Help from an unlikely source

A lot of you might not have heard of Patreon until I started talking about it a couple weeks ago, so I wanted to share how I learned of the site in the first place.

I’m a huge fan of the Survivor podcasts hosted by Rob Cesternino (his podcast is called “Rob Has A Podcast;” his website is RobHasAWebsite.com. Rob has this fun-loving tone to his work (which also extends to many other reality shows) and it’s clear he has a true passion and enthusiasm for what he does. His friendly nature also makes you feel like you could be buddies, which I love.

Anyway, Rob sometimes mentions a link where listeners can go to “learn about the benefits of becoming a patron.” That piqued my curiosity last year, so I went to the site he mentioned: His Patreon page.

I signed up for $5 a month — I get enjoyment from his podcasts and wanted to support them — and initially didn’t think much more about it. But when I found myself in a situation where I may need to change jobs, I started thinking about whether Patreon would work for supporting other kinds of journalism.

But Rob wasn’t just the inspiration for my move. He actually took time to help me with it.

I wrote Rob an email in early January and told him about my plan, thanking him for unknowingly introducing me to a potential new career path.

To my surprise, he not only wrote back, but suggested we hop on the phone.

A few days later, Rob took more than 30 minutes out of his day to help a complete stranger learn more about Patreon and talk through some of the pluses and minuses of the site. And before hanging up, Rob highly encouraged me to start a podcast in addition to just writing on this site.

As a fan of Rob’s, it was a total thrill for me to get advice from someone who is doing it right in the digital world — and feel like I was on my own personal episode of RHAP at the same time. So I wanted to publicly thank him for all his help in getting me started.

Thank you, Rob!

By the way, if you’re a Survivor fan and you don’t subscribe to Rob’s podcasts…what in the world are you doing? His weekly “Survivor Know It Alls” with Stephen Fishbach during the season are absolute must-listens for every Survivor fan (they immediately break down the strategy after the show) and his exit interviews with booted castaways following each vote always shed light on what really happened on the island.

Seriously, I talk my friends’ ears off about what I learned each week on the podcast (ask poor Alan Cavanna). So listen to them; I promise you’ll be a more informed Survivor fan.