Happy New Year Dreamers! Welcome to 2018!

With this inaugural episode of the for 2018, the Dream Loud Podcasters sit down with professional drummer and entrepreneur Zak Lees (formerly of Bury Thy Kingdom) and current touring drummer with Lacey Sturm to talk about:

1) How to become a professional in the music industry.

2) Why he decided to become a drummer and his practicing habits (hint: metronome, metronome, metronome lol!).

3) What it was like playing overseas for an internationally recognized artist.

4) Should you go to a university for music or other creative fields in 2018?

and...

5) Our favorite, skilled metal bands...mostly Meshuggah! ;-)

Join us as we delve into Zak's entrepreneurial mind to hear how and why he decided to open a music school this past year and what challenges he has faced (and currently is facing) on his path to become a successful business owner. Zak's passion and drive really shine through in this episode as he talks about the mindset needed to continually push through difficulty to achieve success! We hope that you'll all find Zak's passion, drive and motivation as inspiring as we all did!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Dream Loud Podcasters!

This episode, we reflect on our personal accomplishments from this past year and look forward to the new things we are planning for 2018!

This episode of the Dream Loud Podcast we sit down with our friend Mike Adamson to talk about his past abuse of drugs and alcohol and to hear his incredible story of how he crawled out of a hopeless situation to become the man he is today.

With the Christmas season and end of year holidays already upon us, we want to remember the ones who have fallen on hard times. From alcoholism, drug abuse and depression; the holidays are a very difficult time for many individuals.

Mike's story is one of hope for the hopeless. Our hope is that you are as impacted as we have been in conducting this interview and that if you know anyone that Mike's story can encourage or help, please share this with them as we believe there is hope even in the most hopeless situations.

This episode of the podcast we sit down with Dan "Flick" Flickinger, owner/operator of the Westmoreland Sports Network, to discuss following your passion, finding your niche and starting a business from the ground up.

In the conversation you'll hear how the WSN came to be and practical advice of how Dan continued to build his brand while battling through adversity. This was a very insightful conversation that we hope you find as inspiring as we did!

The Westmoreland Sports Network covers high school and college athletics in Westmoreland County in a variety of media. Local sports fans can watch and listen to games live, read detailed feature and game stories, listen and watch interviews with players & coaches and get team schedules and rosters by just a click of the mouse. WSN is the exclusive broadcast home of Seton Hill University and Pitt-Greensburg athletics and covers Jeannette, Hempfield, Greensburg Central Catholic, Mt. Pleasant, Penn-Trafford, Derry Area, Greensburg Salem, Franklin Regional, Latrobe, and Norwin High Schools.

This week on the podcast we interview or friend and fellow entrepreneur Jake Welsby. Hear his story of how he built his landscaping business from the ground up (no pun intended) while navigating the ups and downs associated with being a small business owner.

For more information on Jake's landscaping business you can reach him at [email protected] , call him at 412-894-5013, or reach out on Facebook.

Nobody likes to fail, but sometimes our biggest life lessons come in the form of failure. We talk about some of our biggest (and funniest) lessons we learned from failing.

Jimmy is an Assistant Director & Career Consultant at Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh. He has authored a blog called "Securely Insecure" that he used as a therapeutic tool while embodying the insecurities that most of our society deals with on a daily basis. 

In addition, he is currently writing a children's book of poetry that will be self-published in the near future and we will most-definitely have him back on to discuss.

On this episode we discuss our personal life hacks that have helped us while pursuing our dreams.

We continue our story of "Battling Your Way Back from Defeat" in part 2 of our conversation with Fordyce. We delve deeper into the descisions he made after leaving his former life behind in DC soon after coming to Pittsburgh.

You'll hear about the stuggles he faced while looking for his dream job, how he figured out what it was he really wanted to do in life and what enabled him to patiently and hold out for what he wanted.

Finally we hear about how he met the girl of his dreams and how it enfolded as the natural conciquence of the life choices he had made. A great end to a great story!

In this episode of the Dream Loud Podcast we have our first special guest! Matthew Fordyce - a Process Improvement Specialist at PNC Bank, music enthusiast and longtime friend of our panel member Dan - comes on our show to talk about going from rock bottom (when he was left at the alter by his ex-fiance) and how it put him on the road to finding himself and true happiness.

Find out how he pulled himself up from a truly devistating situation and the ideas he put into action to make it happen. This is a story you don't want to miss!