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A chat with influencer Molly Sullivan about her new book AND her new marriage.
Liv swallowed. Might as well listen.
Never a bad idea to know what you were up against.
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Transcript
Podcast: Quinn’s Picks
Quinn Tompkins: Welcome to this week’s episode of Quinn’s Picks. I’m thrilled to have a special guest on the podcast today, someone I’ve admired for years. You know her as the relentlessly optimistic and always authentic Invincible Molly Sullivan from Instagram, TikTok, and her... just released, memoir!
I had a chance to sit down with Molly and chat about her life off-screen. I hope you’ll learn something new about Molly—as if we needed any more reasons to love her.
Molly, tell me how you first got started on social media.
Molly Sullivan: Five years ago I thought I was living the perfect life. I had a handsome husband, I was pregnant with our first baby, and we’d just purchased our dream home outside Denver. But while I was in labor at the hospital, my husband told me he was stepping out for some air. He never came back. I soon discovered his business was in serious financial trouble and our savings were wiped out. He’d taken what little money we had left and run off.
The next few weeks were the darkest of my life. Not only had I lost my marriage, I’d lost so much of my social support system. All my friends at the time were friends with my ex-husband, too, and none of them had kids yet, so it seemed like they didn’t know how to interact with me. I was alone all day in a big empty house with my little baby, and I needed someone to talk to. To connect with.
I started sharing snapshots of my new life on Instagram—the sleepless nights with a fussy baby, the days I couldn’t find time to take a shower, the struggles with breastfeeding—and slowly developed a small following. These amazing women, people I’d never met in my life, would comment on my posts, giving me support and advice through those early months of motherhood. It wasn’t long until my online friends became more supportive than my real-life friends. Our society has become fragmented—women used to live in these tight-knit communities with their sisters and mothers and aunts and cousins, but now we’re all isolated. I think women are looking for that sense of connection in social media.
QT: How and why did you transition this into a career?
MS: I was a twenty-six-year-old single mom with no income and a massive mortgage on a house that needed lots of work. Once I exhausted my small savings account that my ex-husband hadn’t emptied, I figured my best bet was to sell the house and start over, but the housing market had taken a turn, making it impossible to sell the house in its present state. When my daughter was a couple months old, I started working on fix-it projects. I had no idea how to refinish a wood floor, for example, so I searched on Pinterest for instructions. I found all these amazing women with DIY blogs and YouTube channels. And as I tried and failed and eventually succeeded at my own projects, I documented my process on Instagram with videos and posts.
That’s when some small sponsors got involved, giving me a few gallons of paint, a new drill, light fixtures, that sort of thing. Slowly, I went from feeling alone and scared to feeling supported and empowered. By the time the house was ready to sell, I could afford to pay the mortgage myself. I owe it all to this community.
QT: But your first post to truly go viral wasn’t about DIY, right? It was that horrible date story.
MS: You mean the one about the guy who took me to McDonald’s drive-thru for dinner?
QT: (laughs) Yes! He squeezed the ketchup packets into the cupholder of his car so he could dip fries in it! So gross.
MS: That wasn’t even the worst part. When he dropped me off, he asked to use my bathroom—
QT: And tried to steal four rolls of toilet paper by stuffing them down his pants! I remember. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so awful.
MS: I shared that totally on a whim and was shocked to wake up the next morning to all the comments and shares. It was insane. I couldn’t believe that people cared so much about my life!
QT: Speaking of that, tell us what it’s like to share so much on social media. You’ve been called the Queen of Realness—sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly.
MS: Before my first husband left, he was consumed with maintaining a certain appearance—even though he was secretly putting us into debt, and eventually lost his business. I decided early on in my social media journey that I couldn’t be perfect, but I could be authentic. That included letting the world into even my dark moments, my difficult moments—being vulnerable.
QT:How do you balance authenticity and vulnerability as it relates to your child’s appearance in social media?
MS: Part of being authentic is showing my real life, and that includes my daughter. I do use a pseudonym for her, and I think carefully about how she will react to all this as she gets older. I always try to remember that my real-life relationships—with my daughter, for example—have to come before my online relationships.
QT: Speaking of relationships—you recently got married. Congratulations!
MS: Thanks so much.
QT: Tell us about your husband! You’ve been super quiet about him, only sharing one picture. We’re all curious!
MS: (Laughs) Mister Sullivan is my opposite in many ways—he’s a confirmed introvert—but we share something important: a desire to be our authentic selves. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who is as true to himself as he is.
QT: Did he know about your social media presence when you started dating?
