With a $10,000 grant from STORYHIVE to help, UNBC grad Brandon Greenall is the content creator behind the Commerce, Coffee and Community Podcast.
Greenall’s podcast series was one of 82 that were created in communities in Alberta and BC covering topics like health and wellness, community profiles, local gems and others.
In his podcast, Greenall tells the unique stories of six local entrepreneurs and how they forged their own path to the careers and businesses they currently manage.
The list of entrepreneurs includes Katrina Wiebe who owns the Open Door Café, John Brink who is CEO of the Brink Group, Michelle Quellett, owner of The Current Hair Salon, Eric Raymundo owner of Film My Ride, Amber-Dawn MacDonald, owner of The Crimson Dawn Collective Tattoo Studio and Doug Bell, owner of Northern Lights Estate Winery.
“With all the educational components to the STORYHIVE grant I was able to attend meetings and workshops and with all that I was not only able to upgrade the program but also could get into audio editing so I can do that sort of stuff myself,” Greenall said. “So that was a really nice part of it.”
Then Greenall went to another local company to do the videography for the podcast.
“So that way I could hyper focus on the audio and trying to be a better interviewer,” Greenall said. “I really wanted to figure out a way to make my guests comfortable because I often have people on the podcast and this is their first time with media in general so going from not having any experience to then having to talk in an hour-long podcast is a bit of a jump for people. I really loved the storytelling opportunity of our local entrepreneurs and to tell their story in a way they might not have had before.”
Greenall does get to test out his new-found talents as he moves on with another STORYHIVE grant for season 2 of Commerce, Coffee and Community.
This time he will focus on people’s side-hustle entrepreneurship, as he calls it.
“That’s where people are working a full-time job because their financial commitments mean they can’t really take the big dice roll and dive into entrepreneurship 100 per cent,” Greenall explained. “So this is something they are doing in their spare time. I really would like to give those people in season 2 the opportunity to tell their story about why they work so hard outside of their regular jobs.”
Greenall said he was invited back to STORYHIVE to apply for the second round of funding and talked a little bit about what he learned during his first round and how he would take that and apply it to the second season that will focus on the side hustle entrepreneur.
Greenall said that since he’s graduated from university, he now has the time to take on the whole production of the podcast.
“That includes the videography and the editing to learn those other skills as well,” Greenall said. “I love video content and grew up in that YouTube generation where we’ve all been watching other people create their own home-grown content."
To check out Greenall’s podcast series visit Brandon Greenall on YouTube.
