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Anna DeShawn (pronouns: anything respectful), is an Ambie award-winning podcast producer and host. She is a Chicago-born social entrepreneur who builds streaming platforms which center & celebrate BIPOC & QTPOC creatives. Media has always been her passion and in 2009 she turned that passion into a reality when she founded E3 Radio, an online radio station playing Queer music & reporting on Queer news with an intersectional lens. Most recently, she co-founded The Qube, a podcast production company and curated platform to discover the best music & podcasts by BIPOC & QTPOC creatives. Anna is an award-winning podcaster determined to ride media into its next era by utilizing digital media streams to tell the stories and play the music that deserves to be heard.
Website | TikTok | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Discussed in this episode:
- Anna’s relationship with feminism
- The journey of building E3 Radio from side hustle to full-time gig
- How Anna continues to honor Black women of history in her work
- Why Anna avoided calling out queerness in the beginning of E3
- How all of Anna’s intersecting identities affect how she shows up in the world and in her work
- Navigating the early days of licensing music and being ahead of the technological curve
- Breaking barriers as a Black woman in the podcasting space
- What kept Anna going in the early days of speaking into the void
- Treating every episode or project like it’s “the” episode or project that gets a “yes”
- The virality of sitting-on-the-toilet videos
- The importance of relationships in funding, and generally in growing a business — and why every high school should teach networking
- Never giving up and continually putting yourself out there as the key to growth and success
- Learning to pitch for funding
- Making financial preparations for leaving corporate and starting her business
- Why Anna’s mantra is “have the confidence of a mediocre white man”
- Adjusting revenue models based on market demands to create sustainability
- Learning to be fluid with what a business can be, and thinking before acting on new ideas
- The problem of podcast search engines and how those marketing failures are excluding so many diverse voices from the space
- Anna’s mission to change podcast discoverability for marginalized audiences
Resources mentioned:
Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com
A full transcript of this interview is available at FeministFoundersPodcast.com
