Sometimes You Just Have To Show Up and Be Present.

Can't Win If You Aren't In the Game.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Over the past few months I have been periodically taking a few minutes to stop and look at what I have accomplished over the past 2 1/2 years in this podcasting space. The Black Podcasters Association has gone from a small facebook group, to an online community that is making an impact for Black podcast creatives and professionals, and to be honest, I can’t believe we are here.

The past two years has been a long journey into hard work, dedication, frustration, failures, successes, and a stubborn path in personal growth; I want to definitely stress the personal growth part.

See, I am what some would say is a “serial entrepreneur” because of all of the various businesses I have attempted in my life. Some were outright failure in part to me getting in my own way, while others were beyond my control.

My real estate investment business didn’t survive the 2009 real estate crash, my dot com attempts fell flat due to limited resources & non-committing partners, and my podcasting business was almost lost to the pandemic before it even got started.

And despite my losses over the years, and numerous “start-overs”, here I am, on probably one of my greatest journeys of failures and successes.

An Unexpected Event Blew Up My Business Model

In 2019, after being badly injured in a car accident, and out of school/work, I decided I would use my recovery time to finally do that podcast “we” (friend and I) kept talking about. While going down the podcast learning rabbit hole on the internet and youtube, I discovered Shannon Hernandez’s (aka the Shan Man) amazing youtube tutorials on podcasting. I dove down this rabbit hole like a Greg Louganis’ forward dive…I finally found someone who spoke plainly to me.

So after hours of consuming his channel, and taking notes, I stumbled on to a particular video that peaked my interest. This wasn’t his typical video, I noticed something:

1. He wasn’t filming in his in his usual locations

2. He had a yamaha mixer in the background

My background is in music, and recording studio equipment will always catch my eye. this situation was no different.

I wear glasses, so of course I couldn’t make out what he had exactly. I watched over

and over to see if I could make out what it was he had in his setup. I had an idea, but I like to be sure.

All I truly knew was, he had a mobile recording setup and I knew I could turn that into a business for me.

For days my curiosity was killing me, I kept watching, and then I did something I would have never normally done.

I reached out to a Youtube personality and asked him what was his recording setup.