EP 79: Culinary Storytelling: A Toastmaster’s Journey on Voice4Chefs with Ray Miller

Transcript

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In this special episode, I want to extend huge gratitude to the inspiring Toastmaster and Leader Ray Miller for welcoming me as his guest.

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Together, We delve deep into the evolution of Voice4Chefs toastmasters, and the culinary conversations that fuel the Voice4Chefs podcast.

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Welcome to episode 15 of the District 7 podcast.

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I am happy to share our conversation with the host of the Voice4Chefs podcast, Michael Dugan.

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Michael is a Toastmaster in District 7, a member of the Podmasters Toastmasters, and has a podcast with, at the time of this conversation, 70 episodes.

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Get ready for an enlightening conversation about giving voice to passion, sharing doubts, fears, courage, and tenacity in the Voice for Chefs podcast.

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This is the District 7 podcast, presented by Podmasters Toastmasters.

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My name is Ray Miller and please enjoy this conversation with Michael Dugan.

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welcome to the District 7 podcast.

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Michael, how are you this morning?

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I am fantastic.

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Are you ready for my first question?

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Oh, absolutely.

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I'm interested to hear your answer.

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Michael, what is the best sandwich?

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Alright, so I have not shared this with you, but I just realized it.

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When I was first dating my wife, We had this place called Larry's market.

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Larry's market was a gourmet food shop and grocery store in Seattle, Washington.

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It's gone now, but back in the day when I was dating my wife, I bought crab, but I didn't just buy crab.

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I bought soft shell blue crab because I made her a soft shell blue crab sandwich.

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Now, if you don't know, soft shell blue crabs have the whole body, like the whole shell they shed and you eat everything.

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Including the eyes, and she saw it and she was grossed out, but she ate it and she asked me for a second one.

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That's always been my favorite, is soft shell blue crab.

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They call them poor boys, actually.

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I've heard of them before, I really like the sound of that.

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I've said this in the last interview that I recorded too.

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Okay.

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I ask that question because it always leads to an interesting story, and I'm not I'm not writing a cookbook about the best sandwich, but I've had a lot of great stories from that one.

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When did you first join Toastmasters leading into that?

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What was, when you joined Toastmasters, what did you, what was your reason for coming into it the first time?

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Well, the very first time that I heard about it, I was at Washington State University in school and I was taking a speech communication class and people weren't very serious about the class.

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they wanted a party in college and everything.

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And I was very serious, this is my junior year or senior year.

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I wanted to get better at public speaking.

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And I always had a fear of standing up in front of people.

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Sounds familiar for a lot of us.

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And the teacher took me aside at the end of the semester.

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And he said, you have great speeches.

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Have you ever thought about Toastmasters?

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And I was like, I have no idea what that is.

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And he explained it to me.

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I waited a few years after I graduated from college, I went to a Toastmaster club North of me.

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Now, probably about 40 minutes North.

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I won't give you the name because I walked in, they ignored me.

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There was 20 people in the room.

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They ignored me.

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And in the middle, they asked me to introduce myself and tell a story about myself.

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And I felt so nervous.

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And at the end, they completely ignored me.

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So I never went back for 10 years, but then one day I was working for Boeing in the corporate headquarters.

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And I saw an announcement that said, come to a potluck and learn about toastmasters, it was on the fifth floor of the executive building.

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I was nervous.

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I had this vision that was going to be judged by sales executives, vice presidents that were in the building.

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And I worked in technology there.

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And so I went.

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And I was greeted by so many amazing people.

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They gave me hugs and just made me feel incredible.

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The next week I gave my icebreaker and I just fell in love.

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And that was over 10 years ago.

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And I've been in Toastmasters ever since six years in leadership, just had an amazing journey.

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I went, like everybody else to get over my fear.

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I feel like that is a relevant story for.

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Anybody who's been in Toastmasters for a long time, I think I've been in Toastmasters almost the same time as you have, because I joined in 2013.

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Wow.

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Because my other half said, you need somebody to talk to.. So that was her encouragement to me, but I had stage experience before.

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It wasn't a stage frame thing.

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It was a storytelling thing for me.

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Wow.

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I'm also, one of the, one of the topics of conversation that we talked about in our pre interview and we want, I wanted to circle back to is talking about our common interest in podcasting and interviewing because you've been running your own now successful podcast yeah.

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Actually, it's been two seasons.

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And there should be 70, 69 or 70 episodes total, 70, zero, yeah, seven, Oh, incredible journey.

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Just incredible.

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What was your experience in your first, 10 episodes, did you pre record them all or did, were they haphazard?

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Did you book guests as you were catching them for that first, first

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few?

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Oh my gosh.

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Just thinking back, the very first.

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First couple, I do prerecorded and not because I'm nervous.

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I was nervous in the beginning.

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I had imposter syndrome.

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Like many people, as I went along, I got over it, but I do it for the chefs to make it prerecorded because their schedules are so tight.

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They're so stressed.

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So it's kind of like a coaching session when I do an interview because I help them relax.

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That's why I do prerecorded.

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And so in the very beginning, though, it was challenging because the first episode was called stay hungry and it was with my wife.

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And I'll tell you, that was very challenging.

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That was very emotional because that was the first episode.

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But also I had a Yeti mic, which I did not like.

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And I used it and literally she stood on a stool because she's shorter than me and we went on both sides of the microphone having a conversation because that's all I could afford at the time, one microphone and editing 16 minute episode took me six hours.

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Because I was learning audacity.

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I was learning how to edit, but also trying to edit somebody talking into a microphone from both sides is pretty challenging.

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So back then, I launched with three episodes and I had no idea how I was going to get the next chef.

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It was very risky in the beginning.

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but now they call me from all over the world.

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So it's I can't keep up, I've got lots of guests, but back then it was three episodes pre recorded.

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And a lot of learning, steep learning curve.

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Oh, yeah.

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I mean, when I said pre recorded too, I was meaning more like lots of episodes recorded in the can.

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Not live stream, but more like recording.

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Like I, I do pre recorded.

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Well, I record, but one or at one point over the last year, I've had four episodes in the can that I've been.

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Working on an edit for yeah, but the but we're like pre recorded in the backlog.

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Like how many episodes do you have in your editing backlog at this point

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right now?

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I think I have four.

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but see back then that's the other thing.

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I used to call restaurants in Seattle and beg the manager to talk to their chef.

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And it took a month to get that conversation to happen.

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Now I have five other people that I need to reach out to all over the world.

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And literally I'm getting ready to start those conversations, do pre interviews like we do, which is the best way to go.

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Yeah.

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but right now I have three or four that are in the hopper.

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I got to finish editing.

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Yeah, I can see as things grow and as things, gain momentum, you just want to keep up with the conversation and keep having this conversation.

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Tell me a little bit about your podcast.

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what is the one thing that you're wanting to drill down to when it comes to each podcast in the, when you're talking to a chef?

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my wife is a user experience and a senior user experience.

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Person and designer, and she's very creative and she taught me early on about creating experiences.

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So for me, it's not about asking questions.

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It's about creating a whole journey.

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Every interview, I do a lot of research and it's like a walkthrough of the chef's life, and one of my favorite episodes, a very special one was with a French chef in Vancouver, Canada.

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And when we interviewed, he opened up and it was like, he was semi retired and he was looking back at his whole life.

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And I mean, I asked just a few questions and all of a sudden I was just following his whole career.

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Those are the kinds of interviews that I try to create are those chef experiences.

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You remember what episode that was?

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I don't remember.

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Yeah, it was, gosh, his last name was Kutan.

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And I've got a, I don't have it handy, I mean, I can post it in show notes or something like that, but it was really incredible because he cooked for royalty in Thailand.

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He actually worked in a restaurant where they got their first Michelin star and he was a kid and the chef said, you can't tell anybody.

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And he's telling me the story, right?

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He's semi retired and he just opened up with all this emotion and it was so natural and transparent.

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Frederick Couton is the name.

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yeah, you can look it up, but, oh my gosh, it was epic.

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And then I interviewed his son.

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And the reason that I did this was because they create lobster oil.

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And it's this concept of fancy restaurants would use it in Canada and they pour it on bread or they put it in soup.

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And it's something you can have for a long time.

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And they literally go from the West coast to the East coast to get the lobster, to extract the oil.

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And I just thought it was brilliant.

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And so it's a father and son thing.

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Right.

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The father is the chef.

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The son is a marketing guy.

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Right.

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And he's really good.

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So I interviewed both of them, but Frederick just hit my heart because I mean, he's cooked for presidents.

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He's cooked for royalty and he was so humble.

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And that experience was epic.

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And Canadian, by the way.

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Well, yeah, I mean.

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I know.

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I know about Vancouver Leading into my next question, as a former professional chef, people find it challenging to watch movies or TV shows with you, where a chef or a cooking or a kitchen is an important part of the story.

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You mean if I'm watching a movie with somebody else?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Around

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that.

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I get pretty passionate about it.

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You could ask my wife, but I don't have PTSD, which I probably had when I worked in the restaurant business.

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It was really tough.

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Like watching the bear, people talk about that, the bear.

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And if you don't know, it's a show about the restaurant business.

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I'm kind of fearful because friends of mine that are chefs said they kind of felt PTSD from it.

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And I don't know if I want to go back to that feeling, but I kind of do, I kind of want to connect back to it, but I love watching chef shows.

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Absolutely love it.

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The problem though, is that they glamorize the stress and it's real stress.

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PTSD and mental health is a real thing in the restaurant business.

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People are abused.

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And that's part of what the podcast is about is to expose that and to talk to people and help them share those experiences and help them kind of heal as well.

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I'm, I, one thought talking about PTSD and chef

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is

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One of the movies that had a huge impact on me in my cooking was the Jon Favreau movie, Chef.

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Oh yeah.

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And

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there was that scene in the early part of the movie after he'd extricated himself from his commercial kitchen and everything like that.

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huh.

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When he lined up, when he basically went to a farmer's market and picked up a bunch of stuff and then went home and just made this incredible spread at home on his own table.

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And sampling all the textures and everything like that.

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That changed my experience for how I look at things.

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Restaurant food in general.

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So I look for opportunities for that kind of storytelling and seeing that the stress has some, has a root as well.

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And it's funny because I gear questions to create storytelling.

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Every question has a purpose.

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And it's so important as a podcaster, if you're listening and you're thinking about podcasting, don't just ask random questions, ask something that you think is going to bring some emotion or some powerful story from your guest.

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That's why I start , my, questions always off with the sandwich question because I love it.

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Yeah.

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Everybody has a different story about their favorite sandwich, which is interesting.

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And then sometimes people will answer like explaining why a hot dog is a sandwich, which is an interesting answer in its own way too.

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Yeah.

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it's.

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It is an interesting thing to dig into.

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Always, there's a story involved in everything.

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Into Toastmasters stuff, and I'm imagining this, because I've worked in kitchens before.

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Cool.

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I'm always interested in Microprocesses or practices.

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like the sous chef who, the sous chef who makes the, like the prep cook who makes everything the right shape, the right texture, the right everything.

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And I think about that in a Toastmasters world too.

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Every single role, every single project has it's only, it's own micro

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Checklist.

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The thing that you, the, like the texture that you want to get out of.

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The kind of thing, have you noticed any, from your perspective, rhymes or similarities between the kitchen practice of making things with the right shape and the right texture into the Toastmasters world by the chair person or the table topics master or the counter even.

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You could think of it this way.

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There's a famous French term called mise en place.

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And it's about being prepared.

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It's about having your stuff together to be politically correct.

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you have your onions chopped, you have your celery chopped, you have your mushrooms chopped, you have everything lined up for the day.

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Your prep work is done.

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Your mise en place is ready to go.

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So when you hit the sauté line as a chef or as a cook, you've got all your ingredients in front of you.

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You got your sauces ready, because honestly, if you don't.

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Then you're in a panic.

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Then you're in a catch up for the whole day.

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So it's kind of like giving a speech, right?

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You practice it.

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You get ready for it.

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You get criticism from it.

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Maybe I record every speech before I give it and then I listen back to it and then I evaluate it.

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But that's the kind of preparation mise en place that I do before I prepare.

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If I have a grammarian role, I might go out on the web and research being a grammarian, tips and tricks and maybe have a checklist and those kinds of things.

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So for me, it's all about mise en place and that's something I learned in the restaurant business.

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The one evaluation that changed things for me was always the ah counter evaluation six or seven years ago, I remember, and the evaluation in the explanation at the end of the meeting when he's giving the count of, this many ums, this many ahs, this many sos, this many filler words at the end of his evaluation, he said, I'm not counting these because they're not words that your words are not supposed to be using.

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I'm counting them because unconscious use of these words.

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is the thing that I'm learning to practice and recognize.

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You can use filler words, they're totally fine as long as you're aware of them.

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What is your brain automatically doing in between thoughts though?

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That's where filler words become Interesting.

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And it's interesting too.

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And maybe you already have this as a question, but I definitely want to interject this filler words are a nightmare in podcasting.

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And I'll give you an example.

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I interviewed someone from California and they said 250 times in a 45 minute episode.

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For me, I spent a lot of time working through editing, cleaning that up.

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Because I want that person to shine and the curse of being a Toastmaster is I hear all these filler words over and over again.

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And it's something that it's in my heart to help them, to release some of those filler words.

00:17:43.794 --> 00:17:48.374
You don't want to release all of them, but some of them so that they sound more professional.

00:17:48.733 --> 00:17:50.584
And as a Toastmaster, we all understand that.

00:17:51.294 --> 00:17:55.034
But it's hard as a podcaster to listen to those.

00:17:55.074 --> 00:17:56.243
That's painful.

00:17:56.644 --> 00:17:58.953
As a podcaster, and I know you know this,

00:17:59.003 --> 00:18:00.443
it's a perfect interjection.

00:18:00.453 --> 00:18:05.003
My painful experience in my experience has been editing myself.

00:18:05.473 --> 00:18:08.503
Oh, yeah, because I'm listening to myself talking.

00:18:08.503 --> 00:18:09.534
I'm like, Oh, that.

00:18:10.959 --> 00:18:12.318
Why did you say that?

00:18:12.348 --> 00:18:13.358
That was terrible.

00:18:13.368 --> 00:18:13.618
Why?

00:18:14.769 --> 00:18:15.608
Stop talking.

00:18:15.608 --> 00:18:16.148
Stop talking.

00:18:16.949 --> 00:18:21.419
But these are all things that you run into when you come into your own storytelling.

00:18:21.959 --> 00:18:26.949
Here's something that I really do and I want my guests to sound better than I do.

00:18:27.459 --> 00:18:35.828
So I actually edit less filler words for myself than I do for my guests because I just feel like I want to honor them.

00:18:35.939 --> 00:18:37.838
That's the whole point behind the podcast.

00:18:38.328 --> 00:18:49.038
in my experience in this last year that I've been doing this, I actually have not been editing out filler words from the video podcast because in a video podcast, they're,

00:18:49.489 --> 00:18:50.439
yeah, it's too hard.

00:18:51.189 --> 00:18:51.608
Yeah.

00:18:51.689 --> 00:18:55.868
And it's not a matter of it's too hard, it is just less natural.

00:18:56.439 --> 00:18:58.368
Yeah, so I'm aware of the filler words.

00:18:58.368 --> 00:18:58.739
I might.

00:18:59.419 --> 00:19:02.788
edit or chop around them, but I don't remove them.

00:19:03.189 --> 00:19:05.999
at least I don't make any conscious effort to remove them.

00:19:05.999 --> 00:19:13.739
I mean, if it's an easy thing, that's like a long pause filled with a, filled with another long pause, then I'll chop that off in the middle.

00:19:14.068 --> 00:19:17.199
Part of the storytelling can sometimes be the filler words

00:19:17.298 --> 00:19:17.648
agreed,

00:19:17.719 --> 00:19:18.699
which is useful.

00:19:19.088 --> 00:19:23.499
I think I do less removing of filler words because I want it to be more natural.

00:19:24.088 --> 00:19:28.548
And if you're listening, when you first start out, there's a little bit of that anxiety.

00:19:28.719 --> 00:19:30.669
That you go through and you're like, you want it to sound perfect.

00:19:31.179 --> 00:19:34.648
I've gotten to a point where it doesn't have to sound perfect anymore.

00:19:34.979 --> 00:19:36.548
People love it for what it is.

00:19:37.219 --> 00:19:38.638
And that's what really matters.

00:19:38.648 --> 00:19:44.648
So I did get hung up and probably talk too much about filler words, but this is more for people that are listening.

00:19:44.659 --> 00:19:48.128
maybe they're starting out as a podcaster and they're just wondering, how do I do it?

00:19:48.548 --> 00:19:49.469
What do I look for?

00:19:50.128 --> 00:19:56.199
And that, I think it's important to recognize them, but not to too much anxiety around them.

00:19:57.064 --> 00:19:57.854
Absolutely.

00:19:57.884 --> 00:19:58.683
Absolutely.

00:19:58.753 --> 00:20:05.384
That's what the ah counter is all about, recognizing the conscious and unconscious use of filler words.

00:20:07.864 --> 00:20:14.874
At this point now, like you said, you've got four or five people basically calling and you've got four in the backlog of editing.

00:20:14.874 --> 00:20:15.023
Yeah.

00:20:15.023 --> 00:20:15.374
Yeah.

00:20:15.909 --> 00:20:19.509
How do you go about scheduling guests for your podcast at this point?

00:20:19.519 --> 00:20:25.548
Do you have an assistant or somebody that basically, helps you schedule these things now or is it still all yourself?

00:20:25.648 --> 00:20:29.078
I am looking for an assistant, to be honest, somebody that's passionate.

00:20:29.088 --> 00:20:37.189
Maybe they're in Toastmasters, maybe they're hearing this, but this is an amazing experience for someone to connect to chefs around the world.

00:20:37.709 --> 00:20:41.098
And to hear their stories and be part of something that's really special.

00:20:41.828 --> 00:20:42.878
I'm looking for that.

00:20:43.269 --> 00:20:44.519
I do work full time.

00:20:44.848 --> 00:20:47.509
This is self funded, so it's tricky.

00:20:47.628 --> 00:20:51.378
I do it myself now, but yeah, I'm definitely looking for that.

00:20:51.388 --> 00:20:53.128
So I schedule out with them.

00:20:53.298 --> 00:20:56.759
Chefs are tricky though, because they don't always have a consistent schedule.

00:20:57.249 --> 00:21:02.209
You would think they would, but that, that creates some new unique challenges, right?

00:21:02.798 --> 00:21:06.699
so I schedule them out, but I don't have an assistant.

00:21:08.453 --> 00:21:11.483
Do you have a publishing schedule for your podcasts?

00:21:11.554 --> 00:21:13.503
So I do it once a month.

00:21:13.604 --> 00:21:18.263
I do it the second Sunday at 1 p. m. Pacific standard time.

00:21:18.973 --> 00:21:22.354
Now I'll say that, but I have 70 episodes.

00:21:22.364 --> 00:21:28.294
So I interject some other episodes in between, but my standard is once a month.

00:21:29.013 --> 00:21:34.094
I had on my notes page from our conversation in June to talk about . Kyle Hall.

00:21:35.203 --> 00:21:36.644
Oh, Kyle's incredible.

00:21:36.703 --> 00:21:46.013
was number three in the world championship of public speaking, and he's very active in district 32 and district two, which are in my areas.

00:21:46.634 --> 00:21:53.784
I did mention Kyle because Kyle was key for the High Performance Leadership Project, which launched the Voice for Chefs podcast.

00:21:53.834 --> 00:21:55.203
That's in the context.

00:21:55.213 --> 00:21:56.134
I remember that.

00:21:56.134 --> 00:22:03.683
He was the person at the beginning that was saying, get over that imposter syndrome and just do it.

00:22:03.753 --> 00:22:08.463
And even if three people listene to it or 10 people listen to it, just do it.

00:22:08.874 --> 00:22:09.074
Correct.

00:22:09.074 --> 00:22:10.604
Get the process out, which.

00:22:11.999 --> 00:22:13.318
Yeah, I remember that.

00:22:13.328 --> 00:22:16.249
One of my favorite Toastmasters in the entire world.

00:22:16.429 --> 00:22:21.269
I know I circled his name for a reason and I knew there was a story there.

00:22:21.888 --> 00:22:22.959
Clubhouse.

00:22:23.878 --> 00:22:24.179
Yeah.

00:22:24.219 --> 00:22:31.638
How did you get involved, like, how did your relationship get into Clubhouse, this online app that is audio only?

00:22:31.818 --> 00:22:34.989
Yeah, so that was a very special thing.

00:22:34.999 --> 00:22:44.364
I had joined a long time ago, and I would say Maybe six months in I was, I had launched the podcast.

00:22:44.493 --> 00:22:47.203
I wasn't really getting a large audience.

00:22:47.263 --> 00:22:50.913
I was some Toastmasters, some friends and people I knew those kinds of things.

00:22:50.963 --> 00:22:56.844
Plus also when you publish, it goes out to a lot of podcast directories and people just kind of filter in listen.

00:22:56.844 --> 00:23:07.163
But for me, I took a course with Nancy Judden and Nancy is a brilliant person that helps people guest on podcasts.

00:23:07.634 --> 00:23:11.354
That's one of her big, well known parts of who she is.

00:23:11.403 --> 00:23:14.243
She's an incredible business and marketing person.

00:23:14.773 --> 00:23:18.913
one of my heroes and I took a course a week long course.

00:23:18.973 --> 00:23:23.213
And it was all about how to get yourself prepared for podcasting and for the media.

00:23:23.963 --> 00:23:25.794
And I was so inspired by that.

00:23:26.144 --> 00:23:28.284
That it helped me get over imposter syndrome.

00:23:28.284 --> 00:23:40.104
So I started going on clubhouse, which is an audio only app, and they invite you to speak much like a podcast or an interview, except you could have five people at the same time speaking.

00:23:40.364 --> 00:23:48.203
You could have one person at the same time speaking and you invite another person up on what we call the virtual stage and it's audio

00:23:48.213 --> 00:23:48.523
only.

00:23:48.523 --> 00:23:50.713
So you don't see anybody, but you're listening.

00:23:51.324 --> 00:23:56.054
And there could be hundreds of people listening in what we call rooms, like, a zoom room.

00:23:57.013 --> 00:23:59.973
And there could be a hundred, there could be 200, there could be 500.

00:24:00.574 --> 00:24:02.713
And these could be people from all over the world.

00:24:02.993 --> 00:24:04.324
There's no specific place.

00:24:04.963 --> 00:24:06.233
So what happened was.

00:24:06.689 --> 00:24:09.388
I met a chef online on clubhouse.

00:24:09.858 --> 00:24:11.128
Her name is chef Mimi Lan.

00:24:11.689 --> 00:24:29.108
And she was the catalyst for the growth of my podcast because she invited me to join this club called Food is Religion and Food is Religion started when I started, it was 5, 000 people around the world that were in this club and they would have daily rooms.

00:24:29.108 --> 00:24:34.808
They call them for topics about food, about chefs, about anything related to food.

00:24:35.114 --> 00:24:38.554
It ran all day long because there are people all over the world, different time zones.

00:24:39.094 --> 00:24:43.943
So you join, you listen on your phone, you could be working, you could be traveling, whatever.

00:24:44.003 --> 00:24:45.624
you're not actively speaking.

00:24:45.993 --> 00:24:49.763
You're just listening as an audience member, much like people that'll be listening to the podcast.

00:24:50.784 --> 00:24:53.693
So what happened was we really connected.

00:24:53.723 --> 00:24:58.114
And I actually asked her to be, to interview because she's a Michelin trained chef.

00:24:58.114 --> 00:25:00.233
And I was like, wow, Michelin trained chef.

00:25:00.284 --> 00:25:00.614
Right.

00:25:01.273 --> 00:25:03.104
And I got excited about it.

00:25:03.548 --> 00:25:09.239
And so I interview with her on clubhouse, but not officially on my podcast.

00:25:09.239 --> 00:25:09.459
Right.

00:25:09.838 --> 00:25:17.548
And that was okay because she invited me into this amazing circle and she saw my energy, my passion, my desire to interview chefs.

00:25:17.919 --> 00:25:19.398
So she invited me.

00:25:19.909 --> 00:25:25.388
To do an online audio only cooking class and interview chefs while they're cooking.

00:25:25.739 --> 00:25:26.909
You can't see anything.

00:25:26.929 --> 00:25:28.759
You're listening to the pan sizzle.

00:25:29.148 --> 00:25:30.939
You've got to really use your imagination.

00:25:31.489 --> 00:25:35.269
So that's how I started meeting chefs all over the world.

00:25:36.108 --> 00:25:41.318
And so what happened was I helped her because I became an officer in clubhouse.

00:25:41.798 --> 00:25:48.298
I helped her grow the club from 5, 000 people to 8, 500 people in a year and a half.

00:25:49.153 --> 00:26:03.703
And there were other officers involved, but we were, we would meet and we talk about strategies had nothing to do with the podcast, but I fell in love with the idea and it meant so much to be part of this community and help grow it.

00:26:04.403 --> 00:26:08.273
And now I started to have listeners come from all over the world.

00:26:08.763 --> 00:26:16.433
So I went from two countries to 65 countries and so had all this reach, but the best part about it was.

00:26:17.364 --> 00:26:19.963
It wasn't just interviewing chefs in Seattle anymore.

00:26:20.394 --> 00:26:22.114
I would interview chefs on clubhouse.

00:26:22.763 --> 00:26:25.084
But then I would also interview chefs on my podcast.

00:26:25.753 --> 00:26:30.943
So I invited a celebrity chef who was a chop champion from the food channel named chef Ed Harris.

00:26:31.534 --> 00:26:33.394
I did a cooking class with him.

00:26:33.804 --> 00:26:38.733
Like I interviewed him in the cooking class and then I said, Hey, would you be open to an interview on my podcast?

00:26:39.394 --> 00:26:44.923
So he did, and that opened up more doors and the doors kept opening and opening.

00:26:45.523 --> 00:26:51.354
And that's when chefs started calling me and PR people started calling me or reaching out through email.

00:26:51.354 --> 00:26:52.443
I just got another one today.

00:26:52.443 --> 00:27:02.784
It's would you like to interview someone from the Escoffier Institute, which is the first online cooking school ever in the U S. And I was like, absolutely.

00:27:03.304 --> 00:27:05.473
So that's how things happen.

00:27:05.473 --> 00:27:11.973
And that's where it all came from was clubhouse chef, Mimi, Nancy Juetten and really Kyle Hall.

00:27:12.814 --> 00:27:14.513
So that's kind of a little bit about clubhouse.

00:27:14.513 --> 00:27:20.558
The other thing to know too, is that any hobby, any passion, any career that you have.

00:27:21.288 --> 00:27:24.429
There's a conversation about it on Clubhouse all over the world.

00:27:24.959 --> 00:27:25.989
It's not just cooking.

00:27:25.989 --> 00:27:27.078
It's fly fishing.

00:27:27.088 --> 00:27:28.459
It's Toastmasters.

00:27:28.808 --> 00:27:31.269
Mark Brown's on Clubhouse on Toastmasters.

00:27:31.308 --> 00:27:35.148
I would listen to him and you can come up on stage and talk to him.

00:27:35.909 --> 00:27:37.489
that's so cool.

00:27:37.818 --> 00:27:44.288
Their algorithms have changed a little bit, so it's a little bit different to navigate, but.

00:27:45.003 --> 00:27:48.094
It's, it was an amazing platform to be involved in.

00:27:48.094 --> 00:27:51.763
I stepped away a little bit cause I'm so busy now with all the chefs in my podcast.

00:27:52.564 --> 00:27:57.403
for me, because I was a toast master, it was easy.

00:27:57.953 --> 00:27:59.854
I didn't struggle with a lot of things.

00:28:00.308 --> 00:28:02.088
I already knew how to present.

00:28:02.118 --> 00:28:04.179
I already knew how to have a conversation.

00:28:04.608 --> 00:28:11.719
What I ended up doing was supporting other people doing that, that were going through that struggle and loving that journey.

00:28:12.159 --> 00:28:19.169
Absolutely loving that journey because as an officer, I was a coach, and I'd be coaching chefs on how to speak up in clubhouse.

00:28:20.189 --> 00:28:22.239
And it just, that just took off.

00:28:22.479 --> 00:28:26.848
And then we went from the cooking class to a food talk show.

00:28:27.429 --> 00:28:32.388
So I started doing that and then I started interviewing chefs on clubhouse just as a regular interview.

00:28:32.409 --> 00:28:32.628
Right.

00:28:32.628 --> 00:28:39.499
And I brought lots of them from different circles and chef Mimi would introduce me to famous people because she was really connected.

00:28:39.959 --> 00:28:43.019
So I started interviewing them and it just grew and grew.

00:28:43.019 --> 00:28:48.098
And now you have a great resume when you approach a PR person and say, I'd like to interview your chef.

00:28:48.108 --> 00:28:58.058

EP 79: Culinary Storytelling: A Toastmaster’s Journey on Voice4Chefs with Ray Miller

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