The full disclosure on Full Disclosure

For those of you who know me well, at some point you may have heard me talk about my childhood dream — to become the next Katie Couric. It seemed very realistic when I was in middle school. After all, she did have Virginia connections.

I sincerely pursued the idea through college. I interned at Henrico County School’s TV station (and if you can find the tape, I seriously abused the term “excellent” during my interviews), attended the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and interned for a PBS show, the Baltimore Fox affiliate and Richmond’s own CBS 6. Alas, however, when I realized the prospect of TV stardom meant moving to small-town America and away from my beloved Richmond (and my then boyfriend, now husband), I made the practical choice to apply my writing skills to a marketing mindset. As I made that leap, I remember telling myself, everyone in TV goes into PR eventually, you’ll just have a head start on them!

I was happily following that path a few years ago when I happened upon Roben Farzad, host of Full Disclosure. During our first meeting at The Hodges Partnership, he talked about his vision for the show, a business-minded podcast infusing music, Richmond and Roben’s quirky style to educate listeners. From the start, my interest was piqued — I’m a podcast lover – and Roben could tell. We continued the conversation and over time developed a friendship. And when we’d talk, he’d typically ask, when are you going to come produce one of my shows? Produce a show…what?!? He’d already come up with my radio moniker — E D Shane.

A few months ago, after he submitted the first draft of his new non-fiction tome on Miami’s early 80’s cocaine trade, Roben approached me again, and we restarted the conversation. And then three weeks ago, another call, this time with a different ask. He told me he’d be producing a live show with a local celebrity and wanted me to executive produce. He’d secured a venue and the talent — Young House Love couple John and Sherry Petersik — had put a few dates in front of him. The catch? We had less than two weeks to produce the show, a portion of which I was to be out of town on vacation. We needed to determine event logistics (staging, staffing, branding), prepare for the interview and promote the event to Richmond.

To start, Roben approached CARITAS to serve as our nonprofit partner. In exchange for helping us brand and promote the event, they would receive a donation from a portion of the ticket sales. Next, this new production duo went over to our venue, The Hippodrome, to determine logistics and carve out a plan for the day of the production. And then over the course of the next few days, we began promoting the event. Now if you know Richmond, then you’ll know that we’re a town of late RSVP’ers, so this in and of itself is a daunting challenge. We leveraged our personal networks, social networks, the CARITAS community and anyone else willing to help. The response was positive, especially given the short notice (less than a week) and the fact that this was a paid event.

Over the next few days, Roben and I spent evenings working out the details. On my end, this meant news releases, staffing charts, production on a step and repeat and other event collateral. My favorite piece was the pre-interview — a staple for executive producers (or EP’s as Roben typically says). I spoke with John and Sherry a few days before the event. I had the pleasure of working with John during his Siddall days, and I had met Sherry once or twice around town. It was fun to interview a team whose story I knew well, parents who are in a similar life stage, and to learn so much more about their process for growing their brand and what made them stop and take a pause along that journey. I shared my notes with Roben following that meeting and crossed my fingers he could make sense of them.

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The night of the event, Roben and I didn’t know what to expect. Roben had been putting the show on for more than two years, so we weren’t concerned so much about the content of the show. More in question — would anyone show up? How would the live audience respond? From an engineering perspective, could we make this buttoned up enough to create the radio show and eventually upload the podcast? Could we get enough steam from this event to produce another?

Luckily for us, people started arriving early. We moved the event into the Hippodrome’s Speakeasy for a more intimate setting and people were actually there and excited to be part of this cool new Richmond happening. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t shoulder to shoulder — and we would have taken that. But what it lacked in arms and legs, it made up for in its authenticity. The interview was unlike most interviews John and Sherry have done. It wove in Richmond, Sherry’s past love of “artist” Eminem, their family, DIY empire and personal struggles with life balance. People were leaning in, nodding and sharing with their social networks.

We’re calling it a success — maybe that’s our optimism or a strong belief that Richmond is the right place for this sort of thing. And looking back on it, the rush to produce this event — which by no means helped us — was likely just the kind of energy surge we needed to get this up and running. Its cliché to say that the mistakes were learning opportunities, but in many ways they were, just with a lower level of pressure because what we were hoping to achieve seemed nearly impossible. (You can listen to the episode on NPR One.)

We’re working on producing our next event — a night at the Hippodrome with Peter Chang and Style Weekly’s Brandon Fox — currently slated for May 15, certainly enough time to make magic. We hope you’ll join us.