We recently connected with Taé Michelle & Chevaun Camille and have shared our conversation below.
Taé Michelle &, thrilled to have you on the platform as I think our readers can really benefit from your insights and experiences. In particular, we’d love to hear about how you think about burnout, avoiding or overcoming burnout, etc.
Taking breaks is a requirement and if you forget this important requirement your body will remind you! After two years of recording episodes from January to November and in our second year adding a monthly vlog to the roster, we realized that our ambitions, while good intentioned, were unsustainable. From the fact that we both have personal lives and professional responsibilities that extend beyond content creation, production, and editing, as well as everything else that goes into having a podcast, in our third-year burnout hit. We realized by the middle of June of year 3 we had to do better with prioritizing ourselves, our families, and our loved ones. In a very last minute, but just as necessary, decision, we chose to take a break from July to August. During a meeting right before we were to return in September, we also agreed to include January in our winter break, effectively splitting our seasons into Spring and Fall portions. So far, the results have been what was needed. Burnout is a very real thing, and it will impact your productivity; it will impact the quality of whatever it is you are trying to do, and you must remember to prioritize yourself. It is a work in progress and when you have 2 people focused on a common goal it can be encouraging to push each other and pick-up and support each other, but the flipside of that is not wanting to let the other person down or be the reason things fail or fall. It’s important, if in a business partnership, to have regular check-ins and be honest with each other, and yourselves, about what you can and can’t handle at any given time as life evolves and things can change weekly and monthly.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Bold, conversational, empowering, and unapologetically honest, we have candid conversations about life, relationships, and culture over a glass of wine. We’re not afraid to tackle controversial topics head-on, but we do so with respect, light humor, empathy, and relatable, often personal, experiences. Our podcast, A Little Something 2 Wine About (ALS2WA), is exciting and different than a lot of the podcasts out there because we have 4 series: Sis, Let’s Wine, Wine’ing with the Guys, For the Culture, and our monthly Wine Out Wine Tastings. On Sis, Let’s Wine, we give our experiences and advice tips and tricks that we have learned from experiences across a whole range of topics that pertain to contemporary women. On Wine’ing with the Guys, we get real, down-to-earth men on the couch and get their honest opinions and experiences as it relates to life, relationships, and the impact culture has on them mentally and emotionally. With For the Culture, we look at pop culture issues, social media trending topics, and themes that occur in American culture from a critical lens. And we do all of this over a glass of wine! We feature a new wine every episode (Popping Grapes!) and give our personal reviews during our Wine Out Wine Tasting.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
We would not have been able to get to where we are at this stage of being in our fourth season of ALS2WA without three key things: (1) the desire to learn and acquire new skills, (2) being ready to pivot in times of challenge or when things aren’t quite going as expected, (3) without being perseverant. Do not stop learning! That has been one of the biggest qualities we have had to have to make the podcast a reality, to expand it, and to streamline what we do to increase efficiency. You can always learn from those around you and tailor approaches to fit your needs, niche, and/or resources. We are constantly finding new ways to increase our knowledge in the areas where we don’t feel as confident or if there are better ways to do things. Don’t be afraid to take risks and take chances but do so cognitively with as much research as you can so that you’re entering minimally blind, always remembering, and accepting, that you don’t know what you don’t know. And because of that, being ready to pivot is important. What works for someone else – or how they approach a situation – may not work for your market, your audience, your brand, your current skill or knowledge level, your budget, or a plethora of other factors. You must be ready to change course or course correct. Perseverance is key in life. And it helps to have a support system or team, even if just a few people, to encourage you when you can’t find the strength or confidence to encourage yourself. Perseverance and a lifestyle of learning are essential qualities to have, and the ability to pivot is a skill that can be exercised by trying when you combine the two.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
We are always looking for engaging and knowledgeable people in a variety of fields to join us on the couch, as we say, and sip some wine — nonalcoholic included — and share their experiences, life lessons, and tips and tricks to help bring light, knowledge, and positivity to the world. We enjoy engaging with others who are thoughtful and passionate and committed to connecting the world through sharing their stories. We are also always interested in topic and wine suggestions and wine sponsorships and partnerships. Anyone who wants to connect with us we encourage to reach out to us via our website or via email. We can also be found on Linktree @ALS2WA.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alittlesomething2wineabout.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ALs2WA/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ALS2WA
- Other: Linktree – https://linktr.ee/als2wa
Image Credits
Carl Gray, III ALS2WA
