We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Crystina Rowntree and Danielle Lamadrid. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Crystina and Danielle below.

Crystina and Danielle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Once we had the idea for a podcast and solidified the purpose and direction, the real task ahead was learning the process and how to show up as hosts. From the beginning, we set out to do this 100% on our own – mostly out of necessity – but we did feel it was important to take complete ownership of what we were creating. We have no producer, editors, social media managers, or assistants. It’s all us!

We started with the podcast studio. It was a more economical and efficient choice to create a home studio. Renting a studio on a consistent basis gets expensive, especially for indie creators with a small (or virtually no budget). It also saved time and offered us the freedom to record on our schedule. We emptied and painted an extra bedroom in the house that was a makeshift office, then got to work on soundproofing, lighting, and recording equipment.

This is where we saw the most trial and error. We tried several microphones that weren’t the right fit, either because of the type of microphone or sound quality. Ultimately we landed on the Sennheiser e835 which is an amazing choice, especially for podcasters on a budget! We dealt with a whole slew of technology issues, which was a headache but expected as we had very minimal knowledge going into it. Now we can confidently show up on recording day knowing exactly what to do and how to troubleshoot if things aren’t going right.

For anyone reading who wants to start a podcast and may have decision fatigue with all the platforms and technology decisions to choose – we won’t gatekeep! Spotify for Creators is great because it’s free but we love Buzzsprout as it has been the most seamless hosting site. They offer a lot of tools and resources to get you going. We started out on Riverside and that was a HUGE flop so we switched over to Squadcast. The huge pro here is they were bought by Descript, meaning you can now edit your episodes through the transcript, taking a 5-6 hour editing job down to about 1 or 2 depending on the length of the episode.

Looking back over the last 7 months, we see so much growth and are so proud that we did everything our way, even when it was hard. We now have a well rounded knowledge and hope to coach other creators and provide resources in the near future so they don’t have to make the same mistakes we did.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are Danie and Crystina, the hosts of Empaths Anonymous podcast where we explore navigating through life as an empath and the different cultural, socioeconomic, and familial upbringings that played a part in shaping us. Crystina is your mixed, curly-haired career baddie and community builder with over ten years of experience in public relations and media. Danie is a 4th generation Mexican American, mother, and psychology student working professionally alongside English learners in their adolescence.

We started Empaths Anonymous podcast as two women of color, eldest daughters, and best friends in their early 30s trying our best to hold it down in our careers, relationships, families, and mental health journeys. Both of us are huge podcast fans, but felt we didn’t see ourselves represented in the landscape (did you know less than 14% of podcast hosts are black and less than 7% are Latiné!?) Our goal is to be 100% transparent and authentic in our journeys without the illusions of a social media “perfect life” to show our audience you don’t have to have it all together to go after your dreams and you’re not a failure if you’re still building your life after your twenties.

Our deepest desire is to create a space and community of fellow BIPOC millennials, empaths and deep feelers, generational cycle breakers, and people on their own prospective healing journeys to open up honest and authentic conversations on mental health, wellness, culture, self-care, friendship, relationships, spirituality, and more! Each week, we host an EA meeting or “support group” on a related topic or current events in pop culture through the lens of mental and emotional health. We seek to bring awareness to mental and emotional health and what that looks like within our own cultures by featuring fellow BIPOC therapists, wellness experts, authors, entrepreneurs, and creatives. We start each episode by asking, “What’s in your cup!?” to hopefully inspire fellow deep feelers to prioritize filling their own cup first!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Absolutely! First and foremost, we are here to amplify BIPOC businesses, art, and culture and make sure mental health within black and latiné spaces is talked about more.

When coming up with the name and community aspect of our podcast, we landed on Empaths Anonymous because we wanted to create a support group of fellow millennials and empaths to be completely themselves and talk about topics that are often glossed over. We are living in the age of social media “picture perfect” lives where there’s this unspoken expectation that by your 30s you should have the house, the car, the partner, the family and be at the top of your career. While that is wildly unrealistic, it also creates pressure and shame for those who have not “arrived” at that place yet. The podcast was born out of a time where we were both going through life changes and transitions that left us back at square one. The goal of the podcast is to document our journey (even the non-aesthetic parts) and show that it is okay to start over. Often times, the most beautiful things emerge out of the rubble. We want to show our audience that if we can do this, they can do whatever their heart is telling them to, no matter their age!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Hands down, the most rewarding part about podcasting and being a creative is the community of like-minded people you connect with and add to your network. Now more than ever we need each other. We need each other’s art and voices to ban together. While the lived experiences of most BIPOC folks in America can be different, what binds us together is a mutual understanding and urgency to have our stories heard and cultures celebrated. We have made so many friends, working partners, and mentors in this space based on the fact that we can relate on where we’ve been and support where each other are going.

We also want to note that the freedom to be and create whatever is inspiring you at the moment is incredibly joyful. With both of us being multipotentialites, we’ve often wanted to be, try, and do many things at once, which can be discouraged in society. Instead of niching down, we let our creative freak flags fly and share our rainbow of interests and talents with our audience. As long as it makes sense for the purpose of the podcast, we’ll talk about it. We want our audience to know all facets of us that we feel safe enough to share.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://open.spotify.com/show/6sdrtFze1MJ2NEDJUZ4XLx?si=6c030b03e3f54cb6
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empathsanonpod/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EmpathsAnonymous
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@empathsanonpod
  https://buymeacoffee.com/empathsanonymous – for those who would like to support the podcast!