We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Curtis Grace a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Curtis , thanks for joining us today. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.
When we started the podcast, we were astonished at the outpouring of support from our community and those who had served in Panjwai. Their financial and listening support helped make our podcast what it was, and allowed us to purchase the equipment to create the best possible product we could. We always said we wished we could find a way to give back at some point, and essentially kept our eyes out for any opportunity to do so.
When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in fall 2021, we found ourselves immersed in the pain and suffering of both those left behind in Afghanistan, as well as those in the states who felt like they were seeing their work undone. We wanted to find a way to morally support our community and financially support those refugees streaming into the U.S. from Afghanistan. While we had a decent network and fan base, we wanted to maximize the efficiency of any campaign, so we partnered with other podcasts and social media pages to promote a limited time fundraiser, where we sold T Shirts and Koozies stating “It was not a waste” featuring the colors of the flag of Afghanistan. It was a wild success, and allowed us to donate $5,500 to World Relief Seattle, a non-profit organization that was helping with refugee resettlement in the Seattle, WA area.
It was a great example of timing a campaign to maximum interest, across a community that was seeking some way of stating that their efforts were not wasted. It was just great to see communities collide and collaborate to help a lot of people, and it remains the proudest moment, for me, of the podcast.
Curtis , 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?
The Panjwai Podcast is an interview-based podcast series that seeks to capture and document the experiences of combat veterans who served in the Panjwai District of Afghanistan. Panjwai, the ancestral home of the Taliban, was a strategically critical region of Kandahar Province in which several different NATO forces served during the War on Terror in Afghanistan.
We (Luke Coffey and I) initially sought to tell the story of our Company, B Company 1-64 of 2nd Brigade 3rd Infantry Division. We served at COP Sperwan Ghar in Panjwai from March to December of 2012 during a period of intense fighting towards the very end of the American conventional fight in Afghanistan. We sustained a lot of casualties and losses for the Company, and felt the experience was unique and reflective of Infantry combat in a modern era. We wanted to capture our stories to preserve them forever.
Interest in the project far exceeded our expectations, and we felt it was appropriate and necessary to expand the scope of the project beyond our deployment and talk to others that had served in Panjwai. over the course of three seasons we interviewed around fifty different guests from all different walks of life about their experiences in Panjwai, including citizens of the United States, Canada and Great Britain. We had the privilege of interview four star generals, best-selling authors, and highly decorated war heroes, but most importantly had the opportunity to let the average, enlisted infantryman tell his story .
What we found was that this project was perfectly timed and much needed for our community. The men and women who served in Panjwai have kept their experiences mostly to themselves, their traumas and experience shrouded in mystery even to their closest loved ones. We found that by sitting across the mic from them, it was easier to open up about these experiences and generate an authentic and genuine account of war at its lowest levels.
The healing that resulted from this project is by far the highlight of it. We were able to end the project by partnering with the Semper Fi Fund to bring our company together in Texas for a 10 year reunion. It was clear that either through the podcast itself or the reconnections with the men they served with, that healing was occurring. Hatchets were being buried. Trauma was finally being reasoned with and men were ready to move on.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
When we decided to start the Podcast, both Luke and I were “in between”. He had just graduated with his Masters degree and moved to TN so his wife could pursue her PHD, and he was in between jobs and purpose, really. I had just moved to Alaska after leaving a corporate role in Seattle, and was pursuing my MBA full time. We both had a lot of time on our hands but no income generating activities, so tackling something like a podcast with no prior equipment or experience was daunting.
We turned to crowdsourcing to try and fill the gaps, and it far outpaced our expectations. We offered exclusive merchandise and gifts for the various tiers of donations, and we were able to raise almost $5000.00 just to get the thing off the ground.
To keep it running, we opened a small merch store on our website, and offered subscription services through Patreon and Podbean to allow subscribers to support the podcasts ongoing costs and development.
The final nail in the coffin came when we finally reached the monetization thresh-hold with Youtube, allowing us to run ads on our videos and collect revenue, a stream that continues in perpetuity and will likely allow the podcast to remain on the web indefinitely on its own.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I met Luke Coffey at Fort Stewart, Georgia in March 2012 just a few days before we would deploy together to Afghanistan. I was a brand new private, straight out of Basic Training and brand new to the unit. My first interaction with Luke was hearing his theory about the existence of Bigfoot, a wild and absurd tale he would agree was complete BS. (But we do both adamantly believe in the big man – just not Lukes story). When I learned he was from Southeastern Kentucky, and that we had lived without 30 miles of each other at one point in our lives, we became quick friends, even watching the University of Kentucky basketball team win the national championship from the MWR computers later that month in Panjwai, Afghanistan.
Our bond as friends only grew stronger throughout the deployment, as we ended up on squad together. By the end of the deployment Luke and I were the only remaining members of our squad on Sperwan Ghar, with the rest of the squad wounded and back in the US. This shared resilience formed a lifetime bond that ensured we would be best friends still 10 years after the deployment.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thepanjwaipodcast.com
- Instagram: @thepanjwaipodcast
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thepanjwaipodcast
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-panjwai-podcast/
- Twitter: @panjwaipodcast
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/thepanjwaipodcast