We recently connected with Brian Waters and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
The biggest thing I believe Corporate America gets wrong in the podcasting industry is the value of people. Sometimes there are people who are really creative, but may not have the traditional education or degree to show. But if you show them how to do the job, they can put their personal spin on a video or audio project that will serve the audience.
Brian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
When I was a child, I feel in love with professional wrestling and always stopped in my tracks to watch it. Then when I got to second grade, I fell in love with baseball after I started playing it. Anytime I was given a written assignment, I would always use sports an the subject. As I got older I wanted to be a sports writer, so I did everything I could to do. My way into the media world was through my mentor, Sam Davis who was a trustee at my church and a sports writer for the Baltimore Sun. I would shadow him on the job and send him articles I wrote just to get feedback. While in college, I interned at The Sun in the multimedia department. By this time, my passion become video producing and here I was able to hone craft. I was learning Adobe Premiere in school and at the time, the Sun had switched to that platform. During this time, I was able to produce a couple of pro wrestling stories. At this time, I had just launched my podcast, The Wrestling Wrealm which me and my co-host Dwayne Allen would recap WWE shows and apply what was learning at Morgan State to our show. We maintained this show through college and managed to produce over 700 episodes which is still running this day. This allowed me to land a job at The Ringer producing WWE content. Through The Ringer, I have been able to produce interviews with former WWE champions and hall of famers. One of the projects I am most proud of is attending the red carpet for the movie Queen of the Ring and interview my favorite women’s wrestler of all-time, Trish Stratus. The thing I’ve learned over the course of time is if you believe in yourself, do not let anyone stop you in your tracks and always look to learn more.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
There was a time when I had a major pivot in my career which helped me more than ever before. That is leaving ESPN to move back to Baltimore and working at Johns Hopkins Medicine in media relations. By moving back, I was able to learn the Public Relations side of Communications. I took broadcasting and production classes but never PR classes. This benefits today as I know how to strategically communicate not only with my audience but also potential sponsors.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
I met my cofounder of the Wrestling Wrealm, Dwayne Allen while in our Video Production class. We were doing class introductions and my friend Danielle blurted out that I was a wrestling fan and I wasn’t ready to talk about that or the show I had with my cousin at the time. Dwayne said nothing is wrong with that and declared he was a fan as well. After a few wrestling conversations, I told him, it was time for he and I to start a show. We would have conversations about wrestling that no one else was having and they would be sometimes one to two hours at a time. Even to the point, our friends would go to class and then come back and we would be talking in the same spot.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianhwaters
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrianHWaters24
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/n/brianhwaters
- Twitter: https://x.com/BrianHWaters
- Youtube: https://Youtube.com/TheWrestlingWrealm
Image Credits
Image credits
RandyJCruz
Hasmat3photos