00:00:08
Speaker 1: Our efforts are supporting millions of children. We're not necessarily in the hospital every day. But I want you to feel inspired and not get sucked into whatever it may be that you're losing sight of what the mission is.
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Speaker 2: The annoying part about work isn't always the big stuff. It's those little things that start to add up. An overflowing inbox, a meeting that could have been an email, a project that doubles in scope at the very last minute. And when this happens, it can be helpful to remember why you're there in the first place. Hey everyone, I'm Jessica Chen, host of Leading by Example. I'm also the founder of soulcast Media and the author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at work for all the right reasons. Today I'm joined by Meredith ccres leitch, the CEO of the Ryan CEA Crests Foundation. Yes, it's that Ryan Seacrest, the iconic radio host. In twenty ten, the two of them came together alongside their parents to help launch a foundation that brings media production to children's hospitals across the country. They also co authored a children's book together called The Make Believers. As another way to inspire creativity in kids around the world like me. Meredith started her career in news, working at Entertainment Tonight before moving over to public relations, and when her brother Ryan asked her to run his foundation, she jumped right in to help them scale, evolve, and carry out their mission giving kids a fun and creative way to spend their time while in the hospital. So in this conversation, Meredith shares how creativity shapes her leadership style. She also talks about setting boundaries when working with your family, building a culture rooted in flexibility and trust, and how she helps her employees stay connected to the impact of their work because when you lose sight of the mission work, it can start to feel like a checklist. But when you can keep your why top of mind, that's when you make the biggest impact. I'm Jessica Chen and this is leading by example. Well, Meredith, thank you so much for joining us today. Obviously, a lot of us know the name Ryan Seacrest, we know what he does. I feel like your family, you know, there's this really huge media centric background. Where do you think that came from? Is it just like both of you had this innate desire to want to get into media, Like, how did that all start? In many ways, I think it naturally was in Ryan.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: Ryan and I we played a lot together even though we were six years apart. The good news was we were kind of that age difference where you didn't fight. He was just the big brother that looked out for me. We're fortunate to have really great parents that always instilled us to be close as siblings, and so we've remained very close and now work together and have for years, which is a lot of fun. And a lot of what we did playing as kids is we'd make movies and shows. He would pretend to do the news, and we had this sun room and had a bar, and he'd hang a sign, you know, paper made channel news sign off the side of the bar. We would put on a New Year's Eve show and he would be the host of the New Year's Eve show, and it's almost like he manifested things. So we used media for fun, and that's where a lot of this all started for the two of us.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you grew up in a very family centric household, So what did your parents teach both you and Ryan about leadership, influence, work ethic.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: Well, my dad worked very hard and he was an attorney, so he taught us a lot about paying attention to detail. But he would share too, like you learn more when you're listening than when you're talking at times, and so to be a good listener as well. He also was on time. He had the military background, so we learned about being punctual. And my mom is a wonderful mom who made our sandwiches in our lunch bag and you know all those kind of things that they show up for you. So we definitely had the family dinners where we could reflect on what was going on in our lives or connect as a family with all the busy schedules and things going on. So that was also a big focal point in our background.
00:04:24
Speaker 2: Before we talk about the foundation, I want to talk about your experience in PR what what are some of the things that you learned, particularly around how you lead others, how you build visibility. What were someone like the golden nuggets you learned in that industry.
00:04:36
Speaker 1: We definitely learned about writing and communications and communicating clearly, communicating with talent, and building trust with those you worked with. You know, you found if you worked hard, you delivered, you kind of got a reward in that and good communication with whoever you're working with. Working at entertainment tonight was definitely fast paced, very intense at times. I took away things that I loved about it, but I also things that definitely from a management style that were not my favorite. It was definitely more of an aggressive, you know, yelling environment at times. So I grew and I learned so much so fast. Working in a newsroom, it just was the best job in the sense for once I worked there, I felt like I could handle anything after that.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: You know, I always say a lot of times, like our early year experience, even though we might not have been in a leadership position, there are things that we see other leaders that we watch. I'm just curious, what were some of the things that you saw that number one, you really thought, oh, I would love to lead others this way. And on the flip side, what were some of the leadership attributes that you saw that you were like, hmmm, that's not really my style.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I learned definitely the bosses that did innocence talk to you, learn about you, try to give you opportunity for success. Then there were some that it was almost like a fear based scare you type. I think I learned what worked for me and how honestly, if I think you create an environment that you feel connected to, you feel heard, you just perform better. Right, You feel safer to be you and work hard versus almost shutting down. If there is this fear to take steps, to do things to raise your hand, that is going to be the wrong answer. Versus a more welcoming environment to be able to brainstorm and share your vision and know that it won't be shut down. I had another job at production company and that definitely was a more warm environment in the sense of sharing your ideas. I was new to the company and it was you were just thrown in to pitch meetings and throw out your ideas and creativity. So I got to see two different angles of the approach on things as I went through different production companies and seeing how it all works.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: So eventually your brother Ryan Seacrest pulled you into his foundation. Can you tell me about that period of time and was that just a conversation you had over dinner or was it something that you had to think about for a while. Tell me what was going on.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Ryan would visit children's hospitals just with some of his work and even with his radio show Kiss FM in Los Angeles. They would go to the hospital there in Orange County where you are, and bring in some special guests, broadcast live and I would join him. Living out there, I'd go with him and we were there. At one point there was one little girl got out of bed who hadn't been out of bed in like seventy two days, and she got so motivated to get out of bed to be part of seeing the excitement downstairs and the broadcast and the special guests, and it really touched Brian and I and we drove home and my parents happened to be visiting at the time, and He's like, you know, I just reached this point where I'd love to create something tangible and something that relates to what I'd do. And we started brainstorming as a family, and it kind of was like, okay, radio and television are your two things. Like what could we create that could live in a hospital, be that fun spot, broadcasting could happen, kids could learn the equipment, all the good stuff. We could bring special guests by to be the heartbeat of the hospital. So it evolved into creating we call Seacrest Studios. So he first tasked my dad to see if he could just set up a five oh one CET three. He's like, Dad, can you figure this out for me? So my dad got it established is the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. Then we started to pitch Children's Healthcare of Atlanta with the CEO. There this concept of building a multimedia studio down in the lobby of the hospital, and we always kind of joked and my dad too that we didn't really know what we were doing. But it was luckily Donna Hyland, the CEO, said let's do this, and we were able to start to build our first project and kind of learn as we went. So I was doing it on the side. Is just helping out, help with the pr all the things, you know, I'm helping him walk media. We didn't have a publicist with us at the time, so I was wearing all kinds of hats. And then we started to get win another hospital in Philadelphia they wanted to look into getting one of these. So Ryan looked at me and said, hey, Mayor, will you quit your job and will you run this? Because this could really be something And I thought there's any area to really work together giving back is the most beautiful place to do it. And we think alike in many ways our hearts connect and ways that we want to give back. And so I thought, all right, here we go. I just took the chance to leave my job and go try to start to build the foundation. And we did end up building in Philadelphia, and Selena Gomez came with us for that opening, and next thing you know, she's saying, you know, oh, I'm from Dallas, could we build one in Dallas? And she connected us to the hospital in Dallas, and then all of a sudden, we got Boston Children's reaching out and so it started to become a real thing. And as we're building more of these and realize that we need like an application, we need to get some real infrastructure here, ended up hiring someone to help me. It's crazy. It's been fifteen years of doing this and we're still building more, and we never dreamed that it would be what it it is today. So it's been amazing to see again what was just this idea really turn into a true network of studios and children's hospitals across the country.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: I know how hard it is sometimes to get folks who are doing one thing, which is healthcare, to get them to see the value in building something like this. Can you tell me what it was like having those initial conversations with these hospitals. How do you actually communicate to get the buy in from them?
00:10:29
Speaker 1: I think we really tried to paint the picture of the story of what the impacticut have. As we call it a no poke zone. It's a place where kids can be kids and escape what they're going through. It really becomes just the hub for all kinds of fun and it feeds to every patient's room and a closed circuit network, so if they can't physically come down, they can still be a part of things. And there's so much this important to heal from the medical side but also the mental side and to compliment the medical journey. Was really a goal of ours to help aid in that.
00:11:00
Speaker 2: You know, you made this transition in doing this foundation, this nonprofit, but your whole previous experience before that were obviously at organizations that were, you know, very business driven. How did you have to think about leadership and communications in that way.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: I think in certain ways it was good going into nonprofit with more of the business background because we were able to say, look at things like Ryan at the time had a partnership with Coke. How could we leverage Coke then to be a partner of our foundation. He was on the E network at the time and he was a partner. So I went pitching each of his businesses of kind of joining this mission and believing in us. And I think a lot of people liked the family element and that we were honest of wanting to do this, and they joined us in the mission. And that pr experience helped, right of learning how to communicate, how to be prepared, how to bring a presentation that would show them that we're serious about what we're doing, and so it all kind of connects. And working with talent, we did start kind of an arm of the foundation where it's just talent booking, so we help bring in special guests to all the markets that we serve and all our hospital partners. So we added this extra element of a service of bringing them special creativity and content and guests and all that. So it was beyond just the studio. But it's very different working in a business and then raising funds and learning about a nine to ninety And I didn't know all this at the beginning, and five oh one c. Three and all the accounting we have to do an audit each year, and all these things that you have to live and learn as you grow a nonprofit, and just being mindful of your spending, right like you want to raise funds and you want to spend them appropriately and be cautious, you know, it's one thing we always want to be by the book on all the things that we do as a nonprofit. So I had to learn a lot, but I was able to take past experiences through pr and entertainment and some business sense working with brands and things that I'd done in the past and kind of merge it into the nonprofit side, which in many ways was helpful from that point of view.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: Did you initially feel as you are pitching this concept to these hospitals, did you feel like you ever had resistance or was actually an idea that people just generally like got instantly. What was kind of the reception of it?
00:13:20
Speaker 1: I think it was one of those things at the beginning sometimes they had to go visit an existing one to try to really understand it, and then they met with the hospital partner and saw what it was doing in their environment, and then that would help show the capabilities. Now we're fortunate we're building in Milwaukee, and when we met with the team there, the CEO had been at the hospital in Denver, so he knew what all it did, so he was all in for it and knew and wanted it for his hospital now being there. So that's so helpful when you truly understand all that the studio can do, besides just seeing a picture of it, you can't understand what the magic is that can happen inside patients and families until you've really experienced it.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: Speaking of the magic, do you have a personal story or something that you saw firsthand of a child experiencing being their own radio host and what that felt like. Do you have a particular story that.
00:14:15
Speaker 1: You can think of this one? Well, boy, you're in Atlanta. He just lit up all our hearts and you know, going through a hard time with what his diagnosis was, and the studio really became kind of his outlet, his place to be happy. He always called the studio team his best friends. And then he got inspired to start a podcast with his grandfather and he would talk about his diagnosis. But it truly became a way to heal, a way to connect and he was inspired. And now if he has to come back for appointments, he wants to book it around special things going on with the studio. He wants to come back and visit. He sees his hospital experience positively by what all he learned and how it grew him as a person, and thinks that he wouldn't have had that experience or wouldn't expose him to to something that he's so passionate about and enjoying this podcast with his grandfather and all those things. So to see hard times, but what our ability and the outlet that we created can inspire a young person and motivate them. That's so meaningful to us. And you know what we do this for.
00:15:22
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more leading by example after a quake break. So you're now the executive director of the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, which means you manage a team. How do you think about leadership in this role? How are you communicating your team? How do you get them energized? How do you get them aligned? Like? What's your thought process when it comes to managing people?
00:15:55
Speaker 1: So I really wanted to establish a culture and I always said, you know, we started as a family and whether it's the team that's in headquarters for the foundation or it's our secret studios all the team members across the country. We always say that we're all a big family, and so this notion of supporting each other, helping each other grow, learn, having trust in each other. And I also, because of certain experiences in my past, I believe taking care of yourself is so important and that you do make time to go work out. If you say to me, I'm going to go this yoga class at three, go put it on your calendar and get it in and like, if you've got more work after, get it done. But I find that if you allow your team to make time and room for themselves in their life, they perform better. They're not feeling their chained to the desk from nine to five. And so I started two kind of reset days where you have two a year, and it's not to add to your vacation. Don't use it to run to target. Actually go do something that resets you and take the day off and come back rejuvenated. And so putting some things into the culture like that, I find your team feels more motivated and wanting to perform versus feeling depleted and drained. So I really try to infuse certain things like that for motivation with our team.
00:17:18
Speaker 2: I love that and I feel like it sounds like it's very intentional in how you allow your employees to do this, You encourage them to do this, And I just think back to I feel like I've personally had some managers who I felt like they weren't like that. They were very much micromanaging the situation and you know, making sure like are you doing your work? And I feel like for me as an employee at the time, it didn't create that culture where I felt like I was giving my best. How do you instill that I want you to go out, I want you to take care of yourself, but at the same time, we have to get our work done right, Like, how do you communicate that to them?
00:17:56
Speaker 1: I think it's put in place, but if you abuse it, you would be called out. And I think I'm fortunate with the team that's been hired. It's a very motivated, connected team to the mission, and that has been fantastic in the sense that everyone is truly just loves what they do. And I always say this, like, you know, we're here to help children and don't overstress on these things, like this is the goal, Like we're doing wonderful things, and I want you to feel inspired and not get sucked into whatever it may be that you're losing sight of what the mission is.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's also just reminding them. In many ways, it's almost embedded within a nonprofit, like you know, we're working together for a great cause. I actually just recently joined the board of one of our local nonprofits. It's a children's museum here in Orange County called Pretense City. So I just joined the board there, and I always feel like talking communicating with the folks there. It feels almost so much easier than talking with an organization because all of us are coming into the room, we're all aligned, and we're all motivated to make sure we can make the biggest difference for the kids, which is you know, what we do as well. So I totally get it well.
00:19:02
Speaker 1: Even in a team meeting, you know, go around and at times just have a mission moment or you just reconnect to why you do the job. You know, somebody has a story that week they want to share of what they did that week or what happened, and it's just reflecting so you don't lose sight of the big picture. I might have just come back from a visit in Dallas, and I want to share the impact or how great the team there is doing and the creativity of the way they're using animation. We're not necessarily in the hospital every day, but our efforts are supporting millions of children, and it's set sense to keep that motivation a morale as we do our daily jobs. Working with children and seeing what I see through families and what they're going through. It gives you a lot of perspective for the way that I live life, where I focus my priorities and where I don't focus energy either.
00:19:53
Speaker 2: I love that. So one of the things that I know you and your brother did was you co wrote a book together, a children's book, and I know creativity and play is a huge part of that. Can you tell me how creativity and play also shows up in perhaps your leadership style.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: I'm not like a stiff, rigid person. I want people to smile and have some fun, and we do things even through the team. I take them out to dinner or we'll go do something fun to just get out of the office. And so creating that somewhat playfulness so that you don't.
00:20:27
Speaker 2: Get run down.
00:20:28
Speaker 1: It's just important to me that my staff and joys where they work. Even when we interview people, I say, this is much you're seeing where you would work, but we're interviewing you, but making sure you would fit in this culture too, and this would be for you. And so I think there's so much to say about that. And I think as an adult, you can always still continue to believe in dream and not feel that this chapter is just this. There's always new doors to open and new things to learn, and always continue growing. I think that is what inspires me. I like to continue to push myself to do new things, try new things. Even moving to new cities and starting new adventures in the book was another fun endeavor that I did with Ryan. And then the Make Believers started and we're working on some other projects. Don't fully continue the Make Believers journey.
00:21:17
Speaker 2: Talking about working with your brother and having that working relationship, but seeing him at family dinners, family functions, how do you separate the two?
00:21:27
Speaker 1: It was very important, and even because my parents were more involved in the beginning, and I wanted to whether it was talking to Ryan or my parents not have you felt like you were always talking about work. So it was one of those things where we still set meetings or a call. But if I called, you know, my parents after seven, you know they were in Atlanta.
00:21:45
Speaker 2: I was in LA.
00:21:46
Speaker 1: My mom didn't start asking me all these questions. It's more like I'm calling you as a daughter right now. Right and two With Ryan, I now to this day, I mean, I make an agenda. He knows when we're talking about work. When I call him about other stuff, it's just being brother and sister. Or I'll text him here the three things I need from you, and he gets back to me. And so it's just learning communication style. Again, we can separate family time versus work time. So I've definitely tried to manage that for all of us to have healthy working relationships.
00:22:15
Speaker 2: That's awesome. So as a company grows, as a mission evolves, how does that change the way you think about leadership? Because at the end of the day, this is a leadership podcast and you are leading people. How does that change from just managing maybe two or three people to now a dozen or so.
00:22:35
Speaker 1: I mean, we've definitely had to grow, and I feel fortunate to have some really strong employees and being able to empower them to take on things and not be a micromanager. I can't do all the things I used to do, and I want to be a present mother. So I'm trusting that you can handle this, and that you do hire people that can take on certain parts of the organization so that you can lead from the top. But you have wonderful people supporting you that can really help do the daily walk and all the different facets of the foundation.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: So then it sounds like it starts with the hiring process making sure you're hiring the right people in the right roles. So then how do you determine that this is the right person for the right role for our organization?
00:23:20
Speaker 1: I know, and it's not easy. I mean, I think in the beginning, it's fortunate to find really passionate people. One of the one of full ladies who works with us, she had worked at Chock Children's and so she was very familiar already with what we did, so she just already had this connected passion. You know. The next employee was an intern in a Secrest studio, so she had this connected passion and then it kind of evolved from there, and maybe I don't know. It's something about reading people like you get a feeling and it's do you fit the culture. There could be wonderful people that are super skilled, but maybe they're not the right fit for dynamics within the office. So there's several things. There's not always the perfect recipe for it, but it is helpful if you find the right people that you can trust and empower to carry out certain jobs. I think it's hard if you do have an employe where you do feel you constantly have to watch them and oh are they doing this and they're doing that right? And that's almost creating more work for you because you can't let go of certain things or oh I need to probably join that call with them, versus being able to say they got this. You know, if I join, it's great, but if I can't, I know that they've got it handled. And to be able to establish some of that over the years and build that trust and it didn't happen overnight. It took time, but I think it's been something that's been very helpful. And we've just found a lot of our team like they stay with us. It's been years and they don't leave. So I hopefully that says something.
00:24:43
Speaker 2: That's a huge testament I think to the organization as well as your leadership. So we know media is also changing in that sense, right, I mean we're now evolving from just radio to podcasting to digital and I think I read somewhere that you are offering bilingual content as well in some of the hospitals. So how are you thinking about the future at these hospitals.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: Well, we finally truly hired a director of engineer and innovation because that is part of it, right, I mean, technology is changing, it's advancing. We've had to go back and renovate old studios and then we're building the new ones and then they're more advanced than say the one we built six years ago. So it's this game of keeping things up to date but thinking ahead about innovation and having young children. They're so savvy and what they can do and what they're learning. It's faster than I could keep up with. But we're trying to make sure our facilities feel relevant to the times, but also that we're using the media for good and in a healthy way. So it's a constant part of what we have to do as an organization with building and using tech that we continue kind of learning and growing with it.
00:25:51
Speaker 2: So the name of this podcast is called Leading by Example, and the question that we always ask our guest is what does leading by example mean to you?
00:26:02
Speaker 1: I do think you do need to lead truly by example. You can't say to people when you're on vacation, really take your vacation, but then you don't do it. There's these boundaries that you have to create and show and lead that. It's okay for certain ways that we do our work here, but if you want your team to be on time, you should be on time. You know. If you want your team to be prepared, you have to be prepared too. So I think you have to practice what you preach and you can't just want these things but not be doing them yourself. So you truly do need to lead by example.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: Meredith, thank you so much for being here with us. I really enjoyed this conversation with you. I know, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining and listening in to this conversation. I had a great time chatting with Meredith. In fact, there were two things that we talked about that really stood out to me. The first one was when she talks about how you should lead with your feelings in your pitch, not just talk about heavy data and numbers. So when Meredith and Ryan were pitching hospitals on building these multimedia studios, they didn't just lead with specs, square footage or ROI. They led with a feeling. And if you can remember, they called this studio a no poke zone. That phrase, immediately, as I can imagine, would transport every hospital administrator into that emotional experience of what a sick child must feel. This would be a place where they wouldn't have needles, no fear, or any of that anxiousness that comes with being in a hospital. And before anybody would say, well how does this work, they actually felt the why behind the studio. This is what we call emotional resonance, and I think it's a very smart leadership strategy. It's not just marketing. Because when you can name a feeling of your idea, of your service, of your pitch, you are now speaking to people's emotions. How you position it can really evoke that feeling that gets people bought in. The second thing that she talked about that I loved was how you can use your experience, your work experience as leverage for your next job, even if it's a completely different industry. So for Meredith, she didn't start her career in nonprofit. She started in the fast paced world of media and business. And what I loved about her experience is she took her corporate fluency and used it as intellectual leverage. She thought about how brands usually work, how partnerships get structured, how to make a very compelling pitch, and she used that experience as an opportunity in her ask. So it's all about finding these connection points between your previous experience and how you can now leverage it in your current experience and where you want to go. Thank you so much for joining this episode. I hope you walked away feeling inspired, because I certainly did. If you enjoyed this episode, or you have feedback on what you want to hear and guests you'd like to hear from, please rate and review, leading by example, every review, every rating. It really does help us reach more people and make this show the best it can be. I'm Jessica Chen, the author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons, and the CEO of Soulcast Media, a communications training company. For more information about me and what I do, you can head over to my website Solcastmedia dot com or add me on LinkedIn and Instagram. A huge thank you to our production team at Ruby Studio, especially Kelly Kyle, Matt Stillo, and Sierra Spring. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Leading by Example. I'll see you, then fight
Speaker 1: Our efforts are supporting millions of children. We're not necessarily in the hospital every day. But I want you to feel inspired and not get sucked into whatever it may be that you're losing sight of what the mission is.
00:00:23
Speaker 2: The annoying part about work isn't always the big stuff. It's those little things that start to add up. An overflowing inbox, a meeting that could have been an email, a project that doubles in scope at the very last minute. And when this happens, it can be helpful to remember why you're there in the first place. Hey everyone, I'm Jessica Chen, host of Leading by Example. I'm also the founder of soulcast Media and the author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at work for all the right reasons. Today I'm joined by Meredith ccres leitch, the CEO of the Ryan CEA Crests Foundation. Yes, it's that Ryan Seacrest, the iconic radio host. In twenty ten, the two of them came together alongside their parents to help launch a foundation that brings media production to children's hospitals across the country. They also co authored a children's book together called The Make Believers. As another way to inspire creativity in kids around the world like me. Meredith started her career in news, working at Entertainment Tonight before moving over to public relations, and when her brother Ryan asked her to run his foundation, she jumped right in to help them scale, evolve, and carry out their mission giving kids a fun and creative way to spend their time while in the hospital. So in this conversation, Meredith shares how creativity shapes her leadership style. She also talks about setting boundaries when working with your family, building a culture rooted in flexibility and trust, and how she helps her employees stay connected to the impact of their work because when you lose sight of the mission work, it can start to feel like a checklist. But when you can keep your why top of mind, that's when you make the biggest impact. I'm Jessica Chen and this is leading by example. Well, Meredith, thank you so much for joining us today. Obviously, a lot of us know the name Ryan Seacrest, we know what he does. I feel like your family, you know, there's this really huge media centric background. Where do you think that came from? Is it just like both of you had this innate desire to want to get into media, Like, how did that all start? In many ways, I think it naturally was in Ryan.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: Ryan and I we played a lot together even though we were six years apart. The good news was we were kind of that age difference where you didn't fight. He was just the big brother that looked out for me. We're fortunate to have really great parents that always instilled us to be close as siblings, and so we've remained very close and now work together and have for years, which is a lot of fun. And a lot of what we did playing as kids is we'd make movies and shows. He would pretend to do the news, and we had this sun room and had a bar, and he'd hang a sign, you know, paper made channel news sign off the side of the bar. We would put on a New Year's Eve show and he would be the host of the New Year's Eve show, and it's almost like he manifested things. So we used media for fun, and that's where a lot of this all started for the two of us.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you grew up in a very family centric household, So what did your parents teach both you and Ryan about leadership, influence, work ethic.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: Well, my dad worked very hard and he was an attorney, so he taught us a lot about paying attention to detail. But he would share too, like you learn more when you're listening than when you're talking at times, and so to be a good listener as well. He also was on time. He had the military background, so we learned about being punctual. And my mom is a wonderful mom who made our sandwiches in our lunch bag and you know all those kind of things that they show up for you. So we definitely had the family dinners where we could reflect on what was going on in our lives or connect as a family with all the busy schedules and things going on. So that was also a big focal point in our background.
00:04:24
Speaker 2: Before we talk about the foundation, I want to talk about your experience in PR what what are some of the things that you learned, particularly around how you lead others, how you build visibility. What were someone like the golden nuggets you learned in that industry.
00:04:36
Speaker 1: We definitely learned about writing and communications and communicating clearly, communicating with talent, and building trust with those you worked with. You know, you found if you worked hard, you delivered, you kind of got a reward in that and good communication with whoever you're working with. Working at entertainment tonight was definitely fast paced, very intense at times. I took away things that I loved about it, but I also things that definitely from a management style that were not my favorite. It was definitely more of an aggressive, you know, yelling environment at times. So I grew and I learned so much so fast. Working in a newsroom, it just was the best job in the sense for once I worked there, I felt like I could handle anything after that.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: You know, I always say a lot of times, like our early year experience, even though we might not have been in a leadership position, there are things that we see other leaders that we watch. I'm just curious, what were some of the things that you saw that number one, you really thought, oh, I would love to lead others this way. And on the flip side, what were some of the leadership attributes that you saw that you were like, hmmm, that's not really my style.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I learned definitely the bosses that did innocence talk to you, learn about you, try to give you opportunity for success. Then there were some that it was almost like a fear based scare you type. I think I learned what worked for me and how honestly, if I think you create an environment that you feel connected to, you feel heard, you just perform better. Right, You feel safer to be you and work hard versus almost shutting down. If there is this fear to take steps, to do things to raise your hand, that is going to be the wrong answer. Versus a more welcoming environment to be able to brainstorm and share your vision and know that it won't be shut down. I had another job at production company and that definitely was a more warm environment in the sense of sharing your ideas. I was new to the company and it was you were just thrown in to pitch meetings and throw out your ideas and creativity. So I got to see two different angles of the approach on things as I went through different production companies and seeing how it all works.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: So eventually your brother Ryan Seacrest pulled you into his foundation. Can you tell me about that period of time and was that just a conversation you had over dinner or was it something that you had to think about for a while. Tell me what was going on.
00:07:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Ryan would visit children's hospitals just with some of his work and even with his radio show Kiss FM in Los Angeles. They would go to the hospital there in Orange County where you are, and bring in some special guests, broadcast live and I would join him. Living out there, I'd go with him and we were there. At one point there was one little girl got out of bed who hadn't been out of bed in like seventy two days, and she got so motivated to get out of bed to be part of seeing the excitement downstairs and the broadcast and the special guests, and it really touched Brian and I and we drove home and my parents happened to be visiting at the time, and He's like, you know, I just reached this point where I'd love to create something tangible and something that relates to what I'd do. And we started brainstorming as a family, and it kind of was like, okay, radio and television are your two things. Like what could we create that could live in a hospital, be that fun spot, broadcasting could happen, kids could learn the equipment, all the good stuff. We could bring special guests by to be the heartbeat of the hospital. So it evolved into creating we call Seacrest Studios. So he first tasked my dad to see if he could just set up a five oh one CET three. He's like, Dad, can you figure this out for me? So my dad got it established is the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. Then we started to pitch Children's Healthcare of Atlanta with the CEO. There this concept of building a multimedia studio down in the lobby of the hospital, and we always kind of joked and my dad too that we didn't really know what we were doing. But it was luckily Donna Hyland, the CEO, said let's do this, and we were able to start to build our first project and kind of learn as we went. So I was doing it on the side. Is just helping out, help with the pr all the things, you know, I'm helping him walk media. We didn't have a publicist with us at the time, so I was wearing all kinds of hats. And then we started to get win another hospital in Philadelphia they wanted to look into getting one of these. So Ryan looked at me and said, hey, Mayor, will you quit your job and will you run this? Because this could really be something And I thought there's any area to really work together giving back is the most beautiful place to do it. And we think alike in many ways our hearts connect and ways that we want to give back. And so I thought, all right, here we go. I just took the chance to leave my job and go try to start to build the foundation. And we did end up building in Philadelphia, and Selena Gomez came with us for that opening, and next thing you know, she's saying, you know, oh, I'm from Dallas, could we build one in Dallas? And she connected us to the hospital in Dallas, and then all of a sudden, we got Boston Children's reaching out and so it started to become a real thing. And as we're building more of these and realize that we need like an application, we need to get some real infrastructure here, ended up hiring someone to help me. It's crazy. It's been fifteen years of doing this and we're still building more, and we never dreamed that it would be what it it is today. So it's been amazing to see again what was just this idea really turn into a true network of studios and children's hospitals across the country.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: I know how hard it is sometimes to get folks who are doing one thing, which is healthcare, to get them to see the value in building something like this. Can you tell me what it was like having those initial conversations with these hospitals. How do you actually communicate to get the buy in from them?
00:10:29
Speaker 1: I think we really tried to paint the picture of the story of what the impacticut have. As we call it a no poke zone. It's a place where kids can be kids and escape what they're going through. It really becomes just the hub for all kinds of fun and it feeds to every patient's room and a closed circuit network, so if they can't physically come down, they can still be a part of things. And there's so much this important to heal from the medical side but also the mental side and to compliment the medical journey. Was really a goal of ours to help aid in that.
00:11:00
Speaker 2: You know, you made this transition in doing this foundation, this nonprofit, but your whole previous experience before that were obviously at organizations that were, you know, very business driven. How did you have to think about leadership and communications in that way.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: I think in certain ways it was good going into nonprofit with more of the business background because we were able to say, look at things like Ryan at the time had a partnership with Coke. How could we leverage Coke then to be a partner of our foundation. He was on the E network at the time and he was a partner. So I went pitching each of his businesses of kind of joining this mission and believing in us. And I think a lot of people liked the family element and that we were honest of wanting to do this, and they joined us in the mission. And that pr experience helped, right of learning how to communicate, how to be prepared, how to bring a presentation that would show them that we're serious about what we're doing, and so it all kind of connects. And working with talent, we did start kind of an arm of the foundation where it's just talent booking, so we help bring in special guests to all the markets that we serve and all our hospital partners. So we added this extra element of a service of bringing them special creativity and content and guests and all that. So it was beyond just the studio. But it's very different working in a business and then raising funds and learning about a nine to ninety And I didn't know all this at the beginning, and five oh one c. Three and all the accounting we have to do an audit each year, and all these things that you have to live and learn as you grow a nonprofit, and just being mindful of your spending, right like you want to raise funds and you want to spend them appropriately and be cautious, you know, it's one thing we always want to be by the book on all the things that we do as a nonprofit. So I had to learn a lot, but I was able to take past experiences through pr and entertainment and some business sense working with brands and things that I'd done in the past and kind of merge it into the nonprofit side, which in many ways was helpful from that point of view.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: Did you initially feel as you are pitching this concept to these hospitals, did you feel like you ever had resistance or was actually an idea that people just generally like got instantly. What was kind of the reception of it?
00:13:20
Speaker 1: I think it was one of those things at the beginning sometimes they had to go visit an existing one to try to really understand it, and then they met with the hospital partner and saw what it was doing in their environment, and then that would help show the capabilities. Now we're fortunate we're building in Milwaukee, and when we met with the team there, the CEO had been at the hospital in Denver, so he knew what all it did, so he was all in for it and knew and wanted it for his hospital now being there. So that's so helpful when you truly understand all that the studio can do, besides just seeing a picture of it, you can't understand what the magic is that can happen inside patients and families until you've really experienced it.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: Speaking of the magic, do you have a personal story or something that you saw firsthand of a child experiencing being their own radio host and what that felt like. Do you have a particular story that.
00:14:15
Speaker 1: You can think of this one? Well, boy, you're in Atlanta. He just lit up all our hearts and you know, going through a hard time with what his diagnosis was, and the studio really became kind of his outlet, his place to be happy. He always called the studio team his best friends. And then he got inspired to start a podcast with his grandfather and he would talk about his diagnosis. But it truly became a way to heal, a way to connect and he was inspired. And now if he has to come back for appointments, he wants to book it around special things going on with the studio. He wants to come back and visit. He sees his hospital experience positively by what all he learned and how it grew him as a person, and thinks that he wouldn't have had that experience or wouldn't expose him to to something that he's so passionate about and enjoying this podcast with his grandfather and all those things. So to see hard times, but what our ability and the outlet that we created can inspire a young person and motivate them. That's so meaningful to us. And you know what we do this for.
00:15:22
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more leading by example after a quake break. So you're now the executive director of the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, which means you manage a team. How do you think about leadership in this role? How are you communicating your team? How do you get them energized? How do you get them aligned? Like? What's your thought process when it comes to managing people?
00:15:55
Speaker 1: So I really wanted to establish a culture and I always said, you know, we started as a family and whether it's the team that's in headquarters for the foundation or it's our secret studios all the team members across the country. We always say that we're all a big family, and so this notion of supporting each other, helping each other grow, learn, having trust in each other. And I also, because of certain experiences in my past, I believe taking care of yourself is so important and that you do make time to go work out. If you say to me, I'm going to go this yoga class at three, go put it on your calendar and get it in and like, if you've got more work after, get it done. But I find that if you allow your team to make time and room for themselves in their life, they perform better. They're not feeling their chained to the desk from nine to five. And so I started two kind of reset days where you have two a year, and it's not to add to your vacation. Don't use it to run to target. Actually go do something that resets you and take the day off and come back rejuvenated. And so putting some things into the culture like that, I find your team feels more motivated and wanting to perform versus feeling depleted and drained. So I really try to infuse certain things like that for motivation with our team.
00:17:18
Speaker 2: I love that and I feel like it sounds like it's very intentional in how you allow your employees to do this, You encourage them to do this, And I just think back to I feel like I've personally had some managers who I felt like they weren't like that. They were very much micromanaging the situation and you know, making sure like are you doing your work? And I feel like for me as an employee at the time, it didn't create that culture where I felt like I was giving my best. How do you instill that I want you to go out, I want you to take care of yourself, but at the same time, we have to get our work done right, Like, how do you communicate that to them?
00:17:56
Speaker 1: I think it's put in place, but if you abuse it, you would be called out. And I think I'm fortunate with the team that's been hired. It's a very motivated, connected team to the mission, and that has been fantastic in the sense that everyone is truly just loves what they do. And I always say this, like, you know, we're here to help children and don't overstress on these things, like this is the goal, Like we're doing wonderful things, and I want you to feel inspired and not get sucked into whatever it may be that you're losing sight of what the mission is.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's also just reminding them. In many ways, it's almost embedded within a nonprofit, like you know, we're working together for a great cause. I actually just recently joined the board of one of our local nonprofits. It's a children's museum here in Orange County called Pretense City. So I just joined the board there, and I always feel like talking communicating with the folks there. It feels almost so much easier than talking with an organization because all of us are coming into the room, we're all aligned, and we're all motivated to make sure we can make the biggest difference for the kids, which is you know, what we do as well. So I totally get it well.
00:19:02
Speaker 1: Even in a team meeting, you know, go around and at times just have a mission moment or you just reconnect to why you do the job. You know, somebody has a story that week they want to share of what they did that week or what happened, and it's just reflecting so you don't lose sight of the big picture. I might have just come back from a visit in Dallas, and I want to share the impact or how great the team there is doing and the creativity of the way they're using animation. We're not necessarily in the hospital every day, but our efforts are supporting millions of children, and it's set sense to keep that motivation a morale as we do our daily jobs. Working with children and seeing what I see through families and what they're going through. It gives you a lot of perspective for the way that I live life, where I focus my priorities and where I don't focus energy either.
00:19:53
Speaker 2: I love that. So one of the things that I know you and your brother did was you co wrote a book together, a children's book, and I know creativity and play is a huge part of that. Can you tell me how creativity and play also shows up in perhaps your leadership style.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: I'm not like a stiff, rigid person. I want people to smile and have some fun, and we do things even through the team. I take them out to dinner or we'll go do something fun to just get out of the office. And so creating that somewhat playfulness so that you don't.
00:20:27
Speaker 2: Get run down.
00:20:28
Speaker 1: It's just important to me that my staff and joys where they work. Even when we interview people, I say, this is much you're seeing where you would work, but we're interviewing you, but making sure you would fit in this culture too, and this would be for you. And so I think there's so much to say about that. And I think as an adult, you can always still continue to believe in dream and not feel that this chapter is just this. There's always new doors to open and new things to learn, and always continue growing. I think that is what inspires me. I like to continue to push myself to do new things, try new things. Even moving to new cities and starting new adventures in the book was another fun endeavor that I did with Ryan. And then the Make Believers started and we're working on some other projects. Don't fully continue the Make Believers journey.
00:21:17
Speaker 2: Talking about working with your brother and having that working relationship, but seeing him at family dinners, family functions, how do you separate the two?
00:21:27
Speaker 1: It was very important, and even because my parents were more involved in the beginning, and I wanted to whether it was talking to Ryan or my parents not have you felt like you were always talking about work. So it was one of those things where we still set meetings or a call. But if I called, you know, my parents after seven, you know they were in Atlanta.
00:21:45
Speaker 2: I was in LA.
00:21:46
Speaker 1: My mom didn't start asking me all these questions. It's more like I'm calling you as a daughter right now. Right and two With Ryan, I now to this day, I mean, I make an agenda. He knows when we're talking about work. When I call him about other stuff, it's just being brother and sister. Or I'll text him here the three things I need from you, and he gets back to me. And so it's just learning communication style. Again, we can separate family time versus work time. So I've definitely tried to manage that for all of us to have healthy working relationships.
00:22:15
Speaker 2: That's awesome. So as a company grows, as a mission evolves, how does that change the way you think about leadership? Because at the end of the day, this is a leadership podcast and you are leading people. How does that change from just managing maybe two or three people to now a dozen or so.
00:22:35
Speaker 1: I mean, we've definitely had to grow, and I feel fortunate to have some really strong employees and being able to empower them to take on things and not be a micromanager. I can't do all the things I used to do, and I want to be a present mother. So I'm trusting that you can handle this, and that you do hire people that can take on certain parts of the organization so that you can lead from the top. But you have wonderful people supporting you that can really help do the daily walk and all the different facets of the foundation.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: So then it sounds like it starts with the hiring process making sure you're hiring the right people in the right roles. So then how do you determine that this is the right person for the right role for our organization?
00:23:20
Speaker 1: I know, and it's not easy. I mean, I think in the beginning, it's fortunate to find really passionate people. One of the one of full ladies who works with us, she had worked at Chock Children's and so she was very familiar already with what we did, so she just already had this connected passion. You know. The next employee was an intern in a Secrest studio, so she had this connected passion and then it kind of evolved from there, and maybe I don't know. It's something about reading people like you get a feeling and it's do you fit the culture. There could be wonderful people that are super skilled, but maybe they're not the right fit for dynamics within the office. So there's several things. There's not always the perfect recipe for it, but it is helpful if you find the right people that you can trust and empower to carry out certain jobs. I think it's hard if you do have an employe where you do feel you constantly have to watch them and oh are they doing this and they're doing that right? And that's almost creating more work for you because you can't let go of certain things or oh I need to probably join that call with them, versus being able to say they got this. You know, if I join, it's great, but if I can't, I know that they've got it handled. And to be able to establish some of that over the years and build that trust and it didn't happen overnight. It took time, but I think it's been something that's been very helpful. And we've just found a lot of our team like they stay with us. It's been years and they don't leave. So I hopefully that says something.
00:24:43
Speaker 2: That's a huge testament I think to the organization as well as your leadership. So we know media is also changing in that sense, right, I mean we're now evolving from just radio to podcasting to digital and I think I read somewhere that you are offering bilingual content as well in some of the hospitals. So how are you thinking about the future at these hospitals.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: Well, we finally truly hired a director of engineer and innovation because that is part of it, right, I mean, technology is changing, it's advancing. We've had to go back and renovate old studios and then we're building the new ones and then they're more advanced than say the one we built six years ago. So it's this game of keeping things up to date but thinking ahead about innovation and having young children. They're so savvy and what they can do and what they're learning. It's faster than I could keep up with. But we're trying to make sure our facilities feel relevant to the times, but also that we're using the media for good and in a healthy way. So it's a constant part of what we have to do as an organization with building and using tech that we continue kind of learning and growing with it.
00:25:51
Speaker 2: So the name of this podcast is called Leading by Example, and the question that we always ask our guest is what does leading by example mean to you?
00:26:02
Speaker 1: I do think you do need to lead truly by example. You can't say to people when you're on vacation, really take your vacation, but then you don't do it. There's these boundaries that you have to create and show and lead that. It's okay for certain ways that we do our work here, but if you want your team to be on time, you should be on time. You know. If you want your team to be prepared, you have to be prepared too. So I think you have to practice what you preach and you can't just want these things but not be doing them yourself. So you truly do need to lead by example.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: Meredith, thank you so much for being here with us. I really enjoyed this conversation with you. I know, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining and listening in to this conversation. I had a great time chatting with Meredith. In fact, there were two things that we talked about that really stood out to me. The first one was when she talks about how you should lead with your feelings in your pitch, not just talk about heavy data and numbers. So when Meredith and Ryan were pitching hospitals on building these multimedia studios, they didn't just lead with specs, square footage or ROI. They led with a feeling. And if you can remember, they called this studio a no poke zone. That phrase, immediately, as I can imagine, would transport every hospital administrator into that emotional experience of what a sick child must feel. This would be a place where they wouldn't have needles, no fear, or any of that anxiousness that comes with being in a hospital. And before anybody would say, well how does this work, they actually felt the why behind the studio. This is what we call emotional resonance, and I think it's a very smart leadership strategy. It's not just marketing. Because when you can name a feeling of your idea, of your service, of your pitch, you are now speaking to people's emotions. How you position it can really evoke that feeling that gets people bought in. The second thing that she talked about that I loved was how you can use your experience, your work experience as leverage for your next job, even if it's a completely different industry. So for Meredith, she didn't start her career in nonprofit. She started in the fast paced world of media and business. And what I loved about her experience is she took her corporate fluency and used it as intellectual leverage. She thought about how brands usually work, how partnerships get structured, how to make a very compelling pitch, and she used that experience as an opportunity in her ask. So it's all about finding these connection points between your previous experience and how you can now leverage it in your current experience and where you want to go. Thank you so much for joining this episode. I hope you walked away feeling inspired, because I certainly did. If you enjoyed this episode, or you have feedback on what you want to hear and guests you'd like to hear from, please rate and review, leading by example, every review, every rating. It really does help us reach more people and make this show the best it can be. I'm Jessica Chen, the author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons, and the CEO of Soulcast Media, a communications training company. For more information about me and what I do, you can head over to my website Solcastmedia dot com or add me on LinkedIn and Instagram. A huge thank you to our production team at Ruby Studio, especially Kelly Kyle, Matt Stillo, and Sierra Spring. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Leading by Example. I'll see you, then fight
