Emily Merrell  00:00

Hey, my name is Emily Merrell. I’m a taco loving people connector. And I’m obsessed with playing the name game, and all things networking. I’m the founder of secondary society, a female focus networking community, as well as a business coach for female business owners passionate about bringing their business to the next level with the help of events, community and connections. I crave deep conversations, and I’m continuously curious to see what makes people tick. And I’m invested in uncovering their stories with some life lessons along the way. This podcast is aimed to inspire and educate as you tackle your busy day. So join the conversation and tune in for the second degree podcast. Welcome back to the second degree. Well, I am Emily Merrell. And I am so excited to jam with Jen jameelah. Director and co founder of Google jam, how many times can I say jam? Endless times, actually. Welcome to the show. It’s so wonderful to have you here.

 

Jen Jamula  01:06

Thank you so much, Emily, it’s a pleasure to be here. You know, I was today years old when I understood, actually, it was like last time I chatted with you, when I understood that the name of your company is half of your last name and half of your co founders last name. Indeed, you would be surprised by how many people just they’ve worked with us for years. And they still don’t know. Because it’s kind of a catchy name, right? Gold jam. It sounds like we’re jamming. You know, we’re doing it at a very high standard or something. But yeah, it comes from Goldberg, Allison Goldberg and Jen jameelah. And we have a long history together. She and I as creative partners. I love it. I think that’s it’s so fun in such a creative way to embrace a name. So speaking of a Code Jam, how to let’s let’s go to the beginning, what the hell is gold jam? And what how did it come to existence? Yes, so gold jam is a communications training company, we do interactive on your feet sessions. Even if you’re in the comfort of your own home, taking a training remotely with us, it will be very interactive. And everything’s based in research. We cover topics that range from public speaking and storytelling to fighting gender bias in the workplace, to feedback, difficult conversations. But all of that we’ve created those topics over the years, we drew upon our experiences, actually, as actors and performers to create the trainings in the first place. So just a really brief history of how the company got started was that Ali and I were actors. We were in school together at Yale, we studied theater there, we came to New York to be actors, and pretty soon discovered that what we actually wanted to be doing was creating our own live performances on stage. So she and I, throughout the years created many shows the most popular of which was called Blog blogs, in which we repurposed material from the internet for the stage. So this was like 2011, when blogs were actually quite popular still at that time. And we ended up performing the blog posts of a lot of people that we knew in the tech community in New York. And those were the audience members of the show’s who eventually approached us about coaching. So it would have been around 2014, that we began coaching for pitching and public speaking and storytelling, and what the audience members were seeing us perform was, you know, costumes and lights and sounds and taking dried text and reimagining it, making it very creative weed projections behind us the whole time. So they were really able to make the connection between what we were doing in their pitches. So that’s where the company started in the realm of pitching and storytelling and public speaking. But like I said, we’ve grown over the years as we’ve worked with clients, and now we do a lot with internal communication, and particularly with gender bias. Wow. Yeah. It’s, I love meeting actors. And I think actors, actors and teachers, I think, make incredible coaches. And both have the opportunity, the ability, I would say, to take content and make sense of it and deliver it in a really digestible way. So I’ve seen like incredible teachers become course creators, but actors also are have the performance to them aspect, like they’re able to show up and sell even if they’re shaking in their booties inside. There’s that presence that that actors really bring to the table. So I want to hear, you know, as an actor, you graduated Yale, he went to acting, you acted at Yale like you were an actor. So I was undergrad. I was not the drama school, the very famous school I was an undergrad but I did act there and studied theater. That’s, that’s amazing. So you when you graduated, you were like, I’m going to be an actor. Yes. But here’s the thing I was in no Be prepared for what acting entailed as I listened to your episode with Bridget Brady. Yeah, totally. There’s like I very much relate to what you’re saying even though we have very different backgrounds. But so I at Yale yells a wonderful place. It was a lot about the theory of theater, it was a lot of like talking about it. We put up productions and things, but honestly, it was really summer theater programs that I pursued on my own to get professional training that like put me in the mindset of like, okay, I would really like to be an actor. So one of those programs, I went to France, and I studied street theater, I did another in England, where it was all Shakespeare. And then I did one in upstate New York at Vassar College, that was like, we worked with theatre professionals to learn more about acting. And all of that was what told me that like, Okay, I could really make a life out of this. But like I said, What I discovered when I started pursuing it is like, I just really didn’t enjoy what Bridget was actually talking about this, the idea that other people have such control over what happens to you. And what I had actually enjoyed doing in theater as a child was creating the productions from scratch myself. So that’s where it sort of led me and I think that has really helped me be able to create original sort of interactive learning experiences for people as well. And like you said, to just the comfort with speaking in front of groups, being able to memorize a quote, unquote, script, all of that, like kind of, that’s all great, too. But I’ve also had to think about just like, what does it mean to have presents, for example, or, you know, what, what was it about being an actor and being on stage that helps us be able to relate to people. And so I started to break down some of those concepts of things I could actually teach to people working in corporate spaces.

 

Emily Merrell  06:45

I love that you were able to reimagine what acting meant and what it is to. And I think entrepreneurship is a lot like acting where some people, not everyone makes it to the top. Not everyone, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, everyone wants to be an actor, but then it’s not necessarily the right path for everyone to pursue. And there is a moment especially and when you’re both experienced this as business owners, where you’re like, Oh, should I should I pivot? Or should I make adjustments and modifications. And I think with actors too, there, there might be that moment that that comes to be like, maybe I’m not supposed to be a comedic actor, after all, or

 

Jen Jamula  07:27

writer, I’m not totally. But here’s the thing about me, I’ve always been adaptable. And it’s been there, that was a great like byproduct of being an actor. But I’ve also not been very good at when it gets to the moment to make the shift to be able to actually make it and take action. So that’s where for me having a creative partners throughout the years was really helpful. I often said that Ally was the gas and I was the brakes in our professional relationship, because she would go for things before we were even remotely ready, in my opinion to do them. Like she would book the theater before we had a show, for example. But I needed that. And that’s I think we really were able to I you know, I helped her in other ways, too, I’m sure. So we were very complementary to one another.

 

Emily Merrell  08:10

And so now that you’re at the stage, when did you all start this? 2011?

 

Jen Jamula  08:14

So 2011 was the start of our live stage show blog blogs, but 2014 was the inception of gold. Yeah.

 

Emily Merrell  08:20

So happy 10 year anniversary.

 

Jen Jamula  08:23

Thank you so much. That was around the time that the former six degrees insider began to write okay.

 

Emily Merrell  08:29

Yeah, gosh, we were, we were probably bumping shoulders and elbows and didn’t even know it. So I want us to go back to 2014. And you’ve made this this Cognizant decision that you are going to partner in great this business with Ally. What steps did you take to get clients when you have also expressed you had mentioned like, people were showing interest in what you were performing? Yes.

 

Jen Jamula  08:55

Well, just to say we did keep performing our shows at that point for many years, probably until for me 2017 ish. 2018. Ali is still a performer. She’s out in LA. She’s doing a lot of Stand Up Comedy now. But gold jam was half of what we were doing at the time. The biggest thing in 2014 that allowed us to have new clients was actually joining a co working space, which was really taking off in New York at that time. We did it because we were having interns for a theatre company for the first time as we were creating these shows we needed help. And it was Ali’s suggestion to find a professional space to be in Yeah, so we ended up at a place called V alley, which was in Midtown away. Yeah, yeah. And we so those people knew about us, they would come to the shows and one of the companies there called the Lean Startup machine. They were our very first client and from there, they passed us on to others. But within the first year of teaching, we got to work with BuzzFeed out in LA and like we got passed along to some pretty big clients. So that was really exciting for us and showed us that we were having some traction. But also at that time, it wasn’t just word of mouth for us. We also did a ton of cold emailing as I remember it.

 

Emily Merrell  10:11

Gosh, isn’t that is it’s so funny. When you look back, like how foggy things are, you’re like I I

 

Jen Jamula  10:17

hustled Oh, hi, yes, we would get up, go to the co working space, work until five and then rehearse until 10 or whatever, go home and then do it all again the next day.

 

Emily Merrell  10:27

And for those listening, can you share where you are in your life now? Yeah,

 

Jen Jamula  10:31

absolutely. So it was right before my daughter was born in 2021, that Allie and I had a conversation about me becoming the sole person to run gold jam, because she really did want to be focusing more on her comedy. And I really wanted to put all of my effort into gold jam. So that’s around the time that we did that it’s been about two years now. Well, I guess it’s been more than that. At this point, she stuck around for a little while to help me through maternity leave. So now I am solo. running this business, you know, now I’ve transferred officially into a sole proprietorship. Yeah, and I still have facilitators who work with me. They also helped me in other capacities like social media and newsletters, which has been incredible here and there where I need some support. And I’m conducting both virtual and in person trainings, mostly for groups within companies, teams, or, you know, for retreats for whole companies. And then I also do some individual coaching throughout the year, depending on people’s needs. I usually have about a dozen private clients throughout the course of the year.

 

Emily Merrell  11:35

And would that be for someone who has a pitch deck or like wants to do a big presentation? Yeah,

 

Jen Jamula  11:41

it’s usually helpful if they have like something specific that they’re gearing up towards. But it could even be a conversation that they would like to have at work, or I’ve had people in transitional moments want to be able to better tell their professional story. So we’ve worked on things like that. But yeah, we can talk about a feedback conversation coming up, even, you know, it’s really open, but it’s usually helpful to have something to work towards.

 

Emily Merrell  12:04

I think that’s wonderful. And I feel like that should be you should be a resource that’s available to all companies just to have that sounding word, right. Yes, everyone. Take Emily’s messaging, please. know, I always reflect back to my my corporate life and think I was really young. So I was also super naive. And there’s so much that I didn’t know. But asking for things was was something that I found wildly uncomfortable, which is ironic, because as an entrepreneur, I had no qualms in being rejected and asking for things when it was on behalf of me. Mm hmm. Yeah. But yeah, on a business level, I was like, I’m so sorry to bother you. Can I? Can I maybe get 10 more dollars to my salary? No. Okay. Well, $10 minus, that’s, that’s fine. Yeah, it’s

 

Jen Jamula  12:58

so tough. I mean, even for people to do things like take credit for the work that they’ve done. I’ve noticed and many people throughout the years that we just don’t even really know how to talk about that. Because it seems like we’re not a team player. If we don’t give everyone else that credit, particularly for women, as we know,

 

Emily Merrell  13:13

are awesome at falling on this or it’s been like, oh, Joe, he did such a great job. Getting this opportunity. Oh, it was a

 

Jen Jamula  13:21

stroke of luck that we completed this project in time. Not that I busted my butt for you know, over time for a week or whatever.

 

Emily Merrell  13:29

We’re all cool. I’m not I’m not crying in the bathroom.

 

Jen Jamula  13:32

Masters of downplaying things. Yeah.

 

Emily Merrell  13:34

Seriously, I Sorry, guys. Women are incredible. Like we’re, we’re basses. Men are great allies are great. You Jen and ally. And I’ve had, I just want to share a little bit origin story. I don’t even remember how we were connected, which I need to wonder if I was a cold email or

 

Jen Jamula  13:58

not sure. To be honest. I’m not sure. I’ve sort of feel like we were within the same orbit. But maybe I just realized that once we actually met when Ali and I did a session for six degrees society. I believe we did a live event did ya

 

Emily Merrell  14:13

spacious, right. Okay. Yeah. And I wasn’t there. Okay, so we did not meet there. Yeah, no, no. And so we didn’t meet. I’m looking at our first email pack. Because I think this is like I honestly don’t even know. I don’t know who introduced us. This is 2018 but 2018. And it’s been Oh, do you know what was it? Was it Emily? Do you know that was my assistant anyways? Oh, oh, okay. I found it. Sorry, guys. And this is a fun thing. So a girl named Emily working for you. Yes, that’s correct. And you heard from someone that unified, who and me had done enough sent for unified, called hairstyles and headshots. And then you then pitched gold Jr, Emily pitch school gym creative on communication skill workshops to companies and groups. Yeah. And so guys, this is just a teachable moment. How many? How many channels are you know, if you hear something that you think is cool, make an ask of it, because we’re some stores, they don’t respond to you. And we have probably done like four or five workshops in in the time since 2018. Hmm.

 

Jen Jamula  15:37

Yes. Yeah, that’s incredible. I do have to say it felt so much easier to do that when I had other people I was working with. Now that I’m solo, I’m like, all these are things I would like to do. And I always forget, but just yeah, I totally agree with you that if you can think of people who know people like Don’t, don’t be scared to reach out exactly what you’re saying, because that’s honestly how we’ve gotten most of our business through the years. It’s not just referrals, but it’s us reaching out to people and being like we’ve worked with so and so who you may know, and you know, that’s kind of led to something, so it’s worth it.

 

Emily Merrell  16:11

And I think, Jen, that’s an excellent example of like a quality pitch, you know, even in the pitch that this was someone on your team, it made me feel special, it made me feel recognized. So can we delve into pitching and how to craft an effective pitch for someone who might be listening? Yeah.

 

Jen Jamula  16:34

Well, this is wonderful, because I recently did an event with you, that was all about selling your ideas. So I was thinking about this and speaking with some members of your community about this, and it’s always a favorite topic of mine. So with pitching, the biggest thing I say to everyone to begin is that we want to shift our mindset from being transactional to being more emotional, because it’s so natural to want to sort of flip into that mode of trying to sell something to people, but that can be very transparent. And honestly, what we want to be doing is making a connection with them. That’s just generally um, sort of a presentation and selling your ideas and influencing people concept that I really like that it’s about, genuinely connecting with the audience that you’re speaking to, and not necessarily about selling them something or explaining something to them, that we want to elevate it to something that’s more emotional about connection. So there are a lot of different ways to do that. Just in terms of pitch delivery, something that I often this is not about the structure of a pitch. But it’s more just again, about delivery. A concept that I teach, I’ve taught for years and really believe in is this idea of active verbs. And it’s exactly what I’m talking about where we want to elevate our delivery beyond just explaining to people and really think about in your body language and your facial expressions in your tone of voice. How do I actually want to make the person feel, you know, do you want to comfort them? Do you want to inspire them? Are you there to excite them? People are reading little cues from our communication all of the time. So we do want to consider that in our delivery. First of all, what is the intention? How do we want to make people feel. So that’s one way to think about taking it to an emotional place. Another way to make a pitch inherently more emotional would be to infuse storytelling into it, which is something that a lot of people do. Stories are so amazing, because maybe your audience is aware. But as soon as you tell somebody a story, it creates a sense of having a shared experience with them. It’s actually like what’s going on in our brains is that if I were to talk about traveling to you, for example, and telling you a story about a trip that I took, your motor cortex would be activated and so would mind so we would feel as if, like the way that our brains were working as if we were actually traveling together, it actually creates a sense of sharing and experience, which is incredible. And then also the research around storytelling is that when people feel transported with a story, like taken somewhere else out of their own experience, it’s amazing because they’re much more able to be influenced, which can sound kind of devious. But I like to have a positive spin on it, where it’s like, you know, people are more likely to go along with what you’re saying if they feel like they’ve been taken on on a journey with you. So the key things to think about with telling a story in a pitch is that ideally, people resonate with real people. So rather than just, you know, this can work sometimes, but sometimes people create these like fake personas that they talk about. And if we do that, that’s okay. But just make that person feel as real as possible take time to really think about who they are all the little details that makes up who they are, what motivates them what their challenges are. So similar to that we want real characters, and then they always face some sort of obstacle in a story and we don’t want to skip over that obstacle too quickly. Something I see people do in pitches often is that they want to skip to all of the solutions that they have the pot of gold, so to speak at the end of the story and just like present everything they can offer right out of the gate. But when you’re really telling an effective story you do want to have that person for Through the challenge a little bit and build some tension. And then also in a good story, there’s also what I like to say is the pot of gold and the pot of gold is something that that character wants more than anything else in the world. And that’s probably going to be something that’s relatable to other people, because it’s going to be something like very big and universal, like, they would like the acceptance of their peers or, you know, they would like to return to a sense of who they are, they want to make the world a better place, something like that. So that’s one way to make a pitch emotional to is to infuse storytelling into it. And then I always like to talk as well, in pitching about taking it way back to Aristotle’s time. It’s kind of fun to think about, you know, what it’s like, we’re not really thinking about Aristotle anymore. But he has three elements of influence that he talked about which were ethos, pathos, and logos. And those are good to think about in any pitch. So ethos is where the word ethics comes from. And it’s really character, resume. But it’s not just like your track record, and accomplishments. It’s also who you are, as a person, what makes you who you are your character, if somebody were giving you a character reference, what that would be about, those are all good things to like, infuse into the pitch here and there. Pathos is emotional connection. So you know, I was already talking about ways to make it a bit more emotional. And then logos is the logic of the pitch. And that’s really important too, which is essentially backing everything up with data. But also structure like just making sure it’s coherent, we want a beginning, a middle and an end. Ideally, we have a really clear call to action at the end to so people know what you’re asking of them, even if it’s just a continual conversation with them following the pitch.

 

Emily Merrell  21:35

And I think that that’s a great thing to remind people, because so often, people will do their spiel, and then there’s no follow up or connection or action step or something call to action or their their pitch. Absolutely.

 

Jen Jamula  21:49

I find with pitching and with business storytelling in particular, people forget to do that. But it needs to be very explicit. So it’s like, yeah, what, what is the action we would like them to take? What is the message we would like them to take away, it’s just, it’s something we definitely want to It could even be a line that we, you know, perhaps memorize in advance, there’s no shame in memorizing? No, no. As an adult who worked from a script yet no shame in memorizing.

 

Emily Merrell  22:14

I would also say like with the digital world, it’s been so cool to see people definitely reading off of something, but it doesn’t look like they’re reading a note card before they they pitch something and practice does make perfect, right? Um, Jen, it’s, it’s cool. Looking at your website, and all of this, the scope of things, the broad scope of offerings that you have, from optimizing remote work, to feedback to unconscious bias and conscious inclusion, guys, to male ally allies, to effective communication to difficult conversations to creativity and collaboration. Where do you find your inspiration for all of the presentations and programming that you offer? Yeah,

 

Jen Jamula  23:02

I know, it looks like a lot and all over the board. But it really has come from our clients throughout the years that we’ve created the offerings that have indeed that people have. So like I said earlier, we began with pitching as a result of people asking for that. And public speaking was like a really in presentation skills. It was a very clear extension of pitching, as well as storytelling, which I’ve really developed throughout the years and you know, storytelling at a moment a few years ago, but I feel like it comes back around every few years. And I’ll look at it again. And kind of recraft the workshop. With, with so with the gender bias topics. The way that came about is that very early in gold gems history, we were working with women’s groups on mostly public speaking, presentation skills, types of things, it kind of transitioned into like advocating for yourself supporting our female colleagues, and ally. And I really loved teaching those groups and the research that we were looking at around those topics. But we were genuinely feeling like we also wanted to be working with men, and then eventually with people of all genders or gender identities. So those types have just grown throughout the years. And I have to say male allies is one of my favorite sessions to teach. And it’s the wonderful gold jam that spans the most industries, just because, I mean, unfortunately, well, fortunately, people do want to be allies across industries now. Yeah, it’s been interesting, I co teach that with a male co facilitator, and we get to model a lot of the practices together. But yeah, everything’s come about as a come from a knee that a client has expressed throughout the years and then inspiration we get from them. And then, you know, usually we’ll test it out with one or two companies, you know, if they’ve asked it of us, and then it will become a broader offering.

 

Emily Merrell  24:45

I think that’s so cool. And I would love to know a little bit more about them. Can you give us like a synopsis of the male the male allies? Why why I can’t say that. I don’t know. But what what would what’s an example But what happens in that workshop? Yeah?

 

Jen Jamula  25:04

Well, it, I would say the first half of this session is really about awareness of the challenges that women face in work environments and an opportunity for the men in the session to say the things that they don’t know, I know that, you know, just from working in with groups in this session, there can be a lot of fear, I think if we’re not sure, even if the problems that exist, you know, we’re not sure what we can do to make it better as men kind of, it’s been helpful to talk about the challenges that women face as a result of gender bias and work environments. And we get the men talking about, you know, the things that they see around them every single day. But we also talk about just bigger challenges, like, you know, there’s a protective hesitation around giving women honest feedback for fear that they’re going to be emotional. That’s something that maybe, you know, people haven’t necessarily thought of, or there are things that are so commonplace that we just overlook them, like, the way that we might assign a woman without thinking about it, just what’s called the Office housework, I’m sure you know, a lot of people out there have heard that term before. But things like taking notes, organizing office events, you know, creating the Zoom link for everything, whatever it is. But we really kind of break that down. So they’re aware of what those challenges are. So the first half is about the type of awareness. Then in the second half, we start to look at practices for creating space for women and speaking to bias. So we do a whole section on listening with the idea that, you know, we don’t want to interrupt others, we want to particularly listen to experiences of gender bias when they’re expressed to us. So we teach them listening practices to them and have them work on those. We do a section on microaggressions. Now that we’ve talked about, you know what gender bias looks like, in a work environment for women, we look at some strategies for how they could potentially support women as bystanders in moments of microaggressions, whether it’s in the moment or after the fact. But we also talk about, you know, kind of how do we figure out if we should say something or not, we don’t want to speak for people. But we give strategies for what you could potentially do. And that’s, that’s really the bulk of the workshop. I know, I’m forgetting something towards the end, but that those are the main practices that we look at. That’s phenomenal.

 

Emily Merrell  27:15

And what an incredible opportunity for for people to learn and grow and, and shine a light and reflect on their own behaviors and for fine accordingly. Again, where were you when I was in corporate? I don’t know. I know. Well, speaking of corporate, I know you have had the opportunity to present at Deloitte, Time Warner SoulCycle. We were Twitter a k x, Credit Karma Deloitte. I said delight. But what? For those that are starting out any listeners that are starting out, and are like, what, how did they get these opportunities? How did they get in front of these big names? Do you have any advice for those those listeners? Yeah, I

 

Jen Jamula  28:03

think it’s a little bit of what we’ve already covered. So prioritizing relationships with people like I have to say Ali was always so much better at this than I was, but she, she was very good at leveraging every I don’t particularly love that word. But you know, thinking about everyone in our network, and not just what they do, and how we can be a value to them. But even the people that they know, and this wasn’t like on LinkedIn, this was in real life where we wind up conversations with people, and they might mention something and we’d be like, Wow, that could potentially be a thing. So it was just like, constantly having conversations and fostering relationships. Like I had also said, there was a fair degree of cold outreach towards the beginning. But we always tried to do it in a really thoughtful way. We were always looking to reach out to companies who we’d been reading about who we thought we might resonate with, we also knew that they might be going through like a particular period in their company where they could use this type of training based on what we were reading about them. So whenever we went into those cold pitches, there was always like something kind of personal to say, even if we’ve never met them before. So I think those are really good places to start. But also, like I had said, just being a part of that co working community very early on was really integral and growing our business and not just the networking, but also getting ideas for how to grow the business from people who are growing businesses around us. I know co working is really common thing now. But I was co working in the last few years post pandemic and I have to say people don’t really talk to one another in the co working space, but way back. Yeah, I don’t know it. Maybe it was because people were sort of siloed within their own company areas of the we work that I was in. But back in 2014 when we had joined the ally. Everyone talked to everyone all the time and we would go out for dinner afterwards after working and all that so There was a degree of being social that was helpful and growing the business as well, because that’s where, like career conversations continued, obviously,

 

Emily Merrell  30:08

totally. And I think the biggest takeaway that I hear is like finding a community that you can plug into and also make your brand known. So it’s easy to be referred by the people who you’re hanging out with. That’s

 

Jen Jamula  30:21

right. Absolutely. Yeah. We had to have, like, the assets to backup what we were saying. And it was like, I know, we needed to make the website and all that. But that’s, you know, hopefully, you know, everybody would know that.

 

Emily Merrell  30:31

Yeah. And a lot of people, I think, I want to say historically, I want to say like, generally people want to be helpful. So when you’re flying that flag, and they know that flag has been flown, they want to point you in the right direction. So thinking the right direction, where where can people find you and learn more about gold gem?

 

Jen Jamula  30:52

Yes, you can visit gold jam creative.com. And that is where we have the most information. I’m on LinkedIn, gold gems on LinkedIn. We’re also on Instagram, but I would say go to our website and sign up for our newsletter. And that’s where you’ll get the most meaningful contact with us. We have monthly newsletters that go out and there are often a lot of opportunities there to do like free trainings with us or you know, we kind of give more insider information on what’s going on with the company. So go to the website, sign up for the newsletter.

 

Emily Merrell  31:23

I think that’s a great, great to do. Well, we are going to turn our business brains off now. And we are going to do some six fast questions. Awesome. You ready? Yeah, let’s do it lacks the brain. Okay, Jen, tell us an unknown fun fact about you.

 

Jen Jamula  31:41

Unknown Fun fact, to your audience is that I once was on the television show Impractical Jokers?

 

Emily Merrell  31:47

Oh, yeah, I was. It’s fun.

 

Jen Jamula  31:51

I was part of a challenge. I’m not super familiar with how the show works. But I think it always culminates in the challenge and I moderated a women’s panel with a microphone in my ear and the Joker’s talk to me, prompted me and they they put one of the other Joker’s in like a compromising position and I was part of the joke. So very fun.

 

Emily Merrell  32:10

So fun. Okay, well, I’m gonna go find that episode after this call. Who would be a dream person for you to meet and be connected with? Yes,

 

Jen Jamula  32:20

so many people. I right now am on a major Glennon Doyle podcast. So I would say Glen and Doyle would be amazing. Or also a star Pearl is always a big one for me, or

 

Emily Merrell  32:36

just both of them for lunch and about Yeah, that’d be just a very interesting conversation. I hear like I haven’t heard Glenn and Doyle in a while after untamed I feel like when I was recording the podcast when untamed came out, every single person was like, Glennon Doyle Glennon Doyle, and then it died out and then now she’s coming back. Apparently

 

Jen Jamula  32:57

she’s coming back. I did not read on TNT. But I have discovered I discovered for myself, Lenin Doyle through her podcast, we can do hard things, which is definitely worth a listen to any of you out there.

 

Emily Merrell  33:08

I love it. I love it. I have to I have to listen to it. Okay, I know you were on Impractical Jokers, but What show are you what currently watching?

 

Jen Jamula  33:18

Currently, I have to admit is below deck. We’re working our way through the season finale. My husband and I and it’s taking us a few days. We’re actually liking it so much that we’re pausing it to like pleasure delay. I’m really embarrassed by that one. But one I watched recently that I love that just won some Golden Globes and I think other awards was beef. Did you see beef?

 

Emily Merrell  33:41

i My husband keeps going Can we watch beef? And I’m like, I don’t know. The commercials aren’t resonating with me. It seems stressful show.

 

Jen Jamula  33:50

It is about road rage. You know, I don’t like watching anything that puts me in a bad mood or like anything like that. But it’s very creative and very funny. And there are like elevated moments. I think it’s worthwhile. Okay,

 

Emily Merrell  34:04

I will I will give it a go. I’ve been forcing him to fool me once is what we’re watching right now. I don’t know that one. It’s I don’t know. It’s like Netflix recommends you watch this. He just literally looks at me. And he goes, Why do you hate me so much? Every show that I’ve picked, he’s like, What was that disaster? Don’t fall asleep. Go to bed. What book are you reading? Yeah, so

 

Jen Jamula  34:29

for the first time in a long time, I’ve had some time to read. With the new year things slowed down a little bit. So I picked up because of Glennon Doyle, actually, her podcast she had on Jenny Odell, who wrote a few books but the one I’m reading is called Saving time. Oh, yeah. It’s just sort of about like, the construct of time and how it affects how we function everyday and who we are and just ways to start to break that apart. So we feel like we can own our time a bit better. So He’s really good, so far very researched. So you have to kind of be into that to want to read it. And then next to me right now I have the campfire cookbook, actually, that’s not what it’s called. But is this book called The camp out cookbook? Because we’re going to do some more camping this year. So I love reading cookbooks from cover to cover. I don’t know if I’m actually going to cook any of this stuff, but I’m feeling inspired.

 

Emily Merrell  35:19

Hmm. And love that you love reading cookbooks? I think that is an amazing, amazing quality. Do you do? Know I remember? No, not really. I was in college. I was this. One of my majors was Spanish and English senior year, we had a Spain. Like it was a cooking class Spanish Spanish cooking class. And so we had to read the cookbook. I think it must have been in Spanish. Right? Whatever. No, it’s Yeah. It must have been inside magic. Yeah. And should have us like, then make the pay. Yeah, it was as it’s so funny how murky my memories are from college. Like, I’m like, did we make the pay as a class? Or was it homework?

 

Jen Jamula  36:04

I know. It’s incredible. It feels like it was a million years ago. But yeah, I find it really cathartic to read a cookbook from cover to cover, almost as if I had actually made it.

 

Emily Merrell  36:14

I love that. I think that I have read some cookbooks before and like really good. I went through a huge group. Trophy. So I remember when I got that cookbook been like making notes and bookmarks all over it. But yes.

 

Jen Jamula  36:31

It’s also just it’s great to get ideas, because I’m sure you probably feel too. Like it’s so hard to figure out what to make for your family to eat during the week if you’re the one who’s cooking.

 

Emily Merrell  36:42

Totally Well, I have to on that note, we just bought an air fryer. And I’m very much team airfryer. And I never thought I would be so into airframe things but it has been a game changer. And last night. My husband made Nashville fried chicken in the air fryer. And now he’s the cook of the family. But I’ve been making like salmon every day for lunch and the airfryer it takes 10 minutes and so easy to clean up.

 

Jen Jamula  37:09

That’s incredible. And a great tip we do not have that intimidates me to be honest, but it sounds like once you have it, it makes your life a lot easier.

 

Emily Merrell  37:15

I was like I literally the first time I made something I had a friend who was coaching me through it. She’s like, Okay, now like turn it on and you know, put it in for 20 minutes but boiled potatoes before can’t make. Okay. So so much now like okay, I get this. This is cool. Yeah. The other night, we reheated it, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t microwaved. It was in the oven. It was like perfectly crisp. It’s cool.

 

Jen Jamula  37:39

That’s very awesome. Well, I might contact you if we end up getting one tip for that coaching. You mentioned. Come on down.

 

Emily Merrell  37:45

I’m following Instagram Stories. Okay, I have two more questions for you. What is your favorite emoji?

 

Jen Jamula  37:52

Oh, I really I don’t use it as much as I should. But genuinely my favorite emoji is the smiley face with the star eyes. Oh,

 

Emily Merrell  38:02

I like that one too.

 

Jen Jamula  38:03

I think that’s my theater background coming through a little bit.

 

Emily Merrell  38:11

And my final question is What permission Do you want to give the audience members and our listeners today? Audience members, listeners, another theater. Guys hands,

 

Jen Jamula  38:26

stars and stars in the permission just like you know what, what door Can I open for all of you potentially to say this is something that you could do is the permission I would like to give everyone is to communicate authentically as themselves without worrying so much about what it looks like. You know, I’ve been coaching speaking for a long time. And it’s so easy to get caught up in what other people think about us and appearing like we’re experts in what we’re talking about. But genuinely, this is something I’m really trying to work on right now as a 40 year old woman is kind of letting some of that go. Because you know, if you’ve been speaking to others for a while, that kind of training just comes through naturally. But like we talked about a little bit earlier, what it really is about is connecting with other people. And we can only do that if we’re able to communicate as ourselves. So, you know, maybe just communicating as yourself and not being so hung up on what others might think about it

 

Emily Merrell  39:28

might drop right there. I love it. I love it. So communicate as yourself. Well, Jen, thank you so much for joining today’s conversation I had this was so much fun chatting with you.

 

Jen Jamula  39:41

Thank you Emily. I had a blast. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. And listeners.

 

Emily Merrell  39:45

If you liked today’s episode, share it with friends. We love growing through organic connection. And we will see you the next time on the second degree podcast. Have a wonderful day everyone