Episode #41: With Rachel Jenkins, on selling yourself and your story without selling your soul

Welcome to another LEGENDARY episode! Our Legendaries are special guests who are an expert within their area of storytelling. In this episode, Courtney Shack and Ghabiba Weston have the pleasure of interviewing legendary Rachel Jenkins.

Rachel loves stories in all forms. An educator at heart, she has taught literature and communications at the high school level and coordinated learning assistance programming at the college level. She helped develop the Public Speaking Center at UT Austin and continues to coach today. Currently, she is a feature writer for Southern Arkansas University. When she's not writing fantasies, you can find her re-watching her favorite mockumentaries, settling in for long game nights with friends and family, or drinking boxed wine by a fire.

Rachel lives in Arkansas with her web developer partner Joshua, their two children, and a very rude cat.

In this episode:

• The importance of sincerity when pitching
• The balance of what matters and making money
• Rachel’s infamous document for pitching 
• Courtney distills herself down to three words in an exercise you can do too
• We reference our episode with Laura Thomas and the idea of having a framework for how one sees the world
• Gabi discusses using flash fiction as an exercise to pitch your story
• Courtney describes Gabi as someone with “final boss energy”
• Pitching on the page versus in person (with tips)
• Stage fright and anxiety, with some practical strategies that may help
• Neuroscientist Gabi enters the chat about the stress-effect of public speaking 
• Amy Cuddy’s “Fake it til you make it” TED talk on lowering your stress hormones and using confidence poses
• Special mention of the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle and the science of 20 second hugs to reduce stress 
• Rachel gives a mile-long snack list

Find us on our website and on Instagram at @storybeastpodcast.  For more storytelling content to your inbox, subscribe here. 

Feel free to reach out if you want to talk story or snacks! 

A warm thank you to Deore for our musical number. You can find more of her creative work on Spotify. 

As ever, thank you for listening, Beasties! Please consider leaving a review to support this podcast. 

Be brave, stay beastly!