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Welcome to the Travel Transformation Podcast, where we talk all things travel and all things transformation. My name is Jessica Grace Coleman and I'm your host, and today is just going to be a quick solo episode.

Now, I wanted to do this while this is fresh in my mind because I've just got off a Zoom call inside the Travel Coach Network, which is a program that I’m in. I did the certification program with them. They have a business membership as well. They get guest coaches to come on and talk about a certain topic every month. And the TCN is run by Sahara Rose DeVore, who I've had on my podcast. 

I actually went on her podcast a couple of weeks ago – it hasn't been released yet, but it is on YouTube, if you want to look for the Travel Coach Network and find the video. I can put it in the show notes as well, even though I totally cringe looking back at myself on video interviews, but I need to get over that. 

When I was on her podcast, I talked a bit about my story, about how I was terrified of public speaking and how I used travel as a tool to overcome it when I went to the Basque Country and stayed for a month in a coliving house there, which is run by a company called Sun and Co. Their whole thing is about sharing your knowledge, your skills, giving back to each other, learning from each other, and I knew they did skillshares and presentations and masterminds and things like that. So, I went there with the intention of overcoming my fear of public speaking and my fear of being the centre of attention.

I talked about this on the podcast, and I talked to her about it before; as part of our certification, we have a one-on-one Zoom call, and I talked about it on there with her as well.

And then I got a message from her last week saying that they had done a Zoom training in the program about pitching to podcasts, and I hadn't been able to attend because I was at this business event in London. She said that a question came up about what if you don't want to put yourself out there? What if you are scared to even pitch yourself to a podcast, let alone go on one? In the Zoom, she said, “I think I know someone who might be able to talk about this,” and then she asked me if I would go on as a guest coach.

To think of the me of a year ago, when I wouldn't even have considered pitching myself or applying for a podcast, let alone go as a guest coach on a Zoom to teach people something – and, in particular, to teach people about overcoming a fear of public speaking when that has been my number one fear my entire life, and it has held me back my entire life – to go and talk as an expert on this…. and I'm using air quotes with expert… that's actually part of the thing. I talked about how if you're worried about not being an expert enough, there's this whole thing called the 10% edge, and as long as you're 10% ahead of the people you're trying to teach, that's enough. It gives you permission to go out there and do it anyway, even with imposter syndrome.

Anyway, the fact that I had been asked to go and talk to other people about overcoming a fear of public speaking and putting myself out there, overcoming limiting beliefs, overcoming fears… which is all stuff I talk about. Like, it's my entire point of the book that I wrote, intentional Travel Transformation. It's a lot of the content I put out there on my blog, my podcast, my email lists, and everything on social media. But to actually be asked to go and speak to a group of people about it kind of blew my tiny little mind. 

I was posting about it on social media earlier, saying I was going to do it, and the caption I put was: ‘Year-ago-me would not believe I'd be doing this. It would blow my past self’s mind from a year ago.’ So you never know what is going to happen in the future and you never know what can come out of one thing. 

I applied to go on the Travel Coach Network podcast mainly as practice. That's one of the things I talked about: the importance of practising and getting your message out there. And the more podcasts you go on and the more interviews you do, the more you'll be able to clarify your message and figure out what you're actually doing and what you want to tell people, and you'll get practice telling a story and all that stuff. So, I did it as kind of a practice thing because I knew Sahara, I was in the network, and it didn't seem as scary as doing something with someone I didn't know. 

I had been on a podcast before with the lovely Evelina, who was a friend of a friend who I met at the coliving in the Basque Country, actually. So hers was the first podcast I went on, and again, that was a good one to go on because she's so nice and it was just like a casual conversation. And the Travel Coach Network was the second one I went on, but I've also been pitching myself to other podcasts, to guest blogs – I've just submitted a guest blog for the Travel Coach Network blog – and contacting journalists and pitching myself to them. 

I was featured in an article on coliving, actually, where I was the only one quoted, so the entire article was basically my words, along with the journalist’s, so I got quite a lot of my own story into that article. All this kind of stuff that I just would not have done before. I would not have had the confidence to do it before. I should have been doing it, but I wasn't. 

So, I've just got off the Zoom call, and I think there were seven people. It gets put in a replay cabin in the certification program, which loads of people are signing up to recently, so it's going to be an evergreen thing there that people might see in the future. It actually went really well. I've had quite a few messages from people who attended saying they really liked the tips and tricks and hacks and ideas that I gave them. 

I created a framework for it because I'm obsessed with doing stuff like that. I'm also obsessed with creating things on Canva, so I created a PDF that I put on my website that people could download for free. And I've had messages from people saying they're going to work their way through the PDF and that it's going to help them in upcoming events.

I've had some really great feedback and I'm feeling really good about it… and I didn't throw up! I was nervous, but I wasn't terrified, which is what I would have been before. I would have been so terrified I would have come up with every excuse under the sun to cancel it, or I maybe would have just not shown up… no, I wouldn't do that, I'm far too professional for that, darling! 

It's all very meta, because I'm making a podcast on the subject of putting yourself out there, having just done a talk on putting yourself out there, which is one of my biggest fears and my biggest problems. But we teach what we most need. I hear that a lot and it's so true.

It's actually sort of sent me down a different road. I wasn't planning on doing lots of content around this because I'm more B2C, not B2B, like helping people in business. But now maybe I will. Maybe I'll create a course or something based on this. It won't be the exact thing because this was a special exclusive Zoom for the members of the Travel Coach Network as part of their membership fee, but I might use the PDF I created as a basis for something else.

I'm not going to go through all the stuff because, like I say, I created it solely for this guest coaching session, but I just want to share one of my favourite bits: the alter ego exercise, which I walked them through. I did an episode on this recently – a couple of weeks ago, maybe, now thinking about the schedule. It's always my favourite exercise because I find it so fun. 

Part of it is choosing your transformational song. Well, mine is usually Little Red Wagon by Miranda Lambert because my whole ego thing is a country music singer from the south, like a feisty blonde bombshell who doesn't take crap from anyone. And my transformational item is some red cowboy boots. It all fills into that. But I did think about changing my song after going to this business event recently in London, Expert Empires. I did an episode on this as well. 

At the start of Expert Empires, and I think right at the end – so, bookmarking the two days – they played All Of The Lights by Rihanna and Kanye, but just like the first bit… the hook and then Rihanna's bit. They played it really loud. They put the video on the screen, which was like flashing lights, shooting stars, fast cars – putting the lights on in the room so you can see yourself, basically.

So it's all about: turn on the lights, let me see you. It goes really well with the theme of putting yourself out there in business and marketing yourself and all that kind of stuff. And it's also just a really good song – no matter what you think of Kanye West, you can't deny it is a banger. I never say banger. I don't know why I said that. It's a really good song to get you pumped up! And your transformational song should be a song that gets you pumped up. It shouldn't be like a dreary ballad; it should be something that gets your energy up, it gets you going. 

It got us going on the first day. It was like half nine by the time we all sat down. I'd been there since eight to register and I was networking, talking to people. I was already tired because I'd been out the night before and I had not had enough caffeine, to be honest. Then the song came on, and it was really loud. The guy who runs it, Nick James, was walking to the stage. Everyone was dancing and clapping and really excited to get going. Lots of people were hopped up on caffeine and they were just really ready to start the day of learning and networking.

And, this might sound boring, but if you're into business stuff, it was really exciting. The music just really went with that, so I think I've changed my transformational song – though I can still use Miranda too, it’s fine.

So, before I went on the Zoom call, – the TCN guest coaching Zoom call – I played Rihanna, All Of The Lights. I was just getting in the zone, and all the energy and excitement from that room from last week came flooding back to me. Because music is such a powerful trigger, such a great signal; it's a way to train ourselves to get in a certain mindset or to remember a certain thing, like a feeling, like energy. I just wanted to say I talked about that in the guest coaching. 

My favourite bit, apart from all the alter ego stuff, was… well, I did it in three sections. I did Mindset Reset, the Overcoming Objections section, and Prep and Rep, or Prepare and Repeat. And, as part of Prep and Rep, I talked about three different ways you could prepare for an interview by basically doing your own practice interview. So, I went into that. 

You could get someone else to interview you in real life or on Zoom, and you could record it, you could watch it back, see where you need improving, all that kind of good stuff. If you didn't have anyone to do that with, or if that seemed like too much, then you could do a voice note interview where you get a friend or VA or accountability buddy or whoever you've got to message you maybe a few times in the day with different questions. And then you reply with a voice note. It will get you to practice talking out loud, answering questions… and, again, you can play them back and hear what you sound like. Again, scary but necessary. 

But the third one – which is my favourite one, and which I didn't do until a few days ago, but I had to include it – was to use your new AI friend, your chat GPT friend. If you've not used Chat GPT, you have to – there's a free version and there's just so much stuff. I've been using it to help with my editing. I edit other people's books and I do all the editing myself. So, like, I've not handed it over to Chat GPT. It still gets a lot of things wrong, to be honest, but it does help me sometimes rewrite sentences when I can't think of the right word or the right phrase. It gives me options and it's just brilliant. 

But, I thought, what if I could use my Chat GPT friend and make it my interviewer? So I gave it specific instructions. I was like, ‘I'm going on a podcast about travel transformation, can you come up with some questions for me?’ It gave me a list of questions and some were quite generic, but some were pretty good. And then I was like, this is all very good, but I kind of need to get the back and forth of like, an interviewee. So I gave it the instruction: ‘Can you pretend to be an interviewer and ask me one question at a time?’ And it said, ‘Sure!’ 

So it asked me about a transformative travel experience and I told him about my month in the coliving. And then ChatGPT replied with something about what I'd said and then asked another question, digging deeper, and I replied. And it went on like that several times and we actually got pretty deep – I was getting deep with this thing! – and it was such great practice. I would never have come up with those questions to ask myself. My friends, who aren't really into the whole travel transformation thing, probably wouldn't have come up with it either. If they'd googled questions to ask me, it would just be like a list of generic questions, like the first time I asked ChatGPT; it wouldn't be like going back and forth and having a conversation. 

It was just really, really good. I was very impressed by the really legit things that it was saying. It wasn't just asking me questions, it was giving its own opinion… that sounds terrifying! It was pretending to be an interviewer, giving its own opinion, and I was actually having a conversation with it. 

I created a PDF for the coaching session and I put the script in there just because I thought it was so fascinating. No matter what job you do, could you do something like that with ChatGPT to help you? It doesn't mean that it's taking over your job. AI isn't going anywhere. It's only going to get more and more complex and more and more fascinating and more and more intelligent. 

Actually, my brother has a YouTube channel called Yotty Laboratories. I'll put the link in the show notes, but he does a lot of videos on AI – and one that's a really good one, that's like an introduction to the whole thing. If you don't know much about it, it sort of goes into all the ways AI could go in the future and it gets a bit scary, but that's like the extreme version.

So I know some people are anxious about using it, but I think if you use it, if you learn to use it in a way that helps you, rather than just think of it as, it's going to take my job… I'm a writer, though luckily I'm not a copywriter, because that could actually take my job. I'm trying not to think of it as like, it could take over, but I'm trying to think, how can I use it to help me in my daily work, in my daily life, and with things like this, helping me put myself out there with interviews and stuff? Which I just think is fascinating. Anyway, AI tangent – done. 

So, I've just got off the Zoom. I'm getting some nice messages through, and I just want to encourage you to step outside your comfort zone and do just one thing this week that either scares you or that you've been putting off, because I think we usually put things off out of fear or that just, you know, you need to do, but you haven't got around to it for whatever reason – again, probably fear in some guise or other. But yeah, I highly recommend doing it because you never know where it might lead. 

Like, I did this podcast episode. It went on to this guest coaching session. Now, I've made connections with people who were there. They're working their way through my PDF.

I've asked them to let me know how they get on if they use any of the tips, and at least one of them is going to come on my podcast. 

I offered my podcast as a way to get more practice because I told them my story about how I was so terrified as a kid I wouldn't put my hand up, wouldn't speak up in class, dreaded presentations, all that stuff. They know all that backstory now, so they know that when I interview them on a podcast, if they're nervous, I get it – I totally get it. It doesn't matter if they mess up – and I put that in air quotes – or if they don't know what to say, they know that I've been through it, I'm not going to judge them, and it's just going to be a nice, casual conversation. So I offered that as a next step for them to put themselves out there. And I think it went really well. 

So, yeah, I just wanted to do a quick episode about this and to record it – mainly for me, so in a year or something, I can listen back to it and see how far I've come, see if I've done any other guest spots or any other Zooms or any other talks on putting yourself out there and getting over public speaking. It will be interesting to see.

I just want to thank Sahara for that – Sahara Rose DeVore and the Travel Coach Network. I'll also put the link in the show notes to the Travel Coach Network if you're interested. She also does lots of other stuff about travel and things, which is really interesting. 

I encourage you to step outside your comfort zone because you never know where it might lead. Let me know if you do at info@traveltransformationcoach.com or on Instagram @traveltransformationcoach. 

That's it for now. Until next time, I'll catch you on the flip side, bye!

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Written by Travel Transformation Coach Jessica Grace Coleman, this guide walks you through 10 ways you can transform yourself – and your life – through travel... even when you can't travel!

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