Sneaker Impact News
Weekly interviews, news, updates and more about Sneaker Impact and our work in the recycling and running industries. Hosted by Bryan the Botanist. Please send us your guest recommendations and topics you'd like us to feature. Email: bryan@sneakerimpact.com
Sneaker Impact News
From Activism To Music: Meet Aaron Jordan, The Visionary Behind HIPHOUSE Festival
Episode 34 of Sneaker Impact News features Aaron Jordan, the visionary tech founder and community organizer behind HIPHOUSE Music Festival. Aaron shares his journey from Louisville, Kentucky, to Miami, and the inspiration behind his new festival that merges hip hop and house music with sustainability and climate action. Drawing from his experiences with the Louisville Juneteenth Festival, Aaron dives into the importance of community activism, climate readiness, and making sustainability accessible. Discover how Aaron's early life of service, influenced by his mother and ministry work, shaped his path towards becoming a prominent figure in social and environmental activism. Learn more about HIPHOUSE Festival, its mission to educate and inspire eco-conscious individuals, and its exciting future plans in Miami.
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From Activism To Music: Meet Aaron Jordan, The Visionary Behind HIPHOUSE Festival
[00:00:00]
Introduction and Guest Welcome
Bryan The Botanist: All right, guys. Welcome back to Sneaker Impact News. I'm your host, Bryan. And today, my guest is Aaron Jordan from HIPHOUSE Music Festival. Aaron, welcome. How you doing?
Aaron Jordan: I'm doing good, man. Thank you for having me.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah, man. We're excited to have you on the podcast.
So, guys, Aaron is a tech founder, festival organizer, and young badass. And he recently moved here from Louisville, Kentucky, to Miami. And we're excited to share his story today and everything he's up to.
Origins of HIPHOUSE Music Festival
Bryan The Botanist: So, Aaron, um Tell us about HIPHOUSE Music Festival. What's it all about?
Aaron Jordan: Yeah man, thanks again for having me here.
I'm excited to be here at Sneaker Impact. Um, so HIPHOUSE Music Festival, it literally started out, um, with organic inspiration from what was going on around me. More specifically, um, I had a friend, uh, in, in a program that I was in called Built in Miami. His name is Alex. And, um, you know, most folks know me from producing the Louisville Juneteenth Festival in my hometown in Kentucky.
[00:01:00] And so while I was participating in this program here in Miami here to build my tech company Um, I was simultaneously producing the festival back home. And so one of my classmates, uh, Alex He goes when's your next festival and I was like next year He was like why and I was like because it's Juneteenth is annual celebration and he was like Nah, I think you could do another festival here.
He was a man if you did I will support it So he low key put a little battery in my back I don't know if it's cuz I'm a quarry or so what but like That was just playing in the back of my head like, Hmm, he's right. I could do something impactful. Right? Uh, here in this city. And that's really where the conversation was stemming from.
He learned about how much impact the festival in Kentucky had. Um, how community driven it was. intentional it is and he's just like, you know, Miami could use something like that.
Community Activism and Environmental Awareness
Aaron Jordan: So fast forward, um, I'm learning more about just the Miami ecosystem. Um, the, the flooding that was going on, the winds, um, picking up, you know, hotter summers.[00:02:00]
I learned about the incinerator, learned about the garbage being shipped out to Orlando on trains. Um, just learned about all of the different elements of the climate crisis that were impacting Miami. And, um, you know, back home in Louisville, Kentucky, I would go on, like, cleanups with my council members and things like that, cleaning up a creek called Beargrass Creek, something that I grew up.
I love that.
Bryan The Botanist: I clean up a little river in our backyard here. Okay, so I feel you on the little river. You feel me, right?
Aaron Jordan: So, um, I mean, and something that I did in my spare time because In the last four to five years, I've been a community activist specifically around Black Lives Matter, around Breonna Taylor, around George Floyd.
And so I've always kind of had this, um, this itch for activism and I thought it would be, you know, when I was younger, I would say, I'm gonna be an activist when I grow up. But I didn't know that it would come to my back door in the way of civil unrest when I was in my late 20s. I thought that I would be like an older gentleman.
A little more established in life, but it's just one of those things, you speak it into existence and you don't get to choose how it comes about. [00:03:00]
The Birth of HIPHOUSE Concept
Aaron Jordan: Um, so, I was on, uh, my homeboy's patio over here in Wynwood and, um, we were listening to Drake's album. We were listening to Honestly Nevermind and, um, we were just admiring the eclectic makeup of the album.
House music. It was hip hop. It was just a vibe. You had no stickies
Bryan The Botanist: on that one, right? Is that? Yes, it is. It is. I've played that. It is.
Aaron Jordan: It is. It is. And, um Um, you know, hanging out with my boy, his name is Nick. I was hanging out with him, um, and I think we had a couple of like, just music sessions, sipping wine and just vibing and then like one day, it just hit me.
I was like, bro, HIPHOUSE. And I said the name HIPHOUSE. He was like, what's HIPHOUSE? I was like, bro, HIPHOUSE. I'm like hip hop house music fused together. I'm like, we got to make it more than just music. I'm like, we could do sustainability. We could do climate action. And then we literally like sat there and then like he said it back to me.
He was like, HIPHOUSE. I was like, yeah, HIPHOUSE. So it was kind of one of those moments of where, like, when, when I said the name of the festival, it coined itself, like it kind of [00:04:00] actualized itself. And
Bryan The Botanist: that's the origins, that's the
Aaron Jordan: origin story. Yeah. Everything from Alex putting the battery in my back and.
You know, me having a good time in Wynwood, listening to Drake. It's like,
Festival Planning and Community Involvement
Bryan The Botanist: all these artists now are coming into house music, you know, I'm a house music DJ for about the last seven years, you know, and I'm in my mid forties, so I started late, but I've always been passionate about music and sustainability, so I'm so glad to see you doing that because, you know, a couple of the music festivals down here have gotten more involved with.
Zero waste. Yes. Yeah. And um, that's how we met was through, I mean, I don't wanna give away, I want you to tell him, but Well, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Jordan: We met in the, uh, zero waste, um, group in the chat. Um, zero Waste Miami, zero Waste Miami Group.
Shout out to Maddie. Um, and yeah, yeah. Matt
Bryan The Botanist: Kaufman. She's been on the podcast debrief information. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cool
Aaron Jordan: man. Yeah. I saw you come down the timeline. Um, I think you were talking about another event that was gonna be happening
Bryan The Botanist: psycho. Yeah, psychedelics for climate action,
Aaron Jordan: psychedelics for climate action.
And yeah, like the, um, how did that, how did that even go?
Bryan The Botanist: Amazing. A bunch of the organizations came together. It was right down the street at the hub, which is called the technology and [00:05:00] climate innovation. Where's that at? It's uh, in a little river, which is where you are right now.
Aaron Jordan: Okay, cool.
Bryan The Botanist: Cool. Yeah.
Aaron's Journey to Miami and Tech Ventures
Bryan The Botanist: So guys, Aaron just moved here yesterday. I
Aaron Jordan: moved back. Yeah, but I just moved into my new space. You've
Bryan The Botanist: been to Miami before. Correct. And I know you have a 305 number. I see. Yeah, I'm
Aaron Jordan: actually coming up on my year anniversary. I moved here last year on March 27th, uh, to build Pebble, which is my tech company.
Okay.
Um, that's what I was, um, in the built in Miami program building. And from there. I thought I was just gonna like, do a little bit of hybrid back and forth. I got Airbnb, I ended up staying longer, I moved in, um, more permanently and thought that I was gonna like, find somewhere else to go after graduation, which was last June.
Uh, June 25th I believe, and Graduation from what? From the Built in Miami program through Venture Miami. Okay, so tell
Bryan The Botanist: us about Built in Miami, because I don't know what that is.
Aaron Jordan: Okay, yeah, so Built in Miami, um, shout out to Chris Daniels, who's the program manager, um, shout out to Eric Gavin, shout out to Burhan, um.
These guys were working in partnership with the [00:06:00] city of Miami to host, um, essentially like a tech accelerator. And, um, it was programming like twice a week for startups, correct? Um, there were about 200 or so, uh, startups in the program. And actually from everything that I was able to learn in that program, again, shout out to Chris Daniels, I was able to apply that and we were able to land our first, um, Our first check, my first pre seat check for Pebble.
So, I didn't think that I was going to be, I didn't know. What is Pebble? It's an app? It is, it is. What does it
Bryan The Botanist: do? Like, what's the elevator pitch if you and I are in there? Yeah
Aaron Jordan: man, so, Pebble essentially is a, an app that helps event organizers like myself to understand how much money is, is being generated in our marketplaces, at our festivals, at our farmers markets, etc.
Um, and we also are building out a POS system that will help you track those sales and be able to give a piece of that revenue back to the event organizer. Um, there's an event management piece of it. So you can go on Pebble, you can host your event on Pebble, vendors will come and [00:07:00] apply to the event. You approve them or deny them based on whatever your event criteria is, and then they're able to pay their registration fee.
You give them their load in, load out times, all the information, give them a map, they can get their booth spot or their stall number, and then they're able to So a lot
Bryan The Botanist: of planning. A lot of planning. Plus promotion, plus the accounting. And a little
Aaron Jordan: bit of accounting. And a little bit of accounting. Yeah, I mean, it takes the, it takes the, it takes a lot of the, um, confusion out of communicating back and you know, you got
Bryan The Botanist: Eventbrite and you got all these other apps, you know, there's a million apps, but you built this app, like, did you need a team of developers or how did you do it?
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, man. So I actually, I worked with a dev shop when I first came to Miami. Is that a local
Bryan The Botanist: thing? Shoppers at
Aaron Jordan: a development shop. So like, um, like a team of developers, a business that is built of developers through the built in Miami program. Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: Wow. Look how supportive they are.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, man. And, um, I mean, cause I mean, tens of thousands of dollars later, I'm still, [00:08:00] um, you know, about.
A month and a half away from my launch. Okay. Um, I'm currently raising, I'm in my pre seed, um, raise. And um, We're gonna
Bryan The Botanist: get that information in the bio here. Yeah,
Aaron Jordan: yeah man. So you
Bryan The Botanist: can contribute. And you're gonna use it for HIPHOUSE Festival? I'm gonna
Aaron Jordan: use it for HIPHOUSE Festival. I'm gonna use it for the Juneteenth Festival.
Um, I've been having conversations with a lot of festival organizers who are anticipating the, the platform. And so, I wouldn't be in Miami if it weren't for Pebble, um, and I wouldn't have potentially been inspired to build HIPHOUSE because, you know, like I said, that, that organic story that I just told you wouldn't happen unless I was here.
Juneteenth Festival and Civil Unrest
Bryan The Botanist: So tell us more about Juneteenth. Cause I was really impressed to hear how big of an event it is.
Aaron Jordan: Thank
Bryan The Botanist: you.
Aaron Jordan: Like, and
Bryan The Botanist: your history. So tell us when you started that and like, don't be shy, like tell us some numbers.
Aaron Jordan: Okay. So, um. Juneteenth. It actually started during civil unrest. Um, 2020. My background is in integrated marketing communications.
I've worked at Sony as a college marketing rep alongside Epic records, [00:09:00] Columbia records, big
Bryan The Botanist: time names.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, man. Um, I've, I've learned a lot. I've been fortunate enough to, to be able to learn a lot from the music industry. I've worked in Atlanta and record recording studios, trees, tree sound studio. Um, and.
My background also is in musicianship, and I'm a songwriter, I play the drums. Wow, amazing. Um, thank you, man. So, imagine Civil Unrest 2020, you know, my city is looking like a war torn, you know, third world country. Yeah, Louisville, Kentucky is something that I couldn't even recognize. You know, the streets that I grew up on the ice cream parlors, the pizza shops, all the everything just looked out of whack, you know, like, I would have never thought that I would see my city look like that.
You hear about stories like this.
Bryan The Botanist: Like, what do you mean? Like, was where they shut down? Or was it just, I mean, it was boarded up, right? Because of COVID, the pandemic. I do remember during that, Time Madison, Wisconsin from they boarded up all the businesses on State Street. Yeah, they put up on murals about Black Lives Matter, correct?
That was during that time when everything was closed. It was
Aaron Jordan: [00:10:00] when everything was closed. There were army tanks on the streets. There were National Guard, you know patrolling and blocking the streets off. Because of large crowds, you know people were coming in from all over the world Demonstrating and protesting and so, you know, we have been demonstrating for some time Um, unfortunately, I was a prominent figure during civil unrest.
So I was, um, allegedly one of the figures that was out there leading, um, crowds of thousands of folks and demonstrations and, um, really demanding justice for Breonna Taylor. And so, um, you know, one day, uh, I mean, we were just over it. I'm like a lot of days we were over it. A lot of people could, you know, could, could, um, express the exact same sentiment that I, that I have, which is just, you just never knew what was going to happen.
It would go from, it could be a peaceful nonviolent rally and then LMPD could show up at any moment or the Kentucky state police could show up or just another, maybe like You know, super [00:11:00] crazy Proud Boys group or something crazy would just show up and like these things would happen at the drop of a dime.
And so you have to kind of get into action mode. And so just being kind of worn out from that, you know, tear gas and, and rubber bullets, et cetera. Um, myself and a couple of other organizers, we decided we wanted to observe Juneteenth. And Which celebrates? Which celebrates the, um It represents when, not emancipation, but it's when the last of enslaved Africans in the country were told in Galveston, Texas that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed.
And so actually what abolished slavery was the 13th Amendment, not the Emancipation Proclamation. But, um, the information was So this is in the 60s? This is in 1865. Oh, okay. And so Oh, okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I know
Bryan The Botanist: there was the segregation movement in the 60s where they finally brought everyone together instead of separating, you know,
Aaron Jordan: which, um, you know, that history plays into where we're going to be hosting HIPHOUSE.
We're looking at historic [00:12:00] Virginia Key Beach Park. Um, historic Virginia Key Beach Park was actually, um, a response to civil unrest and was a response to, to, isn't that called like the black beach? It is, it is, it is the black beach and it's where black folks were recreating and the only beach that folks could recreate because Miami beach was a sun downtown and they weren't.
Um, permitting black folks to be on their beaches. It was super racist. And so black folks established Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Um, And so, you know, moving here to Miami, learning more about the culture, learning more about the history. Um, as a, as an activist, I naturally gravitated towards that venue once I learned the history about it.
It's
Bryan The Botanist: also, they protect the environment there. Correct. Like, it's very sensitive and they leave no trace. So it's not like, Festivals have been there many festivals from love burn to art with me to Caribbean Fest, all kinds of tons of festivals have been there. So it's an amazing place for festival, but it's also a pristine part of our ecosystem.
Correct. And it's an environmental, it's like a state park or something. So
Aaron Jordan: it's, I'm learning more about the way that the [00:13:00] park is set up, but I believe so. And, um, I know that there's like a crocodile mama that lives over there.
Environmental Challenges and Local Wildlife
Aaron Jordan: I know where crocodiles
Bryan The Botanist: are within two blocks of the studio. Yeah, I go paddle boarding and I will never forget the first time I saw this 15 foot American crocodile.
Are you serious? And I came around the corner barefoot in a little bend in the river with, you know, bare feet on my paddle board with my friend and we saw this dinosaur looking thing on the shore about 20 feet from us and we almost jumped out of our skin, but they're harmless as long as you don't provoke them.
They've never attacked a human. Alligators would be a little bit more
Aaron Jordan: part of me wants to go get on the paddleboard with you and I'm going to show you where it is, because there's a lot of me is like staying in lane,
Bryan The Botanist: just in the paper yesterday in the, um, you know, local 10 or whatever they were talking about how in this area up by North Miami, it's called Highland Park Highland.
I've heard of it. Yeah, there's a bunch of American crocodiles up there that are like really close to like. Walking past, and some of them are 10 to 15 feet. Now the Nile crocodile from Africa is the aggressive one that can eat humans. The American [00:14:00] crocodile was federally threatened or endangered in the seventies, but it's made a comeback.
But it's, and I heard that the population is actually here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're, they're, they're found in Jamaica and Cuba, but also in the keys and also in Miami and, um, down at Turkey point, which is a nuclear plant. Okay. Down here. It's right on the ocean. Yikes. There's a nuclear plant on the ocean?
Yeah, yeah. It's in, it's like down in the, uh, Key Largo area. Like, it's south of Homestead, but I guess, yeah, I mean, I guess it's like category five proof. Like now we're getting into like a little wormhole or what do you call it? A little, uh, rabbit hole. Rabbit hole, yeah. But, uh, you know. There are a lot of crocodiles and alligators that live in Miami and the alligators, they move them out of like, they have some times at UM, University of Miami, they'll have a crocodile or alligator that'll come into their lake there or the lagoon.
And they'll move it because they don't want anyone to accidentally provoke it or get, yeah, night, you know, but they, you know, the summertime when it's warmer out, that's when they're more aggressive in the winter. Like the, the alligators are, [00:15:00] um, cold blooded, so they don't, they're not as aggressive as active.
Yeah. So, I mean, we, we live amongst manatees in the Little River. There's hundreds of manatees. I still haven't seen a manatee. Oh my God. I'm going to show you the manatees because the manatees and the Crocodiles coexist. Isn't that interesting? It's kind of like a microcosm. It's, well, I'm so
Aaron Jordan: lame, I'm such a nerd.
I grew up, shout out to all the lames and all the nerds out there. I grew up on building out of the science guy. I grew up on paid public programming and watching the booming food cracks brothers, stuff like that. So, like, I overstand the relationship between those types of animals and sort of the respect that they have.
I mean, a crocodile is not going to try to go up against a manatee. That was too big. And there's even
Bryan The Botanist: little baby manatees with their moms I've seen. And there's a 15 foot crocodile right there. They got their own food source. Yo, cause when I first moved down here, the manatees are eating like, you know, the, the grass, the grass, the seagrass and then the crocodiles are eating like fish, I guess.
And then there's these, uh, cormorants, these birds that dive in and get the fish too. So there's a lot going on. There's other things too, I forgot about, but I'll take you for a paddleboard. I want [00:16:00] to go,
Aaron Jordan: uh, when I first moved down here again, to my life infatuation with wildlife, I, um, I was like, where are the animals that like, what kind of animals are there?
Crocodiles in the water. And everybody kept telling me, like, nobody would give me like a definitive answer. Everybody was like. I don't know. They're like, I mean, it's water and crocodiles live in water. Canals for sure. Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: West of Miami. But in the city of Miami, it's a little more rare. Okay. But you know, there are a couple and it's their habitat, so we just respect them.
Like we stay away from them. Like when I was paddle boarding, I'd give them 20 feet of space, you know, and I tell my friend, cause she wanted to get close. I'm like, respect it. You know, this is like a major, you know. Yeah, this is not, yeah, it's similar to a shark, you know, they respect the environment, you know, and there's bull sharks in our rivers.
Oh, there's bull sharks in that same river. So there's manatees, bull sharks, crocodiles. Why are you
Aaron Jordan: on the, why are you on the paddle board?
Bryan The Botanist: I love paddle boarding. It's something besides running to do. Plus I'm cleaning up
Aaron Jordan: the river. We're cleaning up the river when we're on the paddle board. I don't know if I'm giving you a pass.
I will give you a [00:17:00] pass for that one, but you never heard the, you never heard the phrase, find something safe to do? Well, I won't
Bryan The Botanist: ever jump out of a airplane yet. And the biggest thing that scares me is, um, cave diving. Cause there's these springs in Northern Florida and people go dive into these caves that go deep into the earth.
And they, you can watch on YouTube, people have died.
Aaron Jordan: Mammoth cave.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah, I've been there. How
Aaron Jordan: do you know?
Bryan The Botanist: I've been there as a little kid. Damn. We used to drive from Madison, Wisconsin. My dad would drive us in the minivan at 50 miles an hour. Everyone's passing us. All the way to Orlando. And we would stop at Mammoth Cave.
I actually, I think, spent a night in Mammoth Cave. Are you serious? As a Boy Scout. We would camp. We would go a couple miles under the earth. But those are big caves. They are. And those aren't underwater. I'm talking, you can look on YouTube. There's stories about divers who get, you know, a little bit too confident.
Damn. And even professional divers who have died. Um, three miles under the earth in some cave and it's because they got stuck or something happened to their, you know, it's just like, I'm claustrophobic. So [00:18:00] like, I, I don't want to be stuck in a cave underwater with scuba gear on, I haven't scuba dived yet.
I'm a snorkeler, but I just respect wildlife. Like for instance, in the river. It's a tame little river. Yes. I've seen a bull shark here and there, but like, this is a little river, like the width of the room. It's actually called the little river. There's the Miami river, which goes through downtown. That's what all the big boats come through.
But little river is here. So that's the one I chose to clean up because we're right in the middle of metropolitan Miami right here in mega city. And there's trash galore in there. And I go out there on earth day and then I started going out once a month and it looks a lot better, not just for my efforts, but we did clean up a couple shorelines where the manatees live and there was so much styrofoam and beer bottles and stuff.
And now it looks much better.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, man. That's pretty, um, it's pretty sick. Engross how humans can impact the waterways. So much
Bryan The Botanist: more education.
HIPHOUSE Festival Vision and Sneaker Impact Partnership
Bryan The Botanist: That's I mean, let's bring it back to HIPHOUSE festival, because when you reached out to me through WhatsApp about two or three weeks ago,
Aaron Jordan: maybe two weeks, two weeks
Bryan The Botanist: ago, yeah.
[00:19:00] Instantly, I sent it to our founder and I wanted to do it because I'm a big fan of music, but you want to incorporate sustainability and sneaker impact, so let's tell people a little bit more about HIPHOUSE festival and how sneaker impact is going to get involved and what else is going to be going on there besides DJs.
Aaron Jordan: Well. So, you know, a big part of this is everybody has to be doing something like there's no way that one organization, one initiative, one project is going to be able to, to handle the lift of what humans have done, frankly. And so the idea with HIPHOUSE is that, you know, folks can come in as music lovers, but they leave as eco conscious, um, you know, climate ready individuals, um, climate action ready individuals.
And so, like, similar to civil unrest of 2020, you know, people would come up to me and say, Aaron, you're on the front lines, you're putting your body on the, on the line daily, and I feel like I'm not doing nothing. Um, and I would always correct people, like, you know, if you're a mother or a father, Like, your first front line is your [00:20:00] children and bringing them up in the way that they should be brought up, right?
Or if you're an educator, or if you're an attorney, or if you're a politician, like, you should be leveraging your relationships. You should be leveraging your, um, your, your IP, your mental capacity, and all these things to do something for the, the movement. Something for the cause. For the greater good. For the greater good, right?
And so, in that same, like, vein of, like, Convincing and getting folks to understand like you don't have to be like on the front lines as a you don't have to and no Disrespect, but you don't have to chain yourself to a tree to feel like you are like doing something for the environment You could literally from your vantage point and from your framework in life Do something that you're good at which is so dope like the sneaker impact has taken A niche and carved out a lane and is making a dent in this particular space, right?
And so with HIPHOUSE, what we want to do is inspire people to do the same thing. So if you're a politician, if you're an educator, if you are a runner, if you are [00:21:00] a, an events organizer, or if you're a lifelong environmentalist, right? How can we all find our way, find our lane? put an emphasis on it to make impact.
And so, you know, we're going to be doing things from everything from, you know, every person who purchases a ticket, every attendee that purchases a ticket would plant a tree. Um, yeah, we're working on partnerships right now. Um, you know, there is the opportunity again to work with sneaker impact. What I'm seeing for our partnership is we're going to ask each attendee to bring a pair of gently used shoes.
Yeah. Right. Or maybe they bring more than one pair. And the beauty is. You know, food, culture, music generally brings people together effortlessly. And so how do we bring people together, but not just for the sake of partying, but we party for the planet?
Bryan The Botanist: Consciously.
Aaron Jordan: Consciously, right? And, and, and intentionally.
So, you know, you probably know, just like I know, there's not a bunch of money in climate action. In fact, there's no money in climate action. Funding is
Bryan The Botanist: getting cut.
Aaron Jordan: And funding is getting cut. Unfortunately, we have an administration that doesn't even believe in climate reality and all the things, right?[00:22:00]
And, and it's, and, and, and well, now it's
Bryan The Botanist: up to the individuals and the, and the organizations, you know? Correct. You can't wait for the government to, you know, and, and the government's, you know, it, it's, it, it's always changing. Yep. But, you know, music festivals, you know, haven't really focused on sustainability.
So when you told me this music festival's all about education, sustainability, and health. Correct. And you're actually gonna have. I don't want to take your words, but eco house,
Aaron Jordan: health house, um, and, and then these are all going to live under the umbrella of HIPHOUSE, right? So the HIPHOUSE being the festival, um, eco house being, um, sort of our eco village or our resource village, what we call it at Juneteenth.
All right. But it's the same concept where nonprofits are invited to come in and have information about how folks can get involved, whether you're hiring or you're looking for interns or. You have a new initiative that you're launching and you need community support, or if you want to do some surveying, like whatever you can leverage the HIPHOUSE platform for, for the good of the work that your organization is doing.
That's what we want folks to be doing. [00:23:00] Um, and then Hill house is a space that we're developing. Um, that is exactly what it sounds like. We want folks to heal their mind and their body and their spirit. At HIPHOUSE, right? So this could look like anything from ice baths to sound healing, um, yoga, stretching, etc.
Love it. Love it. Um, we're still in the very early stages of planning. Oh, if you need any help with
Bryan The Botanist: the sound healing and the other things like yoga, I mean, I've lived here for 18 years. And I've got all types of teachers and instructors and studios interested that area. I would take you up on that, Bryan.
No, we're going to be working close together, and I love the idea of having people bring their pre loved or unwanted shoes.
Aaron Jordan: I like that. Pre loved. That's what we've been saying lately. Pre loved. I like that. I like that.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah, that only came into the vernacular in the last year, maybe. I like it. We've always said gently used and unwanted.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: And then we have the end of life, which is what goes in our grinding program. But recently someone was like, one of my mentors was like, I'm not sure about end of life because it's a little morbid. It's a little morbid. So we're trying to come up with a new word for end of life. Pre loved. But pre loved means that someone.
Had them and they used them [00:24:00] and then, you know, they had a life, right?
Aaron Jordan: Like,
Bryan The Botanist: yeah, they had a life, but then they're getting a second life in Haiti. And that's our number one country. We export, um, the shoes too. And, uh, they create businesses out of it.
Aaron Jordan: I saw the facility, you showed me around. Yeah. What'd you think?
Man, I'm impressed by, first of all, it doesn't look like this much building when you walk in from the street. So I was really impressed by the, um, the, the scale of the operation. 75, 000 square feet. I would, I didn't notice, I didn't notice it from the street. Um, and then, like, as we're getting into the walk in tour and you're telling me about, um, a lot of the intentionality behind the operation, that just got me more excited.
You know, I mean, you went from everything from, The pre loved, uh, shoes aspect and they being repurposed, um, at the, in the island of Haiti. Uh, you talked about the families that are running businesses and the fact that this space is, you know, multifaceted and, you know, layered in intentionality to this.
And we're right here in Little Haiti, so we're and we're right here in Little Haiti, right. This is
Bryan The Botanist: little, we're on [00:25:00] the edge of Little Haiti. Mm-hmm . Little Haiti Little River. Right. Little River, little Haiti. Yeah. And then Winwood's to the south. Yep. And design district. Um. And then you got Little Havana, it's more to the south, but yeah, Little Haiti is right here.
So many of the Haitians in the community work here.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, this is inspiring to me. I mean, you know, you spoke to me a little, you introduced me to one of the co founders and just talk, told me a little bit about, um, the history of this operation, that it's a, it's in the family, family, family business. And that's inspirational to me, right?
Because. You know, when I look at HIPHOUSE, um, or when I look at pebble, right, my tech company, you know, I want to have longevity in these businesses, not only because there is a problem to solve, but also ultimately like might not go away as soon as, as, as I anticipate. And so like there's going to take, it's going to take more than Aaron Jordan.
Even it's going to take generations. It's going to take generations. It's a legacy
Bryan The Botanist: for you and your family. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And also your friends and the community that gets involved. Correct. I'm [00:26:00] so excited to have HIPHOUSE festival. When do you think you're going to do it?
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, man. So we're looking at November the 15th, 2025.
Bryan The Botanist: Okay. Um, we got some time. That's
Aaron Jordan: our tentative date. We got some time. We're actually doing what we call lead up events. And so like. So far this year, we've done three lead up events. We did two at Citizen M. One was the open house, um, the HIPHOUSE open house, which was, you know, exactly what it sounds like.
It was an opportunity for people to come in and learn more about the event, um, and plug in in any way that they see fit. Um, and then we had another event at Citizen M called the co the Mixer and Cocktail Happy Hour, which was The open house, but it was a little more, it was a little more vibed up, like we were on the rooftop with Citizen Hill, we had music, cocktails, it was a panel.
We did it in partnership with my good friend, Bryanna Fleming, who's the founder of Jim Social, who is our talent partner. And so all talent photographers, DJs, videographers, etc. Um, they'll be coming through Jim Social to sign up for our, um, our project, or to sign up to be a part of the festival. [00:27:00] And then we had the, um, The Planet Party over at the Arlo on the rooftop.
It was actually my birthday as well. Um, but it was exactly what it sounds like. We were partying for the planet. It's so cool
Bryan The Botanist: that you did something on your birthday to help, you know, cause and to help, you know, build your new movement. Thank you. Yeah. Versus just going out on a yacht.
Aaron Jordan: Exactly. Right. I could have been wasteful.
But, um, you know, one of my homies, he told me, he was like, bro, he was like, shout out to you, man. He was like, people live for their whole lives and a lot of them don't have rooftop birthday parties. And he's like, you did it in under a year. I was like, Arlo in Miami Beach? I didn't think about it. Arlo is in Wynwood.
Wynwood. It's in Wynwood. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Um, and Wynwood is a spot. Wynwood is definitely one of the hot spots. So much good food and, you know, we're having venues
Bryan The Botanist: too that might work for you for some of these pop ups. Let
Aaron Jordan: me know, man. We've got one more that's coming up. I think I told you about it.
Um, it'll be on Earth Day at Mids Market. Oh, we love Mids Market. Yeah, we love Mids Market. I'm going
Bryan The Botanist: there next Friday for a spaghetti dinner.
Aaron Jordan: I'm going.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah.
Aaron Jordan: I pay my, I pay my little money. I'm going. Me too. 7. It's like you can't, [00:28:00] 7 for spaghetti?
Getting Involved With Local Events
Bryan The Botanist: You get Radiate Kombucha, a local company, which is a healthy drink.
I didn't even see the Kombucha. Yeah, Radiate, they give you some Kombucha. I love, I used to, I brewed Kombucha for the last 25 years. So you know about fermentation and all that stuff. Yeah, I've, I've brewed like. Thousands of batches, but I don't know about thousands, but I've, I've been a kombucha fan for like 30 years, but like, forget about that.
Like radiate is a great local company. So shout out to radiate. They're always supporting the events and then they're going to have spaghetti there for us.
Aaron Jordan: I can't wait to eat. And then we're going to
Bryan The Botanist: talk with debris free ocean, which is hosting it. Maddie Kaufman. And we're going to zero waste Miami.
That's her also her, um, the groups, her and, uh, Amanda to Perna. a big shout out to Amanda too. Cause Amanda, um, we're going to see them all there. Mids market is like three blocks from sneaker impact and they focus on secondhand. It's like a secondhand. What did you call
Aaron Jordan: it again? Um,
Bryan The Botanist: preloved preloved. Is it preloved?
Like they got like a vinyl area there. We can listen to vinyl and then it's
Aaron Jordan: going to be a whole vibe, but I want to use that. I like that preloved. You can use it. You know what I mean? Use it. [00:29:00] Like I think that marketing that definitely puts a different perspective and framework around and again, makes sustainability.
So, okay.
Sustainability and Community Impact
Aaron Jordan: I'm kind of backing up, going back to HIPHOUSE for just a second. Like another big inspiration was like. We need to make sustainability accessible, right? Like, we shouldn't be trying to gatekeep sustainability. We shouldn't be trying to gatekeep climate action. Like, we should make it palatable and digestible for as many people as possible because we'll need as many people as possible to put a dent in the wreckage that humans have caused, right?
And so, a festival, I believe, in Miami, right? A city that you don't have to sell to anybody. Everybody knows Miami's beautiful. Um, and what's also equally as true is when you get kind of under the layer of like Miami, you start to see some of the, some of the blemishes frankly, um, that we've contributed to.
Again, the hotter summers, the flooding, um, you know.
Bryan The Botanist: The bay has had a lot of fish kills. The
Aaron Jordan: bay is, is polluted, right? And similar [00:30:00] to my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky, um, you know, we're cleaning Beargrass Creek, which is a creek that goes through, it goes through Kentucky, but a major part of it goes through Louisville and Jefferson County.
And so, you know, for me, Like, I enjoy our parks. Our parks in Louisville, Kentucky are some of the best in the nation. They were designed by the Olmsted firm, who is the same, uh, guys who built the Central Park up in New York. Okay. And so, our park system is one of the country's best park systems. Um, and to see, like, all this wildlife, um, and recreation going on, but then you look down at the creek, and then there's, like, plastic bags, and just, like, all kind of used.
Crap in it, you know, everything from bikes to tires and it's just like, you know, we're able to make a little dent because that council member, shout out to Ben Reno Weber, actually, um, out in Louisville, Kentucky, man, um, one of his first actions when he came into office was to clean Beargrass Creek Park. I love it.
And, um, you know. To your point, like, the work that you're doing here in Little River, like, that stuff matters, and it adds [00:31:00] up, and if we can scale, like, if there are, like, one Aaron Jordan, one Bryan, that's cool, but, like, imagine 10, 000 Aarons that are inspired to go do similar work, right? Like, now we're talking impact, which you know all about.
Yes,
Bryan The Botanist: impact. We got you a shirt today, over there. We're going to be giving out shirts at HIPHOUSE Festival for people that recycle with us. I heard we're going to have an incentive for recycling. Yes, man.
Organizing Successful Festivals
Bryan The Botanist: With your Juneteenth event, you were getting thousands of people to come, correct? Correct. Tell us like what your goals are for Miami and how, you know, how many thousands have come to your Juneteenth event?
Aaron Jordan: So the Louisville Juneteenth festival, um, our first year has 6, 000 attendees.
It was grassroots. We didn't have any corporate sponsorship, um, literally. There was, we got one check for 2, 500 that I was able to give to the sound guy to bring in a stage and like pay for the back line and um, that was just a hard cost that we really couldn't get around. But everything else, like everything from like tables, tents, [00:32:00] um.
Snacks for volunteers, like everything was like from a Facebook post that I put out. We had two Facebook groups called No Justice No Peace. They both had 8, 000 active users in both. So essentially we had 16, 000 people that were ready to get active pretty much at any time. It was a very intense time. I mean it was to the point where like you go outside and you look up to see helicopters to know where the action and where the protesting was going on.
So, um, you know, from there we scaled to 10, 000 attendees. We have partners everywhere. Yeah, man, we've got partners from, you know In
Bryan The Botanist: five years, you got up to 10, 000 attendees. Because I put on smaller music festivals with like 400 people. We got to 10,
Aaron Jordan: 000 in our second year, actually. And we sustained it.
But yeah, man, like, um I have a great team. Shout out to Erica. Shout out to Essence. Shout out to uh, DJ Carmen. Shout out to Jamie. Um, shout out to my advisory board members. We, we are priding, we pride ourselves in, you know, we're the largest local black led festival [00:33:00] in the state and we're the largest Juneteenth festival in the state, the largest Juneteenth celebration in the state.
We're actually ordained or proclaimed and acclaimed by the Kentucky State Senate and the Kentucky Governor, Governor Andy Brashear. And, um, We had over a hundred vendors, we contribute to tourism, we contribute to economic empowerment, uh, to local businesses, to workforce development, um, to the creative economy.
And so with HIPHOUSE, we want to do the exact same thing, right? Like how can we, um, How can we contribute to workforce development through internship programs or through, um, you know, being able to hire and recruit local talent, whether that's a vendor management, um, coordinator, or if that is, you know, stagehands, et cetera, hiring locally for the folks that put together the stage and the sound systems and, um, the engineers and, et cetera.
You know, we got to bring up porta potties. How do we make sure that we prioritize a local company to do all these little nuances? Um, and again, contributing to workforce development. Um, when you think about tourism, right? Like [00:34:00] the, the beach itself, the historic Virginia key beach park itself is, it's a, it's a gym.
And so how do we continue to get people to come through? Um, to the Key Biscayne to see that, that natural gym, that natural habitat, um, and to grow their own relationship with it, not only from a historic standpoint, but also for the future sake of the park. Um, so yeah, tourism, workforce development, job creation, um, supporting small businesses through vendors, um, and then ultimately.
Being able to plant trees or being able to repurpose, um, pre loved shoes and things of that nature. Um, really just tying neatly to our through line which is, you know, we want to make things sustainable. We want to make everything sustainable from the build out of the stage to the artists that we're putting on the stages, you know.
It could be their first time even talking about sustainability. Yes, you're not going to just That's not a problem.
Bryan The Botanist: You're not just looking for the biggest names. Correct. You're looking to get, like, students involved. Correct. Like, I can imagine high schools and [00:35:00] universities and, you know, going out to some of the
Aaron Jordan: I thought about high schools You know, dealing with the Dealing with the public school system, I would say, is kind of tricky.
Well, you're going to need,
Bryan The Botanist: obviously, like, a volunteer coordinator and stuff. Correct. Correct. But you get to make these decisions. But I love that you're not just looking for, like, the most high end artist. Yeah, I know. You're looking for people that are We need a collaboration. We need a combination. That want to really also get behind the movement.
Correct. And aren't just looking for a big paycheck.
Aaron Jordan: Correct. There was one, um, one, uh, a woman who showed up to one of our, um, our mixer events, uh, a citizen M and she posed that exact question during the panel. She was like, well, how are you going to get students involved? And I was just thinking like, you know, I think that there is a space specifically like, um, K through 12 age students.
Okay. Because. If I'm being frank, the festival, it's not going to be a, it's not going to be like the family kind of like, there'll be some like, some lyrics in the music, you know, there'll be booze and there'll be cocktails and, um, you know, it's really targeted towards millennials, [00:36:00] Gen Z, um, you know, adults, frankly, 21 and over adults.
So
Bryan The Botanist: you're going to focus on recycling all that stuff, correct, correct. Using plastic straws or correct. No plastic straws. Creatable cups, biodegradable.
Aaron Jordan: You know, there's even a guy who came to me about sandbags like that. You used to wait down tent and he makes it out of like repurposed glass. Yeah. I saw that out of Louisiana.
There's this
Bryan The Botanist: couple that makes, uh, they, they rebuilt the Bayou area. They're, they're helping rebuild in Baton Rouge, I think it was, or New Orleans. And they're using, uh, They're collecting glass from the community. I just saw it the other day on Facebook and they're, they're putting it in sandbags and yeah, it's helping to, they put, then they plant like, uh, these reeds in it, you know, that grow Oh, wow.
That help to prevent the hurricanes from destroying it's, but, um, the mangroves people are replanting the mangroves down here and the, and the coral reefs. So, you know, trees too. But yeah, native stuff, especially, you know, I'm an ecologist. I got a degree in, in botany and an ecology from the University of Wisconsin, so.
You know, but you got Debris Free Ocean and some of the other people on, on your team that [00:37:00] I know will help you get connected to. And I heard that you're even talking to people like You know, some of these agencies you mentioned the other day to me, do you want to give any of them a shout out
Aaron Jordan: or are
Bryan The Botanist: you, are you still in the negotiation?
Aaron Jordan: Once we, once we have inked on, then I'm happy to give shout outs. He's got some big partners and big
Bryan The Botanist: music partners. Yeah.
Aaron Jordan: I'm really excited. You know, once we lock down and frame up everything. Kind of hearkening back to the festival and shout out to anybody who's doing festivals. Festivals is not easy work.
It's so many moving parts. You got to be really passionate, um, really high energy. You got to be able to take on a lot of stress, um, and you got to be able to move teams and be a great leader. Um, what I'll say about the festival industry in general, if you're looking to get into festivals or if you're interested in working with festivals, you know, contracts are the name of the game.
Nothing's final until it is final. You're right. Um, you know, I've been in, I've been to festivals for now six years. I've had conversations with some of the biggest players in the game. And then for whatever reason, you know, people have had to pull out. You know, like [00:38:00] even right now, usually it could be anything from marketing dollars to like this, like something big just came up in our company.
I don't like to get political, but you can't talk about environmentalism without talking about politics. I think they kind of just have a relationship, you know, with these executive orders, and with sort of uncertainty going on in the stock market, tariffs, all these different things. You know, partners could say like, hey, we don't know that we can do this thing because our bottom line is being impacted in the market of dollars that we thought we had.
We don't have them anymore. I've had those conversations, actually, for the Juneteenth Festival. Somebody, uh, a big hospital, um, that part has partnered with us now for four years in a row. Um, they told me they were like, we have to hold off on our contract because they have to make sure that they're NDEI compliance.
And so like sometimes people don't understand like the implications that what's happening in DC have on what's happening in our local municipalities. Um, and then also like. [00:39:00] our local governments are in lockstep with things that might be antithetical to things like sustainability and environmentalism.
So it's tricky. Um,
Challenges in Festival Funding
Bryan The Botanist: Would you say that's the biggest challenge you're facing is the Funding.
Aaron Jordan: Funding is the biggest, is the biggest challenge because, you know, I mean, fundraising is challenging no matter how you flip it. Whether it's my tech company or whether it's for the festivals, it's challenging in that like you're a salesman, right, like you're putting together your presentations and you're, you're getting all of your points down and you're making sure that there's some alignment with the organization that you're approaching and the project that you're pitching.
Um, and then, you know, It's just like the ratio of success you're gonna get, you're gonna get nos. Um, but you're also gonna get yeses. And I believe that those yeses, you know, they become more, you, you appreciate 'em more because of the amount of nos that you go through. But that's in anything. Yeah. You have be willing
Bryan The Botanist: to take 20 nos before you get a yes or 30 correct.[00:40:00]
Sometimes a hundred. No sometimes just means no right now.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, not right now. That's that's all I see it as. Yeah, I like to circle back to partners the next year and show my impact report and say hey This is what we've done and maybe take a second look at this. That
Bryan The Botanist: perseverance, you know, not giving up I love I can see that spirit in you.
Thank you, man.
Mushroom Fest and Personal Passions
Bryan The Botanist: Plus being an event organizer, you know I helped put on Miami Mushroom Fest about Four years ago. Yeah. Tell
Aaron Jordan: me a little bit more about Miami. Yeah. So we educate
Bryan The Botanist: people about, um, all the benefits of mushrooms, not only for your body and your mind, cause they're used for depression. They're also used for focus.
Like there's, you know, the legal, we call those functional mushrooms. I created a product called ultimate shrooms for a company in Miami beach called live ultimate, and it's still around. And it was one of the most popular mushroom powders in the U S and it was. Um, eight different mushroom species and they were like cordyceps, reishi, lion's mane, you know, these are for brain function and energy.
Cordyceps is for energy. Olympians use it. And these are from China and they're from the U. S. Um, and they're grown organically in the mountains. So a lot of people, when they think of mushrooms, they think of [00:41:00] psilocybin, the hallucinogen or the
Aaron Jordan: psychedelic,
Bryan The Botanist: which we also educated about. But we also put on the waivers, we do not approve the sale or use of psychedelics.
Correct. Because we're only an educational arm. We had Artists there. We had performers. We were a music festival first and foremost, but we also had an education stage and a wellness stage. I was in charge of the education stage as Bryan, the botanist, but I also performed on the main stage. I was actually an opener on the first day, you know, so your
Aaron Jordan: DJ.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah. I'm a DJ. I play deep house, progressive house. I play melodic. I play open format. I played in the keys last weekend at Key Largo. I play all throughout the keys and Miami and Fort Lauderdale, West Palm beach area for a music agency. I also get my own gigs. Uh, but I don't play clubs just because, you know, I, I don't really live that lifestyle anymore.
I tried it a little bit in my thirties and it just didn't. Match with my athletic career, which I'm a marathon runner. And, um, you know, sneaker impact. I've really found my home and music is one of my side passions, but I would love to be a part, you know, my music [00:42:00] too, you know, I don't produce yet, but I have friends that are producers and, you know, that are.
Very accomplished artists in Miami that I'd love to introduce you to, but I've heard you've gotten a ton of submissions already.
Aaron Jordan: We've gotten a ton of submissions. Um, nothing's final with any artists yet. I mean, this is really too early on the production side. Of course. Um, I've been getting some numbers of different DJs and artists that we are interested in.
Are some of them
Bryan The Botanist: outside of Miami? Some of them are
Aaron Jordan: outside of Miami. I mean, we've got some, we've got some pretty ambitious advisory board members who are really You know, pushing me to take this thing to another level beyond the level that I was imagining that. And so that's always reassuring when people see the potential of what you're working on and and want to amplify it Which is why i'm so again appreciative, um that you were so receptive about sneaker impact being a partner with us, you know, like You guys are doing something incredible.
You sent
Bryan The Botanist: me an email I think actually because you asked me for my email and and you know Sometimes we get a lot of you know, spam and we get a lot of you know [00:43:00] Cold stuff where we have no idea who this person is and they could live outside. I'm a stranger. Yeah, but I was a stranger I was like hip hop festival and then I looked at your message and then I remembered you Reaching out through zero waste and saying hey, I love what you guys are doing a sneaker impact I want to get you involved and then I am a very open hearted person I've learned that it's not just about being open minded.
It's about being open hearted And you know my family my mom in Wisconsin my dad raised me, you know to You know, understand that, you know, some of our, you know, biggest black leaders in our history, like Martin Luther King Jr., and, you know, Malcolm X, and all these other amazing leaders throughout the history, um, you know, and how important they are, and to not judge people based on the color of their skin, because we all have the same color blood.
And we're all one. It's one planet. We have no planet B. We're one along. And it's just so silly to me. And I've never understood, like, warfare. Like, it's driving me insane what's going on in the world the last ten years. Yeah. You know, like, [00:44:00] I don't want anyone to die ever.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: I watch YouTube videos where people are rescuing animals that are on death's doorstep.
And then they nurse them back to health. And it makes me want to cry. Or I watched the movie WALL E, yeah, I watched the movie WALL E on a flight to Bogota a couple weeks ago. I'd never watched the whole thing and WALL E is a robot who recycles and he's my hero. And the earth had been trashed and no one else was on it.
This has come up in a couple of podcasts recently. I'm like, WALL E is like doing sneaker impacts. He's doing the work. In like the year 2900 when the earth has been abandoned and they're all living on a spaceship. And they have like a million people on the spaceship. Do you think they were going to be
Aaron Jordan: living on a spaceship?
Bryan The Botanist: I don't think so, no. There's no planet B, that's what our founder says. And I think there's enough people on this planet that care about it that I think that even with all these weapons of mass destruction and the military industrial complex, you know, and how much money they're making, like, I still feel like there's someone protecting us.
And I think it's also enough humans that care, that are doing the right thing, and that's keeping the shift from, Yeah, you should [00:45:00] never give up first of all. Um, but you know, I have a lot of hope for the planet and I see even though there's all the, you know, destruction of the rain forest and the oceans are turning into plastic.
Then you got the ocean cleanup project and then you got four ocean, you know, they're out of Boca Raton and they're paying fishermen to retrieve plastic out of the ocean. They're making bracelets out of it. They're educating. You got all these nonprofits that are cleaning up the rivers in Guatemala and all these places around the world where unfortunately, you know, they don't have.
First World Sanitation, and so their dumps are for these major cities are right outside the city in a gorge, and it all goes right into the ocean through the rivers, then they got these river interceptors out there that the nonprofits are putting out there that are collecting billions of tons of plastic waste, and then they're using that plastic waste for water.
Things like, you know, they can now make them into, you know, new things, you know, and then you saw everything from surfboards
Aaron Jordan: to bottles, anything,
Bryan The Botanist: they have ways now, you know, but we have to prevent as much as we can, the, um, you know, [00:46:00] littering and the waste. And that's why I was telling you earlier on the tour, only 13 percent of Americans recycle their footwear when they're done with it, their shoes.
So we need to change that alarming statistic. We need that number and our only competition. The first day I worked here, our founder told me, Bryan, our only competition. Petition is a landfill, not any other recycling company, not any other nonprofit, the landfill. It's like, basically we're up against the matrix.
What do you think about the
Landfill Crisis and Environmental Solutions
Aaron Jordan: landfill crisis here in Miami?
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah. I mean, I heard you bring it up in the intro and you know, we lost one of our only two incinerators. There is one in Broward County and then there was one in Miami to serve all of South Florida, like 8 million residents. Right. And it's a very sensitive area because we have the Everglades nearby and the oceans.
So our Doral, you know, Doral is part of Miami. The Doral incinerator was. Uh, it was a major fire about three years ago, and it burned for like a week or two, and the whole incinerator facility was destroyed. And so South Florida lost one of God
Aaron Jordan: or malfunction? Uh, I
Bryan The Botanist: think it was just mismanagement. Like, they didn't Catch it [00:47:00] quick enough.
Like they should have caught that. Like, I don't know how it started, but a fire started and you know, tires and all this stuff and alarm
Aaron Jordan: should have went off. And then how did they not get
Bryan The Botanist: like support out there quick enough? How did it progress to the point that we lost an entire, and we're not talking about some little building.
We're talking about a mega industrial, you know, facility for processing trash because we have Mount trash moors, which they turn into park Mount trash moors, just a term that they use for many different. Landfill. We have landfills in Miami. We have, if you drive on the turnpike going north out of Broward, you'll see a major landfill that's still active, uh, just outside of like the Fort Lauderdale area, but a little bit inland.
But, um, then there's one in Weston that they made into a park called Vista View. And it's a beautiful park and you never would have known it's a landfill previously, but they restored it, they capped it, and they also, you, like, they made it into this giant mountain hill. So the runners go out there and train and other people use it, you know, besides runners.
And there's trash under it? Yeah, but they cap it. And so like there's an environmental standard where [00:48:00] basically capping means that they don't just cover it with soil. Like there's, um, other ways, like I'm not an expert in this, but I don't know if they're using concrete or if they're using, you know, so that it doesn't go into the exactly that doesn't leach as easily.
Like when they build a landfill, my understanding is they don't just dig a hole, you know, it's more complex than that. You know, they, they, they, they have ways to prevent it a little bit, probably from going into like the local water supply, the watershed, the aquifers. But, you know, when they restore, you know, and I have a background in restoration ecology, I used to restore the forest prairies and wetlands of Wisconsin for 10 years, you know, and battle invasive species to prescribe burning and all this stuff.
Um, but you know, down here when they restore a landfill to a park, you can't even tell when you use it as a park, there's no trash anywhere, there's no smell. There's birds everywhere. There's dragonflies. There's fish. It's beautiful. So they know what they're doing. They bring in the experts. It's not perfect, but they're doing a pretty darn good job and we can always improve upon it.
But this isn't [00:49:00] just some simple bodo, bulldoze some dirt over the landfill and call it a day. You know, no, no, no, no, no. Like you'd have like smell galore coming out of there. Like you can't tell this is a landfill. I mean, we're, you go to Vista View someday and it's called Vista View Park up in Davie.
Davie is just West of Fort Lauderdale. So shout out to, you know, Broward County, but yeah, our only incinerator right now is in Broward County to serve all of the residents of South Florida. So they're actually shipping a lot of the trash, like you said, to other counties and way to the North. That's not sustainable long term.
It's very expensive and it's not their trash. You know, we shouldn't be shipping trash overseas. Sneaker Impact has a promise that we will never ship any trash to any country with our shoes or our clothing. We will never ship trash, uh, the trash that we have we deal with here. We have a grinding program.
We also, we have people come by that buy or they take the um, Leftover from a lot of our boxes. Cause we have so much cardboard from all of our boxes. I can imagine.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah. The operation is crazy. Founder
Bryan The Botanist: told me that someone comes to collect the cardboard every week [00:50:00] and that they, they recycle it, but they make money off of it.
Nice. So yeah, it's not going into more jobs, creating more jobs, but we used to send some of our end of life to the incinerator and the incinerator had, um, filters on it that would scrub the, um. the tar or not. I don't know if it's called tar, but like it would scrub the pollutants out of it. So like in Europe, they build nuclear power plants now and incinerators that are very environmentally friendly.
These are not The nuclear power plants of our grandma and grandpa or our parents, like they're cutting edge now where like, there's so many safeguards in place. And you can learn about that. Like, there's a big misconception about nuclear power nowadays. It's actually the cleanest, most of the nuclear energy is.
Yeah. I thought it was, well, no, I mean, you know, they're actually going to start like building AI power centers. Now, like Google is using nuclear, um, Generators for their AI power centers. I heard. And the same thing in outer space, they're going to be using it. Cause like there's nuclear fission. I mean, now we're going down
Aaron Jordan: deep rabbit hole,
Bryan The Botanist: but [00:51:00] you know, I'm just saying that the technology has progressed.
Just like AI has come. And made its name, you know, nuclear power has become a much cleaner and safer way than Fukushima and Chernobyl. When people hear these things, of course they should be scared, but those are very old power plants, you know, and then we have one here in Miami called Turkey point, which you can do some research on, but they say it can withstand a cat five, but we don't want that to ever happen.
But that was even built in the seventies or whatever the ones that they can build. Now. You know, are they, they don't maybe produce as much waste either. Cause with nuclear waste, you have to like bury it or you have to like put it in a pool or something and you have to like super fun sites and you got to like, it takes thousands of years, just like a pair of shoes.
I mean, a pair of shoes can take 500 to a thousand years to decompose. Yeah, that's crazy. You know, now with modern plastics, you know, it's, it's, it's game changer.
Plastic Pollution and Recycling Initiatives
Bryan The Botanist: You know, um, we've been doing, we had a expert on last week. Um. Two podcasts ago about the microplastic crisis and the past like they use plastic pellets like the size of like a grain of rice [00:52:00] And they ship them across the country on these train cars And sometimes they forget to close the valve when they when the train starts and it just is trail and plastic along the train tracks the whole way she told me that and she works for the government and She told me about how at the plants where they make the plastic pellets because the plastic pellets they used to make everything Like our cell phone cases, our water bottles, it all, the toys our children use, they all start with pellets.
Plastic pellets and probably use heat to like, yeah, exactly molds heat. But when they are when they're making the plastic pellets There's a lot of issues that sometimes some fall on the floor. They fall out the door, you know Like there's a lot of spillage and so no one's regulating it really like she said only California has a law on the books.
No other states track the and the companies aren't polluting intentionally It's just accidents happen. Just like when that river I forget where it was, um, the river in the last couple years in the U. S. that got completely trashed. I forget. It was like, there was a train derailment. It was in like Pennsylvania or something.
I'm [00:53:00] not
Aaron Jordan: sure, but I think I heard something about it in the news. It was a
Bryan The Botanist: big deal a couple years ago. Yeah. And we need to, you know, the problem with our society, if I can have my little Yes, get on that soft box, please. Is that like We quickly forget and move on from one topic to the next, you know, and some celebrity will steal, you know, thunder of a more important social topic.
But, you know, we need to stay focused on sustainability because Um, there's no planet bee and they're we're literally, you know, creating a plastic ocean. They did a study the other day that, uh, each year the average human consumes like 90,000 plastic particulates. They're in our brains. They're in our breast tissue.
Said, we all said about
Aaron Jordan: a spoonful, about a tablespoon of plastic bodies. But if you bodies, if you don't
Bryan The Botanist: use plastic bottles, which I love to see your glass here. Yes. Um, if you don't use plastic bottles, that one action alone I read in a study yesterday will reduce your microplastic intake from 90,000.
Parts to 4, 000 parts, so just so I'm a that's yeah, that's a [00:54:00] big that's a big job Yeah, that's a HIPHOUSE festival. We can't have any no plastic bottles. No plastics Yeah, and encourage people to bring you reusables and give you actually have a
Aaron Jordan: partnership that we're working on We're we're really close to closing the door like an email away from finalizing the deal.
Yeah Most of the deal has been inked. There's just like some marketing stuff we want to, to tidy up, but it's with a super dope, environmentally friendly, super environmentally conscious water brand. I can say that much. You need a good water company. We need a great water company. Ultra,
Bryan The Botanist: same thing. You know, all these big music companies.
I
Aaron Jordan: just saw a post about Ultra. So I didn't know much about Ultra. Oh my god, it's the biggest festival. I moved here. 50, 000 people. I've been learning. So yeah, shout out to Ultra. Global. Shout
Bryan The Botanist: out to festival organizers. And they're
Aaron Jordan: doing a lot for waste reduction. Yeah. They are. So I saw a post by the DDA, by the Downtown Development Association.
Yeah, you gotta read it. Authority. Yeah, yeah. Um, and they were, they had a Ultra, like, I think, like, um, like a workshop or something, or maybe like a little seminar. But they were basically, like, [00:55:00] Telling people about the sustainability work that Ultra is doing. So shout out to a festival of that magnitude that's already in the sustainability work.
You know, while HIPHOUSE is the only like climate focused festival, right? Because, like, I literally built it for climate action. You know, it doesn't, again, I'm not a gatekeeper of climate, right? And I think that everybody should be doing their part. And it's awesome that a, a festival to that scale is already like showing the world that like, we can have fun, we can do dope things and we can also like save our planet in the process.
We don't have to. And they're right on the bay. And they're right on the bay at Bayfront Park. So they have a big responsibility. When I first moved here last year, actually, I'm coming up on my year anniversary on the 22nd. Um, when I moved here last year, I remember. Riding the bus from South Beach and I was just going up towards North Beach.
And, um, I remember I got off like around fountain blue area and there was like just so many people and it was raining so bad. But I knew that everybody was coming from the ultra [00:56:00] music festival. So I knew it was a big deal when I moved here. I just didn't know much about
Bryan The Botanist: Miami music week. It's in March this month, the end of the month.
Yep. So this is
Aaron Jordan: my, my year anniversary. Maybe we'll, we'll toast some kombucha. I mean, Aaron, you
Bryan The Botanist: just landed here yesterday and I was like texting you on Monday, like, Hey, or last week, like what day do you arrive again? And then yesterday I'm like, yo, welcome to Miami. Yes, man. I appreciate it. I've been willing to pick you up from the airport, man.
Like I got mad love. Don't tell me
Aaron Jordan: that, man. I tell all my friends, Bryan, the other Uber said it's going to be at thousand dollars.
Bryan The Botanist: I got an EV, not that it matters, but I'll come pick you up. We're neighbors now. I'm not going to docks where you're living. I appreciate that. You're about three miles from me.
And I tell ex girlfriends, I tell best friends, I tell acquaintances, sneaker impact colleagues that come, like our partners, we pick them up at the airport and our founder puts them into an Airbnb, you know, and stuff that he owns and like, and like we bring them by to have, and we get, you know, some healthy food and we like have a salad with them.
We've got to sell, you know, so we're, We're like, we break bread, you know? And like, I, I think that it's a forgotten [00:57:00] love to like offer an airport pickup or an airport drop off. Like I'm from
Aaron Jordan: Kentucky.
Bryan The Botanist: Hospitality is the name of the game. Absolutely. So, and, and we're fast friends already. I can tell, you know, a lot of musicians caring about the environment, social good and equality.
Um, so it's, man, it's an honor to have his name is Bryan
Aaron Jordan: too, by the way,
Bryan The Botanist: with a Y. Not with a Y. That's an I.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: I love both. He's pretty cool though. He's pretty cool. I love the I's too. I meet so many Bryans out there and I always got to ask because I'm with a Y. Yeah. But it's just interesting because I mean we're all Bryans.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah. Well, so my name is Aaron and of course you can think of all the different derivatives that you can, that you can spell my name. But um, I wanted to ask you one question. Yeah. Maybe two. But the first one was, what do you think, what advice would you give to people?
Engaging the Community in Climate Action
Aaron Jordan: who want to break into climate action, but just don't know where to start.
Um, a lot of the festival attendees are, it might be their first time coming into contact with climate [00:58:00] reality and with climate change aspects of, of Having fun, right?
Bryan The Botanist: So I mean there's a lot of resources on social media So if you are using social media like on instagram on I don't use tiktok, but I use instagram and youtube I'm on I live on youtube, you know, I love you.
Shout out to youtube. Please subscribe to our channel. Yeah Oh
Aaron Jordan: clack click. What does it say click? Uh, what do the people be saying when they do the podcast? Smash it. Yeah, smash the like button, subscribe. Destroy the like button. Destroy the like button. Make sure you turn your notifications on. Turn your
Bryan The Botanist: notifications on for Sneaker Impact and please subscribe.
We're at 123 subscribers. Yes. Once we get to 500.
Aaron Jordan: 123? Yeah. You wanna know something funny?
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah.
Aaron Jordan: Maybe it's coincidence. My angel number for the longest has been 1 2 3. Oh my god. Yeah, you, when we get done, I'll show you some
Bryan The Botanist: screenshots. I think we hit 124 because my older brother just subscribed. Well,
Aaron Jordan: damn, don't fuck it up for us just yet, bro.
Because when I was trying to decide if I was going to move to Miami, I just started one, two, three, just kept like coming up, coming up. So I made a little jingle for myself. So it was like one, two, three, [00:59:00] Miami. That's so random, but I can't help it. Yeah. So that was crazy. Cause it was
Bryan The Botanist: at one, two, three earlier today.
And, um, so once you get to 500, you can, um, they allow you to, um, monetize the channel, which we've been working hard for one year. You're going to be our 34th episode.
Aaron Jordan: Is
Bryan The Botanist: this,
Aaron Jordan: am I the right way on the camera, or is it? Close enough. Wait.
Bryan The Botanist: Oh, I can look at myself.
Aaron Jordan: Okay. Yeah, three three four and we're
Bryan The Botanist: still in season one at our one year anniversaries in april So when we hit the one year anniversary, i'll move it to season two.
We'll have a jingle, you know We'll start to we're gonna have you back many times aaron. We're gonna have you on the live I mean, we're not done with the interview yet. I got some more questions for you Okay, cool about your youth and about some other stuff. But um I, just to finish your question, you know, what can people do besides social media?
You go on there, you type in sustainability, you type in recycling, start getting inspired by what other people are up to. And then you're also going to learn that there are organizations in every community when people think of Miami, they think of parties, they think of the club, they think of the beach, that's what they think of.
But when I first moved here in [01:00:00] 2008, uh, I'm from Madison, Wisconsin, and we're a very progressive town up there. And every, all my friends are like Miami. They're like, are you some like. Celebrity at this point? Are you some celebrity all of a sudden?
Exploring Miami's Vibrant Communities
Bryan The Botanist: Like, are you just partying 24 seven down there? I'm like, no, I'm part of all these communities.
Cause when I moved down here, I found the running community and it's grown a lot. There's a healthy community in Miami. There's also people into sustainability, yoga. There's people into, um, you know, consciousness down here, whatever your background is. If you're into knitting, I'm sure there's a knitting community.
Go on meetup. com, look on Facebook, on Facebook, every, all these organizations, there's clean Miami beach. You can go out there and clean the beaches with Sophie Ringel. And she's got hundreds of volunteers every week cleaning the beach. She was on the podcast. So you just need to go on social media. It doesn't matter if you live in Kansas.
I always pick on Kansas, um, is, uh, you know, our Katmandu, you know, you're going to find some organization that you can volunteer with or just meet people with, make friends. And then, [01:01:00] so social media is a first step and just finding people in your community that you can hang out with.
Practical Tips for Sustainable Living
Bryan The Botanist: Second step would be stop using plastic bags and use a reusable bag and stop using plastic bottles.
So that's my quick advice because you can make a big impact by just. Stopping using plastic bags at the grocery store, like at Publix, I'm going to pick on, you know, but Publix actually has their reusable bags, but you know, some grocery stores like all these. They won't let you use, you don't even have them.
You got to bring your own bag to Aldi's and I shop at Aldi's every week. So I love Aldi. They have some of the best food. It's affordable and I can't afford. It's
Aaron Jordan: affordable. And, and, and some of the products I have different standards than, than what like us food and USDA. Yeah. It's a German has. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes we reap the benefit of like not having certain chemicals or elements.
But just get,
Bryan The Botanist: you know, I've got in my trunk. Underneath the little floorboard, I've got like 30 reusable green bags that I've accumulated over the Publix and you see Bryan, man, ask to borrow a bag. Exactly. Or, you know, buy one and just bite the bullet and buy [01:02:00] one for 2 or whatever, 5. Worth it. Or just repurpose something, um, or reuse your plastic bags at home for garbage bags, which a lot of people do.
Yep. They repurpose the bag for garbage. Instead of buying a garbage bag, and then with plastic bottles, buy I grew up doing that. Yeah, same for me. I grew up I've never bought mom would hang
Aaron Jordan: When we were really, really young Yeah. Sorry, Mom. You know, she would hang like a, uh, a bag on the counter, on the, like on the cabinet.
the, uh, hook of the cabinet. On the little hook, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ha, ha, ha. And get, get as much use out of that bag. Yeah, exactly as possible. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: And um, you know, plastic bottles you can buy nowadays they got, um, box water. Yeah. They also have what box water. Um, you can just reuse something like you've got here or you can buy glass.
You, you know, I've got tons of those reusable, you know, things in my cupboard, you know, even the glass kombucha, I reuse it. Yep. Uh, to make my own kombucha. I don't throw it in, you know, and then if you do need to throw it out, you know, get it into the garbage bin and just recycle. It's just as stuff your mom taught us, you know.
Challenges and Solutions in Recycling
Bryan The Botanist: When it comes to recycling, are they [01:03:00] really So some municipalities do and some don't, but you know, do the best you can do. Yeah. And, you know, also go to some of these meetings. Like Miami recently had a recycling meeting like last week. No, it was earlier this week. Like the city had this big meeting where like residents can come because like they're making all these decisions.
Aaron Jordan: It was on the third, I think.
Bryan The Botanist: But yeah, Miami beach, they used to not recycle. Like I was working for this company out there and I was sorting everything in my office into recycling bins and stuff. What can go in and what can't. And then the building told me on Lincoln road that, well, we don't have a recycling contract anymore in the city of Miami beach.
Like they're just putting it all in the same truck and taking it to the landfill broke my heart. Cause I was putting all that effort in, but I didn't give up. And, um, you know, you can still recycle, there's ways to recycle, there's, uh, electronics recycling, like they're doing one soon in the city of Miami, Earth Week and Earth Day, they always, you know, definitely don't throw your batteries and stuff and your computer stuff into the, into the landfill, and they have a, now the city of Miami, they do a mattress pickup, you can [01:04:00] schedule it, so when you're, when you're done with your mattress, you don't have to, uh, throw it, You know, some people just throw it on the side of the road.
You can schedule a pickup. Same for appliances. So there's always a solution. You just have to go to Google or whatever you use. You know, brave, I guess, you know, I don't want to just shout out Google. The first thing we have to do is be
Aaron Jordan: conscious, though. Like, you have to care. Like, if you don't know, then you can't do.
And I
Bryan The Botanist: guess, you know, everyone has a different struggle. Some people don't have the time or they don't have the resources in the sense that they're struggling just to, like, feed their kids or whatever. Moe, you want to come in and say hi real quick to Aaron? That's okay. Hey, Moe. You can come on the panel.
Hey, man. How you doing? This is our founder, Moe.
Aaron Jordan: for coming, man. for coming, man. This is a crazy operation, and I love it. I love everything about it. Thanks, man. Crazy cool. Got
Bryan The Botanist: Mo in here. What's
Aaron Jordan: up,
Bryan The Botanist: Mo? Whoa! Hey, Aaron. Thank you for coming, man. Thank you for having me, man. Good stuff. Good stuff. Alright. Yeah, we're finishing up the podcast, but Aaron's telling us all about HIPHOUSE Festival and sustainability and where he comes from.
That's, you know, he was raised that way. He's [01:05:00] bringing the climate action and the education to Miami from Louisville. Yep. Yep. So Sneaker Impact is going to be involved. And
Aaron Jordan: yeah.
Muhammad Ali's Legacy and Personal Connections
Bryan The Botanist: Muhammad Ali is from Louisville.
Aaron Jordan: Get out of my head. I was literally about to say, like, so I went to Central High School. That's the high school that Muhammad Ali went to.
And when I moved down here, I learned that Muhammad Ali had, he trained down here. I didn't know that. He's from
Miami, but he's from Kentucky.
Yeah, but he's from Kentucky. He would run along
Bryan The Botanist: the Julia Tuttle in his, in his army boots. I didn't know that
Aaron Jordan: until I moved because I would see these Muhammad Ali murals.
And I'm like, that's dope. Cause I just feel like I'm at home. And he fought at the Fillmore.
Bryan The Botanist: That was where one of his big fights was. I don't know if it was Frazier.
Aaron Jordan: But he's, he's from Louisville.
Bryan The Botanist: Of course. Yeah. But one of his big fights was in Miami beach. I didn't know he was from Louisville. Are you
Aaron Jordan: there?
Bryan The Botanist: No, I
Aaron Jordan: didn't.
Bryan The Botanist: I didn't know.
Aaron Jordan: The world's greatest boxer is from Louisville, Kentucky. And his last name, his real name is Cassius Clay. Um, my father's name is Leon Clay. And I think that I'm related. I don't go and look because like everybody in Louisville is like, Oh, I'm related to Muhammad Ali. I'm sure that there's something there from a, [01:06:00] from a DNA perspective and
Bryan The Botanist: Mo's
Aaron Jordan: nephew
Bryan The Botanist: is named Muhammad Ali.
Aaron Jordan: Are you serious?
Bryan The Botanist: His name? No. Name's Ali Moham. Ali.
Aaron Jordan: Muhammad Ali. We might have relationship there. We might be cousins. Yeah, we might be cousins. Ali man. Yeah. Actually met his, uh, his wife and his, one of his wives, man and his son. I met them couple years ago. Wow. Yeah. Beautiful people,
man. Yeah, man. Yeah. I missed his funeral.
I'm like the only person that I know. That's from Louisville that I was in L. A. At the time in twenties, 18 or 19, something like that. And, um, it was a big deal. I watched it on the news. I was like, dang, I missed it.
Yeah, man, he's gonna go on. It's one of the most influential people. People might remember him as a boxer, and that's fine, as a political activist, as just somebody who can say no and doesn't care and end up in jail for the rest of his life.
I think, uh, There's a lot of chapters that would be written on Muhammad Ali.
Yep,
because and you can pick [01:07:00] whatever you want. You can pick the boxer Resilient the young black kid that would say just say no, and I'm as good as everybody else and better Yeah, I mean you could and he said he was pretty Muhammad Ali man, which is he was he spoke and he his mind and he Thought he was better than everybody else Yeah, he was wow I Float
like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Yeah. Yeah. I
mean, I, I, again, man, I think, man, there's a lot of chapters that could be written on his life. And, I mean, you can pick that boxer, uh, corner, which is fine, but there's a lot of corners on Muhammad Ali that, uh, that could be told. You
know, he, um, he, when he won the Olympic gold medal, he chucked it into the Ohio River, which is right there north of Louisville, Kentucky, separates Kentucky from Indiana.
And, um, so many times going back to civil unrest for a bit, I remember standing in what was close to the very same spot that he stood [01:08:00] where he threw that. And I kind of felt his sentiment at times, just in terms of like, You know, you fight for what you believe in, and then, you know, you feel like the fight might have been in vain, and I can just imagine that he felt so much of that in his lifetime, and, um, yeah, I stand on the shoulders of giants, the likes of Muhammad Ali.
Yeah, he,
Bryan The Botanist: I'm sure he'd be proud of where the nation has come in the last five years, a little bit, maybe not as much lately, but maybe more, like, You know, during the Black Lives Matter movement that like you said in Louisville, maybe I don't know a lot of Aaron had, um, you know, 10, 000 people come to his Juneteenth festival in Louisville and year two.
I mean, it's just incredible. So now at Virginia Key, he's I think in November he's going to do his next festival down here and it's going to be all about sustainability, climate change, and music coming together. Correct. Sneaker impacts.
Aaron Jordan: Pleasure to meet you. Thank you. All right. Thanks Mo for coming through.
Thank you for coming man. Any way we can help man, please call us. Yes sir. I gave him a
Bryan The Botanist: mini tour before and yeah, he's excited.
Aaron Jordan: [01:09:00] Okay bye Mo. See ya.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah, that's dope. That's dope.
Growing Up and Family Dynamics
Bryan The Botanist: So you grew up, did you have any brothers and sisters? Tell us a little bit more about your early life.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah. I guess so. Um, I got one sibling that I grew up in the house with who like, usually when I think about like my upbringing and my siblings, I usually think of her because like we were in the house together.
Um, she's my mother's daughter, my sister. And then I have on my father's side who are my half brothers and sisters. Um, I have three sisters and one brother. Um, yeah. So I have a sister Sharia on my mom's side. And then on my father's side, there's LaQuisha. Uh, Felicia, L'Oreal, and Ethan, my brother. Very
Bryan The Botanist: cool.
Yeah, but we didn't, we didn't grow up together. I didn't have any sisters. I only had brothers, so. That's cool. Yeah.
Aaron Jordan: I met them, I met them in probably one of the most awkward ways that you can meet your siblings. Do you want to share any more? I was, uh, it's not too, uh, it's kind of, uh, well, so L'Oreal, for example, we went to Central High School together, and I would always call her [01:10:00] my play sister, like I would always call her like, sis, you know, like, hey sis.
And then, a year later, my father passed away, and at our, at his funeral, I found out that we were actually brothers and sisters. Oh my God. Ain't that so weird?
Whoa.
And then I met Ethan, and uh, I had always heard about LaQuisha, and I heard about Felicia. I didn't know them too well, but, um, yeah. Imagine meeting your siblings at a funeral.
You know how, like, you go to the repass and you eat food? Yeah, thank you. Well, it was a minute ago, thank you. Um, it was in 2009. Still, I was not
Bryan The Botanist: easy. I have both my parents in my life. So yeah, yeah, it's kind of how that even how you even deal with that. Yeah, man happens. Um, yeah.
Journey into Social Activism
Bryan The Botanist: So when did you get so passionate about social activism and also, um, environmentalism?
Like, was it as a teenager? Man, is there a certain moment? Or was it just more of a progression?
Aaron Jordan: No, I mean, I think that I have to give all the credit to my mother My mama, her name is Sherry Jordan. She took me around the church at a super, super young age. [01:11:00] Um, you know, we would do like these backpack giveaways with the church.
We would go volunteer at backpack giveaways. I'm like, I'm like six years old, seven years old, school aged. Passing backpacks to kids, volunteering, also needing a backpack myself. Um, you know, I worked at this place called the Lord's Kitchen. There were several programs, uh, that my church had when I was young.
So another one of the programs was the Lord's Kitchen, where we would like, there was like a mobile, Um, truck
food pantry, kinda.
Yeah. And they would serve hot food to people that were houseless. Um, so I've been in ministry and then eventually I got into the Music men ministry as a drummer. So I've been in ministry since I was a young kid, like my mom took me.
So these values to serve
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah. Your mom helped instill in you, but also through your ministry work. Correct.
Aaron Jordan: Wow. Yeah. So,
Bryan The Botanist: and they taught even. A little bit about sustainability or was that in climate change? It wasn't happening. It was more probably about helping those less fortunate.
Aaron Jordan: Correct. Yeah. Like just having a heart of service.
Um, I love that was something that was instilled in me as [01:12:00] a young age. Um, and then going to like a high school, like central high school, where like, A lot of activists, like the first, like, black senators, some of the first, like, Muhammad Ali, like, really staple figures in Kentucky, went to Central High School, um, and so just always being raised around that kind of energy.
I'm a graduate of Tennessee State University. Our motto is literally, Think, Work, Serve. So I've always consistently been of a mind of service, and then like I talked about earlier, In terms of like building on the science guy, I used to watch shows like, um, Zabuma Fu and the Kratts Brothers and just a lot of paid, paid programming.
I'm a documentary hit, like science stuff, science stuff. I've always loved animals. I used to want to be a veterinarian when I was younger. I went to high school actually and studied veterinary science for three years. Um, I was supposed to be a veterinarian, but, um, you know, the luck of the draw would have it that I became an activist.
And so, you know, I always kind of like. [01:13:00] put myself in spaces where I was supporting activism around environmentalism, like, um, community gardening, um, creating urban gardening gardens. Yeah. Urban gardens. It's amazing. Urban gardens, food deserts and food deserts. Yeah. There's so many food deserts in Louisville, Kentucky.
It's actually, it's actually horrific. And Louisville is not an isolated event in America. There are tons of cities that are food deserts where there's some in Miami.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah. It used to be there getting better. There's probably still some too.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah. Like where you can't find Fresh produce. It's just a
Bryan The Botanist: convenience store for like three or five miles.
Correct. You drive 10 or 20 miles to get to it. To get to the nearest grocery store.
Aaron Jordan: Quality store. So yeah, man, like, um, you know, going to community cleanups and, you know, cleaning out the creeks and, um, I mean, I'm just like somebody who has always been. My mama used to say that when I was a kid, she tells this story all the time, she says when the school bus would come, whether you were the first one on the bus stop or the last one, the bus was, [01:14:00] if you were running up to the line, uh, as the bus was approaching, she said I would always stand number one in line, she said it doesn't matter how big the kids were, she said I would always like go to the front of the line and get on the bus first, which is crazy because I didn't sit in the front of the bus, like I would go to the back of the bus and like, you know, clown off with everybody on the bus, but I think that She tells me that story to just remind me of my personality and my character from a super young age.
Of just always being a leader, always thinking that I deserve the best. Always thinking that like, you know, my quality of life was never determined by like our situation as a family. That I always wanted the best out of whatever scenario I was in. Don't play small. Exactly. And so I think that that kind of spills over into how I end up being a prominent figure doing civil unrest and how I end up with the largest Juneteenth celebration in the state and how I come to Miami and being inspired and wanting to do something about it, um, how that turned into HIPHOUSE Music Festival.
HIPHOUSE Festival and Future Plans
Aaron Jordan: And so I'm really excited [01:15:00] about the trajectory of HIPHOUSE Music Festival. I'm excited about, you know, people who look like me, frankly, being in the environmentalism space. Like when I look around the environmental, um, ecosystem, I don't see a lot of people that look like me. Not a ton of people,
Bryan The Botanist: right. I can attest to that too.
You
Aaron Jordan: know? And so I think that I also have a duty and a responsibility to like, Um, again, in the name of making things accessible and removing access barriers, I think that I, I have a mandate of showing like young black folks, young people of color, like, you know, you belong in this space just as much as anybody else was here to do something for the environment.
Bryan The Botanist: It doesn't matter if you have a college degree or if you're Correct. Affluent.
Aaron Jordan: Correct. And it's like, you know, A lot of times you don't think you can do something until you see somebody who looks like you or reminds you of yourself do it and then, you know, it kind of instills, representation matters. And so, um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really excited to be here in Miami, but kind of putting a, um, A bookmark, I guess, in my upbringing and how I got into this space.
You know, like I said, [01:16:00] from serving meals, passing out backpacks in the summer. I mean, we used to go canvassing, knocking doors, passing out school supplies and all kinds of things. And, you know, I think if I'm just being real about it, my mama probably saw that as the best opportunity to not only get a resource, but to also be of service to people in the same way.
And so she had a very passionate, and still is passionate about ministry, um, and so I became a drummer just because she's a singer and so naturally like being at choir rehearsals and things like that, I just picked up the drums and fast forward working for Sony Music Entertainment and just things like that.
Isolated experiences, um, created who I am now today.
Bryan The Botanist: That's amazing. Thank you. It sounds like your mom is your hero.
Aaron Jordan: Thank you. Yeah, my mom is my hero. I love her. She actually was awarded a Juneteenth Legacy Award last year at the festival.
Bryan The Botanist: Cool. Yeah. It sounds like she's had a life of service and instilled that in you.
For sure. For
Aaron Jordan: sure.
Bryan The Botanist: Very cool. It's cool to hear your youth story because, you know, um, [01:17:00] I was really shy as a kid. It sounds like you were the opposite. And that confidence comes through. I may have a podcast now, but I was very shy. I would hide behind my mom's leg. I was not the first one. How would
Aaron Jordan: your friends or family describe you as a kid?
Bryan The Botanist: Um,
probably energetic. Because I played soccer. But I don't know how they would describe me. Maybe just, um, curious. Curious but shy. Curious and shy. Yeah, but I guess I, uh, I grew out of that shell in college. Yeah. You know, and, uh, I was bullied a lot as a kid. I'll say that on this podcast. I was bullied a lot because I was one of the smallest kids.
I was the shortest kid in my high school. I'm a little taller now, but. I was a late bloomer. I am a late bloomer. Um, I didn't grow really till I was like 18 or 19. Okay. I was like 5'1 in high school. Now I'm like 5'8 or 9. But, um, I was, also my last name is Huberty. So people would call me all the names in the book.
Oh wow, yeah. My entire high school Yeah, that's messed up. Yeah, and they would tease me and stuff. [01:18:00] Throw you in lockers. This was back in the 90s. You know, we were getting hazed on my soccer team. They would pull our underwear off. They would rip it off of you. Damn. They'd come and, they'd bang you on the wedgies.
It's called banding, it's so bad, banding, and they pulled up and they'd use it as a trophy. This is what kids do back in the 90s. Kids were trash. I'm a
Aaron Jordan: 90s baby, so. Yeah. You were maybe a little older than me in the 90s, maybe. Yeah, I mean I graduated in
Bryan The Botanist: 97, so like I didn't have a cell phone until like I was in college.
Okay. Like they didn't even have iPhones until I was like in my 25 or so.
Aaron Jordan: I grew up on, I'm like one of the last generations that remembers analog. To the digital. Oh, yeah, we have the tape
Bryan The Botanist: players and the record. I mean, I love records to this day, but yeah, even just Not having a cell phone. We used to have the pagers in high school But like we memorized everyone's phone number in the 80s and 90s and remember the
Aaron Jordan: pay phones.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah I remember they don't even exist anymore. It was a C A
Aaron Jordan: L L A T T. Yeah, I never understood that though I guess it's called AT& [01:19:00] T. I don't know because they would say it's called Collect and then when they would spell it out, it never seemed like the letters matched. Oh yeah, you could call a
Bryan The Botanist: Collect phone number and then the person would either accept it or not accept it.
Yeah, I remember that. I hadn't thought about that in years. But yeah, we used to have a totally different life back then because we weren't always attached to these phones. We put them on Do Not Disturb, but I would have been getting all types of X notifications. know it's going
Aaron Jordan: to be crazy when I look at it.
Yeah,
Bryan The Botanist: yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I oftentimes wish we could go back to when, you know There wasn't so much anxiety. I think it causes a little depression, anxiety, and the thing I want to write on my, my mirror Someone gave me this advice and something that I think is good advice is comparison is a thief of joy.
Aaron Jordan: Oh my god
Bryan The Botanist: I just looked it up the other day. Yeah, I don't know who said it, but yeah So really compare yourself like a proverb at this point. Yeah comparison is a thief of it is I need to write that I'm a mirror because even as a runner don't compare yourself to anyone else You are on your path and it's a beautiful path and everyone is equal Career and in the eyes of the creator And in the universe, like no one, it doesn't matter if [01:20:00] you're Jeff Bezos or any of the richest man in the world and, or if you're the poorest man in the world, we all have an equal right to live and to be safe and to have
Aaron Jordan: quality of life,
Bryan The Botanist: you know, a quality of life.
So I just, you know, there's a lot of, um, what's the word in America? There's a lot of, uh, you know, different, there's a big difference in economic and, you know, there's a lot of, um,
Aaron Jordan: dissonance.
Bryan The Botanist: So, so it's really great to see you raising this awareness in the music community because, you know, a lot of these festivals, it's just about partying.
You know, so you're, you're doing something different. We're going to get a thousand percent behind it.
Aaron Jordan: Thank you.
Bryan The Botanist: Um, and we're promoting it on our Instagram. In fact, tell people how they can learn more about HIPHOUSE festival and what you're up to.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah. So people can stay tuned, um, and stay up to date www.
hiphousemusicfest. com. Um, and also our Instagram handle is HIPHOUSE. Festival. Um, we're on LinkedIn as well. HIPHOUSE festival. Yep. I found you today. [01:21:00] Uh, yeah, man. And then you can follow me on Instagram too. I'm sure Facebook, we don't have a Facebook. I don't know if we'll do Facebook. I love Instagram right now.
Just stay with Instagram and maybe we'll do a tick tock. I don't know. I'm not, I don't know how to use tick tock for real. Like every time I get on there, I end up buying something. So I'm like, okay, no, this, no, I heard they have a marketplace. They do. I think it was genius to, to embed that into their, um, to their system.
Bryan The Botanist: Instagram is HIPHOUSE. Music Fest,
Aaron Jordan: HIPHOUSE Music Festival. Okay. No, I'll find it. Sorry. Hip. There's hip A description. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hip on Instagram. It's HIPHOUSE festival. HIPHOUSE festival. And the website is www dot HIPHOUSE. Um, fest.com. Yeah. And then on. LinkedIn. It's HIPHOUSE festival. Yeah. So it's not music isn't in any of the new
Bryan The Botanist: project for you.
Super new. And you're going to keep the Juneteenth going.
Aaron Jordan: I am. I am, man. We turned six this year. I'm really excited. Last year, I was my first year producing it from Miami. So I kind of have that notch in my bill of where like, you know, I needed to grow [01:22:00] professionally. Like, okay, can I produce this event without being on the ground?
Bryan The Botanist: There's a whole team to supporting. There's
Aaron Jordan: a whole team, you know, and my team is they're dope, but they also believe. and are passionate about what we do. It's not always a joy ride, you know, we've got to, the thing about like the festival business, I've had to learn to go frankly at it with like everything from city officials to, um, groups, hate groups sometimes, um, or people that might.
Just not see the value in Get
Bryan The Botanist: nasty messages.
Aaron Jordan: Very nasty. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Yeah. Super nasty messages. And so I think that, you know, that experience has built me up in a way to where like, you know, I've had people that Worked with me or have been on my advisory boards who have done things that were antithetical to the work that we were trying to do and not always on purpose.
Like sometimes people are just people in there and like things just happen.
Bryan The Botanist: So you're the [01:23:00] CEO, right? Yes. I'm the founder and president. So you keep an eye just to make sure the integrity is correct. Gucci. As we say,
Aaron Jordan: I gotta be real Gucci. Everything's Gucci. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan The Botanist: It's got to align with your core values.
Correct. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. I'm a big on leadership. People are not going to get behind it and they're going to. Be like, wait a second, you know, um.
Aaron Jordan: Yeah, people can tell something phony. Um, you can put a shiny, you can put paint on it, put a nice bow on it, but eventually if it's fake, it'll, it'll, it'll rust and people will notice really quickly.
Bryan The Botanist: Well, we are going on maybe the longest podcast we've been on so far, but we've had a couple of hour tens. We're approaching an hour 30. We're turning into a Joe Rogan. Okay. Well, if this is time,
Aaron Jordan: then you can call
Bryan The Botanist: it. I would love to keep jam with you. We're going to come back again. I'm sure. We're going to be doing some marketing with you because we love what you do.
Thank you so much. People are going to be learning about you through our Instagram and our YouTube.
Final Thoughts and Inspirational Message
Bryan The Botanist: Um, so Aaron, this is that point in the podcast where we ask you for the inspiring message to sneak your impact [01:24:00] community
Aaron Jordan: with. Okay, well, anybody that's in the sneaker impact community, I think that the words of inspiration that I would leave, just like be you, be yourself, show up in the world authentically, um, as who you are and that will take you wherever you need to go.
Um, nobody can steal anything from you and, and like we talked about comparison being a thief of joy, you know, I tell people all the time, you can't, you can't compete where you don't compare. That's just me being a little, uh, Muhammad Ali ish about it. But the reality is. There's a lane for everybody and nobody can take what's kind of divinely yours whether you're spiritual or not.
It's like Our destiny and our journeys whether they go straight or up and down or sideways or zigzag, whatever like What is for you is yours? And so you don't have to like try to be anything that you're not you don't have to Show up in the world other than how you show up in the world and that is gonna mean A great deal, a lot more, um, than, than showing up any other kind of [01:25:00] way.
And you'll inspire somebody by default.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah. So just be yourself. Just
Aaron Jordan: be you.
Bryan The Botanist: Yeah. Awesome, man. I love it. Thank you for all of your passion. Thank you. It came through loud and clear. for having me. Yeah, man. Guys, Aaron Jordan, HIPHOUSE Festival. Yes. Check him out on socials and, uh, welcome to Miami, Aaron.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right, man. It's great to have you again. Thank you. We'll see you soon. See you soon. Bye, guys.
