Episode 007 (unofficially my James Bond episode) of The Audience features my first pair of guests —Jen Capstraw and & April Mullen. Both are email marketers extraordinaire and Co-Founders of the global nonprofit organization, Women of Email. 

Jen is a strategist, speaker, writer and #emailgeek — currently the Director of Strategic Insights and Evangelism at Iterable. April leads client marketing and strategy for Selligent Marketing Cloud. 

We covered a lot of important topics in this jam-packed episode, including:

• A discussion about what’s so fulfilling about being an email marketer
• Why email marketers take to public speaking and engaging an audience so well
• What Women of Email is doing to help mentor its 2500+ members, including a full-fledged WoE speaker bureau
• Important discussions about inclusivity at events
• How we can prevent harassment from occurring at events
• How we might encourage more organizers to implement stronger code of conduct policies.
• Expert advice for speakers from each of Jen and April’s unique perspective

Episode 006 of The Audience features special guest Quinn Tempest, a digital strategist and designer based in Phoenix. For 5 years, she served as Director of Marketing at top internet marketing agency, Vertical Measures. She has worked with enterprise-level corporations, including Banner Health and UPS, to develop large-scale, paradigm-shifting content marketing strategies. As a designer, she helps small businesses and entrepreneurs create attractive, strategic websites and brands that drive holistic results. She is also the co-founder of a successful digital urban awareness platform, This Could Be PHX. 

In this chat with Quinn I dive into a bunch of fun things including:

• How to know as an entrepreneur when you’re ready to leap away from a single “regular paycheck” client to more variety 
• Purposeful work and aligning your day to day with what brings you joy and who you’re draw to serve
• Tips on owning your own voice in business, life, as a thought leader
• Her creative process and alchemy as a designer and brand consultant, and how she applies that to her public speaking
• How she aligns the free flow of creativity and structure in her process
• Why Instagram is her go-to marketing channel, how she uses it, and her other favorite digital tools
• Her take on the event industry, advice to speakers, and self care tips

My guest for this episode of The Audience is Melanie Deziel, Founder of StoryFuel and a brand storytelling speaker who travels the world teaching marketers and publishers how to tell better brand stories. She has spoken at conferences and events around the world, including Content Marketing World, Native Ad Days, SXSW, Social Media Marketing World, Inbound, and more.

Melanie is on the board of the Native Advertising Institute and teaches Content Marketing for Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is the former director of creative strategy for Time Inc. and was the first editor of branded content at The New York Times, where she wrote the sponsored content pieces that won the 2014 and 2015 Best Native Advertising Execution OMMA Award, including the acclaimed “Women Inmates” piece for Netflix.

In this chat with Melanie we dive into a bunch of fun things including:

• How we can each be better storytellers
• Her evolution and best practices as a speaker
• Advice for new speakers
• And her take on how the event industry can create more opportunities for for thought leaders new to the speaking circuit

My guest for this episode is the awesome Ajit Nalwalkha. Ajit is  a serial entrepreneur, global educator & consultant. He is the co-founder of Mindvalley Teach, Evercoach  and Global GRIT Institute, author of The Book of Coaching and Live Big — which comes out today as of the posting date of this episode. 

Born in Jaipur, Rajasthan, living in a home with 23 other people, Ajit has always pursued the dream of Living Big. Over the past decade he has helped build training and coaching companies to inspire the coming generation, transform entrepreneurs to live on purpose, while enjoying their lives while increasing profits. He enjoys exploring the world, learning different cuisines, writing, and spending time with his wife Neeta and their new daughter. 

In this episode we talked about

• Some of the key ideas in his new book, Live Big, just released—which you check out at livebigthebook.com
• Joy vs. happiness and balance as an entrepreneur
• Tips for entrepreneurs off all types to live your biggest, fullest life
• His thoughts on what’s missing in current conversations around entrepreneurship and education

My guest for this premiere episode of The Audience is Ann Handley, which I’m so grateful for. Ann is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author who speaks worldwide about how businesses can escape marketing mediocrity to ignite tangible results. IBM named her one of the 7 people shaping modern marketing. 

Ann is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, the leading marketing training company. She is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, and co-author of Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. She has contributed commentary and bylines to Entrepreneur magazine, IBM’s Think Marketing, Inc. magazine, Mashable, Huffington Post, American Express, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

In this episode we explore a bunch of topics including:

• Her creative process and habits, and how those have evolved
• Where she looks for and captures ideas
• The missing link she sees in many companies’ content
• The weird connection between guarding tomatoes from squirrels and intellectual property

My guest for this episode of The Audience is Michael Barber. Michael is the Senior Vice President, Chief Creative Officer at Godfrey. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. This work has been awarded numerous industry awards, but more importantly has driven successes including the most effective and cost-efficient campaign in the history of a Fortune 500 company, a 160x return on ad spend, and 50 million earned media impressions within the first month of a new product launch. 

Michael is one of Marketo’s Fearless 50 which recognizes the top marketers around the globe driving bold, fearless, marketing and digital transformation.

It was a real treat to spend the time chatting with Michael, exploring a variety of things including: 

• Ingredients and recipe for a great speaking experience
• How to stay in your personal truth as a speaker, no matter what
• Advice for speakers for staying authentic in social media 

I can say from personal experience, working with Michael, that he is truly great at his craft of creating memorable experiences for a variety of audiences. I hope you enjoy!

Welcome to the Audience, Soulful Conversations with People Creating Out Loud.

This is the "origin episode" and gives you an overview of what this podcast is all about. In a nutshell, this is a podcast about how to thrive in the conference and event business. 

Each episode will feature guest interviews and/or solo riffs by me, Jaimey Walking Bear — bringing you:

• Practical advice for building and growing a public speaking business
• Tips for thriving within the speaking or performing circuit once you're there
• Real talk about how we, as a community, can make the event space more inclusive and a safer space in general

This Welcome Episode 001 gives you a sneak peek of what to expect from future episodes of The Audience, which is 100% about serving your whole person as a changemaker and creative. THANK YOU for giving it a listen, and I hope you come back for more goodness. 

xoxo
Jaimey