Rosa Linda Román: 00:00 Hey everyone, before we get started, a quick note. This is one of the early episodes recorded back in 2015 before we left New Mexico and moved onto the sailing catamaran Dawn Treader and before we became a fulltime traveling family. As you can imagine a lot has happened since this was recorded but I do hope you enjoy hearing this backstory. If you want to stick around until the end I will share how to find out what we are doing now. But first, a step back in time before we went from New Mexicast to New Mexi-Castaways. Enjoy! Rosa Linda Román: 01:29 Hello and welcome to another edition of NewMexicast audio podcast. It has been a while since I have done anything here on NewMexicast and I was quiet for a long time. I've got a few um, podcast episodes where I chatted a little bit and I, by the time you get this, I will have posted those. Um, but it is now time for a resurgence of NewMexicast and revitalizing the brand. So I thought I would start with the most logical place since it all started as a video podcast. I figured I should revitalize the podcast at the very least, the audio version. Uh, so hello. I am Rosa Linda Roman. I am the host and creator of NewMexicast. By creator, I mean that I am a one-woman band. I have done it all. And, I created everything you see on the website of NewMexicast at least as of December, 2015. Rosa Linda Román: 02:40 Now, the big shift is going to take place from here forward. So let's say starting with 2016, you can expect to see me drop that idea of a one-woman band because as noble as I thought that might be in my mind coming from a place working with a big, big team. Um, and for those of you that are new here, uh, I'm a long time broadcaster. I actually worked in the mainstream media for uh, 12 years working at TV stations around the country as a reporter and an anchor. And eventually my last job in the mainstream was as the main anchor in Monterey, California at KION46. Uh, but once my family came along, once my first daughter was born, um, in 2005, I became a full time mom and eventually launched NewMexicast as an independent venture. And I spent a long time figuring out how to do things. Rosa Linda Román: 03:44 Podcasting was new back then, uh, when I launched it in 2007 and mine was the very first video podcast in the whole state of New Mexico. Uh, the name came because I was in New Mexico and I was looking for a domain name that would work and that I could get. And so I made up the name NewMexicast. Over time I came to realize that I didn't want to only do stories in New Mexico because my family travels extensively and we go to some interesting places and I knew that viewers would be interested in seeing some of those awesome places that we go and meeting some of the fascinating enchanting people who may not necessarily be in New Mexico. So about 50/50 of the, the stories that you will see if you go back through the archives here on NewMexicast are actually in New Mexico. Rosa Linda Román: 04:39 And so I am now looking ahead. I did two seasons after NewMexicast was a video podcast for many years, about seven years. Uh, it became, I was approached by a local TV station in Albuquerque to turn it into a half hour TV show. And so I created, um, I ended up doing two seasons of a weekly half hour show and each season had 13 episodes in it, which meant I did over 60 stories. And again, if you're new here, the premise of NewMexicast is that they are family friendly stories featuring in chanting people in New Mexico, people and places in New Mexico and beyond. So it was a lot of stories and it was a lot of work and I loved it because it maintained my skills while I still got to be home with my kids full time. Uh, but it turned out toward, as my kids got a little older, I now have three children. Rosa Linda Román: 05:42 As they got a little older, I realized I was taking away a lot of the time I wanted to be with the kids to meet those deadlines and get the job done. Well, that's basically a year ago, December of 2014, I discovered that I needed a break. And so I finished up season two of NewMexicast the TV show and I took a hiatus at the time I was helping. And you, if you go back through some of these audio versions of the podcast, you will hear me talking about the film project I worked on and I helped the kids at my daughter's school create a little film and have a film premiere and did some other projects that were really fun. I worked on a friend's business for a while to try to get that off the ground. Um, but NewMexicast was always still kind of in the back of my mind. Rosa Linda Román: 06:37 I did not do anything with the brand really other than a few occasional tweet, occasional tweets and a few Facebook posts. Pretty much NewMexicast was dormant in 2015. Uh, while I was doing a lot of soul searching and figuring out what I want to do with the brand. For a long time, I thought I would just sell the brand cause it's a great name and it's a great, um, you know, for anyone that is interested in doing broadcasting or podcasting in New Mexico, it certainly is a natural fit. And so I talked about actually selling NewMexicast. But then I discovered and interesting, um, well I've been listening to a lot of online, um, core like not courses, but podcasts about entrepreneurship and business ventures. And I've listened to a guy named Pat Flynn who does a podcast called Smart Passive Income. And he and his friend Chris Ducker who does a, he does virtual assistant, he has a virtual assistant, a company, and um, they did a one day business breakthrough podcast, although that seems to be dormant at the time of this recording. Rosa Linda Román: 07:57 Uh, but I really enjoyed them. I also listened to Amy Porterfield who is, uh, formerly, uh, worked for my favorite motivational speaker, uh, Tony Robbins. And, um, anyway, through listening to some of these podcasts I discovered, uh, in fact it was Pat Flynn's podcast that he at one point interviewed a woman named Chalene Johnson. Chalene Johnson, it, you probably have seen her face and you know of her because she, uh, has, uh, had and kind of still has a fitness empire. She is the one that created Piyo. And what else? Beach Body, I think. And she did a bunch of fitness programs and she was known for in the fitness arena. But as I started listening to her podcast called Build Your Tribe, I realized she was much, much more than that. She taught about different business principles and life principles about really helping people get off the treadmill, if you will, or really not the treadmill, if this is more like get off the, the spinning durable wheel, you know, that hamster wheel that you see, the mouse or the gerbil just running incessantly in it and they're never getting anywhere. Rosa Linda Román: 09:17 Well Chalene's program, she has these online academies, online programs that teach you how to step off that, that treadmill if you will, or that wheel and reclaim or claim a life that supports you and your, as she calls it your key priority. She is now, uh, I guess she's for a long time, been in business with her husband, Brett Johnson, but together team Johnson, if you will, um, have these online academies. And I decided to invest in one of them and it was a big leap of faith because I don't like to spend money. That's why I did the one woman band, right. I did everything in NewMexicast. I set up every interview, I shot every interview. I, you know, I create, I wrote and I logged and I edited. I actually learned and got certified as a, a Final Cut Pro certified Pro for Final Cut 10 X. Rosa Linda Román: 10:18 So that I could do this show. And I did, I built the website, I learned wordpress. I, I mean, I can't even tell you the number of things that I learned and taught myself so that I could save a dime and so that I could do this video podcast by myself completely by myself. Now if it was just throwing a video up on a website, it wouldn't have been that crazy and that ambitious. But I tend to be an overachiever and a perfectionist. And from my days in broadcasting, I had a standard, I actually have a degree, a bachelor's degree in telecommunication from the University of Florida. I am, I consider myself a journalist first. And so for me, having that quality in that standard of excellence was critical. And I didn't want to lose that when I created something independently. And that was a big struggle for me. Rosa Linda Román: 11:17 And that's actually why I went dark, if you will, or went on hiatus with NewMexicast because I couldn't figure out a way to create quality content without killing myself and negatively impacting my family. And so now that's where I bring you to the present day and enter Team Johnson and this academy that I invested in called Smart success. Smart Success is really interesting. I'm only halfway through it. And you go through these different modules and it teaches you how to really get clear on where you should be spending your time. And a big part of the program that they talk about and teach is outsourcing. Now the word outsourcing, like when I first heard it just kind of triggered like scary thoughts for me. The idea of outsourcing something that was so personal, creating these stories and telling someone else's story because it's one thing to see your own work butchered, right? Rosa Linda Román: 12:18 But to, to know that I'm representing the person that I'm doing that story about and if that, if I outsource that in my mind that was selling out and cheating and taking away the, the thing that I could be doing for this, this person and telling their story. And so I never did, I never wanted to do that. But there did come a time in New Mexico last where I hired someone through the, the website called ELance and that's where you can hire freelancers. And it was way back when. And I hired this guy who promised the moon and the stars in terms of search engine optimization. Um, and I, you know, and the way Elance works is you put money in escrow and then when they do the job, you pay them, you release them, the funds for them to, um, to get the money. Rosa Linda Román: 13:11 Well, I, in hindsight, I know now that I, I had no idea what I was even asking for and the guy was just promising whatever I was asking for, which was impossible. I wanted an organic reach. I wanted NewMexicast to get to the people that would actually understand the quality and the value of having not just a kid with a camera, but an actual quality production. So I really wanted the positive side of that. But I wanted a lot of people to be able to see it. Well, the problem is the way, I dunno how it is now, but back then you'd basically, we're spamming, he was using NewMexicast name to spam all of these websites with my videos. And obviously that flies in the face of what NewMexicast stands for and what I believe in. So it turned out to be a failed venture. Rosa Linda Román: 14:06 It made me totally gun shy about working with others in the future and I just kind of stopped and took care and said, if you want to do something right, you gotta do it yourself. That was my mentality. Well, now that I'm going through this Smart Success Academy, I am starting to have this seed planted about NewMexicast again for so long. I didn't even want to think about NewMexicast. I wanted to sell the brand. I didn't want to go there because I, I, in my experience, it meant my family was on vacation at the beach, but I was sitting in the hotel room or the condo. I'm working 24 hours trying to get a video uploaded and trying to get something edited for the deadline and missing the life that I, I had created with my family. I was missing the time with my family and so that's why I just said I, I can't do that and I just stopped. Rosa Linda Román: 15:04 But now I have this glimmer of hope working on this program called smart success. It's really made me rethink how I approach NewMexicast as a brand and how I approach my career as a broadcaster. At the same time, there's a lot of new tools available now that didn't exist when I created NewMexicast, the video podcast specifically, I started doing something that's super fun called Periscope. Periscope, if you don't know, is an app that allows people to do a live broadcast and by live broadcast, I'm not talking about how people say, oh, we're recording live. No, it is live. Like people see you in real time around the world. And so you and you can broadcast about anything you want. The catch is the broadcasts or they call them scopes on periscope only lasts for 24 hours. So you record a, you do a live shot, people can join you live and comment through text and give you hearts and tell you how great they, you know that they like what you're doing. Rosa Linda Román: 16:13 But then, and people can also watch it and replay, but then 24 hours later it's gone forever. And it's been interesting because it revitalizes a part of my broadcasting career that I hadn't done in probably 11 years because since my daughter was born, she's almost 11 now. I did not go back to mainstream media and I had not done live reports. I, you know, I've done a lot of recording and editing and putting things to tape or not tape anymore, but you know what I mean? Um, you old school journalists will know what I mean. But anyway, they, the Periscope allowed me to just kind of dabble in the live element again and I loved it and I love it and I'm doing it actively. So my point in telling you all of this is that I feel very strongly that I am at the beginning of a new chapter for this brand. Rosa Linda Román: 17:12 I now have tools available to me that I did not have before and I intend to utilize them and apply them to New Mexicast. Where I'm going from here is still not 100% clear, but I have a renewed vision. A lot of is still forming as I speak, but I'm going to be working on the next, in the next several months on revitalizing New Mexicast. And I'm excited to share the journey with you. I have always been kind of guarded about the process because I didn't want anyone to think it was amateur hour the way I was doing NewMexicast. But I'm over that now. The fact is I want to share what it has been like, what it is like so that maybe you, if you're interested in this, whether it's broadcasting or, or some other area, maybe you can learn from my mistakes, my experiences and from the wonderful people that I engage with through this brand. Rosa Linda Román: 18:16 A side note on all of this is part of why I am revitalizing the brand and um, and really looking at where I'm going from here is because my family is preparing to move on to a boat. Back in 2009, we lived on a wonderful sailing catamaran called Hakuna Matata and we sailed from Florida to The Bahamas and back again over the course of a year. Well, we now bought another boat, um, after more than five years back in New Mexico on dry land, we bought another boat called, we called it the Dawn Treader and we are preparing in the next several months, we are going to be moving aboard the Dawn Treader with our family of five plus our German shepherd Lyla and probably a liveaboard nanny. So I'm really looking at what I can take with me as we explore the world and what it's time to kind of do away with. Rosa Linda Román: 19:19 So as I was looking at that question and the question of should I be doing away with New Mexicast and move on, um, I now feel like maybe there's hope and maybe there's a possibility to work on something, uh, that I really love. So again, I'm going to share that process with, with you here probably on the audio podcast because this is the easiest way for me to communicate. It seems to be every time I'm driving to the climbing gym, which is what I'm doing right now. I have a good half hour to share my, my random rambling thoughts with you. So, if you have listened this far, thank you so much. Leave a comment. Go to NewMexicast.com and or on Facebook, it's NewMexicast or on Twitter. I'm NewMexicast. It's all NewMexicast. So, uh, if you want to reach out to me and let me know, if you do like these audio podcasts, I would love it. Rosa Linda Román: 20:17 But I gotta tell you, uh, that the need to please is the old me from my past life in, uh, the mainstream needing to, um, make sure that I didn't offend anyone or, or say something that you know, wasn't approve, approved of. And so a big part of what I intend to do here is just be completely raw and honest. And if you find you don't love it, then as Chalene says, you are not my people and that's okay. You're totally welcome not to listen. But those of you that want to stick around and hear the process, I thank you and I'm excited to share it with you until the next one. I'm Rosa Linda Roman, and thanks again. Bye. Rosa Linda Román: 21:43 Once again, I marvel at how much has happened since this was recorded back in 2015. I’m happy to report that I continued these recordings throughout the process of buying, prepping for and moving onto the Dawn Treader sailing catamaran, so you will have that to look forward to in future episodes. For now you can find us as New Mexicast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, or just go to New Mexicast.com for all the content that I have there. And if you want to support this show please consider joining the New Mexi-Castaways Crew. You can do that at Patreon.com/NewMexicast. Which is where we will share a lot more content, including photos and videos from each of these podcast episodes, plus updates on where this crazy crew is now. Thanks again for listening and supporting our Enchanting Adventures. I’m Rosa Linda Román and who you just heard was, “Samuel!” Yep. And this is New Mexi-Castaways.