how to do HTML, how to do CSS, and how to do JavaScript, and all the coding, and then I created my own network. Instead of trying to find somebody else to do it, I built it myself. So there you go. She builds, I build my network. (2:35)
• I was one of the very first Women in China to teach podcasting, and it was really bizarre because when I went over there, everything was in Mandarin, when I was trying to figure out the podcast platforms…. I’m going to stop you right there. Does HTML turn into Mandarin when you’re in China? Is it all the same? No, it’s different, and plus when you go onto the platforms, everything was in Mandarin, so I had to learn different words in Mandarin that would be related to what the podcast would be. So that way when I went through their platforms, I’d be able to go through and set it up. So I learned a little bit of Mandarin to create it. (5:16)
• I was creating TV shows back then, that’s what a cooking shows and health shows and things like that, and I actually was making deals with doctor’s offices and they were going to stream my TV shows inside their doctor’s offices for their patients to watch before they go into their appointments. It gave us a way that it went beyond the old way of doing broadcasting through these major networks, you can create these little networks and have your content streamed just anywhere. And it’s even more so today. But from FMG network, I did podcasting, I created women in podcasting directory in 2005, so it was the first online directory for all women podcasters. Then I actually went in and started a podcast school. After the fire I kind of took everything down and went on hiatus to rebuild my life. I’m now in the process of re-emerging. I have a Radio, TV and Podcast Network, a podcast directory, the women in podcasting directory and I have a site called Podcast mingle, which is an online community where people can find guests for the podcast, so I have a lot of different things that are launching this fall. (10:19)
• The word no, when people have something that happens and they can’t control it, you keep saying No. No. Like, it’s going to stop it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it doesn’t… And so we couldn’t get in the next morning and then a friend of mine, she called and said you need to come over here and I can’t leave, I can’t leave. She said just come over here and just rest, she was such a sweetheart. So we went to her house, and then the next day we came back out and we were trying to… Kept trying to get in, they wouldn’t let us in. I kept trying to call animal rescue, that was such a nightmare, the phones were down and you couldn’t get a hold of anybody. (15:49)
• It’s kind of like separating yourself and it’s like, alright, now I’m on this timeline that one’s gone, and then instead of looking back and always trying to be what you were, it’s almost like there’s been this death of whatever Jody was before. Now, we have to kind of let go of that because we’re never going to find that again, it’s gone. And how do you move forward and just embrace that like this has happened, and this is me and this is my new life? With my journey with you and how much you’ve poured into me and helped me, I think in a small way when we’ve been through something like that, when we can look back on it with gratitude and be like, Okay, through that fire, all of these other beautiful things about myself have been formed and created, and I have gratitude. Are you at a place of gratitude yet? Yeah, because one of the things that I’ve found about myself is I was constantly running and I was doing a lot of things, I would say yes to everybody, and I would do all these things previously where it wasn’t always where my passion led me, and so now I’m grateful, I pay more attention to things I love, I’m conscious that life is a fleeting moment. (27:24)
CONNECT WITH JODY:
Website: https://fmgnetwork.com
Women in Podcasting: https://womeninpodcasting.com
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