Avid explorer. Fellow Canadian. Hopeless romantic.
That’s just the tip of the Kristen Manieri iceberg, and she is kind and generous to a fault (Canadian). That includes with her time, letting me interview her about her main professional love, the Orlando Date Night Guide.
Along with that, we got into her college experience, the Canadian music scene, and writing. Never afflicted with writer’s block, Kristen has the wherewithal to be a very prolific writer. Eventually, she decided to hang her own shingle doing what she has come to love, exploring Orlando and sharing her discoveries with others.
And Kristen doesn’t stop. She’s got plans to expand the Guide to other cities, and locally, she’s going to old school with the Discovery Club, featuring even more ways to find new places.
If you missed this episode, it also featured some great Canadian music. And Kristen will have to come back in the future because she didn’t quite agree with all my song choices.
0:00 – Welcome Kristen! Let’s get to know her through a game called Take the Money or Run.
4:09 – “So you don’t like things floating around the ether.”
8:44 – “I love when there’s a democracy to social media. When there isn’t this big brother control that tells me when I get to see something and when I don’t.”
14:17 – “On paper it’s a good system, but maybe it’s just got bad PR.”
20:00 – “I don’t watch a lot of it, and I do have a Women’s Studies background. Maybe I would say run.”
24:26 – “Do you eat food at any point?”
26:24 – A little background on the path Kristen took to eventually get to Orlando Date Night Guide.
28:26 – “So totally backwards. Most people these days have a blog. Then they start a newsletter. Then they write a book.”
30:35 – “Once you have this person you’re dedicated to spend time with, that’s when I step in. Now you have to figure out what to do. And I’m happy to help in that regard.”
32:22 – “At what point did you say, ‘Okay, this is what I’m going to do this full-time.’”
39:23 – “You produce a lot of content. How do you get motivated, and how do you get past writer’s block?”
45:17 – Talking Canadian music before getting into Bad Business Ideas (patent pending).
46:46 – Let the startup talk commence! Lead blankets and an analogy subscription service.
49:20 – “It’s really like swaddling for adults.”
52:27 – “It’s like the Sopranos are trying to recreate a world where Mad Men was the norm, but we end up with the Walking Dead.”
57:48 – College talk with Kristen. What was it like in the great white north?
1:03:20 – “I used college as an opportunity to be an agent for myself in terms of what do I like to learn and what do I feel like pursuing.”
1:07:53 – “What I would love to see is go do two years of college, take a gap year, and really evaluate if I’m studying what I want to be studying.”
1:09:45 – Pop culture and current event quiz. Marilyn’s dress, a movie based on the band Queen, and Englebert Humperdink. And she goes four for four.
1:15:44 – “Nothing says romance like going on a date with 70,000 mainly dudes.”
1:17:20 – Wrapping up! Chatting a little bit more about what you can find on Kristen’s site. Even if you’re not dating, it’s quite a resource for places to go.
