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.

Tiff Finney | Too Confident? | Episode #021

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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.

Crystal Gibson Interview | Balancing Studio Owner Life

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 

Stacey Clare | The Ethical Stripper | Episode #020

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.

Stacey Snedden |Time Management and Naked Newsletters| Episode #019

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?

Tiff Finney | Too Confident? | Episode #021

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