We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brandon Joyner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brandon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Any thoughts about whether to ask friends and family to support your business. What’s okay in your view?

Asking friends and family for support in a business venture can be complex, to say the least. For us, a business like Shortwave Kitsch requires a certain amount of support from friends and family.

There are not only people who are needed to read the lines on stage or run the box office or make sure that the lights are turned on when you need them, but you also need people to show up and watch. With SWK also being a podcast, you’ll hope they’ll also be willing to listen and share with their friends and extended family.

Then, there is the issue of financial matters. Don’t lend friends money, as they say. But there is a certain amount of capital needed to get things started and keep everything afloat. In our situation, everyone who has invested monetarily in our ventures understands that their investment won’t lead to any sort of immediate profit. But they will be entertained by our product on stage and supporting our cause.

We have some of the most talented people in Charleston, SC show up and perform with us. They know we respect them and certainly their time and talents. If we keep them engaged and amused while taking up the least time possible by remaining vigilantly organized, we can count on them and produce the best performances possible.

In just our last show, Maddie, one of the co-founders of our company, was called away on a personal matter. It took all of two hours to have someone pick up where she left off. The audience was none the wiser. We support each other. And our friends have become our family.

Ultimately, the key is open communication, mutual respect, and understanding the boundaries of each relationship. We love them, they love us and we all love participating in building something special together.

Brandon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Performing is in my DNA. I started singing and acting in church with my family. Then it was continuing to do that throughout grade school, college and beyond. Before COVID, I thought my time on stage was done. I was satisfied to stick to writing even as a pastime. Then COVID hit and everything stopped. Things went slower for a while and that fostered an online community of creative people gathering together in a way that I’m not certain would have occurred had it not been for an international pandemic.

We gathered whoever was bored or inspired or hopelessly in need of a creative outlet. At least monthly, we met online and read anything and everything we had written. This kept us sane in a time of great hardship. Then things started to return to normal. We were returning to our offices and to the stage for live performances.

But… we loved performing together. So after a brief time, we created an experience that not only can be enjoyed by an audience but can also bring back the core group of folks that joined us online.

Community has always been one of our core values. We’re so proud that we get to create something that has been around for a great while yet is new as we put our own spin on it; as our slogan says: new stories, vintage vibes. All the while, we get to do it with people who want and are excited about growing the business with us.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I mentioned earlier that one of our own was called away on a personal matter. This was in light of several other crazy happenstances. Another of our lead actresses as well as our accompanist were called out of town for our dress rehearsal. Anyone with any tertiary knowledge of the theater will tell you that can mean death for that particular show.

This same show, we lost our original performance space less than ten days before we were supposed to be on stage. We were able to find another space four days before our show. With a new space comes a new set of challenges. We had to rent lights, augment sound equipment and advertise everything all over again.

Not to mention, I broke a tooth that morning while eating a delicious yet destructive sandwich…

Had all of this craziness killed that performance? It might have. Could it have put our business out of business? Not in the least. It’s in these times of hardships that you learn things you didn’t think were possible and didn’t know you could overcome put you to the test and pull you out stronger for it on the other side.

The phrase “the show must go on” was never more true on that particular Saturday.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Consistency, consistency, consistency. Your family will always love you. Your friends will support you as much as they’re able. It’s the shared burden – for lack of a better term – of a collective fan base or audience that will continue to drive the business.

As far as Shortwave Kitsch is concerned, we do everything in our power to provide the same quality every single show. We take care to write the best shows, work with the best performers and treat each audience member as if they’re the most important person there. This is a team effort. Rely on those you trust. They won’t let you down.

We have so many repeat guests who comment, “This show is the best one yet. They just keep getting better.” There may come a day when we don’t hear that. That will be the day we might want to reassess how we’re doing things. But, for now, we are growing and loving all our new fans!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shortwavekitsch.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/swkradioshow/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SWKRadioShow
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/swkradioshow

Image Credits
Ruta Smith took the one of the four of us in the park. The rest were all taken by Kristen N. Granet and Jeannie Joyner.