Building A Community For The Vulnerable

31 May 2019 — Leave a comment

The Launch of “Hella Black Hella Seattle”

Eula Scott Bynoe

Eula Lurene Scott Bynoe, a freelancer, full-time parent, and a doula, is also the founder of “Hella Black Hella Seattle” and co-founder of KUOW’s “Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace” (BTSW) podcasts. Scott Bynoe grew up in Seattle’s Central District area but went to a school in Boston to receive her associate’s degree in radio broadcasting “really not knowing what I was going to do with the degree. I really just went because my mom is a stickler for education.”

Although Scott Bynoe didn’t think she had an opening for her personality, things seemed to fall in place once she moved back to Seattle and saw how gentrification impacted communities of color. During that time, Scott Bynoe also befriended two other Black women, Alaina Caldwell and Jasmine Jackson, who joined her in an effort to create a community for people of color in Seattle.

Jasmine Jackson (left), Eula Scott Bynoe (middle), Alaina Caldwell (right)
Courtesy of Hella Black Hella Seattle

In the summer of 2016, they launched Hella Black Hella Seattle, a podcast that focused on life hacks and interviews of people who’ve made huge moves to Seattle. However, due to lack of funds, the podcast was discontinued at the end of February 2019. “That was my only opportunity at journalism before this door KUOW opened.”

The Launch of “Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace”

It is through her local podcast that Jeanie Yandel, co-founder of KUOW’s Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace, discovered Scott Bynoe. Yandel once invited Scott Bynoe as a guest on the show, and “we vibed so well that she asked me to be her co-host.”

  • Jeanie Yandel (left) and Eula Scott Bynoe (right)
  • Eula and Jeanie
  • Eula Scott Bynoe at Seattle University
  • Eula Scott Bynoe and Jeanie Yandel with KIRO Radio’s Colleen O’Brien

In May of 2018, Scott Bynoe and Yandel launched Season 1 of Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace, a podcast that was inspired by Jessica Bennett’s, gender editor for The New York Times, book Feminist Fight Club that talks about how to navigate sexist workplaces.

“This is the future of the conversation, not just is there a problem, but yes there is a problem, and Jessica has been meeting with people trying to solve the problem and trying to have her own secret club to succeed as a woman in the work world, and Jeanie thought we should expand this secret.”

Season 2 is set to air in June of 2019.

Challenges Then and Now

One of the biggest challenges Scott Bynoe initially faced was the conversations that [the show] had sparked within herself.

“I’ve had a huge awakening to the things that I am facing because I am a woman, and I am a woman of color. They’re always compounded.”

Scott Bynoe also began to recognize much more sexism among her male friends. “I’ve never shied away from a hard conversation. I’m not afraid to unfriend a friend for being a bigot.” But because of this show, “the men in my life are grateful that we are having these [hard] conversations….They might be aware of a problem but very unsure of a solution.”

Her current challenge includes “trying to really understand what freelancing means for me and what that looks like realistically with what I am able to produce as a show.” Additionally, Season 1 only brought her little money, although money is something she doesn’t prioritize, she added.

Another challenge is that “I can’t be truly political…[even though] politics affects all of the things that we’re complaining about.”

Driving Factors

Despite these tense times, “I am super optimistic that we can get to a better place with conversations, community, and understanding.”

“And so this show being one of the first NPR-affiliates that’s willing to challenge something, to really say something straight-on is the coolest thing in the world I could be a part of because it’s right up my alley of what I want to do with my life.”

The Podcast Set-Up

Aside from caring for her son 24/7, Scott Bynoe currently works three days a week at KUOW. Along with her team, she schedules meetings, discusses what the week would look like over lunch, talks about the episode context, chooses guests, brainstorms interview questions, unpacks the interview, writes the script in a conversational way, goes into the guest interview, discusses the tactics, and helps edit the show. Finally, the episode is scheduled for airing. Woof!

  • Eula Scott Bynoe and Jeanie Yandel at KUOW studio
  • BTSW Launch Party in June 2018

For her show, Scott Bynoe and Yandel interview researchers who “are willing to be part of a journalist effort to spread the word on their knowledge” and also local community members who have faced sexist workplace challenges head-on.

Episode–Office housework

In one episode on the topic of “Office housework,” Scott Bynoe and Yandel discussed “how women are often expected to do everything that makes an office run, not just the job they are hired for,” and they invited Joan C. Williams, a law professor at University of California, Hastings, who wrote a book about it. For Scott Bynoe, Twitter have made connecting with people relatively easy.

https://twitter.com/BTSWpodcast/status/1009558154059792384

Ironically, this KUOW-affiliated podcast doesn’t have its episodes on the KUOW website. But one can listen to these episodes on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, and RSS feed. The podcast also has a Facebook group with “really great conversation” as well as Instagram and Twitter accounts with relatively low audience engagement. But “I’d love for us to get better at being on social media because that grabs people a lot and that brings people in huge ways.”

In addition, feedback from the Facebook group, letters, and in-person interactions, where people have shared how they used tactics to negotiate their pay raise, has helped her measure audience engagement.  

Entrepreneurial Models That Inspire Her Work

“I loved ‘Another Round,’ and I hate knowing what happened to it. It was a BuzzFeed podcast hosted by two Black women…and it was just really beautiful to see…people they interviewed, the conversations that they had, the openness of it, and the fun that they had with it.” However, BuzzFeed announced on social media that the production would be discontinued in 2018.

Top Advice For Young Entrepreneurs

“Go it alone until it’s perfect. And perfect…means in terms of at least having understanding of the concept,…and what your involvement is in the show and what your goals are. And once you have that planned out, go for goals before anything else.”

Final Thoughts

Scott Bynoe’s childhood hero has been Queen Latifah because “living single was huge for me to watch for women [like Latifah] be bossy all the time, to be in charge of their own lives every day, and to be their biggest challenges be the dynamics of their friendship which are real, and men, and work….and she really shows up herself in a business person.”

Queen Latifah performs at the 2018 Essence Festival in New Orleans.

For self-care, Scott Bynoe likes to play games on her iPad, actively consume information to stay current and informed, and also “I eat cake every day.”

Let’s Chat Wellness

14 May 2019 — Leave a comment

The Launch of “Balanced Black Girl”

Lestraundra “Les” Alfred

Seattle-based Lestraundra Alfred is a social media manager at The Riveter and founder and host of the podcast “Balanced Black Girl”—a name she consciously chose to educate people on why wellness matters for Black women too.

From a young age, Alfred loved storytelling and creating content. She changed her course to business and corporate communications, in college, due to the long-term financial security and stability benefits. Aside from working in corporate America, Alfred was a personal trainer and nutrition coach and over time was burned out. So she created a fitness blog in 2014 called “Balanced Berry” where she created content, a passion she finally pursued, on workouts and smoothie bowls to reach a larger audience.  

Balanced Berry-Introductory Video

“I got really tired of going to events and being the only Black woman and being the only woman of color there.”

The diversity issue in the wellness space really bugged Alfred. She then decided to extend her fitness blog and give her audience “content to help either other women of color feel seen and heard in the wellness space and to maybe build a community for [her]self that [she] felt like [she] wasn’t getting.” In October of 2018, Alfred launched her podcast “Balanced Black Girl” to offer other women of color a platform to engage in candid conversations around wellness, self-care, and self-love.

First Episode-Wellness So White

Although she didn’t have a prior experience in podcasting, she “taught [her]self how to do it and jumped in and was really nervous to put it out there, but did it anyway.” In her first episode “Wellness So White,” she shared her experience of being uncomfortable with the lack of representation in the wellness space. Because it’s a very taboo topic and “it can make people really uncomfortable [and]…defensive,” she did lose quite a few followers at first, but has since then attracted an even bigger audience that resonated with her message better. Therefore, pushing through that initial fear and tension is what she’s most proud of.

Challenges Then and Now

One of the biggest challenge for Alfred was “not knowing how to create a podcast, how to host it, or how do people find out about it.” Moreover, she gave herself only a week’s timeline in which “[she] taught [her]self how to create a podcast, recorded several episodes, built a brand-new website, and launched the show.”

“I was just so gung-ho about it that I just wanted to jump all in.”

As a creator, her current challenge has been how to create enough content and enough diverse representation of people on her show. Though finding time for self-care has been challenging, she is figuring out how to show up authentically for herself and her audience because “at the end of the day, at its core, Balanced Black Girl is still a wellness brand and [she] can’t fully neglect [her] own wellness.”

Driving Factors

Michelle Obama with Balanced Black Girl Book Club

“When I hear these stories from women finally taking care of themselves, those are the things that just make it all worth it.”

One story Alfred shared was from a woman who finally found her community in Seattle by being part of Balanced Black Girl’s book club. She has made incredible friends and built an incredible community of women.”

Additionally, the constant love and support of Alfred’s childhood heroes, her parents, keeps her driven.

The Podcast Set-Up

According to Alfred, 90% of guests are Black women who are creating wellness content and “killing it.” Recently she has also branched out to more lifestyle content like career advancement to help women of color better navigate their workplace.

Alfred hosts and facilitates guests conversations and manages their scheduling. She also works with two other team members: an editor who helps edit the show and a virtual assistant who helps schedule and publish her episodes.

Aside from podcasting itself—Spotify, iTunes, and Stitcher, Alfred actively engages with her audience on Instagram, where she has the largest following, and that’s how most of her audience learn about her and her shows. She also has an active Facebook page and a Facebook group for listeners where a lot of women connect with one another. Alfred even sends out a weekly newsletter with updates about events, shows, and general wellness content.

Entrepreneurial Models That Inspire Her Work

Oprah Winfrey

Although Alfred’s listens to a few podcasts, she really looks up to people who have created communities. Her biggest role model is Oprah Winfrey because “she has completely revolutionized media.” As a Black woman from the deep South, Winfrey completely created her own network and made Alfred’s dream a possibility.

“Black women in media wouldn’t be a thing if it weren’t for [Winfrey], so I would really love to create a [next-generation] version of that where I really amplify other people’s voices on a ground  scale but in a more modern way.”

Top Advice For Young Entrepreneurs

“Just do it, don’t worry about being perfect….It’s far better to put something out there and fix it as you go….I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have like the perfect thing that is super successful right away….It’s okay to pivot, it’s okay to change course…what’s most important is that you put [something] out there because that gives you a place to grow from.”

Final Thoughts

The podcast has really “taught me about the importance of using my voice….For a long time, I was really quiet, kind of convincing myself that my voice didn’t matter…that people who are louder, smarter, they deserve to talk and I didn’t. By creating this podcast, I’ve learned to find the power in my voice and in what I have to say and what I have to bring to the table.”

Theory to Practice

9 May 2019 — 2 Comments

Some key concepts that I found very helpful to apply to my entrepreneurial journey in my chosen field of exploration with my blog include audience engagement and audience analysis whether one is an entrepreneur or intrapreneur. According to Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship, “[i]t’s not enough to build a startup. An entrepreneur must find ways to engage a target audience to become successful.” The focus of my blog is to highlight Black women podcasters and my target audience is women of color.

To better engage with my audience, I’ve embedded links to my social media profiles, Facebook and Instagram, and links to my email in case some people don’t have social media accounts.  

Inspired by KING 5’s audience engagement model, as I launch my subsequent blog posts, I also plan to write short and creative blurbs on different social media platforms and link those to my blog posts for users to read a more detailed story on my page. Following Eric Reis’s Lean Startup Methodology, as the book states, through multiple platforms, I can measure audience engagement, gain feedback, and learn to persevere or pivot. As an added bonus (I found this in the book!), the Facebook’s “Insights” feature would enable me to analyze my audience demographics and find better ways to serve them.  

Pitching Ideas

In addition to this, I found the concept of “Pitching Ideas” very helpful in my understanding of multimedia entrepreneurship. I’ve learned that pitching ideas is one of the prime skills “that can attract advisors or investors to a startup.” In fact, as I am developing my business pitch, I am constantly pitching ideas to my friends and professors. For example, I learned that women of color, especially Black women podcasters often lack a large following on digital platforms. But I can further develop my blog and create a podcast where I can engage these disadvantaged women podcasters in dialogue with those who are more popular to help increase their visibility. My podcast could also help other aspiring young women of color to start their own podcasts with the skills they learn on this platform from successful women podcasters.

Moreover, I was surprised to learn the range of startup funding options and the differences among self-funding, crowdfunding, angel investors, venture capital, and nontraditional funding.

On top of that, I found it helpful to brainstorm answers to questions like why we need funding, what unique services we offer, or what “rewards” we may offer to our investors in exchange for funding.

  • Testing Ideas/Solutions
  • SWOT Analysis

Finally, I learned that being innovative and resilient helps us grow, prepares us for the changing media landscape, and helps us better serve our customer needs. Coming up with “What if” scenarios, answering questions like “Is the idea desirable, feasible, and viable?” followed by a SWOT analysis during ideation phase is the key to identifying the problem or need, doing the research, analyzing the audience, and creating prototype (beta-testing) solutions.

Voice Of Race

28 Apr 2019 — Leave a comment

The Launch of “Colorblind: Race Across Generations”

In April of 2018, Vanessa Echols, a Florida-based television journalist and a news anchor for WFTV-9 in Orlando, launched a podcast called “Colorblind: Race Across Generations,” a name she chose because “It’s not about not seeing color; it’s about not judging people because of color.”

Vanessa Echols

Earlier that year, Cox Media Group that owns WFTV, where she works, hosted a podcast contest with a monetary reward, in which she participated. As she brainstormed some of the ideas, the topic of “race” jumped out at her. “It’s a huge issue in our lives. It’s around us; it’s a part of us but it makes people uncomfortable.

So I thought let’s have a forum where people can talk about race openly and honestly and listen without yelling, screaming, or insulting each other.

Even though Echols didn’t have any prior podcasting experience, the judges liked her idea, and she won the contest. Echols knew she wanted to talk about race; she had the subject matter, and she could get the right mix of people to talk to. That was the start of her entrepreneurial journey.

Challenges Then and Now

“It is a daunting task to get people to talk about race openly and honestly. It was just finding who will be willing to talk, who will be willing to listen…So it’s [finding] people who are willing to admit, ‘I don’t know everything, there is stuff I need to learn, and I want to talk about it.’”

According to Echols, “In the business of television news, no two days are the same.” She works all-day as a news anchor or in the “real house” as she describes it, records her podcasts in evenings, and in the little free time she gets, she is extremely dedicated to her community. As a breast cancer survivor herself, she founded a non-profit breast cancer foundation 12 years ago called “Compassionate Hands & Hearts,” that “help[s] [cancer patients] pay for their [daily living expenses] while they are going through treatment….” Therefore, finding the time to record multiple podcasts within the same week has been difficult for her.  

  • $2,500 check to help cancer patients

Driving Factors

Listening to the interesting stories of people keeps her driven. Echols recalls an experience from her very first podcast where she asked, “Why do we have such a hard time talking about race?” And there was silence. “Nobody said anything. But once I got them started talking, they really opened up, they were really honest and vulnerable.” But stories like these help her and others understand why certain people feel the way they do.

The Podcast Set-Up

Echols currently works with two technical producers and pretty much runs the show in terms of getting the content and subject matter.

Colorblind–Episode 1

In her podcast, she invites a wide variety of panelists that she has met locally, on social media, or through social justice organizations. These panelists come from different ethnic backgrounds and span across different generations, including millennials and those in their 40s, 50s, and 70s.

Echols has expanded her audience reach mostly through word of mouth and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

“And when [people] start sending me ideas, that’s when I know the audience is engaged.”

Every once in a while, she also focuses on telling the story of one person, while staying true to the general mission.

Looking back, Echols wouldn’t do anything differently because it’s been a unique learning experience for her.  

Entrepreneurial Models That Inspire Her Work

“I like to listen to podcasts where people are great interviewers, people who really know how to ask questions and listen for the answers.” In her podcast, Echols does not follow the traditional Q & A-style approach. Like the CBS This Morning show, she uses an informal approach where “It’s like we are having a conversation and the rest of the world is like eavesdropping on our conversation.”

Echols is a news junkie and consumes most of her news through multiple platforms, including her local TV network and news website. She also reads a lot of magazines and newspapers.

Top Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

From a podcast point of view, she says, “Go for it. If you have an idea, you have thoughts and you have a subject matter that needs to be discussed and you think people will listen, just go for it. Don’t be intimidated by it; don’t think it’s a big technical giant I can’t slay.”

From a TV journalist point of view, she says, “You gotta be willing to get out there and out work everybody. It’s a very competitive field; it’s very competitive for women; it’s very competitive for people of color.”

The Do Good Challenge–Vanessa Echols

Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) states white-hosted podcasts make the top-100 iTunes chart. As a woman of color herself, Echols has found relatively less women of color in the podcast industry. “I don’t know why but I think we’ve been slow to get on the podcast bandwagon.” But she strongly believes that women of color are slowly establishing a fertile ground.

Final Thoughts

In future, “I just want to have more listeners, and at some point I would like to see us take it on the road…discussing some of the subject matter that I think receive the most attraction, attention, or feedback.”