Welcome back to another episode of Invest In Yourself, the podcast series. I'm, of course, your host with the most feel better. And today, I have the most dopest, most confident person in the whole wide world. They are the host of the Dope Confident podcast. I had been a recent guest on it. Amazing conversation we had. I am so happy to have Amanda Ramsey. Amanda, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much, Phil. I wanted to hear that air horn.

I don't have

the air horn in.

I'm gonna put the air horn in just before so people are like, what?

What's going on? Never mind. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. We recorded your episode sometime ago, and it was such a great conversation. Felt like talking to a old friend, so it's good to see you, friend.

It's been amazing seeing you again, friend. I I I love that episode. I I go back every once in a while watching. I'm like, oh my god. I look so handsome. Oh my god. No. I like, it was there's the show notes will have a link there so other people can go, Phil, you were not that handsome in that episode.

Trust me. Yeah. But enough about me. I wanna talk about you, Amanda. Yep. You host the Dope Confidence podcast. Now that's a very interesting podcast because, you know, you have people who are dope. You have people who are confident, and you got them bringing it together.

But I wanna know, what started you in the podcasting world?

Wow. Well, I had a coworking space. I owned and operated a coworking space probably about I started in 2016. So around 2018 or so, I was like, you know what? I think I wanna start a podcast. And so, you know well, some of you don't know, but I have a storytelling night for women. So, I said, you know what? I'm already doing stories live on stage. Let's go ahead and move it over to the podcast world. So I started my first podcast, and it was called Hey, Sugar, because that's a term of endearment from the South that I use all the time.

So whenever I see people, I'll be like, how you doing, Shuga? Hey, Shuga. So people know me. When they see me, they're like, hey, Shuga. How you doing? So the the podcast was called Hey, Shuga. And I just talk to people about just life stuff, about the things that they've experienced, the pain, the hurt, the good and the bad, and how it shaped them to who they are today. So then after probably about, I don't know, 20 episodes or so, kinda got really busy. And you already know with a podcast, you need to be consistent. So I kinda dropped the ball with it, and I just kinda like, you know what? I'm gonna put this on the back burner.

So during the pandemic, I said, you know, I think it's time for me to think about podcasting again, because this is an opportunity to share my personal experience about what I'm going through. So still was on the back burner. And then probably maybe just a few months ago this year, I'm like, you know what? I need to talk about my journey of building my confidence again because I lost my confidence or had a lack of confidence because of all the things I experienced during the pandemic and post pandemic with me shutting down my business, going through a breakup, all these different life changes that I had. I wanted to share my own personal story of building my confidence as an entrepreneur to help other people that are entrepreneurs, that are aspiring entrepreneurs, that to know that you can start over again. You could begin again. Look at your failures as something that can teach you a lesson. We talked about that before.

Mhmm.

So that's why I wanted to do it. I wanted to be able to share my story and the stories of others so people can be inspired.

I love that. And so when you put down Hey, Shug, which or Hey, Sugar, which which is always hard for a podcaster because it's like, that's our baby. That's our, like, our child. And you put put it down, and she's still there. She's still probably getting downloads and stuff. What lessons did you learn from that podcast that you were able to correct, if you will, when you launched Dope Confidence?