Before there was a brand, before the tour dates and the national recognition and the half-million-strong fanbase, there were two Houston women bartending, figuring out Atlanta, and recording themselves talk. Drea Nicole and Lex P met while bartending in Houston, eventually made the move to Atlanta, and built Pour Minds from nothing — including a milestone moment when they realized the podcast was becoming a real business after earning their first $86 from ads.

Eight years later, that scrappy origin story has become one of the most remarkable runs in independent podcasting. Since launching in 2018, Pour Minds has grown to nearly 200,000 subscribers with a fanbase of half a million and counting. The show is now distributed through the Charlamagne The God’s Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartPodcasts, and the duo has appeared everywhere from Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club to the 2024 BET Awards and the ESSENCE Festival of Culture. They’ve also written Pour Into Your Pod, an e-book and video course sharing the blueprint they built for themselves with aspiring creators.

Now they’ve hit the road for the Still Sippin Tour, a multi-city North American run with stops in New York, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, and more, and the conversation around longevity feels especially apt.

“Most podcasts lack consistency and authenticity, which is why they don’t make it past the first year,” Drea Nicole says. “We showed up every week, even when we were tired, sad, grieving, annoyed, or heartbroken.” Both women have lost a parent, and their collective grief have made them both all the more relatable to their ever growing audience. Drea’s father passed away in 2020. Lex’s mother in 2022. And they kept releasing episodes through both.

That’s the thing about Pour Minds that gets lost when people describe it as a “drunk therapy session with your girls” — which is, to be fair, exactly how the show brands itself. The casualness is real. But so is the infrastructure behind it. “People see one or two hours of conversation each week,” Lex P said, “but they don’t see the days of planning, production, scheduling, marketing, editing, and problem-solving that happen behind the scenes. Sitting down and recording is probably the easiest part of the job.”

Their secret, they’ve always said, is authenticity. It’s a word that gets overused in creator spaces, but in Pour Minds’ case it comes with a track record: they have been openly wrong on air, publicly evolved, and watched their audience respond to both. “Absolutely, I’ve changed my mind,” Lex said on past controversial opinions that she’s since changed. “If you haven’t changed your mind in eight years, you might not be paying attention. The only difference is I do it in front of thousands of people, and they come with receipts.”

The show has rebranded in feel over the years, less chaotic than its early days, more grounded — and it’s been a part of their journey as creators and as women. While some listeners acknowledge the shift, Drea is unbothered. “If you’re not growing, you’re stagnant. We’re always more concerned with being happy with who we are than with being who other people want us to be.”

That independent-mindedness is also a business philosophy. Signed to 85 South Media, the Pour Minds duo has maintained ownership of their platform — something Drea flagged as central to how they operate now that survival is no longer the primary concern. “Money and survival aren’t always the main focus anymore,” she said. “Alignment with the right opportunities, creating quality content, continuing to grow our audience, and building a media empire are our primary focuses now.”

The “media empire” framing isn’t ego, it’s infrastructure. Lex P also hosts Love Lex P, a weekly solo show, and starred in a season of Kevin “KevOnStage” Fredericks Safe Space on Tubi, and the pair starred on Travel Queens on BET, a series following Black women as they explore new cities and cultures. The Pour Minds universe has expanded well beyond the couch.

But it keeps coming back to that couch. And this summer, to the stage.

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In their hometown stop in Houston, Texas the pair hosted an emotional sold out show at the Bayou City Music Center in downtown Houston. Of course, they ran through the pod’s popular segments which include discussing music, sex, and offering unfiltered advice to their listeners. The show also had a few surprise special guests including Houston rapstress KenTheMan and Paul Wall, as well as content creator and influencer, Frankie Bleau.

Some of the audience participated in dance competitions and got raw and candid guidance around navigating some tricky romantic relationships. Altogether, the show was equal parts hilarious, raunchy, and all the trappings of a good night with your girlfriends. 

When asked what Black women in podcasting have actually built over the last decade, Lex P didn’t hesitate. “For a long time, Black women’s voices, perspectives, and stories were ignored in media, so being part of helping change that is an honor.” She framed it as a door that needs to stay open: “Our goal is to open as many doors as possible and then leave them unlocked.”

The Houston stop of the Still Sippin Tour carried a particular charge. “Coming back to Houston means everything to us,” Lex continued. “Selling out in your hometown is a different kind of validation because those are the people who knew you before any of this existed.” Drea agreed, adding the message she wants that room to take home: “Big dreams can absolutely come from familiar streets.”