(bright music) - Will you consider this?

Where can we keep in touch with our roots?

Where can we get local news?

Seems to be a vacuum.

But this gentleman here, Dave Molleck has figured out a way for years and years and years, how to keep people informed.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

- So let's talk about you.

You grew up here.

- Grew up in Peoria.

I've been married, my lovely wife.

And I can't take credit for this, my wife and I are a team.

And we've been married for 46 years.

- And you're still married even though you work together.

- Still married.

People have asked us about that.

We each bring something different to the table.

I'm the outside person.

I'm the visionary.

I'm the guy out talking to people.

My wife's the one behind the scenes making me look good.

She keeps the office going, between her and my son.

And it's just, we all make a good team.

- Awesome.

Well, so when I very first met you, it was through "Senior News and Views", correct?

- Right.

- And that was a publication.

How many years did you do that?

- We still do it.

We bought that from the estate of Mike Kinney.

Mike Kinney passed away, and his estate contacted us about buying that publication.

At that time, it was called "Senior Citizens News and Views".

We've got it.

It stayed a newspaper for a long time, and then we decided to make it into a magazine.

They made it into a magazine.

I think it was around '07, '08, we turned into a magazine.

Our first publication that's still out there is "Healthy Cells Magazine".

And that's really what most people know us by.

- And that's LimeLight Communications.

- Right, LimeLight Communications, the corporate umbrella.

That's what we call ourselves.

Then we have "Healthy Cells Magazine".

We have "50 Plus News and Views".

Healthy Cells in Peoria we've just renamed to "Experience Health".

And the idea behind that is to get people living healthier before they get sick.

- There's a need for that.

- So we're trying to encourage healthy decisions, healthy eating, get up and move.

Emotionally, physically, nutritionally, that's always been Healthy Cells' tagline.

And we opened those in five different states all over the country.

COVID took most of those out.

- [Christine] I was just going to ask, right?

- COVID took out 40% of our business, but we survived.

And we were just grateful to survive, to be honest with you, because it was a tough time.

A real tough time for publications.

- But you would think with people being stuck at home, that they would've needed those publications.

- You would've thought that, but that's not how it worked.

- Interesting.

- I mean, because other businesses hurt, they didn't have money to advertise.

And what supports all of our publications are advertising.

- Is advertising dollars.

- So again, we're very grateful.

We've been able to do what we've done.

We've gotten a lot of compliments, Healthy Cells, over the years.

People called and said, "They saved our life."

"50 Plus News and Views", it gives people an idea of what else is out there as they age, and where can they move and that kind of thing.

Now, we've also gone digital.

All of our publications have websites.

Then we also have another one that's called "Easy Retirement Living".

And that's designed to help people navigate to see all the different retirement communities.

Everyone is there free of charge, and you don't have to give any personal information.

So they're not victimized.

So many families are victimized.

When they have to give their email, they have to give their address, have to give their phone number, then their phones ring off the hook.

With our like "Easy Retirement Living", you never give that information out.

So you can't be bombarded with people.

Our goal is to protect the seniors, to protect the family.

- And this is something that has evolved?

- Yeah.

And it's absolutely free.

- You saw that there was a need and you figured out how to do it.

- My wife and I have been very fortunate.

We find problems, we solve the problems, and that's what we've done in life.

- Well, and you've been doing it for a long time.

- I've been doing it since...

The first Healthy Cells came out March of '99.

We actually started putting it together in '98, but we didn't know what we were doing.

Neither one of us came from a journalist background.

Neither one of us ever were in publishing.

We just bought the computer and said, "Why not?

Let's try it."

- Let's give it a whirl.

- And that's really, really how this built.

And then lastly, we've got the publications of The Voices.

And that's really turned out very unique.

And this has been a lot of fun, The Voices.

- First of all, let's talk about digital.

So you have your son who's helping you, and so he probably is the digital guy.

- More so, we're going to probably hire another digital person.

Someone that is more in tune with digital than we are.

- Right.

- My youngest son who works for us, he's our baby, but he's 39.

So we have to probably get somebody younger than him.

Somebody that... - He can bring through.

- He does far better than I could ever do.

- It's called the computer and technology, right?

- On the internet, I'm looking at the news.

On the internet, I'm looking at my RVs.

I'm an RV junkie.

But other than that, I'm not on the internet.

- But you don't want to be, you don't need to be.

So let's talk about this.

So this is how we reconnected, because I did work for you for a while.

- Very short while, unfortunately.

I wanted to keep you longer.

It just didn't work that way.

- No, but then I had started to have grandchildren too, so it's all good.

- Yeah, I understand.

- But now we have these publications, "The Hometown Voice".

This one I have from Pekin.

This one I have from East Peoria.

And this is a monthly kind of a publication.

You're also in Chillicothe.

- Chillicothe was the first one, yes.

- And so how did it all come about?

There's a thirst for news out there.

There's a thirst for being in touch with what's going on, keeping your finger on the pulse somehow in your community.

Right?

- Yes.

Yes.

Really, to be honest, I didn't want to do the Chillicothe publication.

It was our first newspaper.

My wife has always supported me.

She's always been behind the scenes.

My wife Ginny, we got her out involved in the community a little bit.

Wherever I go, people know me.

And I think she's a little envious of that.

And I said, "Well honey, why don't you go out and get involved in the community?"

So she got involved with the Chamber of Commerce.

Which as of next week, she'll be the president of the Chillicothe Chamber of Commerce.

My wife has always been behind-the-scenes girl.

She didn't want to be out front.

- Okay.

Boy, that's a big stretch.

- This is a big stretch.

Then there's a group in Chillicothe that does a wonderful thing called the Optimist Club.

- Right.

- And Ginny went to the Optimist Club and she got involved with many of the ladies there.

And they were pressuring us to start a Chillicothe newspaper.

Starting a Chillicothe newspaper to me was like gaining another itch.

It wasn't something I wanted to have.

- [Christine] All right.

(Christine chuckles) - But after some pressuring from the community, we said, "Okay, we'll start it and we are prepared to lose X amount of dollars."

Once we lose X amount of dollars... - Then we're going to say, "Goodbye.

Hasta la vista, baby."

- We're gonna put it to bed, that's it.

That was three years ago.

- All right.

- And it's done wonderful.

It's a lot of fun.

You know about the community.

It becomes kind of a gossip piece in some ways.

Everybody knows what's going on in the community, so we said, "Okay, let's have some rules here."

No national news, only local news, and zero politics.

That's it.

- So, local news only.

So Greater Chillicothe.

- Only.

- And that's it.

- That's it.

So then for distribution and publications.

We have to have good distribution.

We direct mail one to every single house in Chillicothe, Rome, and Mossville, free of charge.

And that was our formula.

And we said, "Would this work?"

And it just worked wonderfully.

- And advertising pays for that.

- Supports everything.

- Supports it, okay.

- Then Pekin, Illinois, we contacted them.

Well, they had some people from there contact us, and said, "Why can't we have one of these?"

- Well, they have a newspaper there anyway.

But, okay, so this is in conjunction with- - But there isn't very much local stuff in there.

It's all national news.

- Right.

- So we ended up starting one in Pekin, which was a big jump because in Chillicothe we have 5,600 people, between Chillicothe and Mossville-Rome area.

Or mailboxes, 5,600.

In Pekin, we have 19,300 and some, I think it's 381 or something like that.

- All right, so we're into the big thousands.

Sure.

Big postage.

- Yeah, it's very expensive.

And we thought, "Well, will this work?"

It worked.

It has done fabulously.

I mean, people love it.

People contact my office thanking us for it.

We fill it full of all the local stuff.

No national, no politics.

We'll let politicians advertise, but we are not going to do articles about them unless we can have both sides of the coin.

- Right.

- And it's worked really well.

And that's been going on since last April.

- And this is "The Hometown Voice".

- Hometown Voice.

- So that's Pekin.

- And then it has its own website, pekinvoice.com.

Then we said, "Let's start East Peoria."

- Because you've been doing the "East Peoria Festival of Lights" for many years.

- We have done a lot of work with East Peoria.

Over the years, East Peoria, the Fon du Lac Park District used to put out a magazine that was one of our magazines we put out for them.

They don't do that anymore.

But we used to do a lot of their publishing whether it was the postcards or envelopes, just all kinds of stuff.

So then we started the East Peoria.

We just went to print with the second one, and it has been accepted wonderfully.

And what's nice is all three of these publications, they're all operating in the black.

- And you'll probably be expanding to other communities.

- We have two other communities we're looking at.

We are currently in...

When you add everything up, we're in about 36, 37,000 mailboxes a month between the three.

When we're all done, we'll be just shy of 60,000.

We'll be somewhere around 58, 57, 58,000 when we get done.

- And then what does it cost you to mail all those mailings?

- Somewhere around 22 to 23 cents a copy.

- Per copy.

- Right.

So in Chillicothe, we direct mail out 54, 5,600, something like that.

In Pekin, it's over 19,000.

And in East Peoria, it's over 12,000, 12,500 I believe it is.

Then we also print an additional 7, 800 in each community that we put out in places like the library for people that are from outside the area that come in.

Or we have people that call us at the office and say, "You did an article about Mom.

We'd like to send these out to the grandkids.

Where can I find more copies?"

Well, then we direct them out, accordingly.

- Well now, in Chillicothe, you have one very famous person who has been pictured with "The Chillicothe Hometown Voice".

And who's that?

- Oh, that's Josh Taylor.

So Josh was on the soap opera, "Days of Our Lives".

People don't realize Josh is from Chillicothe.

We have other people that have connections with Josh Taylor.

And his real name's actually Tim Taylor.

But there was already a Tim Taylor, so they had to name him Josh Taylor.

- So as not to confuse.

- Right.

But anyway, yeah, so Josh is from the community.

And we have a picture of him holding newspaper with all the other actors and actresses, reading our newspaper.

So that's kind of fun.

- That is fun.

But how does it work?

You're juggling, how do you keep this all straight?

- My wife is very good at what she does.

- Okay.

But you have contributors.

You don't necessarily have a local news staff for each one of these publications.

You have community contributors.

So tell me how that works.

- Well, one of the things we wanted to do was work with the churches, work with all the nonprofits.

So we have the Rotary Clubs, the Eagles, or the Lions Club.

All these groups that do wonderful things for the community, the Rotaries, they have lost their vehicle for getting information out to people.

So part of what we do, we work with all those nonprofits and we give them space.

And the churches, we give them space.

If you want to come in, we have to be loyal to our advertisers first.

But then the space left over, we fill with stuff like that.

Now, we also have some people that just like to write and they contribute.

And part of that, now we're working with high school kids.

Pekin High School.

So I saw you last week at the East Peoria function with the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast.

A young lady sat across from me, from Pekin, who says, "By the way, I'm writing in your next newspaper."

And she was thrilled.

It gave her an opportunity to be published.

I think that's very important.

I think the other thing important is giving the kids a chance to be junior reporters.

So we give the kids a chance.

They write something up.

We like it, we're going to publish it for them.

- And it's not just the school newspaper where they can get kudos and they can also get bashed.

But this way, it's professional.

They actually get to contribute.

Now, there's no compensation for that.

- No, but we do pay writers.

We do have writers on hand.

And we're always looking for more writers that want to go out and interview and come up with ideas of their own.

Or we come up with ideas and say, "Go out and interview this person."

And then I'll go out and snap a picture of them and stuff like that.

- So that's your role.

You're in sales, and then you take the pictures.

- What else do you do?

- And I'm in distribution.

Yeah, I do about everything.

- And this is satisfying to you because you've just had that itch for many, many, many years.

What did you do before all this, before you and Ginny started doing this?

- I drove a semi for 20 years.

- Is that right?

No wonder you like big motorhomes then.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I logged over a million miles in semis.

And then one day, we decided to start a publication and that was "Healthy Cells Magazine".

And that's how we all got started.

- With Healthy Cells, you saw that there was a need.

Because people trying to navigate the healthcare system back then, especially for senior citizens, it can be really confusing and you have to go from this place to this place, to this place.

And so you were kind of a melting pot for helping them to navigate their own health.

- In all of our publications, I'm not going to claim to be a health expert.

I'm not going to claim to be a senior expert nor a family expert.

All we do is we gather information.

If you notice, I do very little writing.

I didn't know I could really write till, what, two years ago.

A writer didn't show up.

I got a phone call.

And next thing you know, I wrote something up and people seem to like it.

So, okay.

My wife edits what I write, and she makes me look smart.

It works out really well.

- That is a nice marriage in that regard, too.

- Yes.

We support each other.

I tell everybody, I couldn't do this without my wife.

My wife couldn't do this without me.

But together we make a heck of a team and we can do a lot of things.

Now, we have a total of eight people working in our company, and they all do various jobs.

- And where are you located now?

- We're real close to the intersection of Route 29 and Route 6 in Mossville.

We are on Hartman Road.

We are right there real close to Cat Mossville.

And that's what we do.

So, we have- - Did you occupy a building or did you build?

- No.

We bought a building that was already there.

But we bought this land deliberately, there's about four-and-a-quarter acres, so I could start my other business.

- Which is?

- I rent out huge garages.

- For motorhomes.

- For car enthusiasts, motor homes, stuff like that.

So my garages are 20 by 60.

They're heated.

Each one has its own address.

Each one has its own plumbing, its own bathroom.

And they have 14-foot overhead doors, 16-foot ceilings, fully insulated, fully wired.

It is the ultimate man cave.

- And they're for rent?

- Yes.

- How many stalls are there?

- There's a total of five.

And they're longterm renters.

When people come in, there aren't any other garages like mine out there.

So people come in and they stay.

- So this is just another thing that came to you one day, kind of like, hey, let's start some local publications.

- Again, it was my wife.

She said, "Well, you need a big garage.

Surely other people need a big garage.

So instead of building a garage this size, let's build it this size."

So we ended up with five garages.

And people adapt them the way they want.

Mine's heated and air-conditioned.

So in the summertime when it's hot, I'm in there polishing on the RV or polishing on a car, and I am not sweating too bad.

(both chuckling) - Okay, so out of- - It works out well.

- everything that you've done and the expansion that looks like it's on the horizon, what have you found the most interesting about what you are doing and what's to come?

- We live in a very special area.

Central Illinois is good.

And it's nice to be able to help all these people.

And when you're doing a publication like "The Chillicothe Hometown Voice" or "The Pekin Hometown Voice" or "The East Peoria Hometown Voice", you find people behind the scenes that give their heart and soul to the community.

And that's what we like.

- And there are stories there.

- There are stories there and people don't understand that.

And also like with the senior publication, unfortunately, we see where seniors are being taken advantage of.

They're being victimized.

And it's nice to be able to go in the retirement homes and sit and drink coffee with the seniors.

I used to do that when our business was much younger.

Back in the early 2001/2002/3 area, I'd go out on a Friday and just drink coffee with the seniors in the retirement homes.

Fascinating people.

Absolutely fascinating people.

- A generation that we're definitely losing.

- I ran into a lady at Liberty Village of Peoria.

She was in World War II.

Her job was to fly P-51's across the ocean.

- Really?

She was a pilot?

- She was a pilot, and she took the birds from our soil across seas.

And I didn't know they did that.

- I had no idea either.

- There was another lady one time at Independence Village.

She has since passed away, but she helped design the first lunar path to the moon.

And she was right here in Peoria.

- And she's since passed away.

- Yes, she has since passed away.

It's amazing the people I met.

Independence Village, there's a guy there who did poetry.

And I can't remember his name, but he sent a book to Ronald Reagan.

And he published a book on poetry.

And Ronald Reagan's wife wrote this guy a letter, and he showed it to everybody, that said, "Ronnie loves his poems."

And even toward the end of his life, she would read these poems... - [Christine] To who?

- to Ronnie Reagan.

So when you look at that, you realize we live and I'm sure in other communities too, but we have quite the resource here.

- [Christine] Mm-hmm.

We really do.

It's a very generous community.

- And people take it for granted.

Chillicothe is one of the most giving communities as far as money goes.

They have the statistics where they show how much money they've donated to St. Jude and all these different things.

My gosh, it is a generous, generous community.

- For a 5,600 person community.

So then how does it work, advertising in each community?

So, Pekin.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's Pekin businesses that advertise in that one, generally.

You don't have any crossover or very little crossover?

- Yes, we do.

We have people.

Like in Pekin, we have a company there.

They advertise in East Peoria and in Pekin because they have businesses in both.

That's fine.

And we give discounts.

If you're in multiple publications, we give discounts.

You pay full price for the first one and then we discount them across the board to try to make it more palatable.

My wife and I love business and we love helping businesses grow.

And we've helped businesses.

We've had businesses that have been really down and out.

We've helped them over the years to give them a leg up to say, "Look, we'll help you do this, we'll help you do that."

I had a lady not very long ago from another community call me.

I actually met her husband.

And I'm going to let her do some articles and try to help her get her business started.

Because as a community, anytime a business fails, the entire community hurts a little bit.

And people don't realize that.

- Right, because somebody is employed there.

Somebody is making things happen and paying taxes.

- They donate to the community.

I've got nothing against a place like Amazon.

But Amazon is paying their taxes, but they're not helping the communities.

That's what we have to focus on.

You have a little mom-and-pop shop.

They're the ones that the Girl Scouts/Boy Scouts go to.

They're the ones that the Junior Achievement goes to wanting help.

They can't go to the mail-order places for help.

- So you've really been evolving a lot too with your realization of what's cooking in the world.

- Yeah.

That's the greatest joy I have is out talking to fellow business owners, really.

- How do you keep it all straight and you're juggling?

- I don't, that's why I have a wife.

(Christine laughs) - And a calendar and yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

We do the best we can.

There's a lot on our plates.

I mean, there really is.

- I mean, if you add a couple more papers.

So obviously you stagger.

So you do East Peoria maybe one week, and then you do Pekin another week, and then you do Chillicothe another week to concentrate on it?

Or is it all at the same time?

- We're changing that now.

So East Peoria and "The Healthy Cells Magazine" in Bloomington both come out middle of the month.

All the other ones come out at the first of the month.

We can't do anymore the first of the month.

I mean, when you see all the proofs coming through.

The proof, all these ads to make sure they're all correct and they go in the right publication.

It gets cumbersome.

- I bet.

- I mean, it really does.

What really helps, though, is a lot of our customers, although the ads can change each month, many of our customers are in for the long haul.

They've been advertising with me.

I've got a couple customers been advertising with me for 15 years.

- Because you've been good to them, and they want that relationship to continue.

- To us, the customers are gold.

They're the ones paying for everything.

We go out of our way to always help our customers.

The other thing we're starting to pick up now in The Voice publications is employment ads.

Where else can you go to advertise for employment that you know you're getting in 39,000 homes?

- Exactly.

- That's pretty powerful.

- Good way to look at that.

- And it's local.

So in East Peoria, we go to 12,500 homes.

So if a company in East Peoria wants to advertise, a job placement/employment, it may cost them 150 bucks or $120 as a smallest ad.

But they get in 39,000.

Well no, I'm sorry.

I'm wrong there.

They get in 12,500 homes for 120 dollars.

- A month?

- Yeah.

- Exactly.

You can't buy that anyplace else.

- No, no.

- Well, this has all been very fascinating, and I'm so glad we were able to catch up again.

You said that maybe you'll retire and take care of the motorhome.

But I don't think that it's going to be any time soon.

- We're trying.

- Are you?

- We're trying to get my wife and I ready.

I mean, we worked hard our whole lives.

And it's time we cut back and have some fun.

- Wrap up, and then your son will take over the business?

- My son will take over.

He doesn't want to own the business.

He wants to operate the business.

So we'll always have our fingers on it a little bit.

But we're a very tight-knit family.

At one time, all of my sons... We've got three sons.

One time or another, all of them have worked there.

The youngest one just stayed the longest.

- All right.

Well, that's good.

- So it's worked out well.

- It has.

Well, best of luck in 2025.

And we'll keep in touch to find out if you are still expanding.

- Okay.

- Thank you very much for sharing your story.

And tell Ginny that I said hello.

- I will, and thank you for having us.

- And then you can always... Where can anybody contact you for different communities that they might have some information?

- My email's in all of them.

My email is just my name, Dave, D-A-V-E, at Molleck, which is M-O-L-L-E-C-K, dot, com.

Or they call me on my cell phone, and that cell phone number's in everything.

- Great.

Perfect.

- We try to make it as easy as we can.

- And you got it going, I'll tell you.

Thanks so much for being here, Dave.

Thank you for joining us.

And pick up one of the papers, you'll find a little bit more that's going on.

Stay healthy.

- Thank you.

(bright music) (bright music continues)