Was thinking even when I sent that connection,
she might think who on earth are you?
>> [LAUGH] >> Because it was connecting with somebody
who you know didn't know her.
>> So you could have always been refused couldn't you?
>> That's right, you can always have people refuse.
And I also signed up for her blog so
that I would get her newsletters every month when she put them out there.
And I thought nothing more of it, and carried on doing what I was doing,
and networked with lots of other people in the meantime.
So this was one of kind of many people that I found interesting.
>> And so Jean accepted my LinkedIn connection.
And then, well, a little bit of time later, she would post things
in the Business of Storytelling group and I would post things.
And we would comment on each other's articles and
things like that, all very nice and friendly.
And then when I published my book in November 2013, I was really surprised,
must have been maybe six weeks later, I got an email from Jean.
>> Right. >> And Jean's email, it was lovely.
I mean that was just a total surprise, just completely out of the blue.
She had read my book and my book is a book of stories.
And she had related to a lot of the stories in my book, even though we'd grown
up in different parts of the world, we'd both been one of five siblings.
[LAUGH] I had a story in my book about, as
a very small child, sucking my thumb and actually being punished for doing that.
And she had an exact same story.
>> [LAUGH] >> I mean really.
And this is the sort of power of when we tell people things about ourselves,
of being able to sort of connect with them, people go, yeah, me, too.
I know exactly what that's like.
So she sent me this message, which was absolutely lovely, and
I wrote back to her.
And we were both very into storytelling.
We also had very similar kind of backgrounds in some ways.
She had started her career as a dietitian and gone into business, into healthcare.
And I had started mine in marketing and gone into healthcare.
So very common ground, and we'd both gone on to create storytelling businesses.
And so we vowed kind of at the end is that we said we must meet up sometime,
even though you're in Minnesota and I'm in the UK.
And she had never been to the UK, and I had never been to Minnesota,
although I've been to the US a number of times.
But we left it like that, right, that was 2013.
And then we kept in touch, just responding to each other's posts.
We were on a couple of telecalls with other people together,
webinar type things that we would both be on.
And then last year, it was February last year, she sent me a message.
And she said I've been invited to give a talk at a conference in Lithuania.
The organizers said to me that they had a European speaker who's dropped out.
And I said to them, I know somebody who could do this [LAUGH] for you.
And she said, I mentioned you, I hope it's all right [LAUGH], I hope you'll do it.
She said then we could meet up in Lithuania.
And I thought, gosh, that would be so cool.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] So I said yes, yes yes.
So the organizers contacted me and I said yes, yes, yes, of course.
So this was happening in April.
And then we had a Skype because we were both going to give talks, and
we were going to run a storytelling workshop afterwards together.
And so we did some Skype calls, and we spoke with the organizers together,
and got ourselves all ready and packed our bags.
And she flew from Minnesota to Lithuania and I flew from the UK to Lithuania.
And we met there for the first time.
And there was another international speaker, as well, who'd come from the US.
And we got on like a house on fire.
And we spent a couple of days hanging around Lithuania doing our talks,
doing our workshop, eating out and
all that kind of stuff, and just having a jolly, great time.