Celebrating Women in Hospitality #Tieonstage 🚀

25 years I was phone phobic. So 25 years of my life, I could not pick up the telephone and, well, without a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine and probably I had to have the three glasses of wine before I made the call. But I got over it by getting myself a job as a receptionist. Answering the telephone. And if so, so many people I know feel that they are. They have stage fright. They don't want to get on stage, they don't want to talk, they don't want to be front and center. Just do it. Just do it. If I can do what I do now after being 25 years of phone phobic, everybody can.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard. And the tea is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want, you're better. But direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Today is a very special podcast and I'm really looking forward to introducing you to all of our amazing guests and talking about a topic that needs to be said and needs to be talked about. So what I've gone and done and put together is a very special podcast. We've got three guests that are going to talk about Thai on stage.

Well, firstly, Congratulations on your 200th episode. I know that it's a tough slog.

Yes.

Keeping keeping up with podcast episodes. So congratulations on that and I'm very honored to be here on your 200th. That is so cool.

Thank you.

My background, you know, goes back quite a long time, so this could take quite some time. I'll keep it short. So I'm an example psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, management consultant and serial starter of businesses.

My name is Mariah Rockman from Smiling House. I'm the CMO and the founder of the company and we are based here in the Swiss Alps. And I'm not in the sauna, I'm just in the one part of my chalet up here in the mountains. It's very, very beautiful outside, full of space, but very cozy inside, like you can see. And my journey with hospitality actually started with this very place where I'm based right now. It was a 350 years old, very, very old farmhouse that Ira and me turned into just kind of summer vacation home because you for sure wouldn't like to stay here in winter.

But it all started really in a 25 school meter apartment in the center of Rome, where I decided to create an ota, a type of Airbnb. But Airbnb didn't exist back then, so I wanted to be the middleman. So I found a property manager to work with in Rome, another one in Venice, and I made a website because I was a bit of a programmer, developer, front end developer. So I managed to make a website and I had €1,000 to make this website work. I had some properties and decided, you know, I'm going to get some guests. And back then it was 2006. So at a thousand euros and a thousand years, where do you put them in order to make a website work? At the time I put them in AdWords and it wasn't very competitive right at the time, thank God. But yes, it was a makeup, make or break situation.

Just for anybody who doesn't know me, my claim to fame is this little book right here, Shameless. Plug in the background. Million dollar post. I have had a pretty amazing journey in the sharing economy. Within two and a half years, zero to 130 properties, $8 million income, packaged the whole business together, sold the business, wrote a best selling book. Now I get to jump up on stages all day, every day. In fact, today I've got three major events I need to to do today, so. And one of them being a clubhouse room.

Well, once I didn't say thank you so much for giving Thai onstage a platform. Thank you. And Thai on stage basically was born out of a day when I went to a summit, a vacation rental summit. And I looked at the agenda, I done a proposal that I wanted to speak on stage and I looked at the agenda for the day and I basically was the only woman on stage that day. And it struck me, it was like, how is that possible? And so I decided that during that day I would raise awareness around the fact that this wasn't quite right. And then I had to think about how do we raise awareness. It was scary, you know, it was scary because, I don't know, when you speak up about inequality, it's kind of scary. And also, you know, you don't want to be. I mean, I am a feminist, but somehow there were lots of men in the crowd and being labeled a feminist, sometimes there's negative connotations to it. So the whole process was fairly scary to me. And so I decided that somehow we needed to raise awareness around the fact that this wasn't right. And how do you raise awareness? Symbols can help. And so I decided, what can we use as a symbol that's easy for us? To raise awareness with. And I thought of a tie also, because a tie is like a noose around your neck. So we want to liberate ourselves from this noose. And so this is how the whole process behind Taion Stage Kickstarter came about. And I was extremely worried about it. My small speech about the fact that, you know, we need to raise awareness. This is not right. And why not? More women on stage. And to my surprise, it was really welcomed, like, really, really welcomed by men and women, by everyone in the audience, obviously. You know, it's the unconscious biases at the end of the day, I think. And so when, when we spoke about it on stage, immediately there was a, you know, it was. They were welcoming towards it. And so since then, many women have been wearing ties on stage. We have a hashtag which is trending on LinkedIn, etc. Where, you know, also in different industries, which I thought was really cool. Not just in our own industries, but there's been women with, you know, in different industries. Wayne ties all stage.

And.

And so that's what it is. It's basically raising awareness that there is inequality when it comes to public speaking.

Have you ever noticed this there, where there's just a lack of female speakers or is it more 50, 50 so to speak in America and Canada, etc.

No, the proportion of female to male speakers at these events is just.

Is.

Is ridiculous. And even, you know, even after Vanessa launched this and a couple of events that I thought would change their, Their, Their rollout of, you know, the amount of female speakers, they just didn't. And the next one, you know, you know, Vanessa. Exactly the ones I'm talking about, that they listened, it's like, yes, you know, Vanessa got on the stage with the tie and. And then still the next one that rolled out and I looked at the lineup and it's just. You did not get that message. That message didn't get across. So I think, I think we need to do more when it comes to.

Tying on stage and spreading the awareness and most importantly, making it equal and having more people feel the confidence that they can. They can do this. Because speaking on stage can be quite daunting. It doesn't have to be a physical stage. Like I said, it could be a clubhouse stage or whatever it may be. What actionable steps can everybody take? Obviously we can start with the hashtag, but what do you recommend? What can we do?

Yeah, so the hashtag, obviously it's a question. It's a marketing thing. So the more you use it, the better. If you notice some conferences or webinars where it's completely unequal, then do mention it. I think that could be, you know, it's about raising awareness towards the organizers.

Right.

The organizers need to understand that they need to keep an eye on equality and diversity and inclusion. Right. So that's. That's, you know, using the hashtag is there for that. But then when it comes to women speaking on stage, I would say, you know, having mentors is really good. If you feel this is a scary, scary thing, if you have something to say, you should say it also. And then having mentors can really help. So there are so many groups now online, in LinkedIn particularly, this is where I roam. There's tons of these new groups where women support each other and become role models, where you feel suddenly it's a lot less scary to speak up your mind when somebody else has done it before. You say, she can do it. I can do it.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the BO podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee because it's so hard and the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.