Amena Brown:
That time I met India Arie. That time I went on a really bad date. That time I was directed by Robert Townsend. That time I got mono on Thanksgiving. That time I went on a really bad Christmas tour. That time I ...
Amena Brown:
Hey everybody, welcome back to not only another episode of HER with Amena Brown, but also welcome back to what apparently for me is a month of anniversaries. It's a monthofversaries. Thus far you have already heard me talking with my husband about our ten-year anniversary that was this month, and many of you know, or may already know this from following me on social media, but I am the poetic partner for Tracee Ellis Ross's Beauty Brand, Pattern Beauty, which is a natural hair care brand, and Pattern is celebrating its second anniversary this month. Pattern and I share an anniversary because Pattern's anniversary is the same day as my wedding anniversary.
Amena Brown:
And this month marks the one year anniversary of relaunching my podcast as what Leigh, my assistant has affectionately called HER 2.0. Right? So I wanted to talk to y'all a little bit about ... I feel like this is at that time I episode, but as I was working on what to say to y'all, it kind of feels like a behind the podcast episode. For those of you that have been in our HER living room before, you know when I do, behind the poetry episodes, the poems are different, but a lot of the questions are the same. The form of the episode is the same. So this is me mashing together that time and doing like a behind the podcast episode to tell you a little bit about what inspired me to start the podcast, as well as some things that I've learned, some foibles that I've had along the way.
Amena Brown:
So, what you're listening to now is the relaunch of this podcast, that relaunched September 22nd, actually of 2020, but this podcast originally started in May of 2018. So, what inspired me to start podcasting? I think if I go back to me as a little kid, you know how each kid has different make-believe games that they play. And one of my make-believe games I played as a kid is that I really wanted to work in radio. That was like a childhood dream of mine. I loved listening to radio shows. To me, radio had similar elements to what it could be like being on stage. I mean, as a child, I was very enamored with what Eddie Murphy was doing on stage. What Whoopi Goldberg was doing on stage, and then growing up, listening to different radio shows. In a lot of very particular ways, listening to Black Radio, I really wanted to host a radio show myself.
Amena Brown:
So, I got into podcasting first with my sister-in-law, and shout out to Missi, my sister-in-law and I started a podcast called Here For the Donuts. She and I bonded when I married her brother because we were so close in age, we're only a year apart, but we were at totally different seasons of life. As I was marrying her brother, she was pregnant with her fifth baby. At that time, she was a homeschool mom, running a soap business. So, we were entering each other's lives at this very interesting moment, and carbs was the thing that we really had in common, and that was our middle ground.
Amena Brown:
We would meet each other at one of our favorite donut places, our home base donut place, shout out to Revolution Doughnuts here in Atlanta. And that donut place at the time was the middle ground. It probably still is actually, the middle ground between where both of us live. So we would get together and eat donuts and just talk trash and whatever. I went to an event, so many parts of this story. So I connected with Glennon Doyle on Twitter, and Glennon was touring with ... I can't remember which book it was, but she was touring with one of her books at the time, and she was having an Atlanta event and she DMed me like, "Hey, do you want to come to my event? I'm going to leave a ticket at the door for you."
Amena Brown:
I went to her event and ended up sitting next to this beautiful Black woman at her event. We were probably one of a small number of women of color who were there, but I was sitting next to this wonderful Black woman, and she looked at me and she said, "Is your sister-in-law name Missi?" I was like, "Yes." She was like, "Oh, I've read her blog." Because Missi had a blog that she was writing at the time. She was like, "I read her blog." And she was like, "That's how I knew about you because some of the things that y'all have done together." Missi and I would travel together once a year to a women's conference and stuff.
Amena Brown:
She was like, "Man, I would love to hear more about y'all, like about your friendship." So I sometimes get into a moment in public, y'all, where I just start randomly telling strangers random things. I said to her, I said, "You know what's funny? Missi and I have joked all the time that one day we're going to start a podcast or write a book together. It's all going to be about how we eat donuts and talk about life." Because when Missi and I would talk, we would talk about how our full sentence was here for the donut, stay for the cupcakes because sometimes hard things will happen in life that require you to have donuts to help yourself make it through that tough thing.
Amena Brown:
But also, if you go somewhere and they don't have donuts, if they have cupcakes, you'll stay around for that too. We have these ideas about cupcakes can be a reward when a good thing happens. So I'm just like chatting her ears off at Glennon's event before the event started. When I said to her, "Yeah, Missi and I have been talking about, maybe we'll start a podcast." And she was like, "Oh, well, if y'all start a podcast or make a book or whatever it is ..." She's like, "I would listen to it, I would buy it." I just remember both of us turning back to face forward to be a part of the rest of the event, and I remember my mind being like, "What?"
Amena Brown:
So, that next week I talked to Missi and I told her the whole thing. Then I was like, "Do you think we could do this? Do you think we could start a podcast?" She was like, "Come to my house and let's put our heads together." So, went to her house, Matt and I, met with her and her husband, and we just started outlining what we felt we wanted to do with the podcast. So we just started. Matt was recording us. He has always been my husband and my podcast producer through all of my podcasting adventures.
Amena Brown:
So he would record us and we would always record in person. We would always go to a donut place, all three of us, pick different flavors of donuts and cut them up and taste different ones. So that when we got on the episode, that was the first part of the episode was us talking about what donut flavors we had, shouting out the donut place, and then we would actually get into the episode from there.
Amena Brown:
So, we just had such a wonderful time recording. And then over time, our lives shifted, Missi went from being a homeschool mom, owning a soap business to selling her soap business and going to midwifery school, and is now a midwife. Right? Then I went from being married to a youth pastor to both of us traveling the road together and performing, my husband and I. So as that shifted, then we'd realize like, "Oh, neither of us have as much time as we used to, to do this podcast super consistently." Then we decided to change our podcast over into a pop up podcast. So these episodes still exist out there. You can find the link to that in the show notes, and those episodes are still out there for your entertainment.
Amena Brown:
They were a lot of fun to record. I can't say that we're done with the podcast, I think between our schedules changing and then the pandemic coming in, just really blew both of our lives out of the water and a lot of ways, and I'm sure some of you experienced that too. Those are not the last Here For the Donut episodes. I'm sure that we'll come back to that whenever our lives get to some semblance of a place where we both actually have time to sit somewhere, where it's quiet and record. But that was how I got started podcasting.
Amena Brown:
To get started podcasting with a podcast partner on more of a conversational podcast was really nice. We never had to schedule guests. We could just decide what we wanted the episode to be about and where we wanted to get the donuts from. It was a wonderful adventure to have. That got me curious about, would I be interested in doing a podcast on my own? So, my last book that I released in November of 2017 was called How to Fix a Broken Record, and I was kind of noodling around the idea of doing a solo podcast. I thought the book is a perfect time to try this out. So I did a 10 episode podcast series that was related to my book. My book had, if I remember right, y'all, I think my book had seven sections to it. Each section has an episode to that podcast.
Amena Brown:
Then I think the first episode was my grandmother. I did an interview with my grandmother because I dedicated the book to my mom, my grandmother and my great-grandmother. So I had one episode from my grandma, then seven episodes for each section of the book. Then I had one episode where I talked just through the music with the guest, and then the last episode, my friend Adan interviewed me like turn the tables. So, that was my first time doing a mostly interview-driven podcast, because most of that was each episode that was covering a different section of the book, I would pick a different guest to talk about those things with me, riff with me about whatever the section of the book was about.
Amena Brown:
So, I discovered from doing that 10 episode podcast, I felt like that was a good start because it was a limited series, it wasn't something I intended to do every week or do more seasons of or whatever. I could just do it and it was going to be finished. Then that would give me time to figure out what I wanted to be. By the time it got to be the end of 2017 until the beginning of 2018, I was noodling around a little bit. Will I or won't I do the podcast? But I was also coming fresh off of the book. So, I was really trying to focus on launching the book and all of that.
Amena Brown:
Well, if you've been listening to this podcast, you would be familiar with, there's an episode I did that was Behind the Poetry on Here Breathing. Here Breathing was very much centered on what was one of the hardest years of my life, which was 2018. For 2018 coming in, the way it did, my book had come out at the end of 2017, and I am still to this day, very proud of so much of what I wrote in the book, but it also felt like I worked so hard on the book, and the book really didn't have the support that it needed to really get out there to more readers. I didn't have a book tour for that book. I lost my booking and management around the same time that that book came out.
Amena Brown:
So as 2018 comes in, I'm very much in a place of, what is going to happen to my career? Just feeling like, here I have this book come out ... I should preface this by saying, at this time in my career, this book is coming out under a Christian publisher. I am still very much involved in the Christian industry side of things. If you're not familiar with that, the book is very important in that industry. The book is the most important thing. If you are a speaker, a blogger, an artist, whatever, the book is really what your career lives and dies on. Right? Because that's how you get more speaking engagements.
Amena Brown:
Because you've written this book and the books that typically excel the most in Christian industry space, they're one of two things, either they're books that are very much centered on your story, and typically if your story has a lot of part or difficult elements to it, right, or it's a Bible study, and those were your choices. I didn't feel like I was the type of person that wanted to write books that were Bible studies, and so I leaned more towards writing something that was memoir-esque but I also wanted to do that with this comedic lens. Right?
Amena Brown:
So, to have a book come out, it's like a lot of energy and time goes into that, but then to have it come out and marketing wise and tour wise, watch it peter out, was devastating more than I could have anticipated because it's hard writing a book, it's really, really hard, especially when you're writing a book about yourself and about your own life. You're really having to dig into potentially some things that were painful to you. You're having to dig into yourself a lot in a way that you would not for a lot of other projects.
Amena Brown:
And so, to have done that type of digging, and then just watch the book peter out was really hard. Right? But then I get into 2018 and I'm like, "Well, I just wrote this book, but I'm not getting any of the benefits of the book career wise." Right? Like the hope is you've got a book tour, you've got some events lined up. My whole calendar for 2018 for the most part was clear. And then as you heard me describe in more detail in the Here Breathing episode, I also got what I thought was going to be this amazing opportunity to work possibly for a very well-known radio station here in Atlanta. They were about to launch a new show. They were looking for a woman to add to this ensemble cast for the show.
Amena Brown:
And I made it through one interview, but I didn't make it past the second interview. Before I knew it, the show got launched and I saw that someone else had been chosen obviously, and it wasn't me. Of course, I had a time right there of just feeling a combination of feeling very angry, very frustrated, and also very sad, right, in a big overwhelming sense of sadness and disappointment, just feeling like ... I don't know if any of you have ever been through a season of life like this, but just feeling like everywhere you turn, you feel like you can't win. That's what that season of life felt like to me.
Amena Brown:
So I gave myself some time to lick my wounds. Then I started to think, I was so excited about this radio opportunity, but I still have podcasting, and I could start a podcast where I don't have to work with an ensemble if I don't want to, I could start a podcast and I can interview whoever I want. Like I'm the one that gets to control the content that's there. So my original idea was, I'm going to start a podcast that's going to be like the Amena Brown show, and some of you that are here listening have been following me before I was podcasting on this podcast. You knew me from stage and performing poetry and different things like this.
Amena Brown:
And so, there's a lot that I put into my stage show, and a part of it is this combination of having different segments that I would do in the show. Some of it felt a little like late night show, inspired esque type of bits and different things in addition to my storytelling and the poetry. Right? So I thought to myself, "What if I could replicate that and really put myself into that for this podcast and make the Amena Brown show?" But I'm going to tell y'all honestly, I didn't do that because I felt so emotionally overwhelmed at the time, because I was looking through to the book and thought the book was going to help take my career to the next level, and then it didn't.
Amena Brown:
And I was hoping there were going to be some gigs related to the book. They were going to help take my career to the next level, and they didn't. Right? I started looking at the podcast more so as a way to keep ... this is the only way I know how to say it, even though Christian industry is not the streets, but sometimes the values are still the same as the streets. But anyways. I just felt like I have to keep my name out there. What I was going to say is I have to keep my name out in the streets, but I had to keep my name out there. In the type of work that I was doing before the pandemic, it was very event driven, and my experience doing event work as a performer is that everything is a link to the next thing, like you doing this event might get two people to be interested in you to book you for two more events. Right?
Amena Brown:
There, for me, was a lot of pressure. I didn't necessarily feel the pressure of like, "I have to do really great on stage." I feel like I was in myself on stage and I do well on stage. It's a comfortable place for me. It was more so all the other promotional stuff that went with it, right, that I just left Chicago doing this event. I've got to get pictures of myself performing live there. I've got to get pictures of myself hanging around town. I've got to ... All this stuff. It has to go on social media to tell the story to social media that I perform poetry at events like this, to hope that that is going to also inspire someone maybe on my social media or looking at my website or whatever to want to book me. That was how as a performer, that's how you stay working basically.
Amena Brown:
So for me to be at that point where my calendar was just tumbleweed, nothing was going on, I looked at the podcast and thought, "This is a way that I can keep my name out there, that I can keep busy in a way, and it will remind people, "Oh yeah, that's right, Amena. We can have her come and do this." Honestly y'all. So that was really one of the things that made me want to start this podcast. Okay? I'll tell you the other thing that made me choose the format I chose, I put the Amena Brown idea on the shelf because I felt like that was going to take a lot more engineering and doing, and I've always loved interviewing people. I have had journalism experience back in the day, and so the idea of interviewing folks, I really loved that.
Amena Brown:
And having been not only in Christian industry, but also in white Christian industry, and having built community with a lot of women of color who were also in those spaces that were speakers, authors, bloggers, singer songwriters, all of us had this web of connection among ourselves, where we would talk about the different organizations, the different events, how we felt they treated us or not. We would recommend to each other if we thought you should go back into that space as a Woman of Color, and if you do go there, ask for this pay, if you do go there, only stay this amount of time, or some events it would be like, "Don't ever go there and don't ever work with those people." Right.
Amena Brown:
But the overwhelming sense among us at that time, who were all in this Christian industry world, was that Women of Color were not getting the resources that they needed. They were not getting the marketing and the promotions that they needed. They were not getting the pay that they needed, and Christian industry when you're inside of it, and I'm sure this is true of other industries as well, but when you're inside a Christian industry, it feels huge. Everything feels massive and expansive and big. Right? But when you really step back, Christian industry is actually very small, which means there were a limited number of slots for things in general, and then especially a limited number of slots for Women of Color. Right?
Amena Brown:
And typically there was one slot where only one woman of color, like all these events would happen and they'd have 10 speakers, only one of those slots would end up going to a woman of color. Or if it wasn't just that, then it was like, if they were really trying to "diversify" then they'd be like, "Well, we'll have an Asian woman, a Black woman and a Latina here." But those were three slots. There can never be two or three Black women or five Asian women, or two or three Latinas. There could never be that because that was the limited amount of slots. So, as my Women of Color sisters were coming out with their books and wanting better opportunities for themselves to be able to provide for the organizations that they had founded, to be able to provide for their families and provide for themselves. Right?
Amena Brown:
All those things were happening, and I realized even on the promotional end, that there weren't a lot of places even where Women of Color knew when their books come out, for example, where were they supposed to go? What podcasts, what blogs were they supposed to be on? There were just so many limitations specifically in the way that industry was run. So I thought to myself, I will use whatever little size platform I have right now, I'm going to use that and I'm going to elevate the voices of Women of Color, and I'm going to have a podcast where that all I do is, I interview women of color.
Amena Brown:
I decided it was going to be a seasonal podcast. So the first season I decided to use the theme body, and each season I approached the theme from the lens of a poet. Right? So I would take the word body and think how many different ways can I explore that word in a season of time? So, for example, I think I interviewed a pastor because she was pastoring the body of Christ. Right? I interviewed Anowa Adjah, that episode is on the relaunch here as well, and she talked about being a personal trainer that trains the body.
Amena Brown:
I interviewed a friend of mine about being a writer and working with the body of a paragraph. Right? So that was a lot of fun and really creative for me, a way to approach podcasting with what I hoped was this fresh lens, and also it gave me an element of a platform that when my Women of Color sisters in that market were coming out with their books, were launching initiatives or organizations or whatever it was, I had a place where I could highlight their work and try to do the best I could to spread the word, try to use my microphone well. Right? I will say this about Body.
Amena Brown:
I think that theme came to me because I had had fibroid surgery in 2017 and really learned a lot about the limitations of the body, the amazing things that the body can do and recover from. So that was interesting to me to explore that. So by the time we got into season two in the fall of 2018, season two was on the theme, lost and found, which had been coming up a lot in my poetry. So I wanted to explore what are the things that we lose, and even when we lose certain things, are there ways that we feel found even in that, are there things that we find in the process of the things that we lose? I mean, that kind of question was very interesting to me. That's what inspired that second season.
Amena Brown:
But by the time I got to the second season, I started having some different thoughts and I was like, "Okay, I started this podcast because I'm here in Christian industry, and I wanted to uplift the other Women of Color that I knew that are brilliant, that are amazing, that are not getting the shine and the microphone that they deserve." Right? But I also started realizing, I don't know that I want this podcast to be "Christian" and if any of you are familiar with American Christian culture, it can be very like, "Are you a Christian poet, right, are you a Christian artist, are you a Christian rapper?" Like those types of things. Right?
Amena Brown:
And typically it's not that they mean like, "Oh, are you a person that raps and is also Christian?" They mean, are you doing content that are in Christian spaces would deem to be Christian? Right? I was like, "I don't think I want to be doing a Christian podcast because I want this podcast to be broader than just this industry, than just that subculture." So in the season of lost and found, I started really trying to expand the reach of who I was asking to be on the podcast even more so by the time I got to the third season with Create. Right?
Amena Brown:
So I had a wonderful time, any time on the podcast you hear that we are doing an episode from the HER archives, you're hearing episodes that were recorded in the HER 1.0 version. Right? So I was planning to go into season four, and my theme was going to be Taste, and I was just about to start working with Leigh on figuring out who I was going to interview. I mean, I think we even had the list together. We were about to start pitching folks, and then the pandemic hit. Now, let me do a little rewind because the pandemic tipped here in America in March of 2020, I had a stacked travel schedule from January to right crashed, almost right into the pandemic tipping.
Amena Brown:
I've talked about this previously because I've interviewed a couple of people that I was connected to because of MAKERS here on this show, but I went to MAKERS and if you're not familiar with MAKERS, MAKERS is a global summit for women that is invite only that happens in L.A. every year, and the before times, still happens every year now, but of course, virtually now. I have been working with Together Live, which was co-founded by Glennon Doyle and Jennifer Walsh. Together Live was a tour. I had a wonderful time on the tour. I did the tour at the end of 2019, and that tour really, really did a lot for me and my career.
Amena Brown:
Especially as I talked to previously here on the show about me, really wanting to get out of Christian industry and wanting to enter mainstream industry, Together Live played a big role in that. So Jennifer Walsh reached out to me, and a few other artists and speaker folks that had been involved in Together Live. And she said, "Hey, Together Live has an opportunity to open the MAKERS summit in 2020, do y'all want to attend this?" And so I signed up, yes, there were four or five of us, different acts that had been on the tour together.
Amena Brown:
So we got a chance to open MAKERS, which was amazing. I just got a chance to meet so many wonderful people, and Together Live had a wonderful partnership with P&G. So I'm in the green room and the green room at MAKERS is a very fantastic place. I mean, I'm sitting there across from Katie Couric who totally introduced herself to me like, "Hi, I'm Katie." And I was like, "Girl." I really do love that about people who are famous. I love when they're down to earth enough that they just say their first name, very regular to you. I love that even though the fan or the person that knows they're famous is going to always be like, "Girl, I know your first name and your last name. What?" So it was a very convivial environment, everybody's sitting on different couches, talking all the things that you would not be able to do now.
Amena Brown:
This is the same green room where I performed my poem, Margaret for Judy Blume, because Judy Blume was also speaking at MAKERS that year. So I was sitting on some couches with Jennifer Walsh and one of the women, Allison, who was a higher up at P&G, we were all talking around. I was honestly, at that point, y'all, trying to figure out how am I going to better fund the podcast? Because even though podcasting is free to the listener, for the podcaster, it is not free. It has some cost. Right?
Amena Brown:
I mean, thankfully I'm married to someone that does sound design and music production, and so, for my husband to be able to be my podcast producer, it's amazing. I married somebody that had those talents, but if I wasn't married to him, that would be additional costs, plus hosting, plus whatever you need to do to try to market your podcast. All the things. Right?
Amena Brown:
So I had actually talked to Allison from P&G and I was asking her, "Hey, I'm trying to figure out some different ways I can really elevate my podcast, elevate my show, maybe get some sponsors on it." And she was like, "Oh, I don't know anything about that." But she was like, "I know who does, I'm going to introduce you to Kim Azzarelli who is one of the founders of Seneca Women." So she introduces me to Kim, Kim and I have a 20 minute talk because I'm headed to the airport, and her schedule is so crazy at MAKERS. And it turns out that Seneca Women was in the process of launching a podcast network. At that time, she was still in talks, figuring out where the launch was going to be, but she was like, "Oh man, it would be so great to have a podcast like yours under the network."
Amena Brown:
Wonderful meeting, I feel super great about it. I leave MAKERS, and basically a month later the pandemic tips. Right? So at that point, I'm thinking all those conversations I had with Kim are great and fine, but that's probably not going to happen now because everybody's going to want to be holding onto all the resources they can because who knows what all this pandemic is going to mean for businesses and all this stuff? Well, shout out to Kim because she stayed in touch with me. Even after the pandemic had started, she would just reach out to me and keep me updated. Like, "Hey, I just wanted to follow up on our conversation."
Amena Brown:
Now I know that Seneca Women Podcast Network is going to be launched under iHeart. She was like, "Are you still interested in having your podcast under my network?" And I was like, "I'm totally interested." She was like, "Send me some of your favorite episodes and let's talk again." So I sent her those, she listened and she said to me, "What would you think about changing this podcast from a seasonal to a weekly?" And she was like, "If you could change it over to a weekly, I think it would be so great." Because Kim also attended Together Live in New York as part of the tour in 2019.
Amena Brown:
So she had seen me on stage and she was like, "What you're doing when you're on stage, I would love to see you incorporate that into the show." And the wild thing is, y'all, as soon as she said it, it came to my mind that she was basically saying she would love to see what was my original idea of the "Amena Brown show." So that felt like a really full circle moment to me because I realized that all this life, all the things that I'd gone through experienced all the disappointments and what felt like setbacks had all led me back to my actual original idea why I wanted to start this solo podcast in the first place.
Amena Brown:
So she said, "Dream up for me what you would do with this, write it up and let's keep talking about it." And so by the time it got to be the summer of 2020, I was getting a podcast deal, and Kim was like, "A big part of Seneca Women is really wanting for women to have equitable experiences in the workplace, with pay, with the ability to be resourced, promoted." That's the work that Seneca Women has done in the corporate space. And so, she was like, "I want to get you a good deal here." We did all the things, all the contracts and all that stuff that's involved, and I looked up and I was relaunching my podcast in the middle of the pandemic, but able to do it this time with much more resource and with much more help.
Amena Brown:
So, I went from sometimes doing a season a year, sometimes doing two seasons a year, and my seasons would normally cap out at like 10 or 12 episodes. I went from that to now going to do 48 episodes in a year's time. It was hectic changing the podcast over from being seasonal to being weekly. But one of the things that I was able to add, which I've really enjoyed as I'm doing this episode with you now, is when I did HER 1.0, I never did solo episodes. They were all interviews, all conversations, which I thought were wonderful, but I loved being able to do some solo episodes. And when you all responded like, "We also love to listen to those episodes." Then that turned out to be nice.
Amena Brown:
So, that was what made the vibe of the Amena Brown show. I had some episodes where I could just come in and chat, y'all, about whatever it is. I had some episodes where I could bring a guest into our living room and bring them into some of the conversations that we were having, which I really loved. But it was very hectic. If you've been listening to this podcast, since it relaunched, you probably remember that those first two or three months, it was like so much content, segments on segments. So many things. It definitely took me a while to realize like, "Oh, I'm here every week with people. I can keep it simple sometimes."
Amena Brown:
So I finally settled into a rhythm and figured out how to come to the podcast microphone the same way that I would come to the mic when I'm on stage or really what's in my mind is my open mic and my husband and I, which is part of how we got together. Honestly, we were doing an open mic here in Atlanta. We did that open mic for nine years and it was like a quarterly open mic, and I would host it and he was deejaying it. When I would come there as a host, I really didn't do huge amounts of preparation and these very produced bits of anything. I would just come there and talk to the audience about random stuff I've been thinking about since the last time I'd seen them, and being able to bring that communal feeling here has felt so wonderful.
Amena Brown:
The only thing I miss honestly, y'all, is that I can't see you, that I can't see any of you, that we can't like have that interaction moment on stage, and don't worry, I am definitely in talks with my team right now, trying to figure out how we can eventually do some her live events, whether that's going to be virtually or eventually when we're able to do things in person. So we're trying to figure that out. So I have a way to see you and interact with you, but I loved that. The reason why I call this the HER living room is for two reasons. One is for the first reason that I've always shared with you all, the living room tends to be the place I gather with my own girlfriends, and that's where we have deep conversation.
Amena Brown:
It's where we talk just wild about whatever random stuff we want to talk about, but the place where we used to have our open mic, this fantastic coffee shop here in Atlanta owned by this wonderful Black woman, shout out to Cassandra Ingram, Urban Grind coffee shop. The center of the coffee shop feels like a living room. It's all these different couches and comfy chairs. So, I wanted to replicate that here for us. I wanted it to feel like when you're listening to this podcast, that you can have something cozy to drink with you. You can be in your car and just be comfortable, lean back, not too far while you drive, but just feel like you're a part of a conversation, and it was important to me to replicate that.
Amena Brown:
People ask me all the time, what are quick tips I would give to anybody if they're interested in podcasting. I feel like I probably need to do a separate episode and maybe revisit this, but I'll give you just a couple of things off the top of my head. Podcasting can be a business, but it doesn't have to be. I think if you're considering podcasting, you should think about, is it something that you want to do for fun? And that's okay. Or is it something that you want to become a business? You want it to make you money?
Amena Brown:
I was just reading a Twitter thread recently and an article also about what happens when we monetize our hobbies, and is it important in this age of capitalism to have some hobbies that we choose not to monetize. Right? And for Missi and I, Here For the Donuts was one of those. That was something that we chose not to monetize. We chose to keep Here For the Donuts for fun. We chose not to saddle ourselves with having to create a new episode every week if our lives just didn't allow for that, and I think with podcasting, it's important to think about that.
Amena Brown:
People of course will tell you like, "Well, in order to gain this size of audience, you need to have this many episodes you put out, and they need to be put out on this day and this time." And all those things. I'm not saying those things aren't true. I'm saying you have to think about what's most important to you, and are you wanting to enter the podcasting space because you want to have fun? If you want to have fun, then stick to that, and if you want it to be a business, you can still have fun too, but there will be other things required, and I think it's important for you to know. I knew that I wanted HER with Amena Brown to be a part of my brand, to be a part of our business that we have. So I had that in mind already. Right?
Amena Brown:
I would also second to that say, whatever you decide to do with your podcast idea, to think of something that's actually sustainable for you. I know that people will tell you all the things about all the numbers and all that stuff, but really think about what is sustainable for you. You may have listened to one of the archived episodes from the previous version of HER. I shared with y'all a guest, Alice Wong, our conversation, and Alice Wong, she is fantastic. She is also a podcaster. Alice talks about how she releases her podcast when she can, she's not going to pressure herself.
Amena Brown:
She was like, "Sometimes it's a Tuesday, sometimes it's a Thursday. Sometimes some weeks go by. So pick something that's sustainable for you. If you can't sustain a weekly podcast, then do a seasonal one or do it bimonthly, biweekly, whatever works for you, pick that. I would also say, consider your format. Podcasting is an amazing, amazing vehicle for a lot of storytelling. There are a lot of different ways you can do it. For example, under Seneca Women, the podcast, Here's Something Good, is always mostly like less than 10 minutes. It's just like a little pop of some inspiration, some good news to get your day started. It airs Monday through Friday and that's its format. Right?
Amena Brown:
We're also seeing people like Issa Rae begin to innovate in the podcast space and create these podcasts that are centered around storytelling. Right? So think about a format that works for you and be creative. You don't have to do what everyone else is doing in podcasting. There's like a bunch of other things you can do. I would also say, of course, be yourself and still have fun, have fun. This can be good and enjoyable.
Amena Brown:
My last point, which is full circle that I'd say is, I still want to see more Women of Color creators highlighted in the podcast space. I still want to see more LGBTQ folks, more folks in disabled community highlighted in the podcast space. Podcasting is not just for white guys that get together to make a podcast. There are a lot of amazing stories. I want to see more marginalized podcasters actually get to come to the center. That's why I still highlight women of color on my podcast, and that's why I still love podcasting even after all of the different changes that I've experienced, and all the things that I've had to learn.
Amena Brown:
Last thing I want to tell you, I don't do this podcast by myself. If I were just doing this all alone, this podcast wouldn't be. Okay? So I want to give a shout out to the team of folks that are always helping this podcast happen and helping make it work. Of course, I want to shout out Kim Azzarelli and the team at Seneca Women. Hey, Ryan. Hey, Ellen. Shout out to them. Shout out to the team at iHeart, thank them so much. They are a big part of how more of you got to discover this podcast.
Amena Brown:
I want to give a big shout out to my husband and my podcast producer Matt. Who's actually here in the room with me as always for the most part when I'm recording. I want to thank him for taking the time to take a chance on seeing how we could figure out how to do this, and now podcast production has become a part of our business. My husband has so many other clients as well that he gets a chance to produce podcast for them and help them use this vehicle to tell stories. So, this podcast would not sound as good as it does if it were not for my husband, Matt. So I want to thank him.
Amena Brown:
Big shout out to my manager, Celeste, who just helped me reshape this podcast when it was time to turn it over into a weekly. And she and I just have such a great brain share of figuring out what do we want to do with this podcast to keep the podcast aligned with the goals of why I wanted to start it in the first place. Special shout out to Miles, who is a part of this team, helping me with social media and a podcast when we first launched, and I have to thank Leigh. Leigh and Matt are the two people on my team that have been with me through 1.0 and 2.0 of this podcast. Leigh is my assistant and she is my friend.
Amena Brown:
I had just started working with her at the end of 2017. She came into my work life at a time that was very hard for me and really was helping me to pick up some of the pieces there. But she is the one that reaches out to the guests and make sure that everything is organized and together and helps me to make sure I'm completing all the tasks that are necessary here. So I just want to give a big thank you to Leigh as well for helping hold this podcast together and for helping put together such amazing show notes. So, any of the things that I'm referring to here, you can find those on the show notes, and the show notes will also give you just a bit more in depth information about these episodes.
Amena Brown:
So, big thank you to Leigh, big thank you to my team. Nobody does amazing things all by themselves. I'm thankful to have such a wonderful team helping me do this podcast. Last, but definitely not least, I'm thankful for you, for all of you listening, that continue to come back to this podcast week after week. I really, really appreciate you. Your comments mean the world to me, your DMs and your tweets to me, your comments on Facebook mean the world to me, please keep it coming. Thank you, thank you so much for listening and cheers to one year anniversary of HER with Amena Brown. I'll look forward to seeing y'all in the living room soon.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions, as a part of the Seneca Women Podcasts Network and partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.