Your Calling is Calling? Are you on mute? | DFS 396

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your host, Jennifer

Takagi, and today you have a pleasure of meeting my friend

Jackie Bailey. And Jackie and I originally met in person, I

believe it was at a speaker's Playhouse live event, and then

we've met at various events over the years and online quite a

bit. Jackie, thanks for being here today.

Hey, Jennifer, it's great to be here with you.

And I think we met in Dallas. Is that? Does that sound right? I

think that might be right. I think it

was Dallas, yeah. And then did we meet New Orleans

too?

We might have Yeah, probably

New Orleans also, yeah. So hey, if you pay attention,

you can go places

and meet cool people. That's right, as I have

done many times.

It's so fun. So Jackie, you've got multiple things going

on. The one thing I love is your speak lead feed, where a lot of

your attention goes to helping young people speak. And I want

to talk about that a little bit, and I want to talk about your

upcoming challenge. But three of my great nieces went to a public

school here in Oklahoma, but it's fairly small in comparison.

And starting in pre K, I think it's once a week, they have the

corral, and all the kids come to the auditorium, and every week,

a grade gets up and they do something on the stage in front

of the whole school. Wow. And then as they age, then they

rotate around which kid takes the mic, but at some point,

every single child in that school has stood on the stage in

front of the whole school and taken the mic. And I thought

that was spectacular, because, as we both know, public speaking

is one of the biggest fears people have death, public

speaking and moving, building a house, I think are like the top

three, and it doesn't have to be that hard and that scary. And I

love the fact that my three great nieces, like grew up

having to take the stage. Then they all were cheerleaders and

in dance, and in dance, you're taking the stage. So I love the

fact that they had this big experience. Fast Forward, one of

my nephews called one day and said, I have to give a

presentation at work, and it's going to be at the owner manager

meeting, and I'm really scared. And it was how I turned my store

around. And so I don't know what to do. Will you help me? And I

only have, I have 15 minutes to tell my story, and I'm really

scared about it. I don't know what to do. I don't public

speak, but you do. And I said, Well, I'm traveling a lot. I'm

not going to be able to help you. Let me find somebody who

can. But if you can get your little talk put together, and I

say little because of the time, not the importance, but the

direction, if you can get that put together, you can practice

it enough that you feel pretty confident when you take the

stage, but the confidence comes from knowing the material and

what you want to say in what order, and you'll be fine. So I

found him a three day workshop that the company would pay for.

I found him a two day workshop, and I found him somebody locally

who charged something minimal, like $50 an hour to help you put

your presentation together and practice it. And he said they'll

pay for whatever. So I got all the information together,

because that was the best I could do, and got him all the

information.

Guess what? Hand? Let me guess he didn't follow

through or do anything about it,

and he quit his job so he didn't have to go give the

talk.

Oh my gosh, wow. Is that really the reason he

quit?

I'm sure he threw something else in there, but on

the list, he didn't tell them that, but he did tell me that I

couldn't do it, and so I I don't say that to shame him, because I

you know, y'all probably aren't going to guess who it is. But I

say that because public speaking is part of our lives, and we

have various formats and ways of doing it. And I hear people

complain about zoom, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I've made some

really great connections on Zoom, and it was just a matter

of time till we could meet in person. And it doesn't bother me

at all. I am an extreme extrovert, but I can sit in my

house in this camera for days on end. I don't even go get the

mail like, it's like, oh, that's just too much trouble. Right

walk to the end of the driveway. I don't even have a. Large

driveway, but you do, and some people are scared to get on

camera, on Zoom or to speak, so the fact that you have an

emphasis, probably not your only emphasis, but an emphasis on

children or younger people, and getting them talking and

speaking is amazing. So kudos to you for that.

Thanks, Jennifer. And I'm excited to know that

there are schools in Oklahoma that are getting these kids,

kids on stages really early. I mean, you said pre K, that's

that's really cool, because what I have learned is kids are

inadvertently told to be quiet or to not speak up. I think, you

know, parents are doing the best they can, but we do say things

to our kids sometimes that make them less comfortable to speak

up. And so when they get opportunity to do it and learn

to be comfortable doing it, that's a big deal, because we

want our kids to feel comfortable sharing what they're

feeling or sharing that they're uncomfortable with a person that

maybe they see every day, or we want them to be able to come to

us when they're making a big decision about something that

could be detrimental for them. And so if we on purpose or by

accident, make them not want to come to us, not want to speak up

when they need to. It's it could be a bad thing, and I think

that's where that fear comes from, is in somebody's past,

they've been judged or ridiculed by something they've said, and

it's just now too scary to actually speak up, and they'd

rather just not say anything. And then, and then we have our

devices today that have not done us any favors when it comes to

learning how to communicate better, because everything's,

you know, everything's texting. In fact, I asked one of my young

students, when she's 14 at the time, I think I asked her to

tell me what her greatest fear was at this time in her life, at

the age of 14, and she said, it's having to talk on the

phone. And I said that was her biggest fear. And she was

serious. She said, Yeah, I had to call. I put my skis into a

repair shop to be repaired for me, and I had to call them back

to check on the progress, and I just couldn't do it. It was just

so scary. It's a big deal for kids, and so I am delighted.

First doctor's appointment. I can't remember

who says their mom was like, make your own doctor's

appointment.

I know, yeah, that would that would just be

too frightening for most of the kids today to even consider.

That's just too much.

It's too much. Well, I was shocked. I had to make a

doctor's appointment. I was like, a senior in high school,

maybe. And I was like, Mom, we don't even have a doctor who we

didn't go to the doctor who did we go to? And she gave me the

name, and I went, and I had a job, and I had a checkbook, and

they said it'll be X amount of dollars for the visit and the

treatment. I had a wart on my hand. I needed burned off. And

years later, I found out I was on their insurance, their health

insurance, all the way through college, and I didn't even know.

My mom was like, Well, you're in charge of that. Take care of

yours. I mean, I don't think she did it, like, intentionally. Oh,

I'm not going to tell her. I think it just didn't, well, make

your own doctor's appointment, do your thing. So, very

different approaches, but technology is technology,

whether it's talking on a telephone or a zoom or, you

know, however that a microphone, you know, somebody hand you the

mic, you say yes, kind of thing, but you have to practice, you

have to learn it. And I love that you work with people and

help guide them to being able to do it better. And I've been at

events where you were one of the coaches giving feedback, and

it's always spot on, clear, concise, direct, and you know,

we need that, and they need to be able to to speak and

articulate what's going on. I had a conversation with somebody

and they have a loved one or a friend, a friend's loved one has

cancer, and they said, Oh, I don't think the doctors are

doing very well, and I don't think they're taking good care

of this person. And I said, The problem is, if somebody's given

bad news, sometimes their brain just shuts off and they don't

hear the rest of it. So do they really have a bad doctor, or did

they just hear part of the information? Because I've

watched that in my own life, and I'm like, Wait, that's not what

they said. I was there. So it's that whole community.

Communication piece, whether you're a listener receiving the

information or the speaker sharing the information, right?

Well? And it could be that the doctor doesn't

communicate very well. I exactly it could be. It could be

happening in both situations, there both sides of the

situation, but, yeah, I mean, if we can't communicate with

someone comfortably, we're in big trouble, because our voice

really is that mechanical part of our system that allows us to

share what we need to share, whether it's information,

whether it's feelings, you know, whether we're protecting

somebody else. I mean, we have to be able to speak up.

Communication is not optional. No matter what language you

speak, you have to be able to share. And so when we are sort

of shut down or quieted or silenced, or something like

that. It can, at least for me, it can change us

physiologically, who we are. It makes us doubt that we have

anything important to say, and literally, can make us sick. I

know a lot of people who have voiced the idea that they

started developing problems with their throat or with their voice

or even their stomach when they were holding things in because

they were afraid to say it. In fact, it was years ago. Bernie

Mindel. Bernie Mindel, he's an MD. He wrote a book called Love

medicine, miracles. I don't Bernie Siegel. Bernie Siegel,

that was his name. He wrote a he wrote a book Love medicine and

miracles, and he talked about cancer. He was, he was treating

people with cancer, and in almost all of these cases, it

was because they were holding on to something and it was

affecting an organ in their body because of what was needed to

say. And one example was a man with stomach cancer, and he was

on his deathbed, and Dr Siegel just said, You know what you

need to tell your family how you feel about them, because you're

this is the last chance to communicate. And when he did,

when he was able to have each of his children come in the room

and vocalize to them that he was proud of them, that he loved

them, and and even share some secrets that he'd never told

them He healed the cancer actually went away. And so it

was living proof that when we hold things in and we don't

communicate, it can literally make us sick. So communication

is absolutely, ultimately important for our health as

well. So well

it is, and we share that information like you say,

sometimes the doctor doesn't have, you know, the best

communication skills. Sometimes we don't ask the right

questions. Like, oh, a friend of mine's dad had been ill, and she

and I talked multiple times on Wait, what about this? What

about this? What about this? We had all the questions, but is

her parents were of the generation that you don't

question the medical profession. They're the experts. They were

not. They did a terrible job in that particular case. So it was

a matter of communication. They didn't feel comfortable asking

those questions and bringing up the information. But to

backtrack a little bit, how did you become so passionate about

this? Because I love that this is your arena and area. But how,

how did you end up in this? I mean, like I ended up in my

stuff, just by happenstance, and one thing led to another. I

didn't just like, wake up and say, oh, I want to have a

podcast one day. I just right,

well, it really came from speaking actually, you

know, I'm I'm a I grew up in an abusive household, and there

were family members who abused me, as well as friends of family

and even some religious leaders, and I just never said anything.

I didn't really have anybody to tell. My parents were not in a

happy marriage, and then they got divorced, and both

remarried, and then another divorce. And I mean, it was just

there was no one I could really tell. And as I said, it's

changed me. I mean, I was a really vivacious, kind of silly

young girl, but that changed as a teenager. I was really quiet.

I was I wouldn't say, I was withdrawn, but I didn't speak

first, because I was always afraid I might tell something I

was told not to tell and it so in 2014 ish, I started preparing

for a contest, a speech contest with international speak speech

contest, and I started to share a little of my healing journey.

Me from my childhood abuse in a speech, and I started winning at

all these different levels as I shared my story. And what was on

the side of that impactful is that every time I shared my

story, someone would approach me in the audience who'd heard it

and said, Thank you for sharing that I didn't know what to call

that, or I didn't know how to define it, or I need to forgive

my mom, and thank you for telling me that that's how you

healed, and all those kinds of things. And so I realized that

when people were hearing what I was sharing, they were receiving

it and being encouraged to take some action in their own lives

from it. And that was pretty cool. So I became I won, like

six out of eight levels of this competition, and I was getting

ready to go to the next level, which was the semi finals, and

it would have been in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2015 and there was

about six weeks between when I won the local level, the state

of Washington level, and going on to the international level.

And so I was kind of this little bit of a celebrity around here.

Now, I had a for profit business. I was a dental

management consultant. And so I was kind of working full time at

that, but in this six week period, as I became this

celebrity, of this local speaker going to this international

competition, there was a group of homeschool parents. They

contacted me and said, you know, we we have this Co Op, we teach

our kids at home, and we always like to enhance their stuff. And

so we want to know if you could give them some public speak, a

public speaking class. And I was like, oh, that sounds cool.

Yeah, I could do that. Can I do that? Yeah. And so these were,

like, middle school kids of 1415, 1314, 15 years old. And

like, that was a there was nine of them. And so I developed

this, I think it was a nine week course. And then when that was

done, I started, they wanted me to do it again. And then there

was a couple of schools nearby this place where I was teaching

this, and they said, we want to send some kids over after

school, if you'll do another class for them. And it just

started to grow and and at the same time, I started to realize

how impactful this was for the kids. I mean, just after two or

three sessions, when one kid would come in on the first day

and barely look me in the eye, by that third week of class,

they were standing up in front of everybody, you know, with

their chest puffed out, and they were saying things they never

told anybody before, and I started to realize, Wow, this is

kind of cool. And so that just kind of blossomed. And I started

developing more and more curriculum, and then I was

holding classes more and more, and they were getting filled up,

and I was trying to find all these places that I could teach

courses, whether it was a conference room at a business

park or or a community room, you know, some at a center or

something like that, anywhere I could find a place to teach

these workshops, and I was doing it, and then I found a brick and

mortar location In 2019

which would have allowed me to just, kind of, instead of

driving everywhere to all these different places, I could just

have the kids come to me. So that opened up in the September

of 2019, and I had a full house, and it was like a 100 year old

house that I that was speaking, was teaching from that I'd kind

of refurbished and made this classroom out of and that kind

of stuff. So that started September 2019, and things were

going great. And then, as we all know, the pandemic hit after

that, and I became a nonprofit in that time too. So I took the

in for the stuff that I had created for with the for profit

business, and now I was using it with the nonprofit business to

continue teaching this curriculum that I had developed.

And so anyway, it's I just started to realize how valuable

this was for the kids, how much they needed it, and how much

parents wanted their kids to have access to this kind of

stuff, so it it basically grew from there. And I really didn't

do much with my management consulting firm anymore. I was

teaching kids full time, even during the pandemic. It was,

let's get on Zoom. Let's continue with these courses. And

you know, it was a little bit teetering on the edge of success

or failure during that period of time because, you know, obvious

reasons,

the covid, yeah.

But we've survived that. We survived that.

And what I have found lately is that I get my greatest joy, not

necessarily in teaching public speaking, but. And really

supporting through coaching kids that that aspire to something

big. They they know they have something really valuable to

say. They don't have a clue as to how to start saying it or who

to say it to. And you know, a lot of these kids will say, I

want to be I want to give a TEDx talk. I have a chronic disease,

and I've learned how to manage it myself. So I want to be able

to share that with someone, or someone come to me and said, you

know, my family immigrated from one country to the United

States, and gosh, it was culture shock in so many ways, and I

found a way to get over that and to become involved with my new

culture and my new community. And I want to be able to share

some ideas. So those are the types of kids I love to work

with now. They aspire to something, and I love to be able

to help them get there and then get them a stage to talk about

it. So I don't do very many classes anymore. It's it's

mostly one to one coaching, and that's what breaks me, my

greatest joy. So that was a long answer to how I ended up with

that, but it was kind of by accident in that I started to

share my story and share my healing journey by using my

voice when I broke the silence of my abuse. And that's it's

just kind of happened from there that now I help other people to

share their voice.

I love that. And as you were talking, I was thinking

about that little I don't know if it was a meme or just a

saying of parents teach their kids the first two years how to

walk and talk and the next 20 how to sit down and shut up. And

there's a lot of truth to that. And so it's like finding and

learning as a person, from a little person on up, that there

are appropriate times to speak up. Appropriate times not but

often, as we know, what happens is when it's not the appropriate

time to speak up, they decide that every time is inappropriate

to speak up so that that's like that, that balancing act. But I

know I took my first speech class in seventh grade, seventh,

eighth and ninth grade. I was in speech class and did speech

competitions, and I liked it. I was actually tongue tied as a

kid, and I didn't speak at all till I was almost three. And my

mom said, Is there something wrong with her? She's the

youngest and she doesn't speak at all. Is like, is she okay?

Mentally, intellectually, intellectually. And the doctor

goes, she's probably the smartest one you got. She's

gotten whatever she wanted for three years now without ever

saying a word. So my dad would say, we clipped Jennifer's

tongue, and she had never spoken a word, and then she never shut

up. And first grade, my report card, Jennifer's a great

student, but she talks too much in class. And so second grade,

I'm not going to talk so much in class. I couldn't do it like, I

lasted like, I don't know, 15 minutes or something. I'm just,

you know, Yeah, Dad, you're right. You were right. May you

rest in peace, but you're right. I never shut after that, but

going to those beach competitions and stuff, I have a

girlfriend now, and she's like, I was driving to Tulsa, which is

about a two hour drive, and the next day, I was giving the

opening keynote talk at a conference. And she was like, Oh

my gosh. Are you ready? Are you scared to death? And I was like,

No, I'm kind of excited. And it's kind of odd that I'm going

to be speaking to CPAs, but I think like, I'm typically, yeah,

it'll be fine. And she was like, I just want to throw up for you,

you go ahead and do that,

but you know, I didn't really realize as an adult how

much doing that at 1213, 1415, years old molded how it was

easier as I got older. So if you're not introduced to it, if

you're not getting any type of training or guidance whatsoever,

it, it makes it much harder to do, and then you can't share

that story, and you can't share, Oh, I did this and I was healed,

or I did this and this was my journey. Or I remember talking

to a girlfriend and and in our circle of friends, I'm going to

say super loose circle, a couple that, like projected themselves

as the perfect family. Of course there was a breakdown, because

there's always a breakdown because there is no such thing

as a perfect family. I hate to be the one to spoil it for some

of you, but there's always a crack somewhere, if you didn't

know. And my friend said, Oh my gosh, all these years, I thought

they just had the perfect life. And I looked at her, I went, Oh,

girlfriend, nobody does like, like we we all do the best we

can and have the best time doing it that we can. But there's no

such thing as perfect. So I. Uh, that was like a big opening

moment for her, which, if again, communication, if it hadn't come

out that, Oh, everybody has a little chink in their armor, she

was going to continue feeling less than right. And she's not

less than right. None of us are. We're all. We all have our

superpowers. Yours are just different than

mine, right?

Yeah, I love Go ahead, yeah.

I mean, and we know what we just we, as I

mentioned before, sometimes we as parents or or aunts and

uncles, cousins, whatever, when we have children in our

stewardship, we often silence them. And I do remember during

the pandemic, many of my students would had told me I

can't share with my parents the fear and the concern and the

uncertainty that I feel, because I know they're stressed out.

They're worried about their jobs, they're worried about

grandma and grandma getting sick, and I can't add to the

burden or the weight of the family by sharing how I feel.

And that broke my heart, because I know the parents weren't

trying to do that, but by not sitting down with their kids and

saying, Hey, look, These are trying times. These are some of

the things you know, we're worried about, and it's okay to

have that worry. It's okay to have that fear. As a family,

though we're going to do everything we can to get through

this together and make sure everybody comes out okay, but

don't worry about what mom and dad are worried about, because,

you know, as adults, we got bigger things to worry about,

but don't be afraid to share with us how you're feeling about

things that would have been that would have made such a

difference for the kids that told me that they just had to

just swallow it. And what happened then during a pandemic

is a lot of those kids took their own lives because they

didn't have a way, not my kids, but other kids, they didn't have

a way to share it. They didn't feel like they had anything to

contribute to what was happening at that time, and without life

experience to understand we're going to get through this, life

might look a little bit different on the other side, but

it's going to be okay without knowing that they couldn't see

an end to it, this was their darkest of days, and it was just

best to to walk away from it. And unfortunately, it happened a

lot during the pandemic. And you and you

had the the lack of connection with other people,

and you talk about the devices, which can be problematic, but

they also lost the ability to run and play and do things with

their kids, and so the you know time is going to tell of of the

overall recovery of it. But as you and I both know we have a

choice once we become an adult. As a kid somewhat, but as an

adult, as we see more things and get more experiences. We have a

choice, like, I want to heal from this. I want to move on

from this. And, you know, we can, like, do that, but when

you're dealing with the kid like, they don't see that, they

don't see a possibility, I remember my mom would always

say, This too shall pass. And I believed her, and I heard it my

whole life, and there was an extremely devastating period of

time. And she said, Jennifer, this too shall pass. And I

looked at her with tears running down my face, and I'm not much

of a crier, so if I cry, it's like a big deal. You need to

stop pay attention. I had tears running down my face, and I

went, it is going to pass, mom, but not today. Like it's not

going to pass today, but I know that it will, so I still had

that hope, but it was like, give me a little bit of space, it'd

be not okay today, but that being able to have that

conversation, because there was probably a time when I would

have never said that to my mother, right? I was an adult

when this was going on, but even as a kid, I probably would not

have shared that or said that to my mom, so that open

communication in so many ways. I had a conversation with someone

this week, and it was a business type situation, and I hang out

with the phone, and I thought, Wow, I'm just really proud of

myself for being able to give her solid guidance on how to

handle a very difficult conversation. And later, I got a

text message, and it was like, wow, that was so helpful. Like,

you have no idea how helpful that was. It was like, yay.

Like, all of this is for a reason. I'm so glad it's helpful

with that. But again, you got to have that continuous learning

going on and being able to communicate and share, which, I

mean, that's one of my favorite things, is to share what I just

learned. Like, Oh, guess what I just found out. Let me tell you

all,

yeah, yeah, no, that's great. You are a

wonderful. Communicator. Jennifer, you have a special

sense about people and when they need you to either just give

them a pound of back or a hug or a compliment. You have a great

sense for that, and we need more people like you, because many

times if, someone feels a sense of some something's a little off

about that person, they ignore it instead of give them a hug or

just say, Hey, you're awesome. Thanks. Thanks for being you.

You know, sometimes just a smile or simple things like that

changes the trajectory of someone's day, and that can make

a big difference. So you're the kind of person that I know would

never shut anybody out, and so that is your your superpower,

and I appreciate that in you very much.

Oh, thanks. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that

very much. Oh, what is it? Thank you. I received that. Let me

breathe that in. That's right. So you have a challenge coming

up. Tell us challenge? I'm kind of excitable about this.

Yeah, in May, we're going to do our 30 days to

unmute your voice challenge. And so every day of May, the people

doing the challenge, which can be join. You can join that

through my Facebook page. They will be given a tip or a trick

or some way to shift the way they think about speaking and

sharing their voice and how they might say it in a more powerful

way. So there'll be 30 days of that, there'll be short little

clips that you can learn from every day with sometimes a

little bit of a encouraged challenge to take on that day,

to do something, but mostly just shifting the way you think about

your communication and how to say things, not necessarily

better, but with more impact to the person who's receiving it.

So you can find out more about that if you join our Facebook

page, the Speak feed, Lead Project Facebook page, and that

will start on May 1, and the end result will that will be that

they get to be in a workshop with me to dive a little bit

deeper into putting all of those tips and tricks into play and

actually thinking about what would be their signature talk,

which in my definition, is, what is it that you are uniquely here

to say that the world needs to hear, because it's a way that

You can contribute to the betterment of the planet, and

that's a signature talk. And even if you never plan on

getting on a stage to as a speaker, a speaker, knowing what

your signature talk would be, knowing what you would say if

you had five minutes to say, the most important thing you know

that keeps you grounded. It keeps you in alignment with your

purpose and who you are, and gives you that added confidence

you need to say, hey, I can, I can contribute to things.

Because I, I do have something that I could share, something to

say. So anyway, that will be the result of it is some some time

with me.

Oh my gosh, I love that. I'm I'm going to be out of

town a bit in May, but you better believe I'm going to be

hopping over there and signing up for this too, because the

probably the biggest thing that I've learned in my years on this

earth is that there's always room for improvement. If you're

not learning you're dying, you've got two choices, and that

is a choice you can learn more or not, and being able to share

what you want to share in a in a positive way, even if it's a

difficult conversation, you don't have to destroy the other

person in that conversation, or building somebody up as

beautifully as you just built me up. Jackie, that was so sweet. I

appreciate you being here today. How fun. Thank you.

Yeah, we were we ended up on a same meeting

together coincidentally. And it was like, hey, Jennifer, I

haven't seen you in a bit, so it was great to reconnect with you

after at least a little while. I know that we sometimes end up

and say meetings together, but we don't actually get to chat

during those meetings. But this, on this particular occasion, we

did.

So we did and I was recently on your podcast. What's

your podcast? Tell our people about your podcast.

It is in the groove with Todd and Jackie and

so I co host that with my husband, and you can find us on

Spotify, on Apple podcasts, all the platforms, YouTube, you name

it. So we're all out there, and we talked to wonderful people

like Jennifer,

wait, I've been on your podcast. You have it on my son?

Look, we made it happen. Yeah, absolutely. Well. Well, thanks

again for being here. Jackie, do you have any last words for our

audience before we hang up?

I would just say, say something today that you're

afraid to say, don't, you know, just tell go to someone that is

likely going to be good to hear it. You know that they won't

ridicule you or judge you and say something, say something

that you've been holding back. Say it today. That's my advice.

Yeah, that's great. Thanks for being here. Jackie,

thank you. I'm Jennifer Takagi with destin for success, and I

look forward to connecting with you soon. Bye.