Hola chic@s,

Espero que estén bien.

I’ve been reflecting lately on what Chat Spanish really is.

It’s something I ask myself with varying intensity at different stages in my life.

I still don’t know…

It continues to shape-shift in ways I couldn’t have predicted since starting it six years ago.

The day ones will know that Chat Spanish originally started as a podcast, with a solitary Instagram page.

The logo cost nothing.

It was the emoji of the salsa-dancing lady on a white background 💃

I’d do weekly interviews with the Latino cleaners in my office.

Learning about culture, editing the podcast, figuring out how to design and generally being a fool.

Something Spanish itself had taught me to embrace.

Being comfortable with being a fool.

The brown colour is something that just really happened.

I can’t say that I consciously chose it to mean something specific, which is what you should do with good brand design 🥱

Looking back, I think it was really a decision my unconscious made for me.

The association is obvious.

Brown = earth, humility, ground, humanity

The culture encourages us to present a polished mask.

To think something is wrong when we’re not happy.

To worship the surface and fear the depths.

The more time I spend on this earth, the more I believe the goal of life is not happiness, but rather meaning.

Meaning has an enduring quality to it and can only be found by walking the adventure of your life.

You find it living forwards and looking backwards.

Building Chat Spanish hasn’t always been a happy experience.

It’s involved loss, in various forms.

I burned down the original YouTube channel that I had built consistently for two years.

I started with a desire to be massive.

To exploit the opportunities of the Spanish-speaking market.

All of it an attempt to be seen.

But finding myself ultimately humbled into something deeper and truer.

This is what happens when you live your story.

It hasn’t been glamorous and I still don’t know where the fuck I’m going.

But it’s my story.

And it’s meaningful, to me.

Perhaps this is what it means to be a participant.

To keep walking forwards, even when we don’t know exactly where we’re going.

I’ll leave you with a quote from my Argentinian friend Camila 🇦🇷

Someone I met along the journey.

It had such a profound impact on me at the time, that I got her to write it out in her own handwriting, because I’m an emotional son of a bitch.

Persevera y triunfarás
Persevere and you will succeed

Keep walking, chic@s 👣

Un abrazo,
Harrison

Spanish for living, not just learning



P.S - Here’s the Chat Spanish Lifetime Handbook. It took me about a year to write and will act as a guide on your own adventure to living Spanish. Of course, I could have got AI to write it, but that’s no way to live 😉


P.P.S - I also have a few more spaces for 1:1 work for the rest of this year. Please reach out if you’re interested, or even just for a chat.