Hey there! Editor of the newly announced Axios Charlotte, Emma Way joins us this week. Emma discusses her journey down to Charlotte and her career in journalism. Follow along for local CLT news at http://axios.charlotte.com — Excited for you to hear this one, enjoy!
Ohavia Phillips
Ohavia Phillips, host of The OH Show Live and spreading the message of leading with love returns to the podcast. Her and I met last August when this project was starting to take shape. Our conversation was so genuine and effortless so I wanted her to return for the podcast. We talk about her journey to Charlotte and all of the community work she has done and has planned for the new year. Enjoy!
Joe Bruno
Hey there! Excited to be back with the first episode of the year. This week, local news reporter Joe Bruno joins us! From covering all of the stories and current events around Charlotte and beyond, Joe talks about his journey as a reporter to moving down to the city and what that has done for his career.
Blake Pope
In this episode we sit down and chat with Blake Pope. Director of Arts and Culture for Kindred and Hello Sailor, Blake shares his journey in the hospitality business, the journey they are on this year during the pandemic and the content he creates and shares.
https://www.blakepope.com
Alvin C Jacobs Jr.
EP07 of the podcast is live — Alvin sits down and discusses his journey to Charlotte from Rockford, IL. He talks about the incredible and powerful work that he has done and continues to do in our community.
“Once you have a genuine friendship and genuine respect and love for folks, you keep the party going. Doesn’t matter what walk of like you’re in or what community you’re live in, you need these genuine connections.”
https://www.alvincjacobsjr.com
Uncle Jut
On this episode — Justin aka Uncle Jut, sits down and shares his journey on what brought him down to Charlotte from south Jersey. Jut creates some of the most powerful images of Charlotte and it’s communities. He talks about how capturing moments for him is just as important as living in them.
Laura Wolff
This week we have Laura Wolff joining us. Laura shares her journey on how she got the opportunity to be one of the photographers for the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Knights. She also shares her journey on how she ended up in Charlotte and how this year has been going for her. Hope you enjoy the conversation! See you next time!
Laura Wopperer - Mask With Me
In this episode of the podcast we sit down with local photographer, Laura Wopperer. Laura started a project called ‘Mask With Me’ highlighting the importance of wearing a mask during this time. She takes portraits of individuals in Charlotte wearing a mask and explaining the reasons why they do so. It has brought awareness to not only our community but also areas outside of Charlotte. Hope you all enjoy this episode. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Lucas Ayres
Episode two of the Podcast is live! Lucas Ayres — shares his journey of bringing a photography community together in Charlotte by starting CLT Shooters.
“The potential for the things that can happen and how your life can change in an instant. You don’t know what’s going to happen weeks or months from now. Your whole life can change when you least expect it to. Just keep going forward.”
https://www.cltshooters.com
Alyssa Pressler
Welcome to the first podcast of what I am calling Those In Our CLT Community! I’m excited to keep this series going. The people in Charlotte are incredible and I hope you get more value out of the conversation along with the written content. Alyssa touched on some great points, on opening her business during a pandemic and what she has learned from all the protests in June.
“Some of the worst times in our lives are when some of the best things happen. I think the pandemic has kind of broken me but also made me stronger. Every day I am more confident and less confident in what I am doing, and as a person, more confident in asking for what I need. Life is short, and it’s scary. It’s made me a much more honest person with myself and with the people that I work with and that I love, and that is a good lesson that I needed to learn.”
https://www.thatsnovelbooks.com
https://www.instagram.com/readinginclt/
Michael Graff
I am honestly at a loss for words to explain the amount of appreciation and respect I have for Michael Graff. Growing up in Maryland, Michael found his passion for writing and storytelling through the love of baseball. Over the past few years in Charlotte, Michael has been sharing with us the stories that show this city in a different light for us to gain knowledge and perspective on how to move the process one way and that is, forward. I had the distinct pleasure to sit down with Michael last week and ask how he is doing:
“I’m in a thoughtful space right now — we’re doing well, we’re very fortunate. I try to feel gratitude every day and I try to remind myself to be grateful every day. It’s a strange time. Mostly this year the question I have every day is “what kind of world is my son going to have?” I thought about the future before, but he was born on March 6th and that changed the way I think about the future. He is such a blank slate, he doesn’t know that any of this stuff is happening. All he knows is that he laughs really hard when his Mom walks in the room or when I whistle or make monkey sounds — he is just so sweet. Every day when I look away from him and I look at my phone and I see everything that is not sweet with the world. I want him to hold onto that as long as he can.
To be able to do that we have to make a better world for him, we have to make a better Charlotte for him, we have to make a better community here, for him. We have to make sure every kid gets what he or she needs.
I don’t know, like “how am I doing?” wrestling with those questions, I’ve been drifting toward stories about father and sons this year, I’ve gotten to know the family of Justin Carr, who was shot and killed in 2016 during the protests outside of the Omni, and I’m sitting there that day watching his four-year-old run around and he wasn’t born on the night he was shot. I just looked at him and thought, 'We want you to have a better fate than your Dad did, and we don’t want your Dad to have died in vain.' So what's the point of all of these protests and stuff that we are covering? Well, the point is to make the world a better place for the next generation. It’s not about me — that's our job. I spend a lot of time thinking, in terms of five years, ten years, fifteen years.
And I think that way at Charlotte Agenda. Are we perfect every day? No — we are not even close to perfect. Do we make mistakes that I cringe at? Yeah, we do. We are also moving fast. We publish five to six stories a day with a small staff. Occasionally we are going to mess up but what I always try to check is: are we closer to our goals that we want five years down the line? I want to leave a media organization that hopefully, my son can read one day.
This year has been a year that caused me to think and be reflective and think long term rather than “what am I doing this weekend?” which I did for a long time and was a lot of fun. And the Agenda serves a lot of readers who think like that too. We are making stuff for a wide range of people. The core audience of the Agenda are millennials. You’re trying to do a lot of different things for different types of people. It looks weird to people sometimes and I get this. You know, I’ll spend ten days in tent city working on a story about homelessness and then I work with an organization that publishes a 5 million dollar home listing. People ask, 'How can you do both things?' and my response is that we are holding a mirror up to Charlotte. We didn’t make Charlotte this way; Charlotte is this way. That's a totally different thing. What you’re frustrated with is actually Charlotte and you should work to fix it. It’s on us but if we present something to you that you don’t like then go out and fix it. If you are upset that we have 125 tents outside of uptown then what have you done today to help make sure those folks have a roof over their head? Living in Charlotte, one of the things I have learned is that when people are giving something, accept their generosity wherever they are in their generosity. I learned this from @gregjackson704. He’s said, “Look, some people want to just give food to our kids, some people just want to give money and that’s fine, you never turn away generosity.”
A few months back, Michael spent some time in tent city to talk to those who are having a hard time finding affordable housing. For me, someone who is fairly new to Charlotte and the issues at hand, it opened my eyes to the amount of work we need to do as a community to make Charlotte equal for all of us. With all of the stories he has written over the years about strong issues and important topics, I wanted to see if he saw any change from us, the community, to help change the narrative:
“I think we have more people trying to make a difference, we have more good work being done now than when I moved here eight years ago. We are in a better position to help those people in need. The challenge is the city has grown in other ways. The city is responding to people who are making 80 to 100 thousand dollars a year. The developers are building things that might not serve the interests of people who have lived here and can’t get ahead. Anywhere you have growth, you’ll have challenges. In 2016, during the protests, I covered them and they were some of the most profound evenings of my life. Most of the change has come after that year. It was a big millennial movement on council. A lot of positive change but it’s not keeping up with the need right now. We need to make sure when we build, that we aren’t pushing people out. It takes political will to make sure that you’re not just putting affordable housing in neighborhoods where there has always been affordable housing and make sure you put it in the most valuable land in the city. We need to be better at that.”
I loved that he mentioned Greg Jackson. When I connected with Greg earlier this year, he said something that stuck with me: “Let your passion lead you to your purpose, and when you bring that work to the community, it changes legacy.” Michael touched a little more on that topic of what Greg said:
“We all have a role, and you can't do everything that everyone else is doing because that's the thing to do right now. The best protest I’ve been to and the most meaningful ones I’ve been to, they have leaders who knew their role in running protests. Kass Ottley has a role in this city; she’s amazing. Queen City Nerve has a role in this city. We all need to recognize that. If you don’t want to march, you can do other things. You don’t need to march to move equity in Charlotte. A friend of mine, James Ford, I didn’t see him at a single march. But he is on the state board of education and he’s trying to figure out how to change the history curriculum for generations of students. He’s making a huge difference, but that doesn’t diminish what the marchers are doing, so we all have roles to play. Find what you’re passionate about. Just do your part.
I asked Michael if he can share his journey on how he became a writer and how he landed in Charlotte:
“I grew up in Maryland, my Mom was a first-grade teacher, my Dad was a charter fisherman on the Chesapeake. I am a big Baltimore Orioles fan and we went once a year because it was always an extravagant cost. I found out that people went to the games for free and they were called sportswriters. I set out to be a sportswriter.
I was a sportswriter at a small-town newspaper in Virginia covering high schools and the Washington Football Team. I moved to Rocky Mount, NC, and covered high school sports and the ACC. Then after, I moved to the Fayetteville Observer, where I was a sportswriter covering college sports. At 28 years old I missed a lot of my nights and weekends. I moved over to project reporting and news and that's when I became more of a longer-form feature writer covering mostly military issues at the time. (Fayetteville is home to Fort Bragg.) It was the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when I was there, and just the world of trouble from people being deployed six or seven times, I would write stories to help build the community around those issues.
After that I freelanced for a little bit then I got a job at Our State Magazine as an editor and that's where my career really changed. It was a lot of fun; I traveled around North Carolina for four years or so and interviewed people all over the state and fell in love with North Carolina all over again. This is home now and I care about it deeply. Then an opportunity came to lead Charlotte Magazine as the editor there and I came to Charlotte in 2013.
Charlotte was the biggest place I ever lived. Charlotte just wrapped me up when I got here. I saw it as a stepping stone to go into Washington or New York and I started to get offers to interview but I didn’t want to go and leave Charlotte. I’m glad I didn’t because I met my wife here and now, this is home. We get to see her family; we have her mom and cousins and uncles all here, and it’s just a lot of fun.
When I came here I’m like 'Wait, there is stuff to do every night here.' I love live music and sitting there with a beer with live music I can do that any night of the week. I still cling to that very rural, peaceful upbringing but I still get wide-eyed about Charlotte. I like to see Charlotte as this wide-open place of possibility. I don’t like it when people in Charlotte accept things that are wrong that they will be permanently wrong. I see this as a land of possibility and that WE can make the city that we want to make. Don’t stop because something is bad.”
Any takeaways from this year that you will take with you going forward?
“I won’t take concerts for granted anymore. I won’t take eating at a restaurant for granted. I probably won’t shake hands with anyone the same way. Business-wise, Charlotte Agenda was doing very well before this but it got scary for a while there. Was I going to lose my job? And I feel for everyone who has lost theirs.
This is always what I’ve known: You never know where someone is in his or her story when you pass them on the greenway when you pass them in the car. If someone gives me the finger on the road, I always try to think “I wonder what happened to them before that moment?” Then you think maybe something terrible happened before that. This year has really hammered that home. You just don’t know who's dealing with what. So I'm just going to keep telling meaningful stories to hopefully improve someone's life. I want to keep telling stories that will make people see the city differently.
JD Harris - Glory Days Apparel
I love this series and I’m thankful for those who agree to take the time for me to ask how they are doing as I think it’s an important question. Like I always say, it’s community and I’m hoping this brings us closer to one another in Charlotte. JD Harris, the owner of Glory Days Apparel is a honest and genuine soul who donates his time, energy and efforts to help move this city forward. He recently opened the first retail location for Glory Days Apparel and more impressively, during a pandemic. I asked how he is doing:
"I've been extremely busy with the opening of our store. It's a different busy, but it makes me happy. It's not easy. Nobody wants to open a store during a pandemic, but so much of our sales and interaction before came from pop-ups and those were all but eliminated for safety measures. So, the store was actually a good thing for allowing us to have a place for our fans to safely come and experience our brand. It was already challenging enough preparing our first store opening. Then, on top of that, making sure our fans are safe and comfortable when they come in. This is my baby and I want to keep it going for our fans and the city but I want to make sure we do it the right way. The store is more than just making Charlotte shirts. I want it to be a place where people feel like it's a destination spot and a brand they're proud to have represent them."
Glory Days is something that seems to always bring a smile to our faces when JD donates, collaborates, or releases new shirt artwork. I was curious about what his biggest struggle was to get to this point with the brand:
"One of the hardest challenges has been the journey of starting from no one knowing your brand to growing it. It's so hard and challenging but it's worth every second of the ride from the experiences and the people you get to meet along the way. You have to continuously push and prove yourself. Never want to get complacent. It's been a long journey but well worth it. I've had Glory Days Apparel now for just over 4 years now. The pop-ups always treated us well. Fans really came out to support and it's how we grew our fanbase over the years. it's great to meet people at these events. I take what I do with the brand very seriously, but I don't take myself too seriously. I like to have fun and joke around with people and I hope that personality comes through with the brand. It's so important to me that people feel connected to this brand."
JD is always involved in helping the community. Why?
"It goes back to when I first started the clothing brand. When I started Glory Days, it was important to me that we made quality clothing with awesome designs but it was just as important to me that Glory Days was part of the community and engaged. I'm happy to be able to make monetary donations with our charitable pursuits but if we can do something, like with the CLT STRONG campaign - we raised money to buy meals for essential workers but I also delivered meals myself to the hospital in the Glory Days van, that means much more to me to be involved like that. I'm very thankful for those opportunities and it means a lot to me where people reach out and think we can help out."
I asked if he has any personal or business-related takeaways after going through this year to take with him going forward:
"That's a good good question. I always try to lead my life with empathy and I think this past couple of months really put that into focus for me. Especially, with the Black Lives Matter movements here. That hit me harder. When I was growing up the narrative was more "don't see color". The intention behind that was meant for good but ultimately it wasn't the right perspective. It's important to recognize the differences and how you can support and empower one another with that understanding. It was something that really jolted me and saw that serious change needs to occur. It's not simply just about listening but being open to change and having your mind changed"
QC Exclusive - JP Grice & Brett Barter
For more than ten years, the team at QC Exclusive has been producing stories and highlighting the community in Charlotte through their magazine, website, and social media. Over the last six months they have shifted some of their content to be more of a resource to help those in need. J.P. and Brett sat down to discuss their personal and professional journey over the past year. I opened up the conversation and asked how are you doing? After a few laughs, Brett kicked it off:
“I’ve been good. Doing good, I’m being optimistic. I have two little kids at home. It’s been a challenge to say the least to manage both impact from Covid on the business, while simultaneously trying to navigate our kids with school, childcare and all of that stuff. I do a lot of business development. Usually, I go out and meet advertisers and try to get partnerships, the personal interaction is a big piece. I’m a social animal so it’s hard for me to not interact with people. I’m blessed that our company, my family, and everyone is healthy but it’s all about perspective. I’m just trying to keep that positivity both with the business and personally. So, I’m good, thanks for asking.”
J.P. “A lot of my friends have children and I feel for them, it’s a lot of work right now. The thing I’ve had a hard time dealing with is with my parents. They are moving here and I’m trying to see them as much as possible, and it’s troubling because of their age I worry about them with this. Other than that, just working hard and making the best out of the situation. The last six months has been tough for everyone. I do feel good that we have been trying to make the most of this as a company. We have spent a lot of time promoting as many Charlotte businesses as we can. That was our goal from the very beginning in mid-March. We were focusing on stories that could promote businesses in our community, in particular the niches like restaurants and retail that need it the most right now, as well as those that have supported us over the years.”
Brett: “We have a responsibility to promote the community and that responsibility has grown over the last six months. We have been reaching out and just seeing how we can help. J.P., Sunny, and our editorial team, have been instrumental. They’ve been great handling the outreach with others and seeing what’s going on and how we can help. That’s been a big thing for us and that’s really put things in perspective because there are people still really, really hurting out there.”
J.P: “If you don’t have that flexibility where you can’t switch and work from home it’s a really tough time right now and it weighs on a lot of people who can’t do that and have to rely on something being open.”
How have you seen the community aspect of your work change?
Brett: “We have been looking to ramp up our social and digital presence for awhile and this has positively fed into that because we have put more emphasis on it. We can react, learn about people that need help, and put messages of support and awareness out there to the community.”
J.P: “We focused a lot more on the industries that needed the support. The home and design industries are doing relatively well right now along with the real-estate business. So, we have kept promoting those industries but dedicated more pages for other industries including restaurants, retail, and art galleries. We’ve also invested in promoting our community online.”
Brett: “Individual, personal care, personal wellness, was something we focused on too. What you can do to feel good. You’re at home for 6 weeks and we thought about how we could provide that content to help people.”
J.P: “Putting out that content was new for us and it was kinda cool. The topics were fun and it was enjoyable to talk to people about what they are doing with their time and how they are being productive, tips on being physically healthy, and how to stay mentally healthy.”
What was your biggest struggle as a company that you had to overcome?
Brett: “J.P. was dialed in from the beginning with the whole news cycle and everything that was happening. He reacts quicker than I do and he was really good about anticipating what it might do for us. Production, distribution, etc. That was something that was challenging and we had to pivot. It was a challenge but it gave us an opportunity to show how nimble we could be.”
J.P: “It gave us an opportunity to reevaluate what we had been doing for so long. All of a sudden you get tossed this giant curveball and everything changes. I feel like it was a good way to reassess our business and we did it quickly. Throughout the process we relied on each other. It’s good to know that we, our team, have each others back.”
Any big takeaways from these times that you can take with you for days and years to come?
Brett: “Take this as an opportunity because it’s a complete unknown. This is what we do now. We have this time on our hands that we didn’t think we were going to have. So you can either sit and pout or you can roll up your sleeves and at the end of the day, that's where we've always shined, in times of struggle. I think it's been a good reminder of who we are and how we got here in the first place more than a takeaway. The response has been positive from the community. Everyone is going through this stuff. People naturally don’t want to show vulnerability, or that they are having a hard time because they want to protect their image and want people to have confidence in them. You combine that with people not talking to each other and not seeing each other, due to quarantine and Covid, it takes just reaching out to someone to see if they’re okay and that goes a long way.”
J.P: “There are so many people supporting each other. You can see that the community has come together even more to help one another. We’re pretty lucky to live in Charlotte. There are a lot of good people here who have each others backs and when you have that, the city thrives.”
Khaleel Loyd
Leadership is something that you can spot a mile away just by having a conversation with someone, and I immediately got that feeling after meeting Khaleel. He taught how the importance of family, and surrounding yourself with likeminded people can push a community forward in the right direction. Lights, cameras, action, Khaleel, how are you doing?
“I’m doing phenomenal. Every day on this earth is a blessing so no matter how hard things may get I try to keep a positive and optimistic attitude. It doesn’t mean that things don’t affect me, sometimes the weight of the world feels like it's on my shoulders but I try to still take a positive outlook on life. But right now I’m feeling really good and energized. We have a lot of work to do, I'm just looking forward to the future.”
I asked if he can just dive into a little bit of what he and the Loyd visuals team does for and around Charlotte:
“I’ve been in Charlotte for 10 years now. It has been great to move to a city and feel like I have grown with the city, Charlotte has grown immensely. I was able to grow up here, go to school here, work a corporate job here, and now being able to start a business here, I feel is a huge blessing. Currently, I am working and building a creative agency by the name Loyd Visuals. We have been working with non-profits here locally, we provide value to our clients through digital media. Being able to tell stories that resonate with the community from a client perspective is what we strive to do. The best part about it is that I get to do this with my two younger brothers. Myself, Najm and Maleek. This is just the beginning of what is to become something that Charlotte hasn’t seen before.”
I wanted to see how COVID-19 has effected his business and what they have done to shift the direction of what they provide:
“Back in March we just moved into this space at Hygge. We had to leave after the first two weeks and from there we had four or five clients that postponed events and then ended up canceling. 2019 was one of the best years that we had, we had a lot of momentum coming into 2020. We got hit hard but lucky we keep our overhead low. We have been rethinking the business to meet the needs of our clients. There are a lot of unknowns and I think we are still in that space where we are all trying to figure it out and learn as we go. Fortunately, we are in a field where content is needed, video, photo, design is needed. We have been able to manage and sustain, we are seeing a spike in our inquiries. I tell my team that, if and when we can get on the other side of this pandemic we are going to be so much stronger both personally and professionally so I take this as a challenge and that when you take a step back it’s okay to not know. You just need to roll with the punches.”
Connection to the community is important and I wanted to see if that has changed recently for the team:
“In some ways along the lines with the social unrest, the community has come together to rally around a common cause which is justice, and equality but on the other side of that, with COVID-19, we had to be disconnected and separated for health reasons. From a common goal perspective, we have gotten close to the community. For us, coming from the communities of where we grew up, we understand and we have experienced what it’s like to be black in America and we have been able to just lean into that even more. We have been raising money for black led, nonprofits here in Charlotte, and that came from the Black Lives Matter mural that was painted. Maleek was capturing a visual of that day and he got an overhead shot of the mural. A lot of people reached out asking for the photo to use it and license it. We offered it up and told them that we are donating all the money to folks in Charlotte that are actually doing the community work. We stay connected with our core values — creativity, collaboration, and communication. Now I would say Community is our 4th value, it's not that you don’t care about the community, it's that you ARE the community and people are realizing that we are stronger together. If people understand that shit needs to get better here in our city, our state, our nation, and in the world, we can make some change when we are together. We raised and donated $1,000 each to Hope Vibes Charlotte and Heal Charlotte. That was a huge blessing for us and it felt so good to help out.”
People in this series have referred to the 2016 protests a few times, have you seen any difference in the impact this time around?
“This year is unlike any other year we have experienced, so I wouldn’t compare this year to anything. The social unrest has been prevalent in this country for quite some time. We now have cameras and access to the internet and we can now hold people accountable for the death of black bodies. From 2016 to 2020, I can remember vividly in 2016, I was at work sitting in my cubical and I remember that I felt so powerless. It was one of those times where you had death after death, murder after murder. It was eye-opening, the city came in a rage after what happened with Kieth Lamont Scott. I was so distraught, I called Ohavia and I didn’t know what to do or how to help, that moment, we already started the business and I realized that if I really wanted to help my community then I couldn’t be chained to a desk. So I said you know what, let me take my fate into my own hands and I thought eventually I’m going to quit and dedicate myself to build the business and at the same time, serve the community. It’s a blessing to us because it’s not transactional anymore, it’s more so about what/how can we offer our talents to help you achieve what you’re doing knowing that you guys are doing good work in the community.”
I wanted to see if Khaleel had any different and important goals or takeaways from this past year:
“I realized the importance of health, both personal and mental and that is very important for us to figure out ways to work together around a common goal. Specifically for the black community, we have experienced so much separation in the community. It’s time now for the black community to come together to rally around a common goal and figure out how our children and grandchildren don’t have to go through what we are going through now. For everyone, take inventory of what you do well, what you have to offer to the world or the community, and whatever that is, offer that up. Don’t feel like you have to do a bunch of different things. We need to take ownership of what our purpose is here and to just lean into that and rally around people that are likeminded and care about the same things.”
