Why a podcast?

Like probably most of you, it’s been a long road to get to this place… and I had noooo idea “this place” would ever mean podcast. In all honesty, when my husband started listening to podcast over a decade ago, I thought he was silly for doing so. Then I realized what impactful conversations were going on in the podcasting world and I was hooked! Honest conversations with real people sharing knowledge with people from all over…. YES, please! Now, here I am in a place where I feel like all of these wonderful people I’ve meet and their small business stories need to be shared and a podcast seemed like the way to go.

A little bad story……

For me, my small business dream started in 2008. It took me a few “I’ve launched my business” moments over several years, then a big move and then anther, and then another baby-on-the-way put a pause on my small business dreams. LIFE HAPPENS and being able to confidently say “ok, now is not the right time”, is so important because as much as we would love to do it all…. the reality is we are only capable of doing a small number of things well at one time.

Here I am in 2023 and I’m a few years into my life-long passion business in photography (to give you perspective, I started in photography when I had to roll my own film and develop in a darkroom and made the transition into digital my senior year of college. BAM! Give a little perspective on how slowly played this has been) and I am just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel… and I graduated college in 2007! There were so many start and stops along this journey!!

Acquiring a new photography skills seemed like the easy part, it’s the business aspect that so many struggle with! I started a “side-gig” in 2020, a farmer’s market! It may seem like way out of left field from a portrait photography business, but in reality, the land used for the market was purchased with the intent of building a wedding and event venue that doubles as my studio. The market was a low-capital way to spread the word about this location. During covid lockdowns, many people in my area started dabbling in homemade/ handmade things and the number of small businesses skyrocketed! I saw the opportunity to share the land I was blessed to own and create a space for people to show their goods and services to the local community. A way for so many little “shops” that didn’t have a storefront to have a “store-front” for the day, and outside! This has lead me to countless conversations with small businesses around the San Antonio area and I got to hear their WHY. How they got started, struggles, doubts, successes, surprises, business choices, growth and “this is it, I can’t do it anymore…….” and also, whole lot of thankful, giving hearted people.

The Creatively Devoted Podcast was started in the hope of spreading a little extra piece of these businesses stories. The start, the why, the hard decisions, the joy, and the faith that comes along when you are on a mission to create is inspiring to listen to…. whether that’s create a business, a family, a relationship, or a career. Through real honest conversations about business, life, family, faith, and relationships, we start to realize we are all so similar. We’ve had similar struggles, situations that made you scratch your head… and we’ve all handled it a bit differently. I hope through sharing these conversations, we can each learn from one another….. because LORD knows we each have unique gifts and we must rely on one another to be generous, honest and forgiving of one another to be able to get through life. We are better together!

I hope you enjoy listening!!