Getting Fired Saved My Life (DJ Lyris)
Also available on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify
DJ and music curator Lyris Greene shares how getting fired after 14 and a half years working in the government pushed her to go all in on a creative career in music. We talk about building visibility through livestreaming, creating WLAG Timeless Radio, learning when to pivot, and why she feels she’s in the “experience” business.
Key Takeaways
Building your skills and visibility before you need the opportunity can open doors you never planned for.
A career transition does not have to begin from zero. The work, relationships, and experience you build on the side can become your foundation.
Social media visibility can disappear quickly, so creators should find ways to build direct relationships with their audience.
Pivoting does not mean an idea failed. Sometimes you need to let go of one version so you can figure out what it becomes next.
Start with something you genuinely enjoy creating. Chasing attention around work you do not actually like can eventually become another job you feel trapped in.
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Related Episodes
Turning Setbacks Into Opportunities
Guest: Dani Felt
Dani’s discussion about rejection, getting fired, taking risks, and redirecting setbacks closely parallels Lyris’s belief that losing her government job ultimately opened the right path.
How to Know When It’s Time to Change Paths
Guest: Jess Bumsted from Root & Trellis and Book More Women
Jess and Lyris both talk about recognizing when a career or opportunity no longer fits and giving yourself permission to change direction.
Host: Michael Zimmerlich
Post-Production: EarthtoMoira
Music by: Daphne Greene
A podcast by Omelette Prevail, a creative company connecting creators, brands, and ideas through partnerships and collaboration.
Transcript:
00:00:00 Living Outside the Box
Mike Zimmerlich: Hey, Lyris, how are you?
Lyris Greene: Well, how are you doing?
Mike Zimmerlich: I'm doing fantastic, thanks for asking. I really appreciate you being on the show. It's real exciting to have you. You have such an incredible journey, and I can't wait to dive into this.
One of the things that I saw in a recent interview that you've done was you mentioned specifically that you don't see yourself in the music business, that you see yourself in the experience business, and that really resonated with me.
So I want to start off by asking you, what does experience mean to you? I know that's a very big word, but what does that mean?
Lyris Greene: Well, experience alone is just the life I've been living and the situations that I've had and what they're telling me about myself, right? And then what is it that I want to do while I have this time on this earth, right?
A lot of how I grew up was by boomers: get that nine-to-five, get that secure job. And in that journey, I learned I don't want to do that. Even as I pivoted into music, that world also had these belief systems, and I said, "Yeah, but I don't want to be boxed in."
So I would say the experience is about living authentically and allowing these experiences that you have with people, with your job, with your career, with your relationships, and allowing that to teach you what it is you really want. Don't rely on what you've been told or what your environment has told you. You get to actually create it.
So that's what I mean. I'm living. I like to say I'm becoming. I'm still becoming, and I'm in this period in my life that I'm extremely free of knowing that I can create the reality that I truly want for myself.
The experiences now are like guides. They're like teachers now. So nothing is concrete. It's just a lesson.
Okay, what are we gonna do with this? What is it teaching me?
That's why I don't like to be boxed in. I realized that when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, no matter what field I landed in, there was always this box. And I don't like boxes. I realize that because I like to create.
We're all creators, I believe that. I've really taken that and said, these experiences, these relationships, these jobs, these people are teaching me something about myself. So I'm allowing that to become my school now.
Mike Zimmerlich: I absolutely love that, and I totally agree with you. Sometimes we feel the restriction of being in a box and not truly able to express ourselves or explore our passions and so forth. I'll say that I feel the exact same way.
I also like to say, too, that if I am in a box, I'll try to find how I can rearrange the box.
It's funny that you mention that because I was thinking about literally a physical box. I remember as a kid that in the basement we had one of those pullout, roll-up beds, like those couches with the roll-up bed.
Lyris Greene: Yes.
Mike Zimmerlich: I would, as a kid, make underneath the bed like a cave, and that's where I would play with my action figures.
That's always the thing. I always use my imagination. I try not to be confined, but if I am confined, I'm going to work within that space to be creative, and I'll use that to my advantage to do something with it.
But I still feel like even that is being outside the box, if you will. It's not in the guidelines that were laid out for you. It's like, all right, if these are my guidelines, I gotta find some other way to use those guidelines to do what I actually want to do.
Lyris Greene: I love that. And that's just the beauty of the mind of children. We're so creative, and that, to me, is the secret sauce, tapping into that inner child.
Mike Zimmerlich: So you got your degree originally in accounting and finance. Was that because it was expected to go into the nine-to-five and you needed to get a degree that's going to get you that job?
Lyris Greene: Yeah. I mean, when I tell you, my father probably [unclear] me for that around 10, like, "Get that secure job."
At the time, business and finance was, we're talking about the '80s and the '90s here, so it can't get any more secure. Both my parents worked for the state, so it already kind of set that foundation.
I had always been a creative child, so I had all these interests. When he said, "You should try accounting," I said, "Okay. I'm good with math." I started taking accounting classes in high school.
Once I got to college, I guess I just had that tunnel vision that I didn't even realize this whole other world of the creative because he convinced me. Boomers did that. It's like, "You can't make no money being a creative."
But music has always been in my life, even when I was in the womb. So it was just a hobby. It was just an outlet. But yeah, he made it very clear that, "This is how you're going to be able to survive when I'm not here."
I think that's what my parents were pretty much like: "We want you to be able to take care of yourself when we're not here."
Mike Zimmerlich: Makes sense. All parents want that for their children.
Lyris Greene: That's all they want.
Mike Zimmerlich: Did you play an instrument when you were a child?
Lyris Greene: That's a great story. No. I had a drum set. I requested a drum set, and I had it for about a week, and all of a sudden it disappeared.
Mike Zimmerlich: Just magically disappeared. I wonder what happened to it.
Lyris Greene: It needed to be repaired. I never saw that drum set again.
I tease my mom about that all the time. She said, "Baby, you was just banging on them drums, and we couldn't take it."
So no, but even in high school, I wanted to play the drums. I actually did. I just didn't explore it. I was more into sports, very active.
Again, it was not knowing that I could do it all. It was feeling like I had to choose one. Again, I told you that it started early where I realized I want to do a lot of different things.
I was my own little DJ in my room. I recorded music off the radio and made my own little mixtapes. I did that probably from the time I was nine, I think. My dad had a huge album collection. Some of it's still right here.
So I was just in that. It was just normal for me in my household.
Mike Zimmerlich: It's interesting that you mentioned the fact that, especially at an early age, you loved music and you wanted to explore this creatively. It also sounds like you're very, very curious. You want to explore different things and try different things out.
What I find interesting is that you graduated from college with this degree and then got into the government sector, which makes sense because that's what your parents did.
And you did that for 14 years. You stuck around for a while.
Lyris Greene: Oh, once I got the government job, that was where I'll retire.
Now, the truth of it is, the very first time I went into the orientation, I knew in my body. I said, "This can't be it. I'm supposed to do this till I retire?"
At that time, the retirement age had moved to like 69. I'm 23, and I'm like, "This can't be it."
But that's a belief. So I stayed there, and that's when I actually leaned more into music because it became this outlet.
I traveled a lot. I traveled like 70% of the year for the first five years that I worked for the government. On those trips, I was always making CDs, coming up with all these crazy ideas.
But I still did not know at that time that there was this whole career path that I could explore. I just used it as this vehicle.
Government was where I was gonna, kind of crazy, but I was gonna work and die. And I was like, yeah, that's, ugh.
But I tend to manifest my way on out of that job.
I think that was just the natural evolution of me in that becoming, as I was saying. Fourteen and a half.
Mike Zimmerlich: Half part, yes. Almost to 15, but not exactly there yet.
Lyris Greene: Yes, yes, yes.
00:11:00 From Government to DJing
Mike Zimmerlich: So you mentioned that even from orientation you realized this was not going to be the end-all, be-all for where you're going to go in your career. And throughout the entire time, you were still being creative with music.
I'm curious, did something change after the 14 and a half years that made you decide, okay, this is the point where I need to change and do something different?
Lyris Greene: The beautiful thing, it came in these different pockets.
When I first got my job, I moved to Charlotte. I had a friend at the time, and we were going out, and I would listen to the DJs and be like, "Man, these guys are... what is going on?"
She just looked at me and said, "You could do it."
I said, "I can." I stuck it in the back of my head, but I never pulled the trigger.
Then my father passed. My father was my best friend. I was 28 years old. Once I started going to therapy after that, because that really triggered therapy for me, which I'm so glad, it was in therapy that I realized that I should explore this.
That's when I bought my first set of equipment.
After he passed, within a year I got a promotion with my job and I moved to Atlanta. Good ol' ATL. Now, this has been my dream place since I was nine years old. I kid you not.
I knew at nine that I wanted to live in Atlanta because of the music, because of the culture that I would see on television. I said, "Man, this is it. I want to live there."
When I would visit here once a year, coming to a classic with my father, we would come down every year. It just felt like home.
So that's when I really explored DJing. That didn't go well with the government. I stirred the pot a little bit once they found out that I was a DJ.
Somebody actually recommended me to DJ a conference. That kind of put the spotlight on me. I didn't know that at the time.
I was just pretty much free. I'm making this money, I'm traveling, and I'm going to explore this thing.
My father passed, and he hadn't retired yet. So that was the light bulb for me.
I'm supposed to work this job till I retire, and I watched my own father pass before he got to retire. So now everything that I knew for 28 years made no sense.
I said, "Well, what happens if I die before I retire?"
That's where the shift came for me. I was like, oh, I'm gonna live my life now.
With that, I would say that I got a little arrogant because I didn't stay the path of a government employee. As the young people say, I was outside.
I think what happened is, as I started really getting into, "I love this. This is great. I want to know more," and I told you I'm very inquisitive, I just kind of go. When I lock in on something, I lock in, and I really don't care about what you think about it.
There were some grumblings at the time like, "Hey, you need to tighten up."
I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I'm not gonna do nothing crazy. I'm not gonna steal, and I'm not gonna lie on my timesheet, and y'all said that's the only way I'ma get fired."
Well, technically I didn't do that. I got myself in some hot water with the craziest thing: work papers.
I kid you not. But it was the lesson that keeps on giving.
I got fired in 2018, but by that time I had already started building a whole life as DJ Lyris. I did Scratch Academy. I started networking. I started getting these gigs. I was literally on flyers and my profile was public, so they were pretty much like, "Oh, so she's a DJ, huh? We going to show her."
I'm not saying it was a particular person. It doesn't even matter because I always say that me getting fired saved my life.
I tell that story because if I didn't get fired, I would probably still be there. I would not have these experiences and these ahas that I've had over the last eight years if that didn't happen.
So I am grateful for all those that were involved in that process for me because it really freed me in a way that I didn't know.
Now, was it scary as hell? I mean, I have this house. I have responsibilities. I have all these things.
But I'ma tell you the craziest thing is I've always had this knowing. I wouldn't be in this situation if something great isn't gonna come out of it. God ain't gonna just leave me hanging out here.
This is happening for a reason.
I had a great support system. Especially at that time, they just thought I was gonna up and get another job in the government.
Needless to say, they didn't understand that the way I got fired, I was not gonna get hired again. That's just how the government works. It's literally like a blackball process, which again is why I say it saved my life because it didn't even give me that option.
Mike Zimmerlich: There's no parachute.
Lyris Greene: Yeah, exactly. "But you have this degree." It means nothing when I've spent 14 and a half years doing this and I can't put that on a resume.
So a lot of people would be like, "Oh my God, that is terrifying."
And I'm saying, if I can survive that and thrive, you can too. And it's not just because I'm in music. No, you really can.
But I got pushed out, and I'm grateful because that was the only way that was gonna happen, to be honest.
When I look back at that time, I was not gonna leave that safety net.
Then we had COVID.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, that's right.
Lyris Greene: Then we had COVID two years later. So it happened, timing. I said, "Man, that's divine timing." I truly know that.
Mike Zimmerlich: I'm curious. While you were still working your day job, we'll call it your day job, and you were building yourself up as a DJ, that probably was quite challenging to do.
Like you said, you were taking classes, you were networking, while still having this full-time job.
I also want to hear more about how you were able to develop this on the side while still having a demanding full-time job.
Lyris Greene: Well, that was the beautiful thing about the job. It was so flexible.
2015 is when I did Scratch Academy. At that point, I had already been with the corporation for 12 years. I had moved up the ranks pretty much, and I was flexible. I did telework, I traveled, and then I had so much leave that I utilized my leave a lot to be able to do things.
But honestly, the passion drove me. My strength was teaching, so I became an instructor within the corporation, which gave me even more flexibility and it gave me more life.
I love to talk. I love to share. What happened was it gave me more flexibility, and with that flexibility I just poured it into DJing. I poured it into music.
I'm very talented at how to make things work. I would have times where I would do a gig. I might not get home till 12:00, and then I would have to get up about six o'clock and hit the road.
I might be gone for a week, and then when I come back in I would maybe have a gig or I would practice.
I was actually going live before going live was a thing. I kid you not. I was going live on Instagram at the time because I was trying to get my own gigs.
Most people look at me and thought I was young, but I'm 45 now. At this time I'm 37, 38, something around there. I haven't hit 40 yet, but I'm in the mid-30s, and I'm around 20-year-olds.
So I'm like, well, yeah, I don't play that.
I would go live, again visible for anybody to see, and I would do that every Friday night. I would go live. I would just play.
So you will understand I'm very active, but I was creating a path for myself. That's what I learned very, very early on in this business, that I wasn't gonna play certain things just to get booked.
No. I have a certain frequency I believe in curating, just personally as I've gotten older, and I wanted people to understand my style, understand the sound that I was passionately curating because I didn't want it to feel like a job.
I already knew what that felt like.
I wasn't going to go into this world with that same mentality. I was like, nope. I did 14 and a half years doing what somebody told me, going where they told me, doing this even if it didn't make any sense.
I was like, no. I'm gonna create my own path. I'ma create my own opportunities.
That's how I really built, and that's literally how people from Roland saw me, because I was going live and I had bought this new Roland machine that was the coolest thing. It was called the Roland DJ-808, and it had the 808, the 909, the 707.
With your songs, before stems, you could add beats under it, and I thought this was the coolest thing ever. Still do. There still hasn't been a controller like this.
I would go home and start creating stuff. If I was traveling, I would have these ideas, write them down, and then when I got back home I would try them out, record them, and post them on Instagram.
Nobody was really doing this at the time, and I just knew that this was the only way that people could see what DJ Lyris could do. That was the only thing at the time for me.
YouTube was so strict on copyright, I couldn't do it at the time. They was like, "Nope."
So I went to Instagram, and that's how that started. The more my visibility rose there, it was seen also in that government sector.
That just didn't look right, as they would say. That didn't look good if a banker wanted to check me out, because I'm public.
Mike Zimmerlich: Right.
Lyris Greene: All you had to do is type in Lyris. I'm not going by no alias. This is my name. So I go in the bank, I'm Lyris. Then you go on Instagram, you can search Lyris and there I am.
I think that became kind of an issue as well, but I didn't care. I didn't care.
00:24:00 Creating Your Own Opportunities
Mike Zimmerlich: That's truly amazing. I very much respect the fact that you doubled down on the fact that, okay, you were pushed out, this is now what you love to do.
As you mentioned, you were already slowly starting to build this up. You were developing your visibility, and that helped you get to where you were an ambassador for Roland, which is amazing, by the way.
That just goes to show you about the content that you were creating.
You were also getting into livestreaming as well, which obviously got very popular during the pandemic. You were doing quite a bit there and still are doing that today.
But I also noticed that you were expanding yourself outside of what you're doing creatively into other areas. I noticed that you were a Twitch producer for Rock Steady, which I thought was really interesting as well.
Lyris Greene: Yes, and again, all of this is just the visibility from doing one thing.
The truth is, I always tell people, "You never know who's watching you. You never know who's watching you."
I wouldn't do things for people to watch me. I was doing it so I could create the opportunity. So if people are looking for a certain sound DJ, I am, right?
Somebody dropped that in my head. He's like, "If you're not getting the gigs, create them for yourself."
I was like, "Yeah, that makes sense. I ain't got nothing to lose. I still got this nine-to-five job. Still got this money coming in."
The Rock Steady came from me doing the Twitch livestreams.
I started doing Twitch at the end of 2020 because I was doing Instagram, but then again, they started getting strict on the copyright once everybody started doing it.
As I look back at that time, it's so crazy.
So I pivot. I said, oh, well, Twitch, that's where all the other DJs that I know, I call them the OGs, the guys who've been DJing at this point 20, 30 years.
I started doing that, and I was going live pretty much every day. Then I started doing at least three to four times a week from about 2021 all the way up to 2024. I kind of just laid off.
That's when I learned about OBS. I learned about streaming, and I was doing it all. Again, once I lock in, I'm like, "I'ma figure this out."
When they were looking for somebody to do the streaming at Rock Steady, because again, this was the hot thing, everybody was trying to stream, they brought me on to help just manage it. Manage the camera, manage the OBS. I was managing it from my phone. They had an iPad, and I was doing all that while in the club.
It was a crazy time.
That came off the strength of a referral of somebody looking for somebody who could do that. I'd been doing it for three years, and I was like, "Sure."
So I did that, and that was cool.
I think for me all of that was just great, but once the streaming became expensive, especially once my computer went down, I said, "Oh, snap."
Then I started getting a lot of gigs. So I went from not really having a lot of gigs in 2020.
Now, I want to back up. I worked for an entertainment company. From the day that I got fired, this is really important, the day I got fired, literally escorted out the building because this is the government, they don't play, I got hired for a DJ entertainment company.
Mike Zimmerlich: That's amazing.
Lyris Greene: I had met the owner, I think maybe two or three weeks prior, on a lunch break.
I overhear him talking about a team of DJs. I didn't even know this existed yet, okay? I done went to Scratch, I've learned about the gigs, but I didn't even know there were entertainment companies that just had DJs.
I said, "What the hell?"
So I'm ear hustling. I had a card in my car. I had one more card, because I carried cards with me.
I was like, shit, I'ma just go up to him and hand him my card and say, "Hey, I'm a DJ. I would love to see what this is about."
I came in, I auditioned, he took me around, then the day that I got fired is the day I got hired with the entertainment company.
I literally went to an event the day that I got fired.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow. It's incredible.
And that's good for you, though, right? You were exploring your options before the option was essentially made for you. Good for you for that fact.
Lyris Greene: I always tell people that sometimes you don't know where it's gonna go. You just gotta start walking the path.
I always use that as one example. I didn't know that that even existed, but when I saw the opportunity, I was like, "Well, shoot, I wanna give it a shot."
In that company, I learned so much about the industry that I had no idea about, that the academy didn't teach me.
I was like, what is this world? Oh, we do private events, we do weddings. This is a whole world over here.
I said, well, I'll be damned.
So I learned about sound. I became a professional DJ at that point.
I wasn't just a DJ, but I could run sound. I could run equipment. I understood everything, which I don't think people really understand.
A professional DJ can produce an event. We understand all the elements that go into the sound and coordinating with all the vendors.
That's what that company taught me, which I'm always grateful for.
But that's what I was actually doing right after I got fired. So, as you can tell, I was like, oh, see, I told you this was supposed to happen.
In that, that's when I just started becoming more confident and just, hey man, just do it. You just never know where it will lead you.
Mike Zimmerlich: Do you still work for the company now, or did you go off on your own at some point?
Lyris Greene: I left the company this year.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow.
Lyris Greene: I did.
That alone is another story. I had to learn my worth. I had to learn how much I have put in, and that I wanted something different for myself. This wasn't the path that was gonna get me there anymore.
In fact, it was starting to feel a little bit like being with the government when I started getting all these other opportunities outside of that. It became a problem, and I said, "Well, this is familiar. I've literally seen this before."
So I said, "Welp, I know what I gotta do this time. I'm not gonna wait to get fired. I'ma just leave."
But I left on good terms because I'm always grateful for the experience, for what it taught me as a professional DJ.
That's why I was like, "Ah, I'm a professional DJ, baby. I can run a show."
And if I don't have the answers, I know how to go get the answers. I know people I can call. I know people who can assist me in it.
I think that's the biggest thing.
So yeah, this is my first year literally flying solo because I just believe so much in what I'm building at this point.
Mike Zimmerlich: Congratulations. That's incredible.
It's exhilarating and scary all at the same time because now you literally don't have a safety net anymore.
Fortunately, it's a different type of financial stability once things start going for you, right? Also, I'm sure it helps to have a background in accounting and finance. Being off on your own, I think that's a major asset to have for yourself.
When you have a job, you do have that financial stability of, I know exactly what my paycheck is going to be and I know this is the money that's always going to be coming in.
But if you get laid off or you quit, whatever the case is, your entire income is just poof, gone.
Where if you are on your own and you're working on gigs and so forth, yes, it's not necessarily always going to be as consistent, but at the same token, if one gig falls through, it's not like you lost your entire paycheck or your entire income.
You can essentially replace that gig or make up for it in other ways later on. Maybe this month there were not as many gigs because it's a slower season, but now gigs pick up here, so that's going to offset the lower amounts that I got during this period of time.
Lyris Greene: Absolutely. Absolutely.
It is a crash course in faith. Faith in yourself.
You don't know where it's gonna come, but if you believe it's gonna come, it will. That's all I can tell people.
I know they're like, "You know, that's just too scary for me."
And I'm like, "I understand."
That's why you have to really work on the faith part. I'm not just casually saying that. It's tested.
I've had a lot of experiences where I did not know how this was gonna get paid, but it got paid.
It's not for the faint of heart, I'ma tell you.
That's why everybody's not doing it. That's why it's extremely terrifying for most people.
I believed that I was chosen for this path, or I chose this path, but I knew that nothing is very normal for me. I'm not that, and I knew that at an early age. I knew that very early. I just learned now to embrace it.
It's like a superpower. Now I look at it like it's my superpower. Instead of seeing through walls, I have this just knowing, and I trust it.
It's a muscle. It's a muscle.
So yeah, that's part of the experience. All of those things are kind of like it has me in this gym, working all these different aspects of myself that I had no idea about 10 years ago.
I didn't have a clue that this was to be my path. No.
00:36:00 Building WLAG
Mike Zimmerlich: I can also tell that you're still always exploring new avenues.
One of the things I see in your background is the WLAG sticker, which really resonated with me personally because that's how I started before starting my record label, 80/20 Records.
The first venture that I had was creating our own internet radio stations. Musicians could upload their music and we would host our own internet radio stations.
Just for context, this is before Last.fm and Pandora got huge. This was back in the mid-2000s era.
So it got me really excited to see somebody creating a highly curated internet radio station. I'd love to hear why you made that decision.
Lyris Greene: Man, that's my baby even though it no longer operates. It's no longer on air. I say it's in hiatus right now.
That idea came to me when I was with the corporation. It originally started as, I wanna have a platform for DJs to come on.
But before I got there, I said, "I need a place where timeless music can be played 24/7."
Because at the time, even with Sirius and XM and all them, I was like, yeah, but y'all ain't really getting into the crates. It's like the same records. Y'all not really switching it up.
I tell you, when I get an idea, I go with it.
When I got hired with musicto, when I met Andrew, I was really exploring being a music curator when I could tell my time was ending with the corporation.
I heard this thing, oh, you can be a music curator with Spotify and all this. I'm like, shit, how do I get into that field?
At the time at the corporation, I was working with a guy who actually had radio stations. He had a radio station in his house, and he was telling me, "Oh, that's easy. You can do this."
He gave me pretty much a blueprint of how to start. That, to me, was a sign. He said, "Yeah, you could do it literally with your equipment."
He gave me a hard drive because he also was in radio in L.A., and he had this hard drive of music from the radio station.
So what does that mean? I had everything you can imagine. Still do to this day.
Even though I didn't use a lot of that music because I used my own music, that's how much music I have. I still have more music I didn't even put on that station.
I had this idea. That was 2017, 2018, and I incubated on it. I said, "Well, I'ma start an Instagram page first."
I'm just gonna start a page, because on my regular page I would just post music videos. I would post songs that I felt like people needed to know about because I grew up in a household where music was played 24/7.
My dad did not care. You woke up to Earth, Wind & Fire. It didn't matter. Horns blazing at 8:00 in the morning. It did not matter.
It just became part of my life.
I said, "Well, I'm gonna create a station with all of this, and I will have different themes for each day."
I still got my notepad of ideas.
Then COVID hit.
I already was posting these videos on WLAG Instagram. I might've had 200 followers. I don't even remember what it was. It wasn't about that. It was just an outlet for me.
In 2019, I made a decision. It's so crazy. I sat and I said, "I'm gonna just post every single day."
Every single day there is a song in my head. So every day I'ma just post.
From, I think it was November 2019, to March or April of 2020, that radio station page went from like 200 followers to like 5,000.
I was like, damn.
Then it was 10,000. Then it was 20,000.
I said, "Hey, you better put this station together."
That's when I said, there's an audience.
It was April 2020. I promise you, for about two weeks straight I sat here like a mad woman building the station, finding the broadcaster, learning everything I can just to do this.
I loaded every single song in there, every single cover art. I did all of that. I programmed every single thing. I was just so obsessed.
That page grew 30,000, 50,000. It got to the point where I would just start celebrating. We hit 30,000. We hit 50,000. We hit 60,000.
I was having the artists themselves come in and comment.
This blew my mind because these people I have pretty much admired my whole life.
I think one was an artist, Jade, and I think I posted on her birthday or something. It was something. She reposted it.
That was one of my first videos that went viral. That was before I even knew what that meant.
Then it got to the point where I couldn't even manage the comment section.
Then there was this whole other section that I didn't even know existed with people who don't follow you. I think I heard T-Pain talk about it because I found it, and I just had hundreds of people requesting and, "Hey, where can we find this?"
It became so overwhelming.
I was like, oh my God, I don't really know what I got. I don't know how to manage this.
So that's where Twitch came in.
I had this idea, and this is how me and Andrew really, he was literally trying to navigate me through this, because we were like, "What the heck is happening?"
I was like, well, what I'm gonna do is get followers from Instagram to know about the station and get on Twitch.
Now my mind was like, okay, followers are great, but I need to make some money off of this. This is great. How do I convert this?
That was probably the biggest lesson that I had to learn.
I didn't even know this. That's what I was stumbling upon. You can't try to promote another platform from one platform.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, you have to be very careful about that.
There's a few areas where it's sort of acceptable. I know a lot of streamers, when they go live on Twitch, they'll post a story on Instagram, and it sounds like Instagram's been cool about that.
But not like making an actual post saying, "Go over to Twitch."
Lyris Greene: Didn't know. This is 2021. I have no idea.
So I'm on Instagram Live, I'm on Twitch trying to get them to come over, trying to promote the radio station. I'd have made T-shirts. I am trying everything, but I feel like that's what you're supposed to do.
You don't know until you try.
Mike Zimmerlich: Correct.
Lyris Greene: It was in that time, I think this is now about 2022, everything started changing. My analytics started changing.
This was one of the things that me and Andrew worked on as my mentor, my KPIs, and literally seeing it.
I was like, "I don't know what to do."
It freaked me out, I ain't gonna lie.
I think I got in one of those, like most content creators, you're like, "Oh my God."
Now, what we did figure out is, hey, need to start getting an email list. Let's try to at least capture some of this audience because you cannot depend on these platforms.
You will have the visibility, and then you won't.
There are so many lessons that came from that page.
It's still running. I just changed the name now because I pivot.
I actually stopped posting for about two years because I didn't know what I wanted to do yet.
I said, "You know, at this point, I don't know. I have to wait till it hits me."
So it's been incubating for, I think, about a year.
00:45:00 Pivoting to Behind The Groove
Lyris Greene: I said, "I wanna use it as storytelling of the DNA of these records, where these records come from, the artists, the producers," because those are my heart.
So I changed the name and just rebranded it to Behind The Groove.
Financially, it was draining my pockets, and I just didn't have the funds to keep it going.
When I did that, I had to mourn it. I had to really mourn this thing that had grown.
I had this idea that I was gonna get advertising dollars and people, and that just wasn't the path.
But I don't have any regrets. I just learned.
Now I'm doing Behind The Groove with it.
I started this series called Same Roots Different Records, and I love it because it's my passion.
It's taking, deconstructing records that people don't realize have been sampled. Some do.
These are songs that I'm still learning. There's songs I've known. Some I've learned in the last year or two. Some I might have learned just a week ago.
I deconstruct it so people can follow the path of it.
One of the things that happened was, I always tell people, you never know who's watching you.
Those who know me know my favorite producers: Quincy Jones, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Babyface, Riley, Missy, and Timbaland.
Those are kind of formative of my DNA.
But then also it goes to Holland-Dozier-Holland and Thom Bell and The Sound of Philadelphia. All of that became my background, as well as Maurice White.
All of that became something that I was like, no, I really want people to understand this sound that is really like this common thread.
A couple weeks ago, I did James Brown. Everybody knows he's probably the most sampled artist in hip-hop, for sure.
It was "Papa Don't Take No Mess" to Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes" because, again, that was a new one for me.
I've known it, but I didn't know where that sample was. I didn't hear that sample like that.
I said, "My goodness."
So I did this, and I was at a gig. Jimmy Jam, the Jimmy Jam, not only liked it and reposted, but he followed Behind The Groove with DJ Lyris.
People who know me know that was it for me.
You can't tell me anything about what I'm doing because I didn't do it for that.
I did it because I absolutely loved it.
But it brought me back to why I did WLAG.
It was never about, I need you to see me and see what I'm doing. I just want to interpret this music for you guys.
I love this stuff, and I nerd out about it every day. There's not a day that I don't nerd out about something, okay?
Which is just the inner child in me.
For me to see something that I just created by saying, "You know, did y'all know this?"
Versus five years ago, I would just post "That's the Way Love Goes" and I would just give you the facts of the artist, the producer, and all this.
It evolved. It's evolved now.
That's the main thing for me as an artist. As I evolve in this becoming, I want my art, I want my content to do the same.
I want it to be reflective of where I'm at and where I'm going.
But the most important thing about what WLAG has branched off for me with Behind The Groove, it's put me more in the producer seat.
More of, no, you really are a producer. The way you hear music, the way you feel it is exactly what producers do.
Now I'm reverse engineering. I'm teaching myself through my favorites. I'm teaching myself how they created this sound that I can feel and interpreting it through the content.
I know that doing that, I will draw the people who are also nerds about it, who also are passionate about it, because I literally could do it all day. Literally could.
That's just one branch of where I'm going, but that's where WLAG evolved to.
So people were like, "Man, you don't have a station?"
I said, "I don't."
Again, you have to really look at what's gonna make sense.
I say, "It's not over, I'm just pivoting."
The goal is eventually to get back into streaming, but it all has to make sense. It all has to be connected.
That's one of the things the experiences have taught me at this point.
You might have this idea, try it. Don't be afraid to try it. Don't talk yourself out of it.
I call them downloads. The idea just didn't come outta nowhere. It just dropped into me, mostly in the shower or on my nature walks, all the time.
I write them down, and I make a schedule to get to execute them just because I never know where they're gonna lead.
But as long as they make me happy, as long as they excite me, as long as Lil Lyris is like, "Oh my God," like if she was beating on that drum, that's how I know I'm on the right path.
Mike Zimmerlich: I really appreciate the fact that you mentioned that it has to start with what you're excited about, what gets you moving, what gets you passionate, what you're nerding out on.
This is something that I also talk about all the time. It has to start from there.
It can't start with, how am I going to make money from this? Or can I get sponsorships? Or anything like that.
Especially when it comes to the creative field, I would say in general, but especially when it comes to anything creative, it has to come from there first.
I cannot stress that enough because I've also known people, I have good friends, who started doing something because they were looking for how to get attention.
They found something that was getting people's attention because they wanted to bring that into what they truly loved to do, but they were getting known for something completely different.
They end up getting stressed out over it because they're like, "Well, I guess now I have to do this now. I don't want it. I want them to know about this, but this is what everyone's coming to us for."
Over time, they eventually got to the point where they are now known for their other works and their other creativity, but that took them years to be able to transition, to pivot people over to knowing them for that reason.
So it has to start off from there because there are so many people that get burnt out or they just become miserable.
It's like, oh, I have to post every single day for something that I don't like, that I don't wanna do anymore.
I really admire the fact that you realized very early on that, okay, this is what I love. This is what I'm passionate about. This is what I'm going to pursue.
We'll figure everything else out later.
I also appreciate the fact that you pivoted when it no longer worked for you, whether it was an outside force or just something internally.
It's like, okay, you know what? Right now the station no longer makes sense for me, so I'm gonna take a step back.
It's not forever gone. It's just a pause until I can figure something else out with this later, and we'll focus my attention on this now instead.
I very much appreciate that mentality.
I think that's something that we all really need to pay more attention toward. It has to start with something that you are passionate about, and it's also okay that it doesn't make sense for you later down the line.
Lyris Greene: Yes, because a lot of people would be like, "You had 80,000 followers and you just stopped."
And I said, "Yeah, because it didn't make sense."
It's not that I just abandoned it. There was nothing more that I could do at that stage, but I had to go back to the drawing board.
Even where I'm at now with it, even calling it Behind The Groove, that came in the shower. It just made sense, and that's how I knew.
I just trust that process because, like you said, if it lights me up, I just know that's the path.
I have done things that didn't light me up for 14 years. I don't wanna do that.
There's no need to attach myself to that because there is this endless abundance of possibilities that exist, and I have to be in this state of allowing to even get in alignment with it.
So I have to let things go.
Like you said, it doesn't mean it's over.
I have to mourn this idea of this version of it. Okay. That's okay, because something bigger and better is gonna come. I know that.
I love learning, and I just get these intuitive hits of knowing, ooh, that's a good idea.
Now there's no ceiling at this point for me, which is so freeing because we're in this information age.
There is nothing you can't learn, do, or be. It's all accessible.
But I will say, make sure you're passionate about it. Make sure.
And it's okay if it changes. That's just evolution. That's becoming.
Learning that for myself, I want to be a steward in showing people that that's okay.
It's okay. It can be scary, but if you know that there's always something better that you don't even know yet, it becomes a little easier to let go.
If you just know something even greater is out there for you.
These experiences have allowed me to let go more, not grip it for dear life, because that just doesn't work.
It doesn't work for me.
00:56:00 Music Influences and Final Advice
Mike Zimmerlich: We can start wrapping things up here. I do have a couple of fun questions for you to end things out.
First question I have for you is, what was the very first concert that you ever went to?
Lyris Greene: Oh, that is such a great question.
Victory Tour, Jackson 5, Knoxville, Tennessee. Three years old.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow.
Lyris Greene: But baby, I do remember Michael on that big [unclear], and them doing "Thriller." I remember that.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow, that's incredible. That's amazing. That's a good one.
Lyris Greene: There's a story with how I got to that concert too. It's divine timing.
But yes, that's my first memory.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow, that's amazing.
Do you have a go-to artist right now that you're really excited about, that you're nerding out about right now?
Lyris Greene: New or old? Does it matter?
Mike Zimmerlich: Doesn't matter. Whichever one.
Lyris Greene: That's a really hard one, right?
Oh man, that I'm nerding out on?
I will forever nerd out over Stevie.
I would say it's more producers now because I like to get in their head. I like to get into, how did they create this? How did they create these masterpieces?
So Stevie is gonna be my top. That's just, he is the GOAT to me. There's a big Stevie right here.
But I would actually say, as I've been learning music, I've been teaching myself how to play music in production and through Maschine and on my MPC, I've been studying Babyface and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis because those songs are imprinted on me.
So I've actually been studying them.
But yeah, I would say every week I pick a producer. This week was Phil Spector and The Wall of Sound.
So I would say him, even though I know there's a little taboo there with that guy.
I've been picking a producer every week, not so much an artist.
I am waiting for that artist to grab me. You know what I mean? You just hear it and you're like, "Where have you been my life?"
I know they're out there, and there are some great artists, but nobody's lighting my fire. Not like those guys.
Mike Zimmerlich: No, I understand that.
Speaking of Stevie, real quick, I'll tell a real quick story.
Are you familiar with the NAMM Show at all?
Lyris Greene: Yes.
Mike Zimmerlich: Okay. So I go to the NAMM Show every single year.
For those who don't know, the NAMM Show, it's amazing. It's like Candy Land.
It's National Association of Music Merchants, and it's this massive show that they have in Anaheim, California.
Basically, it's all the gear and instrument companies you could possibly imagine, and they're all showcasing their new products and so forth. It's truly remarkable. It's massive.
It's a very, very big conference. I don't remember the exact size, but it's like 80 to 100,000 people go to it easy. Maybe more nowadays, but it's huge.
One of the people that frequents it quite often is Stevie Wonder. He's known to show up there.
I've actually seen Stevie on the floor a number of times now.
It's always amazing. He's always with an entourage of people.
I even remember one time I was having lunch in one of the restaurants at the hotels and saw him in one of the booths across the way.
One of my favorite stories, this happened many years ago, but they have stages at all the hotel lobbies and all throughout the convention.
One artist was performing "Satisfaction" at the time, and Stevie happened to come by while he was performing it.
So Stevie went up on stage and started singing it with them. Everyone just blew their minds. Everyone went crazy.
But that's the whole point, right?
Something like that's very special. When you have the community coming together like that, people who've been in it for decades and people that are so well known for their craft and music, and then there's the person that's up there on the stage showcasing what they can do, and then essentially coming together like that is truly remarkable.
Lyris Greene: Yes. That's a dream come true.
I've seen pictures of him there, and I said, "Man, Lyris, you gotta get..." Every year I say that, and I let it come up on me.
But you done planted that seed. I'm gonna have to go ahead.
Mike Zimmerlich: You gotta go to NAMM. Absolutely.
All right, last question for you.
If you were only able to give one piece of advice, what would that one piece of advice be?
Lyris Greene: Whoo.
Mike Zimmerlich: I know. I end it hard. We start hard and we end hard.
Lyris Greene: Yeah. One piece of advice.
Mike Zimmerlich: One piece of advice. I only could give one.
Lyris Greene: Okay, this is what popped up in my head. I have a lot, but question everything.
Everything.
Everything that you believe, just question it.
Ask, where does it come from? Is that your belief or is it somebody else's belief?
Keep going, but I'm gonna stop.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah. No, that's okay. I love that.
Lyris Greene: That has taught me so much.
Is this my belief, or is it something somebody else told me?
Mike Zimmerlich: I love that.
Well, Lyris, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Of course, we'll have all your links in your show notes so people can go and check you out.
Thank you so much again. This was such a blast, and I really do appreciate it.
Lyris Greene: I love talking, I love sharing, so thank you for having me.
Mike Zimmerlich: Absolutely.