Inspiring Conversations with Ally Roden and Jamie Bochicchio of Coffee With A&J

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ally Roden and Jamie Bochicchio.

Hi Ally and Jamie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We met at our Belmont Freshman Orientation in the summer of 2018. We had always talked about doing something creative together, whether it be a Youtube channel, Instagram page, or podcast. We finally decided to pursue our own podcast at our favorite coffee shop, White Bison, at the very end of December 2020.

The podcast started as a creative outlet for us to share some of our funniest memories with each other, but we quickly realized that we wouldn’t be able to sustain the podcast with the topic we had chosen. At the beginning of March 2021, we shifted gears and decided to combine our love of music with the podcast. Each week, we would alternate between posting episodes highlighting successful college students and spotlighting rising artists in the Nashville area.

While we have gone back and forth trying to flush out what we want our podcast to be, we have finally decided to do our Artist Spotlights every week and focus on growing our brand into more than just a podcast. We have hosted two live shows in Nashville, giving the artists we have had on our podcast a platform to share their original music with a live audience. We have also recently released our own merch.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As we talked about earlier, it was hard to figure out exactly what we wanted the podcast brand to be and we really wanted to find our niche. It’s been hard to manage every aspect of a business in the entertainment industry with two people who aren’t experienced in all of the fields we’re trying to tackle.

We’ve had to learn how to be podcasters, video editors, talent scouts, concert promoters, content creators, website developers, and more. It’s been such a valuable lesson learning that sometimes the best thing to do is to reach out to people in your community when you don’t have the answers.

Our problem-solving skills have really been put to the test as we’ve learned that people who work in this industry have to be on their toes and ready to change their tune at any moment. On a smaller scale, we’ve had a lot of technical issues that have set us back, as well as learning how to manage our time as full-time students with other jobs and internships.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs, or other resources you think our readers should check out?
We’ve found our experience at Belmont as a whole to be the most valuable resource throughout our journey thus far. Since we are both majoring in different fields (Ally, Corporate Communication) and (Jamie, Social Media Management) with a common minor in Music Business, we’ve been able to combine the knowledge we’ve learned from our separate courses.

Belmont has such an inspiring community of students and alums that we’ve had the pleasure of working with that continue to inspire us every step of the way. Internships have been another major key to our success as we have both experienced how the industry functions in real-time.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://coffeewithaandj.squarespace.com
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC19gJdxDethe0dBbVCvPu_g
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coffeewith_aj/
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5eFtVsWayhZxOS7WqBpdGi?si=jcfC-2LiR3aj3RDhyuOZmg