IAM1185- Founder Provides Space for Supporting Clients and Freelancers

Melissa Gruhin is the Founder of Two Halves, a custom-tailored strategic marketing agency for both brands and freelancers. Melissa has a decade of experience in branded, scripted, stand-up entertainment, and digital media marketing. Her past roles have been at Buzzfeed, FOX, and Netflix, among others. After almost three years as a Brand + Content Strategy Consultant, Melissa experienced firsthand just how difficult it can be on your own in the world of freelancing and sought out every community and collective she could to support her on her journey to success as a solopreneur. Honing her skills in strategic storytelling and combining her mission of creating space where both clients and freelancers feel seen, heard, and most importantly, supported, Two Halves was born.

• CEO Hack: Giving myself space to start my day slowly
• CEO Nugget: Trust the process
• CEO Defined: Leading with empathy and transparency

Website: https://www.twohalves.one/

www.melissagruhin.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/twohalvesagency

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:48 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Melissa Gruen of 2 Haves. Melissa, it's great to have you on the show.

00:55 – Melissa Gruhin

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

00:58 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely excited to have you on as well. Before I jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Melissa so I can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Melissa is the founder of 2 Haves, a custom-tailored strategic marketing agency for both brands and freelancers. Melissa has a decade of experience in branded, scripted, standup entertainment, and digital media marketing. Her past roles have been at Buzzfeed, Fox, and Netflix, among many others.

After almost 3 years as a brand and content strategy consultant, Melissa experienced firsthand just how difficult it can be on your own in the world of freelancing and sought out every community and collective she could to support her on her journey to success as a solopreneur and honing her skills in strategic storytelling and combining her mission of creating space where both clients and freelancers feel seen heard and most importantly supported to haves was born melissa super excited to have you on the show and all the awesome things you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:50 – Melissa Gruhin

I am ready.

01:51 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:59 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah, so, Well, again, thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So, as you mentioned, I worked in entertainment marketing for many years. I started out my first job out of college doing branded content production and campaigns at a media agency. From there moved into social marketing as well as traditional marketing at a variety of different entertainment entities and something always felt like it was missing. I couldn't really put my finger on it, but I decided to go freelance at the end of 2018 and I had no idea what I was doing.

But I had all of my corporate marketing experience and so I reached out to everybody I knew and I said, hey, I am starting this journey as a freelancer. I didn't even really know how to market myself. I was like, I'm good at social media, I'm good at marketing, I don't really know what that's going to be. And the first 6 months were definitely rough as a freelancer, especially if you're new, but also without the lack of support around you that you do have at a traditional company, you're kind of off in the wilderness.

So as you mentioned, I really, sought out a bunch of different collectives, sought out different communities, and really noticed through that journey that a lot of freelancers struggle. They struggle, but they do it because they love the opportunity to really hone their skills in a specific thing, market themselves, and also have the flexibility that freelance offers. And so as I started thinking about that, I was like, wouldn't it be amazing if there was an agency that really focused on supporting freelancers while also in an intern supporting brands?

And so I sat on that for a very long time. And I was like, you know, I don't think I'm ready yet. I really want to dig my heels into this freelance thing and see where I net out. About 2 and a half years later, I decided to launch this agency. So we're just a couple of months in. We started 4 months ago, so that was May, in an official capacity. I was kind of really working under this model in an unofficial capacity and kind of working in this way with clients.

But so far really seen a lot of positive feedback from the freelance community, as well as brands that we're connecting those freelancers with. So I can definitely also talk a little bit more about our model and things like that. But so far really it just excited about the whole journey and excited to see other people getting excited about working with us too.

04:32 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it's definitely an exciting thing, as you said, like a lot of times when you kind of lean into, some of the things that we feel like are missing, we feel like it might be that, and we get that opportunity to kind of, lean into that sometimes awesome things happen because not only, I always say like a lot of times when we tell our story, if we're kind of leaning into who we are and our mission and our vision and all those things, we start telling other people's stories and having that connection as well.

But I love that wilderness kind of metaphor that you talked about. It does definitely feel like you're in the wilderness and things like, okay, I think I should go left, but oh no, there's like a river there. So that's not the way to go. Or I think I should go right. You kind of don't know how to navigate or feel like you're by yourself. So I love, you know, that support and that connectiveness and all the things that you kind of talked about and what kind of fueled you to where you are now.

05:13 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah, definitely. It is. I think what has been so interesting to me throughout this process, I feel very lucky in that I think starting out in the corporate environment gave me that one understanding of what works in business in a way that had I started as freelance, I don't know if I would have had that experience.

And I really commend freelancers that start as freelance and build their companies and their solo entrepreneurship in that way from the ground up. I don't know if I could have done it myself. But really, my goal is to kind of use that experience to help others. And I really truly believe that all freelancers should feel empowered to continue staying freelance if they want to. And it is definitely hard, but the risk is worth the reward, I would say.

05:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, like you said, if you make that choice you decide that you want to. And a lot of times, like you said, in telling your story, they're very mission-driven. They have these ideas of what they wanna do and see within the marketplace and fulfill that. And the kind of lean into that allows that to happen. And so I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you mentioned a little bit about 2 Half. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about that agency and how you kind of touched on how it was structured as well too.

06:19 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah, absolutely. So at our core, the bread and butter of what we do is strategy. So my background I was as a freelancer, when I finally figured out how to market myself, and what I was really, really good at was brand and content strategy consulting. And so that is at the core of what we do. So we do brand consulting, oh sorry, brand strategy, campaign strategy, and content strategy. In doing that work, I will go out into the market, Let's say we are working with, as an example, a CPG brand.

I will make sure that the strategist who is working on that project has a lot of background and experience in CPG. We even drill down to see if they have experience in that specific sector that the client needs. From there, from the content strategy, And typically what we do, a really large component is recruitment strategy. So I have a chief recruitment officer, Lindsay. She is a fantastic, wonderful person, and she's really good because she's been working in the creative freelance market for so long.

She's really good at finding the right talent for a client's specific needs. So once we build out that content strategy, we say, okay, based on what you want to execute, what we've talked about and drilled down to, you're gonna need X, Y, and Z positions. These positions might not need to be specialized, they might need to just have the specific skills, but these positions are really gonna need to be specialized in your industry. And we talked to the client about that.

And what we do when we get to the execution phase, they decide, if they wanna take that strategy, say thank you very much, we're going to execute this on our own. That's amazing and that's a win and we feel really excited about that. The other option is we can do that direct recruitment for them. So if they decide, you know, really, we only need a couple of freelancers, We don't need the full agency experience. We're going to have those freelancers in-house. Can you do the recruitment for us? That's absolutely something that we do. And then the third tier of that is actually the full agency experience.

So they say, we want you to do the recruitment and we want you to oversee the project. So that could be anything from a one-time project or a monthly retainer that we do social media management or other elements. And we then go out and recruit based on their needs. And the client actually, if they want it, they are able to see the entire recruitment process and actually select their internal agency team, which is something we really pride ourselves on. So the client feels really excited about the team that's going to be working on it, whereas, in a traditional agency model, you get what you get.

And oftentimes that's wonderful and great and it's a great partnership, but we really feel strongly, especially with a lot of the clients that we work with, we want you to feel like we are an extension of your team. And feeling that way comes down to knowing who we're really hand-selecting to make sure that everything you want to accomplish, all the goals you want to achieve are going to happen under a team that you were actually able to select.

09:08 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself or the business or a combination of both but is that thing that you feel is such a part of what makes you unique?

09:16 – Melissa Gruhin

I think it is. And you really hit the nail on the head, something that we are really a human-centered business. I like to think of myself that way in terms of the way I do business because ultimately I want to create change in this way and create a better world for freelancers because I in so many ways still feel like I am one. And so, I really see how the lack of support and resources and all those things that freelancers just don't get because they're not in that corporate environment. I wanna try to create those things as much as possible, while also creating flexibility.

The other thing that I would say in terms of our secret sauce and something we're working towards in the future, and again, we're still very new and small, but I want to create a community of freelancers and kind of build that element up so that we're able to offer resources, events, discounts on software, they need all of those things. So we're still figuring out how we can make that happen down the road. But ultimately, if I can, you know, the reality is we are creating this database of freelancers, every freelancer in the database.

It's not, I mean, if it happens, amazing if everybody can work with us, that'd be fantastic. But the reality is it's probably not possible. But if we are able to host events or if connect people through our database and they find other work outside of the work that we're doing, that is a wind in my mind, because ultimately they're able to do more of the work that they love. So again, really focusing on that human-centered type of business, thinking about what people want and need and how we deliver it to them on both the freelancer side and the client side.

10:45 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And Wayne Grixby has this quote where he says, I don't skate to where the puck is, I skate to where the puck is going to be. And it kind of reminded me of that when you were saying like, also, like being able to kind of literally and probably figuratively be able to kind of host the cocktail party where people get the opportunity to connect and there might be opportunities that come about that, we never would have thought possible, but just getting that opportunity to kind of provide that platform for that to happen.

So I love what you're doing and obviously what you're working on as well too and all the exciting things that will come from that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit.

11:15 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah.

11:15 – Gresham Harkless

And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:23 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah, I will say, and I am, I, I am a recovering workaholic, and I'm really trying to in my business, you know, it does of course take a lot of work and a lot of energy. But I used to, especially when I was working in a corporate environment, I'd wake up, and I'd immediately start working. And then I'd work until my eyes bleed for lack of a better term.

And what I've really noticed on the days that I wake up and I move my body in some way, take time to walk, like have a walk with my dog, listen to a podcast, and just have, even if it's 30 minutes, I love to have an hour before I really start my day, have my coffee and just relax before even looking at technology.

It is such a game-changer. And again, I'm not perfect. There are days where I'm like, oh, like I just need to get started on work. But those days I often notice I feel more sluggish. I feel a little bit more drained by what I'm doing. Whereas when I start my day with movement in some way, and also a lot of sleep, because I also require naps, but I don't take them. But when I'm really giving myself space to start my day slowly, the day feels so much more energized and it feels so much more rewarding.

And I feel good in the work that I'm doing versus I have to wake up and do all of this work and everything is just like a dark cloud. It really helps clear my mind. And so the consistency in that, it's not always perfect, but when I do do it, I really feel better in my

12:55 – Gresham Harkless

day. I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

13:05 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah. I would say for me, it is really about trusting the process as something for my younger self. You know, I thought that in a lot of ways, if I didn't do a certain thing or if I didn't work that 12 plus hour a day, or if I didn't, you know, so many things I was like, all of these things are in my control. Whereas sometimes you have to trust the process and say, okay, it's not gonna be perfect. It's actually never going to be perfect.

And ultimately when you embrace that, you kind of are able to see certain things that are working better than you'd hoped and certain things that you thought were gonna work great, maybe aren't right. So ultimately kind of being open to that change and open to really just saying like, I'm going to see how this goes and I'm going to see how it works out. And there are going to be things that go beyond my expectations. There are things that are just not going to rise to the top and that's really okay. And accepting that it's hard, but accepting that I think has been a real big game changer for me.

14:07 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I love that. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Melissa, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:18 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah, I think honestly, it's leading with empathy and transparency. I don't see it enough in these big corporate structures. And I think with the being really small right now and in the growing phase, I really have wanted to be intentional about how am I growing a values-based business. The 2 things that have been core to what I do, especially being a human-centered business, which I want to maintain are having empathy, and understanding that we are all human beings and we are going through different things, some that we might know about others that we don't and trying to lead with this idea of, can I put myself in somebody else's shoes?

15:01 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate you for being that trailblazer and having that as a foundation within your business. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

15:15 – Melissa Gruhin

Yeah, well, thank you again so much. This has been so amazing. I would say my door, is the one thing I'd want readers or listeners to know, my door is always open. And so reach out to us. We would love to hear from you, whether you're a brand looking for strategy work or creative execution or you're a freelancer who really wants to get involved from a work perspective or community perspective, you can find us at 2 halves dot one that's TW0HALVES dot one, and then on Instagram at 2 halves agency.

We'd love for you to follow us. We'd love for you to reach out. And again, I truly have an open-door policy and love to meet new people. I love making connections and I love connecting other people too. So really don't hesitate to knock on my virtual door, I would say.

16:03 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. To make it even easier to knock on that virtual door, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But truly appreciate you, Melissa, again, for all the awesome work you're doing and the time you took today. And I hope you have a phenomenal

16:16 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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