Rosa Linda Román (00:28): Hello and welcome to New Mexicast or as I like to call it New Mexi-Castaways audio edition. I'm Rosa Linda Román and this is my audio companion to my show. I have a TV show called New Mexicast which you can check out on YouTube at New Mexicast TV or you can watch live streaming. Occasionally internet connectivity is a big factor, but I occasionally live stream on New Mexicast on Facebook. But this is my audio companion, or really it's my, I like to call it Rosa Linda's Ramblings. My chance to share the process of not just making a TV show, but also my family's move on to a 45 foot sailing catamaran, and basically how to marry those two worlds together. More and more, my audio podcast is serving as a chance for me to really try to think about some of the issues that plague me as we're making this transition. Rosa Linda Román (01:35): We just moved on to the catamaran three weeks ago, and I'm just really still moving onboard. I'm actually on my way to go pick up a friend who lives in Hopetown, which is one of the islands we will first go to. I'm on my way to pick her up. So I had a few minutes to think about things and the reason I wanted to record this is I just finished recording the process of how to service a generator on a catamaran, or I guess it, the same generator could apply to a monohull. So basically a boat generator and how to service that. We hired a guy from Jazz Marine here in Riviera Beach, and he was amazing. His name was Chip. I think, no, I could be wrong. I'll have to look that up again. Sorry. I forgot your name, but I was so into what he was doing. I, my husband is out of town and so he said, can you please record the process of how to check the oil, how to change the filters, what to do to service, to do the maintenance on this generator? So at first, I was just kind of wide shot recording it. And then with time, I realized I really want to get in there and show how to do it for real, because my husband needs to see exactly what this guy is doing. And this guy was so accommodating and great and knowledgeable that it was a really great opportunity to really get in there and show close up what you need to do. And so I did that. I, I was literally in the, in the generator compartment, getting closeups of the impeller, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You know, no, I'm not a mechanic, but I got all of this great stuff on camera. Rosa Linda Román (03:24): And I was really proud of what I shot. I made some dumb mistakes. I knew as I was recording that I had some issues with, I'll have issues with sound. I did not mic him, which I always know I should, but I'm always a little hesitant to ask "Hey, do you mind if I put this microphone on you?" Partially because my kit is not complete yet. Part of the process of New Mexicast and figuring out exactly what it's going to become. You know what I want New Mexicast to become now that we are living on this boat, I'm uncertain about what I'm going to be doing in terms of recording stories, which let me give you, let me back up and give you a little background. New Mexicast started as a video podcast, and I worked on that as a one-woman band for many years, from 2007 to about, I don't remember exactly when I launched the show, but it might've been 2013 when it became a weekly half-hour TV show in Albuquerque. Rosa Linda Román (04:26): And so New Mexicast has evolved. And it really, in the beginning I was doing a story once every two weeks and they are long form stories. So it's not like a quick blurb about somebody, but they're long form stories about you know, feature stories about interesting people that we met along the way. Interesting places that we had been when we lived on a boat the first time, about five years ago and just fascinating people in New Mexico and beyond. Well, those stories took weeks and weeks for me to edit and put together each one. And they took away a lot of time for my family. And I realized over time that I wasn't loving it anymore. I wasn't enjoying the process because I spent so much time trying to edit and put together these episodes and get everything done just right. And I'm a, I'm a perfectionist, if you will. Rosa Linda Román (05:21): I really like to have things done just right. And, and so because of that, it's very hard. It was very hard for me to let anything go. So I really did everything I needed it to be just, just perfect. And so literally weeks and weeks, if not months to do each episode fast forward to today, I don't want that kind of life anymore. I wasn't, it was not like I was making a living at New Mexicast. So I mean, you know, I had some really nice sponsors, a few nice sponsors over the years, but never enough to cover even the costs of doing the show. And so I decided over the past several years that I really was going to be more present with my kids. I have three kids now. Samuel is 5, Ziva is 9, and Ahava is 11. And now that we're moving onto this boat, I just needed to really be present. So any work that I do it needs to, to support my family and my, our way of life not detract from it. So again, fast forwarding to today, I basically took a total hiatus except I've been doing live streaming for New Mexicast. With the advent of live streaming now I'm able to share our travels very quickly using my broadcasting skills because my past before I ever had kids was working in mainstream media as a reporter and anchor at regular television stations around the country, ending up in Monterey, California at a TV station there. And then I had my daughter and left mainstream and that's when New Mexicast came along. So live streaming has been great, but it's not great as far as because of the internet restrictions. I do not have easy access to, to high quality internet. I'm constantly struggling with trying to do, like on 4th of July, I had a great shot. Rosa Linda Román (07:13): We were on the water in West Palm beach. We were literally anchored as the closest boat to the barge that had the fireworks. And it just was an amazing view and I wanted to live stream that on New Mexicast. And I got about, I dunno, a minute worth in there before it just totally said your connection is too weak and you cannot live stream. And that has been a constant struggle. And I know it's only going to get worse as we sail to remote islands and things like that. However, I can record things as I did with New Mexicast the video podcast and then, and the show and edit those and then put those together. Right? So in theory, I really needed to go back to my roots and record and edit and put together stuff, but I don't want to take away from my time with my family. Rosa Linda Román (08:08): So it's kind of a catch 22 and I really was loving the live streaming, but that's not really an option. So at this point, the easiest thing that I can do is what I'm doing right now, recording audio podcasts to just describe things. And I love audio, and it has so much potential. I'm listening to just now as I'm driving around, I was listening to a podcast called Serial, which is put on by, I think it's put on by This American Life, which is like an NPR high-quality radio show. Which just really reminds me of how much I love audio and well produced stories, audio stories. You know, I just, that's where I got my start. And I worked at a public radio station in Gainesville, Florida, and I won a William Randolph Hearst award for my radio work. And so I, you know, I have a love for audio, especially quality storytelling using audio as the medium, but I also am in love with visuals. Rosa Linda Román (09:12): I'm a very visual person and I love sharing images and video. And how to marry all of that when you're living on a boat close quarters with your family is a real struggle for me. And so today, and so what I'm why I'm telling you all of this is today because my husband needed to see what the mechanic was doing on the impeller and on the generator and on, you know, all of that. I started recording because I just showed what needed to be seen. And in the process of that, I realized, you know, I, I may not be the best videographer, but I'm pretty decent at it and I can get really good. I know what needs to like to bring you there, to bring you into a story, if you will. I have a pretty good sense of what needs to be recorded, but the challenge is I don't really want to spend my time recording a bunch of stuff. Rosa Linda Román (10:12): And I think I've mentioned this on a previous audio episode, but one of the things that is informing my choice of how I'm moving forward with my business is something that one of my daughters said years ago, when I was recording something for New Mexicast, the TV show, it might've been Balloon Fiesta or something like that. And my daughter said, "Oh, mom, look at that!" And I said, "Yeah, I'm looking!" because I was recording and I could see what she was talking about. And she said, "No, look with your real life eyes. "And That is something that my friend, Natalie, actually my husband's cousin, Natalie Goldfein, we were talking about what do I want to do as I move forward? Cause she, and I kind of work together as, as a mastermind group, if you will, to help us figure out what we want to do with our businesses. Rosa Linda Román (11:02): Hers is My Habit Upgrade, which helps people with self-improvement and, you know, really doing some great things with their lives. But for me, she said, you know, you need to remember that, that, you know, look with your real eyes. In other words, be present and see what is present. So that's where I'm torn because when I have my camera and I'm recording, which I do like to record a lot, I'm not always seeing it the way someone would without a camera. Right. And then there's the next layer. So I recorded this guy working on this generator. And at first, when you approach a story like this, or I shouldn't say story, when you approach something that you're recording like that, you kind of hang back and get an overview and feel the person out and just see, you know, what he's comfortable with. Rosa Linda Román (11:55): But pretty quickly I could tell he was fine with me getting up in there. Like I was, you know, right. I, I was leaning like under his arm and on his, over his shoulder. And I was able to really get close, good shots. And he was very knowledgeable and he talked very clearly about what he was doing. And I realized, of course the wind was, is going to be a problem cause I didn't use a wind, I didn't use a mic, an external mic, I just use the onboard camera mic. Uwhich I know is a mistake. So all of you that are videographers will be gasping right now. Ubut I didn't think of it like that. I was just going to record it so my husband could see what he needed to do. But as I started moving into the recording, I realized, no, this I really need to do this whole thing and, and show everything. Rosa Linda Román (12:43): Okay. So that brings me to, now what I'm thinking about is what do I do with that? Right. I mean, I can certainly hand the video to my husband, but mostly it's probably going to sit on in Dropbox or, you know, somewhere else and not ever get looked at again, if I don't do something with it. And trying to, I started thinking, okay, so here's my thought process. Well, I could just sit down in the next few days and edit this and put it together just so that it makes sense. So if some, if my husband or someone wants to look at it, they can, but most likely, most people wouldn't sit through that whole thing. Right. Then I thought, well, I could do a story, like story format, like take you through each step of how to service the generator. And then it hit me that the logical thing to do with this would be to do like an online course, break it down. Rosa Linda Román (13:41): He explained, you know getting the oil out, taking the cover of the generator off, it turned out the impeller was all chewed up. And we had to take certain things apart to do that. And so each one of those things, I was thinking, you know, who would be the audience for this video and it's people who want to service their own generator. And so I told the guy, I said, you know, you should do your own online course with this. And he goes, you know, so you could teach people how to do this. And he goes, yeah, but then I'd be out of a job. And I said, actually, no, because someone like myself, even though I'm looking at this and you know, I can see that it's a lot of work. I, I could figure it out. I could certainly do it myself, but I wouldn't want to. I might have to, if I'm out at sea and it's handy to know, I have that access to what I need that way, but I don't think it would replace him. Rosa Linda Román (14:36): It would just be for people like my husband, who is more inclined to get in there and do it himself. Right. But there's still plenty of a lot of people who own boats are not interested in getting in there and servicing the generator. So I really don't think it would negatively affect his job. On the contrary, it would help set him up. Or his company has an authority on these generators and how to, how to service one and do the routine maintenance. So anyway, this is how my thought process has been going lately. I go in these circles of, okay, so I got this video now, what do I do? I don't really have the time. I'm still, I still haven't even moved onto the boat fully where we have all kinds of stuff that have, have not been unpacked yet. You know, just a lot of things that still have to happen. Rosa Linda Román (15:24): So I don't really want to take the time to edit this thing, but I don't want it to sit on my hard drive or upload eventually over forever, cause my lousy internet, to Dropbox and then it just sits there in the cloud. Right. So that brings me to my next thought. Maybe this is where the hiring the editor comes in. Okay. For a recent project that I did, my friend Mita Saldanya is an amazing book binding expert. And I created, okay, here we go. Okay. So let me pause. Cause my friend just landed and then I'll tell you about the bookbinding course and my thoughts on the editor. All right. I'll be right back. Rosa Linda Román (16:09): Okay. All right. I'm back. And my friend is still going through customs and I'm sitting in the cell phone parking lot waiting for her. So that's perfect. I can do a little more recording while we wait. Right before the break, I talked about the fact that I'm thinking I probably need to outsource and have someone else edit the work that I'm doing, even as I'm unsure of exactly what I want New Mexicast to be or not just New Mexicast Let me also throw in, for many years I've been toying with the idea of letting go of New Mexicast the brand. Maybe selling that to someone who would do something more New Mexico centric with it and move on to creating a new show or a new brand or a new place that I would share videos related to our family's travels more. We have talked about and I have the website for something we came up, with my kids and I, called A to Z Travel Kids or A 2 Z T K would be the hashtag because my first daughter is AHava and then Ziva. Obviously we came up with that before Samuel S but that's okay he fits in between A to Z. So it would be A to Z travel kids. And we would be putting videos that I do more videos with the kids on there and less about other people and really more about our families travels and maybe other traveling families liveaboard. And there's lots of people who are living a nomad life with families now. So we've talked about doing something with that for quite a while, but I always keep back to New Mexicast because it's a brand that I've already built. And, you know, even though it hasn't been, you know, a cash cow in any, any stretch of the imagination. You know, I feel good about the work I've created here. So again, that's where I've been struggling with. Rosa Linda Román (18:05): Okay. How to maybe switch from a show that took up a ton of time? Didn't make me really any money. And eventually was just draining me to creating instead something that uplifts me and my family in a way that supports us maybe not so much a financial drain and maybe even a little financially supporting in the positive direction. And mostly just allowing me to be really present with my family and kids. And I'm not, you know, I sound like, Oh, I work was everything. And I took away from the time with the kids. That's not true. I really feel like I did a pretty good job balancing as best I could, but it took up a lot more time than it needed to. And the idea of being a one-woman band that I was so proud of in the past, I'm ready to let that go. Rosa Linda Román (18:54): I don't need to do everything. And because of that, I've been really moving toward the possibility of outsourcing things that I may be good at. I'm a certified Pro in Final Cut X, which is the Final Cut 10 editing program. And I love editing, but it is extremely time consuming for me. And I usually don't, I'm not able to get to it until late at night when I really need to be resting so I can really be present and a better mom when my kids are awake. I recently did this project with my friend Mita Saldanya. And I'm sure I've talked about this on a past New Mexi- castaways or New Mexicast audio edition. Mita is really talented at this book binding. And we spent a few months, several months actually, recording this bookbinding course that I hired someone to edit so that I could help her set up an online course that eventually she can sell and hopefully make a better living at than just going down to the community college and teaching the course here and there. Rosa Linda Román (20:00): So that was really an interesting experience. I've hired to edit the entire eight module course, I hired a guy his name's Ryan Lagu out of Canada,.Montreal, Canada. I found him on Upwork and I hired him and he's been really great. He, he and I have seem to work very well together. I was able to hand him this project and he got it done efficiently, and it was such a relief for me to get that done. Now I still have to learn the program that I'm going to be hosting this online course on and that's a whole nother skillset. It's an app that I bought last year called New Kajabi, and it's really got great tools available to me, but I've yet to figure out or had the time to sit down, to look at it. Rosa Linda Román (20:54): So I have to prioritize that and get that done. Anyway, so I hired Ryan. He finished the course. I still need to figure out if I can maybe hire someone to actually build the Kajabi course or if I just need to start scheduling that time to figure it out myself. But now that I'm, I was recording this generator thing I said to the guy, I said, you, you really should do an online course about this. And it got me thinking like, what would that look like? Would I take the video that I just shot and hand it to my editor and ask Ryan if he wants to edit that and then put together a few modules. It would probably be six small little modules about you know, a quick course in how to service a generator on the boat. Rosa Linda Román (21:47): I think the generator is a Cummins Onan generator and would that, would anybody actually want to watch that? So that's what I struggle with. It's like, okay, so I can do these things, I'm recording these things. And that was a big part of what Chalene Johnson always said. Record everything, and then you can figure out what to do with it. Right. and I've been doing that. I recorded the whole process of downsizing to move on to the boat. I used a program called KonMari, which is based on a book by a woman named Marie Kondo called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. And I just recorded the heck out of everything that we did. And in fact were now re- KonMari-ing. Now that we're on the boat because we still need to downsize even further. Now that we're here, we realize we have too much stuff. Rosa Linda Román (22:40): So I'm recording that whole process. I've done some time-lapse recordings and just a number of different recordings. And yet they are all sitting just in my Dropbox on you know, in the cloud, not edited. I haven't done anything with it yet. So this is what I struggle with. And I don't know if you have had any experience with this where you have a, a great idea and a thought of what you can do, because in my mind, I thought, okay, I'm going to make a course and, and take people through how to KonMari. Because there's so many people that read the book, but kind of don't get started, or maybe they read the book and feel like it doesn't really all fully apply to them because they have kids or they're, you know, they don't have this neat little tiny little apartment. Rosa Linda Román (23:30): Like some of the KonMari principles seems to seem to apply to because the lady who wrote the book is from Japan. And apparently the house spaces are much smaller than these big, big houses that we have here in America. And I'm making wide sweeping generalizations, I understand that. I'm just saying that I think there might be a market for people to do it the way that I did it, which is not exactly Marie Kondo's way because mine took longer, but I gave myself a 90 day countdown. And within the 90 days, I, I almost had gone, I had gone through my whole entire house. And so I'm thinking, okay, I can make an online course and share this knowledge with other people, right. And maybe that could be a way to monetize something. And now that I'm working, you know, looking at this video, I shot with this generator guy. Okay. I could do something with that. How this all relates to New Mexicast, how this all relates to A2Z travel kids, how this all fits into my new life, into where we are going with this thing?I really don't know. And I asked myself this every single day. Where am I going with this? What do I most want to do here? You know, there's so many possibilities. And I really am trying to stay focused on who I want to be and how I want to spend my days as we go on this sailing adventure. I mean, right now we're just prepping the boat and prep and really kind of figuring out what we want to do. And so it's a perfect time to figure out what I want to do as far as workflow and, and getting things done. Because starting in August there's a good chance we're going to be homeschooling our kids. Rosa Linda Román (25:20): So that's going to require a schedule. And I all, so far since we left New Mexico I haven't really been able to do any consistent broadcasting. Like I was twice a week with Natalie Goldfein and My Habit Upgrade. We were doing My Habit Upgrade moment twice a week, live streaming and I would do a lot of live streaming just in general, on Periscope and Facebook. Well, moving onto the boat has been all consuming. And so, and also just being with the kids and we have had visitors nonstop since we arrived. So, which is delightful, but I'm not really being very productive as far as getting any of my work done. Uso all of this is just swirling, swirling, swirling around in my head. And I thought I would share it here because I think a lot of people,uyou know, think that you have to know everything and have it all together right away. Well, there's a process to figuring out what you want to do. And I remember working through New Mexicast, just in the format that it finally ended up being as a video podcast. And then again, in the format that it ended up being as a half-hour weekly TV show. And I went through very similar process back then. Both times, just, what do I want to do with this? Where am I going to go? How am I going to, you know, find an audience? What am I gonna make? How am I gonna make this all work? Uand you just kind of start, you have to start moving. And I think that's the number one thing I really,uhave to get back to and remind myself that I have to schedule it and set aside time that I can work on some of these things and then do some,uplanning and brainstorming and figure out what do I want from this? Rosa Linda Román (27:09): What, what am I no longer willing to settle for? In terms of not taking up all my family time you know, all that kind of stuff. So these are the issues I'm thinking about as I'm awaiting my friend's arrival and I'm going to try to be totally present with her while she is here, which is only for a day. And then after that, I will come back to this and chat with you some more. So thanks for listening to all my ramblings. If you have questions or thoughts or suggestions, Hey, maybe you have something you'd like to see on New Mexicast or figure out something like I'm struggling with. Maybe you're struggling with something similar. If so, feel free to send me a note. Either rlr@newmexicast.com, or you can check in on Facebook, that's facebook.com/newmexicast. And you can, yeah, just send me a note. Let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening to my ramblings. And I appreciate you checking in I'm Rosa Linda Román for New Mexi-Castaway.