We had the good fortune of connecting with Shantae Young and Jasmine Kendrick and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Shantae, Jasmine,  how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Work-life balance is essential when running a small business, especially if you are also working full-time. When we began our podcast, we would record whenever we could, and we were also doing all the editing ourselves, so it would take us a while to edit and publish a new episode. At this time, we had a cadence of 1 episode per month. The more we grew and learned about podcasting, the more we found that we needed to be putting almost 40 hours of work into it and publishing an episode a week. So we got into this habit of working non-stop. If we weren’t sleeping or at our day jobs, we were working on the podcast, and it left little to no room for self-care or a work-life balance. At about two years into the podcast, we began to feel ourselves burn out fast! This prompted us to shift how we managed the podcast and prepared for our weekly show. Instead of texting every day about the podcast and always being “ON,” we decided to do office hours. We now hold one long meeting at the beginning of the week to help us nail down the current week’s show, social media promotion and run over any other information we might need to cover. This shift allowed us to get podcast stuff out of the way early in the week so that we could put ourselves in auto-pilot until we recorded our live show and gave us enough time and flexibility to shift topics or guests.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
What sets us apart from other podcasts is our dynamic. We are two women of color who are unapologetically ourselves and bring our unique perspectives to the topics we talk about on our show. We honestly hoped to foster deeper conversations with people we might not usually have those conversations with. We have recorded over 100 episodes today and have been podcasting now for three years. We are excited about the future and hope that once we are back to normalcy, the opportunity for live shows presents itself. We’d love to tour small venues around the country and talk about the current landscape of the World with new people with fresh perspectives. We got to where we are now through trial and error. Neither of us had any prior knowledge of how to run a podcast. The biggest lesson learned is to batch record your episodes and have a plan so that you don’t feel so scrambled when you launch. And if podcasting is a long-term goal, make sure to invest in quality equipment up front.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take my friends to Ponce City Market rooftop or the Beltline (if it’s warm and threatening to rain). I would also like to take them to the Atlanta Botanical gardens to see. I love flowers and taking photos, so this would be more for me than my friend, but it’s a great tourist attraction. I’d have to go to a couple of brunch spots, so we might venture to Marietta for Blaqhaus or GardenParc ATL for fun brunch activities.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We want to shout out the Marshall Law Band. They are a Seattle band that has taken it upon themselves to foster community and positivity within the music scene in the area. They allowed us to do our podcast live at an event called Summer Splashfest, which was the gentle nudge we needed to take our podcast more seriously. After that event, things took off for us. They even invited us back to do fun red-carpet media coverage of another event they held called the Emerald City Gala.

Website: www.thewayjtpod.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewayjazzandtae/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thewayjt

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewayjazzandtae/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_jfABltLyIhR4a97xyvWKw

Image Credits
Stephen Klise (Images with Brown Background) LexScope Productions (Images with Blue Background)

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutAtlanta is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.