Jackie Goddard 0:00
Of course, everybody has a story that we all seem to think we need to have an extreme story. Everything that I do gets people to the point where they're actually enjoying speaking. They don't worry. They get excited about sharing their stories and and telling their stories, and I just kind of give them the tools and techniques to do that. That's Jackie Goddard, former fashion designer and recovering actor. She is a speaker and acting coach who works with entrepreneurs, business leaders and teams, helping them develop their power to speak and share their ideas with the world. Storytelling is talked about everywhere, and it's often associated with big, traumatic events that the person speaking has triumphed over, and that can often feel like we don't have a worthy enough story to share in comparison. So Jackie is going to reframe that for us and show us how to own our own stories so we can grow ourselves and our businesses.
Finola Howard 0:56
I'm Finola Howard, Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart and your host of the your truth shared podcast. I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared.
Finola Howard 1:32
I wanted to revisit a topic we've discussed before on the podcast, and it's this idea of speaking, but I wanted to take a different tack, and I have a wonderful guest for us today, because I chose to speak with Jacqueline Godard today, who comes from power to speak, because she has this interesting background of acting, also fashion design, but an acting background. And it made me think about there's a lot of speaking about embodiment and owning a space and authenticity and walking in the shoes of and really feeling something. And I know from my conversation with Jacqueline that she's the right person to speak to about this. So welcome, Jacqueline. Do I call you, Jacqueline, or Jackie, if? Well,
Jackie Goddard 2:19
call me Jackie, to be honest. I know, yeah, I went to nursery school aged four. None of my friends could call call me Jacqueline, nobody could pronounce it, so I ended up as a Jackie, but my mother hates that. So you know, my family called me Jacqueline, but I am a Jackie really. Okay,
Finola Howard 2:35
so give us a little snapshot of this idea of why you think the acting background that you have has an impact on how you work and has an impact on how people speak, because we know everybody's terrified of speaking,
Jackie Goddard 2:51
yeah, yeah. And which is mad, isn't it, when you think that actually we open our mouths and that's what we do, is we have conversations, and that's that's all speaking is, you know, even if it doesn't matter who your audience is, whether it's of one person or many people, you are public speaking. And I think my love of acting, the reason I wanted to get into acting, the reason I loved it so much was that that kind of human condition, the humanity of of taking on a character and looking at what motivates people and why they do what they do, and telling stories. And I, you know, I taught acting for many years. I did some acting, and I and I loved doing it, but actually, when I'm when I'm working with people and I'm coaching them around, getting in front of an audience and speaking to their audience. Then the the training I had as an actor that interesting people, that curiosity. And the way an actor's training kind of frees you physically, you know, the movement, the warm up, the everything that you do with your body, everything that you do research wise, looking into backstory, looking into motivation, improvising, huge part of an actor's training, and just a fantastic way to get people just talking, just opening their mouths and speaking, not being afraid, not being afraid of their own voices, not being afraid of of just saying something stupid, or being silly, or, you know, all of those things. And so everything that I do when I'm coaching kind of gets people to the to the point where they're actually enjoying speaking. You know, that they they they don't worry. They get excited about sharing their stories and and telling their stories, and I just kind of give them the tools and
Finola Howard 4:47
techniques. It sounds a bit like you're helping them in into this process of becoming someone or becoming themselves.
Jackie Goddard 4:56
Yeah. I mean, when you're an actor, obviously you. Become somebody completely different. That's the idea, is that you take on another character, which is why it's so essential to have those physical warm ups and that kind of mental warm up and research, because you've you actually need to find the truth in that character. But actually, it's exactly the same when I'm putting somebody on a stage as themselves, they have to find the truth in their own stories. They have to find that that authenticity in their own character, to be able to speak to an audience and to be engaging and to be excited.
Finola Howard 5:38
So there's kind of two perspectives on it. One is this idea of becoming ourselves, of speaking from our own truth, of the power of voice, of our voice. And this, this idea of, why are we not doing that anyway? Why do we have to become somebody we already are? And are we not there, already, like what's happening there?
Jackie Goddard 5:58
Do you know well, we are when we're kids, aren't we? We are ourselves, generally, in the playground age nine, and it's one of the very first questions I will ask a client. So if you come and work with me, expect this one, what were you doing in the playground when you were nine years old? What were you playing? What lit you up, what you know, what brought you joy? And there's something in that that we that gets bashed out of us through conditioning, yeah, conditioning, yeah. And we come out the other end into our 20s thinking we should be somebody we should be somebody that our parents expect us to be, our teachers expected us to be, and so we kind of put these layers on top, we kind of mask ourselves up. We give ourselves all sorts of armor because we feel we need to be a certain person. And it's generally not the person that we were in. We were in the playground age nine. And I found actually, with the people that I work with, a lot of them have kind of been through a career, and the reason they're now stepping on stage is because they want to share the experiences that they've had, and now they can, they can look back, and they can go back to that person they were when they were nine years old, and they can bring that authenticity and that truthfulness and that playfulness to what they're doing now and what they do when they step on a stage and talk to their audience.
Finola Howard 7:22
Does that mean they've dumped the baggage, or is it the they have a legacy they want to leave, or what's happening?
Jackie Goddard 7:29
Yeah, well, I don't if it's dumping the baggage, I think it's more taking ownership, isn't it? It's it's more for me, certainly, because, you know, I've like everybody, I've had experiences up and good and bad ups and downs, and it wasn't until I really took ownership of what I'd been through that I wasn't sort of ashamed of different experiences that I'd had, or things that different things that had happened. And once you're going to go, yeah, actually, that's me. I I am the person today because that happened. I am the person today because of the experiences that I've had, and I should be proud of that. And that's once, once you once you take ownership of those stories, your background, to the journey that you've been on, the experiences that you've had, then you can't be caught out. And this is the thing that people worry about, is that they step in front of an audience and they're going to get caught out, they're going to be judged. They're going to be made a fool of because, you know something, it's not until you are comfortable that kind of, is it? I can't remember the I think might be Aristotle. I can't remember who it was. This confidence is a trust in oneself. That confid con being with Fidel being, Latin for trust. You kind of have to confidence comes with trust, and we have to be able to trust in ourselves, and the only way you can do that is to really be comfortable with yourself. So within when you're sharing your stories, it's it's not take, it's not it's not dumping the baggage. Is taking ownership of the baggage,
Finola Howard 8:59
and then you don't think of it as baggage, then, no,
Jackie Goddard 9:03
no, of course, it's not a baggage is is a it's a negative connotation, isn't it really that somehow this, these these experiences that we've had should be dumped somewhere and just forgotten, and that's very difficult to do.
Finola Howard 9:17
We hear so much about this idea of we've got to let go of the past and let go of what happened and put it aside. But you're giving a different giving us a different perspective here, which is, no, let's own that. Let's let it be our story. Let it be our way to help others, I suppose, which is what you would be doing with speaking,
Jackie Goddard 9:38
yeah, and that is, that's absolutely the point. I have so many people say to me, or, you know, I don't Why would anybody want to hear this story or that story? And it's like, well, you could, if you've learned something from that experience, by sharing it, you might help somebody else on you know, have the courage to deal with whatever happened to them, and also. You, you, you validate, maybe the experiences that somebody else has been through, that they can sort of thing, actually, no, I can. I can take ownership of that. Now, if they can do it, I can do it. Kind of thing, how does when someone comes to you and they and they possibly are coming to you because they have to do a speaking gig, or, which is interesting, because there's is so much speaking everywhere you're speaking in a meeting now you're speaking. Meeting now you're speaking all across social media, you know, all the time we're speaking. But do you have? How does one take ownership of a story, or even recognize the stories that you have, that you've possibly forgotten that you have? Yeah, I mean, the very, very first step for me, before I even get into a room with somebody is I ask them to get it all out of their head. You know what? What is it that they are saying? What's the point of if they've got a speaking gig coming up, if they've been asked to speak about something, what is the point they're trying to make? Why should the audience listen and and in order to do that, I just say, get everything out of your head onto a piece of paper. Because I had a podcast up until last year, and a guy that I interviewed said we are story hoarders, and what happens is these stories are in our heads, and they go round and round and round, and they've got no beginning, middle and end. They just and we kind of, we deal with them all in our heads, and there's, there's so much going on up there that no wonder people are overwhelmed. But when you get them out onto a piece of paper, you can see the beginning, the middle and the end. And so that's what I ask people to do. And they may turn up on the first session with me with like, a 2000 word essay, which has happened, and they think, right, that's my talk. I've written it. It's like, no, that's just the beginning. We've just now got them out of your head. Now you're going to tell me that story, and then I will as an outsider, as a, as somebody that can stand back and listen as a, as a surrogate audience, I can tell you what I find interesting, and so I pick, I then from from what they've written, will say to them, and this is the thing, because we don't value our own stories, we don't value our own experiences, because we've lived with them. We've lived with them for however many years, and we think, why would people be interested in that? Once you actually speak them out loud, or get them out of your head and let somebody else hear them, you'll get that feedback. You'll find out what people find interesting, what they can learn from
Finola Howard 12:23
Do you feel that you that, that everyone then needs this other person to be a standing board to help you choose the stories that matter? I think it
Jackie Goddard 12:32
helps absolutely, yeah, because that's very difficult to do in isolation, really, because you're only, you're only putting across either you are thinking, Okay, well, you know what, the audience only need to hear about my work stuff. So I'm here to talk about my work, and therefore I will only tell those work stories. But actually, there's a reason you're doing that work, and so I can maybe or anybody else. And I always say to people, if you've got a talk to do, make sure you don't necessarily have to come to a coach, just speak it out loud to another human being and just get that feedback. Because until you've spoken them out loud, you don't know what's relevant.
Finola Howard 13:17
So if we're if we're thinking of a starting point for someone who's trying to get their head around this idea of starting to speak, and because, I think even this idea of, I think we're also wired often to think that we don't have a story, because we hear across social media, there'll be people who, you know, who were in corporate jobs and had burnouts, and therefore that's their story, and you're like, Well, I Never had burnout, or I never did this, or I never had that struggle, or I never had that. Do you believe that? Do you believe that everybody has a story?
Jackie Goddard 13:48
Everybody has a story. Of course, everybody has a story. We don't. We all seem to think we need to have an extreme story. People. People seem to think that they have to have been through some kind of trauma or or something just outrageous has happened, and it doesn't need to be that, it doesn't need to be that it's, it's anecdotal, it's, you know, we've been telling stories for Malay, you know, since, since humans walked the earth and could actually shape sounds, we've been using stories either as ways of teaching, you know, that will pass on stories down the generations to teach people how to do things. And that's basically what you're doing when you're telling a story. Is, this was the experience I had. This is what I learned from it. And by telling you, you'll learn from it. And so that's, you know, those kind of stories are the ones we want, and if they are slightly entered, you know, if they have some kind of entertainment value, you know, if you've there's a fabulous visual you can pull out of that story. There's, you know, it's, it's about storytelling, and it doesn't need to be the worst story in the world. You know, you the worst experience you've had. If
Finola Howard 14:58
you have an example of a story. That's not a traumatic story. That could be a really good story.
Jackie Goddard 15:03
I think we had a conversation pre recording about the stunt trainees that I work with, and I teach them acting. So I put together a five day acting course, so I still am an acting coach as well. And they sit they arrive on a Monday morning, having never done well, half of them don't actually even really want to be actors. They want to be stunt performers. They want to be throwing themselves off tall buildings and getting into a fight with Tom Cruise. That's That's why they're doing it. They don't understand that actually, you know, it would be handy if they could actually act. So we've put together a five day. Course, they come in on the Monday morning. There's about, generally, about 12 to 15 of them all sat in a circle. It's like, okay, introduce yourself. Why here? What have you done? And they, kind of, they, they speak for about 10 seconds. They speak for as little possible time as they can. And they, you know, nothing really comes out of their mouth. You know, I used to do martial arts, or I was trampolining, or whatever horse riding. And then we said to them, okay, on Friday, I'm going to invite in a stunt coordinator, somebody that can give you work now, over the next five days, develop your 62nd elevator pitch. I know it's a real cliche, but actually, alongside of their acting, if they can't open their mouths and speak to somebody, they're never going to get job. So, you know, they need, they do still need to network, as we all do. And so on the Wednesday, we sit down again and we say, okay, introduce yourself to the new tutor that comes in with us on a Wednesday. And then they start, they've thought about it. What are the interesting things? What have I done that actually would, would capture somebody's imagination, that would, would want them to ask me more questions, because that, after all, is what that 60 seconds is about. It's not or the 10 minutes you've got on a or the 80 minutes you've got on a TED stage. You want people to ask you questions afterwards you didn't. You're not going to get all everything into that time. So then we sit in a circle, and we spend a good hour, hour and a half going round, and then the stories come out. Oh, I was in the military, or I was a bodyguard to a billionaire in Syria. I'm a helicopter pilot. I, you know, I, I looked after the king. I mean, just suddenly, then you realize in the room, you've got GB gold medal winners, you've got these guys have obviously now come on to a second career. They've done amazing stuff, but it's not until they actually speak them out loud they understand how valuable that is. I mean, if they got on a lift with Steven Spielberg and they had 60 seconds to say to him, you know, this is what I've done. This is who I am. It's not necessarily just about the experience that you've had in the space that you're in right now, but it's all of those stories that have got you to this point in your life. You know, we are all our own unique selling point there's, you know, you might be a graphic designer or a web designer, and, you know, millions in the world, but there's only one graphic designer, web designer, that's been through what you've been through that will bring to that work, that experience. And so it's, it's about just owning, again, owning those stories, and just speaking them out loud and finding out what other people think, what other people find interesting. Obviously, it's a really good idea to find out who your audience is, because if you're talking, if you're speaking the wrong stuff to the wrong audience, it's never going to land. So that's a big part of what we do. What I do as well, is to really dig into who is it that you're speaking to, and what's the point for them? Because they don't, they don't care about you at the end of the day, they only care about what they can take away. So yeah, that's
Finola Howard 18:48
so is your your story then just becomes the vehicle to
Jackie Goddard 18:53
connect with that audience. Yes, absolutely, yeah. Because that's surely, that is the point, whatever your point might be for speaking to that particular audience at that particular time, but unless your stories land and you know, there's no point going onto a stage and just delivering data that's not going to land with anybody. You know, there's you can give them all statistics in the world, but it's not unless you hook it to a story, they won't remember it. It's the stories that we remember,
Finola Howard 19:21
is there a cadence or a a way that you plot a story that would help our listeners to understand how to approach their story? Because also, I think it's often not just one story. When we're tell when we're trying to communicate, there's like, maybe there's like, five really good stories that you know are appropriate at key points in that cadence. Is there, if you can say more about that,
Jackie Goddard 19:47
I have a flow chart that I use with my clients, and it basically, it consists of sort of four circles, and I, you know, once. They've done that initial work of getting it all out of the head. We then say, okay, we sort of work together to work out what that flow is going to be. So what are the four main points say that you we need to hit for that audience? Circle A is this point. Circle B is this point. So and then you can kind of say, well, okay, I've got 20 minutes. So say that's five minutes per circle. Maybe take off a minute for each transition. So you trans. How you how do you transition from one circle to the next? So that we build a story together that takes that obviously, putting all of those stories within that overall presentation. But how, how do you like when you're writing an essay? I mean, I did a creative writing course degree, and the big the beginning was that thing like, how do you get from one paragraph to the next? What's your transitions? When I was working in theater, we I was behind the scenes, dressing in my many early, early, early years. And I'd sit in on technical rehearsals. And it would be basically not for the actors, the actors would be there, but the it was for the lights and the technicians. It's like, how do you get from one scene to the next? And so the technical rehearsal was that the actors would say their last three lines from one scene, and then the, you know, the blackout, the lights would come in, the music would come on, and then the actors would come on and say the first three lines of the next scene. And so those, those spaces in between the circles, are those transitions. So what? What's the transitions? What are the stories? So once you've got the points you need to make in each circle, then what are the stories that you can hook those points on what? What is the anecdote there that you can tell? And I always love to use the analogy of the hero's journey to get people from an ordinary world to the extraordinary world. So by the time they've been through their talk, their presentation, they leave the audience transformed, I like to think,
Finola Howard 22:03
but do you is it that? Is it that pragmatic of I've got to do like, every talk has to have four points, or every talk has to have three points. Or is it like, is it that thing of, you know, okay, I've got to go from here to here, and I've got three minutes to do this, and so I need to sandwich, like, is it that practical, that methodical? Is
Jackie Goddard 22:26
it? No, okay,
Finola Howard 22:28
of course. Formula
Jackie Goddard 22:30
even, okay. I mean, it's, you know, everything is helped by a framework. It's good to start with a framework. And as I was saying, if you let's take a TED talk, for example. I'm working with a couple of guys that are going on a TEDx stage in June, and they've got, actually, they've only got 12 minutes, I think. But generally, 18 minutes is a TED talk, isn't it? So what is the again, what's the point? What's the end goal? What do you want the audience to take away, and how are you going to get there? So we'll, we'll however many points you've got. It's you. You really in that time limit. You've only got maybe three minutes per point. And actually, if you've got any more than that, it's not, it's going to be very difficult to fit in, without rushing, without having too much information, without giving the audience really time to take in what you're saying. So as much as four is not set in stone. You don't really want much more than that. So, but yeah, there's a lot you can have, you know, a couple more minutes here for that. But it just that framework to start with is just a really good place to start. And it just then, like I was saying, you don't want too much information. You want enough information in there that's going to get your ex, your audience excited enough to come up and ask you questions afterwards, you know. And then the visuals are a whole other thing is, like, the visuals aren't for you as a speaker, therefore the audience and they really are just to illustrate a point and underline a point that you're trying to make.
Finola Howard 24:10
So say more
Jackie Goddard 24:11
about what kind what's a visual, then the visual is obviously the slide deck. Okay, I have many speakers come to me that have worked meticulously on their slides and actually have done nothing on their talk, because they get very people procrastinate a lot fiddling with slides, and they end up not everybody's done it, but a lot of people, this is what, how death by PowerPoint comes about, is that people will put the whole of their presentation written out onto their slide deck as a way of prompting them. And I can understand that it's a bit of a, you know, a comfort blanket, but actually they should be visuals, not slides. So the visual, obviously, they are slides, but there, it's about having something that I always, I always explain to people, if you imagine. That you're standing on, on the stage, looking out the audience speaking. They are concentrating on you. They're concentrating on what you are saying, what you've got behind you. It shouldn't be a distraction from you. It should literally just be something colorful, something informative, something simple that is just gonna underline and illustrate what it is that you're talking about that point that you really want to land. That's that's what you put, that's actually on the screen behind you. Does that mean then that
Finola Howard 25:32
TEDx talks and talks like this should always be learned off.
Jackie Goddard 25:36
I always say memorize to improvise, and I don't mean memorize the script, but the other lovely thing about telling stories and having that kind of flow from circle A to B to C to D, is that it's a way of memorizing the talk without having to memorize the words,
Finola Howard 25:58
because you know what the circles are, yes.
Jackie Goddard 26:02
So you are able to move from story to story. You know what the transitions are there you you should, in reality, be able to do the talk without any visuals at all, but the visuals are just an added you know, if you do them, well, they're just a nice they're a bonus, really, and they will kind of help you get through. But once you've really got that, that talk presentation, in your head, once it's sort of muscle memory, you know, it that well, that you can, you know, do it backwards in your sleep, that's when you can relax. That's when you can interact with the audience. If the tech goes wrong, or if there's some kind of distraction, you're not going to suddenly think, Oh, my God, I've lost my place, because you're in the middle of telling a story. It's
Finola Howard 26:45
interesting because I was asked to, I remember being invited to speak at an event. There was some enterprise week, and I was representing, I think I was on the board of a chamber of commerce, and I think I was representing the board, or I thought I was going to this place to represent the board of the Chamber of Commerce, and I remember going to the event, and I was having a cup of tea, and I was, you know, having a look at all these nice little chocolate cookies and all of this kind of getting to know people and networking and all of that. And then I met, saw one of the organizers, and I said, and who's the main speaker? And she looked at me, and I said, Yeah, who's who have you got speaking? And she said, You are the main speaker. I had no idea something went got lost in translation, where I thought I was just showing up and being representing someone. And I had to say to myself, Okay, hang on a minute. And I had to run out to the bar have a sniff ring. Well, no, I couldn't. And have a think about what am I going to do now to actually? So nobody loses face to pretend that this was there all along. So I really had to shoot from the hip. But yes, now that, now that I'm remembering it, I can say I had to think of four key points to actually, and that's all I had to think of. And then everything was improvisation, everything, but it worked.
Jackie Goddard 28:05
Yes, yeah. I mean, we all know our stuff backwards, don't we? You know, whatever it is that we're doing as a business, we all know, you know, I can quite happily sit here for half an hour. I could sit here all day talking to you, to be honest. But there's, you know, I don't have a script. So we can talk when we're talking about what we know about, what we love, what we're passionate about, we can talk without a script. And so once you know the points you need to hit, once you know the stories that illustrate that, then it's very easy to spend the time talking. What's more difficult is to stop after 10 minutes and just say, right, that's it. And to make sure that you don't end on 10 minutes thinking, Oh, that was awful. I've done a terrible job. And actually, I didn't fit in. This, this, this, and this, you want to finish on an EastEnders doof, doof, doof, you know? So you need to plan it. You really do. If you've only got a certain amount of time, you need to really plan those those points, make sure that you tell the stories you, you know, you, you, you come in with something really powerful that's going to make the audience sit forward and listen to you, and then you leave them wanting more, but you leave them on that kind of almost like a cliffhanger, but with that something that they kind of go, Oh my God, yes, that's, that's, that's what I need to take away.
Finola Howard 29:28
So someone comes to you and they say, you know, they want to start to move their business into a thought leadership space, and they don't have this big positioning piece done where this is, you're the man who does the whatever it is, or you're the lady that does the whatever it is. Do people? How do they on? Well, two questions. One, does everybody have something that they could dig? If they dig, dug deep enough, they could unearth something that could put. Position them, and if so, and your answer may be no, but if so, how do they unearth it? Do you have some tips of how to unearth the stories that we haven't quite taken ownership of are valued enough yet?
Jackie Goddard 30:13
I would say the the coaching programs that I do generally, the one that's most popular is sort of six weeks. And so that's a weekly session of sort of an hour and a half, two hours. And I would say that it's certainly the first two sessions, if not three sessions. Is exactly that? It's okay, like I said to you earlier, they'll come to me with their 2000 word essay. They'll get everything out of their heads that they you know, they generally have an eye but is that a life story they're writing, or is that just what they can remember? No, what this is what I and obviously the people that I work with are not there to tell their life stories. They are business owners. They want to get into the thought your leadership role exactly like you. They've been asked to stand on a stage and talk about what they do and why they do it and why people should buy into it, basically. I mean, after all, anytime you speak, it's promotion, isn't it? For you, your personal brand, your business, and so that's what they come with. It's not a life story at all. It's Who are they talking to? Why are they talking what is their brief? What have you been asked to speak about? How long have you got, and what is the takeaway for the audience? Those basically are your sort of three and why you so those are the, those are the questions I start with is, uh, what have you been asked to do? How long have you got? Who are the audience and why you and so then that's, you know, get everything out of your head, whatever that is that you think is relevant to that audience, that you want to say. And then it's my job to go through that with you and say, right, well, that's really interesting. Like, who are these people you're talking to? What are they going to be interested in? What's the point? And then I start picking out those stories, and then together, we start putting them into that flow and you know, finding out where in the in the flow of the talk that will come, what, how they get on the stage, how they get off the stage, where they, you know, and everything in between is where those stories get uncovered.
Finola Howard 32:13
Can you share with us this idea of embodiment, of walking in the in the in the shoes are in the space of who you want to be as a speaker. You talk to me about this as an exercise, can you share that with us?
Jackie Goddard 32:27
Oh, yeah. Well, that's again, that comes from the acting and this. But it's really, it is really, really useful. It's this idea that I mean, it's something I've done, obviously I did as my own actors training. But I always think now, you know, I my favorite phrase is, happiness is a choice. You know, we all have a choice in how we show up. And actually, the exercise that I do I started when I used to teach kids, actually, is just give them a scale of one to 10. And this is a really simple way of thinking about character. So as an actor, just a starting point for a character. So we've got a scale of one to 10, and I get them to walk around to the room or just inhabit being a number five. So just this is us, everyday normality, number five, number 10 is as confident as you possibly could be, as as happy as you possibly could be. Number one is as miserable as you can be, low self esteem, no confidence. And as they are walking or even just standing, I've done it with audiences just, uh, stood on their feet. Think, you know, with their eyes closed, and I just say to them, think about how you feel now you're a number five. And as I speak out numbers, it just kind of embody that number. So if I go up the scale from five to six to seven, I'll say seven. You know, it's a nice, warm day. You're happily skipping down the street. There's, you know, you there's work coming in. You've got everything that you need. Number eight is, you've booked a fantastic holiday. You've got a bonus number nine, you know? And it just kind of gets better. Number 10, obviously, is you won the lottery, you know, you you're on the Caribbean island. How fantastic. And we, you know, you can feel people are whooping, and they're hollering and the cheering, it's like, brilliant. And people are literally skipping around the room. And then, obviously, I bring the numbers back down, and we come back down to a five, and then, you know, I'll go the other way and say, right? Number four, you know, it's raining, it's a bit miserable. You know, you haven't had work for a little while. And you go down number two, number three, number three. Number two, maybe, you know, you can't pay the mortgage. You've had to go and and so I start telling the story, and as I'm telling this, you know number one, you've got nothing. You're living in a couple of boxes. Just it gets grim, I have to say. But you just, I watch people's body language,
Finola Howard 34:49
I know, but my stomach just fast,
Jackie Goddard 34:55
yeah? I mean, it probably helps. Obviously, I'm, I'm helping them get into that thing. Yeah. But the physicality people you can feel that, you know, as you go down the scale, people's heads go down. They look at the floor. Their shoulders round, they they slow down. Their pace of walking slows down. And by by the time you get to number one, they've practically stopped. You know, they're not moving at all. They're looking at the floor. And then I have to bring them back up. And then I go, Okay, let's go. We'll go back up through a five, you know, and I'll take them up to a seven, and it's all Skippy, sunny, lovely day. Number eight, fantastic. I might take them up to a number 10 again, and then I bring them back to a number eight and say, right, that's it. Well done. I'm going to leave you at a number eight. And actually, you can see people then they have a different way of walking around the room, you know. They have this kind of shoulders back, head up, you know? And it's just a very simple way from acting to find out where your character is, what, how are they feeling, you know, what's in terms of their physicality. But you know, when you're walking into a networking space, or you're walking into an interview or a pitch. You know, think about that. Where are you on that scale? How you want to be seen? You know, most people will think they're walking in a room at a number eight, when actually they're only a number five. You know, it's the same with volume or pace. We all think that we're going over the top, when actually we're not, we need to, we need to ramp it up a little bit more.
Finola Howard 36:24
I think that's really interesting, that we that we're actually going in at a five normally, which means that we could choose to, you know, step up, as you say, to walk into this and then it become, probably becomes second nature, this new awareness of what eight is like,
Jackie Goddard 36:44
yes, yeah, no, that's it. It becomes muscle memory, doesn't it? You know, if you do it enough, if you sort of, it's your choice. It really is down to you. In lots of ways.
Finola Howard 36:55
I like that. It's your choice. And that is down to that, is that. And I already feel like I'm sitting up even straighter, but that is that idea of owning the room. Yeah, powerful. And what would you like to leave people with today?
Jackie Goddard 37:12
A number eight would be good, but
Finola Howard 37:17
as an idea for them to walk away from this conversation, what would you like to leave them
Jackie Goddard 37:23
to know that they all do have a story, however invaluable they they believe it is. It's valuable to somebody and and there's, there's always the opportunity. I mean, I would, I would say to people, if you get the opportunity to speak anywhere to an audience then, then take it, because it's a great way, not only to to build your personal brand and your own your business, but just to build your confidence. And improv do pick, don't find an improv class, because that's we improvise all the time. As I say, you know, I'm improvising now. We are improvising this conversation, and all conversations are improvised, but the more you become used to just talking off the top of your head with no agenda, just for fun, then again, like your choice of how you walk into a room, it becomes second nature. You find that you get curious about other people, and and that if you, if you're used to improvising, you're used to topic talking, absolute trollop, you know, to silly stuff, then actually, it's, it's fun, it's, it's, it's an enjoyable way to
Finola Howard 38:34
convert. But I also like this idea that you've left me with, which is, when you're kind of planning that talk, that you're also perhaps planning instead, not to be memorizing the talk, but to plan to get to a space where you're improvising, and then you want to care about what bits you left out. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So valuable. Thank you so much. Jackie, you're welcome. It's been a pleasure. Enjoy. Thank you, and that's it for this episode, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, and make sure to connect with Jackie on LinkedIn, and don't forget to click on the links in the show notes for the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you for listening to your truth shared. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do rate and review it in your favorite app, at love the podcast.com/your. Truth shared. It really does help spread the word and helps me continue to invest in this podcast. You.
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