Adriana Baer shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Adriana, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Someone asked me once what I was “irrationally passionate” about, and the thing that popped out of my mouth was, “That hour in the morning when I’m awake and no one else is!” I love my quiet mornings with my coffee, sitting on the couch with my cat. My mind and creativity are best in these early mornings, so I tend to work for an hour or two before I need to get my kid up and ready for school. I find that I can get way more done in the first 90 minutes of my day than in 4 hours in the afternoon.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m the founder and host of I’m Into This Place, which is Clark County and Vancouver, Washington’s arts, culture, and heritage podcast. We are the only weekly podcast, newsletter, and website focused entirely on shining a light on our community’s creative ecosystem. In each feature, we take listeners behind the scenes with the artists, makers, and community leaders shaping our local culture – from art and music to food, history, and heritage.
I launched this brand in 2024 because I saw a huge market gap and opportunity. As small and local media gets cut, arts coverage is vanishing. But the independent creative community here (and in many secondary markets) is vibrant and worthy of a spotlight.
This work combines my experience as a professional theater director & producer, podcast host, public speaking expert, and community builder.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
Now that I’m in my 40s, I’m so bored with my own perfectionism. It used to be the thing that worked for me and got me ahead of the curve. It’s one of the reasons I was so successful early on, being hired to run organizations in my 20s. But now, it just gets in my way. I still let perfect be the enemy of good/done, and I’m actively working on letting 80% be an A+.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
I used to feel like I needed to know all the answers and “have it all together.” I thought that showing any weakness would make people like and trust me less. So I never shared anything personal publicly. Even when I was directing a play, I would often hide what was going on personally from my cast – a group of people who would most certainly have understood – because I needed them to see me as a leader.
But what I finally figured out was that sharing myself as a 360-degree human was what made people feel like they could trust me and share with me. When I finally started showing my cracks – on social media, in newsletters, in videos – I gained new clients and new opportunities. People saw me as someone who was both an expert in her field AND a person they could relate to.
And also… it takes a whole lot less work to be honest and a little bit messy than it does to pretend all the time!
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
There are a lot of interlopers in the podcast space… and they aren’t even humans. AI has come and it’s a hot mess.
People in my industry are starting to worry about AI taking over podcasting and audio – and it’s true, someone is out there telling the robots to make podcasts and narrate audio books – but the humanness of this field is what makes it thrive, and I don’t think that’s going to change. The uncanny valley exists in audio as well as visual, and it’s just not good work. I remember listening to an early episode of my own podcast when my editor “over produced” the audio (took out breath sounds, removed all filler words, and made both me and the guest sound like every idea was fully formed and scripted). The episode wasn’t great. It sounded boring and, frankly, kind of robotic. But when we allowed the people to sound like people, the episode suddenly worked again. It was something I wanted to listen to because I was hearing real people in a room together.
Yes, AI is coming to podcast land. But it’s not going to kill the rest of us – because it will always be a computer program and not people really sitting in a room together, sharing the same air, feeling each other have feelings. I think we’ll be ok.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
Giving any of my attention away. And that includes a full stop on social media, “sound bite” news, and most things that aren’t written on actual paper.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://imintothisplace.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imintothisplace/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianabaer/
Image Credits
Headshot and editing photos: Kayla Anderson
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