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Interviews with Female entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners, and industry Gurus. These podcasts speak with women (women-identified) across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game! Histories, current companies, and lessons learned are explored. The series is designed to investigate a female (female identified) perspective in what has largely been a male-dominated industry in the world to date.
Episodes
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Interview with Rebekah Sager: Award-Winning Journalist
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Interview with Rebekah Sager: Award-Winning Journalist. Rebekah Sager is a nationally published journalist. Her work has been featured in Playboy, AARP, NBC Latino, The Los Angeles Times, Bustle, VICE, Hemispheres, and Cosmopolitan magazine. rebekahsager.com
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's why L DEA agents see or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:30] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Rebekah Sager. [00:01:34][4.9]
[00:01:36] Rebekah is an award winning journalist with over a decade of experience covering breaking news, lifestyle, entertainment and human interest stories. Welcome, Rebekah. [00:01:44][8.4]
[00:01:45] Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you. [00:01:48][2.9]
[00:01:48] I'm excited to get into is with you as well. We've spoken to so many writers and I know a bunch of people in the audience and everyone for everyone listening. You guys really pressed us to find more writers out there. And Rebekah, is the answer to that call a quick roadmap for today's podcast and it's going to hold the same trajectory as our usual format, where, first of all, look at Rebekah's academic background and early professional life. Then we're going to turn to unpacking her writing engagements and also look at some endeavors that she's got a company called Beseen. But we'll get into the logistics of how her career came to be. Kind of the who, what, when, where and why of her journalism story areas that she covers genres, population, specialization, all the range, everything like that. And we'll turn our efforts towards unpacking some of the goals that Rebekah has for the next three years regarding her writing and her businesses at hand. And then we'll wrap everything up with advice that she may have for those of you looking to get involved or emulate some of her life work. So, Rebekah, you have so much going on and read a quick bio before I start peppering you with questions for everyone listening so they have a healthy background on you. Rebekah Sager is a nationally published journalist who work has been featured in Playboy, AARP, NBC, Latino, The Los Angeles Times, Bussel, Vice Hemispheres and Cosmopolitan magazine to name a few a culture and lifestyle writer. Sager's started as an unpaid blogger in 2007. She has covered the renaissance of the US California Mexico border. Our Bazil ComicCon Coachella, New York Fashion Week, California's wildfires and the Flint water crisis. She profiled such luminaries as actor Billy Porter, fashion designer Jason Wu, jazz greats Arturo Sandoval, iconic drag queen Rupal, actor and restaurateur Danny Trejo, Randy Jones of the Village People model and activist Amber Rose. David Joyner, the man who lived inside Barny costume and later became the top sex practitioner, and Jonathan Goldsmith, sickies most interesting man in the world. [00:04:02][134.0]
[00:04:04] For more information and to view a full list of her stories, you can visit her website, Rebekah Sager and dot com. So, Rebekah, before we get into your current writing and kind of the story that got you there, can you start us off with your academic background and early professional life? [00:04:18][13.9]
[00:04:19] So I had we talked about earlier, kind of like an odd trajectory to journalism because I went to a high school for the performing arts. [00:04:28][9.3]
[00:04:29] I grew up in Washington, D.C., was called Duke Ellington High School for the Arts, and I studied theater. And then when I graduated, I really only wanted to go to either Juilliard or Carnegie Mellon was my backup. I did not get into Juilliard, gave a horrendous audition to get I did not get in and then was really depressed when I got into Carnegie Mellon because I didn't know so much about it. My mom and parents were like, this is this is thrilling. This is amazing. Carnegie Mellon's wonderful school. So so I only applied to to school. So I ended up at Carnegie Mellon. And it is a conservatory training program for actors. It's really competitive. I didn't know any of that when I went. And overall, I, I mean, I got a great education, but I, I kind of quickly discovered that I kind of didn't want to become an actor, but I was already going and I was a junior by the time that happened and didn't really couldn't think of another thing to do with my life. So finished what New York tried my hand at acting got very, very close, met a lot of directors. Spike Lee was one at the time. I met several times for auditions and but it just never really hit with me. So part of it was as a biracial person, not looking really black enough or white enough. And at the time now maybe that might be OK in twenty twenty. [00:06:01][92.0]
[00:06:01] But back then it just there weren't a lot of people look like me, so it wasn't a great fit. So I ended up kind of just easing my way out of it. And, and at around the same time, getting married, having a starting a family. We were in Washington, D.C., moving out to California. And my and, you know, I was a mom. I was a stay at. Mom and my now ex-husband is a journalist, and so I was around a lot of that, I edited a lot of his work, I saw his process. He was really successful. I think I kind of gleaned all that, but never thought of myself as a journalist, never really thought that's where I would end up. I I was living in San Diego and so I was volunteering at different with different organizations. And one of them was a school for homeless teenagers call the Monarch School in downtown San Diego. And initially the idea was that I would put on a play. Well, the problem with the homeless community is that it's very it fluctuates. So you never know who's going to be there from week to week. So a play is pretty difficult. You cast to play. Somebody doesn't show up. It's pretty difficult for those who are there. So I started I took the idea of kind of my life experience at the time of interviewing people and creating this narrative and and with theater, which I was really well trained to do, and combined that and had the kids do kind of written journalistic monologues so they could interview each other, but they could write their own stories. And then we ended up hiring actors to act out their stories for them. And I think that was kind of my first real taste of, you know, I I think I could maybe be good at this, but I wasn't the one doing the writing. But what I learned was I was really good with people. I was good at listening to people and kind of finding good stories. And I had kind of a knack for stories. So so that that's kind of the I can go into from there. I can kind of transition to how I started as a journalist. But do you want me to continue? [00:08:23][142.1]
[00:08:24] You know, I think it's fascinating that it kind of began with you encouraging these youth around you, the population at large, homeless high school youth is an amazing exercise to examine in and of itself, but to encourage that kind of a journalistic enterprise through monolog because you couldn't put on a play, it's very creative of you, even in its inception. [00:08:47][23.1]
[00:08:48] So all of this predated you becoming an actual journalist. You were encouraging these young children to, via journalistic efforts, develop monologues. So I like that that like the obtuseness of that. I wonder, so how did that kind of stretch you into developing pieces on your own? Was it enough editing, come ahead, come up that there was an opportunity that came about? [00:09:12][24.5]
[00:09:14] I mean I mean, I was helping them to edit their work. I think that is something that was kind of innately part of it. I think I found it to be something that it was a way I could use acting for something that was I could do on my own. But it was still highly dependent on other people. And I think I turn to to writing when I really decided that I wanted to get that program ended. And the thing that's the most frustrating thing to me about acting is that although I love working with other people and working on a team, you can't do it by yourself. You can't just put on a show by yourself for no audience. You need an audience. You need lights and sound and costumes and direction and a script. So, you know, it was around that time that actually I was working on the Obama campaign and I was just a volunteer making phone calls, trying to get people to sign up to register to vote. And I was just politically charged up at the time. And so actually somebody said, hey, why don't you why don't you write a blog? And I, I was like, Huh? That's interesting. That's an interesting idea. And, you know, my mother had said to me years and years and years before, it's interesting that you married a writer because you always love to write. I didn't remember her saying that until years later. But when I started to write the blog, I thought, well, you know, I'm not really a mommy blogger. I'm not really writing about parenting stuff. It's interesting to me personally, but I don't know. I didn't it wasn't interesting enough for me to write about it. So how who do I find that I can write about? And at the time the Obama got elected and and the economy crashed and we're in San Diego living in San Diego. And I started to hear about this renaissance that was happening on the US Mexico border. Those were a lot of the kids that I'd also been working with. So I was. And I've been crossing the border just out of interest, just to go over for the day, but what was happening was there was gang violence, people weren't crossing. So there was a there was this just transformation of Tijuana at the time. And so I thought between that and this economy, there's all these people I know who are struggling to make businesses work in a time where the economy has crashed and they've dependent they've depend on tourism. In the case of the border, they've they're depending on people with money, expense accounts. None of that's happening. So how are these businesses going to stay afloat? And it became a fascinating beat where you could really there were tons of young, independently owned businesses. [00:12:21][187.3]
[00:12:22] Many of them are owned by women. So it was a fantastic way to highlight their business, hopefully bring business. And it was interesting to me because I thought, how are these people going to survive? [00:12:33][10.7]
[00:12:33] And everybody had different mechanisms for trying to make their lives work and their businesses sustain themselves. And so and at the same time, Tijuana started and these coffee shops and record stores, and it was like these millennial kids had spaces now that were cheap to rent where they could open things for themselves. And it became, well, if we're not going to we don't have tourism anymore, how do we make our businesses survive? We focus on ourselves. What do we want to do? And that kind of became what happened in San Diego. Prices came down at some restaurants. People band together doing interesting pop ups kind of sprouted out of this time because it was all a way of like just how do we survive? And no one was writing about it. And so I got lucky because somebody saw what I was doing and I was literally writing these blogs and I didn't we didn't have social media. It was just starting so many years ago. So I just would do a mass email with a link to the to the blog. And my friends would say, oh, good job, or, oh, I have to try that store. Would I have to go to that boutique and try that or. Oh, now we'll cross the border. It's whatever. So it just kind of blossomed from there and somebody picked it up and said, why don't we make this a column? And an editor who left because of downsizing at San Diego magazine started as editor in chief of a dot com. [00:14:11][97.6]
[00:14:12] So he said, why don't you make this a blog? And it Kofman. We changed the name from my way or the highway, which is what I called it, to shop local SD for San Diego. And and that's really how it kind of that's how it started. That was the start of it. I was in San Diego and it was really kind of just trying to find that unique angle. And I think if anything, if there's any through line for me, that's what it's been. It's trying to find that because I didn't wasn't trained as a journalist and I didn't have years and years of writing experience under my belt. [00:14:51][39.4]
[00:14:52] So I fit. So I was learning how to be a good writer with editors kind of being kind of out of the kindness of their heart. They knew I had good ideas, but I was inexperienced. Yeah. [00:15:05][13.1]
[00:15:05] So that's Yanqui though. That's awesome. That's that's cowgirl style. It's the old West. [00:15:10][4.8]
[00:15:10] It's like that's how people you know, it's Dorothy Parker. It's how people used to jump in. It wasn't this massive amounts of training necessarily learning in the right, particularly in something like journalism. You know, it's filled with Zakk Gaist. I mean, it's the spirit of the times in journalism now certainly isn't what it was 15 years ago. And so it's changing daily. So it's one of those things that I think almost might be more fortuitous to learn in the field. How long did you stay with? Well, first of all, how long did it my way or the highway before it became shop local SD. And then how long did you stay with shop local SD? [00:15:45][34.6]
[00:15:48] I mean, I think the transition was pretty quick. It was like under a year that that that this editor picked it up and then it became shop local SD and I still have shop local SD, but since I'm not really covering. But that that was a great calling card because it got me to San Diego magazine and it got me to San Diego Union Tribune. So San Diego magazine gave me this really, really tiny little contract of ten thousand dollars for the year. That was my salary. And believe me, I was really excited and but I wanted to. So they wanted me to cover local fashion. So I said, OK, fine, so. Kind of covered like the fashion designers and the boutiques that were opening whoever whatever big designer would come to San Diego to fashion Valley Mall, I would go and interview them. And then I suggested, why don't I fly myself to New York and cover Fashion Week? And I had no idea what I was doing, but it had just moved to Lincoln Center from from from the park, Bryant Park to Lincoln Center. So it was and there was like this tiny little space in the middle of Lincoln Center where there was Wi-Fi because no one knew that you absolutely needed wi fi then. So it just kind of started and no one was going because it was all very new. And so I had access and I had a friend. I could sleep on the couch and basically blog from Lincoln Center live to San Diego magazine's website. So I did that for a few months. I covered that for them. And then they felt ended up I ended up leaving because they felt that it was too big. Like it was like we want to focus on local. Why are you trying to push us? So so I kind of OK, fine. So I ended up but when I went well, back when I was in New York, I met a woman who at the time was the fashion features editor at InStyle and met her through their friends. And so she I reached out to her and I said, I need a mentor. I need like someone to kind of guide me. And she was like, I'm all about women helping other women. So she's like, I cannot leave my desk. I do not have time to go to lunch or coffee with you. But if you come to my desk, just I'll eat a sandwich while we talk. I have 15 minutes. And she basically gave me a a template of how she did it and how she thought I should do it. As I said, I want to sit on your side of this desk, like in New York. How do I get there? And she said, OK, you need to build your clips locally and then those will give you eventually enough credibility for a national outlet to publish you. So that's what I was like. OK, so all the money I made basically went back into, like, sending myself places and then hopefully connecting those stories to an editor locally initially. [00:18:53][185.3]
[00:18:54] And then she would doing ad hoc, self assigned, ad hoc work basically. [00:18:59][5.5]
[00:19:00] Yeah, she connected me with Fox News Latino who wanted everything from the border because no one was willing to cross the border at the time. And so I did the first like want to designers and they took it and they were willing to take everything. And that's how I kind of started writing nationally, even while I was basically since I've been a freelancer, even through the last few jobs that I've had as a full time staff writer, I never really give up my freelance. I probably nine months out of the year that I worked at Fox News Latino in New York because I eventually did work for them as a staff general assignment reporter. During that time I stopped because I was writing every single day. That's how I covered the Flint water crisis. I met you're in New York, so it's kind of like you're doing it's not really local because they're a national website, but you have access locally to just like you do in L.A., to celebrities and to big events. So I could kind of get out of the office, but also I didn't have to get out of the office to cover Flint, so. Everything has kind of built on everything else. I mean, San Diego got me I worked in San Diego, then I got to Dr. Phil. Then from there, I got from from Dr. Phil. I ended up going to New York to Fox News Latino than Fox News Latinos. [00:20:42][101.5]
[00:20:43] I end up coming back to L.A. Did you write for the Dr. Phil show or did you interview for them? [00:20:49][6.5]
[00:20:50] So I was working on the Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil Dotcom has a website that promotes episodes of the show. But then at the time, he had a vertical on Huffington Post and so he needed a ghostwriter. So he had a ghostwriter that he'd hired in New York. She was kind of like my editor. But my my idea to her was we have all these expert guests that come on to the show and no one really does anything with them. You know, he talks to them on the show and they're happy because they're on Dr. Phil show. But they'd be even happier to have additional coverage in Huffington Post. So I kind of convinced her that we could take some of those people and do like breakout columns for Dr. Phil because they were doing they needed constant content on Huffington Post. I was doing that. Plus I was doing social media because it was kind of like just an all hands in situation and so in the control room doing so. [00:21:53][62.3]
[00:21:53] I want to talk a little bit about that, because your career has the unique and fantastic. Well, perhaps even demonic moment of entering into social media. I mean, it, you know, and people there are going to be novels and encyclopedias dedicated to this. [00:22:11][18.6]
[00:22:12] And I don't have to go through all of it. But the way that writing changed in particular, we can get into social decorum and things of that nature changed absolutely everything. I think that news and hard news and those were kind of the final people to fall foul but really acquire it seems like there was a stronghold for a long time of like NUPE. We're doing things this way. And then it kind of came to be when you had it come about because you had this kind of self made journalistic, you know, career and background. Did you find the absorption or the incorporation of social media in your writing career to be more fluent than your colleagues? Or was it strange you say like, you know, you're doing some social media for Dr. Phil? [00:23:00][48.1]
[00:23:02] Yeah. All of a sudden I was in charge of the Twitter account, and I have no idea how that became my purview. [00:23:05][3.4]
[00:23:06] Well, that was kind of what I mean when I started the blog, I had I I threw myself into social media because you couldn't not I mean, you had to. [00:23:17][11.2]
[00:23:18] So for me, I got the job at San Diego Union Tribune, not because I wanted to be a reporter. They had plenty of those, although I had to beg them to let me be a reporter. But I really got in there because they thought I knew so much about social media because I had been I was given this the awarded best blogger in San Diego by San Diego magazine. [00:23:40][22.0]
[00:23:41] And so they thought best blogger, she must know about social media. And I mean, I knew whatever I had was self taught. And I guess that was probably more than other people now. I mean, I have friends who their kids are like they have a master's degree in public relations and they understand Facebook in a way that I cannot comprehend. I mean, they just are way above me in terms of analytics and their understanding is much deeper. But at the time I was at the at the Union Tribune, I was training other reporters who were begrudgingly going and having to do social media. They were pissed. They were like, we have to go on the field. We have to tweet about the story. We have to come back and file the story. And then, I mean, Dr. Phil, I got thrown into it in a major, major way. I wasn't the one directly posting, but I was editing someone who was posting all of the content. All of it had to go through everybody's hands before anything could go on. So on on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. So I, I was learning as I was going, but I was also expected to be an expert in it. And then at Fox, basically you put it up on Facebook or Twitter. I did launch their Snapchat channel that they came to me and asked me to do that. And I needed a tutorial from my friend's daughter. And we sat at Chipotle for like thirty minutes. And then, I mean, I liked it. It was actually really fun. I did an entire I did a Snapchat was supposed to be covering the Puerto Rican Day parade. I was going to be fun. I was just taking pictures and doing little drawings on it was so easy and then Pulse nightclub hit, so I get a call from my editor like stop the Snapchat of the Puerto Rican Day Parade. It makes us look like we don't care about because when pulse broke, nobody knew at first it was like, oh, there was a shooting. Oh, my God, there's a catastrophic shooting. So I said, I'm not going to stop. But what I'm going to do is we're going to cover this. We're going to use Snapchat. We're going to cover it by interviewing these huge contingents of gay people who are at the Reunion Day Parade who are from Miami. So it was perfect. So we used Snapchat, which was an odd kind of thing, but it worked. If you're fluent enough to make it work. Now, Snapchat is kind of I don't even know if anyone's using Snapchat anymore. I guess maybe a little bit, but it's kind of veered away. [00:26:21][159.8]
[00:26:21] It's getting Dalbandin. It's not the darling that it was supposed to come. Instagram is no longer the darling. People are getting off. [00:26:29][7.5]
[00:26:29] They're tightening up their algorithm. Right. Which is great. But yeah, it's supposed to turn to Pinterest and YouTube or the next. Yeah. Girls of them. [00:26:38][8.7]
[00:26:39] Yeah. Oh, God. Pinterest was I mean, there were editors at San Diego Union Tribune who were they had design columns and I and I had to teach them how to use Pinterest. And it seemed like the most important thing in the world at the time. Now I'm sure they're happy that it's not. But but now in my job now, half my job is spent making sure that the news is socialized and looking at Sharpey, looking at Google Analytics, my my supervisor's news directors and program, and they're all want to know what's working and why. [00:27:18][39.5]
[00:27:20] I still don't know if there's an answer to that. I mean, I've told him regularly that I think it's like throw it on the wall and see what sticks. I mean, I think timing is knowing your demographic is, but thinking that you can game the system by figuring out every Wednesday at noon you're going to capture that audience. Not necessarily. [00:27:38][18.4]
[00:27:39] You know, especially in that I mean, in your industry, I think there's a lot of money made and a lot of tears shed over someone promising years based on Google Analytics, because they're they're real numbers. [00:27:54][14.4]
[00:27:54] But interpretation of them is archaic Latin to most people and say, look, they mean this, but they may very well not necessarily be correlated. [00:28:04][9.3]
[00:28:05] Yeah. So I love everyone I talk to talks about the Google analytics numbers, but no one quite knows exactly what that means in correlation to their career. [00:28:13][8.0]
[00:28:13] Self enough. Not really. Yeah. I mean, it makes people happy when there's lots of engagement, but and it makes me happy if I, if I have a story and I really want to have a reach. [00:28:24][10.5]
[00:28:24] But I mean, I think now it's impossible to well, maybe not impossible. But from the people that I know, I don't know any journalists who have the great good fortune of not having to be a part of social media. I don't know anyone now. I mean, it's just I just don't think it's become their they're they're kissing cousins. You have to be able to understand both. And it's the way that you promote yourself and your work. Absolutely. [00:28:56][32.2]
[00:28:58] Yeah, it is. It's a tool of communication. And you can kind of get past some of the laboris. I think in the beginning it was the informality. It was a lot of the idiosyncratic details of the childishness attached to it. But once you get past that, it's another lens. It's another language of communication. [00:29:15][16.9]
[00:29:16] Yeah. And I'll just kind of move on with it. I'm wondering, with your so you've started you've launched into another endeavor called Beseen. Can you kind of walk us through that a little bit. [00:29:26][10.4]
[00:29:27] So, you know, I love what I do as a journalist, but I'm dependent again on pitching to editors. And what are the limitations? [00:29:38][10.2]
[00:29:38] I mean, now we have about five. So in California, which limits freelancers to thirty five stories a year for that outlet content, brand content marketing, if you love, as I see it, if you love to write, this is just another avenue where you can write about something. You're not dealing with the kind of budgetary constraints that you're dealing with. An editorial journalism. I mean, I've I was laid off at Dr. Phil with thirteen other people. Three of them were pregnant women. I mean, it's ruthless. I then went to New York for Fox News Latino when Trump was elected, Fox News Latino went under because. It just wasn't in alignment with their brand any longer to refer to Latino people as undocumented as opposed to illegal, and so it the site went under. [00:30:34][56.1]
[00:30:36] But if it wasn't a political or ethical decision, it's a monetary decision. If it's not a monetary decision, it's somebody buys it and just decides to go with it, go in a different direction with that outlet. I think it's just too it just fluctuates too much. So if we can open ourselves up and I'm doing this with my husband because he's a fantastic editor and and a great writer and a photographer, we thought, let's try to see if we can take these years of experience that we have and create something where we have a little bit more control and we can make money that we deserve to make for what we create. I think we all got hit in the head when in two thousand eight journalism fell and you did have bloggers like who just kind of, you know, watered down the content to the point that. People who are professional journalists for a very long time were competing with people who just were like, you know, people on the street who could just throw something up on their phone. And I think we're getting back to that. I know an outlet like Medium used to anyone can write for medium. You can sign up for medium. If you want to write, you can put your content there. But if you want to pitch to an editor, you get a dollar a word. Now, we should be way past a dollar word because that's what it was a really long time ago. That was a starting point for writers. And then we have to go through all this other stuff to get back to this. But it's still just to it's it's just a career that's in flux. And I'd rather try to open more avenues if you have a skill. And, you know, it seems to me like the more places you could try to to to garner money, garner opportunities, garner ways of just getting your content out there. To me, if you love to write and like to work with words, it's just one more big opportunity that makes sense. Just makes sense. [00:33:06][150.0]
[00:33:07] Yeah. So what is beseen what's the nesh how does it is it content marketing. Who can approach it. [00:33:13][5.7]
[00:33:13] Who can work for it. How do you help people out. Who. Your clients. [00:33:16][3.4]
[00:33:17] So we've just started, we're hoping to target business like one of the we're internally kind of going after people that we know right now. We're starting with our own network. So that would be, for example, a company that has clients like Rebel Mouse, which is a platform. So Rebel Mouse is a platform where you can launch your your website and clients come to Rebel Mouse to launch their website. But the clients don't have enough content. And one of the things they have this great product, but they just don't have enough content. So we would go in and we would say, OK, let's clean up the CEO bio. Let's look at your website. Are your is is what you're saying about your brand really representative of your brand? We we're targeting non-profits. We'd like to target universities. I mean, we're kind of open at this point to see where things go. I don't know. It could end up technology. It could end up medical. I mean, I think health and wellness, you know, it'll be interesting to see where we end up kind of falling. I think we're we're at this point, it's just feels like it's a wide open. [00:34:43][85.3]
[00:34:44] Well, it is. And I think it's because of and I don't know which one happened first, if the industry became that way and then you you guys decided to move in and clean things up or vice versa. [00:34:55][10.9]
[00:34:55] But there's this incredible need to kind of flush out some of the more succinct nature of even some of the best websites for communication. Companies are just lost and convoluted. You know, I myself doing research. I fancy myself a really fast researcher. I've been in the game a long time and everyone is pitching themselves as a coach and a mentor here and all of these terms that are just useless. Now, right in the beginning, we're pretty hyperbolic to begin with anyway. And nobody's defining themselves, defining their terms, defining their services. And so I think that this kind of watchdog service is coming in and really fleshing out the axiomatic roots of what someone is, what they're providing, their service, their tool or anything like that, their brand. All of that unification is wildly necessary on every side. I think you're right. [00:35:55][59.8]
[00:35:56] And I think helping people tell their story. I think as a journalist, it's one of the things that when you sit down and talk to someone, you know, as you know, on a podcast, you start to get people's stories. [00:36:08][11.9]
[00:36:09] And they didn't even know that they had that story. If you have a brand, for example, it may be a fantastic brand, but it's not reaching communities of color. Well, OK, but maybe that they're doing something every day and every year and they maybe they contribute money or maybe they have stories from the people who work there that they just never mind those stories. [00:36:33][23.8]
[00:36:34] And it's that kind of thing where we can kind of go in and using just plain kind of who, what, where, when, why journalism to try to clean up what they're the the. Their voice and voice and help them find their voice and yeah, so I mean, I think that's kind of that's that's what we're hoping to do. [00:36:55][21.5]
[00:36:56] So given that, are your goals for the next three to five years to just clean up American literature at large, copy on the Web on the planet? [00:37:08][11.9]
[00:37:10] I mean, I think it's hard to say the three year goal. Always. It always you know, it's a toughie. But I think if I had any goal for us is that we would be able to talk to work from wherever we live. That's kind of where that's really the number one thing that we're focused on now is to be able to go on vacation, get up in the morning in our great hotel and work and and say we're going to spend X amount of time in this place and still be able to work. So it's partly I think the goal for the company is to make enough money that we can obviously survive and do well and feel great, but also to have the freedom so that we're really just not so dependent on one organization. We can kind of we have multiple sources of income and and we get to kind of be creative and pick and choose. And to me, that would be like the dream. That's the dream. [00:38:16][65.8]
[00:38:16] Absolutely. Freedom, global citizenship. I like that. Yes. [00:38:20][3.5]
[00:38:21] So if you ran into somebody tomorrow who she was walking along, caught your attention for a minute and said, listen, I just got done with Carnegie Mellon and a stint in New York City, acting was not my gig. [00:38:35][13.7]
[00:38:35] Appreciate the time there. I'm going to return to doing some writing. I'm not sure exactly what to do or how to get started. What are the top three pieces of advice you would give her? [00:38:45][9.4]
[00:38:48] I would say to her, find what you really are most interested in writing about, first off, because if you're if you're dedicated and devoted to that thing and that thing help you wake up in the morning excited to do that thing, then you'll be willing to and and somehow prepared to face the challenges of that, the pitches that get rejected and the people who say no to you, but you can keep going. So I think finding that thing that you love to do is critical. I also think we live in a world where you can do so much without other people. You can start a blog. You can you can put it on a website, you can do a podcast, and then don't think of those things necessarily as the as the end, but as the beginning as the modern form of a calling card. [00:39:47][59.4]
[00:39:51] You never know where things will lead and lastly, and absolutely make your friends close, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, because those connections, the networking and and meeting people and not burning bridges has been to me has been pretty vital. Like, you never know when you need that person to help you out in some way. [00:40:17][26.8]
[00:40:18] So put your ego aside, because this is not a business that is I don't think you can thrive on having an ego. I mean, I think you have to take jobs sometimes that are less money than you want to take. And certainly in the beginning and you have to be willing to accept that this Ed may love what you did. And this Ed may not like what you did. And you have to make those changes and those adjustments or this client, if it's beseen whatever to or if it's to me. I have a huge ego about my own self personally, you know, but I don't have it in my work because it's not going to help me, you know? I mean, it's just not you have to be able to accept that, you know, you have to be able to accept that kind of criticism. So absolutely. By three things. Yeah. [00:41:14][55.8]
[00:41:14] So find what you're most interested and passionate about so you can wade through some of the beginning muck. [00:41:20][5.1]
[00:41:21] And there's plenty of mediums to get out there and start writing to keep you going and keep your friends close and your enemies closer. [00:41:28][6.9]
[00:41:32] We're out of time. But I want to say thank you so much for taking the time this New Year. Twenty twenty is a is going to be a good one. I can feel it in my bunk. So to thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. [00:41:43][11.8]
[00:41:44] Guys, we've been talking with Rebekah Sager. You can contact her at Rebekah Sager dot com and. Yeah, thanks again, Rebekah. [00:41:52][8.4]
[00:41:53] And until we talk again next time, everyone, thank you for your time. And remember to always bet on yourself, Slainte. [00:41:53][0.0]
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