The world of content creation can be difficult to break into, especially when you’re on your own.  

The Cocktails & Content Creation Podcast offers advice on how to improve your brand. The podcast launched at the end of October 2020. 

Kate Andrews ‘11 transferred from Pace University to Emerson during her junior year as a journalism major, then going on to earn her Master’s for broadcast journalism. Andrews met her friend and now co-anchor Jessie Wyman through her husband, who worked at MassDOT with Wyman, when they were dating at the time.  

Andrews and her husband commuted to school and work together. One day, she called him while he was at work after she finished her class, and he invited her to go to Sweetwater Tavern with him and his coworkers.

“I did and Jessie happened to be one of the people that were there that evening,” Andrews said.

Since then, the two kept in touch, but after leaving their corporate jobs, they eventually reconnected and went on to freelance. After college, Andrews became a broadcast journalist and eventually went into public relations, working in an engineering firm. She then began freelancing and writing for her blog Fashionably Kate & Co. Wyman started her photography business, as well as a photography course.

“I had actually hired Kate to do some content creation for my business,” Wyman said. “She helped write some of the blogs that I needed done and that role has since expanded.”

Eventually, in August 2020, Wyman asked Andrews if she wanted to start a podcast as another creative outlet, and thus created the Cocktails & Content Creation Podcast. They decided to focus on content creation based on their experiences as freelancers.

“There’s a lot that entrepreneurs have to learn and navigate when they’re creating content, and we felt that that would be a good journey to share with our audiences—how to create it, how to make it easy, bring in experts on different methodologies, and best practices in the industry of mainly female entrepreneurship,” Wyman said.

Wyman said the main focus of the podcast is to help listeners create content with confidence. 

“Ultimately, by the end of each episode, they’re supposed to be able to walk away with either actionable tips or a mindset shift in creating content for their business brand, blog, or whatever it is they’re working on,” Wyman said.

The co-hosts either interview each other to share personal experiences and tips, or talk to outside guests, mostly women. Oftentimes, they find themselves learning alongside their audience.

“Every show, we’ve learned something new, and I really enjoy that,” Andrews said. “But sometimes I like those episodes where I have no idea what to expect, and I learn so much along the way.”

The co-anchors credit the podcast’s success to Andrews’ background in production from her experience as a broadcast journalist and previously starting her own podcast, as well as Wyman’s history in business and marketing through photography.

“There’s a lot of little details that I would have never known, but are really important to have planned out and Kate was very instrumental in that,” Wyman said. “Once we had a few shows that we knew [what topics we] wanted to have, we kind of backed it up from there [and was like,] ‘okay, we need our music, we need a license, some music for our intro, we need our mics.’ Kate was able to research what website we [were going to have] and we got a website domain.”

Being friends prior to becoming co-anchors also helped make the podcast run seamlessly.

“We already had this working relationship because of Jessie’s blog and Jessie had taken a lot of my photos,” Andrews said. “Jessie had started taking a lot of pictures for my blog because she had transitioned from wedding and family photography to headshots, branding, and lifestyle photography businesses.”  

The pair currently doesn’t have any sponsors and aren’t looking to make a profit from the podcast anytime soon because they are passionate about solely helping their viewers build confidence as content creators and improve their craft.

“We’re not just talking about the basics of how to get your website seen or how to get more clients,” Andrews said. “We are talking about how to add confidence to yourself because sometimes you push publish on something, whether it’s a blog post or an Instagram post, or an offer that you have for your clients, and you’re kind of sitting there thinking to yourself, ‘is this going to be good? Are people going to like this or read this?’” 

Listen to the Cocktails & Content Creation Podcast here