What You Should Expect From Beats, Hustle, & Politics
The first podcast under New Jersey Plus, Beats, Hustle, & Politics interviews up and coming leaders who are breaking through in their fields while discussing songs meaningful to their personal and career journeys.
Around March 2018, I emailed a group of friends who had become my accountability group- people who I told about my goal of creating a podcast and to who I reported my progress. I’ve always been interested in policy, politics, and leadership, but at the time I had not seen any podcasts around these topics that also focused on millennials and younger people. I told the group I wanted to interview young leaders from various fields about their professional experience and get their takes on policy issues that interest them. However, I also told them that just doing a simple interview format is “played out.” (I went to high school in the early 2000s- I hope using the phrase “played out” is still acceptable…).
I love music and, as I get older, I’m always rearranging my top-10 songs of all time. There’s always a song I can choose that fits a particular time in my life. Most of us are in tune with pop-culture and have an opinion on it. You can also tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. So, I thought, why not mix music, politics, and career hacks together? As millennials, that’s our thing, isn’t it? My initial plan was to ask each guest for a 10 song playlist that I can share publicly and while also discussing on the podcast their favorite song of all-time, at the moment, or whatever gets them through the AO (After Obama) Era.
Through the feedback of my accountability group (Steph, Tamara, Rich, and Aakash- Thank you!), Beats, Hustle, & Politics came to be. It’s a one-on-one interview style format where I talk to people from the younger generation who are breaking through in their fields. I ask each guest to give me a 10 song playlist that I share on the New Jersey Plus Spotify Account.
On the podcast, we discuss three songs that are significant to our guest in their personal and career journey. Since April 2018, I’ve interviewed people in business, academia, teaching, and government. This also includes activists, elected and formerly elected officials, and staff members of state government agencies and legislature.
I’ve definitely enjoyed talking to these guests, hearing about their experiences, interests, and advice. They all offered great commentary about their favorite songs and were even more thoughtful in putting their playlists together. More importantly, these are the leaders of today and tomorrow. You’ll hear about what drives them and how they want to change their industries, policies, and communities.
I’ll be publishing about four pre-recorded episodes a month between October and December. This will be the first half of season one. You can get updates on podcast episodes and playlist releases on our New Jersey Plus Facebook page. Lastly, let us know what you think of each episode or whether there is someone out there you think should also be featured on the podcast.
