Words with P.R. (Edition 8) - Wrestling is a Love Story

By Patricia Rogers | Posted Monday, May 9, 2022

"Wrestling is a love story,” - Cody Rhodes

INTRO

I am back from Dallas and feeling better than ever. I had the pleasure of going to Texas for WWE Wrestlemania as a part of my women’s wrestling podcast, Those Wrestling Girls.

If I had one word to describe what wrestling fans call “Mania Week” is passion.

When hoards of fans travel to the host city of the biggest wrestling events in the world, the streets are filled with people dressed in t-shirts adorned with their favorite stars, and championship belts.

It is almost like everyone there is buzzing with excitement. There is love in the air because we are all there for the same reason, the love of pro wrestling.

This was the first time my friend and co-host Krista B. and I were able to travel outside of New York for Mania Week. The entire trip was one of firsts, and I can say it was the best weekend of my life. I got to meet a lot of friends that I have known online for years for the first time. Including other black wrestling podcasters, and tastemakers in the industry. We were able to have fun, network, and make unforgettable memories including working out of the press box, floor seats to see my all-time favorite, WWE Hall of Famer and Texas native Stone Cold Steve Austin (TWICE!), and the bonding that took place at the after after-parties.

I am already planning the next trip to Los Angeles, California for 2023. 

MEET 

KIPP AMP School teacher, musician, & Wrestling Club founder Mr. Perry. Okay, his name is Victor but I was introduced to him by my mother as that so for my sister and me, he will always be Mr. Perry.

He is a great sixth-grade teacher and one that many of us wish we had when we were younger. Like myself, he grew up a wrestling fan and there were times that he did not have other people with whom he was able to talk about it. My mother introduced us, and we have been good friends ever since.

I was honored when he sent me his proposal to start a wrestling club in his school, KIPP AMP Brooklyn. Students can come to his classroom on lunch breaks to watch matches and documentaries. After the club was approved by the school he posted pictures and videos of his students enjoying marquee matches and it soon went viral. Everyone praised the young teacher for bringing wrestling to his students, and how fans of all ages and backgrounds wished they had a teacher like Mr. Perry. 

Not only were other fans inspired by what Mr. Perry was doing, but so were WWE superstars themselves. It was not long before one of the biggest WWE superstars in the world reached out to Mr. Perry asking to visit his club. She is someone who has had a passion for wrestling since watching WWE for the first time at 10 years old. Sasha Banks had to face many obstacles growing up and has been very vocal about how much wrestling has saved her life and given her a purpose. So I can only imagine what it meant to her to see Mr. Perry’s students enjoying a club like that.

“One day while I was in the middle of class teaching, I got a Twitter notification and I briefly looked and saw that it was from WWE. I had to keep calm while in class and after class, I read the message and saw that Sasha really wanted to come to see The Wrestling Club… Never did I actually think that could happen. From that interaction on we made it happen. I have so much love for WWE for working with me and the school to create such a beautiful moment that will live forever in the lives of my students. I've gotten phone calls, text messages, emails, from students telling me how much it meant to them,” says Victor Perry.

The students lost their minds and were so moved by her visit. Banks answered questions from the kids who were eloquent, respectful, and filled with joy. I think the most memorable part for me was seeing how much it meant to the kids but also what it meant to Sasha Banks. She kept thanking Mr. Perry and the entire moment was genuine and emotional.

He went on to share with me, “Meeting Sasha I realized quickly that she was like the sister I never had. She's so easy to talk to. She was so warm and inviting and you could see the joy all over her face. I think this moment not only meant a lot for my kiddos but it also meant a lot to her. She got to dance and sing to her iconic theme song, answer and give some insightful words of wisdom and take the best photos ever with The Wrestling Club. She's inspiring a whole generation, the future. Not many people can say that! I'm really happy we could make this possible. I hope we can continue to have others stop by and hang out with the kids in the club. I want The Wrestling Club to be the coolest club ever."

Relive the entire experience with me exclusively on Those Wrestling Girls Patreon. Thank you, Sasha Banks, WWE, KIPP AMP Brooklyn, and Mr. Perry for making that moment happen for those kids. Glad I was able to experience that. 

SHOUT-OUT

The University of Orange, the free-people university and non-profit organization based in Orange, New Jersey is gearing up for its annual music festival this month.

The 6th annual Music City Festival takes place from May 13-15 at eight different outdoor venues around the city. Over 50 musicians will be performing in partnership with the following restaurants: D’3Fold, Reddz Bistro & Grill, Sarrah’s Cafe Trinbago, Inner City Cafe, Four City Brewery, Benji’s Taqueria, and Hat City Kitchen.

Performers include Alexandra & Real Music, Asad & King Sykes, Big Naut, Jazz Millionaire, Paul Lombardo & Juliana Carr, Voices in Harmony, Orange All-City Chorus, Orange Concert Choir, and Mighty Marching Tornadoes. 

Music has always been a part of the fabric of Orange, New Jersey. The diversity is showcased at this festival every year bringing the city together in harmony. The festival is sponsored by lead sponsors HANDS Inc., M&T Bank, DAAB Kids, co-sponsors Four City Brewery, NAACP of the Oranges & Maplewood, and Missing Link Music. 

You can sign up to volunteer at the University of Orange’s Music City Festival here. 

LESSONS

Great Love is Never Easy

Growing as a person and learning lessons in life along the way is probably one of my favorite things about life. It kind of makes it all makes sense to me. One thing that I have learned and accepted for the better is that nothing worth having in life will come easy. And this could not be more true when it comes to love. I don’t know if there is such thing as true love, but I do believe that we all have great loves out there that will strike you like a thunderbolt when you least expect it. It will feel intoxicating, and it will be all-consuming. However, it will not be easy. It will feel big, destructive, exuberant, dangerous, and inescapable.

As a writer, I like to think that the storm great love brings into your life is worth it because great love stories are the best stories. And whether we like it or not, the best stories make us laugh, cry, angry, sad, and happy. In real life, not so much. But I will always say that experiencing love in life is a blessing and believe that it is better to have love and loss than to never have loved at all.

SOCIAL MEDIA/BRAND MARKETING TIPS

It’s Okay to Rebrand

The tip this week is probably a little hypocritical as I tend to preach about how important branding is. This means your brand’s tone, voice, colors, logos, and even the font. But I learned that social media is always changing and you have to evolve with the ever-changing strategies. I think it is important to find the balance between trying new things to see what works and also keeping up the brand loyalty you have built with your followers and listeners.

These tips are for those who have not gone to college for social media marketing but for those who are creative up-starts and were brave enough to utilize the free tools at our disposal to start their own brands and companies. We are real people, we change our minds, and a lot of creative fields are fluid. Think about fashion, every year the new It color or fit or length changes with the times. And I think the way we approach social media marketing with our brands should be the same thing. 

So if in your soul, or during a meditation you want to change your logo from yellow to pink or want to start featuring different guests on your show to cater to different communities. This is okay because we all change. That is what is exciting about life.

Words with P.R. (Edition 5)

By Patricia Rogers | Posted Wednesday, July 14, 2021

IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE OKAY

Welcome back to Words with P.R.! This is such an interesting time in my life. Grateful to have this as an outlet.

This edition is inspired by tennis player Naomi Osaka’s choice to take a break from tennis to take care of her mental health. I think it is important to motivate my readers to opt to swim and not sink, but it is also important to emphasize that when feeling you are going to sink… it is okay to not be okay. It is okay to reach out for help.

Huge thanks to the support that the last edition has gotten, where I talk about my journey towards self-love, acceptance, and body image.

QUEEN P.R.’S PICKS

Birdiebee is a brand that I have supported for a couple of years now. And at first, it was just because it was WWE Hall of Famers Nikki and Brie Bella’s clothing line. But once I started to purchase clothing, I loved the fit, fabrics, and designs. The biggest thing for me, though, was how inclusive the pieces are for all body types. I shared my story about it in the 4th edition of Words with P.R., but it really is life-changing when you can feel confident in your own skin. So far I have purchased dresses, activewear, t-shirts, and sweaters. And I recommend it all. You can use code BBAMBASSADOR20 to save site-wide at this link.

I HAVE LEARNED THAT...

SHOUTOUT TO 400 YEARS OF INEQUALITY

I want to share immersive multimedia projects from the University of Orange educating the public on 400 Years of Inequality aka Juneteenth:

A Call Answered: Observing History -- Reclaiming the Future + People's Pathway to Equality

A Call Answered spotlights the change-inspiring work of 5 community-based 400 Years “observances”, events unearthing and acknowledging America’s timeline of inequality, and setting the stage for a new century of recovery.

Art Direction, Media & Digital Content: Gahlia Eden
Creative Producer, Media & Digital Content: Aubrey Murdock
Creative Direction, Marketing Strategy: Stephanie Leone
Editorial Direction, Marketing Strategy: Ricky Tucker
Creative Team: Timothy Nottage, Jacqueline Castaneda, Molly Kaufman, Robert Sember

People's Pathway to Equity provides multimedia activities and the key concepts most critical to understanding and dismantling the ecology of inequality in your community. Across four chapters, you’ll explore the many insights gathered by the 400 Years of Inequality coalition over five years of learning and organizing together, introducing you to people from a range of places who have boldly answered the call for equality, and helping you embark on your own pathway to equity.

Art Direction: Aubrey Murdock
Creative Producer: Timothy Nottage
Creative Team: Aditi Nair, Jacqueline Castaneda, Timothy Nottage
Media + Digital Content: Gahlia Eden
Editorial Direction: Ricky Tucker
Marketing Strategy: Stephanie Leone

I had the chance to talk to some of the amazing team involved in the creation of these amazing educational experiences:

"The website was inspired by the covid-19 shutdown... Aubrey Murdock, Head of School at University of Orange, which was one of the founding partner organizations of 400 Years introduced me to this work. I invited local photographers and videographers to join me in attending and documenting observances." — Gahlia Eden

"I’d want folks to walk away from A Call Answered... with an impressionistic view of the hard work, love, and thoughtful activism it takes to acknowledge everything we’ve been through in this country—and that’s just an acknowledgement. Then comes the hard work of rebuilding, recovering. Our coalition and these websites can be a template for how communities can honor their own historical context—and recovery collectively. The Peoples Pathway site in particular maps out the tools for them to get started." — Ricky Tucker

CHECK IT OUT HERE: 400YEARSOFINEQUALITY.ORG

SOCIAL MEDIA/MARKETING TIP

Consistency is key

When I wanted to start a podcast, I did as much research as I could about what makes these successful. Having the right equipment, topics, and the audience is important. But the number one note I saw everywhere was BE CONSISTENT. This is how you earn dedicated listeners/viewers. You have to be consistent on every aspect of your brand. This means your brand identity, release schedule, social media marketing, everything. Your fans will not even realize how much they are getting used to your content and will engage with it. Most successful podcasts and YouTube channels don’t have the best quality, but their success comes from being consistent.

Words with P.R. (1st Edition)

By Patricia Rogers | Posted Friday, April 2, 2021

Hi! Welcome to my blog

Hello! You may remember me as Valley Girl NJ or the Zine Editor from Orange, NJ. I used to run a blog called Masconsumpion (ran from 2012-2017), and throw cool events in the Valley Arts District. I had fun living and working in Orange. I got to meet and interview artists, musicians, community leaders, and recap art and music shows, political debates, and so much more.

Now, I go by Queen P.R. and am back home in New York City. I am working as a content creator, brand marketing manager, and podcaster. I have learned a lot, and want to share my lessons (learned from mistakes) with you all. So I hope you can come along for this ride twice a month!

Powered by Jersey Indie, I will share Words with PR, a bi-monthly lifestyle blog where I share a short interview, recommendations, marketing tips, and everything in between!

MEET CAROL PADBERG

I was connected to Carol via Molly Rose Kaufman, my friend and the Provost & Program Director at the University of Orange. I was excited to talk to the woman who led the Lunch and Learn workshop titled, “A Mushroom Walks into a Bar...”. I mean, can you think of a more classic joke? And Carol is about all things mushrooms! (Her favorite being the oyster mushroom).

For the University of Orange’s 2021 Jan Term, Carol taught a workshop on how much mushrooms can teach us, answering questions like: What can we learn from mushrooms about undoing toxic individualism and affecting regenerative social change?

For the Lunch and Learn seminar, Padberg spoke about how to weave mushrooms, and also what it can teach us about radical world changes, urban neighborhoods, and more. It was inspired by a graduate program, NOMAD MFA, she designed herself. This was interesting to me because you tend to think about college programs as already established, but this was something new!

I wanted to learn all about the NOMAD MFA program, because to me it felt like one that filled a void. It combined art, creativity, and ecology. And as someone who did community organizing through art & creativity, I was all ears..

The relatively new graduate program offered by the University of Hartford, was inspired by an art project by Padberg, who is also an interdisciplinary visual artist. A few years ago Carol created a 1,000 square foot quilt made of compost, and the fascination of the life and connection that happened to the quilt is what made Padberg consider mushrooms. She realized she could teach art, and ecology, by building creative experiences. The guiding philosophy behind the NOMAD graduate program is “one of connection.”

When speaking with Carol, who is one of the loveliest women I have had the pleasure to speak to, she was able to inform me on mushrooms and climate collapse, regeneration, and more. The more Carol and I spoke, the more I realized just how needed her program was. I also could not help but think about how glad I was that she was able to meet and work with the wonderful folks over at the University of Orange.

The University of Orange is a free people’s university where the learning doesn’t end. I have had the pleasure of graduating twice, and even taught a blogging workshop. Founded in 2007, The University of Orange is a community organization and free people’s urbanism school that builds collective capacity for people to create more equitable cities. You can teach a class as well as take a class and it is open to all people, you can graduate more than once.

My friend, artist, and U of O’s Head of School and lead designer Aubrey Murdock was one of Carol’s students in the NOMAD MFA program. She says about the program, “I had an inkling that I wanted to devote more energy to my individual creative practice, and to understand my work with U of O as a type of socially engaged art practice. I was not actively looking at MFA programs, but came across an article about NOMAD MFA. What drew me in was an attention to human ecology — the ways that social, cultural and technological systems are inextricably linked with landscapes, food systems and watersheds.”

Aubrey’s interest in the program was something Carol and I talked about, how it is important for artists doing community work to understand systems, and how to come into one with care. “I was interested if the program really embraced a critical analysis around compounding issues like structural racism, environmental inequity and the linkages between capitalism and ecological crisis,” says Murdock.

Carol’s ”conviction around why she started the program and her transparency around some of the difficulties of navigating these ideals within an institution like a university” is what sold Aubrey, and the same for me as well. In addition to being a wonderful person, Carol is smart, kind, real, and funny. In other words just the right person we need to build a better future. “Collectively [Carol] brings cohorts of interdisciplinary artists into conversation around regenerative culture, and what is ours to do in this critical moment.”

Also, Carol was nice enough to share an amazing mushroom tea and risotto recipe. Tag us on the @wordswithpr social media for the recipe. ;)

Get to know Carol Padberg more by checking out her website.
Want to learn more about the NOMAD MFA graduate program click here.
Watch and learn from her “A Mushroom Walks into a Bar...” Jan term Lunch & Learn workshop here.
Learn more about the University of Orange here.

QUEEN P.R.’S RECOMMENDS...

My Early AM Self-love routine

I learned back in 2017 that exercise was the best way to help with my anxiety and depression. So, I began doing what I call my “self love” journey every morning starting at 5:00 AM. This time of the day is so quiet and peaceful. Great for clarity and self-reflection.

For my Self Love routine, I pray, Thank God for waking me up, stretch, exercise, meditate, jump in a hot shower, and start my day. I can not express enough what this has done for my energy and focus levels (gave up coffee months ago!), clarity, and anxiety. I understand everyone is not a morning person, so whenever you can squeeze in some self care, do it!

Movo Podcast mic
So for those who don’t know, I am the co-host of Those Wrestling Girls podcast. My co-host Krista B. and I started back in 2018, and were lucky enough to be able to record in a professional studio. All of this changed when the pandemic hit (we don’t feel comfortable recording there yet), so we were forced to make it work from home. Thanks to a friend, we have found a fun way to record via Stream Yard, which has helped us stream live from our social media channels like YouTube, and our Facebook Discussion group. Recording from home meant that I needed to get actual professional equipment to help with quality. So as a birthday gift, I got a MOVO mic that I highly recommend. The set up was easy, the sound quality is amazing (especially during live shows), the instructions were easy to follow as well. So to all my podcasters out there, the MOVO computer USB mic is TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Check it out here.

I HAVE LEARNED THAT...

Always reach out to your friends. This first edition of Words with P.R. is dedicated to the loving memory of one of my best college friends Natalia Cordova. She sadly passed away this month. Her death has been super hard on me because we grew distant over the past few years. I did not get a chance to reminisce with her on our college memories, or tell her how much meant to me and how much she impacted my life. So I urge you all: LOVE ON YOUR LOVED ONES. Life is short. You never know when it is going to be too late. A random text or DM saying, “Hi I am thinking of you and I love” you does the trick.

SHOUTOUT TO...

Breaking Through Glass Ceilings with Brian H. Waters

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a workaholic. And I am very hard on myself. There are very few times when I take a step back and reflect and be proud of myself. Well, I was able to finally do that on Brian H. Water’s podcast Breaking Through Glass Ceilings, where he interviews people that have been successful in media. Check out my episode here.

I was able to chat with Brian (who is also a wrestling content creator) about what inspired Breaking through Glass Ceiling:

“Producing this podcast gives me fulfillment because, in a day and age where we are disconnected and only talk to our friends through text and tweets, the time I spend talking to them while recording this show allows me to have a raw and authentic conversation about their career. This also allows me to learn more about them and their journey, but also provides listeners with lessons they can use forever. One day I was in Atlanta and as I was talking to my manager about networking, I was reminded how blessed I was to be connected to a wealth of smart people. From there I decided I wanted to share my network with the world.”

Check out Brian’s podcast Breaking Through Glass Ceilings here.

SOCIAL MEDIA/MARKETING TIPS

Building your personal brand: Always be proud of your passion, you never know where it will lead you.

So, I am a shy person and would always hide my extra curricular activities and accomplishments from my classmates and friends growing up. I was easily embarrassed and didn't like attention to myself. But one thing I have learned is the only way to get ahead in life and career is to be proud of who you are, what you do, what you love, and be strong in your convictions. I am a wrestling fan, and have a women’s wrestling podcast, and an abundance of wrestling tees. So I style them for work, which I would have been too afraid to do before, but now I like standing out. Me wearing these shirts have been a conversation starter and have led me into rooms I would never have been in before.

For more tips follow Words with P.R. across all socials.

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