Speaker 1: 0:01

Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to the bonus episode for Short Story Long, season 1. Thank you so much for listening. Throughout the season I've really appreciated your feedback and encouragement. We did it Season 1. Done. As you know, season 1 has been all about my story. I've had a number of inflection points throughout my career and really in my life. That's changed me and that's gotten me to where I am Now going forward. I will be talking to different people. You know people like you. Maybe We'll talk about the inflection points and round out the stories. A little bit. Interested in sharing one of your stories? There are two links in the show notes. One is to submit your story and I might feature it on the show. The second is, if you are interested in joining me, you can head to my website and apply to be a guest. So what's this bonus episode you asked here? I was interviewed by my producer, richard, about doing the podcast this season and thought about where we would take it next. There's even a bit of Q&A with the audience.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Enjoy, and I hope to speak to you in season two. So for those of you I have not met, my name is Richard Dodds, and I am the editor and the producer of Short Story Long. Thank you, I think. More importantly, though, I am Becky's friend.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Yes.

Speaker 2: 1:31

So Short Story Long is about those inflection points that change everything. It's the stories about inflection points and season one specifically, is focused on Becky. So we've recorded most of it already. So I've heard so many stories y'all and there's so many to come, so we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about season two a little bit later. But we'll say, as you like to say, that's a story for another time.

Speaker 3: 2:02

It's a story for a little bit.

Speaker 2: 2:03

It's a story before a little bit later. So I know everybody here knows Becky, but Becky is a leadership and business coach. If you don't know her, she's also an author and an entrepreneur and now she's a podcast host. So I'm going to ask Becky some questions and we're going to talk about such a big inflection point of starting a podcast. So Becky, oh wow.

Speaker 3: 2:33

It works. Hey, look at that.

Speaker 2: 2:35

I hope so. So starting a podcast is kind of a big deal. When I came to you with it, just to give you guys some backstory, we were looking at her website and she was telling me about a book idea she had. But she didn't want to do that book idea. And I sat there and I was like Becky, you know what, that would make an awesome podcast. So I didn't expect you to agree.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Well, that wasn't the first time you told me hey, becky, you should do a podcast.

Speaker 2: 3:04

You know, I got to prime you, I got to get you ready. What made you feel comfortable, what made you feel like it was time to take that leap and to go ahead and do that podcast now?

Speaker 1: 3:13

So the original idea for the book was actually all of these inflection point stories and creating some leadership insights for people to be able to understand how real life teaches us how to lead, because we're leading every day in our life, no matter what we're doing right. When I started putting the book together, I thought this is a little memoir and it just felt a little.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Not Becky and Richard has been talking to me many, many, many, and did I mention many times about these ideas of podcasts? And, hey, you got to do this and you got to do this. This man is full of ideas, you want ideas. You talk to Richard, and so at that point in time, what kind of locked in for me is, while all these stories to me aren't a book, all of these stories you have to hear in my voice so that you hear what it felt like for me when I went through those situations and how ridiculous I feel about some of the things that I had to learn so many times. And that's when people can hear me laugh at myself.

Speaker 1: 4:18

I don't know how to write that way so that people can feel that same thing. So I recognized that it needed to be an audio version and, of course, then I also looked at Richard right through the screen and said, yeah, the only way we're doing this is you produce me so, because I'm not learning how to do this and I don't want to do it myself and the only way I want to do it is with you. So the partnership began.

Speaker 2: 4:42

That's where it was. I think the most important part of doing this podcast was that I was excited about it and I knew. When I left and she said, yes, I was super excited. I was like this is going to be great. Oh, he was doing covers that night.

Speaker 2: 4:57

I did. I did send her a cover that night Also designed, so I did her podcast cover. But when I talked to her the next time we talked frequently now um, I was like becky, how are you feeling about it? And she was excited too. So that's like one of the key things. I feel like you bought that exuberance into our first recording session which nobody will

Speaker 2: 5:25

ever hear, because it was terrible. Oh so, so bad. Becky. Becky, you're a little flat, you got to be a little bit more Becky over there when you're recording, so if you sounded like this movie first time recording right, it would have been great. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. So so far, we've been doing this for a while. What was the biggest surprise?

Speaker 1: 5:39

the biggest surprise, I think, for me was how easy it started to be over time, because these are stories that aren't necessarily as easy to tell as maybe what it sounds like on the podcast. Right, you have to dig deep and there are some things that I don't share that were maybe a little bit harder during those times. And so, going back to that, reliving all of those experiences, it's a little bit surprising that then I can sit in the studio and just tell my friend the story and all of the learnings about it, and I didn't expect it to be that easy. Um, it didn't start that way.

Speaker 2: 6:16

Clearly that that never to be heard but hopefully it did not take long though no, no, we kind of got our swing yeah I think the biggest failure we had was our biggest learning point that took us over to the next level we had.

Speaker 2: 6:30

We had a episode that we recorded and before she even left she's like like I'm not feeling it. And I went and edited and I was like you know, I'm not feeling it either. But from that we were able to go back to the drawing board, took a lot of different lessons and she came back 10 times stronger than she had ever came and it was just great yeah, and we came up out of the basement, both of us going all the way up and out.

Speaker 1: 6:56

I drove home that evening, I guess, and I was just like I can't, we can't, we can't publish that.

Speaker 2: 7:02

That's just not going to go that way yeah, I think you called me later and said we can't, we can't, we can't publish that. That's just not gonna go that way. Yeah, I think you call me later and say we can't, we can't.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Yeah, I'm feeling sick, I'm not gonna make it home.

Speaker 2: 7:13

Yeah, so you see how invested you were.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Well, that's right, that's right because if you are putting it out, you want to put out quality and it wasn't the version of the story that I wanted to tell. So I wanted to tell a better story and Richard helped me find that better version of that story so that I could do that so you do a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2: 7:36

I already said that you wrote a book. You're a coach. Yes, you're entrepreneur. You run your own business. How does this relate, and how do you use those other things that you've done to help inform the things that you do on the podcast?

Speaker 1: 7:52

Yes, I think part of writing the book was. A lot of that stuff was stuff that I had worked through in terms of content and things that I had done, and then I could translate that over into a book. Clearly, I lived my life, so it was really about editing that back and maybe not building the clock for free every time someone asked me for the time and really cutting it down to what mattered, and and I think that that really is the stuff that translated over was what's necessary, what's important, what do I put as a priority? Because I've done a lot of really weird stuff in my life. This, these episodes could go on forever, but not all of them would be very interesting and that's the short story.

Speaker 2: 8:41

So when we were starting to pre-produce the podcast, one of the questions that I asked Becky that was very important for me whenever I start something like this with anybody, or if I start something with myself I said what does success look like to you? So for Becky, success looked one way and it was more about the people that she impacted with her stories and the people that she inspired. So now, as of Tuesday, we have the fourth episode is dropped Four episodes out. How are you feeling about success right now?

Speaker 1: 9:15

I feel really good about it. I feel well that's understatement. Let me say what I really feel. I feel ecstatic about it, to be honest, because I'm seeing some of you know that I really like numbers. If you've listened to one of the episodes, you really know I like math and you can still be my friend and so. But what I'm getting is a lot of really great messages, a lot of really great comments and things like that that have been sent to me, and that means a lot to be able to feel like people can walk up and say, hey, you know what my story was a lot like yours, or I never had that kind of situation, but it's really cool to hear that from someone else's perspective, because now I know something that I didn't know before and that means a lot to me. So that's the whole reason I wrote the book and it's the whole reason that I'm doing the podcast is I want people to be thinking about themselves and seeing themselves differently.

Speaker 2: 10:08

I remember one of those aha moments that she had, like she aha, it's an aha moment that she had. She was at a conference after I had talked to her about the podcast. We hadn't started it and she had told a story at the conference and somebody came up to her and talked about how they related to it and it kind of was like they were like on Team Richard. They were like, yeah, you need to do this podcast.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Team Richard's getting really big right now.

Speaker 2: 10:33

You know, I just push you to be your best. All I want is what's best for you, becky. So we talked about it a little bit earlier. I kind of alluded to it. Season one is all about Becky's story, but season two we're going to be pulling in different people maybe some people in this room, I don't know to come in and tell their stories and share inflection points that changed their life. So that's what season two is going to be. We're workshopping it, we're working through it. Right now We've already started getting it together a little bit, a little bit. What are some of the biggest things that you're looking forward to to learn and what are some of the themes that you think will come out of season two?

Speaker 1: 11:10

Well, one of the things that I think would be really important and this is where those questions, but not a quiz come in too is I'd really love to know what people want to hear about. Right, like, I'm sharing the pieces of my story because it's like a scattergram of different experiences that I've had that really impacted me, so I am interested in finding out what listeners want to hear more about, or what they haven't heard yet and they want to hear about, because then we can find stories like that. Everyone has a story. Everyone has had a situation in their life where they could go right or they could go left, and maybe they went center left, and so you know, and they learn from that experience, and that's what I want to find out from all of the people that we get a chance to interview in the next time, and the other thing that I really think is really important to learn from all of that is what they learned, what was the insight from that, Because you don't go through something like that without recognizing something new or different or affirming something about yourself.

Speaker 1: 12:21

The other side of it, though, is I'm a coach, and it's sort of not what I do, it's who I am, and so naturally the other side of me is like well, I have questions and so I really am excited about exploring that a little bit more with people too. About OK, so that was then, that's what you learned then. Where are you now? How does it affect you now? Because I just I can't leave that alone, and people in this room know me well enough that most of you probably know.

Speaker 2: 12:47

So you're saying you're nosy oh, super, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:51

I turned it into a profession so that I could do it all the time.

Speaker 2: 12:55

So everybody who's listening, everybody who listens to the podcast, please make sure that, as you listen, if it's anything that you would like to hear that you're interested in seeing in season two, if you want to be on season two, you have an inflection point that you want to share, just hit Becky up, just give her a note. We'll interview you. It'll be, it'll be painless, I promise. It doesn't hurt. Doesn't hurt much.

Speaker 1: 13:16

Sometimes it does only your heart when you're like, wow, that hit deep. I hadn't thought about that.

Speaker 2: 13:22

I remember her coaching me and it's like I felt emotional after I got off the phone call Like all right, you're right.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Let me sit with me.

Speaker 2: 13:32

So we kind of talked about that. At least part of the podcast came from a book idea, so that didn't ever come to fruition. So, with all these people in the room and people online and people who listen to this recording, that's coming, and Becky knows it's coming. That's why she's making that face. I just want to know Becky, like, when is the second book coming out? Short story long, when are you gonna start working on that?

Speaker 1: 13:57

huh this is the original team. Richard, I was going to say tape Boy. Does that age me? Yeah, we're not writing the book yet. We're working on it. Yeah, richard's really working hard on this.

Speaker 2: 14:11

We're working on it. So you say, like next year we'll be ready.

Speaker 3: 14:15

You keep asking About next year. Scott, you're in there, right?

Speaker 2: 14:18

About next year. Yeah, you keep asking About next year. Scott, you're in there right About next year. I am not in there. Yeah, it's not yet. It's coming, guys, don't worry about it. So look forward like so 2025, everybody look forward to Short Story Along, the Book based off of the podcast, and season two Killing me. So, with all of that said, is any anybody who has any questions for becky you guys? So we got a question about becky's podcast voice. Um, so, honestly, her, her voice is really perfect. I really don't do much editing on her voice. Her voice is really really good. I do a little bit of tweaking, but for, for the most part, what you hear is what you get.

Speaker 1: 15:03

It's really only when I go, and it's all over the place, that he has to even me out a little bit.

Speaker 3: 15:09

I think is a big part the first several episodes of the podcast about your excitement and your interest in planning but not sticking to one particular plan, and I really liked what you were saying about that.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Could you expound upon that? So for me it's part of. So I'm going to back up a little bit to what Richard had said about that conference that I attended and I shared a bit of a story during my presentation during that session and how that came back around. Part of what I had shared at that point in time was actually that I have ADHD and that my therapist had asked me hey, have you ever been tested for it? And I looked at him and kind of giggled and said, Riley, do we need a test? And I think several of you know about that story right. So at the end of that presentation and I had told people look, if you have questions, if you want to talk to me, come, walk up to me, get to know me. And I walked, told people look, if you have questions, if you want to talk to me, come, walk up to me, get to know me. And I walked into a different session and someone slid into the seat.

Speaker 1: 16:24

I have a habit of, whenever I sit somewhere, I would sit in the second seat over, in case somebody comes in slides in two wheels at the end and wants to sit down. Started in college, never ended, and so this woman comes, slides in next to me and she says can you tell me? You mentioned that you use your ADHD as a superpower. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you do that? And we had like five seconds before the session was about to begin. So I told her and she's like, okay, great. And she zoomed away. I was like you could have stayed. I mean, I'm nice, I don't bite, and with that, right, it was one of those moments where it's like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 17:04

So, bringing it back to your question, Heather, I get distracted and I get bored so very quickly you do Right, it doesn't show and I have to keep things changing up. So for me it's like getting a cookie when the plan as scripted doesn't go forward the way that it does. I like the chaos, I like the change. There can be a point where that's too much, but I enjoy that. The plan comes together and then the plan goes as planned. Meh, kind of boring. I want it to be shifting and changing so that it's constantly evolving and getting better, and that's what I'm focused on. So that's what I really refer to in those first couple of episodes when I'm talking about that, because my whole life is almost hoping that the plan will fail so that I get to plan how to fix it.

Speaker 2: 17:56

That's a weird thing. Yeah, that's totally normal.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Yeah, and I bet, though, there are many of the people who are hearing this who go. Yeah, totally I understand that.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Who just applies to you, like, eh, I'll just apply, just because, and get in what could possibly go wrong? And then get in right and then like oh, I got in, go figure.

Speaker 1: 18:21

Yeah. So the question for those who can't hear was you know, when I went to Yale, it was courageous Thank you for that acknowledgement Because I flipped my life upside down, went halfway across the country and when I'm coaching people and I'm recognizing that not everyone is the risk taker that I am, and I'm going to say they're a very small percentage of people who are a risk taker like I am. So I don't expect other people to be willing to do that kind of thing. My question is always what is the step you're willing to take? So at the end of a session, I'm not telling someone what they should be doing, I'm saying you know, and when they're looking at me with I have no idea what to do with this, I might put out a slate of options and say, well, there's this, there's that, there's the other thing. What do you want to do? Well, that feels too big, all right. So what's smaller, right? And what's what's viable? What can you do? What are you willing to do? What's what's viable? What can you do? What are you willing to do? And they design it for themselves and over time, they're maybe willing to take bigger steps.

Speaker 1: 19:32

But even if you take a tiny, tiny little step every day. You're still making progress, you're still moving in the direction you want to go. You don't have to get there overnight. And that's what we're all looking at sometimes when we're making these big changes is well, I'm not there yet. Well, you just started right. We're not perfect at anything when we do it the first time, otherwise we didn't aim high enough.

Speaker 1: 19:58

The question there is with the inflection points, most people kind of graze through them, right, like it's whew, made it through, right, and I don't want to have to think about that anymore because I got through it, I survived and I live another day, and for me, the reason that I look at those is because they've been so huge. Um, some of you know what I just refer to as the Argentina story already that one's coming up, so I'm only going to say that much. Keep listening, that's how you'll know. And that one was an epic shift for me in so many different ways, and so, with that, I think the big part of it see, there's the other phrase and so, um, I, yeah, I do.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Um, the reason that I wanted to look into them is because I I get asked a lot by people If, if you weren't this way before. How did you get this way now? And it was hard one, it was a journey, it was a path and it was intentional. And so anyone I've coached I talk all the time about. Well, you just need to make the conscious choice. It doesn't need to be the right choice, because we don't always make the right choice, we just make the conscious choice. The only way we can be conscious is to reflect and look. So that's what I started doing, so that I could start to look at some of the experiences that I had to be able to recognize where I wanted to go.

Speaker 2: 21:35

If I could add on to that, I will say that Becky's really good at analyzing things that's happened in her life. When we start to record, we do a pre-session where we kind of talk about the story that's coming up and she kind of tells me stuff and even just her she has a lot of depth. But just from us talking and me asking a couple of questions it's like it's so much deeper and it's stuff that you don't always realize. That's been there. It makes me.

Speaker 2: 22:00

It's like, like I said, when she's coaching this therapy, when I'm producing this therapy. It's like, like I said, when she's coaching this therapy, when I'm producing this therapy. It's kind of the same thing Because when you start asking those questions, you see the questions from your point of view. But when you have somebody else like in season two, when Becky was going to ask you on that episode in season two about your inflection points it's like when somebody asks you a question and they're looking at it from a different angle, because even we're on the same page. We got to that page in different ways. So when somebody's looking at a page a different way and they see it from a different angle and they ask you about it.

Speaker 1: 22:31

It makes you reflect on it a little bit differently than you have before yes, and I will also say do not under any circumstances let richard underestimate the value of the questions that he was asking me, because he might call my coaching therapy, and he knows that makes me cringe because it's not about that. But it what it does do is it makes you feel your feelings and so from the that perspective, I understand why he says it. He just knows that I hate that word. Um, he likes to tease me. It's mutual, mutual. But his questions, like I tell him all of the time that he makes me a better storyteller. But he also helps me see my life from a different perspective and it's not just because we're friends that that makes that work, it's because he knows what kind of question to ask me to go a little bit deeper, and I will say I'm reflective so I also can take that.

Speaker 1: 23:25

I get to be nosy too, so so the question is, through the process, other than words, that I repeat quite a bit um, what do I? What have I learned about myself? I think what it is really is that it affirmed some of the things that I recognized about myself, where there was what I might call the full fire dragon fire a long time ago. I've recognized that it's not just age and there's been a long time but it's not just age that has mellowed me. There has been the intentional process of going through all of these things and saying why did that happen and not why did that happen to me?

Speaker 1: 24:09

I'm such a victim though. That did also happen. It really was about what can I learn from this? Where do I want to go? And recognizing the value of me doing that, and it's like me recommitting to doing that even more now, because it's not like life's easy now, right. So it becomes this whole process of recognizing the value of the work that I've done, because it's really only been probably the last 10-12 years that I was really doing the work.

Speaker 2: 24:37

Prior to that, I was flailing and fighting all the time yeah, so, um, the thing, the thing that you just asked was that if it's ever times where, like, becky is sharing something and I feel like it's something else more there, that's kind of like my one of my main roles as her producer is, like when I hear certain things, it's the one to be able to listen actively. Um, when I'm listening actively, I'm thinking about the audience. I'm listening actively, I'm thinking about the audience. I'm also thinking about Becky, because when you podcast and you share something, if you do anything and you put it out to an audience, you're putting a part of yourself out.

Speaker 2: 25:13

So it's kind of like a delicate balance. It's like being able to pull out stuff that the audience will want to hear, but try not to pull out so much stuff that you feel naked when it comes out. Much stuff that you feel naked when it comes out. One of the things that I can think about in particular, one of the biggest moments that we had was when she was telling a story and I was like, oh, it kind of relates to the story you're telling about your dad, and that kind of gave her a pause. So it was a story she was telling about her dad, like that's already. It was when she went to college. It's one of the first episodes.

Speaker 2: 25:44

It was the first episode, the first episode and so later on we kind of she talks about it again. Yes, and it kind of relates because and it made her think about it in a different way, because you know how Becky has this face it's like that hmm. So she had the the hmm. So that's kind of like my role. So my role is that I'm an advocate for the audience. I want to make sure that whatever she's saying, the audience will be interested in it, and I want to be an advocate for her, making sure that she knows that it's a safe place. And if it's something that's too personal, I'll pull it out and not put it in the episode and we'll leave it on the cutting room floor. But I want her to be comfortable. So it's stuff that I pull out. So that happens all the time, pulling out stuff all the time.

Speaker 1: 26:27

Yeah, because I'm a risk taker, so I just like throw it all out. And then Richard's like honey no maybe not that. Thank you for listening to my story. My hope is that you will get insights for leading as you. If you know someone who would benefit from this episode, be sure to share it. Interested in connecting with me on LinkedIn? Drop me a note telling me where you found me. The link will be in the show notes. Okay, bye.