Today marks a very special day. It’s launch day for our startup news site — a work in progress that took years in the making to come to fruition.

We never intended to be bloggers, even though we are student journalists training to become professionals in the sports media industry. If you’ve been with us since 2013, you know how far we’ve come. If not, here’s a little background on how we got here and where we’re headed:

2013: See, this concept of Miami Heat Beat was tossed around between Brian Goins and Giancarlo Navas amid the Heat’s postseason run in their quest for a third franchise title. If you remember correctly, we won that championship thanks to Ray Allen and his fancy footwork.

Well, we began simply as a podcast. It took several long-distance conversations between Queens, NY (where Brian was) and Miami, FL (where Gianni was) to materialize, like 1) When should we start?; 2) Where should we record?; 3) How often?; 4) And what the hell do we even name this thing? (We were so close to ‘Heat Ramble’ being a thing).

Turns out, Brian would arrive just in time for Game 1 of the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals, and with no true audio gear, an iPad, a kitchen table, and a GarageBand app became our only workstation. Sure, it was tough to record with dogs barking in the background constantly and Gianni’s family having to keep quiet every single time they walked through the front door just in the off-chance that we were recording. But we had so much fun with it.

We weren’t any good, I’ll admit that. And we realized this project of ours was a passion that we wanted to get better at by honing our own craft as future sportswriters. Matter of fact, it was around this time when Gianni decided to switch his major from engineering to journalism amid some scrutiny.

Months passed, Christmas came, and surely enough, Santa brought Brian a condenser microphone and Gianni a new space to set-up our podcast recording workflow. Brian would invest his time in audio engineering tutorials as Gianni tried his best to master Settlers of Catan. (Yes I know, this sentence hardly passes as relevant information.)

2014: We became workaholics. We recorded a new podcast every single week (for the most part) throughout the 2014 season, and we noticed that through our efforts, we had a fanbase forming. Albeit a small one, it was a breath of fresh life for us to keep producing content. From #1HeatFanInCanada to “bumping cups” with an England listener to Major Slander, we loved everything you had to say about us.

We realized so many of you became Heat fans because you shared a personal encounter with Miami and its area without ever having lived here. It was tremendous to hear from your perspectives and we quickly knew we wanted to expand our own horizons, as well.

Gianni came up with the idea of having us write stories. I loved it. I didn’t even hesitate to say no when he asked if we should start our own blog. Obviously, neither of us were developers or knew how to code or design a website. We tried valiantly to create a cheap one using Wix. Some of you may remember it. And for those of you, I’m glad you can see how the upgrades have paid off.

Now, it isn’t to say we hated it. We just knew it was hard to start a blog. From casting writers to write for us for free to being consistent with content and staying true to who we are. All of these were important challenges that helped mold what you are viewing today.

2015: And so here we are. A lot of luck and timing has taken place to get us this far. A special shoutout goes to Brandon Chang, my roommate, for taking so much of his valuable time to build this site for us to share. He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t get paid. But he’s getting all the recognition and glory for it because he’s a good friend of ours.

Planning, sketching and designing has taken us a combined 8 months to make this all become a reality. None of it was easy. We’ve poured countless hours and endless nights into creating a website from scratch while coming up with a business mindset, even more-so today. But now we’re ready to share this with the rest of you.

So if you’re stumbling across the site for the first time, we sincerely appreciate the opportunity you’ve given us by simply checking us out. Actually, we’re overjoyed that you’ve even gone on to read to the bottom of this post. We thank you. And with that, we welcome, welcome, welcome you to MiamiHeatBeat.com, “Where the pulse of the Heat community lives.”