Sarah Stockdale has been growing and selling early-stage technology startups for her entire career. She was a foundational team member at Wave, the Canadian financial technology giant acquired by H&R Block in one of the largest Canadian exits of all time. She led the International Community Growth team at Tilt, which was acquired by Airbnb in 2017. And now, she’s channeled her expertise as the founder and CEO of Growclass, an online growth marketing training program.

She has an impressive history of work, and it’s what makes her the perfect person to host The Growth Effect, a new business podcast from Globe Content Studio and HSBC that profiles leaders from Globe and Mail’s Canada’s Top Growing Companies of 2020. We just launched Oct 27th, 2020 (listen here and let us know what you think in the reviews).

We’re always curious to hear about how founders grew their business, but they’re often PR-approved stories of triumph. This show digs deeper and focuses on the tougher parts of building a business, from sleepless nights to risky decisions.

We sat down Sarah Stockdale and our senior producer Jay Cockburn to talk about what it’s been like making this podcast during the pandemic—and how to make guests feel comfortable when recording remotely.

Right now, most studios are shut down because of COVID-19. As a host, what’s it like to record a podcast from home?

Host Sarah Stockdale, recording from home.

Sarah: It's hard to create the intimacy that you'd have in a studio. You have to try to make the guest as comfortable as possible, as quickly as possible. You're also going through all of the technical things, making sure the audio quality is great. You're trying to make sure they're in the right room. It's a whole bunch of things that you wouldn't necessarily have to do in a studio. But I think we're all kind of craving connection and community right now, so I’ve found that guests have been so open to having a really good, deep-end conversation—despite being on Zoom, which everyone is consistently exhausted by.

From a production standpoint, how do you approach making a remote show, Jay?

Jay: As Sarah said, creating intimacy over a Zoom call is super hard. So there are things I do now that I wouldn't have to do in a studio. I try to apply the same principles: I arrive on the Zoom call 15 minutes early and I make sure Sarah is there before the guest logs in. If we were in the studio, I wouldn’t want her to be rushing in, taking her jacket off. I want her to be welcoming the guests into her space, making them feel at home. On this podcast, we’re interviewing very busy CEOs, but as with any guest, we want to be respectful of their time.

As a producer, you’re also a big believer in turning off your camera and muting your microphone—why is that?

Jay: If we were in a recording studio, Sarah and our guests would step into the isolation booth, pull the curtain, and (hopefully) forget that I'm there. We want to create intimacy—we get the best conversations when our guests think that no one's listening.

I want them to be having a conversation with Sarah like they would over a glass of wine in a bar, or sitting on the couch having a meal.

What do you miss about recording in the studio?

Jay: When you invite a guest into the studio, they have to set time aside in their day to do that. Heading to the studio for an hour and a half is a fun distraction from their day. It’s usually not seen as “work.” Whereas at the moment, they're just taking another call in their office and it can feel a bit like work. Now, I have to really drive home that this is not just another Zoom call.

That makes sense. Sarah, what does your at-home recording setup look like?

Sarah: I've got a blanket fort set up in my basement. [laughs] I tried to get recording equipment for my office, but it seems that the blanket fort has better audio.

Blanket forts for the win! What’s your getting-ready-to-record routine?

Sarah: I’m setting up my blanket fort. I go through notes on my interviewee; things they’ve written, other podcasts they’ve been on, videos they’ve done.

To get hyped up, I usually listen to Robyn and have a mini dance party in my fort. I get my energy up, because that can come through in my voice.

I want to make sure that I've got a big smile on, I've got a lot of energy and caffeine in me (and water). And then [Vocal Fry senior producer] Jay and I usually do a sync before the call and get all the questions prepared to make sure that we're good to go.

Let’s talk about making guests comfortable. What are some of your techniques?

Sarah: I'm a new podcast host, but I'm interviewing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and founders, so I can really relate to their experiences. When I'm willing to be open and vulnerable, it's much easier for folks to feel safe. I'm opening up more than I thought I would in order to invite more vulnerability and to create that safe space.

Since you’re new to podcasting, what have you learned so far?

Sarah: I do a lot of speaking and teaching, and it's quite a bit different. I thought that it would be a lot of transferable skills—and it is, in some cases—but podcasting is much more about having thoughtful conversations. And in The Growth Effect, it’s conversations with strangers.

Coming into podcasting, knowing that you're going to have to learn something completely new—being open to figuring it out and being bad at it at the beginning—you're going to have to consistently seek feedback and give yourself feedback throughout the process.

What are the similarities between podcasting and speaking engagements?

Sarah: Speaking engagements are one-to-many, right? So I'm standing on the stage speaking to a group of people. In my head, I have every piece of that talk planned. I'm not going to be thrown off my game by the audience, because it’s just me with the microphone. When you have multiple people with microphones, it's a lot more challenging to have a polished conversation—because you never know what that person is going to say. It's a lot more like Q&A dynamic, in that you're staying on your toes and staying focused, rather than polished. In podcasting, you don't know how your interviewee is going to answer a question. So you have to be really curious.

Any advice for founders or CEOs who might be thinking about starting their own podcast?

Sarah: A lot of folks think anyone can host a podcast. But the podcasts I like have a kind of thoughtfulness in terms of research, who they're bringing on, and how to have conversations that are actually going to be useful for the listener. You want the listener to come away having learned something, or having been changed, or have an ‘aha moment.’ So designing those conversations requires time and thoughtfulness.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast, go back and reverse engineer the ones you really like listening to. What did I learn? How did I consume that information? What are the things that I can't get out of my head after I've heard a good conversation? Be really intentional about design so that your listeners will get something really helpful out of it.

The worst thing you could possibly do is throw up a mic and start having conversations without really thinking about the listener—what they might need, or be feeling, or what they might really benefit from.

Are there any memorable guest moments from recording The Growth Effect?

Sarah: I’m interviewing these founders in the fall of 2020, where they have a million things on their mind. They're experiencing quite a bit of uncertainty and change. To sit and have a vulnerable conversation with a total stranger on Zoom in the middle of a global pandemic is a big ask.

But I'm also trying to run a business in a pandemic, so I empathize so deeply with the fact that their mind is in a hundred different places.

In one episode, at the beginning of the conversation, I could feel the ‘2020-ness’ in the room, that kind of exhaustion and frustration about what's going on. There were audio issues. But we got chatting about what wakes us up at four in the morning (that's how my anxiety manifests, so I like to learn from other founders if this is a thing they also experience.) As soon as we started having that ‘middle of the night conversation,’ I could feel a switch being flipped. It was like, we're in this together. We're in the same boat—that is sometimes sinking. From then on, we had a great conversation. That was the TSN Turning Point moment.

Jay, what have you learned from these conversations between founders?

Jay: Something that’s not always talked about by the business community is that everyone's exhausted. Everyone's struggling, especially leadership in rapidly growing companies. We’re trying to show people that you can find it really hard—and still be super successful.

Sarah, as a founder yourself, what are some challenges that you’ve experienced due to COVID-19?

Sarah: Before the pandemic, Growclass was an in-person course. But we had been planning to bring it online in Spring 2020. So COVID didn't really disrupt our plans to do that, but it did throw a wrench because we had a cohort that was about halfway done when COVID started.

So before the NBA shut down, before we knew Tom Hanks had it, on that one day that everything switched, I was on the phone with my caterers getting individually prepackaged meals just to make sure that our food would be separate. I had bought a ton of Lysol wipes so that we could wipe down the classroom, and make sure that everything was really safe. And then, on a dime, it was like, no.

We were teaching three-hour classes online in the middle of the worst crisis for folks. We were figuring out how to build our online course and at the same time support our students through this (one of them was the CEO of an events company. So their businesses were also impacted).

Finding a way to support the students while also pivoting our own business at the same time was a little bit insane.

Wow, that sounds like a lot. How did you get through those early pandemic days?

It's funny, a lot of the guests podcasts say this, too—as founders, we all started creating worst case scenario situations for our business right away.

We made sure we had plans in place in case things went badly, quickly. We built an online product and rebranded through a pandemic. We had to figure out how to build a professional online course without any of the tools or resources to do it.

It ended up being me and a videographer, six feet apart with masks on until we were rolling. It was a pretty big, interesting wrench in our business. But we built the thing, we rebranded through the pandemic. I don't recommend anyone build a new product and rebrand through a pandemic, but that's the position that we were in. That's what we had to do and we just got it done.

What has it been like juggling podcast hosting along with all your other engagements?

So initially, when I got the email, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, no, I can't do another thing.’ When you’re running a business in 2020, you have every minute of your day already pre-scheduled in your head, for the next quarter. I knew it was going to be a busy fall. But then I learned that I’d be talking to founders about how they’re growing their businesses through COVID. That got me so excited about the possibility of hosting this podcast. I couldn't say no to it. I had to make space for it. And then comes the part where you're like, well, I'm gonna learn how to be a podcast host now, I guess. Let's do it.

This interview with Sarah Stockdale and Jay Cockburn was conducted and condensed by Emily Latimer.

If you want to be featured on future seasons of The Growth Effect, email us at info@vocalfrystudios.com. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes & leave us a review—it really helps other people find the show!

The Growth Effect with Sarah Stockdale