I Was On A Podcast!

The funny thing is that we could’ve spoken for hours, and now I understand how easy things can turn into a Rogan Experience because that time flew by like it was nothing.

A little while ago I had the privilege of sitting down with Sabelo Zulu and his team over at Switchkottin for an hour and a half to talk about my story. I say a privilege, here, because not many people get to talk about their stories the way I do, and I’m always grateful for the opportunities I find myself in to do so.

This session was a pretty cool experience for me, for two reasons:

• While I’ve wanted to for some time, in a different context, I’ve never recorded a podcast before; so the experience of talking with this kind of intention was new and exciting.
• They had a really good quality sound setup, and if you’ve never heard your own voice with such clarity before then you’re missing out, because that, my friend, is pretty freaking awesome.

Alright, let me take you back a little bit. I hang out at Starbucks here in Durban a lot, like a lot. I do this for a number of reasons. I enjoy the culture here and the environment (I’m sitting at one of their tables right now while writing this), the space itself helps me remain accountable to my work and I get to meet and hang out with some amazing people that I just wouldn’t have bumped into if I sat at home all the time (don’t get me wrong, a good potato session can be an amazing thing, though). Oh, and the coffee is pretty great as well. This story comes from one of those times where I bumped into someone really cool.

Prelude

Early in September of last year (2019), I sat down at one of the larger outside tables because the weather was great. I don’t remember exactly what I was working on at the time, but found myself in conversation with a guy across the table from me. Sabelo Zulu. We ended up speaking about a whole lot of stuff, from the apparel industry to design and the role good designers have on any industry they find themselves in. This eventually led to me talking a little bit about what I do (at the time it was only Ripcurl and That Type Guy). And while the conversation had to end at some point, we decided it would be a great idea to catch up again in the future.

This led to me finding out more about what Sabelo does. At the time, he was working on developing a platform where his focus was to bring awareness and exposure to the creative culture here in Durban, especially for those who put a great deal of effort into their artistry.

After our conversation, he looked more into my social platforms and my website (the only place you can really read about my story) and he wanted to see if we could organise a conversation that was more structured where he and his team could develop a blog article on his website about me.

Naturally, I was taken aback by this. I wasn’t sure if my story was one worth telling at the time. It has inspired some of my peers before, but that’s always something you take with a pinch of salt and I didn’t want to think too much about it. This changed that perspective somewhat. Here was someone who didn’t know me past a 30-minute conversation, who believed in my story and my values enough to warrant wanting to share this with other people who had never met me. After sitting with the situation for a bit, I decided to give it a shot and see where this would go.

Later in the month, we scheduled an informal interview here at Starbucks (my little social hub) and I unloaded my story in as much detail as I could muster at the time. We had a great time and I looked forward to bumping into him again soon.

After some website development and unseen challenges, it took some time for the article to be developed and shared on the site. Recently, that became a reality and you can now visit it here.

An Audiocentric Turn of Events

Apparently, though, a blog post wasn’t enough. While I had told Sabelo and his team how it all started and where I planned to take my brand, they wanted to unpack it even further. Now that we had the blog article outlining a lot of my direction and how I found myself at that moment, it was time to record a podcast. We had spoken briefly about the possibility of doing one at the time, and that they wanted to have podcasts as part of their platform, but I wasn’t sure if it would turn into something. This is mainly because I’m new to the recording side of podcasts (I listen to them all the time these days as the industry continues to boom — shoutout to my lecturer in 2nd year who turned me onto them in the first place). This, however, did become a reality and I couldn’t be happier about it.

We spoke about a few things, but mainly we discussed the following topics around my story and how I got here:

• How I got into photography during high school
• Why I decided that photography was not going to work for me
• How I found graphic design and studied graphic design
• How That Type Guy started and how I got into lettering in the first place
• My ‘cum laude’ mindset and how I apply it to my life in all directions

The funny thing is that we could’ve spoken for hours, and now I understand how easy things can turn into a Rogan Experience because that time flew by like it was nothing. We ended up talking about mindsets and the psychology surrounding success — something I’m very passionate in understanding — so we thankfully cut it off before we got lost down a very deep and very interesting rabbit hole. Perhaps we can pick that up where we left it another time. That would be fun.

Personally, it was a bit strange to talk about yourself for an hour or so in such a setting, but if someone is interested in listening, one shouldn’t deny them, right? Especially if your story can help inspire other people to find their passions and make some damn headway with them. Life is too short not to pursue something you don’t love, so get on that shit asap.

I’m gonna leave it there because the rest is spoken about in our episode. Go give it a listen here if you’re interested, I know Sabelo and his crew will appreciate the support as they get this venture moving with some steam.