Choose954 Podcast Ep 08 w Enid of RAW Storytelling

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM_LwMBEU90&list=PLOQvdw7d0cd9RZZkd2lZy2hmrnJv-cfLI&index=28

Evan: All right, we are back on the Choose954 podcast with my good friend Enid Atanasio. She is the founder of Raw Storytelling, which she's going to tell you a little bit more about. But before we get there, if you didn't know what Choose954 is, we started a social movement aiming to cultivate culture and community here in Broward County, where I'm originally from. We aim to bring people together over our shared passions of art, food, music, culture, and we do this by curating culture via social media, visual storytelling, an event calendar, and curated newsletter. We also create culture in the form of events. You can find us every Wednesday night at YOLO for the Choose954 Local Artist Discovery Series, Art Fort Lauderdale in January, and a bunch of other things I'll get to mentioning at the end. But before we get there, Enid, thank you for joining us.

Enid: Thank you for inviting me.

Evan: So, tell us a little bit about yourself first before we get into Raw.

Enid: About me? I'll keep it short because it could be like a novel. My name is Enid, and I am originally from Puerto Rico, so I'm like a Latina representative here in the Broward community. The story is that I actually have a background in video and TV production. I wanted to be a producer, and I wanted that for a very long time until I found the magical world of branding, design, and marketing and all that stuff. And then I kind of switched from there, and that's actually how I arrived here in Broward, just moving from job to job. I really just like that it's a community that's growing, and it's really fun to be part of something that's growing. Long story short, I now work here at a design agency, have my own brand consulting firm, and I started Raw Storytelling. And I met you through all of this. How about that?

Evan: It's a beautiful thing when it works. So, tell us a little bit about Raw for those that don't know what Raw Storytelling is.

Enid: Raw is a live, true storytelling show that happens every second Thursday of the month at Café Collective, which is by Collective Ventures, a co-working space here in Broward. Basically, the concept is simple: people get up and share a story about their life, a true story about their life, and it's unscripted, unfiltered, uncensored—it is whatever comes out raw is what comes out.

Evan: All right, and I've shared one of my stories of kind of how I started off as a troubled kid, and that speaking out and saying what was on my mind kind of led us to where we are today. It was a pretty cool experience.

Enid: It's fun, yeah. And anybody can join; there's no prerequisite or requirement. You don't have to be a speaker. I think the amateurs are actually more entertaining, probably.

Evan: Yeah, the whole point is real people telling real stories, and when people come up and are very vulnerable, the audience really embraces them. Those are the best moments when you feel that the audience understands somebody else's life experience, and that leads to a better community, a better world, a better everything. Storytelling is something that I've come to find from these cultural experiences I've been on. We don't really have too many—we have the Fort Lauderdale Story Slam, and they do a great job, but in other cities and in other markets, they have, in Miami, they have The Moth and so many more things, but it really hasn't been something that we've had so much of here, right?

Enid: Yeah, like you said, in the big cities, they all have different live storytelling events, but someone like me who leaves work at six could never make it to Miami anytime. So, that's kind of why I was like, I need to make one here, and that was kind of part of that.

Evan: So aside from that, why don't you tell us a little bit about the why and why you came up with Raw Storytelling?

Enid: So, it all goes back to me being obsessed with podcasts. I'm obsessed, obsessed with podcasts. I've listened to a lot of podcasts about people telling true stories, and it changed my perspective of how I see the world and made me a better person in how I relate to people because I understood that other people had different experiences. I wanted to create an environment where other people could experience what I had experienced, and that is the big why. It's to create a place where people foster acceptance and understanding—that is the big mission of Raw Storytelling, and that is why I started it. And also because I wanted something fun to do every second Thursday of the month.

Evan: Yeah, and I think you've succeeded. You're getting now over 50 people?

Enid: Oh yeah, last month we had almost 100 people. It was crazy; it was standing room only. And it's a free event—I don't know if I mentioned that before—so people are free to come in at any time during the event and enjoy a fun story, or sometimes an intense story. It's all kinds of stories.

Evan: Yeah, and for anybody that's ever put on an event before, it's not easy to get 100 people to come out and do anything—free or not or otherwise. So kudos to you for creating this really special place. It's a really special thing that people look forward to, and people are excited to be a part of, and it is growing. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you envision for future steps?

Enid: Yeah, so in October, it's going to be our one-year anniversary, and our goal is to launch the new website by then, thanks to donations. We're going to have a full website where people can go and maybe have snippets of different stories, learn more about the storytellers, or just learn more about different things. We're also going to launch a podcast in 2019, so that's in the works right now. I also want to do workshops like storytelling workshops, poetry workshops, acting workshops, storytelling for branding workshops—any kind of workshop related to storytelling is also in the future. I also want to bring my branding experience and do brand storytelling consultations for entrepreneurs or people in the community. I'm all about helping those who don't have a lot of means, so that's the whole point of this—to create good content and good resources for anybody in the community.

Evan: Yeah, a lot of people, especially when you're starting out, you're building your thing, and you're kind of developing it and getting the word out. A lot of people kind of miss that storytelling mark. One of the reasons why we're doing this is we're visual storytelling—the podcast with the live stream—and just getting the word out there and showing people what you're doing instead of just telling them.

Enid: Yeah, it's a lot about in order to sell or in order to reach people, to motivate people, you really have to share your story or the product story or the company story. Storytelling is in everything, even though you don't even realize it.

Evan: Yeah, and you can speak from experience working for an award-winning advertising agency that tells brand stories, so she has a wealth of real-world, high-level experience that she's going to bring to these workshops. So, stay tuned for that in the future. Where can they find more about Raw?

Enid: So, rawstorytelling.org—that's our site right now. We're also Raw Storytelling on Instagram and Facebook, and on Eventbrite, if you put in Raw Storytelling, you'll see our event for the following month. Each month, we announce what the theme is for the next month, and you can get free tickets there.

Evan: Awesome. So, you told us a little bit about the why. Can you tell us a little bit about the how we arrived here with the help of our friends from Action Club and you?

Enid: Yeah, so the how is that I was, by pure coincidence, a speaker at a breakfast morning seminar, and at the end of the seminar, somebody asked me, "Oh, so what's next?" It caught me off guard, and I didn't know what to say. I said the first thing that came to my mind: I want to start a true storytelling live show. And then Evan here, who I did not know at all at the time, raised his hand and said, "I think you just wrote it out. Go to Action Club." And then I think I met you, along with some other people who were going to Action Club. Now it's called Axen Club, and you can find them on Facebook, and there are a lot of them in different cities. So, Axen Club is an accountability group. It's a free accountability group where you go every two weeks, and you meet with people, and you say, "These are my goals," and people actually help you accomplish them. No joke, five months to the date from when I had that speaker series where I blurted that out—that was May 12th—on October 12th was my first Raw Storytelling show. Those five months to the date, my dream came true thanks to people helping me out in various forms, even if it was just pushing me or helping me find the venue or find storytellers and stuff like that. It's completely for free.

Evan: Yeah, one of our good friends and somebody that we both immensely respect, Azriel from Miami, started over five years ago. They've been doing it for a while out of the lab in Wynwood, and I saw an article in The New Tropic about how this club was really helping people do some really great things. Azriel's a successful startup founder, has a great business, and he takes the time out of his life for over five years to lead this group for free. There's no catch, there's no cult, there's no nothing.

Enid: Yeah, it's like therapy with friends who actually help you accomplish things.

Evan: Yeah, and one of my goals—you come to the group, we give you a notebook for free, and we ask that you write down 150 life goals. This could be anything, just to kind of get them on paper, to have you visualize them and start thinking long term. I only wrote down probably about 38 of them, and the 38th one, a year ago that I wrote down, was to have Choose954 merchandise, and lo and behold, nearly a year later, here we are. So, it really is a great thing. It's spelled Axen, A-X-E-N. It used to be Action, A-C-T-I-O-N, and branding. Azriel had a good idea, and he's looking to grow it to help more people, so you can look it up on Facebook and meet up as well.

Enid: Yeah, anyone can get involved. There's no prerequisite; you don't have to have a startup or anything like that. So, you can join us for Axen Club tomorrow. A few other events that I'd like to share: our next Raw Storytelling event is this Thursday at 7:00 PM at Café Collective. You can find Café Collective on Facebook or Google or anywhere, and for more information, you can go to rawstorytelling.org, Facebook, or Instagram. The theme is mothers, in honor of Mother's Day. I can tell you that we have a lot of mommy issues going on—a lot of mommies. So, you never know what comes out of people's mouths when they get on the mic. Don't miss it, and it's the only place where you can find the live stories right now because they're not in the podcast yet. So, if you don't want to miss a story, you have to be here Thursday at 7:00.

Evan: Right here at Café Collective, Broward and Federal, same building, bottom floor where The Waverly is. Free parking, free event, and I think sometimes there's like free booze—there's like free beers, free wine sometimes.

Enid: Yeah, it's a big, nice café. You can get a good brownie with the coffee and just sit there and hear some really juicy stories.

Evan: Yes, thank you to Brian for having us here tonight.

Enid: Yeah, and for letting you use the space.

Evan: Yeah, not only does he let us do this here today, but they so kindly host this event for us at no cost because we are here thanks to people's donations, like I mentioned before. We're also on GoFundMe—if you search Raw Storytelling on GoFundMe, we're looking for donations to be able to grow, grow, grow. So, go there and donate, even if it's a dollar. It means so much to us because we all volunteer to do this. Hosting websites isn't free, and equipment for podcasts isn't free, and SoundCloud memberships aren't free.

Enid: This is a way to story tell the brand, to get it out there so people can see that this exists. This is, once again, another piece of culture that we haven't had in abundance here in Broward that traditionally you would have to go to Miami for The Moth, or in other cities, people would be used to finding. We should have more of these things here. Events like this and clubs like Axen Club have been great catalysts to spur change and new ideas and new things for the community to bring people together, which is why I'm passionate about supporting it and getting the word out there because it is a really cool thing to do.

Evan: Another cool thing to do that was here last month, which is a monthly event that changes venues, is Sofar Sounds, which is celebrating their one-year anniversary. Sofar Sounds is an intimate "songs from a room" music listening experience for true music fans. It's not one of those types of things where everybody has their cell phone out. It's limited; you kind of have to request access to get in there. They don't release the venue; they don't make a Facebook event page. It's not super secret, but that's the cool part—you don't know where it's gonna be. It's not exclusive, but you do have to request access. So, you can go to sofarsounds.com. They're celebrating their one-year anniversary. They produce some of the most incredible YouTube videos of all the performances that you'll ever see that you can find online.

We also have a new event launching soon, this Friday actually. The monthly breakfast lecture series that Enid spoke at unfortunately doesn't exist anymore, so we're starting a new monthly breakfast lecture series powered and supported by the AAF, the American Advertising Federation that Enid is also a part of, called Creative Zen. So, it's going to be a free talk, like a mini TED Talk, free breakfast, free coffee, free vibes, networking. That's also going to be at General Provision. Shout out to Tim. The second Friday of the month, so it's going to be this Friday, May 11th. It starts at 8:30. The talk will begin around 9:15. Just another place for people to come together and get inspired once a month. If your boss says, "Oh, I don't know why I should let you go to this event and come into work late," you're going to meet people, get inspiration, it's networking, and also just learning things.

Enid: Yeah, I've learned so much from going to seminars and speaker series because you never know what people's backgrounds are, how they got there, and how that could inspire you in any way. So, definitely go—those things are so important, and just bring your boss with you.

Evan: Yes, and a little known fact: the monthly breakfast lecture series is what inspired me to pursue my passion, thanks to the talk Alexa gave over two years ago. You never know what's going to come out of it. I've met some of my best friends, and some amazing things have come out of it. So, Creative Zen, you can find on Facebook—I'm going to try to link all these things in the comments afterward. That's this Friday morning. This Friday as well, another great thing for the community that I'm actually going to be doing a podcast with the director of tomorrow, Business for the Arts of Broward, does a cultural tour where Robin Vegas will be on the podcast tomorrow. She takes members of the community to different cultural hubs and different institutions, from the Bonnet House, the Stonewall Museum, the Young at Art Museum, the Coral Springs Museum of Arts, to FATVillage and Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts, and all these different great places. Not every month; she actually mixes up the tour. She provides breakfast, a tour bus, and lunch as well, and you get a curated behind-the-scenes view and experience of these great places. One she shared, I didn't go on this one, they went to the Broward Center for Performing Arts when they had The Lion King, and they actually got to go behind the stage and behind the scenes and see The Lion King up close and personal. So, Business for the Arts of Broward is the organization. They're a non-profit started by Jared Levan from BBX Capital Corporation, and the tour is called the Cultural Tour. You can find it on Facebook, and you can find it on the Choose954 podcast tomorrow morning.

Evan: Keeping the hits running here, another cultural heritage thing that we're really excited about: the CHAT Summit. It's a cultural heritage and tourism summit bringing together people from the tourism industry and the cultural world, like myself, to idea share and talk about the actual business of what we're trying to do here with elevating the arts and culture. It's going to be in a conference format, and I happen to be speaking on a panel next Thursday, May 17th. It's at the Renaissance Plantation off of I-595, supported by the CVB, the Convention and Visitors Bureau. It's going to be a really great thing to highlight the importance of what we've been talking about—elevating the arts and culture, having more things like this, more events, places, and ways for people to come together over our shared passions of the arts, culture, music, and food, since we definitely need as much of that as we can now.

Evan: Lastly, I just found out about a new startup called Skilled, S-K-I-L-L-I-E-D. It's a platform that brings teachers and classes together. If you're like my friend Carla, she's a raw vegan chef, she does dinner demos. Sure, you can put your classes on Facebook, and that's going to get it out there, and you can put it on Eventbrite, but there aren't so many platforms for these classes. They started this platform, and they're doing their launch party next Wednesday at ArtServe. It's going to be a really good thing. If you're a yoga teacher, an artist, or whatever the case may be, I would definitely recommend looking them up. We're going to be supporting them. Skilled, S-K-I-L-L-I-E-D. Their launch party is next Wednesday at ArtServe. You can find out more on the Choose954 newsletter, which I send out every Tuesday morning. It's not spammy, I promise. It's good stuff. Just trying to once again keep people in the know. I know people don't want to follow the New Times, the Sun Sentinel, Venice, and all these different sources, so we try to curate it and deliver it to your inbox weekly. You can sign up on the Facebook page, and if you go to the website, it's right at the bottom. You can follow hashtags now as well. Follow #Choose954. Another way just to keep people together if you're looking for storytelling, you're looking for culture. You can follow hashtags and embed them in your profile. How about that?

Evan: And if you haven't seen, we do have, as I mentioned, Choose954 merchandise. 100% of the proceeds go directly back into our initiatives of cultivating culture and community here in Broward. We are self-funded. We're not backed by the city, county, or anybody else. This has been an altruistic passion project of mine and my partner Andrew Martineau’s, to really support the artists, creative community, and our community overall at such a crucial time as the cranes are rising, and the community is redeveloping. We really need arts and culture in the sense of community now more than ever, to make this a better place to live and not just a better place to vacation. You can find out more on the website, on social media, and we appreciate if you do pick up a Choose954 shirt, become an ambassador, post a picture with it, and I'll be glad to share it. Enid appreciates it, I appreciate it.

Enid: I do appreciate it. I appreciate being here.

Evan: Anything else you want to mention?

Enid: No, I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell people about Raw, because it really is a big passion of mine. It fills my eyes with tears and my heart with joy every month when I see people having fun or just learning in a group setting. So, thank you so much for letting me share about this.

Evan: Yeah, and there's no catch here. There's no surprise ticket at the door, no cults. And the last thing I'll leave you with, if you haven't been, if you've never been to a storytelling event before, you've never been to Raw before, step outside your comfort zone. Come and join us for free. We have a DJ—I forgot to mention that. DJ Sandóz is going to be the DJ for this month. It's really fun because there's a little moment in the beginning and the middle where you can just talk to friends with good music behind you. It's really fun.

Enid: Yes, meet people, network, share ideas, talk to people about what you have going on.

Evan: Yeah, if you haven't been, I encourage you to step outside your comfort zone. Come to Choose954, Raw Storytelling this Thursday, the second Thursday of every month, for free. Appreciate you tuning in, and if you ever have any questions about Raw Storytelling or Choose954, we're out.