Tonka Talk Community and Connection

Empowering Women in Podcasting: A Conversation with Twila Dang

• Natalie Webster • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Step into the dynamic world of podcasting with the formidable Twila Dang, CEO and founder of Matriarch Digital Media, and producer at MPR.

We chat about being unexpectedly paired as co-hosts on a Minneapolis/Saint Paul radio show, to crafting conversation around the joys and pitfalls of being a grown woman on the podcast Twila and Natalie.

A woman in her forties, Twila Dang found the media's representation of women her age disappointing which sparked the drive in her to create a supportive community for women.  'Women in Podcasting', a venture aimed at making the podcast industry more accessible to women. 

Taking a stroll down memory lane we don't shy away from sharing what really went on behind the scenes on our show during our time at myTalk 107.1, as well as the laughter and lessons that often followed.

Our conversation takes a nostalgic turn as we reminisce about our misadventures turned opportunity, the most memorable among them being our encounter with Bethany Frankel.

Learn more at https://www.tonkatalk.com where we share more about our Lake Minnetonka community, including upcoming events and our take on local experiences.

Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TonkaTalk/
If you have feedback, questions, or suggestions of a future guests creating community and connection, email natalie@tonkatalk.com

We appreciate your support in sharing Tonka Talk Community and Connection with someone you think could benefit from our content.

Natalie:

Have you ever been told that you talk too much? Maybe you're too loud? I know I did. Growing up in middle school I was actually voted loudest in my class, and Using my voice is how I met my guest today, twyla dang. Hello, and we met in a very interesting way. We met doing a radio show at my talk 107.1. We were put together, it was called Twila and Natalie and we did it on the weekends. What came after that is what's more interesting to me and what we're really going to dig into. Today I'm Natalie Webster. This is Tonka talk, where we talk about all things community and connection, and today I'm sitting down and talking with twyla dang From matriarch digital media. She's also a producer over at MPR news. She's been up to all kinds of things since we last sat and worked on a podcast, which was in your basement, probably a couple years ago.

Twila:

Yeah, it's like. I mean, it was seven years ago we started it when we started it no longer.

Twila:

No, it was seven years. Well, we started working together about nine years ago, mm-hmm. But we started the podcast in the basement, like seven years, yes. And I like it's so great because I love when you tell the story and you're like so we got put together in a podcast. But she always leaves out the part where we got matched up as partners and she got told before I got told because I was already working there and she got hired and they decided to like expand and sort of Mix people up. So I'm on social media and I get this message from Natalie, whom I've never met, and she's like oh, I'm so excited we're gonna work together. Hey, can't wait to meet you. And I was like who or what's happening? Hello, and then I called my boss and she's like oh yeah, we found you a new Brady, a partner, go. I think I already met her.

Natalie:

I think I did crazy lady over reached out in what I love, though, and why twyla will always hold a very special place in my heart. When I met w Twila, when we started on this radio show, I was getting a divorce. I had not that long before Left Scientology and was going through like some harassment and things that goes along with that. Yeah, and this is who gets paired up with her to do this show.

Twila:

I think no, the best, I think the best part about it was because I think we have this in our lore of our history together we had like the whole first year. We couldn't figure each other out, so Natalie probably thought I didn't like her. And then I'm sure Natalie, like I, was like I think nothing likes me, but I can't like get a read on her because she just seems so. Every time I was show up and be like, okay, we have to work, we have to work. And Natalie would just be like Life is great, like I'm like life is buoyant, I'm happy to be here. You just tell me what to do. I'm rolling with the punches and I would be like, no, we have to like concentrate and we have to like strategy and everything. And it took forever for us to figure out like what our like, how to play our position. I am an over Like everything, I over prepare, I over think, I over, you know, annunciate everything. And Natalie is so good at just going with the flow and she's great at reacting to that kind of energy that it took me a minute to realize like no, they gave me the perfect person.

Twila:

Yeah, and I think the first time we sat down and actually talked about like what wait, why? What is our dynamic and how does it work. And you said I was like you can, you know you can add stuff to the segment, you can produce things, and you're like, totally, you show up for a weekend show where we only need 15 topics and you have 75. I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure I'm a comfortable letting you go wherever you want to go. You just tell me what you need me to like, how you want me to like slot in and how you want me to react. From that moment on, we figured out how to get a rhythm, yeah, and after that it just got to be like fun, like I was in some ways. She used to say like, oh no, you make me be more professional in these settings. And then I would say the opposite. I'd be like, oh no, you help me like chill out in these things, exactly get it'll loosen up a little bit more.

Natalie:

After when we were, when we weren't doing the radio show anymore, you went on and created matriarch digital media, which you, immediately After you listen to this, need to go look up matriarch dmcom. She has a bunch of shows on there. Can you talk a little bit about creating matriarch digital media and what you're doing with it?

Twila:

Yes. So major started on a really simple premise. I was, I had just reached 40, I was in my early 40s and I just kept realizing Sort of, I kept sort of being echoed to me that women in my age group weren't treating respectful anymore. It would sort of hit that, you know, fun, age of usefulness being like declining, and so it was like, oh, you're not, as you know, vivacious or you're not as attractive or you're not as wanted in society. And I kept seeing that play out in the media that was being presented to me. All of a sudden I was getting a lot more ads for plastic surgery and I was being told I need to do x, y and z to stay relevant With a younger audience or a younger demographic. And I just knew none of that stuff was true. I knew we were.

Twila:

I felt like more self-possessed and more confident and Happier in my 40s and I had my 20s and 30s and I don't understand why Media didn't reflect it.

Twila:

So all of a sudden it was like I think I can do something about it.

Twila:

And I had learned all these skill sets working in radio and I thought, and podcasting was just sort of hitting the zeitgeist and I was like, okay, I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna try this, I think I'm gonna try to make something here. And I lucked out, happened to say the right thing in front of the right people at the right time and got some seed money to get started. And then I called all my friends, like Natalie, and said I have a crazy idea, I would like to try to make something and if it works, will change the way the world talks to and about women and girls. And if it doesn't work, we'll talk about the time that we got together my basement and blew some money and nobody said no and we started like we spent a year making content in the basement before we started releasing it and then, once it got out, we just started to build on it and build on it. And here we are, almost eight years later, with the company.

Natalie:

There's multiple shows and the podcast that we had started together Twila and Natalie still on there. Yes, we may need to revamp.

Twila:

I mean listen.

Natalie:

Tell us you're listening to this. If you, whether you listen to us on the radio, you follow Twila on her podcast or the work that she's doing on NPR, would you like to see us back together doing something? We may have to figure it out Well.

Twila:

I've said before, like the beauty of what we built from day one was I wanted it to be evergreen.

Twila:

So, whether you discovered it at the time, we were making it a year from now, five years down the road, it still was relevant because it was speaking women to women, directly in the lives that they live, and it was reinforcing two things One, that you're wonderful and amazing exactly the way that you are.

Twila:

And two, if there's anything that you do want to address in your life, we want to support you in it and not have it be some sort of a requirement to be considered like a woman in full. We just we just didn't think it was necessary. So I think the greatest compliment that comes out of my work is people still discover it new all the time. Like I just had a colleague that I met recently and he and his wife had gone like I mean, when I say recently, within a month, and they came back to me the next time I saw them. They're like oh my gosh, we were listening to your show with Natalie and we were arguing about this too and we had the same debate too, and it made me so happy because I was like we made that six years ago in a basement and it still has 100% relevancy today.

Natalie:

Wow, I need to go back and listen to that. It's Twilight and Natalie, if you want to look for it.

Twila:

Yeah, so it's I mean like to me that's, I mean that's like the greatest compliment of our work, but it's also the thing that continues to drive me, because I knew the things that we were talking about then. It was still necessary. Those conversations are still necessary now. We have young people that are coming up and discovering the brand and it's becoming relevant and necessary for them now and hopefully we're even catching women younger so that they can gain this confidence in themselves below or they hit their 40s before they get to retirement age. I want, I just want everybody to understand that you have agency now and power right now. You should be using it, yeah, and you took it.

Natalie:

You took it to the next level because you didn't just go and do a podcast or get a couple podcasts going. Twilight created a whole community, yes, a whole community. Women in podcasting we're going to talk a bit, a bit about that, and that's the part that really fascinates me. And you know what? In Tonka Talk, we talk a lot about how people create community, how they find connection, and through podcasting you've been able to tell us about women in podcasting and the whole community around, what so?

Twila:

we started women in podcasting probably about a year, two years into the brand itself and it was really to address a specific need. I knew there weren't enough women working in the podcasting industry. I didn't even know it from data at that point, I just knew from the people I was interacting with and when I was trying to find community I just kept running into either like deeply tech dudes or like your AV nerd types, or even like a lot of public media folks, like before I got into the industry. So it felt very like above me and even slightly elitist, like if you didn't know the technology, if you didn't know how to use certain things, if you didn't have a certain background or didn't go to school for it. It felt like it locked you out and I just didn't want that and I knew that women weren't there. So I just started to go okay, listen, I know a little bit about a lot of things. I'm just going to show up and answer questions. At first we used to do like we're a curriculum, like we're going to talk about this this week and this this week, and those were nice and people enjoyed the information. But really I wound up spending an equal or more time answering questions. So I just said, okay, skip the middleman, I'm going to open up the floor. I said, you know, especially during the pandemic, I only really had two things at my disposable head I had time and the ability to talk pretty well endlessly. So I got together and said, okay, I'm going to give you free time. And we used all the social media. So we used clubhouse when it was available, we used Twitter spaces and used Facebook and we would just open it up, and sometimes it'd be like three people and sometimes it'd be like a few more. But then the pandemic happened.

Twila:

And what happened in the pandemic is, all of a sudden I would open it up and go, okay, you have two hours of my time on a Sunday morning, and like we were watching once in Facebook where the numbers went from like 50 to 250 to 1000 to 2500. And it was like wait a second, where are these people coming from? And then we started getting like requested and chat during the session, saying like, oh hey, I'm from Argentina, can you slow down? You're you know you're talking a little fast for me. And so it was amazing because I knew one.

Twila:

There were women out here that really want to do this and learn how to do this. And this wasn't like us going like let's teach you how to use all the technology. 90% of the time, this was me saying to another woman you have an idea, I really want you to go, try to put it in the world. You know what's the idea. Like I would get so many people saying I have a question, I'm thinking about starting a podcast someday, and I go okay, let's back that up. What's the idea? And they would go I don't have.

Twila:

I go, you have what do you? You have something you want to talk about. And then they would just go on to explain in beautiful detail with like producer accuracy. This is the idea of how they want to execute it, what they want to say, what they want to, you know, put out in public. And I go. So basically, you've already worked this all out. You just need the confidence or the permission to go do it. I'm giving you permission. Please go make it, and this session will hopefully give you the confidence because you can get access to like understanding what the tools are or how to get started, what's free and low cost.

Natalie:

I just want you to go make some and this is free, by the way women in podcasting and what she's doing and continuing to build this community. It's not like you have to pay a large sum of money and then you join this group and you have this access. No, she's crazy enough to just go do it for free. So take advantage of it before she comes to her senses and starts charging money.

Twila:

Well, and I and I just try to forewarn people because on Facebook there is a women in podcasting group that's like a paid community. That is not me. I have control over the trademark in the United States but not outside of the United States. So there's a lovely woman in Canada who's built something under women in podcasting and, no, you know, no shade to her. She's building what she's built and what she, what it does, is great for her community up there. I'm just not interested in monetizing this. I just want this to be a free and open access tool for women. So if you're connected to matric, you'll always be connected to women and podcasting content to a degree, and I'm going to continue to try to find ways to do that so people can find out more about women podcasting again by going to matriardmcom, matriart digital media.

Twila:

Yes, and it's already spun out. Like I said, it started out with, you know, these conversations. It's spun out into some research that we've done and some research I'm going to be doing some more of. We've gotten some more funds to do researching about women and BIPOC people in the industry and it is now spun out to the micro grant program. We have a program called Our Greatness that is geared toward independent women of color podcasters. So they're about like up to $450. But it's essentially the thing that keeps you from. It's that first barrier to access. Like I don't have a microphone so I can't make a podcast, or I don't, I can't afford an editing tool. I can't afford, you know, a platform and this, you know, a little bit of money can get you from. I really want to try this, but I don't have this one thing to now. You have the one thing go try, go make something.

Natalie:

Yeah, I like what you said about with the women that you come across and they have an idea and there's this large hesitation which I think is really common. I don't think anybody suffers more from imposter syndrome than women.

Twila:

Yeah, and I, and honestly, like I said, I've done the thing in my head where I've been like, oh, I think I have imposter syndrome, and then I was like, no, I don't, I just don't. I just haven't decided that what the other voices outside of my head are saying are not true. I think for a long time. And I think that's the thing that gets us is we start to, we start to have a discussion in our head that's like our internal monologue, and then we add an external monologue to that that says everything from oh well, women can't, or I can't, or I'm not supposed to, or it doesn't work like that, or you have to pay your dues, whatever those things are. All of that social contract stuff, it's all crap.

Twila:

The second you decide I'm here and who's going to stop me from taking a chance on myself today? Yeah, nobody. Then you do, and then that's a muscle the more you exercise that, the stronger gets, the more you start doing stuff. I mean, I mean, having said, when you and I met, I mean what, what weren't we told about our time at the radio station? Like we were, like we were happily, like little, two little eager puppies in the corner where people pet our heads and be like that's cute that y'all do that, but no one had any illusion of giving us an opportunity bigger than you know, filling the airtime and the dead air space that they needed. Everything that came out of that was a commitment week to week, of me and you just being like screw it, we're gonna try.

Natalie:

Yeah, we're gonna try, we're gonna do something else, we're going to do this. There was and I think you it helped, I know it helped me because you you really seem like you knew what you were doing. Yeah, totally, totally, totally, didn't just netting it out. So it's surprising to hear that you did it and I kind of went into it with it.

Twila:

Well, I have absolutely nothing to lose, okay, see, and here's the thing, if you add, like delusional confidence, with a complete lack of shame. That was us exactly, and what we would do really well is I would be thinking every single solitary scenario. But I still had an external monologue that said, oh, I can't approach this person, or I can't talk to this person because it's that's not appropriate. What's the appropriate channel? And Natalie would go oh, we want to get this person on the show. I'm gonna go on Twitter and just directly at them and would it would go on tour and be like you should come on our show. And then we would get a call and be like wait, did? That person said they could do our show, yeah, you know, or she would scam us into an event Like there'd be stuff we weren't supposed to be at. And then Bethany Frankel oh my God, listen forever we and when I say we, that was so beautiful that we actually got ourselves in trouble at the stage show for it, but it was worth it.

Twila:

Bethany Frankel, if you have a memory, had a talk show, a brief talk show, and was going around the country on tour and she was having these little like cocktail party slash interview events and the media list was hard to get on and every media outlet in the city only got one person they could send. So what we didn't know at the time and at this point we didn't think we had any shot at this. And so Natalie calls me and is like I'm getting my nails done and there's a guy here that's a friend of mine who says he knows somebody he thinks can get us on the list. And I'm like, go for it, girl, you get us on the list, I'll ask the questions. I got you. And so she gets us on the list. Now what we didn't understand when she got us on the list is that essentially, that took up my talk slot because we worked for mud, so while they were trying to get like they're more popular and successful, and there were many more popular, successful shows than everybody else.

Twila:

And so they're applying and they get told oh no, your slot's already taken. And they're like what do you mean? And they're like well, natalie, if they have that, yo, when I say everything hit the fan, all of it hits the fan. And so nobody could be like they were mad at us. But they couldn't be like mad, mad at us, they had to respect the host. Yeah, we did get in, we did get in. So then we get there and we're like just act like you've been there, just act like you've been there. And we got to do an interview and the interview was like super awkward. Yeah, we got to interview Bethany. No, I do so, the interview was awkward, but it wasn't because of us, it was just because that wasn't her bag either.

Natalie:

Yeah, she didn't seem like she really wanted to be doing.

Twila:

No, she was, and I don't blame her. Yeah, it was kind of like what happens when you get into it you make a huge cash grab and all of a sudden you're stuck with the pieces that go with it, and so we were like well, do our interview? We were told coming in the door, just so you know you can do your interview. It's five minutes, no photos, and the party is full. Nobody's getting into the party. Yeah, you cannot go upstairs.

Natalie:

Yes, so we, which immediately meant we were going to go upstairs.

Twila:

It's even better Because they were so specific, like don't ask, don't ask for selfies, don't ask these questions. I come in. I find the most polite way to ask the questions. They told me not to ask, but she did answer them. We get up to leave and now they're like we're going to take a selfie, which they told us specifically not to do. Did it anyway? Come up the stairs and we're supposed to, like you go up the stairs, you're supposed to go out the door. So you either go straight out the door or you turn left and the tables are there.

Twila:

Now, mind you, we're hovering, not because we're thinking like how to scam our way into the party. We're actually just trying to like figure out like how to bundle up against you know, and get you know, like go get our cars and go get out of downtown. We're literally just chatting and this man walks up to us and goes oh ladies, I'm so sorry that we haven't taken care of you. Did you get your bags? You know? Do you have your badges for upstairs? And I don't even get to answer. I turn around and Natalie goes no, we didn't. Thank you so much. And because he's holding them up and we could have said like oh, we're not going to the party, but Natalie goes no, we didn't Thank you so much and she takes them. She hands them to me.

Natalie:

We were right affested that that was ours.

Twila:

Listen, she's literally. We looked at each other and she just like, go, go up the stairs, go. We go, go, go to this someone, go to this party. And I always say that was like the night, that was the catalyst, because we got to that party and wound up getting access to all of these media, people in the city who we never would have met and people who wound up like coming on our show and supporting our show. People like Tony Flavio met that night and he came and did our show.

Twila:

Like before he went to work for Sirius and I think that's still one of my greatest radio compliments ever when he sat in studio with us and told us, like an hour in, he goes. Y'all do this every weekend. And we're like, yeah, he goes. You talk for an hour straight Like no breaks, no music. We're like, yeah, he goes. Don't let anybody tell you you're not professionals, because this is hard, this is a hard thing to do, this is not easy to do. And like after that I was like totally puffy-chested. It was like, ok, look, tony said this is hard, he's been doing this forever. So I think things like that kind of helped, just Like it was like watching our community in action? Yeah, because in a lot of ways our community showed up in ways for us that they didn't even realize they were doing.

Natalie:

Exactly. Do you remember his advice? We had asked him when we had him on the show I think we were still on the air. It was at a time in my life where I had not that long before come out of Scientology, that I was born and raised in a very controlling organization, very limited, very somewhat isolated, and I just really hadn't really gotten out in the world a lot outside of that. So I'm sitting there in this interview freshly having kind of again left Scientology, and she's talking about pop culture. We have a pop culture format. Are you okay with pop culture and talking about pop culture? I'm like I love pop culture, I'm obsessed with pop culture, I am all about pop culture. And then I went home and I googled what is pop culture?

Twila:

Some of my favorite moments on that show were when we would be talking about something we thought we assumed everybody knew and you'd be like what's that? And we'd be like Natalie, you all know that movie, you all know that TV show. And she'd be like I and then like what I loved is that we got to a comfort level where you would just go cult, remember, and we'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah right.

Natalie:

There was a period of time when in my teen years, when I was in what's called the C organization, you're not allowed to watch television, read newspapers, have a TV.

Twila:

So there's a lot of the things that my peers learned about went through and that was a period of time where I didn't have access to that pop culture, yeah, but I mean, I always say in the in the course of the time we knew each other in the early days and even like, and even now, honestly, even to this very day, the thing that I admire most about what you do and how you do it is that you've always had this sense of joy around it. And I remember asking you about it because I remember being like I don't understand how you can just be like happy in the day to day this way, and you said would they stole enough of my joy? They can't have another minute of it. That's exactly it. And I mean after that, I think even that helped me be like okay, you don't like this isn't digging ditches, like we literally show up and we talk nonsense for two hours and got paid to do it, and that there's like you can, I mean to some, to some. To some degree it informed how I wound up thinking about the way I wanted to build the brand. Now, because I'm me, of course, the first execution of the brand was like super, like, you have to take this seriously. But there's like, as time has gone on, we've gotten a real understanding of an underpinning and the underpinning is like I want people to have joy, I want women to understand that they're allowed to enjoy their life. But and I don't like that I don't.

Twila:

As an American and as a black woman, I was always like sort of in the responsibility first mode, like I have responsibility to the voice of the public or to the audience that I'm serving. And I really had to go back and go okay, what, what are like, what were the things that I would do in this space that would bring joy? What were like? That's why the first show we built had to be your show. You know, had to be the show with us together, because I knew that was going to set the tone.

Twila:

And to this day, when people hear the show, they understand two things very clearly One, we are perfectly comfortable being ourselves. And two, there is real like levity and joy and happiness that infuses the way we talk about being women. And I was like, if we could, if I can make that the bedrock of how we make every show, if I can make that the bedrock of what it feels like when you're interacting with the brand, we'll be doing it. We'll be doing something really right, because women will feel safe, being vulnerable here, being happy here, just being themselves here.

Natalie:

And being able to share, and that's what I loved about when you went and created Matric Digital Media was it gave these women and continues to this voice and this platform. But it's kind of like what we went through when we were doing radio and getting comfortable with ourselves and just being like okay. And again, where I was coming from, we're trying to figure out like I don't even know what the social contracts were in society to a degree, and it was. I never felt judged about it at all, even when there's something that I wouldn't know. It became so much fun because Twyla would give me homework, like okay, and be like this week you're going to go watch episodes of this show?

Natalie:

Yeah, exactly, and like you go watch this new movie To find out what happened about it. And then, even when we, when it would come up, we would talk about Scientology. It wasn't a primary subject of our show by any means, it was something that that's kind of when I think I really realized that the more I spoke about it, the better I felt about it, the more I could process it, because my experience for me was a lot about not recognizing how strange, bizarre, wrong and abusive a lot of things that happened happened. So they would come up in conversation and I would be very nonchalant about it because for me that was what my normal was. Yeah, and then we'd all be like what, what?

Twila:

Me Wait and I like I used to do this thing on the show and I still do it in real life where I'll go sidebar, we need to talk about this for a second. Or sometimes I would like we got, we had a good enough shorthand where I would know if we were allowed to talk about it on air or not and I'd be like, okay, we'll talk about that later. We'll be like okay, sidebar, we'll pick that up later.

Natalie:

Yeah, exactly, I heard of. I heard of what I needed to process and it was a unique, I think, situation to be in, to be able to process my cult experience in part on this show and in a public forum.

Twila:

In a public way, but it taught I mean, I think it taught both of us a lot about how to navigate difficult conversations and vulnerabilities. And I think, as a producer because ultimately what I didn't realize at the time was I was learning to be a producer in real time it taught me a lot about how to create the structure of safety around conversations that are vulnerable.

Natalie:

Yeah, so what I'm hearing is I was the inspiration for Patriarch.

Twila:

I'm the general media. I mean I'm not gonna say the answer is no to that, because a lot of what we I mean even when we started to build it remember when we said we were sitting down to make a show and it was like, okay, we can't do what we were doing on the radio. And then we kind of said, you know what though that wasn't even the most fun we had the most fun we would have at the station is showing up an hour before the show would start and downloading our lives together. But we were told, don't talk about that kind of stuff on the radio. Nobody cares about that. They care about the celebrities, not y'all.

Twila:

And so we immediately shifted and said, okay, we're gonna talk about ourselves in this setting. And at that point we had enough rapport. We knew the ground rules of how to structure a conversation. We knew what we had, what our personal boundaries are and what we talk about and what we don't talk about. And so it just I mean the very first time we turned the microphone on, that was super easy, it was much. I went back and listened to it recently and thought to myself, oh, this probably won't hold up, it'll probably feel a little clunky, didn't feel clunky at all. It felt as if it hit the goal I always had, which was, if we make something, I want anybody in front of a mic for us to feel 100% themselves, as comfortable as possible, and I want you to feel like you happen as a listener. I want you to feel like you just happened to pull up a chair at the most fun or interesting conversation that was going on and they just happened to be totally cool when you sat down with them to have time.

Natalie:

And that's really how it was. And when we were doing Twilight and Natalie the podcast together, we treated it just like when we were on air. That was live, yes, other than being able to hit a button if somebody swore there was no editing. So I still don't. I still do things live to tape, yeah, which is amazing. When we were recording the podcast, the agreement in the role was that this is our authentic conversation and there's no taking anything out other than editing for sound and then having an intro-outro. Now I will say we've.

Twila:

I have evolved a little bit from there, I think, because we I said because it was me and you we were just like we knew where the we always knew where the boundary walls were for us as we brought more people in, as we started to work with other people, as we started to work with guests and clients. One of the things I am really, really like passionate about is making sure that you feel 100% comfortable with the way you're presented A little space when you're with us. So I assure you as much as I can in the beginning, like thank you so much for being here. If, at any point, you say something that makes you feel uncomfortable and you just don't want it included, tell me, we'll remove it. If you get overwhelmed during the recording process or it's you feel it's a little too close to the bone, please tell us. We'll take a break, we'll stop, we'll reset, we'll move on.

Natalie:

Don't you wish we could do that in real life? What in real life? You're having a difficult situation, you say some just athinine stupid and you're like, can you please take?

Twila:

that out? Yeah, edit, can you just edit that out? Can you move on and just move that from the edit? I mean, that has been. It's one of the things that I feel like I learned so specifically from the time we spent together, mostly because there were times like there were lessons I had to learn and I think you and I, like, definitely did a lot of that practice ground together when, like one of my main tenants and when I have clients is telling, teaching them that your story is not always your own. So the idea that when you tell a story it should be centered on you, you should be the protagonist, antagonist, but of the joke it should be you. If it's anybody else, that story doesn't just belong to you and you need to vet it properly. And it was one of those things that we always did when we would tell stories. It would always be like we're the butt of the joke Exactly, unless it was.

Natalie:

You know, sometimes a few things about my kids would get in there. But what I learned to do because I have three children and then now they're all adults, is not say which one.

Twila:

Yes, that's it. And I'm gonna step further, because I had children that were minors, so I would obscure all of the detail. But I would also like vet it with my husband before I put stuff out there. I'd be like, okay, can I tell the story? And then sometimes he'd be like, no, you can't tell that story. And then sometimes he'd be like, oh yeah, that's innocuous, that's fine, go ahead, tell that story.

Natalie:

The whole experience was, I think, a big lesson in. I was creating a new community, I was finding my way outside of Scientology and in the world, and you were finding these ways to help what ended up being helping other people create their communities and building it all up.

Twila:

Well, I think the fundamental is we learned how to be in community in a new way and in a new space.

Twila:

And once we learned how to be in community in that space, we developed not just a skill set but a confidence in being able to take those things and go create things in other places. And I will always be grateful for that experience because it's the thing that gave us both the confidence and go okay, I can do anything, I can go out here and try this, I can go talk to these people, I can go start this. I mean, we both started countless ventures public ventures, private ventures and the core tenant is still the same. The same thing that got us that job years ago is the same thing that works today. We're both completely comfortable going into new spaces and just talking to people and that's it's an incalculable skill. And I said my mom jokes every once in awhile she'll call me and be like I can't believe you get paid to talk stuff for a living and I'm like I know that's a pretty good life, that's a pretty good life, yeah.

Natalie:

so if you're that person, you're out there and you're passionate about something you wanna share and whatever it is. If you wanna do a podcast, create a community. That way, reach out to Twyla through matriarch digital media. Again, go to matriarchdmcom. You can see the other podcast, twyla and Natalie. The podcast we were doing is on there. Yes, it is. You can learn more about women in podcasting. You can connect with that community.

Twila:

Yeah, and we have a production house too. So we make custom audio, custom podcast, custom content for clients, from idea we have a generation all the way to finished project. We do audio, we do video, we do all the cart services. So if you wanna make something, you just don't even know where to start you can come talk to us.

Natalie:

We'll help you. I love that. That's amazing. Well, we are definitely gonna have to talk about something again, so I know we're gonna be. We'll have Twyla back. We'll share more about what's going on too. I'm gonna get more involved with women in podcasting and just pick her brain for all kind of things and share with me, too, what you wanna hear about. On Tonka Talk, we share the different ways people create and connect all over, so I wanna hear how you're doing that or what you'd like to hear more about, what would help you to be able to create these communities more or get more connected in your community. So, twyla, thank you so much.

Twila:

No, you never have to thank me, I'm so proud of you. Anything you need, anytime you need it, you know, just call me I appreciate that, everybody else.

Natalie:

I will talk to you later.

People on this episode

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Natalie Webster

Host
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Kelly Olsen

Co-host