We recently connected with Damaris de los Santos and have shared our conversation below.
Damaris, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
During the summer of 2022, I kept getting signs to start a podcast show. If I’m being honest, two people may have mentioned it, and I’ve learned that, apparently, I only need two people to suggest something to me for me to do it. In any case, I had never considered starting a podcast, and I had no idea where to start, but I was sure of one thing: I would do it with my sister as my co-host. My sister, Nachi, and I are incredibly close and come from an equally close family. Considering what she and I have gone through in the last four years with the loss of our father, our family anchor, we felt we had a lot to share with others like us on various life topics. Furthermore, we wanted to create a podcast centered on real-life experiences to help others uplift their individual vibrations. We genuinely believe that this world could be better if we work on ourselves to elevate our frequencies.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have over 15 years of experience in the digital space. For the last seven years, I’ve been an independent digital strategist, helping small and large businesses develop a roadmap for their online branded presence. More recently, I’ve shifted my focus into podcasting, a related but different medium that still leverages the skillset I developed throughout my career.
In the last year and a half, I had the idea to create a podcast and co-host with my sister Nachi. We knew the market was saturated with millions of podcasts, many of which ended up biting the dust, but we still believed there was space for the type of experiences we wanted to share with our listeners. From the outset, I had zero experience in this space but was committed to doing the research and learning as quickly as possible. Thankfully, along the way, I connected with experienced podcasters who were pivotal in my podcasting journey and helped me select the right equipment, planning, and editing software.
I’m incredibly proud of the work my sister and I have put into our podcast, “I’m Not Yelling! I’m Dominican.” Our background of being raised in the Bronx by audacious Dominican parents is the backdrop of our lives. Our experiences growing up in two separate cultures sometimes brought conflict when adapting to American traditions. At the same time, we took much pride in our roots. It is that friction that gives us our unique perspective on topics of spirituality, life stages, entrepreneurship, identity, and self-improvement.
There’s no shortage of distractions and turmoil in the world, and we firmly believe that we can live in a better world if we start with healing ourselves, thriving, and ultimately uplifting our frequencies. We focus on developing content to bring awareness of issues we’ve faced as Black Latina first-generation kids and the solutions used to address them from our personal experiences.
There’s a lot of noise out there, and we intend to help others tune in to our message and tune out the other stuff that is not serving them. I believe we do this uniquely because we speak with authenticity, familiarity and humor.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Hands down, the most rewarding aspect has been hearing directly from our listeners about how a particular episode impacted them. We’ve received messages from listeners explaining how they feel “seen” from listening to a specific episode. Other feedback from listeners includes feeling like they’re not alone in their experiences because they hear about our stories. And many others feel like we’re virtual friends and enjoy our realness and the energy we inject into our conversations with each other and guests. One of my favorite messages came from a man who listened to our natural hair episode and shared that he was made aware of things he would likely have been blind to as a man, but now, he’s shifting his approach to his daughter’s hair care. I’m grateful that we were able to provide a lens for him and other listeners on various topics, especially when it impacts others who may go through similar experiences—knowing that we’re having an impact on others no matter how small is encouraging and drives us to continue doing the work.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Having an extensive corporate career has helped me develop an arsenal of valuable skills. These skills have been highly beneficial in starting the podcast show, where I’ve successfully leveraged my project management, product management, strategy, and marketing skills. But, my background has me always wanting to deliver a perfect product, one that has gone through several rounds of quality assurance, all of my marketing assets in place, no messaging errors, all i’s dotted and t’s crossed. As you can guess, this is not sustainable for a two-person team, and I had to come to grips with the fact that we would not deliver a perfect product, we would make mistakes along the way, and all of this was ok. When we launched the podcast, we were not present on all of our social platforms (and presently, we’re still not equally active on all platforms), and we did not have our website up. We rolled out with what was most important: a clearly audible and edited episode.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imnotyelling.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imnotyelling_/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/imnotyelling_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@imnotyelling_
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@imnotyelling_
Image Credits
artwork behind me is the work of Adam Stubbs. Used with his permission. https://www.instagram.com/adamstubbsart/