The Start Of My Parents Office
How I started my podcast, My Parents Office and an update on how it's been going.
Nowadays, who doesn’t have a podcast? Just about everyone has one but, the real question is, how many people are able to keep up on their podcast? Not too many. I am pretty proud of the product I have been able to push out since October of last year and I have no intention of slowing down.
I came to my friend, now co-host and producer, Brett Castle with the idea of working together on a podcast. Brett and I wrestled together for two years in high school. He graduated in 2017 and went south to Florida for college. He attended school to get into production and worked with high school wrestling teams in the area. Brett moved back to Enfield after he graduated and that’s where our journey begins.
When Covid-19 struck in the spring, I was sent home from Massachusetts Maritime Academy after only being there for two weeks and I was bummed. Online class and the lockdown took a toll on my mental health. I wasn’t seeing a therapist at the time so, my only real outlet was through podcasts. Somedays, the only thing that would get me through the day was listening to a guy like Dan Katz or Joe Rogan. It became an escape from reality.
I listen mostly to the Kirk Minihane Show which is presented by Barstool Sports. While I am a sports hardo, listening to Minihane gave me a different flair that I had never heard in podcasts. His brash out look on politics, journalism, and the way he could make a joke out of anything, including his parents death, captured my attention.
In July of 2020, Minihane hosted a live show at the Saco Drive-In theatre in Maine. I went up with my parents and was able to meet Minihane. The way in which he operates is absolutely mesmerizing. When he gets behind the microphone, he is a machine but off the mic, that does not change his personality. He’ll throw a joke at you and then tell a story that can link back to anything in your own life.
Driving south on route one after the show, I started to think, I wanted to do what Minihane does. That is when my brain began to spin with the ideas for a podcast, one that didn’t have a name yet.
Come September, I was at Bretts apartment watching a roof top wrestling card, NOT WWE, and I just through the idea at him, “lets start a podcast, you and me.”, he responded, “yeah man, absolutely, let’s do this”. After those words rolled off his lips, I got to work on trying to get guests on the show.
My whole idea for the show was to just interview individuals that I found interesting and had found a lane that they were thriving in. My first guest was one of my best friends, Phoenix Jack who is a hip hop artist from Ellington, CT that I played college football with. The week before I interviewed him, Brett, Phoenix, and I met at my house to talk about the vision for the show.
We had all of our ducks in a row except for one thing, a name. We kicked around “Live to Tape with Andrew Diaz” and “The 860 Report” but, looking back at that now, those are pretty dog shit names. We landed on a very literal name when I said “Lets just call it My Parents Office. I mean we are legit in my parents office”. It stuck.
After we recorded a short 46 second promo video, the three of us sat around my kitchen table eating chicken parm and that’s when I told my parents about it. As supporting and loving parents, they told me it was a great idea but, if my academics slipped, the podcast would be no more.
A week later, Phoenix was back in the office and we just chopped it up for 30 minutes about his song that came out, playing college football, and how Phoenix was in musical theatre as a kid. We got on a very set schedule where we were interviewing comedians, Tik Tokers, and rappers from the area that I knew and dropping one episode per week. We were in such a great groove that we decided to up our output to two episodes a week.
When we moved to twice a week, I got nervous that we would run out of people to interview so, I became a fucking hound. I would hop into Twitter and Instagram DM’s and hunted down the emails of people I wanted to interview. Early on, I was able to land journalist Alex Reimer, podcast producer Dave Cullinane, and Wake Forest defensive lineman Rondell Bothroyd. I was not satisfied though, I stayed persistent.
After the new year, Brett and I thought that we should goto three time a week. We started the State of the Office segment, that comes out every Monday, where Brett and I just talk about what is going on in our lives and we talk a lot about college wrestling. We even added to our Wednesday and Friday interviews with a segment called “Bretts Question”.
With “Bretts Question”, Brett comes to every taping with a burning question that we discuss. Sometimes we’ll go over some topics revolving around high school sports or maybe even a top five list about our favorite musicians. The intriguing part of this weekly segment is that Brett won’t tell me what he has in store so, I am left guessing up to the second that we record.
Sitting here at the end of February we are still rolling. I’ve been fortunate enough to interview athletes from the division one to the division three level, musicians I idolize, and other characters in the podcasting industry.
We’ve hit some rough patches where we aren’t able to record in the office but, we improvise and adapt. Brett and I have been able to keep a positive attitude through this whole journey and because of that, we are starting a YouTube channel to venture out of the office.
I often think, if I never got into podcasting, where would my mental state be at? Before I began, I was in a dark place that essentially no one knew about and I needed an escape past just listening to others. I love what I’m doing and without a dude like Brett and supporting parents on my side, none of this would be possible. The My Parents Office train is moving so you need to either hop on or get off the tracks.