“I don't remember a time when you weren't a podcaster”.
My daughter, now 13, said this to me the other night, which surprised me. Given that I have been podcasting since 2018, that’s nearly half her life and I guess it’s most of her life that she remembers. Thanks to being a podcaster she too has had an interesting life, sometime accompanying me to recordings or hearing about the latest interesting guest I have interviewed.
Then she said: So why did you start podcasting anyway?
Shocked face emoji from me.
She didn’t know the origin story of the life that I live now as a podcaster of two shows and the person behind the scenes of many more working with clients across the world from my home office in Fukushima.
So I told her the story.
In 2018, I was the mother of a 6 year old and 3 year old. To say I was having an identity crisis and feeling unfulfilled was a cliche and also an understatement.
I was so lucky, I had everything I needed. I even knew how lucky I was having nearly lost my home just 7 years earlier. Coming out of the fog of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and nuclear disaster or 3-11 as we call it, I started to really wonder what I was doing with my life. Sure raising two kids as a full time parent was a challenge but it wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do. Too much yet to be activated potential sitting on the shelf weighed heavily. I wanted to know what other women like me in Japan were doing. Were they also struggling? Or were some of them living their best lives and I was simply getting it wrong?
I turned to podcasts to see if I could find these women. I loved listening to podcasts and learning while doing some of the mundane tasks of being a stay at home parent. But no, in 2018 there were definitely no international women in Japan talking about their life here on a podcast where I could hear their actual voices. Then one day, my friend and long time supporter Jacqui Miyabayashi said those fateful words that sewed the seed of potential:
“You have a voice for radio”.
And so the die was cast! I decided to see what I could achieve with zero investment.
I would start a podcast with free tools using the technology I had.
What would I call it?
I would call it the very first name that came into my head.
And so Transformations with Jayne came into being.
This quick and low key start was what I needed to get going. There would be no editing, no intro or outro music. I would record in a closet and that would be the best I could do. I would just talk through my prepared bullet points and that would be an episode. There would be no guests for a few episodes because I didn’t know “how” to interview anyone nor did I have the confidence to.
Wow.
Looking back now I can chuckle at my minimum viable product and see that I did it exactly as I should have. I started where I was at and use the skills and resources I had and made incremental improvements as my skills, knowledge and confidence grew.
Six years on I have leveled up my podcast game many times, each time growing, learning and experimenting with different things across many different shows I’ve had the privilege to collaborate on. I’ve learned how to edit, select music, even how to produce an episode for others, how to be a co-host, how to edit a video, create captions, fade in fade out, design graphics, record in person, market in person and online, create ads and dynamically insert them, pitch to potential sponsors, enter awards and even win a couple. Through all of this, I’ve met so many people and my life is better for knowing them.
And THAT is why I started that podcast in my closet all those years ago.
To feel a little less alone in this life in Fukushima, Japan.
To meet other people who are really trying to make the most of their circumstances and turn them into new opportunities.
To tap into some of that untapped potential.
Thank you to everyone who believed in me before I did and continues to believe in me as I do more experiments, fail, get back up, keep going.
To anyone reading this and wishing they were somewhere else, somewhere that seems brighter, bigger, more exciting. Just know that you can create better and more exciting right where you are too.
It’s up to you.
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