Key takeaways:

• The secret sauce to a successful podcast is consistency, connection, and continuing to show up.
• Podcasting work continues long after the recording is done
• If you keep showing up with that same level of honesty and value, you're not just building an audience, you're building a community.
• It's important to lead communities with clarity and care, by not just starting conversations, but also holding space for people.
• Good social media marketing isn't about going viral. It's about showing up consistently with something real to say.
• Social is a 2-way street. It's about posting and engaging with your audience.
• Every line in social media copy has a job to do, and it has to grab your audience's attention in 1-2 seconds.
• Platform fluency matters. What works in one social media platform might not work in another.
• Great copy is part psychology, part storytelling and part restraint.
• AI is a useful tool for writing, but it does not replace one's "writing voice".
• You can and should be repurposing content, because not everyone will see all of your posts all of the time.
• Being a working mom in tech means that there's no off switch. You have to communicate clearly, be efficient, and make peace with not being polished all the time.

About our guest:

Mandy Moore is a seasoned marketer, podcast producer, and storyteller with over 15 years of experience helping tech companies and creative brands build content that actually connects. She's the voice behind ExHotMess.net, a blog where she writes raw, real stories about recovery, resilience, and life in the messy middle. When she's not helping others find their voice, she's usually geeking out over astrology, audio editing, or a perfectly crafted sentence.

Find our guest on:

• Instagram
• Bluesky
• LinkedIn
• Mastodon

Find us on:

• All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
• All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

• On-Call Me Maybe Podcast
• Mandy's LinkedIn post on the importance of writing with heart
• The Happiness Lab (episode with Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General)
• Mandy's Blog

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Mandy Moore. Welcome, Mandy.

MANDY:
Hello.

ADRIANA:
Hey, I'm super excited to have you on here. And we have a really cool connection because, Mandy used to be the producer of On-Call Me Maybe, which is the podcast that Ana Margarita Medina and I used to do back in our Lightstep days, which feels like forever ago, but it wasn't like that long ago.

MANDY:
I love those days. I miss those days.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. They were. They were fun times. And where are you calling from, Mandy?

MANDY:
I am from calling in from York, Pennsylvania.

ADRIANA:
Awesome fellow east coaster. Love it. Cool. Well, let's launch into the icebreaker questions. Are you ready?

MANDY:
Sure.

ADRIANA:
Okay, let's do it. So first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

MANDY:
I'm a lefty.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, me too!

MANDY:
We've got some special skills.

ADRIANA:
We do! We do! And are you are you like a everything lefty or a, like some things you do right handed. Like I can't mouse left handed.

MANDY:
No. I'm ambidextrous, so I write left handed and I eat left handed. But like I do all sports right handed, and I cut right handed.

ADRIANA:
No way!

MANDY:
I, I, I do lots of things right handed.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. It's so interesting to talk to, fellow lefties about, like, the extent of their of their leftieness.

MANDY:
Yeah, it's all over the place.

ADRIANA:
It is. Oooh, fun! Awesome. Okay. Next question. Are you an iPhone or Android gal?

MANDY:
iPhone.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Fellow iPhone-er. For computers, do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

MANDY:
Mac.

ADRIANA:
Same. Same. Do you have a favorite programing language?

MANDY:
No, I don't, I don't I'm not a programmer. I just work tech adjacent.

ADRIANA:
I love it, I love it, and it's so fun to like, meet all sorts of folks who are tech adjacent, and I’ve had a few on the podcast as well. So we will we will be digging more into that. Okay. Two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume your content using, through video or text?

MANDY:
Text.

ADRIANA:
And final question what is your superpower?

MANDY:
Ooh, my superpower is being able to tell a good story.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, fantastic. And so important, also, like in in the type of work that you do as well. Right.

MANDY:
Exactly, exactly. Lots of storytelling involved in marketing and content marketing, tech marketing, all that kind of stuff.

ADRIANA:
Well, awesome. I think this is a good segue to get into, your tech journey. Because as you mentioned, you're you're tech adjacent. So, what you tell us a little bit about that.

MANDY:
Yeah. So I didn't set out to work in tech. I was a single mom on government assistance, just trying to survive. And this was about 15 years ago. I answered a Craigslist ad from a software developer who needed administrative help, like answering emails and scheduling meetings and doing kind of easy stuff. So I answered that ad, and he hired me, and a few weeks, and he asked if I could edit his podcast, and I said, “Pod what?”

I had no idea what a podcast even was, but I know that I needed, you know, the money and the work. So I spent a few... a weekend, heads down, figuring it out, playing with it, and, free software, open source software called Audacity. And, from there, I did such a solid job that he started just sending me referrals. And within a year, I went from food stamps to running a freelance business. So that... that one scrappy “Yes” you know, turned into a 15 year career in digital marketing, podcast production and content strategy, mostly in the tech and software space. So I've edited over 10,000 edit... or I've edited over 10,000 hours of audio, launched and grown shows, built social strategies, and worked with dev teams, founders and creators around the world.

And I did it all while learning on the job, saying yes before I was ready, and never letting anyone else define what I was capable of.

ADRIANA:
That is so amazing, and I love the whole. Like your whole journey is incredible and you know it. It's it's cool because I feel like that's the kind of mindset that you need in, in software engineering is like being willing to learn and being able to learn quickly. So that's so that's, that's so awesome. And I and I think like another thing that you mentioned, which I really love, is that you, even though you didn't have the skills, you said yes to it and and you gave yourself the skills which you know, I, I've talked to so many women in tech who are like, I don't want to apply for this job because I, I need more time to build up my skills. And I don't think I have enough skills. And you're like, nope, I bet on myself. I'm doing this.

MANDY:
Yeah. You know, at first I didn't even realize I was building a career. I was just following the work. I, I kept saying yes to new challenges managing social writing, blog post, building content, calendars, learning SEO, editing more podcasts. You know, like every client taught me something new. And eventually I realized that I wasn't just survival anymore, that I was actually just really good at this. And over time, I carved out a niche working mostly with tech companies and dev focused brands. So I loved it because it blended creativity with systems. I could help founders find their voice and launch podcasts that actually connected, and create strategies that weren't just performative, but real.

ADRIANA:
That's great. And, you know, for the work that you've done on, on various podcasts, what what ha