Just ahead of my first interview for #impact Podcast a good friend asked me how I felt. This is what I answered:
I am excited, a bit nervous but mostly confident.
This was a lie.
What I felt was horror. I was so nervous about this very first recording that I did not even mind that my one-year-old daughter kept me up all night. I couldn’t have slept anyway.
Sue Toomey, Executive Director at HandsOn Hong Kong, who features in the first episode of #impact Podcast was never meant to be the very first person to be interviewed for the show.
I had already scheduled a couple of interviews with social enterprise founders, people in my age just starting out. As much as I look up to them as well, it felt much less intimidating to start off my Podcast recordings with one of them. After Pol Fàbrega from Rooftop Republic had moved his interview to another day, my very first recording turned out to be with one of the women I look up most to.
My heart stopped…
…when I realised Sue would be the very first guest on the show.
My good friend Célia was kind enough to let me practice-interview her, just so that I loose my nervosity when it comes to recording. Funnily enough, that interview with Célia took on a life on its own and turned into an audio mini-series about her family business. But that’s another story.
Back to that very first, nerve-wracking interview for #impact Podcast.
I knew Sue from my freelance work at The Economist and she had since moved to a new role in the Non-Profit sector. She had always impressed me with her drive, passion, professionalism and the support she showed for the team members around her.
After she had replied that she would be thrilled to do an interview with me, I cursed myself that I reached out to her so early. After all, this was my very first recording for #impact Podcast and a million things could go wrong. Of course, I wanted to interview her, but I needed to make sure to do it right. At that point, the technical set up still challenged me a lot. Who am I kidding, it still does challenge me today. It is always nerve-wracking to get that recording right.
These people give me their valuable time.
It would be so embarrassing if I could not use the interview in the end. After Sue and I had finished the recording, I saved the file on my desktop, on Google Docs and in three additional on- and offline folders, just to be on the safe side.
What surprised me most is that nothing went wrong that day.
Sue was the first and by far the most smooth recording I did.
The interviews that followed proved more challenging, be it because of microphone, software or voice failure from my side.
A couple of months later, the show launched on iTunes.
Sue was one of the first to congratulate me and has been supporting me ever since. This is what she posted just after the episode went live.
Because I look up to Sue so much, it makes me incredibly happy that she is — even if it happened by accident — the very first guest on #impact Podcast and I do have to thank Pol for rescheduling his interview.
There is another thing about Sue. She gets me.
Although this interview was the very first time that the two of us spoke for longer than just a few minutes at the office or an event, she recently shared something with me that made me smile. She wrote:
I’m inspired by Regina’s vision and passion for sharing stories about people who are trying to make a difference. She’s such a delight to speak with and a natural at interviewing — it felt just like a chat over coffee with a friend.
This felt strangely familiar. When looking through my mission statement, I found my notes about the ideal listener of this show. I wrote:
I would love for my listeners to feel like they are eavesdropping on two friends that are having a conversation on topics they care about deeply.
Every week I am trying to achieve just that and I am grateful that Sue is the one that happened to be my very first guest.
