 I am just little on me just in Ohio and recording with lawyers telling their stories. Hey, this is Kyla Denigno and you're listening to You Are Lawyer or you are watching the You Are Lawyer podcast on YouTube. So happy new year. It is 2023. Wow. I am so excited to be here talking to you today. The podcast has just had a huge milestone where I've just hit 8,000 downloads. Okay. And now while I wish the subscriber list was 8,000, it's not. So make sure that you subscribe to the podcast as well as listen to it. Those are unique listens, which means that people are choosing to search You Are Lawyer podcast or search Kyla Denigno or search lawyer podcast and click on my show. Mind blown. That is so incredibly humbling and is so amazing because there's a common myth that lawyers are risk at verse and that is not true. Okay. I have at least 70 examples of why that is not true because I talk to lawyers who become filmmakers. I talk to lawyers who become art sculptors and who own beauty brand companies. Lawyers are not risk at verse. In fact, lawyers are smart enough to calculate all the risks that they'll probably take and still do it. Okay. And the fact that I get to share with you how cool lawyers are, how fearless we are, how we have all these great side hustles and jobs and interests that are outside of what we do. I love that I get to share that and I love that you are listening to it. So 8,000 downloads is a huge deal. You don't get it, right? You might listen to podcasts that have 8,000 reviews, which means that they definitely have like 200,000. If not, almost half a million downloads. And that's fine. I am a little Ohioan tattooed lawyer was talking to people every week. 8,000 downloads is exceptional. And I share that vulnerability because I've had a lot of stuff happen in the last two and a half years. And if I needed to slow burn, if I only get another 8,000 downloads for the rest of the podcast, I'll still take it. Okay. Because in the time period, I've had my first child move from one state to another state, bought a house, voluntarily left a job, got fired from a job, lost the parent and life has happened. And I have not skipped on the podcast. I haven't missed the episode. I've been talking to y'all. Now I'm recording for y'all. I've been working. And don't forget, I do all of this myself. I find the guest or I research the guest if they pitch themselves to me. I record, I edit, I publish, I market, I do all of it, right? So while it does feel vulnerable to share with you that I have 8,000 downloads, I don't mind because to me, it is an incredible honor because I'm sharing with the world the fact that lawyers and law students and law graduates can do anything with their law degrees. I am trying to propel the profession forward and let you know, we exist outside of a courthouse outside of a big law office. We are everywhere. Okay, so I appreciate every single download, every single time you search for the URL lawyer podcast, every single time you look for my name, every person that goes to the website, even the people that look at the merchant don't buy it. I appreciate you. Yeah, so I am here talking to you for this bonus episode because podcasting changed my life and I don't say that lightly and I don't say that to be exaggerating, okay? Podcasting reminded me that I was a creative person and that's because I was looking for a job. I eventually got a job working in a basement of a law firm and I went from the basement to a corner office. No exaggeration. It was an internal office, okay? My window overlooked the hallway but I had a corner office. It was fancy. I did it and while I would wear the fun outfits and the cool things and I was at work, definitely always had the funky hairstyles. That was pretty much it for me and so I think I had definitely forgotten how creative I was but talking to people every week, teaching myself how to edit audio, teaching myself how to edit video, teaching myself how to pitch to guests, all of that stuff I had to learn how to do and it actually sparked the creative side of me and it brought it back out which eventually turned into me recording the episodes for YouTube as well as just doing the book reviews, right? Just doing all of this. So all of this spawns out of the decision I made back in February 2020 which was to start the podcast. First episode was released April 16th but I did make the decision before then and I started to seek out guests. It was my own way of doing market validation that there actually were lawyers using their degrees in non-traditional ways that I could talk to, right? There was someone, there was an accountant that I talked to who also was a lawyer. How cool is that? There were people who had never taken the bar exam and they chose not to take the bar exam. Well, yeah, that's who I want to talk to because they're still lawyers, okay? And you started to watch the podcast on YouTube. Me. I am just a nerdy girl from Ohio but I turned on my camera and I share these lawyer interviews with you and you watch it. Wow. And if you haven't watched, please go to the YouTube channel. You can either search You Are a Lawyer podcast or you can search Kyla Denonio, D-E-N-A-N-Y-O-H. Search Kyla Denonio and then you can watch the You Are a Lawyer podcast. Okay, so why am I here? I am here because I went to law school and I graduated from Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2015. So I mentioned being a Southern University graduate. We call the school SULC. And so every single season of the You Are a Lawyer podcast, I have interviewed an SULC graduate. I have to. That's my alma mater. I absolutely have to. So one season, I actually interviewed two different guests. That's my own personal thank you to the school because we are out here doing some incredible things with our law degrees. Okay? So that's another little cute thing for this bonus episode. So when season four ended, I told you guys that I was getting out of my comfort zone and I was going to start with weekly podcast. Yeah, I've been doing it and I've been exhausted. It's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun because true to form, I am releasing this video in January 2023. I've recorded with guests through March 2023. So even with weekly videos and weekly podcast episodes, I still continue to work ahead because I just feel comfort in knowing that I have content waiting for me. I do not record videos to put them out the next day. That's not that's not my blessing. Okay? So whereas the seven videos that I have recorded now would have lasted me about three and a half months, now they're lasting me two months, but I am still working ahead and using all the organizational skills that I've had that serve me when I was working in offices and serve me in law school. So that stretch, that push out of my comfort zone has been good, but it has also been very difficult. Okay? I did want to give you guys a little update on that because I don't take that lightly. That has been a big change. So there's other things that you can watch on the YouTube channels. I also have videos about lawyers. I have my personal top 10 list of black women lawyers that are on TV. I also have videos like the six soft skills that lawyers have that they might be overlooking, as well as the top five things you need to do if you fail the bar exam. Okay? So if any of those videos sound interesting to you, head over to the YouTube channel. You can search Kyla Benigno on YouTube or search you are lawyer podcast so that you can find the different playlists that are on YouTube, including a video that corresponds to this bonus episode that you're listening to right now. Okay? So subscribe to the podcast, okay? You don't want to miss another episode because not only do we discuss where the lawyers are right now as in what they're doing. Are you an artist? Are you a sculptor? Are you a filmmaker? Are you a business owner? What are you doing right now? We also talk about the backgrounds of the lawyers. We talk about why they went to law school and the experiences that they had when they were in law school. Okay? So this is way more than talking about your job. We're talking about all the steps it took and how your life impacts you being a lawyer. Okay? And that's really important because a lot of the emails and responses that I get about the podcast are people thanking me for humanizing lawyers, which was not my intent. I mean, I know why I went to law school. I know the challenges I had getting into law school. I know all of the things. And so I was like, did anyone else experience this? What else do you bring with you when you go to work as a lawyer? Or what else do you bring with you as you are YouTubing? Right? Did I learn how to organize from law school? Did I learn how to negotiate so that now when I talk to sponsors, I can know the right things to say. Did I learn that from law school? I did. So thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it. I am just a little on me, just in Ohio and recording with lawyers, telling their stories, making a small contribution and the fact that people actually listen to it and share it with others and appreciate it. Really, really blessed my heart. So in the comments, talk to me. How long have you been a lawyer? Are you thinking about going to law school? Have you never considered lawyers to be cool? I want to hear about it. Okay. So thank you for listening to this episode, sharing your time with me and getting an update on what's happening in 2023. And I will see you next week for another episode of You Are Lawyer. Bye.