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Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – Hey guys. Thanks for joining me this morning on this gorgeous day. Much unlike the first of our week.

Michael Smith – It’s our pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Yeah, sure. Thank you Angela.”

Angela Barrett – “Guys, I have, Gail. Is it Corvette? Like Corvette car?”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Yes, like the car.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, nice. It was the president of Charleston Symphony Orchestra League. And I also have Michael Smith, who is the CEO. The director. Oh, my goodness of a lot of things. Of the institutional advance advancement Sims and how do you say that.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – All of that.

Angela Barrett – “All of Fonsi I told y’all before we started, I didn’t know a whole lot about music. I don’t even know our font. Tell me what that is.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – It’s her name.

Angela Barrett – “This is our font. Okay. See, I was thinking that that was an institution. Sorry. So, see, there we go. So tell me about the Charleston Symphony.”

Michael Smith – “Sure. I’ll start. Gail. So the Charleston Symphony is one of South Carolina’s largest, professional performing arts organization. And we perform, large scale orchestral concerts with a big symphony orchestra of about, 70 or 80 musicians on stage at the Juilliard Center downtown. So, our flagship series, our masterworks and pops, our masterworks is really the great classical music, of the last 400 years.”

Michael Smith – “And today, so you’re thinking anywhere from Bach to Mahler, Strauss, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and then all the way up to today where we celebrate composers that are living today and many of whom live and work in our community, like Edward Hartford, who’s on faculty, at the College of Charleston, we also perform chamber music, which is smaller groups of instruments, like a string quartet or a brass quintet, which provides really intimate and, kind of close interaction with musicians in all over the community and people’s homes.”

Michael Smith – “And we do some in pubs and breweries. And so it’s a way for us to really get out into the community with a smaller group. And then I guess lastly, we also have a very robust education program. We believe that a complete education involves music education. And so the symphony, our overall budget’s a little over $5 million, of which we invest more than $500,000 in our education programs for students all over the low country and in the tri county area.”

Michael Smith – About half of which are title one schools. So that’s the sort of scope of the organization for sure.

Angela Barrett – “So now, the the symphony itself has been around for how long?”

Michael Smith – Next year will be our 90th season.

Angela Barrett – “Wow. That’s amazing. And so all of the people in the symphony local, they come from all over. How is that? How does that work?”

Michael Smith – “We have a pretty unique model. We have 24 what we call core musicians. And I sort of I sort of joke about this, but it’s like Noah’s Ark. We have pairs of each instrument, so we have two trumpets, two trombones, two, you know, bassoons and oboes. And that serves ultimately as the sort of, artistic leadership of our organization.”

Michael Smith – “Now, many orchestras, like, think a large city like New York or Chicago. They might have 100 core musicians, so just 24 here. But it allows us some flexibility. And there are fabulous musicians all over the country. And we’re providing opportunities for them to come here to Charleston. So we’ve got the 24 musicians that are live in Charleston, work in Charleston.”

Michael Smith – “It is their full time job to play for the Charleston Symphony. But when we want to play a Tchaikovsky symphony, for example, we’re going to bring in probably 50 or 60 musicians from primarily the East Coast, but sometimes all over the country that come in and we call them our guest musicians, and they come in and, work with us for the week.”

Michael Smith – “And then they’re really freelancers and, create really wonderful opportunities for them to come to our great city.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s pretty cool. Now, how many of the that your large productions, when you have to bring in all those people, how many of those a year do you do?”

Michael Smith – “We have eight masterworks of which we perform, each one of them twice on Friday night and Saturday night at the Juilliard Center. Our performance season is really from September 1st, say, through, beginning of Spoleto with some may, we do eight masterworks and four pops. And so the how many performances of each one is varies, but at least one.”

Michael Smith – So 12 major productions a year.

Angela Barrett – Okay. Explain to me the difference in the masterworks and the pops.

Michael Smith – “So masterworks is your sort of, we’ll call it really classical music. So. Tchaikovsky. Yeah. Pops is a little bit of a catch all term, but it’s it’s our way of sort of, being less formal, less serious. It’s a chance to really engage a much broader audience. So we might do, this this weekend we’ve got the music of from James Bond movies, but we also have, you know, Frank Sinatra.”

Michael Smith – “Next year we have, a Cirque show coming in where we’ll have classical music, but there’s going to be acrobats and dancers and jugglers and things sort of flying above the orchestra during that time. So it’s a way for us to do some really innovative programing where, either it’s for families or not necessarily. It’s just a way to have, you know, if, if maybe Tchaikovsky, you don’t know that you love Tchaikovsky.”

Michael Smith – “It’s a way to kind of come experience it for our first time in a really, non-threatening way and put it that way.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – And if I might brag on the Charleston Symphony for a moment. They made their Carnegie Hall debut just a few weeks ago.

Angela Barrett – “Wow. Nice. Well, congratulate nations. That’s a pretty big, accomplishment there. That is, nice. The other question that I had for you, as far as the smaller performances, I know you said restaurants and bars and people’s private homes. I’m assuming weddings. And this is usually maybe a 2 or 3 person kind of thing, or.”

Michael Smith – “I wouldn’t call it. And that’s not it’s not weddings. I mean, and they could be in, in churches, homes, restaurants, other places. There’s really serious, music written for these smaller groups. So whether it’s, you know, Brahms or Mozart or Haydn, this really serious repertoire for a let’s, for example, string quartet. And so putting a string quartet at the Juilliard Center, which seats 1700 people with so few musicians on the stage, it doesn’t you don’t really feel connected to the performers in that way.”

Michael Smith – “So finding smaller venues and where you can fit, say, I don’t know, one of the one of our great partners is the Charleston Library Society. And so we’ve performed there for, let’s say, 150 or 200 people at a time. And you’re really up close to the musicians hearing really great music. It’s a completely different experience than the symphony.”

Michael Smith – “The symphony is this sort of really powerful, visceral. You could sort of feel it in your bones. Yeah, the chamber music in these smaller settings, it’s really intimate and up close, and you can almost feel like you can reach out and turn the pages of music for musicians. It’s that sort of really close setting. And so they’re both really unique in their own, in their own right.”

Angela Barrett – “Nice, nice, nice. Now, Gail, you’re the president of the, Charleston Symphony Orchestra League. Tell me what you guys do. And I know it’s very affiliated with the Charleston Symphony, but tell me. Tell me what you guys do.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “It is the CSO. Well, is a multi-talented group of more than 300 dedicated volunteers whose purpose is to support the Charleston Symphony, encourage talented young musicians, and inspire classical music lovers for generations to come. The CSO well has consistently been the largest institutional donor to the CSO, having donated nearly $5.5 million since the year 2000. We also provide scholarships for music students and the Charleston Symphony musicians, and last year we gave $42,000.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And in this endeavor, we just auditioned 79 school age students for scholarships a couple of weeks ago. And we’ll be announcing those very soon. We also advocate for music education and funding for the arts in the low country, and we’ve been at this for more than half a century.”

Angela Barrett – “Lee. Yeah, that’s, that’s, really nice and much needed. Because.”

Michael Smith – “Can I make a comment? I think that this is important, that Gail, neither one of us really mentioned both of our organizations, our 501 C3 nonprofit organizations. And so, the symphony’s I think I mentioned is a budget currently of just over $5 million. But over the last 20 plus years, our philanthropy goal has been, around $2 million, of which the Charleston Symphony Orchestra League, through their fundraisers and various efforts, they’ve been giving about 10% of our overall fundraising goal through their efforts.”

Michael Smith – “So we’re two nonprofits, two separate five and one C3. But the support that the league has given us has been tremendous as to the overall success of the symphony, but I thought it was just worth mentioning. We are nonprofit organizations.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s good to know. And much appreciated. I know to Charleston and, to the people who, participate with you guys, the, you know, did you have anything else you were going to say? Because I was going to go back to the education part of this, but I didn’t. Or I can.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Talk about our music scholarships now, if you’d.”

Angela Barrett – Like. Absolutely.

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Sure. Since the year 2000, we’ve awarded $690,000 in music scholarships. And we have, we try to support the educational opportunities for the children and youth in the greater Charleston community. And, we have three separate programs for youth and students. One is a college scholarship program that’s available to graduating seniors for use in their first year of college, and they’re up to five potential scholarships of 2500 each that support them during their freshman year graduating high school students majoring in music, instrumental or vocal performance, composition, conducting, are eligible for this, and the highest award is $5,000, which we have named for the former conductor of the Charleston Symphony, the David and Karen”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Stahl Memorial Scholarship, is to the student who receives the highest score in that program, and then we give up to $500 for members of the Charleston Symphony Youth Orchestra or Charleston Youth Sinfonietta, which are run by the Charleston Symphony, to further their private music studies so music lessons can get expensive for these kids. So we have matching funds that we give to provide support for private music lessons.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And the last one for the kids is scholarships and educational grants for summer study. So there are music camps like the Brevard Music Festival, where they can be supported and applicants can be as young as ten years of age. Wow. We get this scholarship because we believe it’s really important to start them young, to foster the love of music.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Yeah, the the last thing we do with our Charleston Symphony musicians for their summer studies is they apply to us and we can help fund if they go to a music festival. One of my favorite scholarships that we ever gave was our oboe player wanted to learn how to make the reeds better, so she took a course and had a little reed making business for oboe players.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – In addition. And she did a program for the Charleston Symphony League at one of our big luncheons to tell us how that study worked. So it’s just really exciting.

Michael Smith – “I might rag on you for just a moment, Gail. So these scholarship programs have been one of the questions you started off by asking us was about impact. Many of these scholarship recipients have the list of accolades. When I think about it, Gail is actually unbelievably impressive of these scholarship recipients over the last 20 years, plus years.”

Michael Smith – “Of course, one stands out. And that’s Jonathan Hayward, who just this, was it maybe two years ago now, Gail was named director of the Baltimore Symphony, and he’s come home to conduct the Charleston Symphony. But this is a student who, really didn’t grow up in a musical family and sort of found a cello and started studying cello with member of the symphony.”

Michael Smith – “He was coming to rehearsals, of the Charleston Symphony. I always wondered when he was going to class, but he would always come to the during the school day, and he’s now, he’s got this amazing, prolific career of both music director of the Baltimore Symphony, conducting organizations like the LA Phil and Seattle Symphony and others, and, also recently named the conductor of Mostly Mozart Festival.”

Michael Smith – “So these scholarships, we can actually track the success of the people that have received these. And it’s been, I think, something to be really, really proud of.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, that is amazing. Especially the story, like you said, of the student who, came back and, all he’s accomplished.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Yes. We’ve got one of our scholarship winners who’s the principal violinist for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Her name is Shannon Fitzhenry. And another, Nick Bentz, is getting his PhD in composition and has had several, of his pieces composed. And he’s a world class violinist in his own right and came back this December to give a concert to benefit the Symphony League, because he’s so grateful for the support that we’ve given him when he was just getting started.”

Angela Barrett – “So I want to go back to something. You mentioned, you said the Youth Symphony. So tell me more about that.”

Michael Smith – “Youth Symphony is one of our core education programs. And so that is a chance to, have these young musicians have a place to come together and play in a symphony orchestra, which cuts all strings in winds and brass. It is meant to enhance or supplement what their music education in schools. And so it’s an extracurricular activity.”

Michael Smith – “And the good thing about this is they get training with our professional musicians on a weekly basis for 30 weeks a year. So they’re getting really, really significant experience. And we have two orchestras. One is for some of the younger students that are just starting out. And so, and then and then we have an older, which is more a high school aged group, where they get this really intense training and, and really, it’s whether they want to become professional musicians or not, the skills and experiences of studying music in this setting.”

Michael Smith – “Have again, it’s it’s wonderful to see sort of track where they go to college and what they do and what they end up doing with their lives. And it’s it’s again, quite, quite impactful. So we’ve got about 130 kids, 150 kids from all three counties participating in this from about sixth grade through 12th grade.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And Michael, how many of the CSIRO musicians performed at Carnegie Hall?”

Michael Smith – “That’s it. Yeah. So we when we went to Carnegie Hall, this is obviously this is just recently as on February, we didn’t just bring the Charleston Symphony, we brought the Charleston Symphony Youth Orchestra and the College of Charleston Orchestra. So we had 65 youth Symphony students that got the performance of a lifetime at Carnegie Hall. And then also the College of Charleston Orchestra came.”

Michael Smith – So we really brought all of Charleston with us.

Angela Barrett – Yeah. South. So I oh.

Michael Smith – “And that’s, they’ll never forget it.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. No. Oh. Goose bumps. That’s pretty neat. No. You know, how do you raise all the the money for these scholarships and to help the the symphony?”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Good question. Angela. Blood, sweat and tears. I’d say.”

Angela Barrett – And it’s a it.

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Is it is a joy to raise money for the Charleston Symphony. Because every time I go into that concert hall, I am moved. And to know that my contributions for volunteering made a difference. One of our volunteers recently said to me, you know, I can’t really personally give $60,000 to the Charleston Symphony, but I can give my time and my contacts and my effort to do the Kiawah tour of homes, which raised $60,000 last fall.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “So we have some signature events that we do. I want to highlight two that are coming up this spring. One is our Rap City raffle, where tickets are on sale now for anyone. Wherever you live, you can buy a raffle ticket by going to our website, CSL Ink Dawg, and the prize is related to music. We are so excited about this connection to our mission and what we’re raffling off.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “For years we raffled off a car and we’re raffling off music. So there’s a trip to Rome for 2 to 2025. Rome Chamber Music Festival, which will be held June 16th through 19. The raffle includes five hotel nights. We’ve already made the hotel reservation for you, where the musicians and the music director are staying. One of our symphony orchestra board members will be there.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Escort. We have premium festival tickets for all four nights. An invitation to an opening reception for the evening of July 16th, which nobody who just goes off the street to buy a ticket can really get into a private meet and greet with the founder and artistic director, Robert McDuffie, and a travel stipend. So we will give you the funds to buy your airfare for if you want to go from.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And it should cover basic airfare, meals and other travel expenses. So if you’re planning a European vacation, tack this on.”

Angela Barrett – “It’s absolutely wow, that is me.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – I’ve been so.

Angela Barrett – Excited.

Gail Harrison Corvette – About that. Yes.

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Gail Harrison Corvette – And we’ll be drawing the prize for that at the end of our pop up house tour. Would you like me to share that with you now?

Angela Barrett – Absolutely. Okay.

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Historically we did, 43 designers show houses, and this year we’re trying something different. So it’s. We have, we’ll be touring, setting up a tour of a historic, beautifully renovated home in the center of Charleston’s historic French Quarter. In addition to house tours Wednesday to Saturday for two weekends. And that will be announced, we have an opening night soiree, which will be held French bistro style in the, Dock Street Theater.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “So this house is a stunner. It’s 50 660ft² with five en suite bedrooms in the main house, a two bedroom apartment on the ground floor where we’ll have an art gallery where the art will be curated. And for sale, with a small portion going to the Symphony League and a small studio that’s behind the kitchen and bath. So please follow us on social media for our hints that are coming out about the great reveal of what and where the pop out pop up house tour is.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I can’t wait to hear about that. As a real estate agent, I’m certainly interested in that, so I’ll keep my ears open. So now, Gail, tell me what what’s your background in music? How did you did you just fall in love with it? You stumble in there and fall in love, or you always had an edge?”

Angela Barrett – “Or do you have an education about, music?”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “I’d say it’s in my genes. My mother was a music major, and she was a church choir director, and it was kind of required that we were in the church choir, and that rang the hand bells. And, I have always been singing for my whole life, a lot of duets with my mom. I sung in choirs.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “I sang in, the Pollio Chorale in Washington, D.C., I sang in the Oratorio Society in New York City. So I got to sing in Carnegie Hall 30 times or so in the ten years of the New York. And then I moved to Charleston, and one of the first things I did was seek out the big chorus in Charleston, and that’s the Charleston Symphony Orchestra chorus.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And I’ve been singing in that for the 16 years that I’ve lived in Charleston. And during one of the rehearsals, one of the alto stood up and said, I’m a volunteer for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra League, and we need docents at this house. So I volunteered, and now I’m the president. So I’ve been involved in the Symphony League about 15 years, because the first designer show house I did was about nine months after I moved to Charleston, which it was my husband’s hometown.”

Angela Barrett – “Nice. So, Michael, let’s talk about you. Give me your history and and how you fell in love with music and when it started and all that good stuff.”

Michael Smith – “Yeah, that’s a great question. So much like, well, I had a musical family, so my father was a tenor, a singer, and he had a full ride to Juilliard when he was young, and his parents said, no. And so he end up at. Yep, they said, we’re going to go get a real degree. So he went and got a degree in, biochemistry at U Pitt instead.”

Michael Smith – “However, probably perpetually resentful of of his parents for this, but continued to sing throughout his life and play piano. And so I grew up listening to him sing and play piano. That’s my, you know, sort of earliest musical memories are hearing my dad now played Tchaikovsky piano Concerto at home for fun.”

Angela Barrett – Right.

Michael Smith – “And so I’ve never forced but always encouraged, that my siblings to play. And so actually my, my brother was a musician. He’s five years older than me. He’s plays in an orchestra in Mexico, and I followed in his footsteps. I played trumpet, and ultimately I went to, major in music. I went to Manhattan School of Music and, with a degree in trumpet performance.”

Michael Smith – “And then in 2006, took the audition for the Charleston Symphony and was lucky enough to win it. And then, long story. I guess this is a long story, but, you know, life takes funny turns going from playing the trumpet to, what I’m currently doing. It music’s always been, you know, sort of central in my life. So when I stand up on stage and talk about the impact of music education and our youth symphony programs or some of the things that girl was talking about, these scholarship programs, these really do make it make a difference.”

Michael Smith – “And so I’m a product of it and grateful for it. So these are really personal to me when I, you know, stand up and talk about these programs. So yeah, music’s been a part of my life since as long as I can possibly remember. And so, you know, Gail, you said something that I just love. You said it’s a joy to raise money for the Charleston Symphony.”

Michael Smith – “And I feel the same way. I just I feel very lucky to be able to be a part of an organization that is so beloved by our community. And for something that’s, you know, near and dear to me, there’s so much in the world that can divide us. Music’s that one thing that really brings us together. And that’s what I’m in.”

Michael Smith – That’s for the love of all that’s happening.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. I mean, you know, like myself and I said this in the beginning, I don’t know anything about music other than I like it. Yeah. But it is, like you said, it is the one language of thought with lots of bands, and, you know, it in doing this, and we all agree, is the one language that will bring everybody together no matter where you are.”

Angela Barrett – And I love that.

Michael Smith – “It’s these are things that’s important to me, is you mentioned this and it’s like, I don’t know too much about classical music. You really don’t have to to enjoy it. It’s really, you know, I have a friend, Quentin Baxter, as a drummer in town, percussionist, and he’s a wine connoisseur. I don’t know anything about wine. And he’s like, really?”

Michael Smith – “It’s two categories. It’s either tasty or nasty. You starting out becoming. And I kind of feel that way about music. You either like it or you don’t. You. You don’t really have to know why you don’t. I mean, and it’s sort of like wine. The more you sort of dig in and you sort of learn about it, the more you can talk about it and enjoy it.”

Michael Smith – “But really, you either like it or you don’t. And it’s as simple as that. And I so I like to share that with people because I think it helps like sort of invite people in rather than say, well, I don’t know too much about it. I’m not part of the club. You don’t have to be in it. You either come in and you enjoy it or not.”

Michael Smith – “I honestly can’t think of any human being that would come in and listen to a Beethoven symphony and say, I don’t like that, or I’m not moved by that. They don’t have to say, why. You know, over time, maybe you figure that out, but I think people just come in and get the goosebumps and then figure out why later.”

Angela Barrett – “Right, right, right, right.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And if you’ve seen a movie, if you’ve watched Bugs Bunny, you’ve experienced classical music. It is everywhere in our culture.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I was going to say the only part that I know is, is a former way, way, way former ballerina I did dance, so there was a lot of it. But sometimes on my birthday where I was dancing to because I was too busy counting, you know, three, 3 to 4, you know, for.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “My favorite warm up when I took advanced ballet for non majors at Indiana University, was we would do the warm up every time to Pachelbel’s Canon in D, which is still one of my favorite pieces of classical music, because it takes me right back there to that wonderful experience I had. Yeah, that’s the other power of music, right.”

Angela Barrett – “And and now we’ve talked about, the impact that both of you guys, the league as well as the symphony have, in Charleston to everyone, but especially to the youth. And and again, for those that might be listening, I know that as a ballerina, to become a, professional musician is quite a commitment. There is not a lot of free time in the very beginnings, at least from this side of it.”

Angela Barrett – “On the ballet side of it, there was not an I was not a professional. This was just, you know, college and high school school, you know, grammar school, whatever. But it’s quite the commitment. But there’s also discipline, as we said, it sets the tone for those youth later on in life. They have those disciplines because they had to do that with the music.”

Angela Barrett – Right.

Michael Smith – “Yeah. I love this conversation because, and I’m going to relate it to something that might speak to a broader audience. Sure. I’m being a professional musician at, in a particularly a symphonic musician, but really, any genre of music is quite akin to becoming a professional athlete. So the path of making it to the major league for, you know, baseball or the NFL or something like that, you’re looking at, you know, a fraction of a percent.”

Michael Smith – “I don’t know the exact stats, but it’s single digit percent of people that attempt this make it to the highest level. It is very similar in classical music. The difference is, you know, the the payout at the end is it’s a different reward. You know, the financial model of it. But so the, the what it takes to get there is a very, very similar path, that sort of dedication that’s sort of throwing your whole life at becoming a professional violinist or trumpet player.”

Michael Smith – “And, it is unbelievably gratifying. And when you when I think about the sort of percentage of people that are able to do it, it is really small, but what I love about it, whether your student or your child is playing, you know, a sport or music, it is that discipline, that commitment to being excellent at something that prepares you for pretty much whatever you want to do for life.”

Michael Smith – “Right. I just recall when I changed my career from being a professional musician to what I’m currently doing. It was a little uncomfortable conversation to call my trumpet teacher who invested so much time in me and say, hey, I’m actually, I’m going to put a suit on now and do something completely different. And his comments to me really uplifted me.”

Michael Smith – “He he said, I didn’t teach you how to play the trumpet. I taught you how to be successful. And so that was inspiring for me. But it just really made me think, you know, people don’t think of musicians like you said. They have to throw everything they have in order to be elite, without the pay off of a, of a professional athlete.”

Michael Smith – “But it’s the same pursuit and it’s yeah, it is that sort of small percentage that actually become professional musicians. But the, everything that goes into that is applicable in other areas of your life, maybe that’s sort of where I’m rambling towards.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. No, I, I totally agree, you know, people who, have had to learn or wanted to learn that discipline, whether it be music or dance or whatever the profession you wanted to choose and all the hours and time that is spent long before you sit down in that chair or hit that stage, people can’t fathom. I mean, they just can’t fathom.”

Angela Barrett – “And so it does. It sets you up really, for success, success later on in life. So encourage, you know, all parents of children find a way for them to be in some form of, you know, that kind of, recreation to, help your child because it’s fun when you’re young. It’s just later on, it clicks.”

Angela Barrett – “I need to put a little more in this, you know?”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “So the Charleston Symphony has a, and fellow program where we have students who want to be professional musicians, study with the Charleston Symphony. And one of our musicians also is studying neuroscience. And there’s been a connection between music and the brain.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, sure. Oh, hang on, I can’t hear you. Oh, okay. You’re back. I had to know what happened.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And I tell everybody how they can join the Charleston band fixedly to help support this wonderful endeavor. And, the more money we raise, maybe the more the musicians can make. Back to earlier. Michael’s earlier.”

Angela Barrett – Point. Yeah.

Gail Harrison Corvette – “I mentioned earlier, we have more than 300 members. It’s easy to join. People can just go to our website. We started as something three years ago because we said, you know, we need younger people in the concert hall and we need younger volunteers. So we have a membership category called the dynamics, which is for our under 40 set under 40 ish.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “We don’t check ID and that’s $40 for a year of membership in the Charleston Symphony. And they put on fundraisers and they have happy hours every Thursday at the Harbor Club. And it’s a great social networking group for our young members. And they participate in every aspect of the Symphony League’s work on, including about a quarter of our board now is dynamics, too.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “23% of our membership are under 40. That’s for an individual member. 40 and over is, $70. And we have many of our members who have been members for more than 20 years. So once you join the symphony League, you really don’t ever leave. It’s kind of like Utah, California. And we also offer a household membership for two members in a household.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “And to for the first time, somebody joins the league. The symphony has been very generous in providing two complimentary tickets to a symphony concert of their choice during their first year, based on availability. Some of our, concerts sell out really fast, which is fantastic, like our holiday Pops concert is going from three concerts this year to four next year because it is a crowd favorite and people look forward to it.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “In this town. But it’s just so fun to be a member of this, the Symphony League, because like minded lovers of classical music or people who care about educating children, we kind of are a part of the CSO family. Sometimes we make meals for the symphony when they have a break during their concert schedule, which is grueling. Three days before the concerts, we have these award winning projects.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “I have the pleasure of going to the League of American Orchestras this summer to accept an award. It’s our second year in a row. We’ve won a national award from the League of American Orchestras, and this one is for our designer show house that we did last spring.”

Angela Barrett – “Well, that’s pretty cool now. And these events, both for the league and again for the symphony, go on the, prospective website and those events all the way there, and that’s how you can find out. It will all be.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Listed and we send a newsletter every other week that has kind of a chronology of what’s coming up. That includes the symphony concerts, as well as the Symphony Orchestra League events. We have a lot of members only events, including like a behind the scenes look to what the upcoming concert is called, coffee or wine with the maestro, depending on the time of day.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “If it’s in the morning, it’s coffee or but all our members are invited to that. And we went to zoom on Covid. It used to be in the CSL member meetings that we had once a month, and then Covid hit and so we went on zoom, and the Symphony liked this programing so much that now some of their top donors and season subscribers are also invited to this coffee and wine with the maestro.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “So for those of our members that are not big contributors to the symphony, because we’re all in different socioeconomic levels, they get this insider access to meet the musician. Last week we had a wonderful tea that was a fundraiser for us with Joann Falletta, who was a groundbreaking female conductor, and she was so inspiring.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s pretty neat. You you don’t see a lot of female conductors, do you?”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “You do not. And she was the first. She told a story about how she grew up in Queens and at age 11, went to Carnegie Hall and saw this world famous conductor. And she knew right then that that’s what she wanted to do. And then she said, it never dawned on me that girls couldn’t be conductors.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, good for her.”

Michael Smith – “Living in the orchestra world, I was thinking, it’s hard to even fathom this today, but I think the New York Philharmonic, a major symphony orchestra in America, I think it’s only been less than 100 years since there have been women in the in the New York Philharmonic. And there are other orchestras that are even worse than that. So made some great progress over the years.”

Michael Smith – “Still some progress to be made, but that’s unfathomable to me. But that’s less than 100 years ago.”

Angela Barrett – “Well, it’s kind of crazy. In fact, Joann.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Falletta told the story that when she went to her first music school, they would they and signed up for conducting. Course, they wouldn’t really let her in. They let her audit it. And if she did, okay, maybe they’d let her in the next one.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, wow.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – He was not deterred.

Angela Barrett – Yeah. No good for.

Gail Harrison Corvette – His won multiple Grammys. She’s on the list of the most notable conductors of all time. She’s phenomenal. And she came to Charleston recently.

Angela Barrett – “Oh. That’s nice. Yeah. Good for her. So what is next? I know you’ve got some big events coming up, but are there any. I mean, in five years, let’s say bang playing in five or we’re just trying to get through the next. What’s the game plan?”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “The Charleston Symphony’s on a wonderful trajectory. Michael, why don’t you tell us what’s on the game plan for next fall’s, season and the season tickets are being sold right now. They just went on sale.”

Michael Smith – “They are on sale. So, yeah, I think maybe I’ll start zoomed out. I actually think that even in a relatively small city of under a million people, we are in many ways redefining how a symphony orchestra serves its community. And so that’s a big sentence. But there are many major orchestras in major cities that are really struggling. I think we’ve found a model that really works for our city to deliver high quality symphonic music and education programs, and one of the keys that I made a big point of highlighting that we are a nonprofit, I try to remind everybody that nonprofit is a tax status, not a funding model.”

Michael Smith – “So. So, we’ve we managed to do this, and I’m really proud and a really financially sustainable way. So what that looks like going forward is how much the way I view this is how much more can we be for Charleston today than we were yesterday. And that’s through our programing, both on and off the stage and in our classrooms.”

Michael Smith – “And so next year, you know, girls sharing, we have a lineup that you would see at a major orchestra in a major city. We’ve got pianists like Emanuel Ax, who is one, you know, the living legend got James. And as a violinist, again, living, living legend and our, our sort of tagline is music for everyone. And it harkens back to, what I said before.”

Michael Smith – “I think everybody, if they would just walk in the door and, and it’s up to us to make that invitation. And so here’s my invitation. Walk in the door and I’m quite, positive that you will be transported and get those goosebumps. And so it’s just a matter of taking that first step. And so we’re, we’re going to keep sort of defying the trend.”

Michael Smith – “Classical music is really neat, right. And and our the just go pointing out this the trajectory of our organization, our audience is up 75% since before the pandemic. Many orchestras have not gotten back to PA from before the pandemic. And it’s because we have this view of and Bill said simply, just sort of connecting and reflecting our community through music.”

Michael Smith – “And so when I look at the future, what are the activities and events and subjects that we can explore through music that, that accomplish that? And so, again, our performance season is September through May and subscriptions are on sale for next year. Subscription gets you great seat discounts and some of those behind the scene access, things that that Gayle was describing earlier.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. How interesting. Nice. Yeah. So, we, definitely need to get online and get, all of that taking care of so we don’t miss anything. Right? Yes.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – And buy your raffle ticket yet?

Angela Barrett – This Friday.

Gail Harrison Corvette – I had ticket to our pop up house tour.

Angela Barrett – “Yes, quite the prize. Well, guys, thank you so much for being with me today. This has been a pleasure. I, not only got to talk to you, but I also learned a few things. So thank you very much for.”

Gail Harrison Corvette – “Thank you, Angela. It’s a pleasure to serve the Charleston Symphony.”

Angela Barrett – “Absolutely. Have a great day, guys.”

Michael Smith – Thank you to.

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Hey, gear. Geothermal. Is that. And then say it right or I still screw it up.”

Guillermo Avila – “No, you know what? You’re on the right track, GMO Avila.”

Angela Barrett – You’re. Good morning. How are you today?

Guillermo Avila – I’m doing well. Thank you.

Angela Barrett – “Good. So you are here to school me to to teach me. Because you are in a field that I don’t know a whole lot about. And that is the world of, digital. Outside of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And lost. So help me out. Tell me what, 365 Digital Technologies does.”

Guillermo Avila – “So what we primarily do is we do at its core, project consulting. So, a lot of companies will hire us to run, like, their enterprise level projects. Unfortunately, a lot of our businesses also in what we call project rescues. And that’s generally when a client has gone over budget, maybe by a million, $2 million. They’re maybe a year to two years past when that project is supposed to be delivered.”

Guillermo Avila – “And they’ll call someone like, me and one of my teammates to come in and try to get that back on track so they can stop bleeding and hemorrhaging. So a lot of our focus is on managing and delivering on projects.”

Angela Barrett – “So first let’s back up and talk about what, for those of us who are not as knowledgeable in this area. A large enterprise project is to give you give me an example of what that might be.”

Guillermo Avila – “Sure. One rescue that we did was for, a website for a biotech company, for instance. So, unfortunately, they had a a bad implementer. They were about $1 million over budget and still had no website. And so when I got the phone call, we look at something like that and we try to break it down in pieces, you know, as to why it wasn’t delivered and what we can do to get it delivered.”

Guillermo Avila – “So in this case, it was an e-commerce site for a biotech. And they had they had nothing to show for the money that they put into it. And so our job is to go in and figure out how we can pick up the pieces and, and try to get them a product delivered. And sometimes that requires us getting a new vendor, or sometimes we can use the same vendor, but, you know, my my job is to come in and be a bit agnostic as far as who the vendor is.”

Guillermo Avila – We were just concerned about getting that project up and running for the client.

Angela Barrett – “And when you say vendor, you’re talking about like a your website host, that kind of thing.”

Guillermo Avila – “Or we have in this case it was the, the the vendor that was actually developing the website for my client. You know, after, more than a year, they still hadn’t delivered a, product, and they were so far over budget that we had to regroup on that. And so my job is to go in and figure out, like, do we have the right people in place to deliver what our client is looking for?”

Angela Barrett – “And so, again, help me, because a website, unless it is, you know, a website for, I don’t know, let’s say hospital where you’ve got thousands and thousands of providers in different divisions and things of that nature, but they aren’t that difficult unless you’re taking that kind of stale. Right? I mean, they yeah.”

Guillermo Avila – “Then, you know, when we look at something like this, it’s not like a website like you would think of for just throwing something up on, you know, just for presents, you know, where you can, you know, maybe have someone do it for, $1,000 or maybe cheaper than that. The thing that that was the complexity around this is you’re dealing with with a client that was integrating all of their warehousing, all of their inventory, you know, they’re forecasting off of it.”

Guillermo Avila – “They’re doing predictive analysis off of it. So it’s very, very complex when you look at what’s happening behind the scenes, just for someone to be able to, to find or purchase like a vial of something very, very complex, just to be able to show what’s in the inventory.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah. So in like in my real estate world, it would have been my CRM, which something else obviously, develops and I just get the plug in, you know, names and numbers. Yeah, that makes more sense now. Certainly. So, All right, so tell us what else you guys do. They’re at 365 Digital Technologies.”

Guillermo Avila – “So that’s that’s a big piece of what we do is the project management side. But we also do, CIO advisory. So, CIO is typically the chief information officer for, for the company. And so typically, we come in to serve as an ad advisor either to the CIO or in some cases, we come in as the interim CIO until a new one, is hired, or in some cases, we’re just asked to stay on, you know, can you give us ten hours a week?”

Guillermo Avila – “We can’t afford someone full time, but we’d like to have maybe someone on a on a retention level. So sometimes we do things like that. The real big thing that we’re getting into right now, we’re actually getting ready to pull the trigger on it. Probably within the next 2 to 3 weeks is we’re going to spin up our, AI and machine learning practice.”

Guillermo Avila – “And so we’re getting ready to hire some developers to help us. Right? Applications for, biotech manufacturing, supply chain sectors and start integrating in with some of their platforms. So we’re pretty excited about that. That’s something we’ve been working pretty hard at. And we think the time is right to go ahead and pull the trigger on that.”

Guillermo Avila – So we’re going to add the the AI and machine learning piece to our project management. The CIO advisory side.

Angela Barrett – “So tell me, how a is going to what will I be doing here?”

Guillermo Avila – “So it depends on the on the sector. One of the first things that we want to do is do some predictive forecasting. So, one of the things that we want to get into is let’s see if we can use machine learning and AI to help us forecast maybe customer sales. In some in in your world, it may have been we’re going to try to see if we can help you figure out, potential customers for real estate.”

Guillermo Avila – “Who are those people out there that are more likely to buy than not, and try to use AI to kind of break down for us who that market segment is. So you can more zero down on that. And that’s basically what we’re what we’re trying to do with, some of our clients is to try to help them develop some, some add ons to help them with forecasting for sales, maybe for raw materials, anything like that.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That’s interesting. And AI is everywhere. Like it or not, here it is. Embrace it and go. Right.”

Guillermo Avila – “Exactly, exactly.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s that’s, In in my world of things, AI is used. Not so much yet. Except, in a couple different areas, but it’s hard to replace AI right this second anyway, with true photos or true videos of a home or an area. You know, everybody really wants to see what that is. And, but some of the like you said, statistics and stuff like that.”

Angela Barrett – “Sure. But it’s all again, way over my head.”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, I think that some of the worry that people would have is, you know, AI is is going to replace my job. And if you look at like real estate, I’d say it’s going to enhance the experience. But you can’t remove the human element from that. You know, there’s some there’s still something about you sitting in front of someone who’s a first time homebuyer, and you’re really encouraging them because they’re scared.”

Guillermo Avila – “AI is not going to be able to talk them off the ledge of being scared, but somebody like yourself can sit there. That human interaction is something you can’t remove. So all we’re looking at is where I, serves as a as a conduit and as a help, but not a replacement. And so that’s, that’s kind of the approach that we take with it right now.”

Angela Barrett – “You guys are in Malden, South Carolina, right?”

Guillermo Avila – We are.

Angela Barrett – “But that is obviously not, a location where you generate most of your business because I would imagine you have them everywhere with large companies.”

Guillermo Avila – “Correct. We actually have no customers in Greenville. So we’ve got our clients are anywhere from Seattle, DC area. We just finished up a project in New York. We’ve got them all over the country. And my, my consultants are all over the country as well. So, all of my folks work remotely, mainly because a central office doesn’t make a lot of sense because our our, our, our guys are having to go wherever the work is.”

Guillermo Avila – “And so, they’re onsite really all over the country. But we’re based out of Malden for sure.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. And love Malden, actually. So let’s talk about some of these companies. And how, how does it happen that they fail? I mean, where’s the where’s this break down and how does this happen when, like, you said, they’ve paid out millions of dollars and still have nothing to show. We’re we’re we’re where do you see most of that break down.”

Guillermo Avila – “So typically what we see and this is more often than not is you have someone at the top level who could hire someone like me to say, hey, can you help us manage this project? We have this three, $4 million project. We could really use you and your teams help to help us manage and get this thing to success.”

Guillermo Avila – “What’ll typically happen is a CFO or someone at that level may look at the costs of bringing someone like me in and say, you know what, I think we’ll take a shot at managing this in-house. And for the most part, that’s where we’ve seen it go pretty badly. Is that in an effort to save money, it actually costs them more money and so, I’ll end up getting a phone call.”

Guillermo Avila – “We had one, one, client up in, the northeast where they were two years past their budget. $3 million past, their budgetary, restraints. And, was very, very, a lot of friction when I walked in. You know, everyone’s angry. Oh, yeah. Everyone’s angry. Everyone’s upset. And when, you know, we start asking questions again, it comes back to, you know, we we thought we could manage this in-house by ourselves.”

Guillermo Avila – “And so now they have to bring in a company like ours to go ahead and level set and get them over the finish line, which, which we, which we’ve always been able to do. But again, it’s coming at a, at a point where they’re having to spend more money in order to get them to the finish line, and it doesn’t make up for the money that they’ve already spent, which are usually, you know, 1 or $2 million, you know, over their budget.”

Angela Barrett – “Right. And so and, and we’ll put it in some very simple forms and I’ll, I’ll let you tell me what you think. But one of the ways to avoid this, and this is where, I love to tell my, the lenders that I work with, obviously in my line used to hire new hires, and the attorneys stay in theirs, you know, because we that’s the problem when people start thinking they can handle these large projects, when they really don’t know the deep details, like you would know in what needs to be placed when, where and how, a is that what you’re thinking?”

Angela Barrett – “Is the miscommunication. I mean, sure, they manage $1 billion company, but this particular project is very particular. You tell me what you think they can do to avoid that. I’m just saying stay in your life.”

Guillermo Avila – “Well, you know it. It’s funny because in a way, it it it sort of is, when, when we come in for some rescues, whether it’s for manufacturing or, biotech, pharmaceutical, whatever that might be, what we find is it’s exactly that you’re having, a group of very, very competent people that that want to believe that they’re able to do something that they’re not skilled in.”

Guillermo Avila – “And project management is one of those skill sets that if you’re not careful, you could really lose your shirt over it, you know, and in these cases, our clients thought they could manage it in-house, and they just didn’t have the in-house expertise to do that. And, so generally when I see the, white flag being waved and it’s help is needed, usually by that point things are are pretty bad.”

Guillermo Avila – “And usually there’s no there’s no secret sauce in a sense, for us it’s just going back to some of the basics. And so once we start adding in some of those basic things, we start to see the, the project, start to get traction again and we get them over the finish line.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. You know, and there’s, this is what I have found. And different parts of the world, the work sector is that you’ve got, like you said, these, you know, geniuses that run this business. But when it comes to breaking it down and seeing the little details as it goes along, because they see the big picture, they’re here.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s right. You know, and then but to be able to break that down and make those steps happen when they need to happen and how they need to happen is a whole different ballgame. At least from the experience that I have seen. But I think that’s kind of what you were saying. Is it running $1 billion company as a whole is one thing to break this project down, you know, is something else, and you do need experts for that.”

Guillermo Avila – “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and it’s in its part for us is to when we partner with the client, I have one client in particular. We’re still engaged, with them for, for quite a few years now. And, one of the things I’ve asked them is, you know, what? What is the value that we add when we’re with you guys for these projects?”

Guillermo Avila – “And he always says, you guys are my watchdog. He trusts us. So when they bring in a vendor to implement something that could be a 3 to $4 million project, he’s learned, he doesn’t have the in-house expertise to do it. They bring in my folks to do it. And our job is to protect the project. And so we will let him know if we think that we’re seeing something that’s going to take the project, like off the rails.”

Guillermo Avila – And he appreciates that. And that’s why he just calls us our watchdog. You were the ones who helped protect his company’s interests.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Now let’s talk just a minute, because we’re talking about some of these these companies and big companies. But what about your smaller companies? Who struggle, you know, some of the entrepreneurs or the small businesses that are already there help. I guess you guys probably deal with them, maybe on a different scale, but let’s talk about them for a little bit.”

Guillermo Avila – “Yeah, we do we we we do partner with like more mid-sized market. And then on the smaller scale we do a that would be more advisory. So, if someone is looking for a, an interim CIO or even, what we call like a fractional PMO. So that would be, kind of, a rent project management office.”

Guillermo Avila – “So we’re just kind of a rental of, of our talent, and they use us as they, as they need it. And so for those smaller to mid-sized companies, we go in, normally in advisory roles and just let them know what they need to do to be successful in projects. In some cases, they may bring on one of our team members on a part time basis to help them do that and just get them over the hump.”

Guillermo Avila – But we do a lot of advisory for the small mid-level market just to make sure that they’re equipped. Then they’re able to get over the hump.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Because, when you do have a small business or even a mid-sized business, you don’t always have all the pieces, and even big companies don’t have all the pieces, I guess, or else there wouldn’t be you guys. But, there’s there’s a lot of especially in that. The world that you’re in, in the technology world, there’s a lot of companies, small and medium, that don’t have that kind of piece.”

Guillermo Avila – “Oh for sure. I mean, one of the things that you’ll find, and it’s one of the reason that I left the some of the bigger consulting firms to start my own is that the price point for those firms are not meant for small to midsize companies. And so if a smaller midsize company is looking for help from, you know, one of the big five, they just can’t afford it.”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, those rates are coming in sometimes at 250 to 85 an hour. And, you know, you’ve got a small midsize company just doing everything they can to survive. And so where we come in is we we don’t have anywhere near those rates. And our job is to just protect, that client’s interest and just get them moving.”

Guillermo Avila – “I mean, we’re we’re a small company. We’re only, this may will be six years that we’ve been in business. We’ve got ten consultants right now. We’re looking at bringing in some more. We’re still a small company in our own size, but, we value that small to midsize company mindset to want to grow. So we we don’t ever neglect those, those clients.”

Guillermo Avila – “We we always deal with them. But on a different level, than some of the enterprise level, projects that we take on.”

Angela Barrett – “So for somebody who’s contemplating starting a business, what would be some of the advice that, that you would give from your from your world, your perspective?”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, my wife and I talk about this, a lot when when my wife and I started the business almost six years ago. You know, you’re going in as a small business owner. We’re in the consulting side. It was. I was the only one consulting. My wife is running everything on the back and everything from dealing with the contracts.”

Guillermo Avila – Attorneys try to. The company gets stabilized in some way. And and we’re putting in a ton of hours just to launch a company. And one of the first things that I would tell any small business owner is no one is ever going to care about your company as much as you do. No one. You have got to put the time in it.

Guillermo Avila – “It’s it’s it’s sometimes, frustrating when you work an entire day. Maybe you didn’t get a client that day, but you’re the one who puts in the hours to do it. And so when you do land a client, it’s your success. Like this is all yours. And, luckily, I was able to start this thing with my wife.”

Guillermo Avila – “So both of us got to be able to split duties in terms of launching a company. But when when you look at the struggles of a small business owner, it really is, sometimes you feel like you’re all by yourself and, you know, it’s. Yeah. And you feel like the world’s against you in some ways. And so part of what we have learned is that, man, if we’re giving any counsel to anyone, you have got to put in long hours.”

Guillermo Avila – “This is not an 8 to 5 type of gig. If you’re looking to start a small business. One one thing that’s that’s so funny, Angela. And I don’t know if you ever run across anyone like this when when we run across, sometimes friends or family, there’s this misconception that because you’re a small business owner, you can take off whatever time you want, you know, hey, if you want to take off 2 or 3 days, isn’t that great?”

Guillermo Avila – “You own the business. Like, because it really work that way. You know, if I got.”

Angela Barrett – “Work, actually.”

Guillermo Avila – “Exactly. If I don’t work, we’re not making money, you know, it’s we’re nowhere near to the point where I can just take off, for eight weeks and think that it’s not going to impact our business. We are very, very sensitive to the amount of time that we put in. And so for I think for the small business owner, it’s really you got to realize your success is going to be really determined by the grit and time and effort that you pour into your business, because you’re the one who cares about it the most.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there are days that you have to remember, the why why again, am I doing this?”

Guillermo Avila – “You gotta remind yourself every day. Because there are days when you wake up, you’re like, why do I do this to myself? And it’s just we, you know, there’s something that we wanted to do different as a business that was different than the consulting channels I came out of. And, we have to remind ourselves that the reason that we do this is because we want it to be different, and we have to live that out.”

Guillermo Avila – “And the people that we hire and, the way that we we live out our company principles with our clients.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. And I think the, the, the nice thing about working with small business or, if that’s if you, if you’re looking for service, working with a small business because they are a big corporation and they do care not only about, you know, their business, but about the client, because that one client makes a huge difference in the business.”

Angela Barrett – “And so you’re going to give that more, attentive, service because you have to whereas a corporation can go for we don’t need them all.”

Guillermo Avila – “I’ll tell you one thing. We did, Angela, and this was one of the best, things I ever invested in. I, I had, a gentleman out in the business world who, really large in the YouTube space and someone I, I respect professionally. And I bought 15 minutes of his time and he said, listen, ask me anything you want.”

Guillermo Avila – “What can we do to help you with your business? And I said, you know, when I’m going up across the the mega giants of the consulting companies out in the world, I’m a ten man shop. They’ve got 30,000 people on their bench. How in the world do I differentiate myself from that? And he gave me such great advice that I use it, when we’re trying to, to make pitches to, like potential military contracts or anything like that, he said, I actually had a presentation, that week with the, that we were planning with the Navy, and he said, you know what?”

Guillermo Avila – “To speak their language. When, when you when when you approach them and you talk about the value that you had as a ten member team, remind them that one of the best special forces that the Navy has is a small team of professionals that do a lot of damage. That’s what you are. You guys are the Navy Seals of what you do.”

Guillermo Avila – “And it was like, brilliant. I realize, yeah, we are small, but we mobilized quickly and we’ve got some people with incredible experience. We may not have that large army, but we are very specialized in what we do and we’re really good at it. And so to start speaking that language of like, we are the special forces of project consulting, and we do it really, really well.”

Guillermo Avila – “That’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given, and it helps me differentiate myself from some of those giants that are out there.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, I actually like that. I like that a lot. And it brings it back down to that. Human touch level, that people can relate, I like it. So what’s the big next step for? I know you said you had one project come up. What’s the next step for 365?”

Guillermo Avila – “So, you know, it’s it’s been a little interesting, I think, in terms of where we’re at, business wise, we had to do some regrouping. We were, we were potentially looking at doing, hopefully some big things, for this year in the government sector. But I think with a lot of the changes that have happened, we’re we’re backing off of that a bit and we’re regrouping on the commercial end.”

Guillermo Avila – “So what we’ve strategically said is the next big thing for us is to start, continuing building out the CIO advisory piece. But we are going to put quite a bit of effort now into, launching the AI and machine learning, practice, our consulting side, project consulting has been going great, and we’re continuing to grow there.”

Guillermo Avila – “So for us, I think the next natural thing is, is to start building applications that our clients need, trying to leverage, AI and machine learning. So that’s going to be the big thing that we’re focused in on now.”

Angela Barrett – “We’ll call. That’d be great. The, you know, I have to ask 365 is that because you worked three, six, 365 days?”

Guillermo Avila – “That’s right, I never sleep. That’s that’s our would, you know, our clients, most of them, you know, especially, most, most of all of our clients, they all operate, almost every day of the year. And I think it was important to when we named the company to, to reference the fact that, we’re recognizing that our that our clients never sleep.”

Guillermo Avila – “And it was important for us in the name to, to realize that we’re going to be there for them, with that same level of effort, because they’re they’re putting out products that people are relying on. My pharma companies are developing, vaccine solutions, things like that, that, that people need. My manufacturing folks are developing things that people need on an everyday basis.”

Guillermo Avila – “And if they’re operating 24 seven, I should be able to operate 24 seven in that mindset. So that was that was pretty strategic for us. When we named the company.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. I like it. So now what would you say today in your the six years that you guys have have been opened and up and running your most successful story? I know you can’t say company names or names, but just giving you the basis of the most successful story you’ve had so far.”

Guillermo Avila – “Yeah. I think, it’s one that we, that we rolled off here, rather recently. It was a, a very large ERP implementation, which is it’s a, it’s a platform that combines all your manufacturing, distribution, logistics. H.R I mean, it’s it’s a very, very large platform, that Microsoft has. And the client was two years past, there.”

Guillermo Avila – “Go live. I want to say that they were close to, 2.5 million past budget and, they were they were on their last leg. They were bleeding out trying to say, how are we going to go live with this product? We went in in about six months time. We were able to get them to, an initial go live.”

Guillermo Avila – “And then about 4 to 5 months later, we went with a second go live. And so we were able to get them in about a year’s time back on track. But it took a lot of a lot of effort, and just a lot of regrouping. But we were able to get them live and, you know, I think it stopped the bleeding that, that they had because it was running, it was going to run in the millions.”

Guillermo Avila – “If they weren’t, if they didn’t call us in.”

Angela Barrett – Let’s call that is a good story. And and good for them and good for y’all. What is your favorite part about what you do running the company? The actual getting in there and doing the work? Or is it give me give me what your favorite part of it is.

Guillermo Avila – “You know, it’s funny because I thought when we started the company, I thought my biggest satisfaction would be, shaking the hand of a CEO or CFO after a project and and just the satisfaction of saying, hey, you guys got us where we couldn’t get to thank you. And it ended up being something different. And where we’re at now is, where in the beginning I thought the mindset would be we can get them where they need to be at and, you know, we could walk away and go on to our next project.”

Guillermo Avila – “And what’s happened is it’s evolved into, that C-level suite saying, to me and my team, can you guys keep working with us to make sure we never have this happen again?”

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Guillermo Avila – “And, you know, it was funny. I had one CFO tell me that in such a huge compliment. The CEO went to him one day and said, listen, is it really necessary, you know, to keep Garima and his team around? You know, there’s there’s an expense having them around. And the CFO told him it is cheaper having them on our team than it is not having them.”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, and the whole point was the amount of money that they were losing, running these projects into the ground was far more costly than having 1 or 2 of us on the team there, and that’s just a huge compliment when they have that much trust in and in my team to get those projects delivered. It’s it’s it’s the biggest compliment.”

Guillermo Avila – “It really is. Absolutely. It’s something that we, we hold dear, that we’ve got clients that believe in us enough that they want us to stick around and keep running other projects for them.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That’s nice. That is I don’t disagree. That’s a that’s a great. Thing when somebody, you know, in my world gives you a recommendation or calls you back to do the same thing again. And, you’re right, that is probably one of the best parts.”

Guillermo Avila – Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah.

Angela Barrett – “Well, I thank you so much for, talking with me today and, helping me, learn a little bit this morning. I appreciate it. And, we’ll have to get together maybe in about a year and see, what are you guys and how much further you’ve come from today?”

Guillermo Avila – That would be awesome. I would totally welcome that.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much.”

Guillermo Avila – Thank you. Angela.

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Well. Hey, lady.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Hey, Angela. So glad to be back.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, well, I was expecting you. I know everybody else can’t see us, but I can see you be all in your pink again. But you didn’t today. And that’s okay, because I’m closer to a woman, so I get it. But I do call you the lady. And thank you. Like the legging risk.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Kind of mess up today. It’s kind of a rainy, drab day. So. Kind of weary of gray and black.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That’s right. So, before we get into kind of what’s happened since for the people who’ve not seen or listen to the podcast prior, tell everybody what locks marketing Company is.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So Lux is a boutique agency, catered to creative entrepreneurs and business owners. So I myself am based in the fashion industry for about a decade now. And then grew up in creative businesses and interior design. My mom under salon for over 20 years. So kind of my passion in a collective of everything else I fell in love with, and how all the creative industries kind of tie in together.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So I cater only to those creative industries, to fashion and to design. Hair, beauty, kind of lifestyle wellness, wellness, I would say probably med spa and more things like that on the beauty side. Or what I focus on for my niche. And then we, cater for marketing, branding, personal branding. Kind of digging deep into, questions that most people can’t answer for themselves and helping them bring their vision to life.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So it goes way more than just the, you know, surface level, services that we offer. Not just making the social post. It goes way beyond that.”

Angela Barrett – “Right? So you are in the Charleston area, but you don’t just work with people in Charleston. I mean, you work with people all over, right?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Right. I have clients, primarily here in Charleston. Just because I have a big connection base here. But I have clients that span from Chicago, California, all over the place. So, definitely, all around the US.”

Angela Barrett – “And we won’t drop any names today, but we’re big clients of that.”

Kelsay Pattillo – Yes.

Angela Barrett – “That. So, what has happened since the last time you and I talked? And I’m trying to remember, actually, what that date was. And I’ll have to look. So go ahead.”

Kelsay Pattillo – July.

Angela Barrett – July of 23. Right? Yeah.

Kelsay Pattillo – 24

Angela Barrett – “It was, I mean. Yeah, 24. Yeah. It was pretty hot. I you remember that? Yeah. So tell us what’s been going on with you and, where Lux is now.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Yeah. So a lot has evolved, actually, since our last conversation. I’ve refined my services to focus more on what really connects with my clients. So branding strategy, personal branding, more deeper high touch services. Kind of realizing, the problems that clients are needing and meeting those with a solution. So one of the biggest changes that have introduced is the looks VIP day, which is a, more in-depth, hands on branding experience for business owners who need that clarity and direction.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “I’ve been focusing on continually refining my niche offerings to make sure creative entrepreneurs are getting exactly what they need, not just in terms of marketing, but in how they show up and connect with their audience. So a big part of that has been the luxe VIP day, which takes everything I do branding, marketing, messaging, strategy and distills it into a focus high impact session.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So instead of clients feeling overwhelmed by all the moving pieces of their brand, we streamline everything into one deep dive session so they walk away with a crystal clear plan that aligns with their business.”

Angela Barrett – “And so when you you have this VIP that wins, that do you do it more than once a year or is it once a year, or how does it work?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So right now it’s been kind of since it’s been a new service that I’ve rolled out. It’s been kind of as people come in, are interested. So I try and do it at least quarterly. So I give myself the time that it needs to put into that project. Because it is a lot of preparation. Every single thing is tailored to that client.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So down to the questions that I’m asking. I kind of do a little bit of preliminary homework and research about their business, and then I can go into it directly tailored to their business. So then they can answer the right questions and get the right things done. So, you know, instead of, instead of trying to have all these moving parts, like I said, we’re kind of honing in on one super high focus day to where we can knock everything out.”

Kelsay Pattillo – And a lot of it is asking those hard questions that sometimes they can’t answer. But that’s my job to come in and help you dig deep and help you answer those questions and help you figure out your why and things that you never would have imagined. Wow. That is how my brand kind of connects with my audience. And that is why I got started.

Kelsay Pattillo – “And that is why I’m passionate about what I’m doing and helping them answer those questions they never would have, been able to answer on their own before. There really is an art and a science to it. So that is where my passion lies, is helping them kind of come out of their shell and being able to be their best selves in their business.”

Angela Barrett – “So let’s just go ahead. Let’s talk about branding, because that is a hot topic these days. Everywhere you look, everybody’s talking about branding, branding, voice, this, that, and the other. I don’t even know what a branding voice is. But anyway, maybe we can start there and you can tell me what that is. What is a branding voice?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So that’s the voice that you portray your brand. So that’s for example, I’ll say in a social post, it’s going to be the scroll stopping copy that someone reads and they say, oh my goodness, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. This resonates. This connects with me. This speaks to me. We are. It’s the brand voice that is reaching the right niche audience that they want to reach.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So we’re speaking music to their ears. This is exactly what they’ve been wanting, no matter if it’s service or not. Service based, it’s how you connect with your audience and resonate with them. Essentially.”

Angela Barrett – “I think I understand, but so branding and again, hot topic, hot topic right now, there’s more to it than social media. There’s more to it than picking your colors for your card in your logo or shoe logo. Give us sort of a breakdown of when somebody needs, let’s just say it’s me. I come to you say I need to be branded.”

Angela Barrett – “I don’t have a client. So tell me what I know you can explain in detail, because I know it’s a lot.”

Kelsay Pattillo – That is.

Angela Barrett – “Will you give us the highlights? You know, of a checklist, maybe, that you have to go through to get a branding together? Because I don’t think people understand how in-depth it is.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Right? Because there’s of course, the main branding aspect for the business. But then there’s also a personal branding aspect where if clients do or don’t want to be the forefront of their business, being able to operate and show the lifestyle around the business and the brand. So there are a lot of components, but as far as just not basic, but I would say more general branding for the business as a whole.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “That’s the kind of go to doing the logo, choosing the colors. And those also are going down to color psychology and how the colors relate to what you’re doing. And, you know, purple relating to royalty, for example, just off the top of my head, thinking about all of those things, that’s where the science comes into it.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “And really putting the puzzle pieces together intentionally instead of, oh, I like this color. So I want to throw this together. So, I mean, some people might think, because I love pink, that’s why I chose pink, but it’s also the color psychology and the softness and the science behind it also matches. So it was more of a perfect fit on both sides for that.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So it’s not about just choosing pretty colors, of course. Choose colors that you love, but also choose them with intention. And then of course the branding identity. So the messaging, the strategy, how we’re going to connect with our niche audience, how we’re going to launch that in, in a marketing side of things, how we’re going to build a marketing campaign and how it all goes together.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “You know, doing the branding mood board. So then you have something or the branding guidelines. So then you have something to, refer back to later down the road. Where if wherever you’re working with, you can just send them that branding guidelines and they know you know, what to work off of. So it’s a lot of moving parts.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “And so it’s different to every client as well. It’s custom to, you know, they want an icon aside from the logo. They want this little character with their brand, or they want to be the face of the brand. It’s really about, getting all those pieces together. And then that’s the hard question I ask is, you don’t like being on camera, you don’t like being the forefront, but you are your brand.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So it would be a waste to not have you be the face of your brand and really capitalize off of that and use your personal journey, or whatever it may be, to connect with the audience even more. So. So even more, that’s a step up from the brand voice is your personal journey and being transparent and authentic?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Of course, in the right ways. We’re not going to share a whole life story, but where it makes sense, where it makes sense. Sometimes showing that vulnerability is, you know, one of the best ways to connect with your audience. So it’s really just about that whirlwind of emotions and all of the things, you know, putting all the pieces together to have that beautiful puzzle at the end.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. And do you have clients to get, I mean, in or maybe this is for this or and I don’t know that. I mean, because I understand the only is the color and the psychology of colors, but it also goes right down to what font you’re using, correct?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Yes. Yes. Fonts as well. That speaks volumes as well. And everyone has a different, opinion and idea of what that is. Some people hate the curly font, some people love the more fancy fonts, but it’s really a it’s not about you as much in a sense, it is your brand in your baby, but it’s more about what is more readable, what is more attention grabbing, what will get my consumer the best.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So of course, your wishes come into play. But that’s where my expertise kind of gauges you like. Hey, this this font is not really readable. We might want to go with something that you can actually see, or we use it on certain case occasions. So that’s something where I’ll work with you on. Hey, if you already come to me with ideas of fonts and colors and everything, that’s totally fine.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “It is your brand. It is your baby. But might have to make some tweaks to it. So it’s for your best in the future for your brand, right?”

Angela Barrett – “In, as I was listening to you there probably people who don’t know what a niche is. So explain that.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So niche is the specific person or ideal customer audience consumer that you are trying to, target. So niche is just my niche is creative entrepreneur. So that’s why I call it that. So that’s only who I, cater to. So some salons only do you know the blow out, the blow dry bar? They only do that they don’t do any cuts.”

Kelsay Pattillo – So that’s their niche is they only do the blowout services.

Angela Barrett – “Right. And like, gosh, if you’ll think, I’ll give. Car repair shops, we’ll go way out here. So not to hurt anyone’s, you know, there are some that cater to your foreign cars. There are some that cater to your luxury cars. There are some, but I’ll do anything that walks in the door. And that would be another example of niche.”

Angela Barrett –

Kelsay Pattillo – “Yes. I know someone that owns a car shop and they only do German cars, so BMW, Volkswagen, that’s their niche. So they only focus on the German car brands? Yeah too.”

Angela Barrett – “But I didn’t know about that about six months ago. Because I have or had my son had not me. My son had a Volkswagen that we could not figure out for why, but what was wrong with it? Finally forgot all that’s right. But Lord, it took forever. But we needed somebody like that that knew German cars.”

Angela Barrett – “Other than I talk to the dealership and again, it won’t hurt you by stealing, but they just want more money. More money, and nothing ever gets done. Here are their. But yes. So that’s what a niche is. Now going back you looks the up day. How do people if they’re interested or you’ve got a day coming up.”

Angela Barrett – How do they know. How do they find out how to get more.

Kelsay Pattillo – “So you can, reach out, call, call or email. I want to say my email out, but of course it will.”

Angela Barrett – Be.

Kelsay Pattillo – “Intro or whatever for the podcast. Reach out and we can, you know, set up a time to discuss and really just kind of map out what we need that will meet your needs and your business. It’s really just been about as it’s new. It’s a newer service, like I said, in the past month. So, it’s something that we’re kind of just taking in stride as it comes and learning as we go as well, because it’s something that we’ve already done.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “It’s just, hey, why don’t we make a service into what we’ve already been doing and kind of hone in and focus just on that? So before it was something that kind of just came along when clients were needing it, as like an add on service. But now it’s a full, you know, mapped out service, just focusing on that.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So, work in it’s tailored to every client. So that’s why we like to have a, you know, a little one on one and get some information. And then that’s where we take it and build out, you know, the questionnaires, the surveys, all the workshops that we do with you.”

Angela Barrett – It and also you have a Facebook and Instagram presence as well.

Kelsay Pattillo – And then it’s more marketing co. Yes.

Angela Barrett – “All right. And for those who are listening that’s l u x e just l ux which you see a lot of times shorter, but, All right, so let me ask you some fun questions. What is the favorite part about what you do?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “I think my favorite part about what I do is helping creative brands really come to life, and really seeing people come out of their shell personally and professionally. I mean, even seeing their home life better because they finally get to the kinks in their business, and now they can finally breathe and do what they do best while I take that and delegate it off their plate.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “That’s where my passion lies. Where it’s like, wow, I didn’t even know why I was doing this until now. And now I can really step into my passion and do it best. So really digging deep and helping them find out their why not just creating content, but making sure their brand feels right for them and for their audience?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Sometimes that’s coming in as a new brand, sometimes that’s coming in and revamping and rebranding. But every time it’s the same gratifying of seeing them come out of their shell and just that glow that they have. I just I can’t put it into words. It’s just it’s like someone going through a transformation like a butterfly. It’s the best way I can describe it.”

Kelsay Pattillo – Just coming from one side to the other. Having that clarity to go forward is probably it’s very gratifying.

Angela Barrett – “I know that look that you’re talking about in the real estate world when you’re showing people homes and they walk into one and there’s that same glow that like, ding, ding, we’re here, you know, without them saying a word, it just clicked right. It is a nice feeling. It is. It is. Now you’re talking about some of the hard questions.”

Angela Barrett – “So give me an example of one of the hard questions. I know you mentioned why some people, like you said, probably don’t don’t know why. It just sort of fell in or they fell into this hole or whatever it is. But what are some of the hard questions that you have to ask?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “I think one of them comes to mind is, why are you doing this? Why are you doing what you’re doing? And even though they are passionate about it and they are doing it, sometimes it’s easy to get stuck and burnt out in that day to day where it’s like I’m just trying to go through the motions. And so they’re like, I don’t get you.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “All right, so it’s one of those I don’t know anymore, but I’m here to help you rediscover that. Like, wow, let me get back to my roots on where I came from, why I started this. So I think that’s one of the biggest things people cannot answer right off the top of their head. And I have to tell them ahead of time.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Hey, some of these questions are going to feel heavier, make it feel like I’m putting you on the spot. But this is just for your greater good to kind of dig deep, and answer those hard questions that you can’t answer on your own. So I kind of guide through that. And, sometimes we have to circle back to some of those hard questions, but, of course, do it as your comfort level allows.”

Kelsay Pattillo – But I think that’s one of the top questions I would say.

Angela Barrett – Have you ever had any by just your flat? Couldn’t figure out the wife?

Kelsay Pattillo – “No, I think I think sometimes if they don’t understand how I’m asking the question, if it’s more technical coming from my side per se, and I’ve have to pivot and break it down and say, okay, well, think about it from this perspective. And that’s where that’s where the digging deep comes from. And sometimes it is just conversation back and forth of throwing the ping pong back and forth.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “And then they’re like, okay, now that makes sense. Now that you’ve explained that differently now I understand where you’re coming from. I didn’t understand it on the level you were asking before. So that’s where I have a basis of questions I ask, but I pivot and change it and tweak it however, in the moment to help them get over that hump, if that makes sense.”

Angela Barrett – “So what do you think one of the biggest mistakes that business owners, especially in the entrepreneur or where we don’t have we can’t what can’t we don’t have?”

Angela Barrett – “A marketing department like some of these huge industries. I mean, here you are. You’re so low. What do you think some of the biggest mistakes those people make when it comes to branding, slash marketing, all of the above.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Well, first, I understand it is overwhelming because I do have some people come to me where they’re like, I don’t know anything. I just know that I need help and I need you to delegate this off of my plate. So that’s the first step is asking for. Right. But I think not having that clear brand identity or any kind of brand or marketing direction, not even having it top of mind.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “In today’s world, it’s almost impossible to not have an online presence. So many people focus on visuals without defining their brand values. So, for example, you’ll see a brand that rebrands and they get a new logo and new colors, and you’ve warmed up that audience to that new vision, and then they have someone else doing graphics for them that’s unrelated.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “They’re using whatever colors they want, so whatever channel they’re going out is something completely different. It looks like a different brand each time. It’s so important to be cohesive across all channels. So then it’s like that brand identity. Just like with Coca-Cola and all the logos that you can look at without it saying the word, it’s brand identity.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “You are identifying it based on the colors and it’s a brain thing. So trying to be everything to everyone instead of honing in on a niche, that’s also a big thing. That’s why I like the I am niche down, so then I can explain and mirror to them. It’s okay to be able to cater to everyone, but you can do your work best if you hone in on what you do best, right?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So honing in on a niche and having that strong brand personality to where they can stand to be confident and say, I do this, and I know I do. This might not be the best, but we can say, hey, I do this best, you know what I mean? And so not being consistent across platforms is probably one of, the biggest things.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Like I was saying, a strong brand should have a clear voice and presence everywhere, whether that’s socials, your newsletter, you know, podcast, whatever channels that you’re on. Even down to how you’re speaking with your clients on the phone, you don’t have to have a script, but you can kind of learn some of that brand language and kind of throw it into then everything is cohesive.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “And even down to I have my clients, I do styling as well if they need like the personal branding and hey, I need to look the part. I’ll have them reaching for the right colors and being cohesive with the brand without trying or without being to, you know, over the top. So it’s something that I kind of integrate these little things where they learn on their own.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Finally, I can operate and talk about my brand and know what’s going on and mirror what’s also being said online and on other channels. So it’s really important to be cohesive.”

Angela Barrett – “So, you know, if we talked about colors and we talked about font just listening to so. What you’re saying is websites, social media, any kind of premium materials cards, those kind of stick should all have the same fonts in the same colors around throughout. Right. Yeah, I got you.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Can there’s ways you can, you know, that’s why you have the brain kit and the branding guidelines where you have a few select fonts, a few select colors. So if you want to change up within those colors and fonts, that’s completely fine. It’s a case use on what works best, what looks best. But you’re still being cohesive where it’s like, oh, it’s still there colors, but it’s in a different light.”

Kelsay Pattillo – So I still recognize that type thing.

Angela Barrett – “Right? Right, right, right. And it is important to people know across the board. And like you said, if you like for me real estate and then I do call it real estate by day, podcast by night. But, you know, really those two should look more like. Right. Yeah, I say, and they said do not. But anyway, it’s all talk.”

Angela Barrett – “So I, I see what you’re saying now as far as, How creative you view it in this is it, you have some people like, like the full range or or most people have some idea or think they have an idea or rephrase it that way. So when it comes to the creative side of this.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “I love this question. So I always tell clients, I want you to be as involved as you’d like to be. If this is something where you don’t want to be involved, you want to take this off your plate. This is stressful. I will take it. If it’s something where we want to hold hands and do this together, then we’re going to hold hands and do this together.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So it’s basically the client’s wishes. On if they don’t have any ideas we’ll we’ll brainstorm together if they don’t want to be involved, whatever. But if they do, then we brainstorm. We do it all the way from step one to finish line. It’s a collaborating working relationship, right?”

Angela Barrett – “Right, right, right. It is a very, I’m going to say intimate because it can be.”

Kelsay Pattillo – Dense.

Angela Barrett – “Because you’re getting down to what people are going to see, and there’s going to be things discussed with you that they may not want other people to know. But to get an idea of where they are and where they’re coming from and what they want. Trey, you made that information.”

Kelsay Pattillo – Right?

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, because it is I mean, it goes down to this is isn’t I just your face, but this is who you are if you want your business to be successful. Right, I like it. I like it.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “It’s definitely a very intimate experience. And I’m like, I know your brand is your baby, so that’s your decision. If you want to hand over that baby and let me take the reins or let’s hold the baby together.”

Angela Barrett – So yes.

Kelsay Pattillo – “That’s the best. Yeah, I can give. But yes, I love. However, the client’s comfort level is how that works out. Basically.”

Angela Barrett – “So what do you think? Without saying, I guess we don’t give names because I don’t want that known. But what do you think has been the biggest success or the biggest? I’m going to call it heart filling success story for you in the end was, you know, whether it be a client who cares, it got no idea or whether it was somebody who had it was pull into, you know, give me what was the biggest success that you think?”

Angela Barrett – Do you personally.

Kelsay Pattillo – “So without naming names, right. And being too specific.”

Angela Barrett –

Kelsay Pattillo – “I do have to give some details. So it was an interior designer. She was under a corporation. She moved here to Charleston and, kind of showed her the ropes of Charleston in general. But from point A to the end of that branding project, I showed her her work in the work that she’s doing and her passion to where she left the corporation and started her own interior design firm just because of that branding project.”

Angela Barrett – “Wow. And because how long does it take for you to do them? That’s a good question I hadn’t thought about. I mean, it’s not like you talk on the phone one day.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “No, this was a months and months process. And we were, you know, already working together. So it was kind of intertwined in all of that work. But of course I did the one off projects where it’s like, hey, I just need a quick refresh. But this was a definitely a very in-depth, intimate process. You know, down to how she dressed, how she interacted with her family, like I said, coming out of their shells personally in her family home life got so much better just because she finally got clarity in an area that was such a, you know, a sore spot, and became more successful because of all of it.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So, to be able to say, hey, you’re worth so much more than this. We cannot we can’t have this bang up job that we’ve just done. And you go back and, you know, give that corporation credit. So we, we did a rebrand for her own new brand as well.”

Angela Barrett – “I know, I do. You know what’s wrong?”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Oh, I don’t hear ringing.”

Angela Barrett – Okay. Must have been on my end. Okay. Go ahead. I’m sorry.

Kelsay Pattillo – “That’s okay. No, so, you know, down to, like I said, the home life and coming out of her shell personally and moving to a new place and just rediscovering herself, not only in her business, but. Wow, I can really do this. I can do the dang thing. So that that was one of the most inspiring and gratifying projects I think I’ve done as far as branding her, being able to come to Charleston and dominate into her design here on her own and get away from that corporation, it was amazing.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, that that is a good success story. That’s that’s phenomenal. Well, Cassie, I thank you so much for being with me today. And I want to make sure before we we get off, that we have covered kind of everything that’s happened because you have launched this new, VIP day. And wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else that.”

Angela Barrett – “Yes, because I got kind of wrapped up in the whole branding thing, but.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “No, I think I think we covered everything and got to cover some other things that, were great questions I love to answer as well. And that last one that was. That’s awesome. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell. Because it’s not easy to do those and make those big steps. But she trusted me enough to where she stepped out and trusted me with her brand, and then also made those huge, you know, life decisions based on everything and now is more successful because of it.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “So and that’s, that’s when I knew what I do.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. And yeah, I do want to mention again, because a lot of people we’ve talked about branding and what we didn’t talk about though, was you help people, find a photographer for their photos. And, and those are some of the in some of your packages that you can help people with. So that again, sort of an all in one.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Right. That’s why it is kind of an all in one for creatives. So if you have a photo shoot, if you have, let’s say a boutique, and you have items that in merchandise that you need shot, I’ll bring in photographers, videographers, I have a running list of people. And then if you need to bring in models, so that’s where, you know, my fashion industry expertise comes in and my connections here in Charleston.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “But even if you’re not here, I still can, you know, coordinate that wherever you are. It’s part of my project management kind of packages. If you’re doing, you know, launching an event, if you’re doing a ribbon cutting, if you’re doing any kind of event or pop up anything. I have experience with that, you know, stuff like that.”

Angela Barrett – “Very nice, very nice. Well, thank you again for being on and checking in with us. We’re I love that Carl Wilkes came up with that name, and I have just run with it. And, I certainly appreciate you being here. And we’ll do it again. We’ll find out maybe in another, you know, maybe not quite as long as we went this time, but we’ll we’ll get back together and see what else has happened.”

Kelsay Pattillo – “Well, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you.”

Angela Barrett – You too.

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of Talking South Carolina. Now this week I have got Rob Hostetler, who is the president and CEO of the Central Electric Power Co-op, both, we’re going to talk to him about who they are, what they do, how they, affect our electricity in our bill, that we get monthly, here in South Carolina, as well as I’m going to ask him about the new bill that was passed in the House here locally.”

Angela Barrett – “Just a couple of days ago. And, see what he has to say about that. So hang on one second and let me bring you in.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Hello, Angela.”

Angela Barrett – “Hey. How are you? You look so familiar. I don’t know where we might know each other from, but.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Yeah, who knows?”

Angela Barrett – That’s right.

Rob Hochstetler – “I live on. I live in Chapin. But I know you’re on the other side of the lake, right?”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That’s right. Hey, Rob, thanks so much for joining me here today.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Thank you. Angela, I’m really excited to be on your podcast. I really enjoy them.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh good. Well thank you, thank you. They’re a lot of fun. I get to meet a lot of nice, people, and that I would never have been able to meet by doing this. And so it’s always exciting for me as well. Central electric power cooperative. Tell me who you are, what you do.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Sure. So, there are 19 electric, just two distribution cooperatives in the state. In the area that I know you live. Mid Carolina is electric distribution cooperative. All across the country, distribution cooperatives partnered together and created generation partners. Sometimes we call ourselves generation and transmission cooperatives. And really we’re their generation partner. We do the contracts and supply them power.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And by working together, those 19 co-ops are can gain scale and scope to compete with all the big utilities that you’ve heard of as well. And so central does those power contracts and supplies power to the 19 electric co-ops in South Carolina.”

Angela Barrett – Okay. I want you to break this down as if you would a child’s picture chart and how this actually works. Sure.

Rob Hochstetler – “And yeah, so you if you let me it really the co-ops build from the ground up and not to go into a complete history lesson, but go back into the 1930s and rule. America doesn’t have electricity but electricity starting to come to the towns. And in, the mid 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes a law to trying to get electrification to rural areas.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And the first electric cooperative in South Carolina is formed in 1938. And in 1948, there’s 7 or 8 cooperatives in the state. Again, the members at the end of the line in rural communities have partnered together to form these cooperatives, and central is formed. And so now everyone that is on a power line, on a distribution cooperative, we call them consumer members or consumer owners.”

Rob Hochstetler – “They elect local board members. So those people that know the communities are elected to the local boards, and then those local boards will send people to sit on Central Electric’s board. And so cooperatives cooperating is what lets them gain scope and scale. So in consumer member consumer, if you will, Alexei, local board, the local board. Since people to serve on the cooperative of cooperatives, the generation planning organization that I work for, does that help?”

Angela Barrett – “It does. You know, because I’m in some sense, you know, some might think, okay, your your whole little bit of energy over here and you’re helping supply, you know, this, that and the other and that’s not what this is about. And the more that I read. So, that does help. Now you guys actually, was it 1948.”

Rob Hochstetler – 1948? You were one.

Angela Barrett – Yeah. That was. Yeah. Been around a long time.

Rob Hochstetler – “We we have been around a long time. And to me it’s very interesting again, the history. And so, you know this is about South Carolina. So it’s South Carolina’s history. But really national history. The local co-ops really start out buying from the investor own utilities. And they really didn’t have options and choices. And I don’t want to say they were taken advantage of.”

Rob Hochstetler – “But I think if you go look they will they would tell you they were taking advantage of the investor owned utilities. So they start to partner together. Well, interestingly, in South Carolina, South Carolina has a state owned power companies. Most states don’t have a state owned power company. And somewhere along the line, some very smart people said, oh, instead of buying from the investor owned utilities, why don’t you buy from Santee Cooper?”

Rob Hochstetler – “And that was that really formed a partnership back in the the late 40s, early 50s of central is the biggest customer of Santee Cooper. We buy about 70% of their power, but we also now buy power from Duke Energy Carolinas based out of Charlotte, and if I’m not mistaken, were their largest customers as well.”

Angela Barrett – “And you guys, meaning Central Electric power.”

Angela Barrett – Are the third largest in the country. Right. And inflation. Yeah. Okay.

Rob Hochstetler – “Yeah, yeah. So there’s there’s cooperatives, all local distribution cooperatives, all across the country. There’s there’s someplace between 40 and 50, depending on how you want to count generation and transmission or generation partners all across the country by sales to our members were the third largest in the country.”

Angela Barrett – Gotcha. Now how? Let’s break it down to somebody. An everyday household. What part would you guys play in the bill that we get every month from whoever it might be?

Rob Hochstetler – “That’s that’s an excellent question. So what I would tell you is for Central Electric, for the wholesale power provider, about 95% of our of our bill is the power that we get. About 80% of that is for a wholesale, just about typical wholesale is the power plants that we build and the fuel that we burn. And so not maybe getting too math oriented here, but for the consumer, then what that translates to about 50% of your bill is the power plants that are built in the fuel that is burned.”

Rob Hochstetler – “So making sure that those decisions are made correctly is very important. Then the rest of the bill is transmit lines, the power lines that you see going across the state, the distribution lines, the power that comes right into your home, and then some overhead. But the power plant decision. So we’re about for the local co-ops. We’re someplace between 50 and 60% of the in consumers bills.”

Rob Hochstetler – So what happens at central is important to the end consumer.

Angela Barrett – “Right. Absolutely. Because whoof. This can get kind of hefty this time of year when it’s cold. Now supply and demand. Let’s talk about a little bit about that. And then we’re going to talk about there’s a lot of chat right now about South Carolina need more energy and this, that and the other. But let’s just basically get down to the brass tacks.”

Angela Barrett – What I want to supply and demand. Let’s talk about that.

Rob Hochstetler – “Well, there’s in our industry and sometimes this is hard to understand even for people who’ve been here. We’re really supplying two things. We supply peak energy and then total energy. So you use some amount of electricity over a whole month, and we’ve got to make sure we can generate that over a whole month. But on the very peak day, very peak hour, very peak minute, we have to have power plants that can generate that much.”

Rob Hochstetler – “So if you turn on a light switch someplace, somewhere a generator is putting out a little bit more energy. And so we have what we call capacity. Do we have enough generation for the very peak days? It’s very cold. Been very cold here lately. Do we have enough generators built to supply that? But then we talk energy.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Solar energy is a great example, right? Solar that’s built is energy, but it may or may not be available on those very peak days. If the sun is not shining and it’s cold outside and the sun’s not up and it’s early morning. So supply and demand two areas we right now with the economy growing in South Carolina, we are short power supply that in that needing that last piece of generation on the very peak days.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And it really has the potential. And again, I know we’re going to talk about this in a minute, but starts to limit what we can do in our state if we don’t add new generation for those peak days.”

Angela Barrett – “So I’ll back up just a minute before we go even further in that direction, because I think there’s a good bit of talk there. But, the type of energy y’all are creating is, are there more than one from one source?”

Rob Hochstetler – “Yeah. So we’re we are getting very close to a third, a third, a third for us. South Carolina loves nuclear power. If you look at the number of power plants we have by our in the whole state, by the population, we are nuclear heavy. So we get about a third of our power from zero emissions nuclear power.”

Rob Hochstetler – “We get about a third of our power from coal fired power plants, those older plants that are still around and about a third from natural gas, which burns much cleaner than coal does. So we’re about a third, a third, a third. Right now.”

Angela Barrett – “And another, government master said, I don’t know if it was last year. Something about, you know, and again, this goes back to we need more power sources that probably in the next 10 to 15 years that the coal would sort of phase be gone. Is that are you in agreement with that, or are.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Think yet the idea is that coal is not necessarily the most economic power supply resource we could have right now, but we have to have something to replace those coal fired power plants. So we really are in this conundrum of we need more power because we’re growing, and we would like to have more power so we can retire the coal fired power plants for.”

Rob Hochstetler – “I worked with the Germans, said Green and green, right? Some because of green the environment, but also because they just really are not as economically efficient as they used to be.”

Angela Barrett – “And so is. Have we come up with the solution for this other source of our or is there something in the works? Now you can say what it is, but sure, sure.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Well, it’s you’re thinking as an industry, we’re saying all of the above. It’s hard to retire coal if you haven’t built a new power plant. And so, one of the gentlemen that works at the federal level, talks about natural gas is a bridge fuel, but it’s a very long bridge. Nuclear plants, you know, Georgia brought on some nuclear plants.”

Rob Hochstetler – “They talk about small modular reactors. Those things are coming, but they’re very expensive. And so natural gas is the bridge fuel. But then we also solar is an option. Solar with batteries, those are things are state and we specifically are investing in and starting to bring online. They’re not on yet but they’re being built across our state.”

Rob Hochstetler – So but natural gas is in all likelihood all across the country. That is really the resource. It’s the bridge fuel to whatever the future holds.

Angela Barrett – “Is, is you brought that up. I will go ahead and set and ask, I know there was a bill passed just a few days ago. The House of Representatives local here about the, the ability to be able to, I guess, seek out natural gas. Is that how that bill read? I mean, I didn’t read the whole thing.”

Angela Barrett – I just kind of got the CliffsNotes for the utility companies being able to seek out that. Is that right?

Rob Hochstetler – “Sure. So our state, if you think about this, there’s interest state pipelines, the big natural gas pipelines, and then there’s intrastate the pipelines inside the state are intrastate. The pipelines in South Carolina, are full, if you think of it like a straw. The straw is for we don’t have any more intrastate pipelines. We need the ability to bring more gas into the state for power plant reasons and for economic development reasons.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And so I think what that bill was meant to do was to help get that those gas lines built inside the state without really bypassing any regulations, but starting to set the tone of we need to do this again for two reasons. One for power plants and two for economic development. The, the piece that we are very interested in.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Yeah, I think from a state perspective, we’ll work well is city Cooper would like to partner with, Dominion Energy South Carolina to build a natural gas bio powered fire fired power plant, natural gas fired power plant. Well, by statute, they have to get approval from the General Assembly to do a project with and with the investor owned utility.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And so that’s the piece that Central’s interested in. Yeah, we get 70% of our power from Santee Cooper. So we will be making, it won’t be in our name, but we’re making a big investment in that. That’s the piece we’re interested in. They’re doing other things to try to bring that power on line. And again, if our state wants to continue to grow as it’s been growing, we need that power plant.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And I could if you would like, I could tell you all the great things cooperatives are doing in economic development as well.”

Angela Barrett – “Well, yeah, let’s touch on that then. I have, I just had two more questions, but I want to switch on that while we’re there. Go for.”

Rob Hochstetler – “It. So, I’ve been here about ten years, and since I’ve been here, the cooperatives have made a big investment in economic development, trying to bring jobs in community changing jobs, but it really anything for the local community. So, since since 2014 last ten years, $18.5 billion announced for economic development in rural electric cooperatives service territory.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Volvo, Samsung names that you’ve heard $18.5 billion. That’s a lot. 43,000 jobs brought in just last year alone in co-op territory, $3.2 billion of announced projects, 1100 jobs. And those those are the kind of jobs, that really, to me, change communities. But the communities where we the to me, the best thing about electric cooperatives is they were built by the communities and they serve the communities.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And so these are the things that the communities want to bring. And I find that very interesting. So the cops have invested about $69 million of members resources, if you will, but it has paid off extremely for the good of our state. We believe, and I don’t quote me on this. I’ve not done all the research, but I believe there’s only two organizations in our state that try to do economic development in all 46 counties, the Department of Commerce and the electric cooperatives, because we serve members in every county in the state.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And we’re very proud of that because, you know, the member, you know, the South Carolina South Carolinians are our members. And so to help them have better lives is something that we get very excited about.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I didn’t see that on your the web page where that y’all were in all, 46 counties in that good analogy there with the Commerce, those those are the people that we think of, not necessarily in the trenches, but, I mean, those are the people who are in the county and owned businesses in the towns and, and, and, and know what’s going on.”

Angela Barrett – “And, the same with you guys. I mean, it, you’re, you know, everywhere. It’s a good representation, for all of the counties. There was something else for all the counties. You, I, I interrupt to go ahead.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Oh, no. No, that’s. So, the other thing. So the cooperatives have partnered together to do economic development together. All my team, which in the way we do that is even in some of those rural areas that are still perhaps struggling the way we’ve done economic development is there’s always a payback in the relatively near term. And so we do give incentives for companies to come.”

Rob Hochstetler – “But by by year two, three, 4 or 5, they’re they’re providing more value. We’re spreading more fixed cost across the entire state. And it ultimately lowers everyone’s bills by bringing these organizations in. It’s good for the tax base. Again, it’s good for creating jobs. It really to me economic development is win win win for everyone.”

Angela Barrett – “That that’s another one of the that I was going to ask you. So I know Frank Knapp is big on these, data centers eating up all of this energy. Your thoughts?”

Rob Hochstetler – “Yeah. So data centers take a lot of energy. And, we do one of our members survey, current data center. What what I would tell you and what the way we’ve approached data centers is, they have to pay their their fair share, right? They they have to if we have to build new transmission lines for them, they need to pay that.”

Rob Hochstetler – “If we’ve got to bring on new power plants online, they need to pay that cost. That data centers to me, just like all economic development, can be good for communities. But each community has to decide if it’s good for them. But they are big and they use a lot of power. But again, if the communities want them, where we sit is we want to help you get those.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And people on both sides. Are data centers helpful or not helpful? What I would tell you is once I they’ll say, well, it doesn’t create a lot of jobs. Well when they’re done, but they really never stop building. So there’s a lot of construction trade jobs that go into those that seem to be everyplace across the country. They’re they almost stay.”

Rob Hochstetler – “So it’s very high end, engineering, computer engineering jobs. But and then there’s just as important and just as professional, people that are in the construction trades. And so, if you and I want to use ChatGPT and use AI and watch YouTube and post our podcast, we’re going to need these data centers. And so they’re only building them because they’re used.”

Rob Hochstetler – And I believe the future will be you don’t want to be left out. You want some of those data centers near to you to continue economic development.

Angela Barrett – “Gotcha, gotcha. So, what is our overall answer here? To the everyday in-home. What are we looking at? And I know that you looking at it from your side, but from a business standpoint and the development of South Carolina and what it will help us as a whole, but as an individual home, are we still working at probably rate increases due to some of these things that have to be built so we can have more like the scout plant that just came, so more businesses like that that are huge and are going to pick up a lot of power, but is that what we’re looking at?”

Angela Barrett – “I mean, honestly.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Yeah. So the one the one thing this is not very technical. The words are pretty easy to say. Cost causation, if someone causes a is the cause, they ought to pay for it. And so, bills are going up. But I would tell you it’s, it’s almost inflation right now. Our industry almost moves with the price of natural gas.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Our rate Santee Cooper coming out of the settlement for the V.C. summer cook plant, we’ve held our rates flat really, since I’ve been here. Ten years, 11 years. And so we’re finally catching up, and we are seeing a rate increase. Now, what we try to do, I like to say we try to put downward pressure on rates.”

Rob Hochstetler – “But your question was what can the local homeowner do? And the least cost option for power in I talk about the power plants or what cost the money is to not use that kilowatt on peak and instead use it off peak. And so, some of our members and we don’t set local rates, are each of our members independent set local rates.”

Rob Hochstetler – “They’re going to three part rates. And really saying if you choose, there’s incentive to move off of peak these three hour windows in the winter during the morning when we’re on peak three hours, in the summer when we’re on peak, that’s when we’re building that last increment of power plant. And if you all do things to move, you know, don’t don’t, don’t run your hair dryer in the morning.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Get up a little early. Let us re cool your house in the summer so your air conditioning doesn’t work. Let us pre warm so you can be just as warm, but, not. And so the members are trying to sell that because it lowers their power cost the wholesale level. And they can pass it on. And so smart home smart appliances are already driving down energy usage, but trying to make it so we don’t have to build as many power plants.”

Rob Hochstetler – I think the individual homeowner can really take take part in that and be economically incentivized to take part in that.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’ll help their build.”

Rob Hochstetler – “It will, it will help their bill. Yeah.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s right, that’s right. And if they what the other question was a.”

Angela Barrett – “And now I can’t remember. But yeah, I was going to say I mean, I think people don’t realize as an everyday consumer, you know, we do think about our individual cells and our, our bills. And then if you have all the business the same. But in order for South Carolina to eat or in job growth and even pay with some of these other states that this is what’s necessary, this is the make or break right here.”

Angela Barrett – “Because if we can’t supply these companies power, they’re going to bring these high paying jobs. And these, you know, the business here, this is where the bulk starts, right? Sure. To put it in sign language.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Well, I can tell you listen to what the governor says. You know, the governor talks about people want to come to South Carolina, the number of people moving into South Carolina, Berkeley Electric, which surrounds Charleston, 700 new meters a month, 700, probably mostly residential people moving in a month. What do they want? South Carolina? Not. I am not a native South Carolina.”

Rob Hochstetler – “You might be able to tell by my twang. But I got here as fast as I could. That’s what I tell people I was, and that’s that’s. I could, South Carolina is a great state to do business in. It’s a great state to Lee to live in. The people are phenomenal. We’ve taken care of our environment.”

Rob Hochstetler – “So. But we still have to do those things necessary to stay competitive, if you will. I would say right now, we. Yes, we don’t win every project, but we win more than our fair share. It’s because of all the intangibles. I think that we bring. But sugar. Right for certain. For certain organizations, electric price is important that they have people to work.”

Rob Hochstetler – “Resources is a key a key point, that they can get their products shipped in and out, be our port, be our rail lines via the trucks and the interstates. All things very important. But we want to remain competitive. And I think it’s important for the state. And we hear our governor say that, and we hear that from both sides of the legislature as well.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. I think this is going to be, a funny word for, so this will a fun couple years, I guess, for all those kinks to get worked out. But it is, at least, I guess, heading in the right direction for all of us. The the state, the whole state. Finally just getting some movement there, don’t you think?”

Rob Hochstetler – “I, I absolutely agree, you know, the energy used to be stayed in steel and we didn’t. Our industry was just same thing, same thing. Now it’s a very exciting place to be because of because we are growing, because of the growth. And it’s exciting to be doing energy in South Carolina, a state that’s growing.”

Angela Barrett – “You know, and, and again, bringing this back to a household, most people take that for granted doing this just there. But it’s not it really isn’t. I mean, and that’s I think that’s where we’re facing and and luckily able to handle right now. But again looking to the future. But I mean people just especially children I’m thinking high school.”

Angela Barrett – They just had no concept. It’s just there. They flip the switch. It’s just they’re.

Rob Hochstetler – “That’s right. And that’s what we want. Right? I don’t know what to do with the place. I could, but I it’ll very close in, Christmas time 2022. We the whole the whole southeast got covered really most of the East Coast with the, with the, with the cold front. Old everywhere. And we were very close. Central did not have to turn anybody off.”

Rob Hochstetler – “But in the South, many people we call them, blackouts or brownouts because because they weren’t generating resources. We talked about that need, that last generation resource. They weren’t there or the transmission wasn’t there to move power where we needed it from. And, we’ve done things now to try to overcome that. But that’s only a couple of years ago.”

Rob Hochstetler – “We were that close, right?”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. It is. So it does need to kind of be a household subject, at least in my opinion. But, people, again, and I’m guilty of it. Take it for granted. No need shirt. I’m one of those. When I turn it on, I want to work. Yeah, okay.”

Rob Hochstetler – “I would tell you, one of the things that we try to be cognizant of again, because we are serving the more rural areas, the cooperative serves 70% of the land mass in South Carolina, about a third of the population, so about 2 million South Carolinians. But we serve some of the poorer areas in trying to find that balance of making sure things are affordable, reliable, safe and environmentally responsible.”

Rob Hochstetler – “That’s the way I like to say it, but never forgetting that there are some people that, their power bill is a significant portion of what they their income. And so we try to remain cognizant of that, follow all the rules. But that downward pressure on rates and keeping rates affordable, so people can do other things with their money besides just keep their power on.”

Rob Hochstetler – “I’m a believer that electricity changed the world, and we do take it for granted, but it really was life changing, and we want to make sure that’s available for every.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I agree in it’s just like we, I have some schoolteacher friends who I’m a give this analogy and some very poor one, but I’ll give it anyway. We talk about how difficult the teachers have in classrooms these days with all the things that are going on. But if home would help because that’s where it starts, is at home, then that would be better all around in the school systems.”

Angela Barrett – “And I think this is kind of the same thing. And this is just NE in Haiti, anything I’ve heard anywhere. So I’ll only write on one brochure that Matt from this is just in my fuller brain. If we all help here and small level at home, I think it would help overall, not only just our power bill, but the energy that we have here in South Carolina.”

Rob Hochstetler – “I think that’s that’s actually a really, really good analogy. Everyone doing a little bit and can help a lot. And so we do things, our members, I say we, we help our members do it, get back to their consumers, beat the peak. Who will tell you when a peak day is coming. Just do little things. You don’t have to, but you can.”

Rob Hochstetler – “We also have people who have put in smart thermostats and let the cooperatives again for financial incentives again, will pre cool your home in summer and will not run your air conditioner during the peak three hours, but you’ll be. Hopefully you feel fine, but if you want you can override it. Same with heat. The other thing that comes close to that, it maybe gets us a little bit off topic, but started right here to cooperate in South Carolina was Operation Roundup.”

Rob Hochstetler – “It’s going all across the country round your power bill up to the local to the closest dollar. So on average it’s about $6 a year. If everyone pools those resources, that money goes right back into the communities. And so what an idea that started here in South Carolina is gone all across the country and allows those local cooperatives, if everyone helps a little, we can do big things.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And I think you’re analogy is very similar, that if everyone helps at home a little bit, it really can go a long way. In the end.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I agree, I agree Rob, thank you so much for being here today. I was excited about this. I don’t often get to talk to you. Big wigs out there, but this was fun.”

Rob Hochstetler – “And instead of myself, a big wig for.”

Angela Barrett – “She, I don’t know, presidency that’s rooting. But thank you so very much, for being with me. And we’ll have to get back together in three, 4 or 5 months and do a check in and see what has developed at that point.”

Rob Hochstetler – I would enjoy that very much. Angel. Thank you.

Angela Barrett – Absolutely. Thank you.

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Steven Wilson 3 to 1. Hey, guys. And welcome back to top in South Carolina. Do that again.”

Angela Barrett – 3 to 1.

Angela Barrett – “Thanks for joining me for another episode of Talking South Carolina. Now today, guys, I have Steven Wilson with the trolls of Amsterdam band. Now, guys, this. He’s a hoot. I just can’t wait. So y’all hang on one side and I bring you in.”

Angela Barrett – Let’s.

Angela Barrett – “All right. Three. Two. One. Well. Hey, Steven, how are you today?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Hey, Angela. I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.”

Angela Barrett – “Thanks for being here. How exciting. So, first of all, half Moon Bay. That had to be like heaven to live.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, man. Absolutely. Still, over 18 years of my life there, it was pretty, pretty magical. And, good. Good part of my good part of my history for sure.”

Angela Barrett – “Absolutely. My son lived in California. Not in Half Moon Bay for a while, and I was kind of sad when he moved home, because now I didn’t have an excuse to go over there. It was kind of more in the San Francisco area, but I was like, darn. So Trolls of Amsterdam first. Where did the name come from?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh. You mean he would I like it. So me and my my buddies, the original founding members, Armand and Stephane and myself were sitting in my garage, and, I know Grenada right there and hopping back, and we’ve been playing music together for quite a while, and we’re about to release something. You know, finally going to do like an EP, which came out in 2016.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Well, I guess we need a name of this, of this chaos or whatever. Y’all got. And we shot back a few ideas and then we kind of came up with that. And then somebody said, I think Stefan came up with it because he was he grew up in Germany and, had had some experiences in Amsterdam and, but then our minds as well, how we’re going to call ourselves trolls of Amsterdam, we’re all from California.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “I’m like, who cares? It’s just a name. It’s just a name, you know? Right. He’s not a it just kind of stuck in it. There’s some. It gets a little deeper. I think, Stefan might have had some type of, psychedelic experience in Amsterdam where the troll party started chasing him and thought they were going to kill him.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And, that’s that’s the real deep meaning behind the story. But, yeah, that’s kind of where it came from.”

Angela Barrett – “Wow. And so, hallelujah, we were playing together.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, man. Oh, well, that’s interesting because, like, right now I’m the only original member. But we started making music together, probably in 2014, 15. And I really only been touring with the band for the last 3 to 4 years. Off and on.”

Angela Barrett – “Gotcha. Yeah. And. Well, I know you off tour. You’ve been back to California. I know that I saw that you had done some shows there, and certainly around in this area. What is your what would you say your biggest, platform has been? Where? I mean, where you played.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, man. That’s a good question. We’ve done some, like, outdoor festivals in California. Not been two huge yet. With this project. We.”

Angela Barrett – “Did, what’s your favorite.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Man? You know, there’s a couple other little gems out there. Honestly, one of my favorite places to see or play a show right now in is actually. Oh, and, in South Carolina.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, yeah.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – Have you been.

Angela Barrett – “To a show there? No, but I have heard people say.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “It is epic and it’s, really encourage any and all bands to to reach out to Eddy. They’re super, warm and welcoming or not, they’re easy to work with is kind of how it should be for a, for a venue. I mean, it’s I can’t say enough good things about it and it’s not too big. It’s not too small, it’s family friendly.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “The shows are on Wednesday nights and the vibe there is just unbelievable. People are there to have fun. It’s, So that’s one of my favorite places to play in the, you know, in the Carolinas. For sure.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Now, what would you say? Where would your general be for the band? I mean, because I’ve listened to some of it and, you know, I get a little bluesy feel maybe, we’ll. And then I get a little, what I call shag music kind of feel. And then there’s some horror stuff. So where when you sing along.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, man, it’s, you know, it’s it’s tough to put a genre on it. When people ask me what kind of music is I like, it’s eclectic, you know, it’s, there’s a bit of everything. Just kind of a representative of of, of who I am. I say, you know, and my experiences and just, I think it comes out in the music.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So it’s all over the place. I mean, it’s rock and roll, it’s fog. It’s a little. Some of the songs are country leaning. There’s even some reggae vibes in there. Yeah. America, I kind of came up in the late 80s and 90s, and I think that’s reflected in the music.”

Angela Barrett – “So tell me, I understand that you played a birthday bash for James Brown. Yes.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – That’s a true story. That’s a true story.

Angela Barrett – I had to be there. Had to be phenomenal.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “It was off the chain. It was one of the. I was so lucky to get to do that, in my late 20s at the time, probably. And that was back in 90 was in 97. We got to play with the band at the time was, one of my first, actually my first band. My first real bad is a band called mother of two, and we got to play, the James Brown Birthday Bash in Augusta, Georgia at the Bell Auditorium.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “You know, thousands and thousands of people. It was, surreal looking back on it, I didn’t realize how fortunate I was that y’all just didn’t realize what was happening. And, but, yeah, it was cool. Got that? Not only play. I’ve got to meet him a few times, and we’d see him in Augusta. Riding around in his Rolls-Royce or at a restaurant.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – It was pretty cool. And I got the birthday cake with them. So. Yeah. But now and I look at.

Angela Barrett – “You know, only I think I would ask this. What kind of birthday cake? Oh.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah. What was it? I don’t know, is it.”

Angela Barrett – It’s long ago. Yeah.

Stephen Russell Wilson – I they go white like cake. Got a little.

Angela Barrett – So now what point was it. Troll of Amsterdam. That was managed by the same people that managed James Brown. Or was it a different brand?

Stephen Russell Wilson – “No. That was that was my earlier band. That was a mother of two. We, you know, one of the guys working with, Mr. Brown’s organization had found us somehow. And then really, how languorous have really launched our career and kind of catapulted us and that was, that whipped us into shape. Really learned to learned so much from being around that organization.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Sure, sure. Just an amazing.”

Angela Barrett – Yeah. Because I would say that’s not small town.

Stephen Russell Wilson – Great. It was great.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Now, how many, albums or records do you have published for right now? Okay. All the day, I guess.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Sure. I guess working backwards. I mean, my latest record was, came out in fall of 21. It’s been out about a little over three years. And that was, trolls of Amsterdam Wilson Drive. It’s a full length record, probably. You know, it’s it did good on the college charts there for a minute and, and back up before that.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “2016, we put out an EP, Trolls of Amsterdam. That’s like 4 or 5 songs and really, man, we just put it out, not even worry about anything. It was some of it’s just skits and banter. It’s really kind of quite ridiculous. But, it was fun, you know? That’s where it all began. And, that, that was that’s the only two records that band has out.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “I did some stuff out in California, like I helped produce some records. One of them was a reggae record. It was called culture. Culture Canute and the Rock Stone players. Yes. I got some credits on that one. I did like some background vocals, but it wasn’t really my band. And that’s the legendary artists. His name is Can You Davis.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And he’s from Montego Bay, Jamaica. And he would tell us stories of when he was younger kicking the ball with Bob Marley. So that was pretty, well, pretty cool. And the funny thing is about that band culture, Canute, those guys, fast forward to now. Some of them, actually, the majority of those guys will come out and play shows with me.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Or if I go to California, some of them will do shows with, oh, neat. It’s pretty. Who knows? Because back then I was kind of like managing them and running sound for those guys, and eventually I become their reggae. I’m sorry, their rhythm guitar player. And it’s just been you never know what these things are going to fall into place.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s right. Never know. That’s for sure. And so how. Yeah. So we’ll say go ahead, tell me about the records and I’ll go about that. And oh that’s.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Not because it never was. That was fun. It was kind of like getting to do some reggae stuff for a while. We did some shows out West and a little bit of Trail of West Coast of that project. But the, the guitar player from that band, Matt Gilbert, who’s actually now my producer out in San Francisco, is the one I produced.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “My last record, Rolls of Amsterdam.”

Angela Barrett – “Nice, nice. And so how old were you? With the reggae band.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Did you do you probably, probably about 3 or 4 year chapter. Maybe a little longer? Yeah. No.”

Angela Barrett – And that’s nice.

Stephen Russell Wilson – Incarnations. Yeah.

Angela Barrett – “One of my favorites is reggae. And my sons, Omar, especially his, technique is a Bob Marley, you know, big done band. Yeah. In fact, we there is a there’s a joke after we saw the Bob Marley movie, we’re like, oh my God, we really did raise a Bob Marley because he is a very piece, you know, everybody just please go along and you know he.”

Angela Barrett – “Is he doing right? He just fits right into that whole thing. Oh my God, we really did reservoir Marley, which is not a bad thing at all. I think we could all use a little more of that.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, yeah? You any more Bob Marley? You’d realize for.”

Angela Barrett – “Sure. That’s exactly right. So from. So let’s do a timeline. Maybe so your first name was way back. Name one you said, I think.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “I went, yeah, by 1991, I would. I got a little time I hear with the started USC Aiken in 91, I think I was in a band by 92, 93. Yeah, that’s kind of where it began. So in and out of bands for the better part of 30 years.”

Angela Barrett – Was the longest band stint you had?

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Probably this one probably. I mean, if you think about when we started Trials of Amsterdam, it’s going on. Wow, over ten years. I’ll get to, you know, quite a while. You think about that.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. Now there is a, encounter or story you have that I can’t wait to hear. Bunny Wailer.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, yeah. Speaking of reggae, right.”

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “That’s right. Okay. So, yeah, it was, man, it was is too surreal looking back on it too. I was playing a show at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach. Yes. And we were opening up for The Wailers, which was, you know, out of this world in its own right. Again, just had no idea how amazing back then, you know?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “You know, just too young and dumb and full of bubblegum to realize what was really happening. And we were, I’m backstage in the in the green room and, or, like, walking to a bathroom, water and in a serious do. Then there’s reggae guy in there. I realized, oh, man, this is this is one of the Wailers, and it’s Bunny Wells.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And he comes up to me and I say, how’s it going with the all good man? And then he starts asking me if me and my boys had any had any weed. Like, let me get this straight. I said, you’re the you’re you’re in the Wailers, you’re legendary member of the band. And you’re asking me I’m like, oh my God.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So, I said, let me see what I can do. You def. And so.”

Angela Barrett – That’s very.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, it was crazy. It’s just crazy. That’s my Bunny Wailer story. I couldn’t believe it. Wow. You know.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Well, that’s big down there, too. I like it again. I love those guys for sure. So how did where did you start playing music? And then you learned as a child. Were you live by yourself or were you taught?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Not really taught. Not classically trained. I made it in college. I took maybe a piano class or two, took a couple of voice classes. And I just kind of had always been into singing and stuff and started singing very. I remember being at USC Aiken in my dorm, and I was so nervous at first. I go in the bathroom and close the door.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “It had the microphone, but then my guitar player and some other, you know, people be out in the living room with, I would be singing, but you could even see me. Then eventually, take I did. My first ever show was at the Fremont Club in, Aiken, South Carolina, probably 1993, and probably stood there were my eyes closed the whole time, but there was, you know, hundreds of people there, and they were pure.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So no classical training, really just. And mostly I had been a singer and then I, I don’t know, somewhere along the line, I started picking up the guitar just to try to write songs, and I would describe myself as a, a decent rhythm guitar player. Maybe, you know, a not enough to get myself in trouble.”

Angela Barrett – So I ask every musician that I talk with and every answer is different. What comes first? The music or the lyrics?

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, man, it just depends. I think it just depends.”

Angela Barrett – I get that a lot.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, it just depends. Sometimes. Sometimes all of it. Sometimes it just depends on how it comes flowing down. You know, a lot of times it’s just like a guitar riff, maybe. And then you just try to put something on top of it. I find for me it’s usually the best stuff is the stuff that comes first, you know, just go try to overthink it.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So maybe, maybe lyrics, mostly, maybe words, lyrics, melodies and then try to work it out on the guitar. Sometimes a piano.”

Angela Barrett – “Is I know you have like you’ve written lyrics and they stay buried. You know what is more down somewhere down the line. And then you come across some lyric or, you know, I even put something to this, or are you one of those that you kind of write the lyrics and let’s go ahead and think of some, well, how the music’s going to play lyrics.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, probably have more lyrics laying around than I’ll ever deal with. You know? It’s like I’m probably lost so many stacks of boxes and stuff. But, you know, one good thing about technology, I feel like with the iPhone, you can just put them in there or make the notes and do a quick little. So that’s been that’s kind of cool.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And I’ll do it. Yeah. I probably got dozens of songs on there that haven’t been released yet and just like ideas and stuff, but, not to mention on my refrigerator, I’ve got probably eight, ten songs that have been up there for about a year, and I want to try to cut somewhere this year. And, that’ll probably be more like my own project.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “I just do Steve and Russell Wilson and, finally be myself all these years later.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, I get it. So, somewhere along the way, I heard about you have these crazy dreams. And maybe that’s where song music comes from, but did you actually dream up above Beyonce at one point?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, that’s a true story. That’s that’s crazy. You’re asking me that right on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Power of dreams, man. Don’t underestimate him. I’m not. Yeah. I’m not. Only have I got them like, songs kind of downloaded that way, but, Wow. And moved back to North Augusta from California. Was it? I guess they moved here July 2021.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And I remember I’d spent 14 days on the road by myself, drive across the country, and I stopped in Nashville to see my album was makes. It hadn’t come out yet. And, I met a songwriter guy there. And next thing you know, on the 5th of July, I’m on stage playing songs off the record before it even came out.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And, I couldn’t believe how wide open Nashville was in the middle of the pandemic because it way different than the West Coast in their part, you know? So it’s too cool. So that was kind of like my trek across the country, like, well, I could I was like, I could stay on the road forever. But I had to get back to Carolina cause my son Waylon was about to have his, it was his 10th birthday.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – 11th birthday? What are you.

Angela Barrett – Doing?

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah. Thank you. Right. As it is a good neck. Anyway, I, I got to Carolina and I’m sitting in my house out in the country, and I’m kind of like, wow, major changes had happened in my life, and I kind of surrendered and left everything I knew and love kind of behind in California. Kind of let the surfing, living at the beach and following my divorce and the pandemic.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And it’s July, August, September comes around and I’m just kind of like, still get my bearings. And I had this dream about this woman, and I’m sitting in this classroom like this old school classroom, and there’s this teacher writing on a blackboard. I’m sitting in the classroom and to my left is one of my best friends and the teacher.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “You can’t see her face. And she turns and looks for the first time, and I see her face, and she looks at the class and she looks at me. She says, so which one of you is coming home with me? And I look at my buddy Jamie and I raise my hand. I’m like, I’ll do it. And and I woke up and so I woke up.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “I’m like, Holy, holy moly, what was that? I couldn’t believe it. And I knew immediately who it was. It was, a woman named Marla Gibson, who I hadn’t seen in about 28 years how to talk to her. No contact whatsoever. And I just couldn’t believe it was such a powerful, powerful dream. And I said, man, I gotta find this woman.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “I gotta find her, and I, I like making my coffee, and I’m trying to, like, remember the dream in my head making my coffee. And I finally I get a light and I try to search her up. And I almost gave up because I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it. And I said, you know what? You can’t give up.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Let me just try one more time. That I remember. Someone had said she was in the yoga like a yoga instructor. So I type her name in yoga and boom, she pops up, but she’s got like a different last name. I’m like, oh, I’m on zoom in. Like, man, that’s her. I’m oh my God. She’s she’s she’s like more beautiful now than I remember us as crazy as it.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh well she’s got a different last name. She’s probably married, but I’m just gonna say hello. We’re old friends, you know, so I find her on, like, Instagram. Two days later, she responds. Long story short, we have talked or zoom every single day sets a year. I’ve been down the matter for our first date in Panama. We just found out an amazing time and proposed to her a year after I found her.”

Angela Barrett – Wow. All from her dream.

Stephen Russell Wilson – Of her dream.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah. Dreams can be powerful. And in both ways good. And sometimes not so. But, my dad and I have this, through dreams a lot of times, sort of an ESB. And we’ll both wake up, we’ll call each other and go, and I’m like, I know what you’re gonna say. Or he’ll say, I know what you’re right.”

Angela Barrett – “But it’s just one of those weird things between dad and I. So I do know the power of great words. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, it is crazy. So now what do we have? Where are you going next? What’s what’s our next steps?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Gotcha, gotcha. Right now I’m waiting to hear back for some folks. Looks like we’re for all shakes out. We might have a nice gig right around Masters here in Augusta.”

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, that would be. Yeah. I’m kind of waiting to take some meetings and have some sit down with some folks, but I don’t want to say too much about that. I’m at. It is in development. That that would be. That’d be very exciting and pretty. Pretty big time if, if at all transit, you know, comes to fruition, which I think it will.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Other than that, I’ve got a little, like a Lowcountry run, shaping up in April, April 30th. I could I think we got one on the books and all wind up, and the boys have told me they looks like they can come out from, Louisville, Kentucky and Kansas City. My rhythm section, who I used to play with in California.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And if they can come, we’re going to try to stitch a 5 or 6 shows together, maybe do all in, Charleston, maybe hit. I would love to hit Hampton where I grew up, but there’s not there’s really no venues there. And probably so that will stop by Columbia, who knows? Waiting to hear from some folks in North Augusta and then probably wrap it up with a Sunday.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “There’s a festival in Augusta called the Somerville Porch Festival, which we played last year. It was it was one of the coolest things I did all year. I couldn’t believe it. You know, people open up their homes and it was just an amazing turnout. And I was like, wow, I just couldn’t believe it.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That is that’s that’s pretty cool. So now that you mention your band, they’re not obviously in Augusta with you or.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “No, I’m the only one here. I’m the. Yes. That’s, that’s kind of a trip. You know, that’s like my my ATM. My guitar and I reached out. I always usually games with crazy enough. Speaking of dreams, I mean, it’s like I will if I’m doing myself. I’ll book the shows and not have any idea how I’m going to pull it off.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “You know, either get to get the gig, so don’t worry about the details. You know?”

Angela Barrett – “And so where the rest of the band, where do they live?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “My guitar player and my producer, who was in San Francisco. So that’s.”

Angela Barrett – The whole.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, he’s he more or less the other main part of my band. It is a hall and he’s got obligations and you can’t always get away, but, Oh, we we’ll probably go back out in the fall in California. We try to do like five cities out there. Waiting to hear back from there. So he with Matt Gilbert, Rock Stone records, Caesar, phenomenal producer.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “If you know anything out in California, anybody needs a record out there, he can help you. And then we’ve got, one of my bass players. Diego. Rumor also is in San Francisco. And so, guys, we have a drummer. They Wilmer who helps us out. And also Frannie, they’re all San Francisco bass. So that’s kind of my crew out there.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And then if it’s east of the Mississippi, I’ll do it, of course. And then, my bass player, Rob, Rob Freeland, is in Kansas City, and then Phil Brown lives in Louisville, Kentucky.”

Angela Barrett – “And get a gardens there. So, you know, we are spread out.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “There, spread out. And those guys are bad. Those two are better known as the Blues Brothers. We earned the nickname The Last Tour of the Blues Brothers in the better, for better or for worse, one of them ran into a waffle House neighbor backing up and had a little too much fun.”

Angela Barrett – Oh yeah. Waffle House I was always a good late night place to go.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh yeah, you play. So yeah, the band is scattered. I’m starting to do a few more like solo shows just for the sake of doing shows and, put put myself a little more out of my comfort zone to do stuff like that.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, well, that’s cool, that’s cool. So you didn’t you mentioned Matt Gilbert and, Rock Stone records. How long have you been working with them?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, man, I’ve been working with Matt off and on for fantasy, probably 15, 16, 17 years. We used to work together. Matt and I, we did audiovisual and, like, production work and some high end resorts sell the West Coast. And we did union work in San Francisco. We were always musicians and, you know, I, you know, I used to manage his bands and help him.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And then he offered, after building a recording studio, he said, hey, man, if you ever to record your stuff, you know, you help me build my studio so you can gave me a screaming deal I couldn’t refuse. And sure enough, the pandemic. We worked on my record and he kind of pulled me through and I came out. It just far exceeded my expectations, you know?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So I’m so grateful for the time and energy you put into it. So yeah, we’re pretty tight. We’re it’s nice to work with your wood, your friends, you know.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I want to know Wilson a Scott Wilson Boulevard. Right.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – What’s his drive.

Angela Barrett – Wilson drive okay. Yeah. So tell me where that song came from.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Well, Wilson drives the name of the album.”

Angela Barrett – Okay.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “It’s. No, no, there is no song. That’s that’s not the name.”

Angela Barrett – “It’s not the song of sound, okay, I gotcha. I thought that was the name. That was one that I think, didn’t get to listen to. Hey, going on on Instagram, YouTube, listening to some of the others, but I go, oh, that’s interesting. So what is the meaning behind the Wilson drive?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Okay. So that, you know, and that’s a great question. Let’s see. So the record trolls of Amsterdam Wilson Drive was fully recorded, fully mastered. But I’m sitting around waiting on artwork right. Oh I reached I had artist and at this point, you know recorded everything at West and had it recorded and mixed and mastered in California and mastered and, and at Los Angeles, Burbank.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So the record is done essentially about a waiting on artwork, waiting on artwork. And I had artists, a couple of artists in California waiting to hear back from a couple of artists in either Atlanta or here in Augusta that I was trying to work with and hoping to work with and, some of them did help me out indirectly, but I didn’t exactly get the full art from the, and I’m talking to a buddy here in here in the CsrA who’s also a musician.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Billy is a very prominent artist and musician in his own right. He’s like, man, you cannot sit around waiting on this. He goes, your record is done, man. You got to get it. You got to let the give it to the people. And it kind of, it kind of stuck with us. Yeah. He’s right. You know what on what am I going to do?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Wait month and I kid you not like not even a few days later. Bing, bing. I get a text from a buddy down in New Orleans. And what it is is this picture of this wolf dog, his dog who looks like a wolf from, on Wilson drive down in New Orleans. You are honest. And for me, you were like, oh my God, that’s it.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Because I have history with this dog. This very dog actually bit me on the beach in Half Moon Bay, California, running down the beach and bit my jacket, shredded my jacket like a mama was like, literally bleeding. I’m a Jim. You’re dog. You. What’s up? So me and this dog had this relationship and I’m like, you know what?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – I’m putting I’m putting magic on the record. That’s my. That’s it. I’m tired of waiting on art. It’s a really cool picture. So I had that picture that you see actually.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, it’s black and white right behind.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – Oh yeah. So this dog is a new update. So this is out all this is the picture. The only thing over the logos overlaid troll’s out.

Angela Barrett – “Well it caught my attention. For one it was black and white photography. And I love black and white photography. I used to fool around with it back in the day. It was film. So I called my attention. That was the first thing that caught my attention eyes. But yeah, so that is so that that became the name of the album, the Wilts and Drop.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s funny and I actually scrapped the name of my working title for the record, wasn’t it? That was not even it, that just came out on a whim, last minute. The working title for the record was like a real, I didn’t even know if I was going to call it Trolls of Amsterdam before I was going to call Steven Russell Wilson.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “That’s a whole nother debacle. And the working title for the record, was actually EEG by the sea, EEG by the sea, because I used to live in L Grenada where, where the bass were the band started and I’m like, man, no, I’m to I’m and I just grabbed that last minute and went with this.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah. So, last question. You’re any film or TV hitting your direction? Okay. Yes. Yes, yes. Very. Tell me about that.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Well, we’ve been working for a while, to try to get some play some songs and some, you know, film and TV. And I have been talking to music supervisors and so a few writer directors, just a matter of time, trying to sort it all out. But, definitely, if you’re out there listening to this podcast, I could, I could use a little help.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “And, you know, those side, the business side is always so much you can do it. I mean, I prefer I’m more enjoy, like, writing the music, performing the music and concentrating on that. But, you know, that is kind of the business side, but it would definitely be cool and kind of a dream come true to do that.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “So if you’re listening and you got any, you know, projects you’re working on, do you want to source some authentic original material? Give me a holler. Let’s do it.”

Angela Barrett – “Absolutely. And when you say to play in the film or TV,”

Angela Barrett – Just sort of the music in the background of a scene or a beginning or an indie. Gotcha.

Stephen Russell Wilson – “That’s kind of what I have in mind. But I mean, certainly there’s other ways to do it, but, you know, like soundtrack essentially supper. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe it’s opening scene or somewhere in the movie or the series. You, you know, you hear you hear my song drinking problem in the background or in the bar, I’ll be like that or backroads or, I think it’s I think it’s, calling for that, you know, and certainly there’s a few, series that are filmed here in South Carolina to me.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Be cool to work with some people, you know, like here. Really boots on the ground. Maybe Charleston area. Augusta, Atlanta, but certainly whatever. You know, a lot of has done in California and New York and Canada, actually, a lot of it was done in Canada.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Well, that is pretty cool. Yeah. So hopefully that will come to fruition soon.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – That’s right. Thank you.

Angela Barrett – “Well, thank you so much for being here today. And this has been a great pleasure and honor. I certainly appreciate it.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Thank you, Angela, for having me.”

Angela Barrett – “Absolutely, absolutely. So, what do you think you’re headed back to? California?”

Stephen Russell Wilson – “Oh, probably going to be. Actually, I’m definitely heading back to California. I’m heading back in last week of March, first week of April to take away land out there for spring break.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, nice.”

Stephen Russell Wilson – Now to go see grandpa.

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Hey, guys. Thanks for being with me today.”

Meredith Amick – Absolutely.

Angela Barrett – “So the last time we were here was July of 23. So, 18 months, I guess. Somewhere in there. Quite a check in we have going here.”

Meredith Amick – Quite a bit has happened in how it breaks in the last 18 months.

Angela Barrett – “Well, detail. Detail.”

Meredith Amick – “Well, I’ll let, I’ll let Greg kick it off, and then maybe I’m. Fill in a couple of the details.”

Angela Barrett – Yes.

Craig Amick – “Sure. So, we’ve got a couple of new things going on. Probably the most exciting or noteworthy is we’ve signed a deal with Garnet Trust. They are the University of South Carolina, Nil collective. So we’re now producing the official Nil vodka for Garnet Trust.”

Angela Barrett – A nice.

Craig Amick – “Deal started, I think it was September of last year. September, October. Some time in there. Right. And we’re starting to get it off the ground pretty good. Now, obviously, the deal with it is it’s, First of all, I’ve gotta say is really good. Bob Gunn, the bottle. But 25% of all sales go to Garnet Trust.”

Craig Amick – So it’s directly supports USC athletes out there.

Angela Barrett – “Right? Right, right. The Cox.”

Craig Amick – “The other big news that comes to mind, we actually won probably our biggest award yet in 24. So it was from the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition we sent. We sent some bourbon out there, and one of the bottles we sent was our high cotton brand. It was 105 proof single barrel that we sent. So the the class that it was entered, entered into was straight bourbon whiskey six years and under.”

Craig Amick – “And it won that class. It was best in class. And then the division that that falls into is just straight bourbon whiskey with no age limit. And it also won best of division. So it was judged to be the best bottle of bourbon at that competition, which doesn’t happen very often in South Carolina.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, that’s that’s nice. So now let me ask you which one there was, one of your bottles. And I want wanna say there was a dog on it, and I was the and it won. So I guess for design or something at some point. Right. Are y’all still using that?”

Meredith Amick – “That was the hot cotton. So is that same bottle. So not only has it won some design and label competitions, it’s also now won you know best use in the bottle essentially. So right now that’s a great brand for us.”

Angela Barrett – “Yes yes, yes. And still one of my favorites is the, Is that sweet? The caramel. Oh, yes.”

Meredith Amick – “Absolutely. The flavored stuff is big with folks. And so that’s one thing I’ll definitely fill in. Here, I think in the last 18 months, I believe it’s been since then that we’ve actually stood up what we are calling our family reserve releases. And so those family reserve releases give us a little bit of time to kind of play with different flavors.”

Meredith Amick – “And so we’ve done things like, maple whiskey, we’ve done things like a blood orange vodka, and so or a toasted marshmallow vodka that we just released back around the holidays. And so that gives us a little bit of ability to play with different flavors, see what the market reacts to. And so we’ve got now the stable of, you know, probably six or so flavors that we’re cycling through for the year that folks are, you know, really responding to.”

Meredith Amick – “But then this year we’re doing something fun with that, and we’re actually going to throw in what we call our wild card flavors. And so we’re going to add a couple more flavors. So stay tuned because coming up really soon you’re going to see some exciting different flavors. And again this just gives us this family reserve release gives us the opportunity to see what the market responds to and, you know, maybe keep them around, see what happens.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. So now going back to all of the awards, people don’t realize, I guess, that it’s a really big deal because you’ve got how many now? Because I know, gosh, in 2023, there was like 4 or 5.”

Meredith Amick – “Yeah, in 20 and in FY 23. And I don’t remember exactly, but at least middle or end of 23 we’ve had, I think at least eight. And then we collected another 3 or 4 in 24 I believe. So, I, I know back during the, the Summer Olympics, I believe it was when Katie Ledecky won all of her medals and, you know, had them spread out like this.”

Meredith Amick – “I posted kind of a silly photo on Facebook and that feeling like Katie Ledecky and spread all of our medals out and held them up, you know, echoes.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you have to compete with the big boys. I mean, this is not small time. I mean, let’s see some of the people that you did tell me this, back in 23. But go over it again, I mean, some of the other brands that you would have been up against then and now that that, you know, people would think, Holy cow, you know.”

Craig Amick – “So honestly, the way I usually answer this is just think about whatever your favorite brand is. We’ve probably competed against them. So there are, you know, a thousand of these spirits competitions that we can enter. There’s only about three that we’re interested in. It’s the three biggest ones in the country. We enter Los Angeles International and then San Francisco World Spirits Competition and New York International.”

Craig Amick – “So it’s the three biggest spirits competitions. It’s I don’t see much much needed entering small competitions just to rack up a number of awards. So when when we talk about something we want, it’s usually something to to be proud of. Yeah. Your favorite brand was probably in the mix.”

Angela Barrett – “Yes, I gotcha, I gotcha. So now, I know y’all during the, family barrel, what would you call it again? I see it all the time on Facebook with.”

Meredith Amick – The famous reserve releases.

Angela Barrett – “Yes, I know y’all were doing that and y’all were still having some, different functions out there. So tell everybody sort of, kind of what y’all got going on as far as functions and people can come out and taste and do all that good stuff.”

Meredith Amick – “So this year, basically when we’re lining up these family reserve releases, we will have food trucks out. So that’ll be posted on our Facebook page. That gives folks an opportunity to come out decent taste and get a little lunch. Father. There.”

Angela Barrett –

Meredith Amick – “And then we, of course, always offer our tours and tastings. And so that’s always an option. This year we are doing what we’re calling a pick six for tasting. And so basically our portfolio has expanded so much, we don’t need you tasting through the whole thing because that to be there in person, we’re free. That’s right, that’s right.”

Meredith Amick – “So we’re doing a little pick six and you can come in and pick the six that you want to taste. And, and so it’s usually a good time. Then of course summertime we get folks coming in off the lake and we will bring those slushies back out I okay.”

Angela Barrett – “You can say my neighbors favorite slushies. Good old Mister Bill. Yeah. So the, pick six. I think that’s that’s a good way to do it, because if you get too many, then you. I mean, it’s kind of like when I show houses. I mean, after a while, they all blend together and you’re like, oh, so same, the same.”

Angela Barrett – “But yeah. So that’s great. Now have y’all, I know one time, maybe last year. So maybe in 24 it maybe in the inner 23. You had a comedian out there. Have y’all had any more of those kind of things or planned to have anything like that? Because that was a good time.”

Craig Amick – “That we don’t have anything else like that on the books right now. It’s kind of one of those things we’ve gotten busy enough that, we just haven’t been able to squeeze one in recently. Right. We’re actually very well received.”

Angela Barrett – Yes.

Craig Amick – “So I guess never say never, but, I don’t have anything that to share that we have planned anywhere.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I got you now on tell everybody, where you are for people who don’t know, where you are and kind of when you’re opened, and those kind of things.”

Meredith Amick – “So we’re on the south shore of Lake Murray, right off of highway 378, in between Lexington and this little traffic circle. Our address is technically Lee’s Mill. We’re out there about Captain’s choice Marina, South shore Marina, the San Jose on the lake. And our hours are Thursday, 1 to 7, Friday and Saturday 10 to 7. And like I said, we’re open.”

Meredith Amick – Our tours and tastings are always free. So come on out.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, well, I’m excited about the, I’m have I still have not gotten my husband out there, to do any tastings, but I’m definitely going to have to do that. So, you guys got any, you said you didn’t have anything like being planned because y’all are so busy, but is that y’all are physically that busy there, or you’re traveling still?”

Angela Barrett – “Like, I guess advertising your brands.”

Craig Amick – “So yeah. Yes, I’m actually gotcha.”

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Craig Amick – “What we what we learned is it takes a lot of effort, a lot of time to pull off a really good comedy night. And it’s just, there’s there’s too much other work to be done on us. Right?”

Angela Barrett – “So, yeah, sometimes it best in a.”

Craig Amick – Production load to actually make the juice. And then part of it is the sales and marketing to go sell it. All right. So.

Angela Barrett – “Right. Right. Yeah. And if anybody hasn’t been out there and taken a tour, it’s pretty cool place. So your hat, you do need to go out there. It was a lot of fun. To actually see the process and how y’all do it. And, it was a lot. It it was more than I thought it was going to be.”

Angela Barrett – “Is for me. I had never experienced it until I walked through with you guys. And I was like, wow, this is huge. I mean, it’s a big place.”

Meredith Amick – “Especially this time of year. And you can come out. We’ve got like today we have Marsh that’s out there fermenting into this week. We’ll be cooking off. So, you know, some lucky customers will walk in when we’re actually cooking. And I can see it rolling out of the still. So, you can certainly smell the smells and see the things when you come out there.”

Angela Barrett – “Well, good. Well, thank you so much, guys, for fill me in on what’s going on since July of 23. I appreciate it. And as always, so good to see you guys. Absolutely. Thank you again. Thank you.”