Amy Silverman, KJZZ, on Three Decades Covering Phoenix

Amy Silverman [0:00] A few years ago, I got a DM on Twitter. We were just coming out of the pandemic from Ronan Farrow. It was before the 2024 election and he was looking for dirt on Biden whenever I put a story to bed. I have a ritual where I have to go to Cost Plus, and I have to walk up and down every single aisle. I looked out that they didn't want that story, because it probably became the most impactful story of my career in terms of actually getting stuff changed.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [0:28] What's the wildest rumor you've ever heard about yourself.

Amy Silverman [0:31] Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Was very fond for a while of telling people that he was at my wedding.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [0:38] For two decades, I'd helped brands earn credibility through PR. Now I'm turning the mic on the storytellers themselves. I am Melissa DiGianfilippo, founder and CEO of Proof Publicity, and this is Off Deadline. The real stories of reporters, hosts and media insiders beyond the byline. Welcome to Off Deadline. I'm Melissa DiGianfilippo, and my guest today is Amy Silverman. Amy is a journalist, writer and teacher who has covered her hometown of Phoenix for more than three decades. She spent 25 years at Phoenix New Times and now serves as executive producer of The Show on KJZZ, the Phoenix NPR station. A three time Arizona Press Club Journalist of the year, she has reported on Arizonans with disabilities for ProPublica, with work appearing in The New York Times and on This American Life. Off the clock, she co-teaching mothers who write and co curates the Bar Flies reading series at Valley Bar. Wow, you've done a lot.

Amy Silverman [1:38] I get bored easily.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [1:40] Well, thank you for being here today.

Amy Silverman [1:41] Thank you for.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [1:42] Having me. I always love when I get a chance to interview people who I've been pitching or known about since I started my career. I've been in PR for over 20 years, and you know, you've built a reputation here. You were at the New Times for so long and now you're you're on radio. So this is new for you? Yeah. When did you kind of start at KJZZ and how did you get that start?

Amy Silverman [2:02] I started at KJZZ in late 2021, and I always said if I left New Times, the only other media job I wanted would be in public radio. So I lucked out.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [2:14] Well, as a fan of This American Life, when I read that in your bio, I was like, I mean, it makes sense if you.

Amy Silverman [2:19] It was a long time ago now.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [2:21] But like, what a show?

Amy Silverman [2:22] Yeah, yeah, that was a I remember that was many, many years ago. And I remember walking out of the studio after doing a very thorough edit with Ira Glass and thinking, it may not get any better than that.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [2:34] Yeah. He's just like such a voice and a character. Great storyteller. How did you get your start in journalism? Why did you pick this field?

Amy Silverman [2:44] Well, I was the editor of my high school newspaper, okay? I was a nerd going way back.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [2:48] Where did you go to high school?

Amy Silverman [2:49] Arcadia.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [2:50] Okay.

Amy Silverman [2:50] Arcadia in the 80s. Oh.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [2:53] Totally different city then,

Amy Silverman [2:54] A tough person that I am today. Yes. Only liberal Jew at Arcadia in the 80s. I'm not really even exaggerating. And I was really interested, you know, from an early age in both politics and journalism. And I chose a tiny liberal arts college in Southern California because I wanted out of Arizona, and I chose one that didn't have a journalism program because I didn't really want to be tempted. I wanted to get a liberal arts degree and not do more of a trade experience. And so I, I was ready to graduate, not knowing which I wanted to go into. Yeah, but I am a very nervous person. And so February of my senior year of college, I already had my job lined up, my first job, and it was on Capitol Hill in politics.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [3:37] Wow.

Amy Silverman [3:38] So I did that for a little while, and that shot me like a cannon straight out of Capitol Hill to journalism school.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [3:46] You're like, I'm done with this.

Amy Silverman [3:47] Yeah, yeah.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [3:48] What an experience. Politics. Oh, that'd be tough.

Amy Silverman [3:52] Yeah, well everything's political.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [3:53] I know now it feels like everything is political, but I guess years ago it didn't feel so much. But what it.

Amy Silverman [3:59] Was, it was a lot.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [4:00] Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. I now want to know about the story or project that you've worked on in your career, that you fought for, that no one else believed in at the time.

Amy Silverman [4:11] So at New Times, when I got there, I was in my mid 20s, which is a very long time ago, and I was very much the junior person, and it was a very kind of rough and tumble place. And you knew your place if you were low on the hierarchy. And someone advised me, someone who'd worked there said, don't talk to anyone at all. Wow, so I didn't I just went in. We had offices. I went in and closed my door.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [4:40] How do you do your job without talking to anyone?

Amy Silverman [4:42] Well, no, I mean, none of my coworkers.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [4:44] Yeah. Wow.

Amy Silverman [4:45] Just nose to the grindstone. Did my work, and that ended up being a good thing. And I think I earned the respect of some of my older colleagues. They were all older, but, you know, I was still the junior person even many, many years later. And I did a lot of political coverage and state agencies and process how government works and then some profiles. And one day I was talking to my colleague Paul Rubin, who's another longtime Arizona journalist. He's left journalism, but to me, he's always a journalist. And one of the people who raised me as a journalist. And this was also a lesson I thought he said, here, you can have this story idea I got because I don't think there's anything there and I don't really want it. And it was there was a whistleblower at the Department of Juvenile Corrections, okay. Which is not supposed to be prison or jail. It's supposed to be.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [5:40] Rehabilitation of kids. Right?

Amy Silverman [5:42] Correct. And it was anything but. And then another colleague had been there for a long time said, oh, yeah, you're working on that. Well, I got another whistleblower, and I just I really lucked out. I lucked out that they didn't want that story because it probably became the most impactful story of my career in terms of actually getting stuff changed. You know, it's very rare that anything actually changes as a result of journalism, at least my journalism. Yeah. And so we ended up with a DOJ investigation and some reforms.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [6:17] How good did that feel? And like, how long did that story take for you to dig in and uncover it? Was it a series.

Amy Silverman [6:24] Took as long as it did to gestate a baby? Wow. I had all right. The project came out, I think, July 1st, and my baby was born July 10th. My first daughter, and I'd been working on it the whole time I was pregnant with her.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [6:38] I mean, what an amazing, like, a gift I'm going to say for someone like you to see that opportunity and then be able to turn it into a story that's going to make real change because.

Amy Silverman [6:48] It was a total gift. It's why why we do what we do. And I've also gone on to cover JC a lot over the years and lately, you know, bringing that together with the disability coverage. I do realize that a lot of the kids who I was covering had serious mental illness, which we knew at the time, or have developmental disabilities like autism that's not diagnosed or treated, and that that was resulting in a lot of these behaviors.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [7:18] Wow. Hush. Well, I mean, I'm sure you've done probably a couple other stories in your career since then that maybe have felt as big, but is that the one that really stands out to you is like the story.

Amy Silverman [7:33] It really is in terms of investigative reporting. Yes, yes.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [7:36] Thank you for sharing that. When did you cover something or post something that made you feel maybe physically sick or just unwell? And how long did it take you to come back from that?

Amy Silverman [7:49] Well, that happens a lot. Yeah. In 20. Well it was it was New Year's Day 2019. I was at Disneyland with my family and my younger daughter Sophie has down syndrome. And by that point I had covered disability for quite a while. She's now 23, and I was looking at my phone, as we do when we're standing in line at Disneyland. And I just silently held it up to my husband, you know, without the girls being able to see. And a woman at a care facility in Phoenix had been apparently raped multiple times and had literally just that, just New Year's Eve given birth to a full term baby.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [8:33] Remember this story? Oh my God.

Amy Silverman [8:37] Yeah. Yeah. So I still like I've done stories about it and gone on live on KJZZ and burst into tears.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [8:44] You have a daughter who you live this life like. This is real life and.

Amy Silverman [8:48] Yeah. And Sophie and that women are, you know, very different, have very different circumstances. I think, as you know, I don't think just as a parent, I think as a human being, like, you can't help but be impacted by it. I don't like to divide the world into the parents and the.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [9:02] You're right.

Amy Silverman [9:03] That's no, but but I do. But absolutely, it impacts me more. But I guess my point is, I think that there's a wide net, like a lot of people, you know, are really we're really horrified by that. And so I covered it a little bit, you know, as breaking news. And then it motivated a year long project that I did with ProPublica about services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Arizona. Wow. And I did then for another project, I got to interview her mother and almost meet her. Wow. Yeah.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [9:40] What was that like? Was that such an emotional?

Amy Silverman [9:43] That was really intense. Because the family is Native American. They don't live in the valley. They live in a very remote area. And, you know, this was an international story. And at the time, everyone was clamoring to speak to the family. And they are very private people. They didn't want to. And I knew the lawyer through some other people, and it was just I would say, I'm a professional nag. I just.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [10:09] It's your job.

Amy Silverman [10:10] Every few months I'd just call and say, how's it going? How's the family? And then finally he said, yeah, they're ready to talk.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [10:18] And also, I imagine you've learned the skill of building rapport. I mean, if you can find some way to, like, make this woman who's gone through this hurt, you know, had a daughter who went through this horrific tragedy. If you can make her feel like you care about her story and her side, which you genuinely do, I can see it in your face.

Amy Silverman [10:37] You know, I mean, often it's not that. Not that way. Right? I know always have a lot of empathy for everybody, but but yeah, in this case, it's a very meaningful, very, very meaningful story. I mean, it's obviously their lives are ongoing and I've continued to do a lot of that coverage. But yeah, it, it, you know, I, I try really hard because people are sharing with me to share with them, which is not, not, not in all cases but many. And that is not always really welcome in journalism circles. But I've been doing it for a long time, and particularly when it comes to disability, I really try to think outside the box about ways to connect with readers, particularly and listeners, particularly those who don't have experience with somebody with disabilities in their life, because I didn't care at all before Sophie was born. I'm a total hypocrite. So so I set out to to find ways to change that.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [11:33] Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. Can you tell me about a moment when you realized you weren't the same person who started in this work?

Amy Silverman [11:41] Oh my goodness. I mean, I think that was when I did become a parent, even though I just said it's it's no.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [11:49] Different as a mom, I understand.

Amy Silverman [11:51] But it is true that, you know, I used to always say that Arizona is a great place to be a journalist and a lousy place to be a human being. Because one big adds the other. But I didn't really understand that till I had kids. Right? And then you put them in the school system and you try to access healthcare. And you with Sophie try to get services for disabilities. And it it brings it into sharp relief. Yeah for sure.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [12:22] Yeah. Yeah. Because you're actually living it with a whole different lens. Yeah, yeah a little lighter. I would love to know what's the hobby, habit or obsession that tell someone more about you than your bio ever could?

Amy Silverman [12:38] Oh, I think walking through my house, which is, I would say very organized because everything's in a bin, but others might, might, would probably call me a hoarder.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [12:50] What kind of stuff?

Amy Silverman [12:51] What are we talking about? Oh, I'm a big flea market fan, and I really, really love anything related to vintage paper and stationery, maps, calligraphy. I collect handwriting work like workbooks from way back. All of that. The stuff that's all going away. Yeah. Because we you know, obviously I still write for Phoenix magazine and that's print. Everything else is all digital. Yeah. So to me, it's an interesting juxtaposition and history that we need to hold on to. Yeah. So that's one of the main things that I collect.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [13:37] How does your husband and your kids feel about your collections?

Amy Silverman [13:42] They're actually way more patient than I would be.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [13:44] Really? That's so funny.

Amy Silverman [13:46] I recently found my kitchen table under several piles.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [13:50] That's. So. I'm kind of an antique hoarder. And my boyfriend. I'm not going to call him a hoarder. He's not. He just loves tchotchkes. I'll call them that. But he says there's, like, sentimental things that I want to see out. Right? Because there's memories. And so I've had to come to like, a okay, I get that. Like, I'm just used to things being orderly and looking nice for a reason. And he wants to remember something which is so sweet.

Amy Silverman [14:13] I think everyone's version of what looks nice is different, right? We recently added on a bedroom and bathroom suite, which we desperately needed in our very old 40s. There's a house and I said, okay, I'm ready to hang up art. And he said, no art. And I said, what? What do you mean, no art? Because I've also taken that over. I think the rifle paper wallpaper is what put him over the edge, actually, which I did not ask for permission on. So we've been in that room almost two years and we've not hung any art.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [14:43] Oh my gosh.

Amy Silverman [14:44] But we're we're.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [14:45] Going you're going to you'll find a way. He'll travel sometime and you'll do it.

Amy Silverman [14:48] Yeah, exactly.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [14:49] Yeah. I asked you to bring a receipt. So, like a physical artifact. Something from your personal, professional life that has a story attached to it. Can you bring that out and show what it is?

Amy Silverman [14:59] Sure. I brought a necklace. Join me to take.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [15:01] It out. No, I'd love to. Just. Oh, they can see right there.

Amy Silverman [15:03] It's just a plain gold heart. It's beautiful. And engraved on it is. This must be the place, which is a line from a Talking Heads song, which.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [15:11] I love that song.

Amy Silverman [15:12] To like three weeks ago. I think very few people even knew who the Talking Heads were. And now all of a sudden, David Byrne everywhere. So funny. And this is one of my favorite songs. And I actually found the necklace at a tiny jewelry shop in New York City. And there were a lot of music, lyrics, lines from from songs engraved. But this one really struck me because not only do I love the Talking Heads, but I think that the sentiment is really important. And, you know, I mentioned earlier that I could not wait to get out of here and go to school in Southern California. Then that wasn't far enough away. So I went to D.C. then I went to journalism school in New York, and I was just convinced that if I didn't live in one of those big cities, you know, you weren't living, I wasn't living. I would never make it. And I'm not here to say I've made it. But I realized along the way that you have to figure out how to be happy wherever you are.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [16:08] That's really good.

Amy Silverman [16:09] I'm still working on it with Phoenix.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [16:11] Yeah. It's so funny. I. I really do think it's easy to live in this city. I've lived a couple of different places, but most of my life here, and I think it's easy to live here, but it's also easy to not love it. It's just there's a lot of things that make it just a little bit not perfect enough, you know, not right enough.

Amy Silverman [16:31] It's just a weird, different kind of a place with a very fierce inferiority complex. You know, I wrote an essay about that a long time ago, and I said, I think Phoenix has an inferiority complex. Or maybe I do. I don't know, maybe we maybe we all do. But but I do think the fact that the living is easy, you know, I mean, even we were talking, walking, walking in, in the heat that I think it's it's a lot easier here than the now with things. Well, but also with things getting warmer. I mean, at least I knew walking in here, there'd be air conditioning.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [17:01] Yes, that's.

Amy Silverman [17:03] My daughter's living in New York, and she's not guaranteed that if she walks into any space. Yeah, yeah. So it, you know, when you get in your car and you.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [17:11] Get used to it too.

Amy Silverman [17:12] Yeah. And, I mean, I don't have a gated community. I don't I don't mind if someone does, but like, you know, you don't have to know your neighbors if you don't want to like. And during the pandemic, I think that really, you know, was something people really wanted to be in a place like this and not in a place like LA or. Sure. Yeah, I still wanted to be there, but yeah, but I've come to appreciate more about it. But part of the problem is you decide, okay, I'm going to I'm going to get the energy together and I'm going to move to New York or somewhere like that. And it's just a nonstarter.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [17:41] Yeah. I always had a dream that I would do that. And I lived in Ohio and and I was I'm, you know, no Chicago. And I was like, I'll live in New York. I'll be a magazine editor. That's what I thought I would do, because I know I'm a child who was raised in the 90s, and every cool job was like a magazine editor job, you know, and I just like it's so funny how much I wanted to come back home after not being home and how much the big city didn't call to me. And it's hard if you don't do it when you're young. Once you have kids and life.

Amy Silverman [18:06] You know, I had to push my older daughter basically. Yeah, toward Manhattan. Like, just go do it. Just go. I know it'll be hard, but you will be really happy that you did it, because. Yeah, the thought of trying to move to New York with kids. Yeah.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [18:19] Impossible. I appreciate you sharing all of that. Now we're into rapid fire, so you're just going to answer the first thing that comes to your mind and share a small story with it as well. So what's your go to ritual when a story is breaking, a post is going viral or everything's on fire.

Amy Silverman [18:35] So this isn't exactly that, but whenever I put a story to bed, turn it into the editor. It's not necessarily to bed, but it's to it's to bed for the moment. Yeah, I, I didn't even realize I was doing this for years, and it's not even really one of my favorite places, but I have a ritual where I have to go to Cost Plus, and I have to walk up and down every single aisle.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [18:54] How funny. That's so random.

Amy Silverman [18:56] It is so random. I can't, I can't really explain it.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [18:59] But do you buy things or you just like, look around.

Amy Silverman [19:01] You know, sometimes I buy things and then. But I always hold the line at the whatever, like the customer rewards thing is, and I show them the contents of my cart, which are all useless, and say, this is why you don't know I can't be part of your customer reward system. Don't give me any motivation to come.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [19:17] Back and cost plus like I just never think of that store. But actually it's like a really fun sort of awkwardness, right? Random? Yeah. What's the wildest rumor you've ever heard about yourself that.

Amy Silverman [19:29] Well, and he was spreading it himself. I don't know if he knows. It's I think he knows. I don't think he knew it was untrue. But Sheriff Joe Arpaio was very fond for a while of telling people that he was at my wedding.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [19:44] Why?

Amy Silverman [19:46] Well.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [19:47] Because you covered stuff.

Amy Silverman [19:48] I covered him a lot, and my husband covered him even more. And New Times figured prominently into the Arpaio world for a long time. And because this town is like this big, he had dealt with something business wise with my father. So when I would see him, he'd ask about him. And somehow that became, I was at your wedding, so I've had to go back and do damage control and met a lot.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [20:15] Wow. That's a that's an interesting one. What's the best headline, lead caption or post you ever wrote or wish you wrote?

Amy Silverman [20:24] So at New Times, I was incredibly lucky to work with the best headline writer on the planet who? The late Dewey Webb. He was phenomenal. And I'll try to make this quick. Yeah. That's okay. A few years ago, I got a DM on Twitter. We were just coming out of the pandemic from Ronan Farrow, and I thought, well, that's not Ronan Farrow, whatever. So I ignored it. And then I got kind of curious and I was like, I wonder what Ronan Farrow wants. So I wrote back and said, yes, yeah. And I don't want to say it was disingenuous, but he was disingenuous. I've been down this road before where a national journalist wants something from a local journalist. So like he didn't need to say first time listen. First time caller, long time listener. Like he did not know who I was. Yeah, he was working. He was looking. It was. It was before the 2024 election. And he was looking for dirt on Biden and no judgment there. That's how it works. And he had found a bunch of tweets from a woman in Paradise Valley named Cece Doane, who claimed that Biden had sexually harassed slash, maybe sort of molested her many, many, many years ago. And so, you know, I'm guessing he was like.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [21:47] Yes, like, this is.

Amy Silverman [21:48] It, right? This is it. This is going to be awesome. And then I'm guessing what happened was that he googled her name and one thing popped up and it was a story that I did not recall. This is embarrassing, but I'll be honest, I did not recall it that I wrote and I think 2000 or 2001, and it was not the juvenile correction series. It was not to me, at the time, a significant story. I don't really care for true crime, but this one was kind of irresistible. And it was about how this woman, Cece Doane, tried to poison her husband by giving him Viagra. Well.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [22:29] Can you do that? Can you overdose on the egg? I guess.

Amy Silverman [22:32] You can't. I think you can probably give someone a heart attack. But he did not die. They're still married.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [22:37] Oh, my God, that's even crazier, right?

Amy Silverman [22:40] And you know, and when Farrow started telling me about, I was like, this isn't really ring a bell. And he said, yeah, yeah. And I said, well, hold on a second. And I googled, you know, my name and her name and all that, and I popped the story. I don't know if you're a PG 13.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [22:55] Oh, it's fine. You can say it. You can say whatever you want.

Amy Silverman [22:57] The headline was Die Hard.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [22:59] Oh my God.

Amy Silverman [23:00] And I said, oh, is so good. I remember that story. Now.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [23:04] I actually kind of forgot the question because the story was so good. And so when you just said that that was.

Amy Silverman [23:09] Perfect. That was the headline was great.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [23:11] Great headline. Die hard. Oh my God.

Amy Silverman [23:14] Yeah. So that's embarrassing. And he just last night premiered his documentary about it because I guess he about her because I think he'd gone too far down the rabbit hole when he found my story. And even though it kind of, you know, it called her credibility into question. Yeah. He convinced himself there was something here. So.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [23:32] Wow.

Amy Silverman [23:33] And on HBO, you can watch.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [23:34] I'm going to.

Amy Silverman [23:35] Have not a very good murderer. He also has a podcast out.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [23:38] Not a very good murderer. Wait, they're still married? I believe you, but I still got to watch it now, because now I have a connection. But there's still married. That is bonkers.

Amy Silverman [23:49] Oh, I mean, that is just the beginning. There's so much nutty stuff that has happened with them.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [23:55] That reminds me of to other story that I bet you knew about. This is so random. Back in the day, there was like a socialite. This is like 2005 who, like, was doing something illegal in PV. I feel like you guys uncovered this story. I got to find it and send it to you. It was so long ago. She was like, I don't remember the specifics, but I remember being shocked in the moment. Like they raided their house. They were.

Amy Silverman [24:18] Did it have to do with jewelry? Yes. Okay, so there was a huge jewel heist. That's what I was referring to. And many, many families in P.V..

Melissa DiGianfilippo [24:28] That.

Amy Silverman [24:28] Was it were robbed, including the donors. But no one was really sure. You know, because something happens, high profile to a lot of people that happens to someone else.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [24:40] Yeah.

Amy Silverman [24:40] I don't know. I didn't I didn't cover that myself. I'm pretty sure we did cover.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [24:43] Yeah. That's crazy. If you weren't doing this. What would you actually be doing right now?

Amy Silverman [24:51] Probably running a small business into the ground. I, I really, for a long time, wanted to have a vintage stationery store. Oh. That's cool. There is no good stationery store here. The paper place is good.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [25:09] But, yeah, there used to be. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of in the mall and PV mall. Back in the day, there was the paper place.

Amy Silverman [25:13] But, Yeah, one on Marshall Way in Scottsdale. And so I'm a big fan of paper, like I said earlier. So I would love to do something like that, but I can picture it and I can picture it going out of business quickly.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [25:26] That's got to have a there's there is a market for everything that.

Amy Silverman [25:29] There is. But in Phoenix it's tougher. Right. Like there's this incredible story I think it's called Paper and Pencil in Chicago. And it's gangbusters. They just opened another location. Wow. I don't picture that going as well.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [25:45] Maybe it's coming back because everything is so digital. Like.

Amy Silverman [25:49] Yes, I think the concept is good, but I think getting I can't figure out where to put a store like that. Where would you get critical mass?

Melissa DiGianfilippo [25:55] You start with online as your unofficial PR person for this.

Amy Silverman [25:59] Thank you.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [25:59] Your store that we've created, you definitely don't start brick and mortar. You would lose everything. Start with a digital store and then make it a thing. And let's bring it back and make it cool on Instagram. And then you can open the store.

Amy Silverman [26:12] Yeah. All right.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:13] You're hired. Okay.

Amy Silverman [26:14] Yes.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:15] Last question. What's the piece of advice you'd give your first yourself? The honest version, not the LinkedIn version.

Amy Silverman [26:21] Trust yourself.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:23] That's good.

Amy Silverman [26:24] Trust yourself. I love that. That's something I could still probably hear.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:29] Yeah. It was such a pleasure to chat with you, Amy.

Amy Silverman [26:32] I loved it. Thank you.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:33] You're so welcome. Can you tell everyone where to find you online?

Amy Silverman [26:36] Sure. I'm on Instagram. Amy Silverman, I'm on LinkedIn. Don't ask me what that is.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:41] That's my Google. Amy Silverman, KJZZ.

Amy Silverman [26:44] And yeah, KJZZ and a website. amy-silverman.com.

Melissa DiGianfilippo [26:48] Awesome. I so appreciate your time. Thank you.

Amy Silverman [26:50] Thank you.