341 Jackie Goddard - From Fashion & Theatre to Empowering Others to Find Their Own Voice

:: 00:00

So Jackie Goddard, host of Power to Speak. Thank you so much for joining me on Podcast Junkies.

:: 00:07

You're welcome. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for asking me.

:: 00:10

So we chatted a little bit about it in the pre-call but for the benefit of the viewer and the listener, where's home for you or you calling from?

:: 00:17

I am on the south coast of the UK, so between the sea and the forest which is a lovely place to be.

:: 00:24

That is nice. Was that always been home for you? Is that where you grew up?

:: 00:28

No, I'm a Londoner. I'm from London originally, though I grew up and didn't move down here until I had my daughter and, yes, we were just looking for somewhere less busy to bring up a child. So, yeah, we ended up here, which is lovely, beautiful, beautiful part of the world For anyone who's not been to that part of the world.

:: 00:47

What's one of the highlights of living there?

:: 00:50

Well, apart from the sea, obviously, growing up in London I didn't see a lot of that and actually the forest itself. This is an area called the New Forest, I don't know. It's been called the New Forest since probably 1100 something or other, and so it's an ancient forest, a tourist destination, and I live by nearby, a Georgian town that has a sort of a little harbour and a river. Yeah, it's just a beautiful place to be, sounds very quaint and we have ponies that roam the road, so they're not fenced in. They just kind of they wonder where they, wherever they like, and cattle and pigs as well at certain times of the year.

So yeah, it's quite rural.

:: 01:33

That's really, really top of mind for me, because you might be able to tell it's a bit rustic here from the wood background on behind me, but we're in Minnesota, so it's in the Midwest of the United States. We're on about an acre of land. And something new for me because I grew up just outside New York City and I grew up some and I've been to London as well, so I love big cities. I've lived in LA as well, so this is new and we have turkeys roaming the property deer. But it's interesting this idea of homesteading and we're looking into getting chickens and we're going to be growing some more of our own produce and we do have our own well, so it's really been something that's interesting for me and new for me as well. And I'm wondering is this new for you? Growing up in London or living in London and then getting to experience what sounds like a magical place where you are now?

:: 02:22

Yeah, definitely, Absolutely. I haven't delved in. I haven't got the chickens. I have friends that have chickens and it seems like a lot of work to be honest, I have friends that have horses, but I don't go there either. I've got a cat and that's you know I can. Just about coat. Just about coat with the cat.

But yeah, it's just beautiful. I mean, as much as I possibly can, I will get to the sea and I'll go for a walk, and yeah, that's part of my daily routine is to get out and do that. So, yeah, the day before yesterday the weather was lovely.

I mean just glorious sunshine, and I just stood and listened to the waves coming in and going out, and coming in and going out, and it was just, I mean, how amazing to be able to live somewhere like this after growing up spending like 40 years, more or less, in London. Yeah, to move out and move here has just been lovely.

:: 03:16

What was life like growing up in London? What's a highlight for you? I know there's, I'm sure, a lot of memories and you've been in your profession for many years like close to 25, it looks like as well. So I'm curious what it's been like growing up in a major city like that. You know what are some of your fond memories.

:: 03:33

Well, I mean, I worked in the theater. Well, I know that's not true. I worked as a fashion designer. I went to fashion college and learned how to design and ended up working in the West End designing and supplying very basic stuff for the top shop and Miss Selfridge and all the shops we have over here I'm not sure if you have them in the States, but your high street run of the mill shops and it was a very, very dull job. It was not very creative at all. I did get flown to Paris and I got flown to Dusseldorf and I did all of those. But yeah, at the end of the day, they wanted me to basically to go abroad and steal the designers outfits and then adapt them for the high street, which is basically what I did for five years until I thought, no, this is really not for me. And then I ended up in theater. So I then went and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company as a dresser, so I was dressing actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company. So, just being in London, I had all of that on my doorstep, so I had all of the theaters.

I spent many years until I moved down here. In fact, after I moved down here as well. I was still commuting back to work in theater. I went to drama school in the end to become an actor and I did the fringe and yeah, so just being part of London life, and I do miss that still. You know, I'll get on the train from here and it takes me into Waterloo, if anybody knows that, right on the Thames by the South Bank, where you've got the Royal Festival Hall, you've got the National Theater, you've got the Globe, and then across the river you've got the Lyceum, it's Covent Garden, it's just, it's all there. So, yeah, love it.

:: 05:10

So what was the impulse to study fashion when you were in university?

:: 05:16

I went to my career's teacher when I was 16 with my mum and she said to me the lady said to me said, what do you want to do when you leave school? And I said I want to be an actor. She sort of looked at me like that, like they do Really. She said do you belong to a theater school? And I said well, no, I live a long way from the school. It's difficult. Do you go to theater? Well, again, it's difficult. She said no, you don't want to be an actor. She said if you wanted to be an actor, you'd live, die and breathe a theater. What else can you do? And I said I'm not bad at art. And that was it. I mean, it was as close as I was going to get to doing anything creative that they were.

Actually, I went to a grammar school and it was very academic, so anything to do with the arts they weren't overly happy about. So I ended up going to art college and I was interested in fashion. So I thought, wow, that'll be amazing. I'll be a top designer, I'll have runway collections fall and spring and all of that. Of course it didn't happen that way, but that's how I ended up in fashion. Yeah, and it wasn't until I worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the theater that I thought no, I need to go and do this, I need to go and train to be an actor, which is what I did.

:: 06:25

So it sounds like you definitely had the pull early on. You had a different path for a little bit, but that pull was strong enough to pull you back in. I studied acting for about three years when I lived in New York for a bit. So I did some Meisner and I thought at some point I was going to do some of that, and then I just got distracted by another opportunity because it was the dot com bubble that happened during that time as well. So I've always been in very amazed and impressed and I just love acting the craft. I love watching a great movie that's incredibly well acted. It just pulls you in. Sometimes. It's so good, sometimes when you're watching a good play or a good movie, that you forget that you're watching actors, and so that was calling to you and it ties into something we'll talk about later related to podcasting, because it's the idea of expressing and finding your voice. So was that pull for you, was that was drawing in?

:: 07:17

No, I don't think.

I think what it was, because I used to, in the playground when I was about nine, eight or nine.

I can remember every break, every lunch break, I would cajole all of my friends to come in and I'd make up a play, I'd write it, I'd cast it, I'd star in it, I'd direct it and then we performed it at the end of the week in the class and I think it really was a. I don't know if it's attention seeking, maybe it was a little bit but I think it was just storytelling. It was just being able to pass on a story to an audience, that actually they got something from it as much as I did, and I think that's what it was really. I think it was all about the storytelling and the. I mean, when I actually went into acting and was training, then it was about the psychology of human beings, because I'm sure you found this doing, meisner, and the acting training that you did that suddenly you have to research what makes a human a human, you know, and why the character you're playing is motivated to do what they do, and yeah, it's just fascinating.

:: 08:19

Yeah, shout out to my teacher, james Price. I wonder if he's still teaching to this day, but I remember him. We would do these repetition exercise and decide just back and forth. You'd have to say the same phrase back and forth to your fellow acting partner until you felt the impulse to either be annoyed that you were doing the repetition, but that impulse is really like the motivation to move you to do something differently. And so he would always say you know what's your motivation, what's your motivation. So that's bringing back a lot, of, a lot of fond memories as well. Yeah, how do you think it over? Taking the classes, doing the performances? How do you think that enriched the way you approach life or engage with other people on the day to day?

:: 08:59

I think because of that very thing about you know, really digging deep into the human psyche and what makes people tick is that you get a view of other people's lives, and so there's kind of an empathy that you have as an actor that you don't have when you are turning up and expected to be a certain way when you'd walk into an office space or you're in a different walk of life, and so I think, yeah, I think you get to find out a little bit more about what makes a human and why we do what we do, and so, yeah, just being able to see things from somebody else's point of view, I think was really helpful.

:: 09:37

Was any of this inherited from your parents or other family members?

:: 09:42

My dad is a stuntman. So maybe he didn't start out I mean he didn't want to be an actor necessarily. He kind of say, fell into it. Obviously you do fall into it. But he became a stuntman in the 60s over here on TV and then eventually films, when there wasn't really a proper stunt register as there is now. You have to go through a lot of training now to be a stuntman.

Back then they were ex-army and military and all of that. They'd obviously come out with the Second World War generally and so he kind of he did a little bit of that and then thought, oh, perhaps I could do acting. So he actually did then go to drama school as an older, when I was I don't know, I was about four. I think I can vaguely remember him doing his course and bizarrely he was taught by the same person that taught me in the end, which is very strange, yeah. So he's still doing that and you know I remember him. He was always telling stories and obviously the career he's had up until now there are a lot of stories, yeah. So yeah, I think that's where it came from, but it was almost not something I realized, because it was obviously something that was in me from when I was a child.

:: 10:55

Did he ever bring you on set? Yes, oh wow, yeah, what was that experience like?

:: 11:02

Well, the one that I've been told, that I don't remember. I was 18 months old and he took me on the set of the Saint and I said I'm Roger Moore's knee at 18 months old, so, but yeah, I don't. And yeah, other ones when obviously, a lot of the time I was at school, myself and my sister we were at school, so we were kind of at home. But there was a couple of summer holidays that we spent in Holland on the Bridge Too Far. Do you know that film?

:: 11:27

Yes, I think so yeah.

:: 11:28

A Bridge Too Far, and then another one called Escape to Athena. We went over to Greece for that one. Yeah.

:: 11:34

So yeah, there's been a few. Yeah, so it's safe to say that there's a bit of that that runs through the family.

:: 11:40

Yes, now I think about it. Yes, there it is.

:: 11:43

It's interesting because the genesis for this show.

I remember I went to a podcast conference and I had been studying acting. So I was a fan of Inside the Actor Studio with James Lipton and I thought how fascinating it is to see a discussion with an actor who you normally just seen as an actor, so you only see them performing. But here they're not performing, they're talking about their lives and they're talking about their cat or you know whatever it is, and I was like this is a nice peak behind the scenes and so that was the sort of like the impetus for the show. I call it Inside the Actor Studio for Podcasters because it's behind the microphone, because obviously we give our most polished and NPR versions on the show, but a lot of times you know it's like the duck on the water. You know all calm on the top and then underneath the water the legs are really moving fast and you never can see what's happening behind the scenes or what it takes to get these podcasts produced. So it's funny to tie that all back to acting, which I thought you might appreciate as well.

:: 12:37

Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think the reason I started I mean I don't know if you want to get onto the podcast but the reason I started my podcast was really to talk to people, because I am so fascinated by people I just wanted to find out what made people creative in the first instance. The first podcast that I did was in lockdown, out of boredom, really, but just what a fantastic way to talk to, in the beginning, people that I knew that were in creative industries, they were doing sort of creative stuff and how they use their creativity for work and well-being, and that was kind of where it started. But yeah, I was just being nosy, really. I just wanted to find out what made people do what they did and how they got to where they were, kind of thing.

:: 13:19

So, yeah, Was podcasting on your radar around that time, or had you been listening to them?

:: 13:24

Yeah, I'd listened to a few. It wasn't back then, it didn't, I don't know. Before lockdown, I was a jobbing freelancing acting coach and I was sort of I'd never really particularly had time so I hadn't got into podcasting. But once lockdown arrived and we were all shut away at home and all of my work dried up completely, obviously I couldn't get into a room with people. That's when I started really looking at podcasts, listening to TED Talks, diving into YouTube and all of those things and really finding people that I wanted to listen to.

s about November, I think, of: 2020

Yes, yeah, For a business owner somebody running their own business to have the time and the energy to run a podcast.

:: 14:56

Were you having these types of conversations before, maybe more informally, with people that you admired, or did you notice that you would have conversations with a colleague or a friend or a fellow actor that would just run on, and a lot of times in those early days you think, well, we should probably be recording this. Yeah, definitely definitely.

:: 15:14

And that was the other thing about Zoom. I'd never really used Zoom before lockdown either, because I'd never needed to. So just being on those Zoom calls and knowing that they could be recorded, it was like, well, that's of course, that's why not just hit record and I'll upload it to YouTube. And I remember at the time and this is only three and three and a bit years ago is that there weren't that many YouTube visual podcasts. Podcasts were audio only. You just recorded the audio, whereas I thought, well, that just seems such a waste to me. We might as well record the Zoom and then I'll take the audio from that and upload the visual to YouTube which is what I did.

:: 15:53

Did you find that a lot of this was sort of trial by fire? There's a lot of tech involved. When you're starting a podcast and a lot of people get overwhelmed, they have something they call pod fading, which is people that make it to episode seven and then give up because they realize this is more work than I had anticipated. So there's a lot of kit involved, as you very well know. So what was that early learning curve like for you and how did you get help along the way?

:: 16:16

Well, you might be mistaken me for a professional podcaster.

:: 16:20

I don't have a lot of kit.

:: 16:24

I bought my microphone and I've got a ring light and a desk, I suppose, to put my laptop on, and that's about it. I did listen to people. I decided in lockdown that if I learned anything and nothing else, I would learn how to edit a film. And that was because before I started the podcast, I did do some Zoom acting coaching. So I had a couple of groups that I used to coach acting with an adult group and a group with adults with learning disabilities. And so before lockdown we used to do terms, so we used to do semesters and at the end of every semester we'd put on a production. Obviously, in lockdown we couldn't do that, so I used to film the Zoom, record the Zoom and then I'd cut it all together. So for that reason I decided that I really should learn how to edit, which I did on iMovie, and I learned everything I know from YouTube. Basically, I just put in how do I do?

that and YouTube would tell me. So that's how I started. Really, it was just hit record on Zoom make sure that people could hear me and see me and just uploaded it and see what happens. Are you still doing your netting?

:: 17:37

Well, I go live now which makes it a lot easier.

:: 17:42

So I do half an hour live on a Tuesday and it's done. And then I do put it into iMovie and I kind of just take out all of the bits that an audio listener wouldn't get.

:: 17:53

Yeah.

:: 17:54

Because they're not looking at it. They can't see it. So that's the only editing I do. I do think I need to, because I do it on StreamYard and I put I do their countdown at the beginning and I would like I need to change that and actually put a proper intro and an outro onto it.

:: 18:10

So we're using Squadcast, which was acquired by Descript recently and Descript at Descriptcom. What I love about their tool and this is how they've made a lot of headway is you upload the video, it transcribes the video and then what you do is you delete the word or the phrase and then the part of the video is deleted as well. So from an editing perspective, it's been really helpful. So if you can work with a Word document, you can essentially edit video. So it's pretty fascinating. And for Newbie, I tried iMovie. Kudos to you for learning that interface because it's not the easiest, but for Newbies or something to try as an alternative for a quick edit. Now for all of the quick edits of videos, I just drop it into Descript, it'll transcribe it and then I just delete the word and it'll delete the section in the video which comes in handy.

:: 18:53

Yeah, oh no, that's amazing, I might have to check that out.

:: 18:58

I'm noticing a through line of being a self-starter, this idea of learning yourself in figuring it out yourself, of watching a YouTube video. Is this in your DNA? Are you? Would you consider yourself a self-starter? If you have to learn something, you just go out and figure it out.

:: 19:15

I suppose, yeah, maybe it is. I feel like since lockdown, since obviously I started all of that that I have I could have done a PhD or a master's degree in whether it's editing, whatever you know, just learning stuff I just I have wanted to carry on doing that. In the questions that I did for the podcast my last podcast and I think I was we were talking about this sort of in the pre-chat that we had. The last podcast I did the live. It was called Ask Me Anything About Anything. And somebody asked me because I put a whole list of everything that I've done. I've been a fashion designer, I've been an actor, my dad's a stuntman, you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know.

I'd put this whole list of stuff that I've done in the last 25, 30 years and I said ask me anything. You know if there's anything you want to know about being a podcast host, being an actor, being a speech, and you know, a speaker, coach, anything. And somebody asked me what's the quality that you have that gives you the oomph to do all of this stuff? And maybe, and I said to her well, if I knew the answer to that, I think I'd know the answer to everything. But I think it's a similar thing. It's why do I keep? Why am I not worried about changing career or stepping into another, learning something else? And I think it's just curiosity, isn't it? It's just a curiosity of if I don't, then I might miss out on something. It's kind of, if I'm bored with that, then I'll try something else.

:: 20:45

And.

:: 20:46

I know that I'm a good learner and I know that I can do anything if I put my mind to it and I practice and I do when I'm speaker coaching. It's all about practicing and preparing and making sure that you're ready to do what you want to do, and I think that's the same in any endeavor that you decide to take up.

:: 21:05

There's always an interesting transition. When you are working on your craft, like acting, and you're mastering it and you're becoming better and better at it, you get to a point where people start to ask you for advice and then you know people want to see if you're available for work. And so what was that transition for you like Because it's obviously a big part of what you do in terms of the coaching where you went from performer to now helping other people who were coming along the same path that you had traveled previously. And so what was that like for you to move into more of a mentor and a coach role?

:: 21:39

Well, I suppose I'd always been the acting coach, so I spent years working with kids and then working with adults on their acting and building their confidence around. That and I realized quite early on, and especially when I was teaching the adults is that we do like a two hour session and they'd come to me at the end and say that was like a therapy session and it was like, well, there's something in this. And actually, you know, I'd have kids, parents, come up to me and say, oh, can you get my child an agent? It's like, well, that's not really why we do it. You know this. The whole point for me was to get a group of adults, kids, whoever into a room and get them working together, getting them creating, getting them to express themselves and have fun and play. And actually, if there was, if there was, if they could get an acting job or they wanted to go to drama school after that or whatever, that was up to them. But for me it was all about the mentoring.

It was about me giving them the space to be who they wanted to be be the best version of themselves, because I could see that it was building their confidence, it was building their creativity, their collaboration, all of those things. And so, when it came to lockdown, I decided to do an online coaching course because I didn't want to go back. I didn't have to decided that I wasn't going to go back to being a freelance acting coach. I wanted to build a business and do something more, and so I did a coaching online for three months. It was practically five nights a week with about 600 other people. It was incredible, but it was a great course, you know, and it really set me up to use all of the experience and all of the skills I'd already accumulated, but to move into that other space of actually coaching people and helping people to take that next step and to get to that point where they wanted to be.

:: 23:31

Having had this experience of working with adults and children and adults with disabilities, what do you think is the biggest fear that people have prior to doing something like this?

:: 23:44

Nobody wants to make a fool of themselves, nobody wants to be judged or looked down on because they have done something silly and it's just. For me, it's getting people to the point of realizing that, once I've found and a lot of what I do now is around the mindset it's not necessarily about the voice and the projection and the articulation and all of that. It's not about the presentation. It's about getting people comfortable with who they are and why they're doing what they're doing, and that confidence that becoming comfortable in their own skin is the first step I have to take. So I have to get all of those limiting beliefs, all of those stories out of the head that somebody, I'm not worthy, I'm not people are going to laugh at me.

I'm working with a client at the moment who said she was worried. She'd done a couple of talks but she was worried when she came off that she'd wasted people's time. That's interesting and you say, well, yeah, so the work I do is really getting people comfortable with the fact that they are. They have enough knowledge, they know who they are, they know why they're doing what they're doing and nobody can tell them otherwise If they're being themselves and if they're being authentic and truthful and honest and all of those things, then nobody can catch them out, they're not going to be caught out, and if somebody is not a fan, then fine, they're not the person that you want to be working with. Anyway, be you and attract the people to you that you want to be with or want to work with. So, yeah, that's most of the work, the majority of the work that I do, and I love it because people really do come out feeling transformed in a way. You kind of have that confidence that they didn't have before.

:: 25:29

What is that like for you to see that transformation happen in a person when they first come to you and they're either quiet or they're shy, or this mindset that nobody wants to hear what I have to say or nobody believes in me, and through the process of working with you, you get to actually see that transformation. So by the time they're done and they're ready to move on, they're a different person and I wonder what that feeling is like for you when you see that transformation.

:: 25:54

Oh, it's amazing, it really is amazing, and I have moments where I can see the penny drop in people's faces. They're just like, wow, ok, I can do that. Oh my God and I know that because I've had that feeling I know how that feels to kind of go oh God, that's how you do it yeah.

And I literally put a post out today saying that very thing is that I had that a hard moment. And so that's lovely for me to see when other people kind of go, oh God, ok, oh, so I can tell that story. So people are like, oh, ok, and really it's only me as an outsider listening to people's stories and their experiences and giving them permission and saying to them actually that's a great story that, what you went through there. If you tell that story, it's not about you being self-indulgent and showing being vulnerable and for the sake of it, you have that story and that experience that you can use that to help other people. That story will benefit other people, that story will validate their own experience.

And so those are the moments that I love to find in people, because none of us value our own stories, none of us value what we've been through really, and it takes an outsider to listen and say, no, you think that's great and I love that, and then to see people move on from that. You know, I've had clients that have come to me. They've got a talk coming up and we'll prepare a talk, they'll get on the stage, they'll do that talk and then it gives them the confidence to go on and do the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

So that's fantastic. That's lovely to see.

:: 27:29

Yeah, it's a reminder to people of their own innate greatness. And somehow it's in there and you just help bring it out in them, which is fascinating.

:: 27:39

Yeah.

:: 27:40

When did you start working with? Is it adults or children with disabilities?

:: 27:45

Yeah, that was a few years back actually. Yes, yeah, I can't remember when I actually started working with kids and adults.

:: 27:52

How was that experience different than working with traditional students? I imagine there's a different set of challenges and a different set of hurdles that they have to overcome, but they're on the same path and end up with the same result.

:: 28:05

Yeah, I think I'm a little bit of a control freak sometimes and it took me a while to sort of think right, no, I will. I mean, they'd asked me a few times the place that I was teaching, yeah, to teach their additional needs class, and I kind of kept putting it off because I was thinking, you know that I know how I get when I'm trying to put on a show and people don't do as I, you know, and they whatever. But in the end you just go with it and that's the joy of it is, you just let them be and you guide them and you say right, well, yeah, we'd like to do, we'll do this play and we'll do. And if you can say that line, and then if they don't or they go off on a tangent, it's just I learned to kind of just not worry.

It's okay. It's okay, the parents love it the siblings, friends, whoever came to see anything, they just that's what they do it for. And I actually ended up working with a professional company, a professional theater company, whose whole cast were adults with learning disabilities, and they have cast members that are in some of our soap operas over here and that are actually acting and they put on their own productions and yeah, so that's lovely to see, Very nice.

:: 29:17

So when you started the podcast, did you have a in mind? You mentioned you wanted to have conversations. Did you know it was gonna be all interview based? And then do you have like a queue of guests lined up? I'm curious a little bit about your plan, Cause obviously I'm sure it changed afterwards, but in those early days, what your thoughts were about what you were trying to produce.

:: 29:36

In the early days it was almost easier because I didn't have as much work and I was recording it, so I could fit people in whenever I had time and they had time I could schedule a recording. Now the live is at a certain time every week and I am working on other things a lot more now than I was. Then it's harder to get those guests because they kind of have to fit into that slot. So I have to kind of send dates out and say, look, I've got these, this, this, this and this date. Can you make these? And I do like to invite people. I don't take unsolicited guests. So obviously you and I've been connected through Ben and that's fantastic and I love that. So I only take people that if I've been bored to.

And the other thing is that I have now niched down into that. I speak to people that are in the business of speaking. So whether that's a podcast host, whether it's somebody that gets on stage, is a keynote, whoever. So the subject is sort of a lot more niche. So no, I don't have queues. So I don't have I know Ben does it's a queues of people waiting to fill those spots. So I kind of there might be some weeks where I don't have anybody and then I think, well, actually, you know, this is quite a nice opportunity for me to talk, and you could probably tell that I do enjoy talking. So every now and again it's quite nice for me to have the half an hour and I'll decide what it is that I'm going to talk about, and I love the life because you get the comments and you get people interacting, so that's great.

:: 31:05

So a couple of questions about the production process, but I'm curious how many episodes are you in with the podcast?

:: 31:12

The live. I've done 42, 43. And Pod Bean, who's my host that I've been with since the beginning, has just, literally today, told me I've done a hundred episodes.

:: 31:25

Wow, congratulations, that's a big milestone.

:: 31:28

Yeah, yeah. So I was doing them every two weeks to start with, and then they're sort of vaguely week over the last year.

:: 31:38

So when you look back, we think about. I always tell our good students or clients that you're first. You're not going to like the sound of your voice when you first record your podcast, so just know that. But your 10th is going to sound better than your first and your 50th is going to sound better than your 10th. So, looking back, how would you say you've grown as a host since you started the show?

:: 31:56

I think I mean, I'd like to think I've always been quite informal, so there's no rigid questions. So I have done a few panels now where I've had more than one guess I've had three or four guests on the screen at the same time, and so my interviewing skills have had to adapt in that way and so. And I was talking to somebody the other day who said, actually from listening, I do give people time and I make sure that everybody gets to speak, kind of thing. And that's really important to me is because I've listened to some podcasts where the host doesn't let the guest actually answer any questions, which is very annoying, so I try not to do that I do.

So, yes, I do like to make sure that the guest has the space.

:: 32:47

Really, how is the dynamic different when you are doing it live? Because obviously there's a lot to think about. You know even something as simple as making sure your kid is working properly, that there's nothing in your background, that you won't be disturbed. So I'm curious how you've had to adjust to be ready to have a quality production once you hit that record button and you're now live across all platforms.

:: 33:12

Well, I just make sure that obviously I give myself plenty of time to set up. When I used to do the recorded version I always had, I used to be in another room and I had a blackboard which stupidly rod for my own back.

I would write the name of the guest and their website or their contact details on the bottom, and so every single time, and then some days, I'd go oh my God, I forgot to do the board and so, 10 minutes before I was meant to be gone, I have to wipe the board clean and put the new name on it. So I don't do that anymore. So now that I'm live, it's as simple as I possibly can make it. So I'm literally on my kitchen table. I know that the background is relatively clear. My niece bought me a lovely sign, which actually you can't see what it says, but it says on air.

So that's just. You know, that's it. That's all I have to do. I've got a sort of a wooden desk with a light attached to it, so I just set it up, I plug in the mic and obviously beforehand I have to set up the stream yard. I make sure that I've got the website of my guest and maybe some visuals to put on an overlay that we can talk about. So I kind of have. I have everything set up. I have to make sure I've done my research, I know who I'm talking to, I know what questions that I would like to ask, so that when I do hit record yeah, when I hit live, it kind of comes there's a countdown and then it's. The first few moments are always the worst, because I never get the introduction right. I kind of bumble over that and then the end as well, when you say goodbye. That always feels a bit icky. So, yeah, apart from that, it's yeah. I keep it as simple as possible.

:: 34:50

The dynamic is so different because I've been on a couple of live interviews as well, but there's an increased need to be really present and attentive and curious and focused on your guest. When you're in live mode, do you sense there's also a buzz and excitement about it? I would imagine as well. But how is the energy different than maybe a recorded session where you really have to be on for the entire duration of the recording?

:: 35:15

Yeah, Well, I suppose it is that exactly, isn't it that you have to be engaged? You have to be in the moment. You can't it's. You know, before we went, you clicked record. You were saying, well, we can stop. If you say anything that you don't want to say, we can go back. I can rerecord that. And it was the same.

That's what I used to say to my guests when I was doing the recordings, Whereas, you know, I don't get that opportunity. And also there's the added extra of people putting in comments and making sure that you go through and everybody that's made a comment kind of gets seen on the screen or whatever. And it's only half an hour, so it's. It all goes so fast, so there isn't enough time for the energy to drop. It's from the moment it goes live, it's you're on and I love that, and maybe that's why I always preferred theater than working on film to actually get on the stage at the beginning of a performance, go through that whole journey and get off at the end, Whereas you know, when you're filming, it's cut here, stop there, let's read, do that again, you know, and it's just. Yeah, I do prefer the live.

:: 36:18

And there's something about the immediate reaction. You get it in theater, obviously, you get it from the audience, but in a live environment you imagine you'd get it from either from the comments or the engagement of the people watching, at a minimum from your guests, and there's something about that immediate feedback that must feel good as well.

:: 36:33

Yeah, no, I love it, yeah.

:: 36:35

Yeah, there's no going back, there's no so it is what it is and then, once you're done, maybe there's a little peek into what that post production process looks like at the time you're going live. I imagine it's on YouTube and any other social channels.

:: 36:51

It goes to LinkedIn, so it's live on LinkedIn and YouTube, and so once the recording's done and then you do, then that's the kind of oh, you come off you just like errr, errr, errr.

And then, oh gosh, and then I literally download it. So I watch it and I sit and wait for it to download, and then I'll go through and make sure that I've captured everything. It's kind of captured everything and then I go for a walk, just I just, you know, I go for a wonder or whatever, and I come back to it later and I will upload it to. I then put it into iMovie actually, so that I can take all those, the dead air or the stuff that doesn't, it's not relevant to the audio audience, and then I'll put it through that and then I'll upload that, I'll take the audio and then eventually it gets onto my audio platform, which is Podbean.

:: 37:46

And then, from a promotional standpoint, which of the major social channels or do you see the most engagement then when you publish and promote it?

:: 37:54

I suppose it's LinkedIn really. So yeah, and I think I prefer LinkedIn. I seem to have quite a big relevant network there to what I'm producing, to the stuff that I'm producing.

In the early days, when I was doing the creativity stuff and I was doing the recordings, I was talking to people that there was a bigger Facebook presence then and I was kind of utilizing some of the actors I knew or people that had a little bit of a kudos to them, and so the Facebook was quite important at that point. But now it's quite niche, in that it's sort of speaking for entrepreneurs and business leaders, whoever doing presentations and that kind of thing. It's more relevant to a LinkedIn audience. So that's kind of where I promote it. First I will take snippets out so I'll go through in while it's in iMovie and I'll take out clips and then I will promote, especially when it. Then when it's on, when it goes live on audio, then I will promote it again with a clip and that I will put on to Instagram and Facebook as well, and sometimes I will put stuff on to TikTok if I feel like it.

:: 39:11

There's so many platforms to manage. It's a bit overwhelming. And I may be showing my age sometimes, but I just feel like it's so hard to keep up because it's like you feel like as much work as it takes to get the production done, to get the scheduling done, to book the guests, that's only half the battle, because once it's out, yeah, you then have to be your own. You know PT Barnum and just kind of do the promotion, because no one else is going to really care about it as much as you do, and I've, you know, been seeing that over the years with this show. You know, just, really, I have to be the one to put in the extra legwork to promote it, to find different channels, to try different tools, to try different platforms, because it's interesting, because each platform has its own audience, and you know, obviously, to your point, linkedin has its own audience. But yeah, it's just to all indie podcasters out there without a team. Kudos to you, because it is a lot of hard work it is, and I don't do nearly enough.

:: 40:01

I don't think you know I could do more, and it's such a shame that I've got such a huge back catalog of some fantastic interviews and they're just kind of sitting there now, which is great. You know people can go and find them. But unless I promote them, people won't know they're there.

:: 40:15

So that is difficult so trying to work around work as well and sort of give it the time that it deserves is hard, it's difficult yeah, a lot of times it's something to be said for sharing back catalog episodes or republishing or resharing episodes, because there could be you'll have a whole new slew of listeners who just found you recently and they have no idea that you've spoken to these people as well. So I think anything you can do to make the back catalog more available I'm finding is helpful for people who are just discovering you for the first time yeah, I do love.

:: 40:45

When I have time, I do love to go back and do like a best of yeah so I'll go back and take clips. So if I did one for on the marketing, so anybody that I'd interviewed in marketing and I bought them all together and put them in a best of kind of thing. So, yeah, I'm from the speaking. I think one of the questions I ask is what makes a good speaker good and a bad speaker suck, and so I took all the snippets of those answers and put those into like a compilation, yeah so, yeah, those ones are great to do, but, as you say, it just takes time yeah, yeah.

:: 41:16

So a couple questions as we get to the top of the hour that I like to ask every guest. The first is what's something you've changed your mind about recently? Recently or any add any. It doesn't have to be recently at any time.

:: 41:29

What have I changed my mind now? I don't want to be a fashion designer anymore. I want to be an actor, yeah yes, yeah, complete U-turn in the career front. I suppose that was something I changed my mind about. Yeah, I can't think of deciding that I didn't want to go back to my pre-lockdown self that was quite.

That was something I'd really changed my mind about as well, that I really wanted to pursue this as a business. It doesn't have my name, it's a power to speak and it's an umbrella that I can bring other things into and really kind of build on it. So that was a big decision.

:: 42:03

That was something I changed my mind about do you think about what your life would look like if you had remained a fashion designer? Oh, god oh no.

I was, yeah, yeah, I can't even think what it would have been like it's almost it's very interesting, because there's that movie sliding doors and there's these moments in life where you just you make one seemingly small decision and then you just kind of just see how it just changes drastically the course of your life and with you with starting the podcast as well, because many people tried new hobbies and tried a bunch of things that they just stopped once they were able to return back to work, and so kudos to you for continuing, because that was feels like one of those moments where you tried something new, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and then it just became you know what, this beautiful thing that it is now yeah, that's amazing, yeah, yeah no, it has.

:: 42:51

It's been quite a journey actually, when I think about it you know, it's lovely to talk about it as well, because I don't get to talk about the podcast very much and I kind of forget sometimes that I actually do it, that it's actually part of what I do what's so fascinating to see how your life journey has taken you on this path.

:: 43:07

But if you think about, you know, even putting on those little performances when you were a child, you know just this idea, this stuff. You have this need for self-expression and using your voice and the acting and the creativity, so it all feels like it all began to be a part of who you are. So it's just inevitable that anything that you would do in the future would be an extension of that, and so it's obviously.

You can only see that looking backwards, because you wouldn't have been able to see that predict that you would end up as a podcaster no but even now, between the teaching and helping people find their voice, this is all seems like it's all not only expressing yourself, but helping other people to express themselves and express their ideas and express their voices as well. So it's amazing to see and I don't know if it's something that you think about, but when you look back you know there's probably a long list of people whose lives you've changed for the better oh, that would be nice.

:: 44:01

I hope so I can remember going into a pub a few years back and this young woman came bouncing up to me, said Jackie, I sort of like, looked at her and said yes. She said it's me, it's me, it's, and I can't remember her name. She said you used to teach me. I mean she was working in the pub but she had gone on to do she was. I don't know if she was a drama student or something?

:: 44:21

she was yeah, amazing, amazing.

:: 44:23

I'm actually teaching. See, I never thought I'd go back to act as an acting coach, but I had the opportunity and to start teaching stunt trainees how to act.

That's interesting so that was something I was, yeah, something I started this year with me and another couple of tutors, that sort of help. We got to Pinewood Studios, which is lovely, but it's amazing to watch those guys because they come in on a Monday and we do a five day course with them which they need to have as part of their stunt training and they used to jumping off high buildings and doing car crashes and horse falls and all of that, but they come in on a Monday morning and they are so scared, which is funny to think about a stuntman being terrified.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely terrified, and these are world champion boxers, world champion athletes. They're athletes and by the end of the five days they are transformed. I mean it's amazing to watch them go through the kind of again the penny drop moment of oh my god, I can do this because they spend time on a set with actors, watching actors do their job and thinking, oh my god, how did they do that?

like I did you know when I was a fashion designer, and yeah, they come out on a Friday going. That was amazing and some of them actually now are thinking of going into, you know, ditching the stunts and going into acting, which is lovely you're seeing that a lot more.

:: 45:48

You're seeing a lot of these MMA stars who are you know, realize they can't be taking the beating like that for the rest of their lives.

You know, and they're trying to get into something else sports figures who retire, trying to think about. So you do see more the. I saw a clip of Tom Cruise like doing his own stunt. He's like 60 now, but there's a scene where he rode a motorcycle off a cliff and then pulled a parachute. I don't know if you've seen this, but he apparently did it. He trained for like six months and he's a bit out there anyway, but it's just curious to him at his age to always upping the quality of what he did, because it's something people look at more closely now with these 4k movies you can see every detail, so you can kind of see when the person's in there and when it's not, and I think you're seeing more of these actors feeling like, well, maybe we need to make you know.

:: 46:33

I need to be more involved in this yeah, no, absolutely, and I think that the stunt profession is sort of cottoning onto that now is that they're, they're stunt. People need to be able to act. Yes, you know, they need to be able to do that.

:: 46:46

That's a another string to their bow, really this is a bit of a self-reflective question, but what do you think is the most misunderstood thing about you?

:: 46:54

oh gosh, I'm sure there's loads of things. What's misunderstood about me? I think people think I'm very confident and actually I'm not really. Yeah, and I don't. I'm not that I'm acting. You know, this is me, this is who I am. But I think in my own space, in my own world, I still have those little imposter syndrome things. That little voice in my head says that I'm not good enough, I shouldn't be here. You know they must have made a mistake. Why are they calling me? Yeah?

:: 47:26

I feel like we all do that as creators. We have that imposter syndrome. I've heard even Oprah Winfrey has imposter syndrome, so it's something that's common. But clearly anyone listening or watching this can track your journey throughout your life to see that you've essentially just followed your passion throughout your life and it's led you to this amazing career in acting and teaching and then now subsequently into podcasting and helping other people find their voice. So clearly it appears to me that you're doing what you love and you still have an like enthusiasm for it and it lights you up, so I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story your journey with us.

:: 48:05

Oh, thank you, it's been lovely and, as I say, it's just so nice to have the opportunity to talk about the podcast. So thank you for that.

:: 48:11

It's been great so, for the listener and the viewer who want to learn more about what you're working on, where's the best place for them to connect with you? They?

:: 48:18

can go and check out my website, which is power to speak, dot co. Dot. Uk, and they can have a look at all the tabs there. I'm in the process of putting together a speaker page because I'm hoping to get on more stages myself as a speaker and talk about what it is that I do and how I do it. So that's not there at the moment but it will be. But obviously the podcast is on there. So the podcast can be found there or on the youtube channel power to speak youtube channel or people can come and find me on LinkedIn that Jackie Goddard power to speak, and they can connect with me there and I'd be happy to have a chat yeah, and you'll be sending all those links to me and so I'll make sure all everything is listed in the show notes for this specific episode.

:: 48:59

So it'll be fabulous. That's great, harry. So I appreciate you again, jackie, taking time. Thanks again to Ben for making this amazing introduction. It's nice to know that you're connected with a network of people that just by virtue of an introduction, you know it's going to be a great conversation, so I appreciate him connecting this as well absolutely, and I'm so looking forward to turning the tables on you, harry, and having this, finding out what it is that you do in between podcasting yeah, there's a lot.

That'll be a fun conversation I'm looking forward to as well. So thanks again, jackie, for your time. I really appreciate it you're welcome.