Renaissance Radio
How on earth did I get here? Setting up podcast gear, scheduling guests, and mind mapping episode scripts and questions. I honestly don’t remember. I know that the Renaissance Agency has been percolation around my head for years now. Some things I learned:
1) There has to be a productive way to be continually curious about new things.
2) When people say, “get great at something and do that” or “why can’t you pick something?” They often don’t fully understand what they are suggesting.
3) Curiosity leads to passion, passion leads to doing, doing leads to learning, and learning leads to curiosity. This cycle repeated over and over creates excellence.
4) I need to create a space that stirs up curiosity and supports doing.
5) This is going to make money.
And with that, The Renaissance Agency was born. Well….conceived maybe. I remember jumping up and down and doing that fist pump “yus yeah yes” thing I do when I’m excited alone. It was perfect. The Renaissance was full of multidisciplined free thinkers. Artist mathematicians, inventor philosophers, painting engineers. I spent months and months thinking about how great this was. Ok, maybe it was years.
It was years.
I just couldn’t get my but out of my seat. It was fear and frustration and fear. Did I say fear? I took a retail job and a corporate job to use my creativity there, but there was no platform for my voice. It wasn’t their fault; ultimately, they didn’t sign up for that version of me.
I was on tour with some dear(deer too) friends of their land, and Amy just turned around in empathetic and kind, encouraging frustration.
”Jeremy, what are you doing. You are so good at this, and I don’t know why you don’t just do it. God has gifted you in a particular way, and it’s time for you to go do that.”
I could tell she was sensitive to whether or not she’d overstepped. She didn’t; she had perfectly stepped.
Shortly after the walk that shook me up, I was fed up, and so was my best friend, Harley. We were sitting in my basement, and he said something along the lines of “you have to actually make something. You have to start prototyping. You’re solving things in your head but doing absolutely nothing that people can see.”
Ok, Amy. I’m going to do this. Ok, Harley. I’ll do it now.
Within what sounded like minutes(maybe weeks), my wife said, “why don’t you have a podcast. You need to start writing again, and you need to have a podcast. I’ve been telling you for years, let’s go.”
Ok, Amy. I’m going to do this. Ok, Harley. I’ll do it now. Ok, Ashley. I’ll call it Renaissance Radio.
Fast forward to September, Pastor Dave pointed out that putting our bedroom in the garage would give us more space and would also give us some distance from the kids. Wishing a few weeks, we started that process, and I realized, “wait a minute, there’s a room here.” So I opened The Renaissance Agency in an empty room with a family heirloom card table and wooden chair.
And with “you need to prototype” in mind, I made my first client myself. Ikea and thrifting my way to a space I was proud of. I reopened my personal website and began to scrape together some family and senior shoots, putting every penny into “The Agency.”
Renaissance Radio has become such a unique outlet. It's the outward expression of hundreds of hours behind the scenes. It's my "thank you" to Amy's and Harleys, and Ashleys and on and on.
There are many things working behind the scenes with The Renaissance Agency and for those expressions you’ll have to wait a bit longer. But as for Renaissance Radio. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy it.
