Amanda Guest is the founder and GM of BFF.fm, an internet community radio station based in San Francisco, CA. Amanda has a long history of working in college and community radio while balancing full-time jobs in marketing and publishing. We talk about that, lessons learned in running a community organization, the importance of process and delegation, the future of BFF.fm, the Bay Area music scene, and a whole lot more. Listen above or on iTunes or Spotify.

Show notes

In this episode, we talk about:

• her past as a college radio host and GM
• how she got space for the studio
• how BFF.fm was born
• changing their revenue model to shift the financial burden from the DJs
• fostering a supportive and tight-knit community among their DJs
• managing full-time work with running a radio station
• working to make the station sustainable long-term through delegation and new revenue models
• their approach to curating live shows
• the state of the music scene in SF
• hard lessons learned in treating the station as a business vs fun project
• processes and structures they’re putting into place now
• the process of giving up control as a founder
• the importance of your team knowing and embracing your vision
• the role of design in audience engagement and donations
• the relationship between corporate funding and the arts
• how to apply to be a BFF.fm DJ

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Amanda on Twitter
• BFF.fm
• The Secret Alley
• Amanda’s Top 30 BFF.fm hits show
• No Magic with Ben Ward
• WMWM Salem 91.7
• The Bold Italic story about BFF.fm
• Bandcamp IRL in Oakland

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