This New Podcast Will Make You Want To Slay Every Day
Podcasts are the new blogs, and with a new one coming out every week, it can be tough to decide what you’re going to tune in to on your morning commute.
Well, here’s a hint.
The IV Wave is a new podcast hosted by Jamie Baratta, an entertainment and fashion attorney, and Mirtha Michelle, writer of Letters, to Women Like Me, and actress — and it’s going to make you feel like every day is slay day.
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Their podcast talks real issues and talks to real women with dope careers about how they stay wavey, and it’s all about empowering the listeners.
We talked to Jamie about how the podcast got started, how she became an attorney for famous musicians and artists, and WTF an energy healer is.
So where are you from?
I’m from LA and then I moved to New York for college and stayed there for about six years. So, I’m an entertainment attorney and that’s kind of where I got my start in the music industry just with internships at labels and all of that good stuff. So, yeah, I was there for a while.
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How did you decide to go into doing law for artists?
So, I’ve always loved music and that was a big reason why I moved to New York because at the time I feel like the music industry was heavily based there. Now it’s nice to see like a big wave of creatives moving to the west side — to Los Angeles. At the time it was just, you know, if you wanted to work in that industry, you had to be in New York.
So, I moved out there for that and for college and I think my second year of college I started interning at Def Jam. And I just loved it, I thought it was amazing. But I didn’t really know what role I wanted to play in all of it. And so, I would do an internship moving around from department to department — like creative, marketing, and my last [internship] out of college they hired me to work in business and legal affairs. And that was when I was like, “Okay, this is cool. You get to be a part of the deal making of all the creative ideas that you find so exciting….” So, what I liked about it is that I’m sure you feel like sometimes you have a creative idea and then it gets to a certain department or a certain person in your company and it kind of gets chopped up or someone says no or whatever. So, I like to able to kind contribute to the creative ideas and give them that feedback early on, so it doesn’t kind of blow up in your face at the end. And that was def kind of was my start in music and then I moved out to LA for law school. Now, I work at a firm that’s an entertainment firm for mostly represented artists.
How did you and Mirtha get together — how did you guys meet?
We met through our friend Kristen — Kristen Newell Crolley, and she is just like amazing at connecting people and Mirtha is one of her best friends. And I have known Kristen through her husband Donsey — just from working at Def Jam — and Mirtha and I met through her. I was at law school at the time, so I wasn’t that social. Once I graduated and had time to actually have more of a personal life is when we started developing a stronger friendship.
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So then, how did you guys decided to start a podcast because you’re obviously both in creative industries, but you both do very different things?
Well, Mirtha… she really got her break from her poetry. She had moved out to LA to act and she still does acting, but that was kind of like her dream and then poetry is what really took off for her. So, she’s self-published. You never what’s going to really work for you. You don’t always have a say in that, I guess. It’s cool that that is what took off for her and she self-published her first book called “Letters, To The Men I Have Loved” and you know, people love it because it’s about relationships and sex and breakups and she has like that Carrie Bradshaw storytelling that relates to girls today.
She’s such a personality. I wish she was on this call because she’s so passionate and so intense. And I was like, “Mirtha, you need to have a podcast.” Can I please create a podcast for you, where you’re talking about — she also writes for Latina Magazine and Elle about relationships and love life and all that stuff — so, I was like, “You need to have a podcast.”
The idea started from there and then it morphed into let’s create a podcast and a platform that talks about all topics that affect women universally. So, not just relationships, but you know, career advice and health and fitness and such, whatever it is. So, it kind of morphed into that. And then my role as producer somehow morphed into also being co-host, which is definitely out of element for me because I’m usually behind the scenes. But we did our soft launch with one episode a couple of months ago and now we’re on to the third and it just works so well because we have that chemistry as friends that we’re able to just have such a natural conversation about topics that affect women universally.
So, you launched the episodes recently, but the project has been in the works for longer, right?
Yeah, we launched the platform The Fourth Wave by launching a social media site. And we did that to really gain our following and get to know who our follower is before launching the podcast. So, like our Instagram page for example is very female driven — the images that we post are really meant to empower and inspire women and a lot of it is art or illustrations or if there’s a cool article up, we put an image of that from that editorial or something like that. And it’s been so cool just to get positive feedback from so many women and hear how much they’re enjoying following our Instagram page. So yeah, we started that a year ago just to kind of get the momentum going.
Obviously, with starting the social media and building the website and all that stuff, more goes into building a podcast than just recording the episode. So, what are some things you wished you knew in the beginning?
It’s all been a learning process for sure because we’re doing everything ourselves — we’re producing ourselves. So even things like learning how to create an RSS feed or sync music onto a wave file onto our podcast show, things like that, creating the website. We’ve done it all ourselves, but I really love that. I love being so involved. So, I don’t know if there’s anything.
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I feel like it’s just part of the process. I knew it was going to be difficult and take a lot of time. It definitely takes more time than I anticipated because so much thought is put into, you know, the content we’re putting out, but also the topics we’re discussing — we really want to stand apart from other podcasts and other feminist podcasts or sites. There are a lot of different ones out there that are so amazing. But we want to really provide people with information that’s going to empower them. So, it can’t all be so spontaneous, but it’s been really cool. The coolest part has just been learning how to create a podcast and upload it and watching how-to videos — it’s been a cool process.
Yeah, definitely, I bet. It’s good to do it yourself because you learn how to do all of it.
It’s been nice. In terms of representing artists, it’s been nice because it was definitely a lot easier to get the music for the podcast and stuff like that.
As a lawyer, do you ever worry that what you say on the podcast will cast a negative light on your regular career since you guys talk about relationships and personal issues?
Even though I definitely share information that’s personable and relatable, I don’t really get as detailed about it the way Mirtha does, maybe because that goes more hand in hand with her brand and her career. So, I still protect that side of my brand. If I talk about a personal experience, I’m not really giving specifics like names or relationships or really talking about which relationship it was or I would never talk about my clients — things like that. So, I keep it super separate. And I think again since we put so much thought into what we are talking about, I make sure never to cross the boundary that would ever jeopardize me. So, it’s completely separate, which is really nice and everything we talk about — well I think, I mean I’m totally biased — but I think it’s inspiring and empowering. It’s just adding a positive layer to what it is I do on a regular basis.
Do you feel that with social media and everything, it’s become more important to be cognizant of what you’re putting out there on every social platform as a professional?
For sure. I mean, for me in particular, I have to be so sensitive about it because for one, your clients want to feel like all your time is going to them. So, I make sure to only work on this on [the podcast on a] weekend or I am up at 5 am or super late at night after around 10. It’s definitely on my off hours. So, that’s been a balancing act.
In terms of social media, I keep my page as professional as I can. Sometimes I wish I could be a little bit more transparent… but that’s not even my personality even to begin with. There’s nothing wrong with posting selfies and all that stuff, but it’s not even really so much my personality to get that personal with people I don’t know. But yeah, I think even if you’re a creative, it’s all supposed to be instantaneous, but I think actually most people put thought behind what content they’re putting out there. You’re still curating it somehow at some capacity. So, I think if you want people to have a very clear of what your brand is or what you stand for, then thought has to go into it.
How do you guys think of new topics for the podcast? Do you guys have brainstorm sessions or is it kind of like just what happens in life?
Yeah, it’ll be a little bit of both. I mean some of it comes from our followers [as they] are becoming more involved and giving feedback. A lot of it comes from Mirtha and I just brainstorming or picking the brains of our friends — just like, what do you deal with every day, what do you think is a cool topic or interesting topic to talk about? And then, we’ll always try to put a spin on it so that it has more of a bit than just being like “oh, this career advice,” you know? We’ll try to put a spin on it so it can also draw in more listeners.
What can we expect on the next episode?
So, the next episode is going to be about manifestation and manifesting things that you want into your life. Mirtha and I love talking about this because we’re both pretty spiritual and we’ve done it all — I had a therapist, I had a Reiki. I’ve done a lot and I really believe in putting out energy into the universe and manifestation in particular. So, we are just going to talk about things that have worked for us over the years in terms of how to go after your goals in life — just little tricks. We both have this one Reiki healer that we see from time to time. It sounds very hippy, but [a Reiki healer is] an energy healer and she can also read energy and it’s not the same as a psychic. She’s doesn’t tell you “Oh, this for sure is going to happen.” She just kind of reads your energy and it’s kind of the same way therapy works. It’s like when someone’s reading you and then telling you what they’re picking up on. You know, any feedback on yourself is always super important, especially if it’s from a trusted source. So, she’ll be on the next episode as well.
Photo Credit: Kathryn Page
