PODCAST TEAM LIFTS SMALL BUSINESSES

Tiffany Holden and Leo Cohen, the team behind the Building Bellingham podcast. Courtesy photo.

Building Bellingham podcast team aims to lift Whatcom business

Local real estate team moonlights as podcast crew

Tony Moceri

“Passion.”

That is the word that kept coming up during an interview with Leo Cohen and Tiffany Holden about their podcast, Building Bellingham.

It’s not just that they love podcasts, and their passion is certainly not derived from desire for financial gain. It comes from wanting to pick up the Whatcom County business community. Cohen and Holden do what they do because they care about the people living and working here and want to see our community thrive. If there is any selfishness at play, it’s their desire to learn from the individuals on the show. They also understand that a healthy business environment helps all companies. As businesspeople running the Cohen Group NW real estate team, they also stand to benefit, along with the rest of our local companies.

“I love learning,” Cohen said, “and this is about as great of a platform we

can create where we’re able to lift the businesses up and able to learn in the process.”

When the podcast began, Cohen didn’t know where it would go or what it would become, but he liked the idea of a local business podcast, so he ran with it.

“As an entrepreneur, most of the time, it just comes from a simple intention and not really knowing what you don’t know,” he said. “I wanted to start a podcast because people in their 30s do podcasts.”

Cohen had completed exactly one episode before Holden joined the Cohen Group NW team to help with marketing. Never having worked on a podcast, aside from in a college class at Western Washington University, Holden took it all in as she followed Cooper Hansley, the director of marketing, around.

“We had an external producer and studio and all of that, so I had the privilege of spending seven episodes sitting on the floor at Binary Studios taking notes for blog posts that came out after each episode,” Holden said.

Even though Holden still had to sit on the floor, she began to form a partnership with Cohen as the podcast started taking shape. Their combination of talents — Cohen as the visionary and interviewer and Holden as the organizer, editor and producer — has made the show what it is today. With help from Hansley, the two create a high-quality production highlighting Whatcom County’s businesspeople, doing it in a way that makes the guests shine. While the Building Bellingham team members have their imprints all over each episode to create consistency, this is done in a subtle way that goes unnoticed by the listener.

This balancing act does not just happen. It is a commitment to quality, and a lot of hours, to make each episode a reality. Beginning with season two of the podcast, the producing and editing responsibility moved to Holden. The podcast is not monetized, but the team expends time and effort because of the intrinsic value derived from learning and knowing they are adding value to the community.

“It feels incredibly gratifying to feel so connected to the small business community here in town,” Holden said, “and it’s a privilege to be alongside Leo and getting to know these folks on a very personal level when I’m sitting in the editing room. I mean, these shows take six to nine hours to edit from start to finish, so I listen more closely than anybody else ever will. The lessons that these really amazing individuals are teaching us and the stories that they’re sharing resonate deeply.”

Cohen adds: “How do we not get stressed out about it not paying the bills? It does pay the bills. It pays our mental bills.”

While team members love producing Building Bellingham and feel they get value from it, there is no doubt that it does pull resources from the operations of the real estate business. As every entrepreneur knows, there are never enough hours in the day, so adding to the list is not easy.

“Every time I hit hour five in the editing room, I’m like, why the heck are we doing this,” Holden said. “But we have never questioned the existence of the show.”

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To balance this, Holden and Cohen have put systems in place to operate as efficiently as possible, and they only record the show spring through fall, taking the summer months off when real estate is busiest.

Currently, in the midst of their third season, Cohen and Holden have become partners in the Building Bellingham podcast. While it is still more of a passion project than a business, they don’t treat it as such. What started on the whim of a young entrepreneur has become a well-oiled machine. Each season and episode is scheduled and planned out to make the process as smooth as possible for the team, the guest and, ultimately, the listener.

With the goal of shining a light on these people and their businesses, Cohen and Holden begin by releasing a promo video the week before, highlighting the next guest. Shows are now recorded in their own studio, where they have set up a relaxed environment that makes the guest comfortable while Cohen delivers his line of questioning. Questions are intentionally not given to guests ahead of time. The team likes the feel of natural conversation as guests think on the fly. While Holden and Cohen do prepare questions, Cohen, with his fluid interview style, uses the questions more as a guide than a fixed plan.

As a longtime local business owner, and having personally been a guest on the podcast (season three, episode seven), I had a firsthand experience of the process. From the moment Cohen asked me to be on through the release of the episode, every step was organized and professional. I was always aware of what they needed from me, and the schedule never changed. With his interviewing skills, Cohen was able to keep me focused on the topic at hand — no easy task — and Holden seamed together an episode that sounds much better, I’m sure, than it did live.

They are intentional about having on established businesspeople, many of whom are well known in the community. The list of previous guests includes Erin Baker from Erin Baker’s Wholesome Baked Goods, Wes Herman from Woods Coffee, Anne-Marie Faiola from Bramble Berry Handcraft Provisions, and Ty McClellan from Hardware Sales, to name a few.

They have chosen people based on their experience and ability to share stories and insight to help others be successful as they become entrepreneurs. Understanding that this platform can help promote businesses, they have begun a “startup spotlight” to shine a light on local businesses just getting rolling.

While Building Bellingham has seen success in its first three seasons, Cohen and Holden hope this is just the beginning.

“We have all these ideas that we are refining on how we can use this to be able to leverage it into more value that we can create for our listeners and other business owners in the community, whether they’re new, seasoned vets, in the middle of their career or students looking for a way to be able to stay in Bellingham,” Cohen said.

The Building Bellingham podcast can be found wherever you get your podcasts. You also can find it at www. livebellinghamnow.com/building_ bellingham.

The flood had a large impact on

our whole community, but how

our leaders respond to the twin

problems of water management may

well impact the state of agriculture

in Whatcom County forever.

PHOTO: iStockphoto.com/Bargais

Deluge highlights twin troubles in Whatcom County

What the 2021 flood means for the future of farming

Fred Likkel

It’s no longer in the news, but the hundreds of families directly impacted by the flood are still working on putting their lives back together. One farm employee lost his life. Two thousand homes were damaged or destroyed. On this side of the border alone, $100 million or more in property damage occurred; the damage in Abbotsford was over $1 billion, and hundreds of thousands of farm animals were lost.

The future of farming in Whatcom County may well depend on how our local, state, tribal and federal leaders respond to this flood. As with most serious crises, there are opportunities as well as grave risks.

The devastating flood has generated a much higher level of awareness in our community and among our government leaders of the Nooksack River’s water management problems. While most attention is focused on the flood, there is a growing awareness that our river has twin problems of equal severity.

In September 2021, 2,500 salmon headed upriver to spawn. These spawners were badly needed — but they died because of low flow in the river, an important issue for three decades. Fish protection and recovery depends on protecting the flow and even improving it.

Despite the harmful low flow, within two months, the river flooded, leaving fish swimming in farm fields, destroying the river structure needed by fish, and causing great damage to our community and families.

Experts on climate change predicted the low flow and also the flooding. Hot, dry summers followed by too

much rain and early snowmelt are likely to increase. As a Washington State University engineering professor commented, these conditions make storing river water more necessary than ever.

Nearly all river systems in the state similar to the Nooksack have storage capacities. Without the storage that’s already on the Skagit River, Mount Vernon and much of the community would have been inundated. The storage also helps fish, as water is released when fish are ready to spawn, and that signals them to enter the river. The excess water captured in the winter is released, maintaining adequate flows for fish.

Low flows affect farms, too. Even though most irrigation water is taken from wells instead of streams, a proposed water rights adjudication could lead to farms and other water users having their water usage curtailed or eliminated. This would do virtually nothing to increase flow and would greatly harm fish recovery as farmland is urbanized.

Other water management solutions are being proposed, but only storage — through natural or artificial means — provides the most promise for solving these water management issues.

What stands in the way of this solution? It will take a combined strong effort by our local governments, tribal leaders, state leaders and federal government to solve the twin problems. Gov. Inslee announced an initiative to work with the British Columbia premier on solutions. But there are voices with much narrower interests that often have an outsized impact on these leaders.

The community as a whole must decide whether solving these twin problems is a priority and whether farming is to be preserved. There is no question that community involvement is the crucial difference when difficult political decisions need to be made.

Fred Likkel is the executive director at Whatcom Family Farmers. WFF is a farm advocacy group that focuses not only on education of the public regarding the good work of our farmers but also advocacy for all in the agriculture industry.

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Experts spot under-the-radar issues from legislative session

Brett Davis

Budget and transportation issues garnered the lion’s share of coverage during this year’s session of the Washington State Legislature, as did failed attempts at reforming the governor’s emergency powers.

But they weren’t the only challenges faced by lawmakers during this year’s 60-day legislative session that concluded March 10. That was obvious based on what public policy experts had to say in response to The Center Square asking for a post-mortem on the session.

Andrew Villeneuve, founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, praised the legislature passing fiscal impact disclosure legislation for statewide initiatives.

House Bill 1876, which Gov. Jay Inslee has since signed into law, makes any ballot initiative that would impact taxes or fees or “cause a net change in state revenue” include language that tells voters the specific fiscal effects the measure would have.

“We are very close to ensuring that the next time voters consider a statewide initiative that would affect the state’s finances, they’ll see language on their ballots advising them of the fiscal impacts, just as they would today for a local proposition such as a school levy,” Villeneuve said in an email. “It makes no sense that local propositions give voters more context about their impacts than statewide ballot measures do.”

Elizabeth Hovde, director of the Center for Health Care and Center for Worker Rights at the free market Washington Policy Center, addressed legislation related to health care.

She was critical of the Legislature passing Senate Bill 5532 — also signed into law by Inslee — establishing a five-member prescription drug affordability board charged with

reviewing drug prices. It is also tasked with creating upper payment limits for prescription drugs the board has concluded will lead to excess costs. The board is to issue its first report by June 2023.

“We now have a governor-appointed board that could deter drug manufacturers from selling life-saving drugs in our state,” Hovde said via email. “That’s concerning. Also, transparency legislation hadn’t been realized when this passed the Senate, and the board could be able to give penalties to the wrong players. Drug manufacturers don’t set the final prices on their drugs. There are many layers.”

Hovde expressed relief at House Bill 1868 not passing during session.

“A bill that would mandate working conditions in hospitals, rather than address a state and national nursing shortage, thankfully died in committee,” she said.

HB 1868 would have created minimum staffing levels in hospitals, mandated meal and rest breaks, and provided penalties for hospitals that ignore the new rules.

“It could have resulted in decreased service levels, especially for patients in rural hospitals,” Hovde said. “And it called nurse judgment and professionalism into question.”

Pam Lewison, director for the Washington Policy Center’s Initiative on Agriculture, lamented that House Bill 1750 did not pass the Legislature this year.

“HB 1750 would have allowed agricultural employers to declare 12 weeks of harvest time exempt from overtime rules and would give them 55 hours a week before overtime pay is required,” Lewison explained in an email.

The bill did not receive a hearing.

“The bill would have given farmworkers much-needed income back as overtime rules roll forward in the next few years,” she said.

Brett Davis reports on Washington state government for The Center Square, a newswire that keeps taxpayer concerns top of mind. www.thecentersquare.com/washington/.

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