Sarah:               Welcome, Crystal!

Crystal:             Hi.

Sarah:               Welcome to my podcast. It’s back! I took a little hiatus but wanted to bring it back, and I want you to be my guest on, so thank you for giving me some of your time.

Crystal:             Oh, thank you so much.

Sarah:               Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your career change, how long you’ve been in the pole dance industry. You’re one of the OG’s, but how long you’ve been in the pole dance industry, and how your career has changed and developed over the years into what you’re currently doing now.

Crystal:             Into the motherhood of the pole industry. Well, I started back in 2001 as a little 18-year-old stripper in Seattle. My friend lured me into a strip club, as a way to pay for our rent, as we were living in Seattle. I was a country girl, so I was living in the country, and I had no idea about dance, or pole dancing, or that it was even actually a thing. I went to church three days a week.

Crystal:             And then I was like, “Okay, I’m going to move to the big city.” We moved there and she’s like, “Oh, I want to be a stripper.” I’m like, “Oh, what’s that?” She was going to do this audition night. She dragged me in, and I was hooked. I saw this girl called Cherry on stage, and she was whipping her head in a really tall, Russian ponytail. Obviously, they’ve been around before the Russians. I was like, “Oh my God. I have to do this.” I went the next week and signed up for the amateur night, which the winnings was exactly how much it cost to get the licence to become a stripper, and I won, so that was kind of fun.

Crystal:             And then that started stripping. And for me, it was a source of money, but I became addicted to the stage presence, and being on stage, holding the power, holding the space, and the lifestyle, actually having money for once. That was pretty cool too. But with that, comes a really hard party atmosphere, and I went down some paths that were really easy for an 18-year-old to go down, drug wise. And so, it put me in situations that I wasn’t really so proud of at the time. I knew with my upbringing, that I needed to eventually get away.

Crystal:             To make a long story short, I eventually ended up quitting stripping and I went back to school in Washington DC, where I went to school for broadcasting and communications, to work in radio and DJ.

Sarah:               Nice!

Crystal:             Yeah, that was fun. I did that for a few years and met my husband in Miami at a music conference that he was working out. He’s a DJ, an international DJ. He’s been doing that for a long time. I still wasn’t doing pole. I did build a pole, which is like from Home Depot.

Tiff Finney joins me in this podcast to discuss her journey to finding her style, what inspires her and potential festival recommendations…

Sarah:                      Welcome to … I did actually just try and start it and then she was like, “Wait! Question.” So we had to do it again. So, Hi Tiffany probably for the third time I’ve said Hi now…

Tiff:                            Hiyaa! You alright?

Sarah:                      I’m alright. Can you show everyone your tits ‘cos you’re wearing one of my tops? Oh it looks so good. Oh! And the leggings too!

Tiff:                            I just fell over trying to do it.

Sarah:                      You covered it well. You covered it well. It’s fine.

Tiff:                            Nice.

Sarah:                      And how are you gorgeous creature? Oh yeah, I’m not even wearing Off The Pole wear. I feel bad. I should be branded…

Tiff:                            You suck, mate.

Sarah:                      I know. Oh well. So how’s life? How is … How is everything in Tiffany’s world?

Tiff:                            All good. Just keeping on at it. Got loads of workshops, I’m around the UK constantly this year and we’ve got an intensive pole weekend this weekend. Just trying to keep on dancing as much as I can. ‘Cos I feel like sometimes I don’t get enough time.

Sarah:                      Yes, this is very true. I think there’s a bit misconception with people who are, like, professional pole dancers. That we just hang out and train and dance all day. When, in fact, it’s like completely the opposite. We actually get, like, a little half hour/hour snippet where we record as much as possible and then just throw that on Instagram for the next month.

Tiff:                            Yeah. The idea is that you record within a half an hour period and that’ll last you for two weeks.

Sarah:                      Yes, sometimes even changing outfits midway through the training session to make it look like you’ve actually trained more often than you actually have…

Tiff:                            That’s exactly it.

I was lucky to sit down with Stacey Clare, The Ethical Stripper and Co-founder of The East London Stripper Collective to discuss her recent press surrounding stripping and feminism, an article written in the Metro and her appearance on Good Morning Great

Britain with Piers Morgan. She was very informative and I highly recommend checking out the links throughout and at the bottom of the article for further reading on the subject.

Sarah: And we’re on! So, welcome Stacy Thank you so much for giving me some of your evening. I know we’ve just been talking off camera as it were about you having a busy time with buying flats and running around the country doing interviews and things. So thanks for giving me some of your evening.

Stacy: You’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me on.

Sarah: And so for those who don’t know a little bit of an intro to you: one of the co-founders of the East London Strippers Collective and can you maybe give us a little bit of background about how that came to be? and a mini overview of who you are

My interview in this episode was with IPDFA Industry Person of the year Stacey Snedden, who most of the pole community have or will come into contact with in some form over their pole journeys. She’s worked with Xpole for over 13 years, she’s the International sales manager for XPERT, runs Pole Theatre UK, Dance Filthy UK, Pole Art UK , The Pole Weekender, Once Upon a Pole PLUS judges numerous competitions, runs her successful studio HD&F Fitness alongside having two boys and a husband to keep happy…

I also asked her some questions from the members of the Off The Pole Community Group

 

Sarah:                      All right. Welcome, Stacey Snedden, to my podcast. It feels-

Stacey:                    Hi!

Sarah:                      It feels odd in this interview format because you’re my best friend, so we chat all the time. We must remember that we’re on a podcast and not in a private conversation and take off on a tangent and start chatting about other stuff. But yeah…

Stacey:                    I promise clean language only.

Sarah:                      Oh, that’s all right. It’s just going out to pole dancers. Many of them have met you. Most of the industry I think has met you at some point. I think if you took a ratio of who’s met Stacey Snedden in polers, it would be, I don’t know what pie chart you’d use, but it would be a big chunk.

Stacey:                    Not sure that’s a good thing…

Sarah:                      Well, that’s a lie. So yeah, thank you for giving me some of your day. You’re currently in your X-POLE office, hidden in the back. So if people need to come in, they need to be promptly told to get out because we’re busy!

                                    I’ve posted in the group that I was gonna be having you on the podcast and got quite a few questions. Most of them were from Dan Rosen granted. He definitely jumped in and asked quite a few.

                                    But I wanted to ask a couple of questions at the beginning. Because you did a post recently about how many events you’ve been a part of. Be that organizing them, running them, putting the trusses up for them, judging. How many comps have you been a part of in 2018 events? 

Stacey:                    Well, 18.

Sarah:                      18 events?

Stacey:                    So 18 pole events, just pole.

Sarah:                      So that’s not even including the yoga, the fitness events? The X-POLE events?

Stacey:                    No. That’s plus. So this year, just pole events itself has been 18. Which the only reason why I did that exercise was because I was actually trying to figure out where the hell I’d been this year. I couldn’t figure it out.

Sarah:                      You’ve been around.

Stacey:                    Yeah.

Sarah:                      What have been your highlights of this year? Out of those? I know you can’t pick one top moment maybe, but what have been your highlights?

Stacey:                    Oh, it’s been a really weird year ’cause everything’s kind of seemed quite epic. So everything that’s happened has seemed really, really big.

So I think probably on a personal level, is seeing all my friends have babies. Which has been really nice. Obviously with Lorna and Kris and Hannah and loads of people.

I had to sit down with Annie Norris after her incredible 2018. She won business and instructor awards, travelled the world competing, ran her successful studio, looked after her 3 sausage pups and even managed to squeeze in getting married amongst other things!

I also asked her some questions from the members of the Off The Pole Community Group

 

Sarah:                      Welcome, Annie Norris to my podcast! Thank you so much for giving some of your morning. We’ve been planning this for about a year, and keep missing each other. I finally got you, and who’s your little friend who’s joining you?

Annie:                      This is Frank, he’s my manager, he looks after me.

Sarah:                      He looks very business today.

Annie:                      Frank, I named him after a sausage.

Sarah:                      Obviously. Your sausage dog is so cute. Mine’s snoring behind so hopefully the microphone won’t pick that up. He doesn’t really like being famous unless I’m training then it’s all about him. Other than that, so thank you for giving me some of your time because you’ve had an insanely busy year. You’ve been pretty much all over the world. You’ve gotten married, you’ve been doing competitions, you’ve won awards, what are some of your highlights? I’ve kind of listed off a few things you’ve done in the intro, but what have been some of your highlights this year?

Annie:                      So I always forget to mention this one, so I’m going to start with this one, getting married.

Sarah:                      That’s number one, so number one not a pole thing.

Annie:                      It was great because Kieran’s my best friend, so that was the best day. Sharing it with your bestie and just having fun. Eating loads of food, people helping me pull my wedding dress up when it kept slipping down, things like that. It was just the best day ever and it was just so warm, as well. The dogs were there and they wore little things around their necks and stuff. So that was number one.

Annie:                      Then I think the second best thing was getting through to IPC. I was in the elite females, my one pole idol, as well. Then won instructor of the year, so that was just amazing. It was like a dream come true. I remember seeing my name on social media and I was like no, no. I didn’t tell anyone for two days because I was like I’m obviously going to pull out, there’s no point in doing that is there? Going to Australia, the comp was ten days before the wedding as well in Australia.

Sarah:                      I like it, it’ll be fine.

Annie:                      It’ll be fine, and it was.

Sarah:                      Fly around the other side of the world, yeah.

Annie:                      Yeah. That was that. It was just crazy, but it was great. It was just amazing. So good.

Sarah:                      I must say you’ve done a million things this year. How do you find because you have a full-time studio as well, which seems hugely popular? We did the Off the Pole Awards in April, and your students were on it. We’re going to nominate everybody, we’re going to do spreading it around. Whenever there’s anything about awards, or getting involved, or doing showcases you always seem to have … your students are very involved. They seem to follow you around the world and have a huge support system. Are you good at time management, do you just kind of wing it, is there any kind of thing that you think, that has to be put on the back burner, or this is gonna be a priority? How do you manage studio time, competing, performing, planning weddings? Like, how have you managed it?

The 17th Episode of the OTP Podcast features Dr. Emily Scherb, also known as The Circus Doc. She is a physical therapist, instructor and a practising aerialist for over twenty-five years

She works with professional and pre-professional circus artists. She is the Resident Physical Therapist at the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts and for the contemporary circus company Acrobatic Conundrum.

She has just released a new Book called Applied Anatomy of Aerial Arts and I loved having the opportunity to sit down and drill her with questions –hope it’s the first of many!

Hit play above or watch or read the transcript below.

 

 

Sarah:                      Welcome Emily. Thank you so much for doing my podcast.

Emily:                      Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah:                      Also known as The Circus Doc, which we’re going to be linking to all of your social media stuff and website and all that stuff so if people haven’t heard of you they can obviously find out about you there. Thank you for giving up your morning, it’s 9:00 am where you are?

Emily:                      About 9:00 am, yeah.

Sarah:                      About 5:00 pm where I am, so we’re a little bit spread out but we’ve managed to make it work which is fantastic. I’ve posted in my off the pole community group that I was going to be interviewing you and got lots of questions from them. So I’m going to be touching on some of those in a bit, but I’d like to start off with hearing about your book that you’ve got coming out, or has it already been released?

Emily:                      It is about to come out next week.

Sarah:                      Ah, fantastic. A little bit about your book, what’s coming out and what lead you to write it.

Emily:                      Absolutely. The book is called The Applied Anatomy of Aerial Arts. I’ve got my copies already.

Sarah:                      Ah, so shiny.

Emily:                      But they’re not quite out for the general public yet. It’s an anatomy book based on how our bodies actually work in the air. It is talking about the basics of anatomy, how they work for everybody and then how that specifically works when we change how gravity works on our body and are hanging from our hands instead of standing on our feet.

Sarah:                      I’m so excited about this book. I know there’s so many people that are going to be completely geeking out that this book’s coming out because it’s so hard, you want to do research, you want to find about how to look after your body and then you look at all the anatomy pictures and the videos out there and everyone is just stood on the floor and it doesn’t work the same, it completely changes it when we’re flipping around in the air. This is so exciting. And you’ve got a huge background in this area. What came first, the physical therapy or the aerial?

Emily:                      Most definitely the aerial. I started doing aerial back in about 1991 or 2, so I’ve been doing it for a very, very long time. I started off as a gymnast and found my way into circus as a relatively young youngster. It really was just, oh, instead of having to compete and having to perform that way, instead I get to perform, then people clap. This is fun. And there was similar challenges on the body and similar demands of a training schedule to keep myself in shape to do it and so I really just fell in love and started doing it back then, kept doing it, started teaching and have been teaching ever since my late teen years.

Super excited to bring you this informative interview with the one and only Oona Kivelä. We went through the highs and lows of being a professional pole dancer, her process for competing and what’s in her famous pancakes. Enjoy!

Sarah:                      We’re back! You’re back on my podcast again, Oona, this is take two. For everybody listening, we recorded probably the greatest podcast episode that ever was-

Oona:                       No, it didn’t.

Sarah:                      … but the audio didn’t work, so we had to do it again. That was a few weeks ago, so we’ve given this a little bit of time so we don’t probably remember exactly what we were talking about, but you’re back, much appreciated that you’re doing this again and looking so glamorous as well, we’ve got a half naked Oona this time, which is fabulous.

Oona:                       I was like planning all day what I would wear for this podcast.

Sarah:                      Well, again, if people are listening, then they’ll have to go and look at the YouTube video because it’s fabulous. And we’ve already talked about, you’ve got … you’re sat in front of a big chalkboard wall. You’re doing Skype lessons, now? Online Skype lessons?

Oona:                       Yeah, actually I thought this was one of them, and then I was like, “Oh, nevermind. It’s not.”

Sarah:                      You can totally teach me stuff, that’s-

Oona:                       Skype is new to me-

Sarah:                      … you can teach me all of your things.

Oona:                       … so, I just literally like started working or using Skype because of the Skype lessons, and then i was like, “What button? Where? What?”

Sarah:                      You’re a pro now. So, if people wanna have Skype lessons for you, let’s do some promo. How does one get a Skype lesson with the famous Oona Kivelä?

Oona:                       It was literally like from day one, people had been asking for it, and since I am now a full-time pole dancer, so obviously, now I have the time. But like, way back, when I was a kids’ gym owner for 10 years, it wasn’t exactly on top of my mind when you come home after like a 15 hour work day and you’re like-

Sarah:                      Yeah.

Oona:                       But now, thankfully, I do have the time. So basically, it’s just like people can … we have first like a planning … we go through people’s wishes and goals, and a little bit like what they would want to achieve or very specifically what they want out of the classes, and after we’ve sort of gone through the plan, then we then start going with the actual classes depending on how-

Sarah:                      When was the switch? When did you stop your kids’ gymnastics and start just being full-time pole? How recently?

Oona:                       I think it was one year ago, I made the decision, it was exactly one year ago last summer last I sold my part of the business to my business partner, but I still kept on working for like six months, and then pretty much the first seven months, eight months that I’ve only been doing pole related stuff.

Sarah:                      Nice. And how are you finding it? How’s the transition been? Have you been feeling like you’ve had more training time? Or are you actually finding that you’re ending up doing more of other stuff and not putting in as much training ’cause you’re less pressured to do so? How have you found the transition?

Oona:                       Well, if the people who has been maybe gone through similar, they understand, it’s probably like people are having kids and I’m doing this,

Episode 15 of the OTP Podcast we’re getting down to business with Tim from TeamUp discussing customer service and hearing about their exciting new competition to win £8000 worth of market research with professional consultants for your pole studio.

Sarah:                      Welcome Tim. Thank you for coming on my podcast.

Tim:                          Great to be here.

Sarah:                      I will let you give a little bit of an introduction as to why you’re here. Why have you come on my podcast? Tell me a little bit about yourself and Teamup.

Tim:                          Well thank you very much for having me. It’s really exciting to be on your podcast. I think this is probably the leading pole podcast out there.

Sarah:                      So you’ve been told by Stacy (Snedden)

Tim:                          I’m really excited to be here. As you know at Teamup we’re really involved with the pole world. We have been for years. Since probably going back four or five years when we first sponsored UKPPC which I attended as well which just blew me away with the quality and the passion of the pole world, and we’ve absolutely loved kind of working with pole studios like pole members ever since, and I’ve got loads more to say on that, but at Teamup we’re really in the business of taking the complexity out of running these awesome businesses, and providing features that take away that kind of really annoying admin and the complexity of running memberships and payments and making it really easy for members to kind of, for example, go on to your website and book onto a class or buy a membership.

And so, what we aim to do is really take all that pain out of the business and allow everyone to focus on the best bits of the business which we have no ability to deliver at all. We’re kind of the boring friend in the room.

Sarah:                      Very well, that’s slightly putting yourself down, but yeah I’ve run a studio myself for a few years and it’s definitely like you start a pole studio because you want to dance, and you want to teach, and you want kind of that side of it, but you actually end up spending a lot more time in the office for of like a managerial role, and administrative role then I think a lot of people realize. So having something like a software system that’s actually gonna take a lot of that time out of it, because it takes a lot of time to run a pole studio as I’m sure a lot of the studio owners out there are silently nodding their heads in agreement. Yeah.

Tim:                          Yeah definitely. And also, just to add to that, it’s amazing at the beginning when you first set up your business how that admin is almost a total pleasure. A studio owner was telling me this just the other week which was, oh right at the start it wasn’t a bother at all. I took pleasure in taking every single payment myself. I was just a miracle that I’ve created this business and people are giving me money, and then about a year in suddenly with like a hundred members or a hundred and fifty members, suddenly it slowly becomes like this admin role that you never had envisaged at the beginning.

Sarah:                      So if someone is maybe looking into getting a software system like yourselves, what makes you guys kind of potentially stand out from other things available on the market?

Tim:                          A lot of it comes down to the way that we built things. Now, you can take payments quite simply. We often recommend businesses starting out maybe just start with online payments. Just try to get some kind of order within it. But where we really come to life is the way that we’ve designed the system to be really simple for business owners to use, and we back that up with ridiculously helpful personal support which we take ab...

For the 14th Episode of the OTP Podcast, Mr Dan Rosen joins us once more – this time on the topic of his recent experience with online trolling and facing backlash against his fictional Susan character.

Sarah:                 Welcome Daniel Rosen, back to the podcast

Dan:                 Hello

Sarah:                 We have returned you to the airwaves and the YouTubes.

Dan:                 You have.

Sarah:                 Thanks for coming back. We wanted to come on and talk about a specific topic today. I wanted to talk about online trolling, fake accounts, that kind of thing. Because you’ve had some recent experience with people giving you some messages about what you’ve been putting out onto the interwebs.

Dan:                 Yeah. This is a serious one today because I think our last one was a funny one, wasn’t it?

Sarah:                 It was more about Susan. This is kind of like the reaction to Susan.

Dan:                 This one’s quite a serious chat, which is weird for me, because I don’t normally do those, but I just feel that it’s needed. I just think things have just gotten a bit crazy. I’m just going to tell you, basically, I’ll just give everybody who’s watching this overview for those who don’t follow me, or for those who just want a rough overview. I own a character called Susan and another one called Danielle, who is a teacher and an instructor, both just a theoretical teacher and instructor. They do all the funny things that all the teachers and students do, and I just make jokes with these characters. It’s just a bit of harmless fun, no one is supposed to be offended by them, but of course, someone always is.

Yeah, basically a girl decided to come onto my Facebook page and try to start a boycott Dan Rosen campaign. She basically posted on all of my posts and was being quite mean. I just shared it publicly and people showed their support. Then someone else basically set up a fake profile to message me again, whether it be that girl again or not I don’t know, but basically sent me another fake profile message to tell me how they think what I’m doing is wrong and how they’re a former fan of mine now. Just saying all these mean things. To asking me to think about how this girl’s mental health could be affected and what this could have done to the girl who basically sent me these messages and stuff.

So that’s basically in a nutshell what has happened. I’ve been having to deal with that for the last couple of days. It’s really raised some awareness for me I think of what people actually go through in terms of online trolling because I’ve actually never really had it before. I mean I’ve had the odd stupid comment before but I’ve never actually been trolled before. I did turn it into a bit of a joke at first because I actually genuinely found the boycott Dan Rosen hashtag quite funny. I was just a bit like, what a brilliant hashtag. That’s hilarious, but it’s a shame she genuinely means it really. But I think when it eventually set in I was a little bit like, hm actually this kind of hurt me a little bit. It sent my anxiety right off, like any message … I literally had someone message me yesterday and it’s just a really long message. I didn’t really read the whole thing I just saw it and I got really anxious thinking oh my god it’s someone else messaging to have a go at me for these harmless posts.

So yeah, it’s been a bit of shit few days to be honest, but I’m feeling a bit better now. I feel really sorry for anybody who has to go through that really. Have you ever had it done to you before?

Sarah:                 I’ve had some weird stuff online. I recently had something, which I think I shared with you about someone who got,

Hello you gorgeous creatures and welcome back to the Off The Pole Podcast, I’m Sarah Scott and today for the 13th Episode I have Mr Stevie Hilton joining me for something a little different.

Stevie has been doing pole for almost 10 years, competing in a range of competitions from the Pleonastic Championship, Pole Theatre and Miss Pole Dance Double where he’s placed in doubles and solo categories. He currently trains at Pole Fit in London.

He took on the challenge of this Pole Trivia themed podcast where many of the questions were sent in by you lovely lot!

Scroll down to see how he got on…

Sarah:                 Welcome, Stevie, to my podcast. Thank you for doing this. We were going to do this on Tuesday, but then we realised it would have to be on Tuesday morning. And because potentially this has alcohol involved, it’s no good. So we decided upon a Sunday.

Stevie:                 Yeah that wouldn’t of set us up very well…

Sarah:                 No. I mean I don’t have a real job, but what do you do for life?

Stevie:                 At the moment I work in a bar.

Sarah:                 So you would have been fine too, we should have just done this on a Tuesday.

Stevie:                 Should have just done it, done it on a Tuesday.

Sarah:                 This podcast is gonna be a little bit different because we decided that we would do a pole trivia game. Where I’m gonna ask Stevie a variety of questions. A little bit about you, because we want to get to know … who is Stevie. And then alongside that I’m gonna ask him pole trivia questions and then if he gets them wrong he has to drink and then if he gets them right I have to drink.

Stevie:                 I wanna get Sarah drunk.

Sarah:                 We’ve decided upon an alcoholic beverage, which is Apple Sourz. You did originally say Sambuca but I’m just not hard-core enough for that and I still have to operate machinery.

Stevie:                 I have to do stuff after.

Sarah:                 What do you have to do after this podcast Stevie?

Stevie:                 I have to go on a date.

Sarah:                 So Stevie has a date after this podcast. It’s quite early on a Sunday. It’s six o’clock. So you’re gonna go on date, so we’re gonna see how drunk we can get him before that. Good stuff.

Stevie:                 Putting out on the first date.

Sarah:                 So yeah Apple Sourz is it. I don’t have a shot glass or anything, and I also have green tea because you know, health and balance.

Stevie:                 Water, shot glass.

Sarah:                 Yeah, I’ll just swig it or something that will be fine. So, that’s the game. I dunno why we decided to do this but we did. But it might be fun. I think we’re all gonna hopefully learn something along the way. I did put out on the inter webs for people to submit some questions and there have been … people know some random stuff about the pole industry. So we’ll see how much you know too.

Stevie:                 I don’t know how well that’s gonna go.

Sarah:                 Well, we’ll start you off with a nice easy question of what are your pole class accessories? So if you were going to pole class what’s gonna be in your pole bag?

Stevie:                 Fairy liquid.

Sarah:                 Right?

Stevie:                 Yeah, I know.

Sarah:                 Why? Why fairy liquid?

Stevie:                 Because I find it’s the only thing that really cleans my hands properly, and I think it smells really nice.

Sarah:                 Okay, right okay. Fairy liquid, we’ve got that.

Stevie:                 Fairy liquid I feel is very good for getting anything off especially i...