From Hollywood to Loft 100: Mary's Media Journey

Carlsbad, people, purpose, and impact, an essential podcast for those who live, work, visit, and play in Carlsbad.

Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone. My name is Brett Schonzenbach. I'm the president and CEO of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce. I'm your host today, and I'm excited to have with me Mary Bert Godwin. She is the director of marketing at Loft 100 Studios.

Good afternoon, Mary.

Good afternoon. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah.

It's great to have you. I'm so glad you're able to come down. We've been trying to get this together for a little while. I'm excited about this. So

Yes. We're just about 5 minutes away.

Yep. Oh, that's

very cool. Right around the corner. Yeah.

Very cool. Which is good because you guys, I think, are hosting our

We are January. January 25th? Yeah. Yeah.

Excellent. Little tease there. I was doing some of my background investigation and saw that you are a grad from UC Santa Barbara. So are you a California native

born and raised? Native, actually. Yes. So you're native, born and raised. And, there's not a lot of us Right.

Left. I don't know why.

Right. Yeah.

And, my dad actually was really active with the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

Really?

And he knew Ted Owens really well. Sure.

He was

the president here for many years. And, born and raised, and then I went up to UC Santa Barbara for school, just a smaller version of San Diego, really. Yeah. And then came back and lived in San Diego for many years and then moved up to Carlsbad 20 years ago. I'm coming up on my 20 year anniversary of living here.

Yeah.

As the time goes by, man. Doesn't it? Yes. And it looks like you jumped into entertainment industry pretty much right away.

Right away.

Yep. And there was a few things in there that I'm gonna kinda pick on because they're quite fascinating to me. But so I saw things like you were an extras casting director. You worked at LEGOLAND, we'll touch on. You were into destination management and stuff.

So but I wanna if we could, I would love to start on this extras casting director because every show, every movie, you know, has these various scenes where you have people in the background that we don't think too much about, but somebody's got to pull that together. So what is that like?

That was me. You know, it was fascinating. It was such a fun job. The company was Stu Siegel Productions. And now they're still the the facility is still there and they have Studio Diner, which is a restaurant there, and they do mostly military stuff.

But back in the nineties, he started, I believe, in the early 90 nineties, and I started there in 1994 with shows like Silk Stockings and Renegade with Lorenzo Lomas and then, Pensacola Wings of Gold. And the our big my big claim to fame is working on Bring It On Uh-huh. With the the movie with Kirsten Dunst. Yeah. Cheer movie.

And, you know, so right away, I got into right after college, I started interning there in the casting office, and it was, yeah, specifically the extras. So everyone with with no speaking line, just the people that would walk in the background. And what now looking back, you know, there was no computers, cell phones, anything. So

Yeah.

We looked through binders, 3 ring ring binders. We would have monthly casting calls, and there was pictures associated with the names and numbers. And so we'd go through the script, and they was there was a scene of a grocery store or a restaurant or a murder scene, whatever it was. We'd have to get the cops. We'd get the the, the

The bystanders. The bystanders.

Yes. And, it was really fun. And I'm a people person, so I loved it. You know, I loved talking to people on the phone and and and going down to the set and organizing them. But you don't realize now

I

am ruined watching movies forever because now I watch the background and You

can see everything.

I see and I see, oh, that guy was recycled from the first scene. He was a cop, and now he's a pedestrian, and now he's a juggler. But, it was a really fun job and, got to work on a lot of, you know, crazy movies. It was I will admit it was mostly b TV shows. But it was it was just really fun.

So I was there for nearly 7 years

Wow.

Working on those shows.

So you must have to cast a I didn't mean that as a pun cast, but you must have to have a pretty broad net because these various scenes, like what you need in the background, can vary quite widely.

Absolutely. It was really, a challenge, and we would go do castings, at bars sometimes. We would go to, different grocery stores within certain communities. We had, a TV show called Running Dragon, which was an Asian led the the the main actor was Russell Wong. And, it was, you know, a lot of heavily Asian communities we would need to cast.

And we didn't have a lot registered with us, so we would go down to these communities and park ourselves with a a table and, you know, get people to sign up Wow. To be extras. And, yeah, it was very different and very again, we didn't have a computerized system. So I had these binders of ages and, you know, all the different things

Yeah.

To go through hand by hand, and we'd have to call everybody.

Oh my goodness.

And then, invariably, the call time would change. And so at 10 o'clock at night, I'd be calling 80 people to say, now you gotta be there at 11 instead of 10:30.

I mean, now with email and texting and all that stuff, it's gotta be, I would think, a 1000 times easier.

Yeah. And our office had anywhere from 2 to probably 6 people at one time working depending on what shows we had. And now it could all be done with one person manning on a computer. On a

on a computer. Wow. So interesting. And then you had this stop at LEGOLAND, which is, of course, hyperlocal here. Tell us about that.

I love LEGOLAND with all of my heart. Yeah. I loved working there. I loved then when I had kids. A few years later, I took my little kids there.

And I actually Yeah. Did, when I worked there, I was in charge of the entertainment. Nice. So all of the shows, if if if any of the listeners have seen you put the wet stuff on the hot stuff like

the I love

that show. Yes. So that was my job to make sure I would do the casting for those shows Yeah. And then go, make sure they were running smoothly and make sure all the actors and performers had what they needed. And then when I ended up I worked there for only about 2 years, and I was hired originally as stage manager because when I was doing extras casting, I also was doing performing and acting in theater locally, regionally.

Sure.

And then I also got into stage managing. That was, like, nighttime, I would do that kind of thing. And then I met someone at a show who also worked at LEGOLAND, and she said we're hiring a stage manager. So that's where I transitioned up there. And then when I I went into event management, weird segue, but, then I had kids and, I started writing the blog as model mom Mary.

I would go to the park and ride the rides through the viewpoint of a mom. Oh. And I would write blog posts that were specific about, you know, if you have a toddler, here's how you can navigate the park. Go to the left instead of the right. You know?

If your kids are this age, you wanna make sure you hit this ride. So that was really fun. I got

Yeah.

I just and I think it's just such a great I love the people that work there. I still am in communication with a lot of people, and I just think it's such a fun addition to San Diego and Carlsbad, specifically.

Well, it's been a huge economic boom to San Diego excuse me, to Carlsbad.

And now they have, what, 3 hotels?

2 so far, but they're they're in planning on the 3rd. The 3rd.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah. And just continue to grow and grow. And, of course, you know from being on the inside, I mean, it it's a very competitive business. And so you can't sit still as a theme park because your competitors sure aren't, if you wanna stay relevant and competitive. And then, so destination management.

Yes. So that was

in closer to Chamber World, to be honest.

It was actually. And, so at LEGOLAND, our entertainment department also became an entertainment and events department.

Mhmm.

And I had always been really interested in events, and so that kinda got that bug. And then I knew of a job that opened up at a company called PRA, Destination Management. Patty Roscoe is the owner of that company, and she was a big player in San Diego, I believe. I know with the chamber down there, and I knew she knew my dad. And, anyway, I learned about this company and a job opened up, so I I hopped on that job.

And just to kind of try a new world, I've just obviously, you've mentioned I've bounced around from jobs. Every 6 years, I just get a new inkling. And it's always in the creative space. It's always in the people space. And, I don't know.

I just really was fascinated by this world of destination management Yeah. And corporate event planning. And, I was an operations manager there. So we would get a file and it would be a corporation coming to San Diego. And a lot of times, because since I lived up here in Carlsbad, I would get the the gigs at La Costa Resort or Mhmm.

At the time, it was the Four Seasons, now Park Hyatt.

Yes. Yeah.

And I would, you know, almost move in there for a weekend when a big group would come in, and I'd be in charge of their transportation from the airport to and from or all of their tours if they had, you know, spousal tours to Legoland or wherever.

Yeah.

And then, also their on-site events. And so I got to do all their private dinners and big corporate events. And so that was really, really a good time as well.

Yeah. Fascinating. And then you transitioned, it looked like, into social media freelancing. Or maybe that

was woven into all

of that.

Was that I had kids. Yeah. And I was, if you really wanna hear I don't know if it's this is in your notes, but I was working still at the the the production company or I'm sorry, the destination management company. And I ended up getting cast on a game show called Don't Forget the Lyrics.

I did not find that in my in my background.

This is special knowledge. And so I ended up winning a a good chunk of money on this game show. I owe $100,000.

Wow.

And I was like, you know what? I think I wanna take a little this year off, let's say. My my I had a 1 year old and a 3 or no. I forget the exact ages, but oh, no. I was pregnant Uh-huh.

And then I had a 1 year old.

Okay.

And I thought, you know what? When I get this money, I'm gonna take some time off. Yeah. And I did. And I took time off to raise my little kids

Yes.

With this nest egg and kind of, you know, was more than I was making. So, and then while I was while I was home, though, I was needing an outlet for myself, and I started working on a blog or I started a blog. It was right when blogs were kind of hitting the the sphere, and it was before Instagram even existed. It was right when Facebook started. And I kind of got into the space of I was an an OG mom blogger, and I became a mom blogger.

And I wrote this book about women who had lost their dads because I'd already lost my father. And I just sort of started to train myself on social media because it was just Emerging. Working. Yeah. And, I started to go to things called tweet ups because Twitter was a really big thing.

And I met a bunch of moms. We'd go to tweet ups and we would get paid to go to restaurants and promote them or go to Legoland and promote it. You know, we got, all these things. I started going to press junkets for films in LA. And I started to just teach myself how to market online.

And it was when it was all kind of happening. And then my kids got older, and I got separated from my husband. And I needed to go back to full time work. And all of a sudden, social media management was a job.

It was a thing.

It was not a thing.

It was a career.

A few years prior

and

all of a sudden it was. And I said, I think I could do that. And so then I started to work in social media marketing. And I really it a lot of it was self taught, and then I would I just started to listen to podcasts about marketing, online marketing, and digital marketing. And, one thing led to another, and it was just a thing.

It was it it was a career for me. For many years, I worked at an agency, and I did, social media marketing for a lot of hotels, a lot of Marriott chains.

Nice.

Or not chains, but, you know, individual hotels. And then Kaboo Music Festival. I don't know if you remember that, but I was the social media man on the team for that Sure. Music festival. And, then all of those jobs have now converged.

Into this

new what I do now at Loft 100 Studios. And let's

let's let's open that up now. You're the director of marketing at Loft 100. So tell everybody what is Loft 100 Studios.

Yeah. Loft 100 Studios is a production company where we produce everything from broadcast TV to small corporate videos to podcasts. And as well, we are now opening up our business model to be an event space as well. So any chamber member can come to our our happy hour here, on January, I think it's 25th, to check it out. But we have a very unique space, and it's got all the built in AV capabilities.

We currently film a couple national TV shows that are, on cable networks and, video networks. It's through biz something called Biz TV. And then we also have a show that's here locally called On the Air with Sully and Little Tommy that airs on KUSI every Saturday and now on Fox 5 because the 2 networks merged. Yeah.

Very nice.

So, we film our own shows, but we have a full production crew. So we also open up and on our off days where we're not shooting our own shows, we shoot, vodcasts video podcasts, and we shoot corporate videos. We have a green screen, and, we are now looking into hosting these, you know, happy hours or small small corporate events where people need AV capabilities. And we have a stage there. So it could be, you know, I'm kind of thinking into small acoustic sets.

Our Yeah. We have a full band that plays on one of our shows, so there is capabilities for a full band to play. And, there's a huge I don't know the dimensions off the top of my head. I wanna say 12 by 12, but 12 foot by 12 foot video wall.

Nice. It's,

you know, it could be you could show your own. I I wanna do it and show my kid my daughters, dance studio, you know, big showcase on the on the big screen.

Nice.

You got a viewing party for for some sort of

Very nice.

Video. Yeah.

Very cool. We're gonna take a brief pause. We are talking to Mary Bert Godwin, the director of marketing at Loft 100 Studios, and we're gonna come back. We're gonna unpack Loft 100 a little more and talk about, a show that Mary herself hosts on air. So stick with us.

We'll be right back. So, Mary, before we took a break, you were just kinda getting us into all the cool stuff that you do at Loft 100. I mean, TV, radio, video podcasting, regular podcasting, all kinds of cool stuff. And you yourself also are an on air host. I believe it's called America Trends?

Yes. America Trends. And we are on hiatus for the moment, but for about 2 years. And the show has been running for several years. It took a hiatus, I believe, right before COVID.

And then somewhere in the middle, I think, in 2021, Sully was talking to me about finding a new host, and he had no idea that my background in in production and that I've been on stage and doing actually theater. On stage is my first thing, I think. Yeah. I was born. I came out of the womb snapping my fingers and was on stage all growing up.

And I said, I could do that. And he said, you can? I said, yeah. Give me a try. So we tried it.

And so for 2 or I can't do the math, but many years, I was the host of that show. It was a 1 hour interview show with Business Lance, and we would interview small business owners Sure. All over the country. I mean, a lot of them would be locally, but we and we would do some on air I'm sorry, Zoom interviews. Yeah.

What a great thing you could do Zoom interviews now. It's amazing.

And we're and we're all tuned in. Like, it seems totally natural to us now. Right? Yeah. Like, if you'd done that in 2019, we're like, this is weird.

What is it? But now it's like, oh, yeah. You don't even bat an eye.

I mean, most of the meetings I do are on Zoom now. So so that is a show that had a business slant, but also had a lot of pop culture moments. I had someone come in and talk about cybersecurity.

Is it a weekly well, like a weekly show? It was actually daily. Oh my goodness. Daily. Yeah.

It was it was a lot. Oh. Yeah. So now we would shoot it, you know, in chunks. Mhmm.

So shoot Tuesdays Thursdays, and we'd bang out a bunch of shows. Right. Now I'm cohosting the big biz show, which is the show that Sully has been doing for the owner of Loft 100 Studios and, Sully Entertainment Group, which is our umbrella company.

Yep.

He's been in radio and TV for 25 years here in San Diego.

Yes.

And he hosted the show many years with Rusty Nails, who passed away. Actually, on our show, he passed away. He was the host of our, Saturday show called On the Air. It used to be with Sully Little Tommy and Rusty Nails.

I remember it.

Yeah. So, that was a big loss for all of us. Yeah. And when Rusty left, now there's 3 other co hosts that all take the place of Rusty. They took 3 people to fill Rusty's

shoes. Shoes. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's co hosted by, Mike Costa, who's a sports announcer, local sports Yeah. Sports announcer, and Greg Todorov, who's our executive producer, and myself.

Nice.

So I'm the only female in the mix, which can be challenging.

I don't know. I'm not getting the vibe that you have any difficulty holding your own.

Well, I'll tell you. It is challenging, but I get I get my words in where I can.

I love it. So, and so that show that you just referenced, though, that is the how often is that show?

So that is also a daily show that's on the big biz show. I'm sorry. Also biz TV, and I believe it's, being broadcast. It's on arm American Forces Radio. It's on radio, and it's it's part of, you know, networks around the country that your cable provider needs to be signed up with.

Yep. Or you can also sign up online at biztv.com. There's a bizvod.

And so then for something like that, I'm imagining that the way that pencils is the advertisers, the the sponsors of the show. Is that how you guys get paid to do it?

Yes and no. I believe that they have, you know, some of it could be, you know, pay to play or, you know, paid to have some spots on to be on the guest. Nice. Nice. And, yeah.

I don't know all the inner workings of that stuff. But, yes, I believe that some of it is, sponsors and then which we're you know, we have, some really great sponsors. And, then also depending on who it is and who who Sully is working with and Greg's working with, they they get sponsored segments.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. So being in this world of content creation and that and, you know, getting guests and getting topics to keep people's interest.

Right? And all this stuff. I mean, you've done it in the world of blogs. You've done it, in the world of TV production and show production. And now, again, in this vein, you know, we're in an election season.

I mean, people might not hear this episode till after the election's over. But as you and I sit here, we're about I don't know. 2 I think it's 2 weeks.

2 weeks.

Yeah. 2 weeks till, election day. So in that vein of content creation, elections help, hurt. I mean, how does it all play into, you know, the mix?

You know, it's interesting. I mean, I love digital marketing

Mhmm.

And I love social media for a lot of reasons.

Mhmm.

There's it's I am one that I I don't mind being sent ads of things that I like.

Sure.

You know, I don't mind getting served ads for, aviation sweatshirts or whatever it is because they know I mean, I don't like getting diaper ads because my kids aren't in diapers anymore.

Not your season of life.

Season of life anymore. So, you know, I don't hate targeted ads. I don't hate, being able to communicate and have an open dialogue some open dialogue in comment sections and seeing things. I I I do think it's troublesome, the echo chambers that we can get ourselves into and people can get sucked into. And as soon as I learned that that was a thing where I realized I was being fed only content Yeah.

That speaks to my likes, then I thought I need to go in and follow other accounts.

I I did this thing.

And watch other accounts so I hear what the other side is saying because I want to be open minded. Yeah. I also don't wanna be blindsided by things, and I want to have to be, informed, and I want to learn. So it keeps that going in me. I don't know that everyone does that, though.

Yeah.

So, you know, being fed information that just speaks to what is going to fuel your fire and not hear both sides. I do also I'm very, wary of AI and these the deep fake content that's out there. I'm seeing videos on both sides of the aisle that I think, I don't think their mouth is matching up to what they're saying, and I don't know if I can agree with or I can believe what I'm hearing. And it's it can be very disheartening. I do love to see how creative people can be

Right.

With hopping on the trends of what is popular on social media and finding ways to incorporate that into their political campaign. Whatever side it is

Right. Right. Right.

I find that to be you know, that goes back to my creative side. It's fascinating. I know that there's a very smart, creative content person working on their team, and I'm always like, gosh, the person that came up with that campaign is genius. I love this. You know?

Right.

How smart. And when they respond also, I love this isn't necessarily, politically minded, but let's say it's Wendy's or that's a brand that comes to my mind. But there's really smart brands out there that are listening.

Yeah.

Social listening is so important on these on these, platforms on Twitter or x, excuse me, or threads or Instagram, whatever it might be. When people are listening and their name is dropped or something is talked you know, if it's burgers, Maybe a celebrity says something about a burger and then Wendy's hops in and says, you know, I got one sitting here. Here's your coupon or whatever. They make a funny joke. I think that is so genius, and that is staying up with the times, and that's kind of what we all need to do.

Yeah. But, I don't know. I I I feel like we're very inundated with messaging. I did Yeah. See something.

You know, one campaign is slandering the other, but then this campaign is just talking about their their platform.

Yeah.

And it it's interesting to see what people are choosing, which direction people are choosing to go.

Which narrative they're following? Right. Mhmm. It's quite fascinating. I think each election is can be, you know, studied as a as individual case studies.

And this one has lots to that will be discussed regardless of which side wins.

Yes.

There'll be a lot discussed about this election for many years and studied, you know, as best practices and not to do's. And

And there's a lot of pivoting. I mean, that's the word of the day. Right? That's the word du jour, but it's true. People have to pivot.

Yeah. And then then a new poll comes out saying one way or the other, or you see what someone else is doing. And now the pivoting can happen overnight kind of because

happens so rapidly.

Yeah. I mean, these social media managers are not sleeping right now.

And the social media aspect that, you know, you've been touching on, it has changed the dynamic, like, you know, candidates on what whichever party or view don't have to rely directly on mainstream media to get messaging out anymore. Right? They can go to these various platforms and speak straight to the masses who are interested in listening to them.

Right.

You know, it's it's fascinating that, you don't have to just rely on these news outlets or whatever, you know, the things are. Or even TV commercial. I mean, I don't even watch regular TV. Like, I haven't for a long time. And so I don't even see, the commercials anymore.

And I used to remember being like, oh my goodness. Can the election just happen so we can stop seeing all these stupid commercials? You know? Yes. But, and I know they still exist.

But, but now, you know, through the other, media outlets. Now I will say you were talking about how you don't mind ads being served up to you. There are things you like. Uh-huh. But the part that does creep me out back to listening Yeah.

Is when it's something I've never searched online for. I've never typed in anywhere. Just in some passing conversations somewhere I had, either in my house or with friends, Had a conversation about something, and then I see it in a social media feed, and I'm like, oh, that just bothers me. Out as well.

Happens all the time.

It does more and more.

It happens more and more, and I still think there's gotta be serious listening. I don't know how that happens because I'm not at the inner workings of that level of any of it.

I I turned off my Google Home because I knew it was listening too much. And, like, I'm unplugging this thing and

Yeah.

And still and so it happens less, but it was it still happens a little bit. And it's like, oh, I don't like that.

Yeah. I mean, the the dangers of it all because it can it it starts they all start off all these technologies start off with something usually a good Yes. Positive outlet. They want to do something positive.

Agree.

But then it's invariably weaponized in different ways. And it it is it is scary. Yeah.

So back to the amazing Soli Entertainment Group and Loft 100 Studios. You guys have this great capacity, great capabilities to help people with all forms of media that they might be interested in. Now you're into event space and event hosting. So, if somebody wanted to learn well, first of all, we've said it a couple of times, but I wanna encourage our audience to come to our January happy hour because then they can see your place, in in all its glory. But, if they want to if they miss the happy hour and they wanna, you know, start talking to you guys or or investigating a possible working relationship, would the solientgroup.com website be the place to start or is there another path?

It can. Yes. Solient group or I think it's, actually spelled out Solient Entertainment Group.

Oh. I think

you get there both ways, actually. That's the marketing tip there for it. I have them both

Yeah.

Go direct. But there you can get to our loft 100 studios.com.

Loft.

Is our studios.com. Okay. On the landing page right at the top, there's a book a tour that'll take you to, a form where you can send. It goes to our director, Jared Coleman, and to myself, And we will schedule a tour for you to come in and and check it out and or hop on a phone call to find out your budget, your timing, to, you know, your capacity. Our capacity is about a 100 for a you know, that's so it's a small happy hour type event or small meeting.

It's not gonna be a big sit down. It's not big tables. 100 is

not small.

That's true. But it's not, you know and that's little bistro tables. Medium.

Medium.

Yes. Small to medium. Yeah. So we have little bistro tables and some belly bars, high top tables. And, you know, there are some immovable parts of the set, but it is kind of cool because you can have the cameras there and it it's just got a very cool feel to it.

You know, you feel like you're in a movie set. And then you can have your food trucks or catering, whatever it might be. But again, it's not gonna be a sit down dinner, you know, full serve full service. But, yeah, people should come to our happy hour or hit us up on loft 100studios.com, and we'll book a tour. Yeah.

Perfect. Perfect. Well, we're, excited. I know, you and I met, I don't know, about 6, 8 months ago, maybe, something like that. And I honestly didn't know anything about your studio.

So I'm really excited to have you guys as part of our chamber. I'm excited to host an event there.

Yes. We're really excited to have have, everybody come and see the space. And we just we moved locations. We were over we had a smaller studio, about 3 times smaller, over off Avenida and Sienna. And we were we were there for we opened up during COVID, if you can believe it.

Yikes.

And then, we were there for about 2, 3 years, I guess. And then we just moved over here to Bressy Ranch area, and it's a it's a much bigger space. So now that we're up and doing our productions, we're up and running. We thought this is a perfect place to do events. So we're segueing into that, opening up that business model, and we'd love to have people come by and check it out.

Yeah.

It's gonna be fun. Our, January happy hour is always very festive because, you know, it's like the kicking off the New Year. And I I have a feeling you guys know how to put on a good party. We do.

Yeah. Absolutely. Let's have fun.

Let's do it. Well, thank you so much for coming down today, sharing all your fun background and all about Loft 100 Studios. It's gonna be, you know, 2025. It's gonna be awesome.

Great year. Thanks for having me. This is great.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for joining us today on our Carlsbad People, Purpose and Impact podcast. If you got value out of our episode today, please hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app, and please tell a friend. Can't wait to see you next time on Carlsbad People, Purpose, and Impact.