What does it actually take to build something that lasts, and know when it’s time to pivot?
In this inaugural episode of The Breakout Moment, Christina May and Stacey Holsinger pull back the curtain on their own journeys—from running businesses through COVID to launching, pausing, and reimagining their podcasts. They share honest insights on what worked, what didn’t, and why consistency, sustainability, and real value matter more than hype.
From the realities of content creation to redefining what “scaling” really means, this conversation sets the tone for the show: practical, unfiltered, and rooted in real experience. If you’re building a business in the messy middle, this episode will feel very familiar and give you a clearer path forward.
Christina May: Hi, Stacey.
Stacey Holsinger: Hi, Christina. How are you? Good, good. Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Breakout Moment. Here we are. Here we are. Let's talk about how we got here. Yeah. So you and I have known each other for a little while now. So for those that don't know us, let's start off with you.
Sure. So Stacy Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. I've been in business for five years now. Used to work for an engineering firm for a couple of years than a mechanical contractor running their marketing department. And then I went into business right after Covid. Like a lot of people did. And we focus on social media marketing, website copywriting, for the most part, but mostly branding.
So in the contractor space. So we serve subcontractors. Small is vendors and suppliers. Awesome. Yeah. What about you? Okay. So, for those that don't know me from the previous iteration of this podcast, Christina may I own illuminate? We are a rev ops marketing and training company. We started out as a marketing firm 13 years ago, and I've always just loved numbers, which sounds weird coming from a marketer, but I love the spreadsheets a little less on the creative side, and I remember, Donna, that, the breakout moment for me and my career was walking into this management meeting, and I used to dread my management meetings.
Like, hated them because everybody just looked at me as red on, you know, paper. Basically, you're just an expense. We can't justify this, blah, blah, blah. Even though, you know, I'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing dollars to generate traffic in the HomeBuilder building space. And in, in the construction space. And my world changed the day that I brought, you know, basically analytics into play where I was able to go.
I spent this the number of people clicked on this, these people came out, they visited these people. Book purchased. Here's your return on investment. Yeah. And the whole room got really quiet. Whole room full of men, by the way, got really quiet. And that was my moment where I went, oh this is it. This is where I go from feeling like crap.
To feeling like, you know, like my job's worth it and then I build a company around that. Right. So yeah. So 13 years later, we leaned really heavy into rev ups about five years ago, which is revenue operations. I don't know what that is. Yes. Where we really take siloed, pieces of an organization.
So marketing, sales, service ops, if you have any are peer if you're a manufacturer or things like that. We tie all those systems together. So you have a single source of truth for reporting. And then you know our marketing background comes into play because when you have the cycle of life reporting can actually tell you what worked.
And I can tell you I didn't work. And I can tell you what sales efforts are actually producing the right things. And sales can't say it's all marketing's fault anymore. I'm still a marketer at heart. So that's what we do. And you know, podcast wise, how we came together, we came together through the industry. Obviously we both work in B2B construction heavy, manufacturing heavy.
I call it, you know, the beautiful boring industries. But we also work outside of that a little bit, you know, more so in the B2B space. And I really found kind of like one you two of us were just kind of kindred spirits. But, you know, you had a podcast. I had a podcast. Mine had gone on hiatus because of life.
And yours had the circumstances had changed? Yeah. Yeah. We changed a little bit. Our. I had a podcast called the Morning Huddle Construction Show with Chad Cranky, and both of us started our businesses at the same time. And then, you know, we're just going in two different directions. Beautiful. Great directions. By the way, Chad's business is doing great.
It's blooming and blossoming all around the US. And it's just that time to, you know, go our separate ways. And now we're bringing this locally a lot of stuff has changed because the podcast that we did was when LinkedIn live was like a popular feature, you know? So we did a lot of time on LinkedIn. Yeah, we did.
We did a lot of those. We did over 100 episodes over four years. It was a lot. It was a lot every Tuesday. And we had a really good community, mostly in the DMV, but we had global reach. We had people join us from other countries. We had so many great guests. So it was a wonderful experience.
And now we're bringing this locally. I also helped start, Mickey's first podcast, which is still running strong. I help them with their finding their audience. And mic. I, by the way, is Maryland Center for construction of Mass Education and Innovation. So their podcast, they have two now and they have Build Your People, which is mostly focused on HR stuff.
But I helped with Build Your Path and their audience surrounds, parents, students to try to promote trade opportunities. So if any young person or career changer is interested in the trades, they would just listen to somebody's story that's, you know, already working in the field or in the office position. So they're still going strong. They've provided so much value for someone that's interested in a specific position.
So that's that's been great too. And then what was your podcast? It was built to market. So, we were doing podcasts and production work for clients. You're actually in the studio in our office right now. And, this was something that kind of developed out through Covid because we needed a safe space to create content.
And, you know, just the in-person events, just, you know, as we all know, kind of blew out. This didn't exist anymore. You know, I feel like Covid was the prime time for the webinar. Like so many webinars. Yeah. We're burnout. We're so burnout. Yeah. But the space got converted, in to a studio, and it stayed a studio space.
And it was really all of those endeavors are really successful for our clients. And, you know, kind of like the cobbler's kids don't have shoes typically, as you don't work on your own business. We can talk a lot about that in another episode. You can be more like therapy. But I decided okay we're going to do I'm going to do a podcast.
I'm going to give this a shot. Totally different format. You know ran a short run of episodes was really much more successful than I thought it was going to be. And it was, but it was just me. No guests. And I will tell you, the prep work involved to do a solo show. I had no idea.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, yeah. Hours of work. Hours of work. What people don't think about if you're thinking about starting a podcast is you have to be consistent. You have to find guests. You have to book them, which if you have a great network, that's not hard to do which we already had that network.
Thank God for all of our years networking. Yep. But finally paid off. Yeah. But if people don't know you, you're kind of cold calling them and pitching, like, come on, my podcast. And. And if you don't have an audience, right. It's a really hard pitch. So. Yeah. So yeah, it's I decided to do the solo show thing.
Really enjoyed doing it. But it was an incredible lift. And when you're running a company and doing all the things and, and during Covid and, and a whole bunch of other things going on in your life, it's not sustainable and you're not getting paid for your podcast. Oh, gosh. No, no, this is a labor of love. They are the big I think people look at these big podcasts like Joe Rogan and stuff like that.
But when you're in a niche market and you're just starting out like you can't, you got to prove yourself. Yeah. And you got to prove the audience numbers and all that. And that takes time. It does. It's consistency. I would if I was to give anyone listening to this. If you're looking for some tidbits on if you're if you're even thinking about doing a podcast, you know, you need to understand really the commitment that it takes.
And for solo versus guests, how hard it is to do on your own, how hard it is to do. And it's multiple people. You know, it is going to cost a little bit of money. The equipment, I mean, you can get started with your phone if you want. And please, if you're a fail fast, do it.
I'm a type A perfectionist. Obviously a little bit more goes into the setup. Yeah. But you learn a lot and I think it's one of the things too, that if you put in the time and the consistency, it's a really great space to reach audiences. So let's talk about this one. What we learned in our old ones and then what we changed for this podcast and what people can expect in upcoming episodes from us.
Yeah. So so I think the first thing biggest change obviously on my side, I when going from a solo show to, a guest show. Yes. And I will tell you already, it's 10,000 times easier for me. So that was a learn good. It's not I mean, I used to have these elaborate scripts and all the research and everything and saw that you don't have that.
It's a different kind of research with a guest. Yeah. And but I feel like the flow's a little bit more natural, etc.. So you can expect that with this show. You can expect it to be in 20 minutes. We've learned 20 minutes is a sweet spot. So we try really hard to stay within 20 minutes. So whether you're non negotiable.
No you know none I'm not doing long form. Sorry. I it loses my attention. So I'm not going to create something that loses my attention. Yeah. But I like 20 minutes is about the average commute, or you're driving to a job site or you're driving to, you know, a meeting, etc. that seems to be the happy, happy place.
Yeah. To keep, you know, your attention. And I think the big thing, too, this comes from my last podcast. It was really important to me to give a lot of value. I think one of the things that we both hit upon was this real need for actionable content for small business. Now, when we say small business, like our small businesses don't feel small, but the classification of small business is insane.
Yeah, it's 508 hundred, 500 or less employees. So I don't know how they do that, but that's how they classify. So yeah. So I mean it. Yeah. You may be huge in my mind. And you're still considered a small business, right? But you go through these growing pains and I feel as for the last 13 years, one of the things I got really frustrated with was there is a ton of content out there on how do I start my business?
Cool. But then you get a couple of years in and you're like, all right what do I do. What, what now. What. Because all of the thought leadership content is coming from big names. Big fortune 500, fortune 1000 publicly traded companies. I don't have those resources. Most people I know don't have those resources. And I don't like.
That's just not applicable. It's great theory. How does that apply in my business? Tell me what works and tell me what doesn't work. And stop wasting my time. Yeah. And I think maybe that's like the biggest thing for this podcast for me. Yeah. What about you. So I think it's unique. So there's so you were talking about scaling your business and stuff.
There's so much pressure. I've noticed because I've been in business for five years to scale my best in scale my business. I don't want to scale my business. You are to a certain extent, to a point, to a point. And then there's other business that really want to scale, but they are actually the minority. But we are connected with a lot of businesses that want to scale or have scaled a little bit or you know, different, different scale lengths or whatever you want to say.
And there'll be guests on our show which will be really fun and interesting to see. And the scaling could be just like adding a new service and increasing revenue or like rehiring or making, a whole change in leadership or, you know, strategy or there's so many different ways to scale. It's not always with people or even revenue.
It could just be like a different market, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, a pet peeve of mine is actually when people focus on headcount. That is such a vanity metric. And it actually shows me that you really don't know what scales of business, because all you're telling me is the number of employees you have is, tells me, oh, you got one heck of an overhead number.
That doesn't actually mean that you're running a successful business, the number of people that you have. So and with I were in the age of do more with less. And we're always in the age of do more with less. But now we have this new tool that we've been working with for a couple of years now.
It's really making an impact. So I to your point scale is an individual lifestyle choice is one of the first things when I talk to other business owners. It's a lifestyle choice. And, you know, you mentioned us as far as business as far as scale. Yes, I have employees. We've scaled up and down over the years, but I have always make it a point to tell people.
My goal with illuminate has never been to blow up into this 5000 person organization, because I don't want that. I don't want to deal with the pressure of that day in, day out. That's not my end goal for the company. I would rather focus on the impact and keep the team smaller. Yeah. And that is truly a personal choice every business owner makes.
And I, I really hate that we shame business owners on that decision. I know I it drives me nuts. Drives me nuts. Yeah. The past five years is a lot of conversations for me. When are you going to make your first hire. What are you going to do this one. And I'm like, do I have to. And then like I would have those conversations with the other business owners and I'm like, no, you don't have to.
And it doesn't mean I don't have employees. I have partners I work with. So when I have large projects, I have partners that I trust that we've been doing it for years before five years, and we team together to produce whatever we need to produce for our client. That's great quality. So there's just different ways of scaling and doing business and getting the job done.
So I'm excited to have like a mix of guests coming on. So speaking of that, I can maybe tease. Yeah, let's talk about some of our guests. So this podcast is based in Frederick, Maryland. So we have Frederick is booming over here. We have a lot of businesses moving here. We do, we do. It's crazy. We have I won't share with who.
Yeah, but we have a contractor that just opened shop and brought their business to Frederick. So they're expanding and would love to learn why they chose Frederick and what they're expanding on and growing. We have another mechanical contractor. I've known them forever. Anyone that's followed me and knows exactly who I'm talking about. And they're classified as small business.
I always was in charge of their prequels and everything, but they are very not a small business. They're one of the the largest mechanical contractors. Definitely in the Mid-Atlantic region. And their company culture is so great. I mean, they have the best tenure. People that stay there forever. So just recently, I think they're celebrating their 50th anniversary.
But what's unique and what I would love them to talk about is they've been a family company forever. And this is the first year, at least last year, I can't remember. They're bringing employees into the ownership. So it's that's going to be a fun conversation because, yeah, so many of our, you know, companies that we work with, especially in the B2B space.
It's a family affair. It it it really is a family affair. So I think that's really important to kind of dive into. What are the dynamics, what does that look like? Because you don't see a lot of this conversation out there. So that's exciting. Yeah, it's really exciting. A lot of people right now, and at least our industry are retiring.
So they're really trying to be really strategic on planning five years in advance of are they selling the company? Are they going to make it an Esop, which is really popping up a lot, a lot of people, like I was talking to my dad the other day. He's like, what the heck is an Esop? It wasn't a thing back then, I know.
So those are really popping up, with contracting. Oh, it's Bianca. That's what I think. It's it's a it's a much bigger trend. I can't wait to dive into that. So, yeah, that's a good thing. Guests coming on. So, you know, I think I'm excited to, you know, take what we've learned and and really pull together something that, you know, small business owners, directors, somebody who's working even and within a small business can, you know, you can look at these unique stories, see what the challenge was, how they met that challenge.
And, you know, walk away within 20 minutes. Our my hope is, is you not only walk away feeling good about like what you heard and it was entertaining and. Yeah. And you know, but you actually get something actionable out of it that you can take back and implement within your business. Not something like, oh, that's a great theory, but, you know, there's 80,000 steps to that.
And that is only maybe 20% applicable to my business or, well, I don't have an entire marketing team inside or I don't have an entire ops side, or I don't even know with Red ops is or we don't have an ERP or whatever those things are. I'm really hoping that these stories, you know, that we share with from our guests can really highlight what those what those little breakout moments were.
And, you know, because I really do truly feel it's it's those it's a string of moments. It's the consistency of those moments is really what pushes us forward. Yeah. So I'm excited. Me too. It'll be fun. It will be fun. Yeah. And I will be behind the scenes. Yeah. By the way, I'm just here for an episode or two.
Yeah. I will be behind the scenes. I'll be securing the guests. I will be you know, navigating some of the production of the show. So I'm excited. I'm so excited to have a partner in that because I love being out front. Yes. Doing the research, talking to the guests. And that's one of the main reasons we got together.
I love being the creative behind the scenes. And you're the analytic person. I'm a great match for the young. Yeah, we are, we are. Absolutely we are. So I'm so excited. I'm just sometimes the universe just works. Yeah. So. Yeah. All right, well, we will see you on the next episode. Yeah. Of the breakout moment.