I'm a homegirl that knows a little bit about everything and everybody.
You know, if you don't lie about that, right, Hey, what's up, y'all.
It's Laura La Rosa, your homegirl who knows a bit about everything and everybody. This is the Latest with Laura La Rosa, where you guys know, we give you your daily breakdown and everything pop culture and all of the conversations that are currently shaking the room.
Now.
I just got back from the Black Effect Podcast Festival, and baby, let me tell you. I left the podcast festival, which just so inspired. And y'all know, we start off this episode always asking how are you doing?
And I mean, like, really, how are you doing?
I'm right now I'm feeling I mean like I'm actually exhausted from the weekend and just you know, I had family there with me in Atlanta. But at the same time, I am so inspired, yo, Like, I don't think people talk enough about being able to build out in business. Like there's a couple of reasons why I'm inspired. I was at the festival and I did a panel that
we're gonna talk about here. But when I was backstage for the panel, I was talking to one of the production guys because I was so nervous because I'm like, they're literally Mandy and Weezy from Decision Decisions formally Horrible Decisions podcasts here on the Black Effect podcast Network in iHeartMedia. They introduced me because they were hosting the podcast festival, right,
So I'm backstage and they're getting closer and closer. They're just calling my name, they reading a bio, they're doing all of the crowd get hype, all of that, and I'm like, I'm telling the production guy, like the stage people, and I'm like, hey, I don't have a microphone. Y'all told me that there was gonna be no microphone in my seat, just in the panel of seats, and I don't got no microphone. Am I supposed to grab it
from them? Like that exchange is gonna be kind of weird because they're gonna be actively talking as I come out. So the guy is like, Yo, you're in good hands. You're in good hands. So I'm like okay. Then they literally say my name and I'm like, hey, I still to have a microphone. And I turn around. He's like, I got you, and he grabs it and gives it to me and He's like, yo, I got you. I know what I'm doing. And he was like, I know
what I'm doing, Lauren. I just then another guy came in and said, yeah, he just came off of working and producing the super Bowl. And I turned to charlat Mane and was like, you got money. Now he just was working and producing the super Bowl and now he's here producing the Live BLA Black Effects Podcast Festival. And Charlotte made was like, I don't got money. I got got And I was like, you know, heard you. But
that moment, I was like yo. And just being there and seeing the build out in a different stages and all the people that come to be entertained, but also the celebrity talent and the podcast talent and all of the production crews and just it is.
A very well oiled machine.
And I don't think people understand how how much goes into putting on events, live events, but just sustaining business to the point where you can have that many different tiers of business and people working for you, and it like go well, and it looked good, and it looked elevated, and it's current and it's with ease, and all of this came from Charlemagne deciding to chase his dream, get on the radio, get on people's nerves, smell a couple
of seats. You know what I'm saying, Like I just was in real time, Like, yo, this is inspiring, like all of this. Tank and Jay Valentine for the R and B Money podcast, sat down with Jack Queeze. Sarah Jakes Roberts for her Woman Involved podcasts, sat down with Regene's mom Toya Mental Wellderness Conversations.
I did a creator's panel. There was just so much. Who else?
Cam Newton did his Funky Friday podcast with and he sat down in the conversation with Porsche Williams for Real Housewives of Atlanta. There was so much going on, y'all, and just so many It was like quality everything. I'm like, bro, the budget was budgeting, but you could have big name productions in the budget be budgeting and it still looked a mess from the outside. Time and is off all of that. Things flowed. There was food trucks, The food
was good. The bar was popping, Like then we got to give it up, we have to, Like, I was like all of this because of a dream. So I'm feeling inspired. Patrick, how you feeling that's amazing.
I'm inspired because you inspired. That sounds like an amazing time. So I'm feeling great. I'm feeding off your energy. You know, we're back at it for this week, So.
How would your weekend? Would you do? This weekend? It was smooth.
I can't even recall. Probably just working shooting. It's one of those week things was just moving so fast year but it's all good.
We here with it.
Well, yeah, so podcast festival next year. I'm taking you with me. At one point because when I got to the festival, I was like, yo, I just want to go out in the festival. I've never been, it's my first year coming. I want to just see what it's like, what the activations are with the food trucks are, like all of that. People are like like in real time, like like noticing me. I'm like, and I'm still getting used to all of that stuff. So I'm just like,
o hey, And then we started taking pictures. We took a couple of pictures. Next thing I know, I look up my managers having to like orchestrate a line. Like I sat for three hours during the festival. I missed the whole R and B Money podcast. I missed the first panel. I missed the majority of the first half of the festival because once I got in the crowd, I was like, I'm not going to tell these people know. And I actually like love engaging with people because y'all
are listening and watching the show. So I met a lot of people, don't Everybody had podcasts. Everybody had great energy. We was in there praying together, laughing together. I was learning about people's shows.
It was just fire.
It felt like a creator's family reunion. That's exactly how it felt. Music wise, energy, love, like all the energy, like all of that stuff. So the panel that I'm moderated was called Creatives, Creators and Curators. It was presented by AT and T and on the panel with me, we had Aaron Howard, a King who was a producer.
He works with the Black Effects podcast Network, but he worked with and helped create and you know the Combat Jack Show, which you know when you talk about podcasts and podcasts and a hip hop space and a culture space like that show.
It's like that show gets pointed to so much.
Because it was the first of its condin it led and drove like it started a lot of people's podcast career seeing what Combat Jack did on that show.
Then we had Christa Renette Hazlet, actress.
She also has a podcast as well called keep It Positive Sweetie.
She's also a producer too.
She's done a lot of different things, so we talked a bit about that, like just navigating through different things as you go. R Carlo Handy who is a TV creator and executive and a CEO of Someoni's Media, Shante Lundy. She is the owner of black Girl Sunscreen. Black Girl Sunscreen is currently in twenty thousand stores, y'all. And this girl started this with her own savings from her corporate job.
So it was a conversation for real, for real, just about figuring her all out as a dreamer and really making it work.
Contry Listen, I know dreams really do come true.
Creators on this pandel we'll share with you guys their story of trying them from having an idea that they ultimately walk to life.
There's no perfect way of doing anything, but this panel is here to tell.
Y'all all the good things that y'all need to know about.
How to get it done.
Now for me being here at the Black of Back Podcast Festival and everything that you guys have been watching in my life over the last six months has literally been a dream come true as a creator.
H thank you guys.
As a creator, y'all, I want to get your story out there, you know what I mean, And you want to do good work and if you want to build audience, but you also want to make some money. It's hard as a creator. It's a lot of work but not a lot of return sometimes. So I'm excited to be here because that has been my journey.
And I'm excited to talk to these creators. We've also probably.
Had a lot of the similar things happening in their life that I have happen.
Now, I'm gonna start with once upon a Dream to.
Y'allity So, Crystal, you started as a stylist, it worked your way into acting and producing.
What helps you believe that you could take that lead.
First?
Thank you so much.
I'm proud of me.
Thank you so much for allowing us to a space, Heavie. But for me, it was I knew when I came to one of what.
I was trying to do, and there was nothing that was going to stop me. I had television, and what I had to understand was that sometimes.
The route would be different to them what you expect.
Yes, we think that it's one way to get into a destination. And for me it was not the first thing I did. I call bah Bahm and I said, hey, I'm moving to Atlanta, and she said, well, pray about it. I had already done that because I don't think any moves without.
Talking about darkness.
That Like, I tell people all the time that the best thing that was ever told to me is is that you can be dreaming and not be in your current reality because you're dreaming and you're manifesting, but you gotta be able to still take care of your reality.
So you gotta put bills, You got to keep your head clear so you be able to even think and create, which you mean, like it's hard to think, create, feel the energy and inspiration when you're worried about how you gonna eat, how you're gonna pay your bills.
You know those type of things. So you sometimes you know what I mean, the route.
To get to where you going is, it's twisting, it's up and down. But I think when you go to festivals like this, or you go to conferences or whatever the case may be, like when you're moving thought your day to day as a creator, and you're hungry. You're just trying to get on you know what I mean.
You want things to work out. You're trying to network up, so that means, you know, you feel like you should only be in conversation with people who can do more for you than you can do for them, whether it's financially or you know, walking you into rooms or things of that nature. But it has been there has been so many times where like people that like were interning after I went through an internship have ended up in positions and called me about jobs.
And you know what I mean, or like you just never know who people are gonna turn out.
The bet I was raised that way, Like my mom always taught me, like you never know who a person is gonna end up being, so treat the person like a person and not like what they can do or can do for you.
And that is so true.
Is like my career has literally been almost like made at certain points in the certain opportunities I've had because people remembered how I treated them and doubled back and threw things my way. So there's a point that a king made Aaron Howard made and he has this saying that he says where he's like, you know, relationships are currency, right, Like who you know is money?
Its goal?
And I asked him about how you know when to cash in on that goal? How do you know when to cash in on that currency?
Well, you have to have value.
Team, that's part of the currency. You just can't be asking people to do you aside. You know, you have to provide some type of value to whatever it is that you're trying to execute, and that takes time because we're all doing things, we're all working on I know right now there's like five people in this crowd that you know reached out to me. I'm probably telling too much, but we're trying to figure out how to do some GOP content. But these are five.
Ten year relationships.
You know, a lot of times what I find is when I talk to people, they get upset, They get frustrated because they might meet somebody that may not be able to reach out to them, or they reach out to them, theyble they didn't get a call bat or follow them, and they get frustrated, like, ah, sometimes you just got to relax and do the work, continue.
On your journey.
See them again, follow up and present yourself in a banner that shows value.
And I think it's a two way.
Street, baby, when I tell you this right here.
Okay, the podcast could have ended right there at that conversation. I mean it technically kind of did because our time was winding down. But that was such a major point, one of the biggest things that I've learned because my life, my lifeline are my relationships are the people I can pick up the phone and call. Whether I need to confirm a story, I need to you know, book talent. I need to find who I need to be calling
to confirm the story. So I got to call a friend, like yo, who's the publicist, who's the manager, who's this, who's the that. You gotta know when it's time to lean in and time that, you know what I mean, like to just not you're not catching on that currency.
But the biggest thing that he said outside of just knowing.
When, is you got to be able to add value in these conversations as well. And I was talking to a girl, there was a group of students there and shout out to y'all, y'all are watching or listening.
There was a group of students.
There from Morehouse, and then there was from another college as well. It was like a whole group. And one of the students, she's a girl that is from New York. She asked me, what is my advice to a college student right now about like how to get to where I'm at from where you know? Like she was, like, you did the whole college thing. You're a marketing major.
I'm a marketing major, like you know, black girl working in you know, mainstream media and like doing these different things and you in rooms with people that don't look like you, Like, what have you learned that you you would tell us right now that we should be focused on it and working on I was like, you need to learn the artists staying ready so you don't gotta get ready. Like everything about pop culture, entertainment moves quick,
moves so quick. I'm snapping my fingers because as I'm snapping, something else is happening, another story is breaking. You gotta stay ready so you don't get ready. I mean, so you don't got to get ready. Really being able to show what you can do and how you can do it in a way that people are wild that they want to bring you back to that table, and also too, I just said, you gotta always think about as well, like people be busy.
Y'all, people be busy.
So I like to think like with certain people when I'm asking certain favors or you know, certain things as I'm in the building phase, and you know, sometimes you need to stamp on certain things to make people, you know, just really feel it. I always think about, like, Okay, these people are this person is busy. So it's what I'm calling them about worth them stopping everything that I know what they're doing because they're going to stop because of our relationship.
Is it worth themselves?
And if it's not, I don't call and maybe I'll wait a little bit until it is worth it. But yeah, So that was just some of the conversations I wanted to make sure that y'all got a chance to take a listen to. But I also ran into because Sarah Jack Roberts was there during her Woman in All podcast. All of the black creatives in La or creatives in general in LA, if you have lived there for over a year, you have been to one church LA, which
is a potter House church. I don't know nobody that has lived in LA that is you know, wanting to go to church that is a creative that has not at least walked through the doors of that church one time. So y'all know how attached they are to a lot of creators' journeys that have lived in la I know, for me, that's the church I was going to. I was watching that church up until I got more into my church in Delaware. But yeah, seeing them in person, I was like, oh shoot.
Like it was also like.
It was kind of like a full circle moment because when I was involved in that church, I even involved that I just used to go. I wasn't like an involved member where they would have known me then, but I was in.
Such I remember, like man I was.
I was in such a building phase of my life and career at that time. It would be some days but I wouldn't even have money to go to church. I couldn't afford to put guests in my car to go there. We would carpooled to church because we were just so broke and just trying to figure it out. Me and my homegirls, sleeping on each other's couches and you know what I mean, sharing apartments and religion and faith.
Even at that time.
It was all we had for real, like just figuring it out, going to church, trying to figure it out, and using church on Sunday as a motivation to get through the week that following week of scraping together money to just like make things shake for real. So to be in that space as a creator, in a new resident of La La to then run into them backstage. I'm at the Black Effect Podcast Festival. I'm about to
go on stage to host a panel. You know, all of this big life and these things have happened for me, and I'm also a lot more rooted in my spiritual journey now with God, y'all, Like it was, I don't know,
It's such a full circle moment. And I actually got a chance to tell them, I got a chance to meet them and almost cried just hugging her because I'm like, she don't even know how much hurt and her husband and their church got me to where I'm at right now to be standing in front of her, because if not but God, I wouldn't have made it through those years, my first two years in La Man. We shout out to my sister Mariah. She's currently on tour with Sizza
and Kendrick Lamar. She's a dancer and a choreographer. I remember we would literally meet up to sit in the car and just talk and cry because we were struggling so bad and we couldn't figure out why it had to be so tough. And both were from Delaware, so we got really really close. But to go through that and then to be back there, it's like Patrick, I see you shaking your head.
You like this identified with the.
Right like it's crazy, It's just kind of it was a very full circle moment. I don't even know how us to put it in the words, but to say it like that. So the festival was a great time. My favorite part about the festival was meeting you guys, like I I'm like being so you know, honest about the fact of like we took probably two to three hours to just like touch the people, like hug people, take pictures. I probably met over three to four hundred of y'all literally within that time.
Yeah.
So the podcast Wressel was fire and talking about Sarah Jakes Roberts and Pastor Terray TD. Jake's Actually, as I was coming in to film the podcast, there was a video and reports beginning the surface from his online service today that he is stepping down from so In November, November twenty twenty four, Tdjkes had this scare on stage while preaching where he like paused and he was shaking, and then he went out and then it was revealed that it was later revealed that he had a massive
heart attack. He actually said that since November, his daughter Sarah Jakes Roberts and pastor Terray Roberts had been leading in the church. Anyway, we didn't know it, but they've been doing it and now they're gonna fully step in and take over the church.
Huge deal.
He said that it was because he wants to work more in the community. Let's say, go listen. I do think that it's more about his health. I think that
that that is very prevalent. Even watching the video of him announcing it, you can tell that, you know, although he's been still preaching and doing better, you know, he's older, he's he's getting up there, and I think it's a good idea for him to step away before he works himself into a place where he's not even able to do the things that he's talking about he wants to do.
So that news came out, so I did want to mention it, but don tomorrow's episode, we're gonna hop back into the topics in the same way that we normally do. This episode was a bit differently, be different because I really wanted to bring y'all some content in real time from the podcast Festival while it was fresh, while it was here.
But we will still take y'all to the streets, to the tweets.
Outside, we outside, we outside, outside of tweet. I really have been like reflecting so much on just a lot of different things since leaving the podcast Festival. You probably like yo, y'all probably like yo, you've reflect all the time since you always in your thoughts.
I am.
I'm one of those people.
But I've been thinking a lot since leaving the podcast Festival, just about what God, like, like what am I learning about God and like and being faithful to God throughout any season in any journey in life right now, Like what my life is teaching me right now about God? Because when I tell y'all, my mind was blown seeing all those people who knew me and my story and were inspired, and I'm just like, oh, bro, like it, like we here, it's happening, like we hear, so I
tweeted out, what is one thing? What is one thing that your life is currently teaching you about God? So our dot Chung responded and said that everything and everything is in all caps, that everything works together according to his purpose. Baby yes, So Rocky Thunder responded and said, God will never allow me to envision anything I can't achieve. I keep checking all parts of the dream life seamlessly.
Baby.
That hits home that how I felt leaving that dang festival, Like.
God, what are you doing? What is life right now?
Lucky for twenty Underscore said he gonna meet you where you at every time. All about Jordan Underscore said that he is learning right now that God remains consistent. So if I've seen him carry me once, I know he'll do it again. Let me tell y'all how all of these are so on point. I just grab these really quick to put in the dot because there was so many replies.
They all hit home this whole episode.
All I've been talking to y'all are about like people and like their elevation and their expansion of their lives and their careers and just all of these things, and like like one thing that I can say that I learned that I'm taking with me from this episode and from the Podcast Festival is you can dream, but when you do it, you gotta do it with God because the way that He sets you up to achieve beyond your wildest dreams. Man, oh my God. Like I'm exhausted,
but I'm so full from this festival. So make sure y'all gonna check out the post content. I'm gonna have vlogs on my YouTube channel.
I have many.
Vlogs on my Instagram and photos. The photos is hitting baby. I was in all Alexander Wayne the second day. First day, you popped out in my sister's Milano d rouge like I was cute or whatever. So make sure y'all go check out all of the content on my Instagram, my Twitter, my YouTube channel. YouTube is Laura the Rosa TV. Some of you guys are already here. Instagram is Laura la Rosa Twitter. I'm one of the roads everywhere. Go find me,
go check it out. If you were at the Podcast Festival and you're listening to this episode right now, tweet me talk to me about what you loved about the podcast Festival. If we met at the podcast Festival, tweet me, instagram me, all that stuff. Let me know, you know what I mean, how you're feeling posts. A lot of y'all have tacked me and the pictures already, but let me know how y'all feeling like after our conversation, after the festival, or y'all feeling like I am. I'm energized,
I'm recharged, even though I'm tired. I'm physically exhausted, but I'm spiritually so full and it's a great place to be.
So I'm signing out.
Tomorrow We'll be back with a full episode of all things entertainment and entertainment news.
I'm Maura la Rosa.
I'm the homegirl that knows a bit about everything and everybody that you guys for tuning in.
I tell you all this all the time because I mean it.
You could be anywhere with anybody talking about these things and these topics, because at the end of the day, there's always a lot to talk about. But y'all choose to be right here with me every episode, and I appreciate you guys for that. I will see you in my next one.