Episode 29 - A Conversation with Lia Picard
This episode features Lia Picard, who is a journalist and a freelance writer with nationally published work. She is also an adult recreational tennis player and the host of the Bagel Bagel podcast. During our conversation, Lia shares about her background, we talk about our love for the sport of tennis, and she shares more about her podcast - the Bagel Bagel podcast.
Watch the vlog of this episode here: https://youtu.be/yhpCK8UraFM
To connect with Lia Picard :
Website:https://liapicard.com/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/helloitsliapicard
To connect with the Bagel Bagel Podcast:
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thebagelbagelpod/
Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bagel-bagel/id1850297689
Spotify Playlists: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Fbir7oHfSeiixfkdlW0Vq?si=957ad57518724de3
Listen to full episode :
Here is a transcription of Episode 29:
0:17: Hello and welcome to the Broke PhD Podcast where we build relationships or kindle emotions with every episode. I'm your host, Dr. G!
0:26: On this episode of Broke PhD Podcast, I talked with Lia Picard! Lia is a journalist, a freelance writer, and the host of the Bagel Bagel podcast. During our conversation, Lia shares about her background. We talk about our love for the sport of tennis, and she shares more about her podcast - the Bagel Bagel podcast.
0:45: [Dr. G] Hey, y'all, and I'm so excited for my guest today and on the podcast today I get to talk with Lia Picard, who is a journalist, who is a writer, and who is the host of the Bagel Bagel podcast. Lia thank you so much for being here.
0:57: [Lia] Thanks so much for having me!
0:58: [Dr. G] And Lia, I just want to ask you to share a little bit about your background, so the listeners can get to know more about you.
1:05: [Lia] Yes, I've been a freelance journalist for the past eight years full time. I live in Atlanta and I cover mostly food and lifestyle. I would say the fun stuff in life of like food, lifestyle, travel, interior design. And then about a year ago I fell in love with playing tennis. And this past fall I started a podcast all about rec tennis. Nothing about the professionals or strategies, just all about the stories of people who also are obsessed with recreational tennis.
1:32: [Dr. G] Ohh, I'd love that so much! And guys, I'm gonna hype up her podcast, The Bagel Bagel podcast. And I got to record an episode with Lia, so check that out. And again, can you, I know you talked about that you wanted to focus on sharing the stories of rec tennis players. Can you talk about your own tennis story?
1:50: [Lia] Yes, absolutely! I had very limited exposure to tennis as a kid. I was not an athletic child, but I did enjoy my tennis lessons in middle school. And I kind of, you know, would hit once I, like, started dating my husband in college, we would kind of like, go on these courts and just kind of hit around, but never really anything serious. And then I didn't touch a racket for a long time. When we joined a Country Club a couple of years ago, my husband started playing. And it was really cool to hear about his tennis journey and he's like, you should try it. I was like, I don't know. But, I joined like a clinic for the summer for this one team. I wasn't all the way on the team, but I joined their like weekly clinic and I got to know them and started feeling more comfortable. Then I joined the league. I didn't win a single match that fall season and that’s okay. But then, you know even with the losing, there were so many qualities that I just loved about tennis. I just really loved the puzzle aspect of like trying to figure out where to stand and where to hit the ball too, as well as the athletic component. You know, running for a ball in short bursts is very doable for me,
3:02: [Dr. G] Yes, I feel that!
3:04: [Lia] Yeah, and so, yeah, I've only gotten more obsessed with it now. I’m on a couple doubles leagues. I’m on a couple singles leagues. And it's just going up from there and I'm in the middle of a losing streak. But, you know, we'll get out of it eventually.
3:17: [Dr. G] It’s a process. It's a process. So I also want to ask from playing tennis, what have been some of the things that you've learned? I know you said right now you're kind of on a losing streak and that, you know, can teach you so much about yourself. So what are some things that you've been learning about yourself from playing tennis?
3:33: [Lia] I mean, I am more competitive than I realized. I really do want to get the point, you know? Like I, I got that at myself when I, you know, when things aren't going the right way. And I think that's like the, like that was like the most surprising thing because I've never never been had never been put in a position to be competitive, really, you know, I guess freelancing is a little bit competitive with other writers. You feel that sometimes, but I'm you know, working alone. I'm not in an office. I'm not like, you know, I don't see the person I'm vying against. And I never really played games, you know, I'm not like, uh, I don't play a lot of board games or whatever. Although now I play Uno with my daughter and again, a little competitive.
4:16: [Dr. G] Yeah. Uno could be one of those ones?
4:17: [Lia] Yeah. So that was, that was a big reveal for me. And it's fun though. Like it's fun even when I lose. Like learning how to lose has been part of it also. You know, stepping back and saying, well, like, there's still so much to be proud of and you showed up and that's a big thing, too. So.
4:32: [Dr. G] I love that! And yeah, with tennis, to highlight, yeah, learning how to lose is definitely a big part of playing tennis that you don't recognize. But, who was it? Was it Federer who said you only need to win, like, 51% of the points to win a match. Which means you're losing 49% of those points. Right. Yeah. That’s a lot of losing to occur and a lot to have to mentally go through. And if you are more competitive like we both might be, it is hard to kind of work through that. So I love that you're, you're learning how to lose through playing tennis. And you mentioned that you are a freelance writer and that, that is also competitive. And I want to hype you up for a moment because, yes, I did a little research because I was so excited for this one. And you were nationally published that you have articles and work that's been published in the New York Times, in Wall Street Journal, and I think more recently Vogue. So can you talk about that aspect of your life.
5:28: [Lia] Yeah. I mean, it's funny, just like tennis. Everything for me is always very incremental. I've never been the kind of person to just come out of the gate, like, swinging and like no one handed me my New York Times byline, like my first time pitching. And that's the case for a lot of writers, of course. It's very rare for it to not be. I had studied education. Actually, like journalism is not my like my academic background. I did education and then pivoted just through moving and, you know, different things and ended up working in the nonprofit world for a little bit. And I had a food blog on the side. And as I developed that food blog, I was like, well. Gonna try writing for different publications and I started on a very local level and then from there I took a online pitching course, which kind of helped me craft, you know, my emails to editors because for those who don't know how freelance writer works, it's like I have an idea, let's say I think we want to talk about like the 10 best tacos in Atlanta and I'll send that to an editor and tell her or him why that's a good idea and they'll say yes or no or they won’t reply at all? So, and then that's that's how that works. And so as I got, you know, as I became a better writer on the local level, I was able to start developing stronger pitches for national publications. And over time, it just kept growing. And as you get more comfortable, you start thinking, yeah, I can pitch the New York Times. Then, okay, I had landed one with the New York Times okay, I can do it again. And then you do so, yeah.
6:59: [Dr. G] And thank you for sharing that process because I, I personally didn't know like how that kind of weaves and what you kind of do to get there. And I love that you also come from education and how that kind of was the beginning, but then it kind of morphed into now journalism and freelance writing. And yeah, that's cool! I didn't know that you had to take the time to, like, e-mail it out. And I guess that makes sense, cause obviously, how they're gonna find your stuff if you don't send it to them.
7:25: [Lia] And sometimes they will. Sometimes, now that I'm like, you know, so farther into it, I will get an e-mail from a publication, it was like, we're looking for an Atlanta writer to talk about, you know, an itinerary, what to do in Atlanta for a few days, like, and you have this background, you want to do it, and I'll say yes.
7:42: [Dr. G] Ohh, I love that! So then as you became more established, you're able to have people kind of reach out to you about it. OK, that's really cool. Yeah. So if y'all are hearing this and you're interested, I am going to have Lia's contact information and social media platforms and all those things in the description box. So feel free to reach out and also have her podcast information down there too. And I just like to hype people up in there! So now I want to pivot back to your podcast. So with this, and I know you wanted to just share the life stories of people playing tennis, but kind of can you give kind of the background of that specifically and talk about the podcast a little bit more?
8:19: [Lia] Yeah. So like you mentioned, I wrote for Vogue. I did have something published in Vogue. I had an essay about my love of tennis published in Vogue later, like late, late summer. And in doing that and talking about how I started playing tennis in my late 30s and everything, and I kind of talked about with like losing and all that, I got so many responses from people and so many people were sharing it. It was so cool. So when I met someone who was like, ohh, like this, like influencer shared your Vogue essay, I've heard your name before. And so it really resonated with a lot of people. And concurrently I wanted, I've been wanting a long term project to sink my teeth into because freelancing is fun, but it is also a grind. You know, and this economic climate, it's really getting more challenging to get those yeses and I don't have a book idea that's like, you know, a lot of people think it's like, ohh, what about a book? It's like, well, you need an idea for a book and I don't have one. So my husband was like, you should start a podcast about tennis. Like there isn't really a podcast dealing with like the lifestyle aspect of tennis and that's really your thing. And I'm like, ohh, you know, that's a good idea and it feels very, it felt very uncomfortable for me and I felt like that's why it's good to do like I think we need as a creative people like we need to like challenge ourselves and like kind of lean into that scary side sometimes. And I took the plunge and had a friend who was very kind and kind of gave me her blueprint for what had set her up on her podcast. And I kind of copied and paste and looked at a lot of Reddit and I'm, you know, went like kind of like the middle road of what you can do in podcast land. And it's been fun. Like it's been really a fun challenge indeed. Great getting to connect with people like you and all over the country has just been, it's my favorite part about journalism is like the interviews and talking and connecting and it's been really cool. So
10:15: [Dr. G] I love that! I love that! And yeah, with the podcast, you can talk with so many different people and also doing it on this online platform right now if you see us on YouTube. we're on Zoom and so, but when we did the recording with Lia, we were using Riverside. And so there's so many things that you can use to record your podcast. There's so many ways that you can connect with people in this virtual digital world. And yeah, I love that you're sharing that lifestyle side of, of tennis because there are so many podcasts out there that just talk about the game and strategies and talk about, okay, what if you do this or what if you do that? And there's like a few, I think adult recreation specific podcasts that exists. A lot of them are focused on the pros, which makes sense, right? The pros are the interesting ones. But I love that you're, you're building this to center around sharing those stories. So yeah. Do you want to talk about any of the guests you've had, outside of me, on your podcast so far?
11:10: [Lia] So I had one of my first guest was Faren from hotmesstennis, and she's great. I was really drawn to her because of her candor and just the way she's like he's willing to just lay it all out. You know, I think a lot of, I mean, a lot of this tennis creators are really honest, but there's so many times where I’m on threads and it's like, OK, you're just sharing your wins. And I just. I do love hearing about the messy process. Yeah.
11:39: [Dr. G] Yeah, cause that's the real life of tennis? It's not all about the wins all the time. Like there's a lot of times that we're losing!
11:44: [Lia] Right, And Roger Federer also said that we would lose more matches than we win. So you know, just like him, I lose.
11:52: [Dr. G] You're just like a pro!
11:53: [Lia] She’s just so funny. And she was like, yes, right off the bat, which was so exciting. And I was like, I'm sure you felt this when you first started your podcast too. It's like, you know, I met, greeted with like just people ignoring your emails. Like, you know, like I'm real, I'm real, I'm promise. And like like Faren never like questioned like she didn't like, you know at all. And then I had Jane Foreman, who is a really well known tennis coach and known for her, you know, like someone called it like aggressive coaching style.
12:23: [Dr. G] Yeah, I would say like her transparency and just like her bluntness. I like her bluntness. Like she's not gonna like, sugarcoat it. She's gonna tell you like it is. And I appreciate that.
12:32: [Lia] Right, yes. And she's like, I'm not a Country Club coach and it's true. Like my Country Club coach will be like that was perfect. I'm like, what are you talking about? That was like out the back.
12:43: [Dr. G] You’re like, I don't know about that.
12:44: [Lia] Yeah. So that, she was a great one, too. And then and actually, like, I'm really excited because it's not all just big fancy names. I also have the upcoming season, which will start early February. I have this guy, Mikey. He's a college student at Marquette. He's a journalist. He's a sports journalism major. He reached out to me and it was so cute. And he like, was like talking, telling me what he wanted to talk about. And we talked and like, it was great. Like, I'm really excited to share that one because it's like, again, it's a range of voices. And he's in college and he plays tennis. And I love hearing that.
13:21: [Dr. G] And I love that he reached out to you, too!
13:24: [Lia] Yes. I was like, I have to like, rework that gumption. That's great!
13:28: [Dr. G] I love that so much! Aww! So outside of being a journalist, of being a writer, and of being a tennis player, adult recreational tennis player, what other things encompass who Lia Picard is?
13:41: [Lia] I am a mom. I have a six year old daughter. I have my husband also. He's here too now.
13:49: [Dr. G] He's there. He's there.
13:50: [Lia] Yeah, yeah. And we live, we live in Atlanta and it's just, it's like life. I was the other day I was like, what did I do before tennis? Like with all the time I had. Tennis has really given me something to, like, anchor my days around, which is nice. But yeah, you know, I mean, I, I do a lot of my writing. I'm always out and about in Atlanta. Like I live in the burbs. But I do try to get into town as much as possible to go just into the coffee shops or go to a cafe and just chat with people who work there, you know? I feel so good on a day where I've bounced around like 3 or 4 different places in Atlanta before I pick up my kid. Very rare these days, but it's just it's great to be out there. So that's kind of that's me, a food lover first and foremost so.
14:32: [Dr. G] I love that! And Speaking of food, I guess in Atlanta or I guess anywhere, what is one of your favorite restaurant spots or even types of food that you like to enjoy.
14:43: [Lia] I'm a bakery girl. Like I love bakeries. So in Atlanta we have a few great ones. My favorite one is little tart and there's a few different locations and they have seating, which is kind of funny to say, but a couple of. Other favorite bakeries, they don't have seating, so I it's hard for like you have to plan strategically how you do it. But little tart also has just like a really beautiful sunny cafe and there's plants hanging and it's just like such a good vibe, you know, I would say those are kind of my favorite types of restaurants. I've such a daytime person now that I love a beautiful lunch spot with like, you know. Beautiful tile and sunny dining room, but I'm also really drawn to like Southeastern Asian flavors. Like there's a Laotian restaurant down the street that's really great. Thai. Those are constantly in my rotation and I'm really lucky where I live in my suburb, Dunwoody, we have a lot of great neighborhoods spots and so like, you know, during the work week when I can't get out that much, it's not like I don't feel like I'm settling. I have a lot of great places that I want to support around me. A lot. I'm a big local restaurant person. So I do try to support local, locally owned as much as possible. So I have a lot of that.
15:54: [Dr. G] And that's so important because there's so many chains out there and like not to knock the chains, but also like.
15:58 [Lia] I don't mind knocking chains.
16:00: [Dr. G] Y’all aren’t struggling, yeah, that like locals sometimes feel more of that weight, especially in today's economy. Right. Like, yeah. Well, well, you know, they can only spend their money on so many things. And so, yeah, if y'all can support local, we're throwing that out there. Support local, Yes. wherever you are because, like, that's so important.
16:17: [Lia] Yeah. Because like, chains to me too. I mean, they really have a way of making like a city feel sterile, you know? And it's like a lot. When I was in Nashville in April, there were a lot of restaurants that are in Atlanta or Nashville. And I'm like, well, like, why come here? Like if I'm only going to eat at the same places that are here, Like, why would I travel for that? So.
16:39: [Dr. G] I feel the same way that traveling somewhere, like if you can get it back home, why would I want to go there? Like I want to see where the like again, the local spots where people who are there that only exist in that one part of either the state, the city, whatever, that you can't get anywhere else because that makes it more like special. It makes it more exciting. And yeah. So along those lines of traveling, because you do kind of your writing centers around lifestyle, food, travel, what has been your favorite travel place to go to?
17:07: [Lia] And well so, I mean, most recently, the big trip that we just took was Paris and, and we took our daughter to Paris for her first trip to Europe. It was Thanksgiving and it was just like a dream. It was all, it all went so well. And it was interesting because I hadn't been to Paris since I like, since a decade ago when I was younger. And, you know, he and I were, like, my husband and I were going to, like, bars and cool, popular places. And so this is a very different trip. Yeah. Yeah. But it was still wonderful because it's Paris. It's all about what you make of it. And that was really cool. That was a great, that was a great trip. And I'm really glad we had that. I mean, more locally than like, I love Asheville. I did try to get to Asheville once or twice a year if possible. And you know, again, they're very big on their independently owned restaurants and they have a lot of them. It's like, you know. Almost like overwhelming. You're like where do I wanna go? I only have two nights.
18:06: [Dr. G] Yes yeah, no, we love Asheville too. Ironically we've been to Asheville more so for tennis trips, which is the connection things. So on a mixed states team my boyfriend was on when they had combination back in the southern region when there was 7.0 combo for mixed that his team would make it to States and states for two years in a row was an Asheville maybe 3. So yeah, for North Carolina. So that was nice and yeah, Ashville is so nice. And I know that they're kind of still rebuilding some areas after the hurricane and everything that went through. So if you want to visit Asheville just make sure. I think now they're back up and running so try to support. Yeah, that they're, they're good now, but try to get there to support them so that they can, you know, keep rebuilding and stuff. So yeah.
18:50: [Lia] Yes, we do a lot of Southern traveling simply because I'm in the South and I write for Southern publications and, and it's also a lot of places are drivable. Or it's not that long of a flight. So that's great. And I'm from Florida, so I also end up in Florida a couple times a year, specifically Boca Raton and the Palm Beaches, which is where I grew up. So yeah.
19:15: [Dr. G] Very cool. Yeah. And yeah, that's what I love about, I guess this region in itself is that you can't drive to so many places because you're in Atlanta. I'm in the like Raleigh Durham area and that's only six hours. Like 6 and a half depending on traffic like, yeah. And you go through obviously another state, South Carolina is in the way, but like. Yeah, like. But it's so cool. And yeah, like you said, you went to Nashville. Like I can get to Nashville from here in eight hours. I think you're closer than that. So yeah. But it's nice that you can kind of drive to like the different areas in this region. So that's so cool. So as we are kind of wrapping up this conversation, are there any takeaways or some insights that you want the listeners to leave with.
19:57: [Lia] If you are thinking about trying tennis, go for it. I've talked to some people who are like ohh, like I want to try it but I was scared and it's like you just have to rip the Band-Aid and like just give in to like the fun side. Like don't worry about the winning and the scary stuff of it, but like just focus on chasing that yellow ball and getting the endorphins flowing and support your locally owned restaurants!
20:20: [Dr. G] Yes, yes. So definitely go play tennis. We're gonna hype that up and yes support local. I love that so much Well, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast
20:31: [Lia] Thank you for having me me. I'm really honored Thank you.
20:33: Well that concludes this episode. But if you've loved hearing my conversation with Lia and you would like to hear more episodes, then please check out the website – brokephdpodcast.com – to continue to follow along. I thank you for being here and remember –
YOU GOT THIS! Again, I'm your host, Dr. G, and I hope you have a wonderful day!