{"id":142,"date":"2026-04-15T10:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blountcountybusinessnews.kinsta.cloud\/?p=142"},"modified":"2026-05-06T10:15:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T10:15:54","slug":"lets-be-blount-podcast-bridges-old-new-in-growing-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"‘Let’s Be Blount’ podcast bridges old, new in growing county"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"

Photo by Robert Berlin<\/em>
Eric Rice (left) and Brett Heppner started the Let’s Be Blount podcast officially in 2023; however, its origins began before that with simple social media posts. For them it has become a community building project.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
<\/div>

Robert Berlin<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Blount County is growing fast, and with this growth comes struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Realtors Brett Heppner and Eric Rice didn’t just understand that growth requires understanding \u2014 they launched a multiyear podcast project to help connect newcomers to the rich history and deep sense of community that many people cherish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since launching the Let’s Be Blount Podcast in 2023, Heppner and Rice have introduced more than 60 local entrepreneurs and community leaders to their audience in a way they hope reveals the heart of what makes Blount County great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Origins of the Podcast<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no grand plan, only evolution, the podcasters admit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well, we have done little things along the way,” Heppner said. “We started with a Monday Market Minute that we would post on social media \u2014 just a snapshot of what happened” in the real estate market that week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although they are both realtors who were trying to leverage social media to promote their personal brands, they wanted to do something different than everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We added Wednesday Friends Day,” Heppner said. “We would talk to people in the community and we just really liked doing it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both came up with the idea to do a podcast around the same time. But the idea was the easy part. Neither has a media background, so figuring out the technology and production process was far more challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also had to find the personality of the podcast \u2014 that part comes from interview style and editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’ve screwed some things up and just left (the mistakes) in,” Heppner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rice believes this is what makes the podcast successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It keeps things light and fun,” he said. “It just feels more natural to do it how we’re doing it now.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as they interviewed more people, a new sense of purpose evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We had so many people moving into this area,” Rice said. “They’re bringing lots of great things from other places and other experiences, all of which I think only enhances and enriches our community.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mixing the old with the new, however, can create tension. Heppner and Rice believe they can help both sides understand each other by having a candid conversation about what makes Blount County great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They’re not moving here to change Blount County,” Heppner said. “They’re moving here because they know what Blount County is and they want to be part of that. And so that’s a good thing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rice recalled an interview with Brian Daniels at Blount Partnership in which Daniels spoke about newcomers to the county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He said ‘Come be part of what’s going on here. Bring your experiences from outside, but don’t try to change it so that it’s something different,'” Rice recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strategic Partnerships<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating and publishing a podcast is only part of the challenge. If nobody hears it, the podcasters feared, the project would fall short of their hopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coincidentally, Jeremy LaDuke, founder of Epic Nine Marketing, was also working on a plan that happened to share the same name and a similar mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LaDuke’s vision was to create a website highlighting everything that makes Blount County great \u2014 events, people, culture, heritage and businesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For him, the title carries more than one meaning: candid conversations about what is happening in the community, but also an invitation to come together and form a unified Blount County.  It looked like the perfect partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We were both kind of doing this thing without being on each other’s radars,” LaDuke said on a 2024 podcast episode. “What could have become a contentious thing became a very collaborative, cool thing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impact on the Community<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With LaDuke’s help promoting the podcast, Heppner and Rice needed only to keep producing content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It started very much as this desire to be real estate experts in the community,” Rice said. “Now it’s just about being a service to Blount County.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both men shared stories of listeners who said they were not aware of a podcast guest despite having lived in the county their entire lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And I just think those stories have become more important than the small real estate piece that we started with,” Rice said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideal guests are not just longtime residents \u2014 Heppner and Rice say it is equally important to interview newcomers who are making a meaningful impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They’re bringing the best of themselves and making Blount County better,” Rice said. “Change is hard for people, and I think new people kind of need to understand that as well, because (growth has) changed schools, it’s changed traffic, it’s changed opportunities. It’s changed a lot of things, and anytime you get change, it’s going to be difficult for some people.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rice said he was a newcomer himself when he and his family moved to Blount County from Kansas in 2005, so he understands both perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It took us a little while to get into the community,” he recalled, “but I think it became easier once we started pouring ourselves into the community.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Future of the Podcast<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heppner and Rice estimate more than 5,000 people have downloaded the 63 published episodes since the podcast launched in 2023. Both metrics give them confidence to keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their biggest challenges now are growing the subscriber base and continuing to find interesting people to interview \u2014 though Rice said the latter has never been a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’d like more listeners just because we’d like to have more people know about Blount County,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blount County is growing fast, and with this growth comes struggles. Realtors Brett Heppner and Eric Rice didn’t just understand that growth requires understanding \u2014 they launched a multiyear podcast project to help connect newcomers to the rich history and deep sense of community that many people cherish. Since launching the Let’s Be Blount Podcast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leader-profile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnews.blountcounty.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}