Katie 00:03
Hello and welcome to The Internal Comms Podcast with me, Katie Macaulay. For more than 30 years, I’ve been on a mission to improve the way we communicate at work, and this podcast is very much a part of that endeavour. Every fortnight, I sit down with a leading light from the world of communication to tease out new and proven ways to better, inform, inspire and involve employees. I have asked many guests over the last six years to reveal what characteristic or trait has most led to their career success. The most common answer: curiosity. Well, my guest today is someone who doesn’t just embrace curiosity. She wields it like a superpower. Beth Collier is a communication, creativity and leadership consultant. She’s also the endlessly inquisitive author of the brilliant substack newsletter, Curious Minds. Her career has taken her from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood to government in New Zealand and the more formal world of financial services in London. She has a rare talent for finding insight in the most unexpected places, whether that’s musical theater, pop culture or history. In this conversation, we explore how to hone your creativity, how to rethink failure and why it’s possibly time to retire the notion of imposter syndrome. We’ll explore some fascinating origin stories, like why it took humanity so long to put wheels on suitcases, and how a worried but determined mother saved lives in wartime by inventing one of the world’s most ubiquitous products. Be prepared, listeners to be informed, inspired and entertained. I bring you the very brilliant Beth Collier. So Beth, welcome to The Internal Comms Podcast. It’s a joy to have you here.

Beth 02:29
Thank you so much for inviting me. Katie, it’s great to be here.

Katie 02:32
Let’s imagine you’re sitting next to someone on a plane and they ask you, what do you do for a living? How would you respond to that question?

Beth 02:42
First of all, I’m delighted that a stranger on a plane is having a conversation with me. It’s always nice having those single serving friends. I’ve done too many flights recently with children where there’s no talking to anyone, just trying to keep track of everyone. But this is a fun one when people ask, because I think when you work in communication or you have that kind of emphasis, it’s not something that people necessarily understand. The easiest place for me to start on what I think I do is I help people. And when you say help, I help people, obviously that was going to open itself up to more, but I would say broadly, I might say to someone, oh, I work in leadership development. What I actually help people do is make work a better place. I help them improve performance. I help them improve their relationships. I help them improve their reputation. It’s all about getting people to understand how important their communication skills are, and that can go across all sorts of things, from the way they write, the way they conduct a meeting, the way they conduct a performance review, the way they recruit and develop their talent. There’s just so much within that umbrella. So see, I’m going to need a longer flight with this person, because they’re coming around for the drink orders, and I’m still going, Well, what else would you like about communication?

Katie 03:59
So the question that crops up in my mind when you talk about helping is, where does that come from in your psyche or background that desire to help?

Beth 04:11
It’s funny because I was thinking about school mottos. My high school had a very large sign on it, big wooden sign. This was one of the oldest high schools in operation in the state of Indiana, where I grew up. And the sign said, enter to learn, go forth to serve. And every day I walked into the high school, I saw that sign, and I think that message, that idea of you’re coming in here to learn, but when you get out of here, you’ve got to go serve. You’ve got to help people with whatever it is you’ve learned. And certainly it comes from my upbringing, my parents, my family, where I come from, but this idea of you’ve got this knowledge or this ability, this gift, it is your responsibility to use it to help other people. That’s where I think it comes from, a very young age, just how I was brought up.

Katie 05:03
I love that thought. Thank you, Beth. Your career actually began in film and television in Los Angeles. What lessons did you take from that world that potentially have shaped your approach to communication today? It feels like a very different world. But I’m just wondering, are the golden threads that run through?

Beth 05:24
Yeah, there are absolutely. I think it’s important for me to say I was not in front of the camera. Sometimes people think, Oh, are you an actress? No, I was not. I was working behind the scenes in production for a TV show and for film company. I went out there to do an internship as part of my studies. I love pop culture and that world of entertainment, how people create something. I’m so grateful for that time, because it taught me things that have carried me through my whole life. I was very young, the world is your oyster, kind of thing. You’re just absorbing it all. I saw people who had so much success. I remember once being on a show, and it got picked up for more episodes, and someone bought a house in Maui like that day, like, that was what that meant. We get to do more episodes, I’m buying a house in Maui. And the cars in the parking lot. I just had never seen so many fancy cars. And you see all these people that materially, have so much and in some cases, they have an enormous amount of power. But what I took away from it was things about, how do you use your power? In Hollywood at that time, there were people who started out at the bottom, people who became film executives, that started out in the mail room, or started out as interns. And so you watch people have this climb, and you think about, how are you treated while you’re climbing, and then how are you going to treat people when you get to wherever it is you’re going? And I saw people who used that power in a way that I really respected. And I also saw people use that power in a way I really did not. And I as a girl from a small town in the Midwest, United States, really struggled to reconcile, like, why would you speak to people like that? Or why would you make those kind of decisions? It was just something like a little bit of real world awareness and… but it stayed with me in my other jobs, when I saw people behave in a certain way, when someone would try to talk about how successful they were, how much they had, and I’m like I saw more when I was 21 years old. To quote my friend Shania Twain, that don’t impress me much. It’s about who are you as a person that really stuck with me, of like, how you use your power, how you treat people. And I think the other thing Katie is about gratitude, about being appreciative for what you have. I used to joke, because as I started out, I wasn’t able to park on the lot. There were only so many spots on the parking lot, and that went, obviously to, like the stars of the shows, but I got to walk at NBC across the street. It took me 10 minutes to get into the studio, and I got to pass these trees that had, I don’t know what flower it was, but it was the most beautiful smelling flower. I thought, wow. Like, I get to have this little walk and have this nice smell as I walk into my day, and I walk past Jay Leno’s cars, which changed all the time, but probably cost more than people’s homes. So just fancy cars and just thinking about like, I loved being there. I didn’t really mind what they asked me to do, like, even the menial tasks. I think that’s an important thing too. Thinking about what’s your attitude gonna be when you’re doing you know, things that you think are maybe not the best use of your talent? I don’t think anyone saw me and thought that girl is gonna be so good at photocopying. Get her in here now. But you know what? I did it with a smile, and I was happy to do it. Just I’m so happy to be there, to be in that world. I didn’t take it for granted. I think that’s something that stayed with me, of being appreciative for opportunities you get. Even now living in a foreign country, which I’ve done for a long time, it’s not lost on me that’s a privilege. I will always feel like I’m a guest, even though I’ve been here longer than I’ve been in any other city in my adult life. Just having some gratitude, those things have definitely been lessons that stayed with me.

Katie 08:56
You mentioned there pop culture, and even in preparation for this show, we talked about your passion, your love of pop culture, and how that influences your work. Can you talk to me about what it is about pop culture that particularly attracts you, and then maybe give us an example of how a pop culture inspired moment shaped your approach to a project?

Beth 09:20
At an early age, I just loved film, TV, books, music, all of that was just really interesting to me. I don’t care who’s dating, who celebrity gossip, but it was just the idea of like, how does something get made? How do you bring this idea to life? You think about music. I’ve always loved music. There are only so many notes, but look at like, how differently people like Kendrick Lamar and Chappell Roan and Dolly Parton and ACDC, they’ve all got the same equipment that they could have at their fingertips, but they do things that are so different. So I think there’s that interesting element to me that ‘Wow, that’s just so interesting what people do.’ And really, Katie, I just think it’s fun to talk about who won this award, and the journey that person had to get that movie made, or get that album released, or get that book, like all these things that we see that are created, they take so much time and love and effort, and so it’s just fun to hear, wow, How did you do that?

Beth 10:21
I do a lot of workshops on things around communication and leadership and creativity. These lessons that we want to share with people, they may not sound that interesting on the face of it. If I say, Oh, you want to be an effective communicator, you better know your audience. Of course, great. But like, how can you get that message across in a creative way that is memorable and is fun? And I had a client years ago, they were company that did branding and licensing for famous people. And so some of it was dead famous people’s estates, and some were people who were still alive. When I dug in, because I like to make things personal. I don’t want it to be like, here’s this generic thing that everybody gets. I want to understand your business, your client, your challenges, your people, and make it really relevant to them and make it feel personal. Because I don’t want to get clothes that are one size. I want something that like fits me and there’s a colour that suits, yeah, it just feels more special. And so this one was really fun because of the people that they represented, the estates. Like I got to do communication lessons. I researched Muhammad Ali. I didn’t grow up with Muhammad Ali. I knew who he was, but not the peak of his career, but to actually go in and I’m gonna research Muhammad Ali and see if I can find some communication lessons from him. And Albert Einstein was another one. Again, where can I find communication lessons from Albert Einstein? Sophia Loren. And I will dig into this. I read Sophia Loren’s biography, because, again, I know who this person is, but I don’t really know, like I’ve not watched Sophia Loren’s movies. I couldn’t really converse with someone who maybe grew up when she was a big star. But to actually go in and make it personal and make it fun, and then it’s different, and then you’re increasing the chances of people actually remembering it, that it doesn’t just feel like, oh yeah, she said, Wait, when I see this thing about Einstein, I’m gonna remember what Beth said, or when I see Muhammad Ali, I’m gonna remember the power of three, or what rhyming can do, or how to be authentic, those kinds of things. It makes it different. It makes it fun, and that’s what learning should be. I don’t know how many people are like, Oh, I can’t wait to have communication training, but my argument is you should be excited for it, because not only is it so valuable to your career and your development, but it’s fun. It’s fun. We’re all doing communication, not in the way some of the professionals are doing it, but we’ve all got to speak and write emails and do this. So if you can be better at it and improve the things that are not just gonna help your company’s performance, but help you personally, why wouldn’t you wanna do that?

Katie 10:25
The other thing you’re making me think is that pop culture is interesting for two other reasons, and there are two reasons that seem, on the face of it, very different from a lot of the work we do in internal communications. One is, pop culture is often about breaking rules or surprising people and doing what’s not expected, isn’t it? It’s taking an idea and turning it on its head. The first time, I don’t know, Madonna came to the stage, Like A Virgin. It’s not what we were expecting. It was brave and bold and broke the rules. That’s one thing. And the other thing that’s interesting, I think about pop culture is the speed. So I think how it can tap into a trend, and especially in the world that we live in today, with social media, blow up incredibly quickly. You’ve got to react to that trend, and then also the opposite, it could be all over in 10 days as well, if you’re not careful. So that’s also what intrigues me about taking some influence from pop culture. Does that resonate with you as well?

Beth 13:53
You’re speaking my language when you’re talking about Madonna, for starters, like, oh, Madonna, you think back to when MTV started, like these things that… But you’re right about trends. It was a really clever IKEA ad that I just saw recently. They are, I think, starting a loyalty programme, they’ve never had one, and they took these elements of things that had been trends or popular kind of pop culture moments from many years ago, and they did this ad, like I saw one, where they were doing the Harlem Shake. And if you remember when that came out, it was, like, all over social media, and then these things, they just die, which they played into that of saying, we’re finally doing this! 10 years too late, but like, better late than never. And I thought, Oh, what a clever way of like, you’re given a throwback to something to then say, Yeah, we know we could have done this 10 years ago, but we’re doing it now.

Katie 14:39
Very clever. You describe curiosity as one of your defining traits. I think it was Malcolm Gladwell that said we need to think of curiosity as a habit rather than a trait. We can develop this. I’m just wondering if you have any daily or weekly practices that help you cultivate that habit of getting curious.

Beth 14:59
It is. Both like a trait and a habit, like it’s a muscle that you can strengthen, just like your own creative talents. For me, it starts with absorbing information. I read every day, and I read a lot of different things, so I subscribe to newspapers and magazines and periodicals, but then I also subscribe to Substacks that are about different things. So some are about politics, some are about business, some are about pop culture, history, just different things. And that’s what I try to do, is actually just feed my brain a lot of different information. Like I just finished a book about, quite sad, this book called I Seek a Kind Person, about the Holocaust, about children who were sent from Vienna. Ads were placed in the paper in Manchester in England, asking for people to take these children right before the Nazis came into Vienna. Will this get used in any of my work? I don’t know, but I was so curious about it, because I think there are these things that we learn about in school, but we don’t… there’s so much more to the story. Yeah, and like you might learn facts and figures, and I’ve certainly noticed this coming from the United States and now living in the UK, that wherever you are, you’re going to get the information base that is interesting to that country. So I see what my kids come home from school, they’re going to have a lot more Winston Churchill in their learning and we, of course, learned about Churchill, but I don’t know if there will be such an emphasis on Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. I knew Kindertransport, but I didn’t know about what would it have been like for those children to leave Vienna, not speaking English, leave their parents behind, be very young, and this case, he’s talking about someone who goes to a very small town in Wales, and it’s just interesting to learn someone else’s story and to think about somebody else’s perspective. And again, going back to what I said about gratitude, to thinking like, oh my goodness. Sometimes you can think, boy, life is difficult in 2025, and then you think, gosh, people have been going through hard things forever, and we’re pretty fortunate not to go through some of the things that some people have gone through.

Katie 17:07
I did some analysis, and I went back through 100 episodes, and I wondered to myself, were there any reoccurring themes that made for stellar careers? I’ve interviewed all these amazing people. What were the things that they had in common? And one was that they took, often, an interdisciplinary approach to their work. So exactly what you’ve just said, they didn’t say, well, I work in comms, so therefore I’m going to read books about communications and leadership. They were, like, fascinated by poetry or fiction or architecture, and looking for that inspiration everywhere else. And it strikes me that great ideas are often at that intersection of one discipline and another. I don’t know if that means anything to you.

Beth 17:52
It does. And I think Katie, it’s interesting. I went to a liberal arts university, and I think about this now a lot that what they encouraged us to do was learn a little about a lot of things. Getting to do things that maybe this is never gonna be your job. Maybe you’re never gonna do anything that has to do with art history, or you’re never gonna have to do anything that has to do with religion or criminology or whatever it is. But I just think it enriches your life to learn about these, like, just get a taste. Because I find when I look into something, I’m reading a book about an obscure Civil War General. Obscure. This is just to mix it up, Katie. I mean, I love my Madonna and my Taylor Swift. And then I read about an obscure Civil War general because we didn’t really learn about him in school. And it’s just interesting to think about, oh my gosh, back then, oh, there was a miscommunication. It’s interesting because there is a communication lesson that I’ve already picked up from it where there had been this miscommunication in a battle, and someone was talking about the time that I gave this order at such and such time, but then you realise they wouldn’t have had watches to know. So how would you be… How could you be certain? So the other person is saying, No, it wasn’t this time. It was 11:30 or whatever it was. And then how do you say for sure, who is right? Because this is a very long time ago without some of the things that we have today that… so yeah, I just think it’s great to just feed your curiosity to learn about all kinds of things and see what interests you.

Katie 19:20
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Katie 20:52
This is a really unfair question, but I can’t help ask you it. Because you’ve lived outside of the States for so long in the UK and you know us so well, is there one thing in particular that you think the Brits get wrong about Americans and vice versa?

Beth 21:12
That’s a good question, Katie!

Katie 21:13
It’s a cruel question.

Beth 21:14
There are probably so many things we get wrong about each other. The thing I say about America to people, which I have said forever, is that it’s a big country, and I come from the north, what would have been considered the north in the Civil War times. There are differences. And I’m not just talking north and south. I spent some time in the East Coast, and I lived in the West Coast, and even within states, I would say where I’m from, it is very different to meet someone from the northern part of the state, to someone from the southern part of the state. So when someone says, Americans are this, or Americans are that, I think it’s a really big country. And I always encourage people, if they’re going to travel to the United States, go do New York and go do Disney and Vegas and Grand Canyon, whatever it is you’re interested in, but go somewhere off the beaten path, like, go to a small town, take a road trip, if you can, just to see, I think, the vastness of America people don’t necessarily appreciate unless they go there, that you can go from I’m on the ocean in California, and now I’m in Utah with like, Red Rock, and then I’m in Colorado with mountains, and then I’m in Kansas, and it’s totally flat. Like, there’s just so much diversity of actual landscape and people as well. You’ll meet everybody. You will meet the smartest people and the kindest people, and you might meet some of the nastiest people. Like, yeah, it’s a big country. And I think the other thing about Americans, there is a curiosity within us that could be dismissed by somebody of, oh, like for people who just don’t know. Someone said to you, okay, Katie, you’re from England. You must have known the Queen. And you would think, Oh my gosh. How foolish is this person to think I know the Queen, or why would you ask that? But, they don’t know, and they might just be curious, what is that like to live in England? And whatever kind of stereotypical things they’ve heard, they may want to know, Oh, does it rain all the time, or do you drink tea? Obviously, yes. I would say to a Brit, America’s bigger than you think, and I would say to an American who’s probably along the similar lines of what your stereotype, or what your expectation of England is, because my version of England, growing up in America, was theRoyal Family, I would have said, British = fancy, like I would have pictured like someone with a top hat in a monocle almost. It wasn’t until I moved here 15 years ago that one day I was introduced to the Jeremy Kyle Show.

Katie 21:16
Oh my goodness.

Beth 21:25
And I said, there goes that idea of British people being so fancy and refined.

Katie 23:46
Not sure that’s the export we’re most proud of. I tell you.

Beth 23:49
We’ve got plenty of those things two. And people are like, Oh, is America like, I used to get it. Is America like Baywatch. Is America like Jerry Springer? And you’re trying to explain to people like, okay, Jerry Springer, all of those people are actors, or they’re… that’s not, again, I would say it’s a really big country.

Katie 24:04
Yeah, but it comes back to your curious point, isn’t it? Get curious. Don’t fall in line with the stereotype. Question it.

Beth 24:11
I’ve been in this country for 15 years, but I’ve lived in London, and I always laugh when people be like, I’m sure you can hear that I’m from Birmingham, Manchester, whatever. To me it takes ab beat for me, someone says, I’m from this place. I can go, okay, I can hear your accent is different, but I still couldn’t tell you by speaking, oh, that person is from here or there. And I’m sure if you live in Manchester, you have a different view of things than if you live in London, like you can really get in a bubble in London, even though it’s such a diverse place I do find when I get out into the smaller, little village, any place where people call me, love a lot. Oh, hello, love, okay, this is different, yeah, different kind of experience. So yeah, see more.

Katie 24:53
See it, yes, yeah, I love it. I’ve heard you say that some of the most innovative ideas have a long history of failure behind them, and I’ve often said that failure is success in disguise. Failure isn’t always one step away from success. It can be one step nearer to it. Do you have any favourite examples of this long history of failure before we get to where we need to go? And I’m just wondering about your sort of personal attitude to failure?

Beth 25:22
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think that we celebrate successes, but we ignore the path to get there. Yes, it’s like, you just look at something and you go, Oh, that’s fantastic. Wow, someone invented the iPhone. Aren’t they clever? I don’t know how long it took to actually get that version of an iPhone, and I imagine at some point when somebody said, here’s this idea I have, there might have been someone to say, that’s not possible, like we have tried that before. And I think you find that in a lot of these stories from history that you could have a creative idea, and it’s different so it just rubs people the wrong way, because we’re much more comfortable with the status quo. And I was thinking about this because I was, I just went to see a musical recently, and I was thinking about musicals and how musicals get made. The musical Hamilton, which obviously was hugely successful a few years back, I don’t think any musical since then has had quite the dent that it has. When I heard about it, I was like, okay, Alexander Hamilton, I think outside of America, probably no one would have known who he was. But even within America, it is true that probably, I’m gonna say, 99% of Americans could have told you, if they could tell you one thing, it’d be that he was on the $10 note, right? He’s not someone that got a lot of, he didn’t get a lot of space in the history textbook. Yes, he was there, like he was present, but he’s not someone who… he’s not one of the Presidents or the other kind of founding fathers that got a lot of attention. So I thought, A, that’s an interesting subject for a musical, but then B, when it was a rap… that is different. When you think about your kind of Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera, or even, like a Chicago style musical, All That Jazz, this sort of Bob Fauci. It’s such a different kind of idea. And I read about this. There was a time when Lin Manuel Miranda, who came up for Hamilton, had tried to get some kind of music theatre grant scholarship, or whatever. He wrote this thing about how passionate he was about musical theatre, and he didn’t get it, but he kept on writing and working. He had a musical In The Heights before he did Hamilton, but then, when he came up with the idea for Hamilton, he faced all kinds of naysayers just the idea, the subject matter, and like the idea of doing rap, like when you think about the Broadway community, they might be looking for a more emotional Jean Valjean ballad, not looking for a rap. And one of the things I saw when he was doing it that he was actually fortunate enough to be having having the ability to access people like Stephen Sondheim, who’s one of the most famous musical theatre people around, had so much success in various shows. And Stephen Sondheim’s response to it, as someone who was a friend of Lin Manuel Miranda, was, this isn’t gonna work. This is… people are not gonna sit through two hours of rap, like they’re just not, so you’re so desperate to get your story out there and to create this thing, and you’ve actually got access to the, at the time, most famous living musical theatre person that you could, and he’s telling you it’s not going to work. And, like, how do you go, “Thank you so much. Stephen Sondheim, I appreciate your feedback, but I’m going to ignore it, and I’m going to keep doing this thing that I believe in.” And the whole story, like we all love Hamilton. I don’t know how many people know that it took seven years to get there. So from, Hey, I’ve read this book on vacation. People seen that picture of Lin Manuel Miranda reading the biography of Hamilton, but to actually then getting on a Broadway theatre, performing for an audience, pay their tickets and come. That’s seven years. But that’s a long time to be working on something, and have so many people saying to you, where do you get it? Like year three or four, where someone goes, I don’t know, like you still want to keep working on this, because I don’t know if it’s going to happen. And that’s the thing that so many people, when they have a creative idea, that is the path of these things.

Beth 29:18
I mentioned to you before, putting wheels on suitcases. This idea. How did this just not get accepted immediately? Of course we’ll have wheels on suitcases. That was rejected. And when you find out that people were pitching these ideas and getting rejected, like, no one’s gonna buy it, no one’s gonna, there’s no money in it, like post-it notes is another one where 3M had canceled that project. They said it’s not commercially viable, there’s no money in it, and then post-its, they become one of the most profitable products that 3M has ever made. This is the thing with failures. It’s all about. You’ve got to really have that drive personally to say, if I believe in this thing, to keep going, to put the effort in, to put the work into it, because you never know. And even something that can be a failure, can lead you to another idea. Are you familiar with the candy Reese’s Pieces? But M&M’s, you would know. So there was another candy that Hershey introduced. They wanted to have a competitor to M&M’s. They called it Hershey Et, so it was the same kind of thing, of this chocolate with a candy coating thing, and it didn’t work. Eminem’s was too dominant, and this is many years ago. But in that failure, they learned something in the technology that they could then use for another candy, which went on to become Reese’s Pieces, which ended up becoming a very successful candy for them in the 80s, thanks to the movie ET. If you ever see the movie ET eats Reese’s Pieces. That partnership basically made this candy so popular. But the point is, Hershey, they had to fail with this candy to learn something that they could then use for the next candy, which then became successful. It’s looking at these things that might have been a failure or feel like a failure in that moment, but is there something in it that could later be a success.

Katie 31:03
Yes. Don’t be too quick to dismiss it all, because what’s the lesson here? And what can we take forward? The other thing that you raised there, I think, which is so important to note, is that some things can take time. Often we get a brief come in to AB: I want this change to happen. It’s got to start this week, and then by week six I want this, then week 12, I want this, and so on. But actually, when you’re talking about developing an idea, really embedding it, really getting change to happen, really getting momentum behind that idea, it’s intriguing that Hamilton took seven years, because we are never given that kind of time, are we?

Beth 31:40
No no, or the appreciation that it can take that long. It’s like someone might want you to write something. You could sit down at your desk and maybe you could write something brilliant in a couple of hours. Maybe another time you go to do it, it might take you weeks. On the TV show Mad Men, when Don Draper would go to a movie in the middle of the day, I thought, wow, that’s great. I’d love to be able to go to be able to go to a movie the day, but sometimes you need to get away from what you’re working on to come back to it. Creativity doesn’t work on a clock quite in the way that some people maybe think it does.

Katie 32:10
You’ve got to tell listeners about why we didn’t have wheels on suitcases for so long. I can’t believe this.

Beth 32:20
Yeah? Well, yeah, the idea of putting wheels on suitcases, one of the primary reasons that they objected and it was rejected was because it was seen as something that was insulting to man’s masculinity, that the argument was that, no man is going to want to have a suitcase with wheels, because this is how you show you’re strong and you can carry the bags. So good old fashioned sexism really is what kept us also in uncomfortable travel situations for many years.

Katie 32:50
I find that so fascinating. So you can have the technology and the wherewithal and maybe even the money to make the investment, but social mores stop it from happening? Yes, and that’s so interesting to me. Yeah, I’d be wondering in business, how often that happens, and I bet it does.

Beth 33:08
And making assumptions, like to say, and this is something I think, like we all have to think about of just because I wouldn’t do it or I don’t like it, or it’s not my co… I mean, the first time I saw the TV show Peppa Pig in this country, I thought, Oh, this is like a little British cartoon, and it’s really simple and basic, so it’s probably not very popular. I had no idea until I again, curiosity, I’m gonna look into who made this show, and maybe Katie, if you don’t have any, if you haven’t had to sit with any little ones lately, you may have skipped this. But like the person who did it, has a house in the Maldives that is 300 million pounds, that it’s like, this massively huge, global children’s show. Yeah, it’s huge. But I thought, and here I am thinking, like, Oh, this is probably not really getting much credit against, oh, maybe this is like a little bit of BBC funding for a local artist. But then I had to remind myself, and guess what, I am not the person they’re making this for. Yeah, just because I don’t… it’s not my thing doesn’t mean you… if you watch it with children, you will see, oh, they quite like it, that it’s simple and it’s easy to follow and the episodes or five minutes. I don’t know. I think we have to have a little humility to know there are things we know that, yes, I know in my profession, in my discipline, these things have worked before, but also being a little bit open minded to maybe somebody else would like it in a different way.

Katie 34:25
Really important. You’ve spent many years working in the banking sector, and when I discovered that, I was really surprised, because banking is just not known, in my experience of it, for its kind of bold, cutting edge approach to communication, quite the opposite. What was that like? And how did you maintain your creative spark when you were working in such a, quite a hierarchical corporate setting, isn’t it, banking? It was when I was in it, anyway.

Beth 34:54
I wouldn’t say that people necessarily put the word creativity with it, when they think of it, but as I would say to people, you need creativity in a bank, because if you want to serve your customers, how do they want to be served? The ATM, the automatic teller, putting a hole in the wall and spitting out cash? That was someone’s creative idea. Who came up with that? Sitting around saying, hey, our customers can’t get here during the work day, but they still need to get cash. What could we do? You still need that creative thinking. You need to think about, how can you solve problems?

Beth 35:25
I look at creativity as a muscle. I think it’s something we all have. We’re born as creative people, and what we can do is strengthen it with practice. So it’s like lifting weights. You’ve got to use your creative muscles to keep them strong, because unfortunately, as you get older and you get more experienced in work, you go through more education, like I say, the system is really good at beating that creativity out of you, because you are not rewarded generally for asking questions. You are rewarded for having answers, right? So you’ve got to find ways to keep that muscle going. And you can use creativity absolutely in your professional study, but you can use it in your personal life as well, like you want to solve problems and think about, how can I do this thing? How can I stretch that muscle? Keeping my creativity going, it’s about looking to outside interests. Because I like to read, I like to listen to music. I like to go to the theatre. I like to watch movies and TV. I like to go to sporting events. I love documentaries. All those things feed my creativity in different ways. And you never know where you’ll get inspiration. I’m just writing a story this week for my newsletter Curious Minds that was inspired by being on the tube platform at Embankment station. Something happened in a moment, and I thought, I gotta look I gotta look that up. I gotta go find out what that’s about. It’s finding those things you enjoy and where you can fill your cup. Because creativity is not just about, oh, I can sing, I can dance. I think that’s where people get sidetracked thinking that they aren’t creative, because maybe that’s not where their interests or talents lie. It’s about, how can I use my brain to look at problems and solve them in a different way? And when you work in communication, you have to do that. How many of us are told your budget is getting cut, or maybe your budget is non existent? You still have work to do. You still have things to achieve. You have to get creative. How are you going to get that message out there? How are you going to really connect with people? And so that’s why I think it’s such an important skill for us all to continually be strengthening.

Katie 37:20
In fact, I have a motto, which I’m sure my colleagues at AB are sick of me saying, but oh dear, the client doesn’t have much budget. We better get creative then, because actually, often our biggest creative ideas come from the limitations that we put around something.

Beth 37:38
Constraints can be huge. This is where I get into the dangers on with some people where they’re like, Oh, you have no money. So no money so you can get creative. There’s a balance between. It’s all about what do you want? Because I agree with you, constraints absolutely can help your creativity. But there are times where you also need money to do the kinds of things. Like, I say, Avatar is the most successful film that’s ever been made, financially speaking, it’s also an incredibly expensive movie to make, so if you want to go do these, like, fantastic graphics and visuals of the rest of it that that wasn’t with a $2 million budget, that Jim Cameron did that stuff. People, I think, sometimes they get on the more, oh, you have nothing, go dazzle me. Yeah, there are times where it’s like, if you want me to make a Michelin meal, yeah…

Katie 38:20
I need the proper ingredients. Yeah, it’s gonna cost something exactly. Yeah, no, it is a good point. And I think often in our world, I don’t think people realise the amount of investment needed, just in the upfront, discovery, research, thinking and strategising, even before you get to making the wonderful assets, the natural campaign. And that time is well spent. It’s so important. Let’s cut that. That looks like 1000s of pounds. No, actually, if you don’t have that, your creative is not going to make any sense the organisation or the audience.

Beth 38:58
If you don’t know your audience, then how do you know what’s best going to serve them? You’ve got to do a little bit of work to understand that, to understand the environment you’re in.

Katie 39:07
Yeah, and also, I guess with AI, there’s even greater danger that people think we can press the button, write this, proof read this, design this. If only.

Beth 39:16
Yeah, I saw a great thing yesterday where someone had said, it was someone who was a photographer saying that people are saying, You must be worried, because now AI does headshots. So she used one of these apps. She put in her own photographs, and it spit out one. And when I first looked at it, I thought, oh, that actually looks like I would have thought that was taken by a person. And then when I looked a little bit more, I noticed that she had three legs. It can help in a lot of ways, but there is still something that you need a human, you need a human brain who asks questions and thinks about things that a computer or a system might not.

Katie 39:49
I’m intrigued by a blog that you wrote, I think it was on LinkedIn, about imposter syndrome. I think you wrote an imposter is not a marketing manager who gets promoted to senior marketing manager and is wondering if they have what it takes to do the job. Well, what is imposter syndrome and why, in your view, is it a misleading or unhelpful label?

Beth 40:18
So imposter syndrome is one that I had a client ask me, they said, oh, all of our people, we’re just really struggling with this. Our employees really have imposter syndrome. They’re struggling to get out with clients and do these kinds of things and take a step up, because this isn’t what they’ve done before. And I really that stuck with me, Katie, this imposter syndrome thing, because I thought about my time working in corporates, and how often I heard imposter syndrome get mentioned, it would seem to always be part of a leadership programme, particularly if it was a leadership programme for women, about we’ve all got imposter syndrome, and it just never sat right with me. I think it’s because I love words, that idea of an imposter, I thought an imposter is if I went and bought a white lab coat and a stethoscope and started trying to do physicals for people pretending I’m a doctor. That is an imposter, right? But if I am a marketing manager who’s been doing this for however many years and has these skills, and then I get promoted because I’ve been seen to be good at those skills, and I’m now a senior marketing manager, you see these people when they take a step off, it’s, oh, now she has imposter syndrome. He has imposter syndrome, and it’s… but you’re not an imposter. You’re just taking a step into a bigger role. You’re stretching. You’re growing. We’ve all grown in our lives, metaphorically and physically, like, literally. When you grow, there can be pain. It can be difficult at times. And what really frustrates me about imposter syndrome is that it gets put on as this label of, oh, you have it like I’m diagnosing you with it. You need to sort it out. And I think there is something that we can do ourselves. If we feel self doubt or we feel anxious or we feel uncomfortable, there are things that we can think about how we can deal with some of those feelings, but also a leader, an organisation, has to think about, if my people are feeling this way, what is my part in that, and what is my responsibility as a leader? If I know these people are feeling this way, how much am I encouraging them, how much am I developing them, how much am I asking them? Am I showing empathy? Am I helping connect them to the right people? Am I being very clear about the expectations I have? Or what success looks like like? It’s what frustrates me is seeing this just shoved on people of you’ve got a syndrome, like you’ve got some disease, and you don’t.

Beth 42:37
I got really nerdy, so I went and bought the original research paper two women who coined what was called the imposter phenomenon. They did not call it a syndrome. Never called it a syndrome. In their writing, they talked about this thing they were seeing in the 1970s and what they were seeing was among high performing women, smart women who were working in a university who, guess what, the world was not telling smart women and smart girls. Hey, you should go be the dean of the school. You should be a professor. You’re so smart, you should run that company. Those were not the messages women were getting from society. So if you were a woman who was doing very well academically, it would have felt a little bit odd, and it would have, for those women to say, I feel uncomfortable. I feel like I don’t belong. I feel like people don’t want me. Guess what? They probably didn’t want you. Yeah, you know, like, so what you were feeling was completely legitimate and to be expected based on the culture and the society and the time you were living in. But now, all these years later, we’ve got to change this. If I hear someone say, I have imposter syndrome, who diagnosed you with that? No one. I’ve never, to this day, met someone that said I have seen this medical professional who has diagnosed me with this because of XYZ. And so I say to people, those feelings you have are totally real, that you can feel uncomfortable, nervous, anxious, out of your depth, all of that can be very real, and I acknowledge that, but stop calling yourself an imposter, because unless you’re faking it, unless you are someone who’s faked your medical you know, your university qualifications, or you’ve lied and cheated and schemed, then you’re probably not an imposter, and you don’t have a syndrome. This is not in the DSM, which lists things like caffeine withdrawal syndrome and hoarding disorder, those were listed as a diagnostic manual that’s like this thick. This is not a thing. It’s been created. It makes a lot of money for people. But what frustrates me is it makes people feel bad and it holds them back. They think, I can’t do this. I’m an imposter. No. I developed a whole workshop about this because I’m so tired of seeing people feel bad about something that they don’t have to feel bad about. If you got promoted, you probably got promoted because you earned it. Because if you’ve worked at any corporate, it is not easy to get promoted in a corporate even when you have the skills and the experience. We gotta wait for the head count. We don’t have the budget, we’ll be waiting for dead man shoes. It’s like until this person leaves, there’s not a gap. It’s hard to get promoted. So if you get promoted, it’s because you deserve it, and embrace that. Hey, I put in the hard work I’ve done these things, and just look at it as of course, it’s an opportunity to learn. When you step into a new environment, a new job, this is a chance to stretch. And when you feel uncomfortable, it means you’re stretching. It means you’re growing. Look at it as a good thing, and remind yourself why you deserve to be there.

Katie 45:23
Yeah, thank you for that. That’s really helpful. And I couldn’t agree more. I did write about imposter syndrome, and like you, went back to the beginning and thought, this is a few decades old now, so I can see why it might have made sense, as you said in the 70s, rather than now, I totally agree with you. We don’t need to label people. It’s not necessarily helpful. But if it means that you go and rehearse that speech one more time, if it means that you just take a little bit of time to reflect on what you’re going to say, that you don’t rush in, all of those things are just common sense and really good practices. And I’d rather be that than, and I’m desperately trying to think of a name of the syndrome, another one, and it’s something like Cunning Duga or something like that, oh, yeah, where people are overly confident about their abilities and rush in and go, I can do this. I know everything there is to know about it.

Beth 46:18
And you think about that, the people who really like, who is it that’s like, confident beyond their ability? The Peter Principle. You could see some people not naming any politicians that might be top of mind at the moment who perhaps are so confident that you think, Gosh, why are you so confident? You’ve never worked at this part of the world or in these issues, but you speak as if you’re an authority. So maybe if I have a PhD in this particular area, that maybe I have something to contribute too. And can I share one other little fun an example? This is when I was doing my imposter syndrome research. I spoke to my mother and my aunt, who are both very smart women who did well in school and would have grown up in that part of the United States when this was all going on. And so I thought going to ask that, what was it like? What messages did you get? Because I knew my mom had been selected in her class like she was the one person in her class that was invited to go to this advanced secondary school. I said, What was that like? You’re the only one picked, and you’re a girl. We had a really great chat. And this is the stuff like AI won’t teach you, because you’ve got to have conversations with people and textbooks wouldn’t have shown this. This was an off the cuff conversation with my mother, and she said, when she was in college that there was a column, a newspaper column, called The Worry Clinic. And in the women’s bathroom at her university, people would post these on the mirror. And The Worry Clinic was a man, a psychiatrist, who would give advice to people whatever their worries were, and a lot of it was about relationships or family. And I dug in to find these columns. I mean, he was a columnist syndicated to the United States for four decades. The most eye opening experience Katie was reading this where he talked… thinking about, how would a smart woman have felt at that this idea was coined, where he talked about women, my husband’s not noticing me so much and what’s going on? And his advice was always, it’s your fault.

Katie 48:08
Oh, wow.

Beth 48:10
If you don’t look the way you looked on your wedding day. He had diets that he shared which were basically like, drink water and starve. It was like, worse than Gwyneth Paltrow’s bone broth diet. It was just absolutely nuts. But he had this whole thing where he talked about boudoir cheesecake. And this is what my mom said to me. She said, look up what you can find about boudoir cheesecake, that any problem a woman was having in a relationship was down to the fact that either the quality or the quantity of the boudoir cheesecake she served her husband. This was his euphemism, obviously, for sex. If someone says, Oh, my husband’s spending too much time with his secretary, and I think he notices her too much. And his response was, what kind of boudoir cheesecake are you serving? And his whole thing was, like, if you have had a problem in a relationship, that there are all these, what he called… It wasn’t quite vixens. It was something like the nymphs will be looking for your husband, and if someone steals your husband, and that’s what he was saying, steal, that is on you, because you have failed as a woman. So just imagine, this is a syndicated daily newspaper column that people are seeing across the country. If something has gone wrong, it’s your fault as a woman, and it’s down to the quality or quantity of the boudoir cheesecake that you are serving.

Katie 49:25
Oh my goodness.

Beth 49:27
It’s just a little colour to think of, what if you were a woman who had a career, you’re interested in having a career, and your husband wasn’t on board with that back 50 years ago? If he leaves you, that’ll be down to you. That’s your fault. So those were the messages women were getting. And I think that it’s those kind of pieces of context that help you go, yeah, I see why women may have felt the way they did back then.

Katie 49:50
You’ve segued neatly into my next question, which was about origin stories, because I noticed…

Beth 49:57
Random pieces of information that no one would know.

Katie 50:00
You’ve shared lots of origin stories already in this show. I’m just wondering, do you have a favourite origin story you haven’t yet shared? What is it about these origin stories, about going back to the start, going back to the beginning, that draws you in so much?

Beth 50:17
Oh, it’s just so interesting to find out where did this thing come from? Because we just don’t think about these things. I’ll tell you. Katie, you just said, Do you have a favourite? I just thought of this actually. This is because it’s fine, I’ve written a lot of stories for Curious Minds, my Substack newsletter, and I love so many of them that I think, oh gosh, how do you pick a favorite? But my whole creativity journey where I really got into this seven years ago, I’d say it was starting to really think about what was creativity really about, and how could I help people understand how they could strengthen this skill and that it was something they had. It goes back to duct tape. Now duct tape, I’m sure you’ve probably owned some, or we’re certainly familiar with it. What would you say if I told you that duct tape was invented to save lives. So duct tape, and this is a great one, because it combines history and problem solving, creativity and women and the time period…

Beth 51:09
Duct tape was created by a woman named Vesta Stout, and she worked at a factory during World War Two that made ammunition, and the ammunition was sealed with a certain kind of glue, the way it was sealed meant that you had to get a knife to open it to pull out the the artillery. Vesta had two sons who were serving during World War Two, and she said to her foreman at the factory, we need to find another way to seal these boxes, because if you know the enemy is approaching and they need to get the weaponry, this will take time. We’re talking, this is literally life and death. If I can’t open to actually defend myself, then I’m gonna die. And so she had this idea of a tape, something that people could open without the need to get a knife. And you can imagine, then seconds would count in those situations. And so she did these drawings. So she came up with her ideas, and she gave it to her supervisors at the plant, and they did exactly what you would expect people to have done back then. Thank you very much. Vesta, no, that’s not how we do things. So what do you think she did when they told her no?

Katie 52:16
Does she make some kind of prototype?

Beth 52:19
She wrote a letter to the President of the United States, and she made the plea to him, of, these are our boys. These are my boys. They are somebody else’s boys in the trenches trying to stay alive. And there is a way we can help them. We can save their life, because those seconds really matter. She had her drawings, and this is what it could do. And this is going to be a tape that you can rip. How in the world this came to get into the hands of the president United States is a mystery, but it did, and the President thought, or the people around the President thought, hey, there might be something to this idea. Maybe it’s worth trying. And that led to duct tape, and duct tape save lives, and then the military uses it today to do all kinds of things. If you’ve seen duct like duct tape has so many uses, and it’s so handy because you could just tear it with your hands. What an incredible story, because it touches on creative thinking, of not taking no for an answer, being courageous, having that resilience and the persistence. And this is a woman who is being ignored, which is not very surprising, given, particularly given the time, who just says, I’m going to keep going, and then she writes a letter. And I love handwritten letters, and the idea of somebody communicating something so strongly in a way that connects, and it’s save lives. So that’s my favourite. That’s my favourite one.

Katie 53:37
You’ve blown me away with that, Beth, thank you very very much.

Beth 53:40
You’ll never look at duct tape the same, right?

Katie 53:45
I loved your naughty and nice Santa list at the end of last year, the best and worst examples. In fact, I put it in my Friday update because I just thought this is so good. Do you have an all time favourite of a truly awful piece of communication? And I’m wondering, when you reflect on awful pieces of communication you’ve seen over the years, why are these mistakes made? Is there a common cause often?

Beth 54:14
Oh, now see this one’s even harder to say. Do you have an all time? I probably would, or at least would come up with a top three or five. If I went through… I have folders full of examples. And when I see something, I add to the list, because I keep thinking that there won’t be as many for me to collect over the years. But I don’t have any problem coming up with the list. In fact, that naughty and nice list, it takes a long time. I love doing it because I just think it’s fun and it’s interesting, and I want to help people see that communication is a valuable skill and it’s worth them putting the effort into it, because you can see, of course, there are people whose names you’ll know that you’ll see them do something well or not well, but there are also people you would have maybe never heard of, and there’s inspiration to be found from them as well, both good and bad.

Beth 54:57
I suppose the one that, it might be a little bit of recency bias, but I still think about Internet Brands. They did a return to office video, literally, January 2024, and it’s just one of those things. Sometimes Katie, I see things that I’m just like, What is going on with this? And I think I’m being punked, like, this isn’t this can’t be real. This is, somebody’s done a joke and like, is it on The Onion? What’s going on? Yes, but they did this video where they were like, we’re not asking you, we’re not asking our advice, we’re telling you, it’s time to come back in the office. And I understand some companies may feel they need to make that announcement. That’s not where my issue is. Where my issue was, is that then they went into playing the song Iko Iko and at the bottom of the screen it said, chakimo fina nae, or don’t mess with us. And then you saw these people dancing, in some cases, in front of a green screen. So I thought that was really funny to be sharing the message of we all need to be in the office. But then you see people who are clearly contributing this video, not from the office, and you’re dancing to Iko Iko saying, don’t mess, it just felt kind of sinister. I had to look into the song Iko Iko, because I was familiar with it, but I didn’t know its origin story, and so I looked into this, and I was like, it’s such an odd choice, and I couldn’t find anything to say why they selected that. I love music so much choosing the song can send such a message.

Katie 56:23
Absolutely.

Beth 56:24
What message were you trying… and are you really gonna tell people, don’t mess with us? It was just so bizarre to me on so many different levels. And when you ask, is there a common thread with this? When I do workshops, my rule is what I call the Beth Collier Wizard of Oz Rules of Engagement, and I hope that most people have seen the Wizard of Oz to get it, but I’ll explain, if not. But where people get into trouble is that they fail to have empathy and kindness like Dorothy. They fail to use their brain like the Scarecrow, they fail to use their heart like the Tin Man, or they fail to have courage like the lion. And most of the examples that I shared, I think if you went back, you could see a real lack of a heart, a brain, empathy and kindness or courage.

Katie 57:14
Fantastic. Beth, thank you very much. What a fantastic answer. This episode of The Internal Comms Podcast is brought to you by my very own Friday update. Would you like a short email from me, never more than five bullet points long, giving you my take on the week’s news from across the world of communications? This might be the latest reports, books, podcasts, conferences, campaigns that have caught my eye during the week. I always limit myself to just five nuggets of news, so you can read it in record time, but still feel a little bit more informed, hopefully a little uplifted as you end your week. Now, this is subscriber-only content which was initially intended just for AB colleagues and clients. I don’t post this content anywhere else, so you do need to sign up, but that is super easy, simply go to abcomm.co.uk/Friday. We just need your email address, and it’s equally easy to unsubscribe at any time. So give it a go that sign up page again, abcomm.co.uk/Friday, and if you do choose to be a subscriber, I very much look forward to being in touch.

Katie 58:53
Let’s head over to those quick fire questions. What would most surprise people about Beth Collier?

Beth 59:00
I always find this one funny, because I guess it depends on what they’re expecting me to be. One thing I think that surprises people is some of the random knowledge I have from things that they wouldn’t expect me to have. Somebody was talking about baseball, and I started talking about Roberto Clemente, who is before my time, like he was dead before I was alive, but he’s my favourite baseball player, and so I was talking about Roberto Clemente and they were like, how do you know about Roberto Clemente? I did another thing where I had a group, I went to do something pro bono with some students, and we were talking about messages of communication, and I threw in something from Kendrick Lamar. And I saw these kids, Oh, this like, you know, mother of two lady is talking about rap with us, what’s going on? Maybe sometimes people are surprised. And again, because I will talk about current pop culture stuff, and then I will talk about a Civil War general or a book I read about a bull fighter from 1920, sometimes people are surprised how varied my interests are.

Katie 1:00:02
What’s one piece of bad advice or unhelpful thinking that has consistently dogged the communication profession, do you think?

Beth 1:00:11
I think that anyone can do it. In the fact that I think anyone can improve their skills, if they’re willing to put in the work, if they care about it, but the idea of, Oh, someone’s good at this, we’ll just give them, I’ve seen this on transformation programmes, like a programme manager is in charge of communication, or Head of HR is in charge of communication. You might know the outputs, but you don’t know the craft and the discipline and the questions to ask that will lead to success. And I think, like from the communication standpoint, where the failure is, is the focus on outputs and not outcomes. I used to work with someone who would measure success, how many hits on this, or how many of these things, and those are important data points to look at. But in my mind, it’s how do people receive that? I get things in the mail, a brochure, a pamphlet, if I don’t read it and I don’t value it, and I don’t change my behaviour, or take an action because of it, then I don’t care that you sent out 100,000 of them. So I think we’ve got to think about this is something that’s helping drive business results. What are the outcomes that we’re contributing to?

Katie 1:01:14
If you could instill one skill in every communicator, what would it be?

Beth 1:01:22
It’s hard to think of one! Actually, oh, these are tough ones, Katie, because I think there’s more than one. I used to say writing ability, because I think sometimes that can be lacking in some people who work in communication, maybe because they’ve been thrown into it. I think, can I give you more than one?

Katie 1:01:39
You’re allowed.

Beth 1:01:40
I think writing is one, but I also think listening is huge. I do like to talk as no doubt you will have picked up, but I can be pretty good at shutting up too, and it’s something that I work on, asking the questions and then shutting up. We’ve got to be listening to people, because that’s where we’ll understand is by listening. So I think if you give me three, I would say writing from the craft perspective, listening and I think we need curiosity. We all need to be curious.

Katie 1:02:09
You mentioned writing there up front, and there was a question niggling away at me, which, if you don’t mind, I will ask you, do you… you write Curious Minds on a regular basis, you sit down to write that you know you’ve got to you’ve got a deadline to hit, etc. Do you have a particular writing process? I love that quote, is it Hemmingway, where I sit down until the beads of blood appear on my forehead. But do you have a process that makes it easier, or is it just going through the pain of it?

Beth 1:02:35
I sit down until I want to bang my head against the wall, and then I know I must be getting close? No, I think it’s just getting into, I have my process where I start with research and I see what can I find. And then a lot of times there will be more to a story than I thought there was going to be, then I find myself looking up documents from the 1800s or requesting to get into some museum to see something. I think you’ve just got to sit and write, to be honest. And I usually will do a certain number of goes. I think it’s really important to edit on paper. That’s just like one of my tips. I think you edit better on or I certainly do.. there are things that you might not see on a screen, so I’ve got to get a hard copy and a red pen and just rip it to shreds. But first, you just have to get it on the paper. Yeah, it’s very Nike. Just do it. Just sit down and write and then refine and edit, and I’ll read aloud. So with what I started doing with my newsletters as well as I’ll do an audio recording, and when I read my stories aloud, I will then find things. Because when you write, you might think this sentence sounds fine, and then when you have to read it, you’re like, no, maybe I’m going to break that up into two sentences, or I’m going to add a, or I’m or I might just naturally find myself talking in a way that I think, okay, I want to change it this way.

Katie 1:03:47
Very good advice. So finally, Beth, this is the moment where we give you a billboard opinions to see, and you can put on that billboard any message you like, what’s going to be on your billboard?

Beth 1:04:01
See, these are tough ones too, Katie. I think on my billboard definitely ‘be curious,’ would be, and my other one might be ‘keep smiling.’

Katie 1:04:12
Oh, nice.

Beth 1:04:13
Keep smiling.

Katie 1:04:15
We need a bit of that at the moment. We need a bit of optimism and hope, don’t we?

Beth 1:04:18
Yeah, absolutely keep smiling.

Katie 1:04:21
Beth, this has been a lovely conversation. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

Beth 1:04:26
It’s been lovely chatting with you.

Katie 1:04:29
And that is a wrap for this episode of The Internal Comms Podcast. As always, you can find all the links mentioned in the show, including a full downloadable transcript, on our website, just to head over to abcomm.co.uk/Podcast. If you did enjoy this episode and found it valuable, I have a small favour to ask, please take a moment to like, rate or review the show on your favourite podcast platforms, this just gives the algorithms a little nudge in the ribs, and it makes it easier for your fellow comms professionals around the world to discover our show. A huge thank you to Beth for sharing her insights today, and a big shout out to the dream team behind the scenes. My producer, John, sound engineer, Stu, Content Manager, Madi, designer, Rob and the rest of the incredible crew at AB who keep this show on the road. Finally, listeners, my deepest gratitude to you for tuning into The Internal Comms Podcast. This show would be nothing without you. I do love hearing from you, so please do continue to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I do try to respond to every comment. So until we meet again, lovely listeners, stay safe and well, and remember, it’s what’s inside that counts.