The Unstoppable Molly Arbogast

Introducing Molly (Mullady) Arbogast, sports marketing expert and Keynote Speaker for the 2022 Women2Women Conference + Expo on April 20. Founder and CEO of POV Sports Marketing since 2016, and with over 25 years of experience developing and selling professional sports, Ms. Arbogast has worked in corporate sponsorship development for the Philadelphia Eagles, the Detroit Pistons, the WNBA and Learfield Sports, among others. Ms. Arbogast has won several awards, including the 2019 Sports Business Journal Game Changer award. POV Sports Marketing is “one of the only certified women-owned, full-service sports marketing agencies in the United States – and may in fact be the only one.” In a recent interview, Ms. Arbogast gave her perspective on a variety of topics, including growing up in a household of boys, the value of hard work, finding your strength, your motivation and your voice and sage advice on “Getting Out of Your Own Way,” the topic of her keynote speech at the Women2Women Conference + Expo.

How did your formative years shape your thoughts about women and working? About being the confident woman you are today?

M.A.: As a woman growing up in the sports business, which is very male-dominated, I had to constantly advocate for myself. If I could pull my younger self aside, I’d love to have her sit in on this keynote and have her listen to me and understand it’s all going to be OK, but you need to use your voice and you need to silence the inner voice of doubt that all of us have. Be brave. And it’s such a crazy thing when you look at a 12-year-old girl and she’s running around on the soccer field or the lacrosse field or playing basketball with her brothers in the driveway…no one has told her there will be hurdles and barriers because you are a girl. She thinks she can do anything, which is the way it should be. I was one of five kids, four boys and Molly, and so for me, having a voice was more about survival…what’s so interesting is when you grow up with brothers, you have this voice because if you don't speak up, you won’t be heard. My father didn’t look at all of my brothers and say, “Here are the rules for you four and here are the rules for you, young lady,” he said, “Here are the rules.” And my mother was the same way. When I was interviewed for an interesting podcast called, “Executive Leadership Radio,” prior to the podcast they said, “We want to know who you were as a young girl, your middle school years.” When I was 14, I organized a school-wide bike-a-thon at Lake Forest Country Day School that raised $16,000 for the American Cancer Society in Chicago. No one told me I couldn't do it. They just said to get it done. I received an award, but I didn't understand why it was such a big deal. I just went and used my voice and organized it. That’s how I was raised, to do great work, raise your voice when you need to, raise your hand and offer to do work on those projects and say “Yes.”

Getting out of your own way means different things to different people. Can you share some thoughts of what getting out of your way means to you?

M.A.: It’s understanding you have value, you have a voice, and you’re put on this earth to use that voice and use it wisely and to take calculated risks and to know when to be silent…knowing

when to be silent is as powerful as knowing when to speak. And raise your voice, whether it’s advocating for a business need or advocating for your spouse or your husband or your partner or your children or a charity but also managing and tempering that so that when you are speaking, people are listening, because they know that you are going to have something important to say. But I needed to go through my journey to get to the point where I was ready to lead and hire and inspire and work with brands like Wawa and Firstrust Bank and Stroehmann Bread and Rothman Orthopaedics. I didn’t even know I was a pioneer in the sports industry until it was happening, because the idea of someone not hiring me, because I was a woman in 1991, in the sports business, was so foreign to me. I’m proud to say there’s a lot more women in the room than have ever been in the sports business before, but we need to just keep doing great work to earn those highlevel roles. To me, it’s about women giving themselves permission to be brave. Giving yourself permission to be brave, to silence selfdoubts will allow you to do things you could never imagine. There’s nothing more valuable than human capital right now in the corporate world, and people need to go and take that for a little bit of a ride to make sure that they are getting paid their worth, and if not, for righting a ship that should have been righted long ago. You will handle it because you are talented, you have analytical reasoning and you get the job done. Tell those Fortune 1000 companies, “I can help you generate revenue or cut cost,” and when women start talking that way, gender leaves the room. I’ve surrounded myself with cheerleaders and champions… and most of them are not in my industry, but they are people who believe in me. When I need that inner voice of doubt to be silenced, I go have a cup of coffee with one of them and they say, “You’re good, you’ve got this,” because no one does this alone. I had the vision and I needed those people who I surrounded myself with to give me the support to bring it to life. Confide in these people to share your doubts and fears. Don’t be surprised Mwhen they say, “I believe in you. You got this. You could've done this all along…why didn’t we talk about this sooner? Let’s find a way to help you along and help you do this.”

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What is your advice to women who are currently struggling and don’t know how to move forward?

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M.A.: God doesn’t come down from heaven and shut off your oxygen when you fail, he actually makes you breathe in and out and work through it, and that experience will make you stronger and those experiences will give you the confidence to be extraordinary down the line. 2 By Kelly Hancock, Freelance Writer

CMY K • When Molly Arbogast was on the cusp of starting her own business, she said to her husband,

“Alright, I’m climbing out on a limb…are you holding it steady?” and he said, “Go for it girl,” so I said

“OK,” and off I went. • Regarding the inner strength of women, Molly

Arbogast recalls that, growing up, her mother had a pillow in their house with the following words quoted from Eleanor Roosevelt, that said, “A woman is like a tea bag. You never really know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.” • On encouraging other women to start their own businesses in a male-dominated field: “I believe I’m the only woman-owned marketing sports agency in America…and I can’t wait to say I’m one in ten.”

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