INBOUND Bold Talks: Lisa Pierpont "Boston's Boldfacers"

Key Takeaways

I'm really honored to be here. Uh I want to introduce you to some people. Um this is Lo. He grew up in the um the streets of the inner city of Boston, Matapan and Dorchester. At the age of 14, he was homeless and by the by the age of 18, he was in jail for attempted homicide. um really going places, you know. Um but a funny thing happened. His cellmate was a guy who read and he threw Lo a book one day and said, "You know, you should try this." Lo had never read a book in his life and the name of it was The Native Son. And he read his first book and he read it again and he read more. And to make a long story short, he uh graduated from high school in jail and by the time he was released, he had been admitted to UMass. Now he's a father of two and he started a nonprofit uh organization called Urban Achievers and the whole mission is to sort of swoop in to kids around the age of 13 or 14 when he was homeless and help them take a right turn instead of a left turn. So he uh he's one of our bullfacers. This is Rachel. Um she's kind of a badass. She's a roller derby skater. Um she wins a lot. Um and she's a big fighter in the rink. off the rink. Her biggest battle has been uh surviving breast cancer. This is Marcus. He's a bongo drummer. I met him at a party on a roof and was blown away by him. He's from Brazil and decided to uh focus his life on on hand drums and so he went to Berkeley and he majored in it and now he's been on MTV and has albums and he's just killing it. This is Jeremy Aair. Um if anyone's in the high-tech world, you may be familiar with him. He um started a company called Broke Breichov which has completely exploded. Here are some more. There's Jinny, a break dancer. Steven, uh an architect. That's Dava. She's literally a rocket scientist helping us travel to Mars at MIT. That's Nate. He's a voodoo priest. That's Dalen, the little six-year-old who captured the hearts of Celtics fans by dancing at Celtics games when he got excited and ended up on the Jumbotron. Um that's Clancy. He's an actor. He's in the dog actors guild. Um, so you may ask, uh, you know, what in the world do these people have in common? It seems like such a random sampling, but, um, there are 400 others like them, and they are what we call boldfacers. I started it seven years ago, and it's an online magazine. Um, the core of it is to showcase the area's coolest talent and personalities. You don't have to have a million degrees. You don't have to come from the right family or the right neighborhood. You don't have to have a lot of money. We choose people who are excellent at what they do. prince or popper, plumber or PhD. We choose people who have a spark and a story and then we showcase them once a week. Every Tuesday, there's a new story. There's a print feature, there's video. I'll show you some of that a little bit later. There's an insiders guide. Um, so it's all been uh it's all been quite exciting. I u my background is I was as Laura mentioned, I was a TV producer for the ABC news magazine show called Chronicle for about 15 years. And it was it was my dream job. I mean one week it was bargain burritos and the next week it was the death penalty. So it was the light, the heavy and everything in between. Um but after 15 years uh I was sort of seeing a few things happen and one of them was that traditional media was was changing at warp speed and um it was clear that things were never going to be the same uh after you know the emergence of the of the digital world. I had happened to uh do a lot of freelance work on the side even though I was a TV producer and one of the things I got involved with was a site called Daily Candy. I don't know if you're familiar with it but um it was on fire from the beginning and I thought this this is it. This is where everything is going. It is clear. Um professionally I sort of had you know questions about what what the trajectory would be as a TV producer. I didn't want to be a manager. I I don't like managing people. I I loved being out in the field. I love meeting people and learning from people. Um, and this, you know, the the migration to the digital world seemed like an obvious choice for me. So, when I sort of started thinking about how to make this change, I started thinking about the the body of work that I had produced for this show. And um, there's nothing in common with a burrito chef and, you know, somebody who lost a child to homicide, you know, but but the one common theme um was that everybody has a story. And even in a halfhour show, a lot of times you don't have time to tell it. So, for example, you know, if we were doing a story on a a new restaurant, we would interview predictable characters. We'd interview the chef. We'd interview the owner. We'd interview a happy customer, show some shooting flames coming out of a pan. Um, but the people we would remember is somebody like the dishwasher in the kitchen who was training to be in the Olympics as a rower. And there would never be time for him. Um, you know, there there was just that was just a complete sidebar where there'd never be time to tell that story. And I thought that's the story that that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to create this platform on which you can showcase um talent and and the next big thing that you wouldn't hear so about hear about. Um, and that coupled with the fact that every time I look in the paper, I was reading about the same cast of characters, pro- alathletes and politicians and anchor people, and I didn't feel as though they were a real true reflection of the richness um of a community, not just Boston, really any community. I mean, this this could happen anywhere. Um, so that's why I started. Um, I am now going to sort of toss this to some of our interviews so you can you can uh hear a little bit more from some of our people and see a little bit of a sample of the video work that we do. So, if you can cue that up, that would be great. Hi, my name is Shay Rose and I'm a soulful rocker and rapper and music for social change activist. Rock and Rose is kind of like this is who I am and rocking who you are in the world and being like okay with who you are like whatever it is. If you have a bald head, if you have an afro, if you have dreadlocks. [Music] My serious rising got you star struck as I struck Betty Davis on this baseline. Kick it with me. Rock funky with a soulful middle. Stop and I'm applying for fellowship to hopefully go to um Africa, Spain and and kind of pursue my music for social change um activism because it's something that I can do beyond my age. you know, certain parts of the music industry, it's very like you have to be this age, you have to you look this way and that's it. And so that um initiative is is really um helps me to expand what I can do with my music outside of making a number one hit, writing a number one hit or a Grammy or whatever. So, I'm applying for a fellowship. Hopefully, I'll get it. For a long time, I was like perfecting my craft and I kind of felt like at one point like this is not enough. So, I go in and I get other students to like, hey, you're a DJ. Do you want to go in and do a DJ clinic for the kids at the Boys and Girls Club? Or if you're a professor, like, do you want to bring your class to this club and perform? So, a lot of my work at Berkeley in addition to being a student there is really getting um students, faculty, and staff at Berkeley just fired up about going into the Boston community and just sharing their creativity and their talent with kids who might not necessarily have it. And so writing and performing really keeps me connected to humanity and just like human conditions. Like everybody wants to go out and party sometimes and go to the club and just let go. And then everyone has a broken heart. So you can write about that and identify with people. So the message that ultimately I want to get out is we're here for hopefully a common cause which is to live and just express and do what our time is. You know, do our time here on this earth and leave a legacy behind that's positive. Now you got the introduction to the rose. New rose. Everybody knows a rose is a rose no matter what you call it. But you can call me Shay Rose for the n. I got you in my clutches and you're digging on this funk. Going to stomp your feet and bob your head now. Get your soul clapped down. This music is a remedy. Brings joy in the morning and the people that want it. Oh, everybody knows no matter what you call a rose is still a rose. I say rock and roll is a feeling. You can flip it how you want. Can't put it in the box. Say rock and roll is a feeling. Let your mind run free. Be who you want to be. Say rock and roll is a feeling in the park on the block. You can drop it like it's hot. Say rock and roll is a is a she's a star. Um she uh she since won a Boston music award. Um, she wrote actually an original piece for us for We usually come out with something a little bit different for the holidays and she wrote an original song for us. You can see that on the site. Um, Travis is a second video. Totally different uh totally different ball of wax here. You'll see. [Music] My name is My name is Travis. from Boston Massachusetts and I run Boston underground underground is great because you know they want their work anywhere else and you know you know it's one of more corporate shops but at the same time like owner of ski market comes on the ramp with me things out so so it's great you know like it's the best job and I still love it you know have an influence on come and getting them psyched more than anything. I just got a feeling feeling feeling like something there's no rules. That's a big plus and something by myself friends. So you know an individual thing everyone else like that as opposed to like team sports where you know you lose like no one ever loses skateboard whoever has the most fun wins. I remember I remember I got a real board for Christmas like 12 but before that I had like snowboarding going down the hill like that you know always fascinated with it it's really really endless there's no end you know so it keeps me going always more to it I'm not like the gangster the king t-shirt I'm not the rock kid I'm just like I just I skate you know look for me out here of awesome That's where that's where you'll see [Music] me. Um, so you know these people have passion. They have passion for what they do. The question always with the business, uh, so you know, we have the content and we know what we're doing for content. The biggest challenge has been the money. you know, everybody sort of says, "How do you make money?" Um, and that's a really good question that, you know, I was very confident in my content making abilities, but, uh, the entrepreneur thing has definitely been baptism by fire. And especially in this space where everything is free. Um, you know, online media is it's sort of like opening up a store and and paying the money to hire staff and then saying, "Take what you want. It's all free. Take the clothes, take the toys, everything." Um, so we really had to sort of go back to the drawing board and figure out how to keep the lights on. In a lot of ways, advertising, you know, I'm a little local person, so um advertising at a local level uh won't won't do everything. So, we had to be creative and come up with different things. Um so, we started doing events and um one of the things we did, we have a really cool space in in Fort Point Channel, a studio. So, we started monetizing the studio that we had and we started producing something called pop-up stores, which I'd read about on the West Coast, um that were really taking off. And so we started producing those once a month and sort of taking an editorial theme and applying it to that. Um, and we ran one every month. Uh, one month chocolate, the next month yoga, the next month Edgar Allen Poe. I mean, we came up with all kinds of things. The the good thing about being little is that you don't need to go through a lot of management. You know, we come up with an idea and we can do it like next week. Um, so we got a lot of traction from that. That really worked. It was nothing I particularly saw myself doing, you know, swiping credit cards uh, a couple years after I started a magazine. But you know what? It it worked and it paid the bills and and that's what counts, you know. Um in coordination with that, we also um produced panel discussions out of our studio as well. That was on manners. You know, how do you be polite in a modern world? Is an email thank you. Okay. That kind of thing. Um we produced those once a month for about two years. And then um something that we've done uh that really caught on as well is something called red frame coverage. um we cover parties and uh you know I was sort of noticing that as traditional media was having trouble um that they were not dispatching photographers the way they used to to to cover events and even if they did you know that it's only a couple of pictures on a news on a newspaper whereas online you can go down to China you know so we started charging for that and uh and so people hire our crews to come and and cover them um so it's been seven years um as far as the future um you know we are excited about the day that we can roll out nationally into different cities. We'll be excited when that happens. Um but in the meantime, um it's been it's been great. No matter what happens. And what I would say to anybody um thinking about starting a business or starting a hobby, it doesn't matter. Uh you just you just do it. The the the key word definitely is bold. Um the people that we've met have changed our lives. Um and it's not necessarily because of the successes they've had, but a lot of times it's because of the failures that they've had. um and they've driven us to keep to keep trying and keep swinging the bat. And I would say the same thing to you. Um don't be reckless about it. Do your due diligence, but find a way to do it. Don't let fear get in the way. Our boldfacers haven't. Um because even if you fail, it's okay. You're you're going to be just fine. Um, so you know, I always tell people that, you know, even though we're sort of an editorial magazine and we choose our people in an editorial way, um, you should be your own boldfacer because, uh, as far as we know, there's only one life and for us, there's only one way to do it and it's to be bold. Thank you.