Today we’d like to introduce you to Julia and Jeff Levy.
Julia and Jeff, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Jeff: As a dad and daughter duo, we’ve been big fans of audio and storytelling for a long time. We used to listen to the public radio when Julia was growing up.
Julia: While I was living in New York City, I became a podcast fanatic. It helped me to tune out the sounds of the subway, and I learned something along the way.
Jeff: At the same time, I was also listening to the podcasts while driving. We would talk about them via FaceTime. When Julia moved back to Georgia, we began carpooling together to work, traffic and all. To add value to our excruciating commute, we agreed that podcasts would become our station of choice. Our favorite topic quickly became entrepreneur stories.
Julia: The more we listened to podcasts during the week and explored farmers markets on the weekend, we identified a void — our local entrepreneurs had impressive accomplishments, but their stories weren’t known beyond a small radius. We found these small business stories deeply personal and equally inspiring. So, we set out to fuel our curiosity with cool content to share by starting our own podcast. We named it after our home state.
As the official fruit of Georgia, the peach represents where our stories begin. Peaches symbolize entrepreneurship, success and strength, according to legends. In ancient China, peaches were the favorite fruit of emperors. The trees were believed to possess the most vitality and ward off evil spirits.
Jeff: We seek out stories with this peach spirit — founders who remain true to their Southern hospitality roots. From conversations at our local farmers market to discussions at tech events, our stories blossomed from a curiosity to learn more about the people behind the brands.
Julia: We launched in February 2018. We’ve built every step from scratch. We taught ourselves about the audio industry to modestly invest in equipment. We perfected the art of asking the right questions to get to a good story. We learned how to edit! And we researched the best way to share our stories through podcast hosting.
Jeff: We’ve released eight episodes! These range from Atlanta bakers (for dogs and for humans!) to cardboard furniture builder to a food rescue app.
Julia: We’re continuing to build upon our storytelling style and experimenting with new additions, including building community with events for our listeners.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Jeff: For the most part, yes! We developed the idea several months before launching. The process of going from idea to reality took time. We had to teach ourselves a lot about audio to ensure that our show had the right sound quality that we would want to listen to, let alone people we didn’t know. We learned a lot from YouTube videos and conversations with the helpful team at Guitar Center.
Julia: Then, we had to learn how to edit. That was a challenging adventure. We spent time researching the best tools. At first, it was a lot of trial and error. Now, we’ve gotten it down to a science. Thankfully, the process of uploading our audio has been seamless. Our podcast is hosted by an innovative startup that is on a mission to democratize audio and build a community along with it. We’re grateful that Anchor.FM hosts our show for free and has championed our stories.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Peach and Prosperity podcast – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Julia: We make podcasts telling stories of Atlanta founders. We find the most interesting and unique stories of our city’s makers. We’ve produced eight episodes so far!
-Brewing with Purpose: How three friends turned a bible study group into an award-winning beer company!
-Bite-Size Brownies: As the founder of NOLA Girl Brownies, Wendy Sanders is disrupting dessert in the ATL.
-Atlanta Scavenger Hunts: Explore the coolest corners of HOTlanta with these books.
-Completely Cardboard: After moving for years, Dara Schaier designed her ideal, lightweight furniture.
-The Atlanta Startup Farm: How a baseball stadium became a hub of innovation.
-Tech for Good: How Good is a sustainable food waste management company, using tech to combat hunger.
-Atlanta Dog Tails: From farm to table, Big Daddy Biscuits has reinvented classic dog treats with paw-sonality.
-Bread and Atlanta: A baker who found his passion as a child and returned to his roots.
Jeff: With no formal background in this field, we were able to take our concept from idea to launch! We learned from the podcasts that we admire. In particular, we didn’t want to just have an interview style podcast. We wanted to focus on a narrative storyteller where we narrate in between to weave together the stories that we feature.
Julia: We are really proud of our podcast launch party held at WeWork in Colony Square! We thought it would be fun to celebrate our first few episodes. The idea blossomed from bringing together current and future listeners to a fun fair featuring delicious samples from Atlanta food founders (several who are on past episodes and others from future episodes) and a panel to go behind the scenes on stories that we shared.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Jeff: We’d like to bring more listeners together in-person. Our launch party was such a success that we’re going to be hosting more events in the future for a chance to connect with founders and go behind the scenes on episodes or get a sneak peak before they’re released!
Julia: Also, my dad had the awesome idea to incorporate local Atlanta bands into the soundtrack of our episodes. We featured Pony League in our Monday Night Brewing episode. Their song “Stuck on 85” really resonated with us since we spend so much time in traffic, and also it has sweet acoustic piano and guitar sounds that are super authentic and relatable. We hope to include more of their songs in future episodes, and perhaps feature other talented local performers.
Jeff: We’ve also learned a lot about makers from the founders we interview. We’ll be releasing some of those insights soon. Julia will be speaking at Atlanta Pecha Kucha, a talk with 20 slides for 20 seconds on August 24. https://www.facebook.com/events/1799050673520512/
Julia: There is so much innovation and creativity. Our list of potential founders to feature is so long that we could literally release an episode a day. It’s inspiring to see so many small businesses and nonprofit organizations launching and succeeding through the support of the local Atlanta community and beyond. We appreciate the willingness of innovators who say yes to being on our podcast, and we are grateful to have a city of listeners who have embraced the stories that we share.
Jeff: Also…. there’s that traffic! We can’t change that, in fact, if we didn’t get stuck in it then we wouldn’t have had the idea and the time to explore the concept of launching Peach and Prosperity. But, still, we wish that there were less congestion and more access to public transit. Who knows maybe that will be a future episode as we consider broadening our focus on Atlanta opportunities and challenges.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://anchor.fm/peach-and-prosperity
- Email: peachandprosperity@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peachandprosperity/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peachandprosperity/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/peachprosperity
Image Credit:
Eugene Buchko, Paula Fagerberg
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