Where I’ve Been + What’s Next for The Pretty Iconic Podcast

It’s been a season of big shifts… new office, new team, new energy. In this solo episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it’s really been like to restructure a business, refresh a podcast, and step into new spaces (literally and creatively).

✨ Key Takeaways:

• Behind the scenes of our new office + business restructure
• How to lead yourself through uncertainty and change
• Why storytelling and vulnerability are powerful business tools
• What’s next for The Pretty Iconic Podcast and its next chapter
  
  

🎧 This episode is for anyone navigating the messy middle, trusting a new direction, or finding the confidence to evolve publicly.

Resource Corner
Watch Brittney’s Ottawa Design Club Speech: https://youtu.be/Cfy6EkAY-gU?si=AyBOHVvN68jVPNVf 

Stay Connected

🎙️ Pretty Iconic Podcast Website: www.prettyiconicpodcast.com

🖤 Pretty Iconic Podcast Instagram: www.instagram.com/prettyiconicpodcast

💖 Brittney Megann Instagram: www.instagram.com/brittneymegann

🎙️Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us for more inspiring conversations!

#PrettyIconicPodcast #WomenWhoLead #Entrepreneurship #MainCharacterEnergy #GrowthJourney

Transcript

Hey boo's, welcome back to the pretty iconic podcast. For those of you who are brand new here, my name is Brittany Meaghan. I'm the CEO and head socialist of socials and stilettos. And this is my podcast. And it's been a little while since we've hung out. I wanna say like probably a little over half a year. And I feel like I owe you a little bit of an explanation, number one.

But number two, I have so much to fill you in on, starting with so much has changed since the last time that we sat down together. We have moved into our very own headquarters as an agency. For those of you who this is your first episode, I run a marketing agency and the marketing agency is called Socials and Stilettos. And it's been part of my vision board for probably about the past 10 years.

to have a headquarters or office, if you will, or space that we could call home, somewhere that we could collaboratively bring our team together to really allow everybody to be more creative and have somewhere that they could call home. And part of getting this office space was definitely and intentionally meant to kind of find a space or area that was big enough.

that we could bring our podcast recording into our actual space instead of using a studio. And there is so much I need to fill you in on, on my experience using a podcast studio for the first season was literally wild. So grab a snack, grab your favorite drink and let's dive into this.

saying before, one of my biggest visions was to have a creative space office, HQ if you will, that was big enough that we could bring our podcast in person. There has been a lot of back and forth with brainstorming, creative vision setting for this podcast. I had such a big vision when we first started the Pretty Iconic podcast. And for anybody who doesn't know this,

way, way, way before this podcast was alive. We had another podcast and it was called the Hey Social Babes podcast and that was incredible. It definitely served its purpose. had its era. And we got up to just under 300 episodes with that podcast. So that podcast was a completely remote podcast that was run during COVID and we used to bring in

a bunch of different business owners and female entrepreneurs, ambitious women if you will, to talk about their story and entrepreneurship and leave the lessons that they've learned along the way. ⁓ I got so burnt out from that podcast. It very quickly became so much about the guests and it being like a PR opportunity than it actually being a community at the end.

I think it's interesting and a lesson most creative people, entrepreneurs, business women, if you will, can relate to is when you have something like a podcast, like some sort of ⁓ outlet that creates space for other people to share their voice, is very easy to be taken advantage of for people to want to be on your podcast for the wrong reasons.

with the Hey Social Babes podcast, that's kind of what I ran into was this space of everybody wanted to be on the podcast, but nobody wanted to be part of the community. Literally let that sink in for a second. It was so mind boggling to me because as somebody who like running a podcast isn't cheap, like put so much money, time, energy into this podcast and it was never about me. It was about creating a space and a

space for community and ambitious women to really come together to feel seen and heard. It broke my heart to see how quickly like it became so much about like just a quick PR opportunity for a lot of people. So that was the story of the Hey Social Babes podcast. And like I said, it lived served its purpose. We got up to 300 episodes. I was starting to feel also like I had outgrown a lot of the messaging around that podcast. So

last year, 2024, when we decided to come up with another podcast. It was really from a space of me feeling like I wanted to connect and share stories of other women in the space and truly like tap into what stories, trials, tribulations.

things that you go through when you're building something that is pretty fucking iconic in the space and what happens along with that. And, you know, it took a lot of like brainstorming the visual identity of the podcast, which you can see if you're watching the video podcast behind us is very different from socials and stilettos and is very different from, you know, our standard like light pink, airy, vibey, cute little elevated.

you know, look that a lot of our brands and our agency has. And I think like the reason behind the branding of this podcast and why we created it in the way that we did was I wanted it to be like, what happens after dark? Like, what is the shit nobody is talking about? What can, what can we share? Like, what can, can we come into the space, be a little unfiltered?

I am so inspired by the Call Her Daddy podcast and the way that that podcast is produced, messaging, like it started as one thing and along the way has really become this space to unfilterly share your journey, if that's the word. And I wanted to create a space just like that for ambitious women. Somewhere we could talk about,

All the bullshit that happens, like I wanna hear about the most fucked up part of your entrepreneurial journey. Like let's make it normal. Let's make it something that is a little less of a highlight reel and something that's a little bit more of real, raw, authentic storytelling. And that is kind of reflected in the branding. It's that like after dark feel. It kind of feels a little sexy, kind of feels a little spicy.

kind of feels a little bit sassy, if you will. And that was a vision for the podcast. So, know, times have changed so much, so much since ⁓ I had my last podcast, the Hey Social Babes podcast. Now we're in a world of video content and I feel like if you have a podcast and you don't have a video element to the podcast,

that you're kind of missing an entire area of opportunity to build awareness around your podcast. Like it's kind of like you're almost, you're almost like cutting yourself off or like selling yourself short a little bit because video content is so easily like able to be cut down, used in social media, used as little cut downs to sneak peek episodes.

and everything else. it was kind of like a no brainer with this podcast that I wanted video to be an element of it. At the time, we did not have like HQ and office, if you will. So it was me working from home, our team was completely remote. It was like a very different time for socials and stilettos and me as like a business owner generally. you know,

At the time it was like, okay, what are we gonna do? Are we gonna rent out a studio and then bring in a production team to set up a multicam setup? Because that's a whole thing that I didn't even know was a thing until I started looking into it. Or can we find a podcast studio and just stop into this podcast studio and do what we need to do and leave?

You know, after searching long and far, we did end up finding a podcast studio in Toronto that was, you know, it seemed very aligned with us ⁓ and where we were at in the podcast. I feel like the T is literally T-ing. I'm like, how do I tell you this story right now?

I feel like the thing is, is like when you are creative and you're a creative business owner and you have the knowledge that I have about production, content, quality, everything, you are so much pickier than like maybe the next person who doesn't have that knowledge and is just kind of like popping in for the first time to record something and.

doesn't really know what to look for or doesn't really know how to nitpick and make sure things are to A++ quality, especially for a service that is not cheap and that they're paying so much for. And that's kind of what in long story short had happened. We found this podcast studio. It was like all seemed so great and going in there, it was like...

not the right environment to represent the vision that I had for the podcast. There was like a lot of details that were missed in recordings where we had to scrap quite a few episodes, if I'm being honest. And what was supposed to be like a very quick turnaround for these episodes? Like it was supposed to be like we went in there, we recorded over, you know, two days, 12 episodes for our first season.

And it was supposed to be as easy as like, okay, you'll get the episodes in two weeks and then it'll be done. We recorded these episodes in October of last year and we were still fighting for them up until like the end of March of this year. It's wild. Like when I tell you, I was like so many times during that experience, I was like, wait, is this the universe being like I

actually girl, maybe not with this podcast. And I think that like I had so many lessons that I've learned through that experience.

I feel like if you are somebody who has a very clear creative vision, be very careful who you hire. It's hard because I think in the creative industry, it's hard to tell people how to do their job. And ultimately, when you're hiring out, you're hiring an expert for a reason because they're supposed to be able to do maybe a job that you don't have the skills or assets or tools to do yourself.

But this specific experience reminded me as a creative, as somebody who owns a marketing agency that does in-house production for brands, that there's a reason why we should do the podcast ourselves. Like in this setting, we have full creative control over how things are done. There's no waiting around to try and, you know, chase somebody for your episodes to get, you know, very

clear things that should have been caught in the editing process to be removed. let's say, I don't know, like I just went into a coughing fit right now. Like, why would that be delivered in an episode and be included? Like, why wouldn't that be cut? You know what I mean? It's just like, you have your own vision. And as an entrepreneur, like, let this be a reminder to, number one, be very clear with your creative expectations.

whenever you're outsourcing, but to understand and stand your ground when you know something is not being done correctly.

I think that going back and looking back, would I have done it the same way? No. I think that I would have probably spent a little bit more time looking into other alternatives and how we could have a video podcast

would have loved to have had a little bit more time over that post-production piece of the puzzle and I learned my lesson through this and that's what I can share. So this coming into where have we been? ⁓ We've been researching, we've been exploring, we've been trying out different things, we've been back at the drawing board figuring out how are we going to have

this podcast be filmed, produced, created in a way that meets that level of expectation that we have, but also that we want the world to see and be able to understand what we really bring to the table as a marketing agency and as a creative agency generally. So that looks like we've...

had a few realizations. Number one, we will be filming all episodes moving forward ⁓ through this incredible platform, Riverside, if you've heard of it. ⁓ We used it before. It was a little confusing the first time I used it, but the more that you use it, the more you'll get used to it. Anybody who's looking to start a podcast. It was also where Miss Taylor Allison Swift's New Heights podcast where she announced her new albums ⁓ podcast was filmed.

automatically like here for that. And if Taylor can trust it, we can trust it too.

We will be going back to somewhat of a hybrid in-person and virtual podcast experience where I'll be in-person and in our cute setup that we have here, but I don't want to limit the kinds of guests that we can bring onto the podcast as well.

by ⁓ only filming in Toronto. So there are so many friends that I've had and created in this space digitally from across the world in so many different industries that I want to be able to have the opportunity to film with them in a way that is not limiting to location. So I'm excited about that piece. And to put the cherry on top of the cake, I have decided that we will no longer be doing seasons.

of podcasts instead of sticking to a season and a theme, we're just going to have our weekly episodes that roll out every single Wednesday at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And the theme is, you know, ambitious women creating something that's pretty iconic and sharing their story along the way. So.

I hope that you're just as excited as I am about this new era for the podcast. I'm excited to be hanging out with you guys again every single week. Not every week will we have a special guest. We're really going to be ⁓ super mindful and intentional about who we're bringing into this space and ⁓ really just making sure that everything feels super aligned with the stories that are being shared.

Not that season one was not that I mean season one I rode hard I rode hard for those guests to be on the podcast like season one outside of the production issues was like such a stand-up lineup of podcast episodes that I am so proud of hold such a special place in my heart

I think more so with this weekly episode rollout, I was just trying to really be mindful and I wanted to avoid running into the same issue that I had with the Hey Social Babes podcast and making sure that, you know, with each episode, like everything was so intentional and really well thought through and that the guests that we were bringing in are like active parts of the podcast community and the people that are already listening and loving the podcast.

I'm excited for you to see who we have coming up in some of the upcoming episodes and what those are going to look like. We have some really fun conversations lined up and I think it's going to be nothing short of pretty iconic.

So besides the podcast and this new redirection, like I was saying, there's been so much that has changed since the last episodes that we rolled out. And one of those things was definitely, you know, finding our HQ. And for anybody who knows this story, you know, it holds such a special place in my heart. The office that we have is in Central Aurora, which is just Northern GTA outside of Toronto.

And I am so obsessed with this location. Like some people don't even know this story, but like when we were location scouting for an office space, and this has been like something that's been in the works for like quite a few years now,

I remember seeing this exact office space three years ago and at the time it kind of felt a little bit out of reach. It kind of felt like too much too soon. Like it kind of felt like I wasn't exactly ready for the investment that came along with an office space and the impact that was gonna have on my business and how that was gonna look and what that was gonna mean even for me at the time. Like my husband Jake was like,

you know, I'm constantly working ⁓ outside of the house and had like a typical nine to five jobs. So our fur babies were like used to somebody being at home all the time. So that was like, really like a big question mark for me, like how's this going to ripple out into every other aspect of my life. But most importantly, like the investment that comes along with getting an office space and like growing is insane.

I don't think that people actually talk about how expensive it is to have an office space. Like it is fucking wild. Like I still to this day, I'm like, how is corporate real estate like just leasing a space so fricking expensive is beyond me. Like I don't get it. You think that it would be easy as like, okay, like to rent a home is like,

this square footage is this much, so that's how much it should be for commercial spaces. No. Triple quadruple five times that amount, and then you have the investment of an office space. It's really tricky too when you're in growth mode of your business because trying to figure out how you're going to get a space that you can afford right now but has enough room as you continue to grow over the next few years because

most office spaces want you to sign a five-year lease to start. It's not like, just a one-year lease and predicting where your business is going to be in five years. I think it's a little tricky for everyone, especially if you're in growth mode. I mean, one year in my business was such a huge quantum leap in revenue, in the size of my team and everything.

If I had gotten an office space back then, it would have been like a tiny room for maybe four desks and no studio space attached, no nothing, not a private office for myself. Like it would have looked so different. And does that mean it wouldn't have been great? No. I probably could have made it work if I'm being honest, but like I think it would have limited my growth and I would have been like really stuck.

in the ways that I could expand out my business. like I was saying, we had seen this office space a few years ago. Last year, I knew like it was gonna be the year of me finding a office space.

Over the years, we have been a completely virtual creative marketing agency.

I don't think that I realized being a fully remote team, how limiting it was to be remote and not have an in-person space for not only for us to serve our clients better, but also for us to collaborate more. If you think of being a creative marketing agency and even just needing to jump on trends, I remember being in a space where there was really relevant, really big trends happening and

I wanted to film them with our team. I wanted us to be together as a team to jump on these trends and to create relevant Reels content. Just to be able to batch them content, we were renting a studio at the time. We would go find a cute aesthetic studio in Toronto, travel down there for the day, everyone would meet and then...

Ultimately like film or content and I didn't realize until like I started like looking back to on like Bookkeeping shit, you know and like the money side of it like how stupid of a decision that was because If I had taken the amount that I was spending renting studio spaces and had just put it into an office There was really no difference like it would have actually costed me less money to have an office space

than to be renting out these cute little studio spaces to film reels or TikTok videos. So it's really interesting. Like, I mean, if you think like we were at one point going like once a week, a studio is $100 on average an hour to rent and we were there for eight day or eight hours, sorry. So like that's $800 times like four or five. Like, yeah, it was like spending more.

than actually being in an office. So it's interesting. feel like my lesson learned through this experience was definitely like trust your gut and books don't lie.

Let's just throw an example out for a second. Let's say you're looking at an office space that's $4,000 a month, but you're already spending $1,000 a week in a studio to be able to create content or have a space for your team to collaborate together. In the long run, it probably makes more sense to just grab the office, right? So that's kind of like...

what I weighed out in my brain when I was thinking about like, okay, should I get an office? Should I not get an office? Is it a lot of money? Yeah, but like, you know, we definitely can afford it. It's just like a big commitment. It's kind of like buying a house, right? This is like such a shitty example, but like, or buying a car. ⁓ Anybody who grew up in a family that like maybe had a little bit of like, I don't know, like money problems or their money mindset they grew up with.

came from like a scarcity mindset. I think that like it's harder for you to make big purchases or big commitments even when you have the room to because you're so scared of what if, right? And it's interesting because like looking back I think that I definitely like stopped myself from getting an office when maybe I shouldn't have just based out of a like place of fear of being scared on the what if. Everything

in the world, in the universe, has like a very funny way of working out for itself. So when we ended up getting this office space, like I had all these aha moments. And honestly, like I will be the first person to say like it was not easy. It took a lot to like set the space up. In between like setting up our space, we had quite a few of our team members like make the decision that they didn't want to commute to the office. So there was a lot of like

team restructuring that had to happen and like finding a team that wanted to be here every single day, especially in a world where like now there is like a lot of like remote jobs. There's a lot of jobs that you know, you can work from home. So like finding that special kind of someone who like likes wearing cute outfits in the morning, likes going to an office space, likes collaborating with others, likes to have a space to show up to every single day and then like leave their work at work.

kind of thing. And we did it and it took a little bit. Now looking back, I'm like, holy shit, I should have did this sooner. And I'm so happy and so proud of this space. So if you're listening and you know, we're in the end of the year, like this was around the time last year where I really like hit the ground running both stilettoed feet and was like, I'm finding an office space. This is not going to be another year where I go and I don't have

this space, this vision, checked off my vision board. If you're in that space of like really keeping on pushing something off your list because you're scared, let this be your permission slip that if I can do it, you can do it too. And the best things in life come through those moments of like scared decision and like you grow. Like you, when you commit to something different or you

take on a risk, like it creates a growing opportunity for you. It creates space for expansion. And that is so big, especially when you're running a business. If you don't change anything, everything is always gonna be the same. So always try to find ways to try something new to change things up so that you can keep growing and keep expanding.

I still have more updates for you guys. This is going to be a long episode. This year was also really big for me because I spoke at my very first keynote speech. If you will, I did my very first keynote speech at the Ottawa Design Club. I have spoken on so many stages. And I love the experience of being in a room filled with other ambitious people and just sharing an experience together.

This one was so different for me because I actually had to like tap into like this vulnerable side of me of sharing my story that maybe I never really like fully shared in detail before, which was wild. It was actually super scary. There was actually quite a few times like

that I almost was convinced I didn't want to do it. And if you're Izzy listening to this, Izzy's the founder of the Ottawa Design Club. I promise you, like it was a me thing. It was such a me thing, but I think that like it was so new and so scary and so different. And I was so afraid of so many things of my story not being told the way that I wanted it to be or

like people not getting it or people not resonating with it that at one point I literally was like ready to throw the towel in and be like, I can't do this. Like I'm not ready. And I'm so proud of myself for pushing through this. And if you get the chance to watch my speech, I will link it somewhere for you guys. If you get the chance to watch my speech, you'll probably see like the first half, I was like the most nervous ret.

that you will ever see in your life. I was like trying so hard not to cry. I was trying so hard to like be a bad bitch and hold my shit together. And yeah, it was really hard. It was so hard. But I'm so proud that I did it. And it was like a big thing on my vision board this year too to do. And it kind of feeds into this theme of exactly what I've been telling you this entire time. Like don't be afraid to expand.

Don't be afraid to try new things and you know when in doubt do your research figure it out. You're gonna be fine like worst case scenario It doesn't happen the way that you want it to and you learn a lesson from it. So it's fine, right?

I feel like there's definitely going to be a time where we get more into like the lessons that I've learned along the way when it comes to public speaking. ⁓ And specifically that experience doing my first ever keynote, things that I did to help make the process a little bit easier, how I just went through my process with that. So if that's something that you guys wanna know, definitely let me know and we can dive into a whole episode on that.

⁓ what else? I think like last big thing is more recently it was my 29th birthday, which was definitely feel like turning 29, I am looking back on like the past 10, 11 years of having a business and like the lessons that I've learned along the way and like what I would give

as advice to like younger entrepreneurs. It's interesting as you got older and like as you kind of start looking back on things, I think that there's so much to be said about learning and growing along the way and you know, being a young business owner, young entrepreneur like and making the decisions that maybe I made along the way or like again, like having to learn how to be this

CEO if you will, this business owner, this person who can confidently pitch and talk about herself, but like also being in my early 20s was a wild ride. ⁓ Turning 29, I'm like so excited of what's to come. I think that like I'm slowly starting to learn like how to channel this like really fierce powerhouse energy that

maybe like I've struggled a little bit with along the way. I'm like the first person to show up on this podcast and tell everybody here like how to, you know, show up in your main character energy, how to be iconic, but I'm also the first person to tell you guys this has been such a long road for me of lessons and things that I've had to learn along the way and

I think it's just like a year of reflection is what I'm stepping into and conversations around like, what does it look like to be at this space where you've spent, you know, these younger years of your 20s, building something that's so fucking iconic to now having to enter this era of like, wait, I got to like build my life out to be like just as iconic. Like, I want to be a mom. I, you know, want to do these things. I want to have babies, you know? So like,

What is that going to look like? And I definitely have some fun conversations for you planned around that topic. ⁓ And if you're looking for one to go back on, I think like the episode that we did ⁓ when we first launched this podcast with Brittany Gray, the owner of Fancy Face, like she talks a lot about this, like being a young entrepreneur, being a mom, building that out, like building both these two legacies, like your business and

that's a baby and then like your actual like family and what that looks like. So yeah, it's really interesting. I definitely think that there is so much that we have to dive into around that topic and I'm just excited. All I can say is I'm just excited for like where this podcast is headed, the conversations that we're gonna have, the things that we're gonna chat about. I would love to know from you.

What would you like to hear on the podcast and what has been a big lesson for you this year? Definitely let us know in the comments below and you know, thank you so much for being here and for sticking this wild wild west of a ride out with me. I am so excited to jump back into this with all of you and keep showing up here every single Wednesday with you with our pretty iconic podcast family and

just continuing to have these like real raw conversations about entrepreneurship, business life, and what it takes to build something that is pretty iconic. So thank you so much for all hanging out with me. Remember that you're beautiful, confident, capable, and worthy of whatever your heart desires. And here's to creating something that is pretty iconic. Wow, that was such a great sign off. I still got it. See you guys in the next one.