Women I Want You to Know by Andrea L. Johnston™

Message, Medium & Messenger: Mary Corcoran on Reaching People

• Andrea L. Johnston • Season 1 • Episode 13

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What does it take to walk away from a successful corporate career and build a multi-million dollar movement in seven months with no map?

In this episode of Women I Want You to Know by Andrea L. Johnston™ Podcast, Andrea sits down with Mary Corcoran, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Save America Movement, the cross-partisan organization she launched with Steve Schmidt to slow the rise of authoritarianism and renew American democracy. Mary calls herself a recovering corporate executive. She spent a career in communications and marketing, the kind most people spend decades building, and then left it behind after watching a gap open up that no one was filling. What she traded was comfort. What she gained was a first-time founder's education, learned in real time and at full speed.

Mary and Andrea unpack the strategy underneath the movement, and it maps directly onto building any business. Mary breaks an overwhelming mission into its parts and reaches her audience through three things: the message, the medium and the messenger. She makes the case that trusted local voices outperform polished national campaigns every time, that a nurse, a member of the clergy or a veteran in someone's own community will move people in a way that linear television never will. For any founder deciding where to put limited dollars, the lesson is to build around who your audience already believes, not around your budget.

This conversation goes well beyond politics. Mary talks about leaning on a career and a life's worth of network to build something high stakes and high risk, why she had to shed the fear of being publicly wrong, and how she keeps an organization agile without letting it tip into chaos. She is candid about the all-encompassing reality of founder life and the discipline it takes for a woman to carve out time for her family inside it. Her closing ask is one any time-poor founder can act on: if you have five minutes and a phone, you have enough.

This episode is for the woman who is building something no one has built before,who is tired of sitting on the sidelines and is ready to act on a big mission without a roadmap.


In this episode, you'll hear:

  • Why leaving a successful career costs comfort, and why that discomfort is also the benefit
  • How Mary built a multi-million dollar nonprofit in seven months by leaning on her network
  • What the message, the medium, and the messenger reveal about reaching any audience
  • Why trusted local messengers outperform polished national campaigns every time
  • How breaking an impossible goal into parts keeps a team from burning out
  • Why being willing to be wrong and pivot is the hallmark of a successful founder
  • How Operation Liberty in Los Angeles became a pilot before scaling to other cities
  • What it means to stay agile without becoming completely chaotic
  • The three actions any founder can take in under thirty minutes
  • Why every dollar counts, whether you give five or five hundred


Episode Resources


Timestamps

(0:00) Welcome and intro to Mary Corcoran 
(1:17) Leaving a corporate career behind 
(3:05) Defining the Save America Movement mission 
(6:17) Setting big goals without burning out 
(7:52) Message, medium, and messenger explained 
(11:29) Engaging communities beyond the screen 
(12:44) Leaning on your network as a founder 
(16:58) Inside the Operation Liberty program 
(21:24) Being willing to be publicly wrong 
(27:45) Three actions in under thirty minutes 
(31:03) The women running for office now



SPEAKER_00

I am a first-time founder. Like, I have never started something completely on my own and grown it into what is a multi, multi, multi-million dollar nonprofit, like in seven months. It's like running down a road and not having a m.

SPEAKER_01

This is Women I Want You To Know. Hello, and welcome back to Women I Want You To Know. I'm Andrea Johnston, and I am very happy to welcome Mary Corcoran today to the show. Mary is the co-founder and executive director of the Save America movement. She's also a close personal friend and someone I have had the great pleasure of working with multiple times over the last several years. Mary, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. It's so good to see you again. And I'm really excited to dive into what you are doing in this new phase of your life and the incredible movement that you have co-founded and what that means as both an entrepreneur, because even though it's a politically oriented organization, it's still incredibly entrepreneurial. And you have really been focused on building and scaling something from the ground up. So let's dive in, shall we? Let's do it. All right. So I've heard you describe yourself as a recovering corporate executive. You had a very successful career in communications and marketing, and you had really the kind of career that many of us spend decades building. So, what was the actual moment when you knew you couldn't stay on the sidelines and you had to jump in on the political front? And what did it cost you to make that leap?

SPEAKER_00

So it really was after the inauguration, which was just a little over a year ago and it feels more like 10 years ago at this point, but I was just watching the executive orders kind of come down the pike and they were coming so fast and so furious. And I didn't see any opposition really in the marketplace, if you will. And that was clearly a gap that needed to be filled. And typically politics doesn't get really get revved up until you're in the midst of an election year. And it was clear to me that things were moving so quickly that if we didn't get organized in some form of opposition to the Trump administration, that we may not make it to the midterms. So that's what really pushed me off the sidelines and kind of put me in a situation where I ended up starting something from scratch. You know, in terms of what it, you know, has cost me would be comfort. The benefit of being uncomfortable all the time is also something that is immeasurable in a way.

SPEAKER_01

And I think that that description of being uncomfortable is something any of us who have been founders can really relate to because there's so much discomfort in leaping into the unknown and having to build on your own and chart a course that has not been previously charted. So I completely relate to what you just said. I'd love to give people a better sense of what Save America movement is all about. And all of the materials and your socials, you talk a lot about being right versus wrong, not left versus right. I also find it really interesting that you are working alongside former Republicans, people who used to be on the other side of the table. I know you have a background in democratic politics. So, as someone who really built a career in communications where framing and coalition building, alignment are really everything, you know, what have you had to unlearn to build this kind of partnership? And what is it that Sam is really focused on?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I the the insight when when I started this organization with my co-founder Steve Schmidt, who, yes, as you noted, former Republican and lifelong Republican up until Trump became the face of the Republican Party, was that the issue and the movement to maintain democracy in the United States is not a partisan issue. Having a strong democracy that is anchored by our constitution is something that a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, and someone who has never even thought about politics, but just happens to be an American can get behind. So we wanted to create an organization and a movement that there the only litmus test is that you want the Democratic Republic of the United States to continue. And also, we believe that America is a force for good in the world and a force for good for its citizens. And maintaining that democracy and fidelity to the Constitution is actually a moral imperative.

SPEAKER_01

Are there things that have been challenging or unexpected in your efforts to build collaboration and to create that alignment, find common ground to your point, the right versus wrong?

SPEAKER_00

When you are an outside group that doesn't have fidelity necessarily to a political party, it can be challenging because political parties are built to maintain their own power. So that's a long way of saying one of the biggest challenges has actually been working within the construct of democratic politics in such a way that actually will ultimately help them.

SPEAKER_01

Your stated mission, as I understand it, is to slow or stop the rise of authoritarianism in the United States while setting a stage for the renewal, reformation of US democracy. These are very bold founder scale goals. You know, you're basically trying to combat MAGA and save America, as your name suggests. How do you set goals of that magnitude and keep your team from burning out when these stakes feel almost existential at times?

SPEAKER_00

The way to do it, and it's not just for my team, but for me, is kind of breaking it down, right? So, like, yes, it's a broad, you know, of course, slowing and stopping the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, like, holy cow, that's a big, big goal. Um, and you got to kind of break it down into its component parts. Like, what are the key kind of root causes of this? And then how are we going to stop it? And some of it is short-term stuff that we really have to do in the short term, and some of it is the longer term stuff. But, you know, kind of the short short term is okay, like very simply, how do we educate, activate, and in some cases persuade Americans to understand the impact of the policies of the Trump administration on their lives, on America, and on people around the world? How do we really powerfully, authentically, relevantly help people understand that so they are moved to action? Whether that action is they're gonna get involved with us, they're gonna get involved with another group, or simply that they're gonna register to vote for the first time in their lives. So one of the things that we do a little differently than kind of the average political communications campaign, shop, committee, whatever, is we embrace the fact that the world has changed as it relates to media consumption, as it relates to trust, as it relates to how people are going to consume and interact with information. So typical political campaigns often spend a significant amount of the money that they raise on paid media, even linear television advertising, which I know sounds insane, but it's true. We, as people who are living in the year of 2026, and we're also not media consultants, understand that that's actually not how people like take in information and political advertising is actually deeply mistrusted. So you actually have to talk to people through there's three things. It's your message, it's your medium, and it's your messenger, right? So, what are the messages that actually are gonna be relevant and people are gonna care about, right? What's the messenger that you can deliver those messages through that's gonna be trusted? And oftentimes that's gonna be a local person, not a national person. And there are three categories of people that are still trusted in the United States right now: nurses, clergy, and veterans, which is why those three categories are huge constituencies of the Save America movement and messengers for us. So if you work with messengers that are trusted in local areas with messages that really matter, right, that are not dial tested to death, that are just obvious and authentic and relevant, right? And then you think about your medium. Like, is linear television going to be your medium? Give me a break, man. But still, like 80% of political money is going into linear television.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and I want to stop you there because I think this is like a really valuable conversation to translate back to entrepreneurship and founder mentality overall, right? Yes. Because what you're talking is about in this case is how you look to reach your audience. But I think for any of us starting and building a business, it comes back to what are we gonna do? So I love what you said, which is first you're gonna break it down. How do we get from point A to point B? We have a big goal, we have big ambitions, but we can't get there overnight. So, what is the pathway to get from where we are to where we want to go? The other thing I love about what you're saying is the importance of your marketing spend and strategy, right? And I think I really want to reiterate this for our listeners the message, the medium, and the messenger. Because I think all of us in building a business need to think very strategically about all three of those things in order to maximize our reach and impact. So I just love what you're saying. And I want to make sure that not only from people hearing this in the political framework, but understanding how this then translates back to building a business of any kind, because these are like salient points. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00

No, of course. And, you know, so that's you know, the first piece is like, how do we do that? And how do we do that effectively? And the more people that are are educated, activated, and persuaded, like the bigger impact we're gonna have, not only in November, but over time, because you have a more civically engaged America that goes beyond a televis a television ad that you see once or probably skip past, even if you see it on YouTube, but you're actually engaging in content and conversations that make you think, that get you involved, that get you engaged in in a civic way in your community. And at the end of the day, that's what we have to do. We have to get Americans engaged civically in the United States, beyond a screen, because that's not real engagement. It doesn't mean that um paid advertising and social and all that stuff isn't isn't important. And we are way like way down the skis on our all of our social, and we can talk about that later. But the importance of interacting at a community level, um, I think has been undersold and overlooked, um, particularly by, frankly, the Democratic Party in the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I think, you know, this can be true of a politician, a party, a business owner, a brand. You can totally lose your audience. You can lose your customers, you can lose sight of the people that you're trying to connect with because you no longer are focused on connection. I love that you talked about social media and the importance and relevance of that. I'm also going to ask you, because this is something that I talk a lot about with my clients and with my founders, is the importance of network and leaning into the in-person connectivity, the in-person opportunity to dialogue and engage in a meaningful conversation. And, you know, I would assume that that also factors into how you are growing and scaling with Sam.

SPEAKER_00

A hundred percent. And, you know, I'm so glad that you brought that up, Andrea, like the network piece, because I am a first-time founder. Like I have never started something completely on my own and grown it into what is a multi, multi, multi-million dollar nonprofit, like in seven months. Amazing. It's like running down a road and not having a map. What I did, and it and it's it really served and saved me was I was like, who do I know that knows how to do this, that knows how to do this, that that I can lean on, that I can trust. Um, particularly when you're in this kind of the entrepreneurial situation, which is pretty high stakes and to some degree high risk. Trust for me like was really important. The partners that I'm working with, the the my the people that I'm working with. And leaning on a career and life's worth of my network to build this was the only way to do it. I think it touches on the importance of for everyone, whether you're a founder or you're thinking about being a founder or just a human on earth, to lean in and nourish those connections, um, your friendships and your and your collegial connections. Because you never know how they're gonna come into play when you're doing something that you probably have no business doing and you're just figuring it out.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's more that, you know, you're doing something that you really believe in that's never been done before. And so you're having to write the playbook on your own. Which again, you know, I think a lot of people building businesses that they really believe in and believe fit an unmet need in the market feel the same way. You know, they're writing the playbook for the first time, and hopefully it makes it easier for those who come behind them, but it doesn't make it any easier in the moment. Right. But you know in your heart that you're right. Like and you know in your heart you're doing something important.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that's what really matters. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Systems don't like to break. So there are systems that operate in this country in the context of politics. And this is this honestly, this is true for any industry where there's like tried and true ways of doing things and business that business models that exist that people don't want to break because it it's hard and it impacts things. And breaking things is, you know, people don't like that in any industry, whether it's whatever, and you come in and you see an inefficiency or you see something that's not working right, so you're gonna break it and create something new, there's gonna be a lot of resistance to that. Right. Like a lot.

SPEAKER_01

Because someone's on the losing end of that or is perceived to be on the losing end of it, and it's a threat to their power and their influence. That's right. So there's a lot of vested interest in not having change for the established, whatever the industry or organization may be. Even if it's not working anymore. Correct.

SPEAKER_00

For the customer profiting from it, whether it's working or not. Exactly. And in this case, the customers are the voters, right?

SPEAKER_01

I actually love that you just called voters customers because I bet people listening have not always thought of themselves as customers of the government. And yet we pay through our taxes for everything that the government does, every choice they make, every salary of an employee, all of the things. Yes, we're investing. And we should be the customers of the goods, and we should be able through the demand curve to have impact and influence over what gets done. No kidding. But I don't think people always think of themselves as having that customer voice when it comes to the government.

SPEAKER_00

You know, in the context of politics, it's it's actually the donors that are the investors. What are they getting back for their investment? That's the world I'm living in. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I want to shift gears slightly because I think that your Operation Liberty program is really compelling and something I'd love to share with our listeners. So Operation Liberty was on the ground in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis. You were documenting the real impact of the ICE raids on families, communities. You also provided rapid on-the-ground response. That was not an accident. You did that very intentionally. How did you build an organization that could move that fast and so quickly? I mean, as you said, you haven't even been an organization for that long, yet you were able to get these groups deployed into these cities. And that work must have been just so challenging and so heart-wrenching. So, how do you also lead a team through work that's so heavy and hard?

SPEAKER_00

The insight for me was when I was in LA and there was just these raids happening like all the time, it was like nothing I've ever seen or experienced in my life. And what I knew was that if people all over the United States could feel and understand even a little bit how the people in LA were feeling and the experience they were going through in the United States of America, both from the actual scene of the violence, but also the impact on the families, the communities, the economy, that public opinion would start to shift. And again, educate, activate, persuade. So that's where Operation Liberty came from, because I was like, we need to get in there and we not only need to help the community, we need to partner with them. And then we need to we need to record what's going on here and we need to distribute it. Like we need to get it to national news, we need it, we need to get it on owned platforms, we need to get it on social platforms. And again, this was way back last summer. We actually bought these like vans. We staffed them with clergy, veterans, immigration attorneys, and a wartime correspondent videographer, people who are used to running towards the violence versus away from it. And the reason for the coalition of the clergy, the veteran attorney in dress is because it's a deterrent for violence. So, anyways, what we did was we um partnered with the rapid response teams that were already on the ground in LA, and we started deploying these vans to where the raids were happening. And we essentially took that same approach. And when they moved the focus to Chicago, we did the same thing. We moved, we literally moved the teams, we partnered with the folks on the ground there. And now, nine months later, of course, we were in Minneapolis as well. We have literally thousands of hours of video. And certainly not only because of us, but I can say that I believe that we contributed to the shift in public opinion around ICE and the raising of awareness around that. Part of doing this, this work is being very um agile. And my thing is we need to go where we're needed, but now we've changed our focus to the detention centers because we want to raise awareness around what's happening in the detention centers. There's not as significant public awareness around those as there now is about the ice rates.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just gonna ask you to take a step back and think about what you accomplished with Operation Liberty in the context of that was a major program that your organization launched. Yes. And when you talk about the thousands of hours, when you talk about moving physically these vans and people from place to place, just for our listeners who may be thinking about their own business and launching major programs from the ground up, like how did you undertake something like that in such rapid succession? Did you have to bring in external partners? You know, what was the budget planning process like? How did you kind of break it down? Did you have a strategic plan? You know, just kind of give us some insight into what made it possible to do something of that magnitude in such a compressed time.

SPEAKER_00

What I would say is being willing to be wrong. And like honestly, because when you're moving that fast and doing that complex of an operation with volunteers and like the whole shebang, you know, the deployment in Los Angeles was not flawless. Um, what we we made mistakes, we learned a lot. Like it got a lot smoother when we were in Chicago, Charlotte, and Minneapolis because we had it down. When we did it in LA, there was no roadmap.

SPEAKER_01

Um it's almost like a pilot. You almost used LA as your pilot right and then you took those learnings and how you implemented in other markets.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good way to put it. Um so you know we had to kind of fail fast in a few areas and be willing to do that and be willing to shift some of the ways that we were doing things. One of the things that I think might be um relevant for your viewers is being willing to not be stuck in a decision that you've made just because you already made it. Because it might be wrong.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And especially when you're doing things that have never been done before, you're going to have to try some things and you're going to be like, oh, you know what? That wasn't quite the right thing. We got to move on and do this. And there's some things that I've even said publicly that we were we were going to do that we are no longer going to do because they no longer make sense because the political realities on the ground have changed.

SPEAKER_01

That's actually such an important point because the political landscape and what's happening in America has been changing rapidly week to week sometimes day to day. But that's not untrue about the broader market and economic environment. So anyone who is running a business today has got to be agile, as you said, and responsive to the market forces because what works yesterday is not going to necessarily work tomorrow. So I love that framing in terms of how you've been able to respond to what's working and what's not, but also to meet the needs that are evolving in real time. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

And I mean honestly the the trick of it is to be agile without being completely chaotic. Well when you figure that out let me know like like that's and it's balance and I I I like I I feel like I'm figuring it out every single day. I feel like a lot of people are so afraid of being wrong um and they're so afraid of failing and I think people are afraid of like being embarrassed. And I think one of the things that I've realized is that I have to shed all of that. Like if if this is actually going to happen and we're going to do this like I have to be okay with all of that. And particularly in this context, I actually have to be okay with that publicly because I'm talking to the press I'm talking like I'm meeting with you know senators and stuff and you know sometimes I'm going to say something it's going to end up being wrong.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm going to have to change it. Well I think that's actually such a great message because in today's social and digital environment as we just talked about many of us are on whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram or TikTok, you know, making videos, making pronouncements about business or markets. Yeah. And that service disappears after you know a month because it didn't work. Exactly. So I think that that is that point about like it's okay to fail. The point is you're trying and you're trying to then pivot, which is actually the hallmark of a successful business person and founder. And I think your point about shedding what before you felt the pressure of having to succeed, having to show up and when you and I work together in a more corporate environment, right, you weren't going to get rewarded for failing. No, you know the expectation was very high on us. So I think when you're a founder and you're running an organization and you're building it from the ground up, it's kind of exciting because you have that leeway to sort of go and then pivot if you need to. I mean it's harder because it's often with a much smaller budget and every dollar counts. But nonetheless you can be that much more agile.

SPEAKER_00

Totally. And it's one of the things that you know I struggle with thinking like if I would ever be back in a corporate environment because I'm not saying I would never do that again, but having to play by someone else's rules would be really hard. But I think that's why people become founders because they they have a vision and a belief in that vision but also in themselves and are willing to take the risk. I think that has to do, you know, whether you're starting a nonprofit, a political movement or a business. But you also, you know, you get to call the shots.

SPEAKER_01

Well I have two more questions before we wrap up today. One is and you know this as well as I do when you're building a business even when you're a corporate executive and you're a mom or you're a wife or a sister or a daughter you're caring for aging parents there is this incredible shortage of time. And in this world right now where things are moving so fast and I think a lot of us just have a difficult time getting our laundry folded totally like how can we show up? How, what can we do? What is like the 30 minute or less action that we can take to get engaged and get involved.

SPEAKER_00

So first of all I just want to acknowledge that I so feel it for all the women that are listening to this call that are founders that I don't think I ever understood before how all encompassing that this actually is that like you are literally working like 24 hours a day because it's not a job. It's it's your life it's your life you have to be so intentional about even carving out time for your family. Like you have to be really intentional about that. And I've figured that out and I've always been a workaholic but this is like next level it it requires more discipline than I've ever had to have before to make sure that I actually like spend time with my family and stuff like that. So I just wanted to like say that like I feel that for people. In terms of you know if folks concerned about the world the easiest and fastest way that you that you could do something is you could contribute to an organization that is doing the work um that have people doing the work all day long. Because the only way that these these these are not for profit organizations. They run on donations. Every single thing we do is dependent on donor dollars which is such a strange thing like it's like weird coming from a for-profit background that you're like all of a sudden I'm like the fundraiser in chief. I'm like what is this? So like that's so that's obviously one thing. Okay. But like the other the other thing that I think is more impactful than I think people realize is picking up the phone and calling your elected officials. You know, whether it's like get your ass back to Washington like we're in a war and like the president just threatened to annihilate an entire civilization and you're in Turks and Cagos like you know or you know that's that is something that like they count every phone call that comes in. An email or just phone calls? I personally would pick up the phone. I'm not saying emails aren't important. I would do both you know like if you have five minutes go onto one of those websites if phone number comes up pick up the phone. Then also like register to vote. And the other thing is this is like really high on my mind right now this is my belief. The biggest risk right now to us not being able to put a check on this administration in November is going to be voter intimidation and voter suppression. There's a lot of ways that you can volunteer for early voting to like at precincts and stuff like that. We're going to be really focused on that and get involved with us because we're going to be doing a ton around that. Those are things that like would be would be I think very impactful.

SPEAKER_01

You've given us three really good actions and I just want to reiterate them for our audience because making that phone call to your elected official is really important to express your opinion and to share your voice. Your vote is your voice. Yes. So register and and use your vote. I hear from so many people like oh the vote doesn't matter your vote absolutely matters. A hundred percent no matter where you live yeah and I think the third the third ask is a great one and it's like if you can if you have the time if you have the capacity and you can volunteer in some way for the midterms and be at the voting polls like that is amazing. So I think if any of and all of those three are available to you, please do. But I think the phone call and the vote doesn't take that much time and it's within all of our access to be able to go and make that happen. So thank you for that. Because I think for me what get it's getting me through some of the darker days is what are those actions that can be taken. Because I think it's it's so easy to feel helpless. And it's so easy to feel like well I don't have the money to donate here I don't have the resources for that. And that's the other thing I would say because this has been impressed upon to me by many others it doesn't matter if you give $5 or $500. Every dollar counts.

SPEAKER_00

That is a thousand percent true like literally like one dollar makes a difference.

SPEAKER_01

So my last question for you and how we like to end the show is to ask who's a woman you want us to know?

SPEAKER_00

So I have met some incredible women who are running for office right now. Down ballot, some in the house, some at the state level the level and the um class of women that are that are stepping up to to to lead right now and run for office is so incredible and so inspiring. So get to know the women who are who are running this year. You will want to get to know them.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. I love that well that's a great call to action and I think you know it gives us all an opportunity to get more familiar with the women who are going to be shaping the future of policy and our democracy. Wow what a lot of ground we covered Mary thank you so much. That was so fun. Thank you so much for having me. We will have in the show notes for everyone information on Save America movement, where they can find you in socials, where they can find you on your website and certainly keep us posted on any new developments. We'd love to continue the conversation with folks online. Awesome. Thanks Andrea thank you for being here today and sharing in this inspiring story from Women I Want You To Know. Please leave a review and share this episode with another woman in your life. And please join the conversation and connect with us on LinkedIn and Instagram and keep fueling the future for female founders and leaders