Good Life Project - The Untold Story Behind GPS Girl and the Voice of Siri.

Episode Date: July 21, 2016

How did an Australian woman who wanted to be the next Olivia Newton-John become the voice of SIRI and the confident giver of directions in than 400 million GPS and smart-enabled devices?Also known as “GPS Girl,” today’s guest, Karen Jacobsen, never saw her device-enabled voice-future coming. It happened entirely under a shroud of secrecy, when Karen took a job that required spending days cloistered in a studio, reading tons of phrases, but never being told why. It wasn’t until a friend called years later and said “you’re on our GPS” that she finally learned what’d happened!Behind her golden voice, though, is a much bigger story. At heart, Karen is a songwriter and singer. Her dream was always to become the next Olivia Newton-John in the United States. To take the pop music world by storm.That dream has since led to a career not just as the voice of SIRI and GPS devices, but in music, including gigs singing the national anthem in front of massive stadiums on TV, having songs featured on hit shows, and a career as a featured keynote speaker. But, it’s also been, at times, a brutally hard road, that’s taken humility and a willingness to “get real” and even head home to recover and recalculate, then rebuild.And, funny enough, Karen and GLP founder, Jonathan Fields, have a fun, intertwined back story that led them both to appear together on the front page of the New York Times Jobs section back in the early 2,000s.Today, Karen takes us on her incredible journey. She shares how taking the voice-over gig completely changed her life and how it eventually reflected back on her life and her career in an entirely different way than she ever expected. And, she also ends up singing us a little something about a good, good life! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and we're well on our way to selling out spots at this point. So be sure to grab your spot as soon as you can if it's interesting to you. You can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes now. It's a good life. It's a good day. It's a good life to be here this way. It's a good life. It's a good, good, good life. If you've ever used a GPS in a car or GPS app to get directions, and you happen to have hit the little voice on your GPS that says the Australian female voice, there's a decent chance that you've actually

heard the voice of today's guest. Karen Jacobson, also known as GPS Girl, whose voice is in something like 400 million GPSs and smart enabled devices, ended up landing that gig having no idea she would eventually be the voice of the GPS in hundreds of millions of people's heads and cars and all sorts of other things. What she really wanted to do was go from being in Australia to being the next Olivia Newton John in the United States. So we dive into that journey, into her early days, into how she ended up landing the GPS gig and how that eventually reflected back and began to amplify her career in a completely different way than she ever imagined. A lot of fun with this conversation.

I hope you enjoy. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. So it's really fun to be hanging out. We haven't seen each other for years. And both of our first big professional media break happened at the exact same time. I guess it was the end of 2001 or beginning of 2002, something like that. Shall I tell the story? I'm curious how you experienced it, actually. You tell your version first. All right.

So I was, back then, I had just opened a yoga center in New York City. You were one of the first people in the door, from what I remember. You were one of our first students when there were three people. First day of sign-ups. This big classroom. And I was like, wow, this feels really kind of vacant. And shortly after, we got a call from somebody from the New York Times who wanted to do a story and include us. And they sent a photographer in. So they took a picture. And you were in class that day. I think you were one of three students in like a thousand square foot room and it was me teaching and the photographer was like underneath you inside and all around you taking pictures of me teaching and of you practicing and you were very kind not to freak out and then shortly after that there was a photo of you doing yoga and he was kind of shooting through you doing down dog and me behind you teaching and that ended up on the front cover of the job section

on the New York Times, which because that was also, they had just launched it. It ended up being plastered on buses and billboards around New York. I don't know if you knew that. I did not know. I need footage of that. Yeah. I was freaked out because for the first time I thought, well, this is cool. It's on the front page of like a major section in the New York Times. And then I was literally walking down the street and I see it on a bus. I'm like, what's going on here? Did you ever get a photograph of it on the side of a bus? So I didn't. But you know, back then, if you knew people at the Times, which I did, you could actually literally get the printing plate from a page. So somewhere tucked away in

a closet, I have this actual size metal printing plate from that one page that has us both hanging out in this fixture. I'll have to find it. I'll take a picture and send it to you. Yeah, really? Really? Wow. So can I tell my vision of the story? So I had been living in New York for a year from Australia on the east side, had to leave the country, sorted out my visa and came back and moved into an apartment on West 49th Street. And it was, I believe it was actually December 1st when you opened the doors. It was right around there, yeah. Because that was when I moved in and there was a flyer. I think there was a flyer. Oh yeah.

We completely, we, we were not sustainably oriented. We paper the entire day. Yeah. Right. And I saw yoga studio on ninth Avenue and 51st street. And I was like,

Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I'm so lucky. It was like a kismet moment for me to see that flyer because I had fallen in love with yoga the previous year, moving to a new neighborhood and didn't know how far I was going to have to travel to yoga because 14 years ago, yoga wasn't everywhere the way it is now. It wasn't. And that neighborhood was also not the way it is now.

It's like very kind of like upscaled and gentrified and there's great restaurants, but back then it was like block by block was very sketchy. Exactly. So I was like this, I've hit the jackpot and I came around to find out the story and I met you, the owner and founder. Because there were only two of us back then. That's right. And I signed up for the, you know, the full, you know, unlimited yoga every month.

Like I came in knowing I need this. And I was just so thrilled and delighted. So I feel very excited that I was there at the beginning of your, well, of that part of your transformation and that part of your business life. And to watch you develop and then move on from that business, which still runs. Yeah, which is awesome. Which is such an incredible accomplishment, first of all. I love that. I'm literally out of it longer than I owned it now.

Yeah, because I started it. I built it for seven years and sold it, and it's now. Seven years. I love the fact that the community is still there and flourishing. It's so cool. Right. And so I was a part of the furniture at Sonic Yoga for a really long time until, in fact, until one day about three months into or four months into my pregnancy,

I was in a yoga class and was so tired. I mean, it was 10 minutes in. I had to lie down for the entire rest of the class. And my body was saying to me, there will be no yoga for you during this pregnancy, which is so counter what I would have thought. But anyway, that was it. So, and at the time, because let's fill in some Lang's hair now. So it was funny because I remember having this conversation with you back then. Like you were like really excited, I'm going to show my mom. And it's so weird how this is like popping into my head right now.

I remember you saying to me, like, I always hoped that I would like be in like major media or be in the New York Times, but I never thought it would be for this. Absolutely. Right. So let's kind of like take a big step back and fill in some of the blanks here because your profession, your art, your passion. Tell me about it. When I was very small, I would sing along to everything on the radio. And then I started to hear little melodies in my head and started to write songs. And I knew that they were important and I needed to work out how to write them down. So, this is about the age of seven. And I wasn't really sure how to write them down. So I scribbled the words and wrote what I thought were notes,

just not on music paper but just on regular paper. And when I was seven, I saw the most important and influential person in the whole world on TV, and that, of course, was Olivia Newton-John. And that moment really set the course for my life because she inspired me. And it's something about her coming, this blonde Australian female singer, coming to America, being embraced, being loved here. I just knew that's what I want to do with my life.

I want to become a professional singer and move to America, like a lightning bolt at seven. And throughout my life, I then, and my schooling, I was playing piano, writing songs, singing and everything possible with the vision that one day I'm going to move to America. And at the age of 31, I was now living in Sydney, Australia. I grew up in Mackay in North Queensland in a tropical town in the middle of nowhere and worked my way down to Sydney. I'd been there 10 years building my business and my life and was just like, hang on, I haven't done, I haven't moved to America. And what I really want to do is that.

So you were still, you're like, that was part of the original vision. Absolutely. Oh yeah. Become a professional singer and move to America. But why the America part? Like, why was that so important? I'd seen Olivia do it. That's what that

particular experience was. But as I grew older, there was a shiny, bright light over here for me. It was attracting me to come here. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, Americans are super huge generalization now, but Americans are welcoming and upbeat and casual and encouraging. And you say you want to accomplish something and an American will go, great, go for it. An Australian might go, what do you want to do that for? Really? Because Australia is about the lifestyle.

Ah. Australia is about- Take me deeper into that. Oh, yeah. Australia, and in many ways, I think the priorities are excellent because Australia is like, what are we doing on the weekend? Mm. And the weather is very good in many parts of Australia year round.

Well, especially in Queensland. Exactly. And the beach is right there for most of Australia's population. I mean, there are over 200 beaches in the city of Sydney. It's a beach life in a city for many people. So, there are boats and there's swimming and there's surfing and it's all about the lifestyle. What are we going to do on the weekend? Whose place are we going to? Where are we going to go outdoors and enjoy this paradise we live in?

So that, I think, is part of why Australia is so lifestyle-oriented as opposed to business, business, business, which, of course, exists there. They have an economy and Australia is a successful, very successful country, but America just has possibility. There's this, and especially in New York City, my absolute experience moving here and then, you know, moving here with a suitcase and a dream at the age of 31, which is kind of old compared to a lot of people moving somewhere to start a new life for a new career. And I want a big record deal. I want to tour the world with my music as a singer and a songwriter and a piano player. People are like, great, how can I help you? Who do you need to

meet? Oh, you need to meet my friend so-and-so. That was my experience over and over and over again. And it's so funny too, because you hear stories of the exact opposite from here. So I've been in New York my whole life, or I grew up just outside and I've been in the city for a really long time. And what was so interesting is back in the days where I owned the studio, the vast majority of our students were all singers, dancers, actors, because we were just off Broadway. So I was surrounded by so many people, and so were you at the time, where it was just like, go see, go see, go see, rejection, rejection, rejection, close, close, close doors, to the extent where I was always wondering, I'm like, how can you keep going on in a profession like this? So it's so interesting to hear you say that your experience was almost the exact opposite.

Well, I would say there was a lot of what you're talking about also, because the structure of the entertainment business, I find, what's a really strong word? Soul destroying. Because it is, you go and audition, and then you either get it or you don't. And it's a numbers game. And most often you don't for many people. So there is a real accumulation of disappointment, which if taken personally can be soul destroying. So how do you not take that personally when it's sort of like you're the product?

It's extremely difficult. I think it takes everything in a human being to keep their mindset straight during that kind of experience. I mean, I feel like in many ways I'm still recovering from the heartbreak I experienced in the music business. And I've managed to create my own road, you know, in my own way. Did things turn out how I expected and did things work out? Did I accomplish what I came here to do? I didn't, not yet, but I still believe it can. However, along the way, other incredible and amazing things have happened that I'm very happy to be doing. Yeah. So when you hit New York, what were the early days like then?

The first year, my year on the east side, I mean, I arrived with 33 telephone numbers of friends of friends. Seriously. I started to tell everybody I knew in Sydney, I'm moving to America. I'm moving to New York. And a lot of people were like, really? Was there something that happened? Like, was there a moment in Sydney that just made you say it's time or was it just a gradual? I had a relationship breakup and I thought, okay, well, I got to do this now. Now is when I have to do this. And I knew I wanted to move overseas. I knew I wanted to move to America. But I wasn't married to New York as an idea at that point.

I had several cities in mind. I always thought I would move to LA. I thought I would go to Brisbane, Sydney, LA. But at this particular moment, I felt really drawn to New York, even though I'd spent only a handful of days here ever. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because if the vibe that you were describing around Sydney before is really close to sort of like a Southern California type of vibe. So it's almost like, in a weird way, it's almost like it wouldn't have made sense for you to move from there

to Southern California because kind of like you're just changing the accent, but so much is the same. Whereas New York is a much more profound change and shift in opportunity too. Exactly. And when you ask if there was a moment, it's only recently that I re-identified this particular moment. And the Broadway show Rent, there was a production playing in Sydney, Australia in early 1999, I believe. And I went on my own and I was sitting in the audience watching this show and I just was, boy, so moved and so connected to what was happening energetically in that show that it was like the lightning bolt of, I'm moving to New York.

I don't want to sound like a cliche, Jonathan, but it was so interesting that it was like, I'm moving to New York. I understand that, actually. I remember seeing that show, the original cast, like in the very early days in the city and just weeping. It was so powerful. And it was all about like sort of like the bohemian super creative scene in New York and the struggling artists just trying to make it. So you land here with 33. of somebody's room on the east side. And I set out to meet people for coffee, lunch, dinner, drinks, all those 33 people on that list. And your goal at that point was to become the next Olivia Newton-John in America or had it evolved? Yes. Yes.

So, all right, I'm going to zoom forward a tiny bit, but maybe it's not actually that much because I don't know the timing of when this happened. In 2002. Okay. So your voice became known to hundreds of millions of people in a way that I'm guessing you never imagined possible. No. I mean, no. So take me there.

So 2001, you and I met. I'm practicing yoga three times a week at Sonic and I'm going to auditions. I have a great New York voiceover agent. I am singing live many nights a week and I get an audition and the client is looking for a native Australian female voiceover artist living in the Northeast of the United States. So I go along to an audition and they have me say some things like, at the next intersection, turn left, and all kinds of directions and numbers. I did all the numbers up to a couple of hundred, you know, all these different things in the audition. And they said, oh, well, we want to hire you. You've got the job. We need to take you up to Ithaca in upstate New York for three weeks. We're going to record only four hours a day, every day for three weeks,

to do this text-to-speech voice system. It's about 50 hours of recording, and you're hired. So up I go. Did you know what the job was at the time? No, I knew it was an involved voice system, a big voice system, but I didn't know what it would be used for. And they weren't really even telling me what it would be used for. They had some ideas of some of the things that would be used for. They probably sensed you'd want like a royal teaser, more money if you knew. So I go up and do this job and four hours, nine till one, they didn't want my voice to

sound fatigued in any way. So I recorded from nine till one every day. And then I'd go to lunch. I'd go to Moosewood for lunch, which was so super yummy and go back to my hotel room and write songs and hang out until the next day. I did that for three weeks. Then I went, came back to my life in New York City as a singer and songwriter and fast forward a couple of years. So you just kind of forgot about it.

You're like, all right, interesting job. You're like, whatever. Yep. Money arrived. Great. What's next? And then a couple of years later, I got a voicemail message from a girlfriend who also lives in New York.

She was on the original list of 33 people, by the way. And she said, Karen, you know, it's Christmas and my husband and I, we're just driving back from Maine to the city after Christmas and I bought my husband one of those new GPS thingos and, you know, we're in the car and I said, turn it over to the Australian voice. And so he did and we're listening to the Australian voice and, oh, my God, Karen, Karen, it's over to the Australian voice. And so he did. And we're listening to the Australian voice and, oh my God, Karen, Karen, it's you. It's you. And I turned to my husband and I said, oh no, I bought you Karen Jacobson for Christmas. And that is how I found out my

speaking voice was in GPS units and now ultimately, you know, smartphones and voice systems in more than 400 million devices around the world. So you're the Australian voice. That's right. I'm curious how you felt about that originally. Which part? Finding out that you were the voice and never really knowing until then. It was weird. Yeah.

Wow, this is that job I did. It was just very, very weird. But I've had that experience repeatedly because I will be staying in a hotel and hear my own voice. I will get into an elevator somewhere on the other side of the world and there's my voice, land at Brisbane Airport and my dad picks me up and we go and we jump into the elevator to go into the parking lot. There's my voice. I mean, my voice pops up with regular. So was that all part of the original session or is this now just sort of like the building body of work that's kind of gone down that path? Much of it is the original session. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. They got a lot of mileage out of that. Pardon the pun. Sorry about that. That's okay. Daddy immerse me again. That's okay. I mean, such a, like, talk about, you know, like the big break that you never imagined would happen. But I guess maybe I'm making an assumption there because, so this is something that comes

out of nowhere. You don't, you do the job, you vanish, and then you realize that here's your voice and like hundreds of millions of devices and things and locations around the world. Did that create opportunity for you? Well, I had two choices. I could be upset about it. Why would you have been upset about it? How dare they use my voice everywhere and I don't even know where it's showing up. You know, you can find something to be mad at. Or I felt like, well, there is something in this. And it took me a little while to work

out how to harness the opportunity. But once people started to find out that it was my voice directing them, I would start to have the most fascinating conversations with people. First of all, they would treat me like they knew me, like I was a member of the family. They would then and they still do now. And they want to tell me their GPS stories. They want to tell me the wonderful places we've traveled together. Oh, that's so funny. They talk to me like I was there, you know.

Oh, my goodness, last weekend we went to my cousin's wedding in Milwaukee. We had a great time. Fortunately, we didn't get lost. They talk to me like I was there. I've had children write songs in my honor and draw me pictures and poems and tell me how I'm a member of their family. And one little girl who wrote me this beautiful letter and said, we know your name is Karen. You've been with our family for four years now and we've gone on all kinds of wonderful trips. But even though we know your name is Karen, we call you Zoe after my pet bird who died.

So, people humanize that voice. And I knew there was something in it because of the light in people's eyes when they were relating to me. And they were so present and so connected and so alive and entertained and delighted. I'm like, well, this is not something that happens every day unless you suddenly have a conversation with someone who's been with your voice all the time. And the level of familiarity with me was outstanding. That's so interesting. I'm curious, did it at all lead to uncomfortable scenarios where people actually assumed that they really knew you and where they kind of were too forward? I haven't ever had an experience that I can think of in this moment where it's been completely inappropriate or rude. Mostly people want to apologize for yelling at me,

seriously apologizing to me. That happens with regularity. That's pretty funny too. Yeah. So, but I want to kind of circle back to certainly the original thing though, because you think about, okay, I got paid for a job. I'm hundreds of millions of people know my voice,

but they don't necessarily know it's me. And your original dream was to be the second coming of Olivia. Right. So did this experience open doors to parts of that dream in some way? It ultimately did. So in those early days where people were very excited, I wasn't quite sure what to do with this, even though I knew there was something in it. And then, goodness, so my husband and I had

financial, right at the GFC, we had a personal financial crisis. And we, kind of a long story short, we got ourselves, we were in the middle of an awful legal case. We got ourselves into terrible credit card debt. One of the ways we thought we could handle this was by, we came into a small amount of money and we ended up putting a down payment on an apartment with the strategy that once we closed on it, we could then refinance and dump all of the credit card debt, which was at 30% at that time, down into an 8% mortgage. So we had a really good strategy. However, we closed on our apartment in August of 2007, and a month later when I called Tim, our mortgage guy,

back to say we're ready to refinance, he said, Oh, Karen, I'm sorry. I'm sorry we can't do that anymore. So we were really stuck, and I was six months pregnant with our son at that time and both my husband and I were in the entertainment business and work had dried up. And what we ended up doing to recalculate, as I would say, is we rented our apartment out.

We really had to make a big move to sort this out and we put tenants in our apartment. We used frequent flyer miles and flew back to Australia and actually lived with my parents for a whole year to get back on our feet. And I did deals with 19 credit card companies, one at a time on the phone, 0% five-year deals and worked with the mortgage company to refinance our mortgage. I worked for 11 months on the phone with the mortgage company in another time zone to sort that out. And ultimately, we did modify our mortgage at the end of 2009 and could make plans to move back.

So we've been back here since 2010 and we paid off every cent of that debt where we got it all handled. So it was almost like you were starting fresh when you came back. Absolutely. And why I was telling you all of that story was during that time when we went back to Australia, we had a small child, a tiny baby. We had all this debt. We've had less overhead now because we had tenants in our

apartment, but we had to make this happen. We had to really get things sorted out and get back on our feet. And at that time, I started to just really have clarity around what I could do with this platform I'd been given. And I saw a vision for myself as having a brand, and I knew what there was to do was to create an empowerment brand. And I call that brand the GPS Girl. And it was very clear to me very quickly, oh my goodness, I'm going to speak, and I'm going to write books, and I'm going to have online content, and I'm going to do events, like just all of it was very clear to me that I wanted to get this message of, you know, it's never too late to recalculate, and that really you can make your life

what you want to make it, and you can be your own inner GPS anytime. And I knew there were a lot of ways to get that message out there, and I wanted to explore as many of them as I could under the umbrella of that brand. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting that had either one of those things happened, you never having sort of randomly landed this job, which a few years later, you only found out was sort of, you know, like you, you being the GPS girl. Right. And then going through real financial hardship. It's like those two things happen. And all of a sudden, sudden the pattern recognition engine in your brain went on and said, wait a minute. There's actually a way to marry the story that I've actually been living and like the recovery sort of like, you know, I've just been through a couple years of hell and figured out how to get back on my feet. And at the same time, there's this thing that's been just kind of following me around for years that I've never really understood how to leverage the power in it. And it's like that somehow those two came together in a way where you said, oh,

that's it. So what did you start doing around there? Well, I, you know, because I made that connection between directions in the car and directions in life. And I really got to marry my lifelong love of personal development with this brand, this persona that I've been given. And I actually saw a very inspiring interview with Dolly Parton on 60 Minutes. And it was, I think, two weeks after we got back to Australia. And those first two weeks, I mean, we just needed a little bit of recovery time because we'd really been through hell. And so I rested and kind of got myself together. And then I was like, okay, it's two weeks. It's

time to really go for it now. The Sunday night, I'm watching 60 Minutes and Dolly Parton, something about her. She is such a smart business woman. And this interview was really inspiring. I'm like, wow, it's time to go for it. And so, the next day I was sitting at my computer and I just went to the page of the number one breakfast television show in Australia, which is called Sunrise. And I just wrote on the person in the street page. I didn't have a contact online and I just wrote and I said, I think your viewers would love to know the face behind the voice at that time, 25 million GPS units.

And I'm right here in Brisbane. So within an hour, the phone rang. And the next day, I was on a flight to Sydney and in the prime spot on that show. And that was the beginning of my brand. Yeah. So you really just said, I mean, it's so interesting too, because it's like the value in this opportunity was sitting there for years. Mm-hmm. it's like the value in this opportunity was sitting there for years, you know?

And I think that happens with so many people is that there's this huge asset or huge resource or huge capability that's kind of like right in front of you for years. And you look at it every day and you're like, you see it there, but you don't know how to mine it. You don't know how to actually tap it in a way that opens something bigger. Right. So it's fun to see how this is what happened with you. It was there and all of a sudden something just happened.

You're like, wait a minute. Rather than just saying it was a job that I did, this is a huge door that could be opened. But then it took you taking action you know well i've had it said to me repeatedly that this is it's a very unique take on something yeah you know and it's and i am proud of that because i could very easily have just not done it because i was put on this planet to make music right you know right so what's happening with the music well this is i mean you're so that you're still in Australia. I'm in Australia for a whole year. Right. And you give birth also.

I have a baby boy and I'm in Australia for a year and I realize I'm starting to build this brand and I start to have very interesting conversations and connections with some major brand development companies in California from Australia and all kinds of things coming across my path. And I realized that I need to have a product out there pretty quickly because I'm getting amazing national press in Australia and I want to have something else. So I released an album that I had released in the US, but not released out in Australia. And so my music was a part of my story and my persona and my whole self. So the first thing I released was that album. And I had a lot, it was so interesting because I had a lot of press that year, major press of people coming and saying, now, I know a

lot of people are doing a story about your voice being in the GPS, but we want to do something different. We want to cover your music. The number of articles that happened and press. Really? Is that okay? I know. And I was laughing to myself.

So, music was a part of it and always there through that period, that development phase. Then I wrote my first book and did an online interview series and all kinds of other things. But as my speaking business built and I speak for a lot of corporations and associations and I travel a lot for my speaking engagements, I weave music into my speaking presentations. So the music is always there. I give a keynote where I talk about recalculating and how to navigate change and how to keep going no matter what, and give the five directions for recalculating and a process on how to do that. And I weave music into each of those five steps. I play, there's a piano on stage, I play and sing. So it's unique and it's expressing everything

that I'm here to do. Yeah. So you've really turned that into this really distinct blended performance where you get to sort of take all the different pieces of you and integrate them. Right. Do you like speaking also? I love it. Yeah. I love it. Do you get the same Jones from that that you do from singing or performing? I guess it's

performing. Similar. Similar. It's a little bit more serious, I think, to speak than to sing because there's a serious may not be the right word, but singing I find I'm in another zone altogether. It's a different zone. Speaking, I'm still fully there, if that can make sense. Yeah, it does to me. It's almost like there's this transcendent type of where you kind of go somewhere where you're singing, whereas when you're onstage speaking or keynone, it's like it's you and the audience.

But I love it. I love to speak. And that was a very, very interesting transition too to be somebody who had a message. And originally when I was starting my brand, I thought it was going to be a travel brand and that once I had my GPS Girl travel brand up and running, then I would transition into a personal development brand and it was fear because who am I to tell people how to live their lives? Who am I to give advice about, you know, I'm not a therapist, I'm not this, I'm not that and it wasn't until I really realised that, oh, I need to do the thing I want to do, not something warming up to the thing I want to do, which is have an empowerment brand.

And I am a 100% expert on my experience. Right. That's all you can speak to. I needed to get to that. Yeah. It's so interesting you say that because so many people, I've had this conversation, I'm curious you have also with so many people where they're kind of like, who am I to say that I have the answers? And it's like, it's the wrong question. It's not about having all the answers. It's just about acknowledging that whatever you've lived up until that point of life, you've got something to share. You've got your story, you've got your lens, and you've got whatever you've learned. It doesn't mean you have to be the most knowledgeable or the best person in the world at it,

but there's somebody somewhere out there where there are a few steps behind or a few steps off to the side, and the way you've experienced something, the way you might phrase it, it's going to make a light go on and there's value to that. Right. And when we were talking before about the way this brand took shape for me, it was obvious and I was trying to work out how to do it. But I think there are so many times something is actually super obvious to us and we don't think it has any value. Do you know what I'm talking about? We do. We take it for granted that we know how to fold laundry better than anybody else or be able to structure our morning

to have the most productivity or whatever it might be or know how to, gosh, do the best, have great tools for how to go for a run and be in the best shape afterwards or whatever it might be. But there are little, little, little, little things that everybody has some level of amazing expertise at but discredits themselves and thinks it's too obvious. And that's not, it's not valuable. Yeah, totally agree. There's a lot of imposter syndrome around also. I'm curious, I'd love to actually get a little bit more granular with you. So, cause I'm really curious. I know so many people who are interested in some way

in speaking. Oh, good. And probably a lot of people listening to this have thought about it. I think a lot of people are terrified, but also intrigued. You know, it's the number one fear whenever surveys are done. But at the same time, I almost think that a lot of people can, if they could see themselves getting past the shaking and wanting to throw up and up there and be able to actually hold the room. That's sort of a really cool place to be. Once you started to get all this media attention around GPS girl and people wanted to know, this is the woman behind the voice and that's opening media doors to you. And then some of those media doors were like, oh, you do music too. And can we talk about your music? What did you actually do to say, from here, I want to start to speak and get paid to speak and start to make that happen? as a speaker, not for money through those leadership programs before we moved to Australia. And I knew I loved being in front of a room speaking. I knew I had plenty of fear around it,

very different to singing at the time. Put me up on stage in front of thousands of people and no problem singing, but speaking, I've still had a lot of fear around, but I knew I wanted to do it. And I knew I had a message that I wanted to share. And I started to tell people that I was wanting to speak. And a friend of mine was doing a lot of speaking and he said, oh, I've been asked to emcee this three-day event, but I'm not going to be able to do it. And I've given them your information. And I got booked for that event, which was phenomenal because I kind of stepped into that realm in a professional sense right away and met an incredibly successful speaker at that event who said, I love your ideas and I love what you're planning to do with your own keynote. You should join the National Speakers Association.

And that was in the back of my mind for a while. And then I had people asking me, come and share your story. So that was a part of it as well. And then we moved back to New York in the May of 2010. And I attended my first NSA meeting and felt like I was home because here were all these people from amazing different walks of life who were professional speakers. And that association teaches people or helps to support people who are building the business of speaking. So I've been heavily involved in NSA for the last six years and I'm the immediate past president of the New York City chapter. I'm involved on the national level. And to me, it's like an alternate UN of people, thousands of

people speaking from around the world on different topics, educating and informing people. And it's a community I really love being a part of. So it's through NSA that I've learned so much about how to build my speaking business. And I hired a coach, an amazing coach who was a former president of NSA. And he really has been instrumental in helping me start to see my worth and that it is okay for me to be paid at all, let alone be paid very, very well to go and share my story and that my story is good enough, which I am still reminding myself. Is that why you mentioned you can take the stage in front of thousands to sing and you're totally fine, but to speak, the fear rises up? But back then when I was first starting, it did. I think it's that fear of really being exposed. You know, we are completely vulnerable at that moment.

We are standing on a stage in front of people. All attention is on us. And, oh, my God, what if they find out I'm really an imposter? What if they find out I'm not good enough? What if they find out but it's so interesting that you felt that with with that but not with a singing and and playing playing piano which i think a lot of people would feel even more vulnerable about because it's sort of like bearing your soul yeah it's like people are judging you based on you know like your singing ability your playing ability your composition ability and the story like behind words. Not that I'm

trying to shake you. No, no, no. And I'm good. It's really interesting that we all have different triggers. Maybe also because you were doing that from the time that you were born. 25 years of that already. Yeah. I had that. You've owned that at that point. That's right. Yeah. That's so interesting. I love how you ended up basically taking these two things and putting them together into one, which also I think makes you really distinct. I've seen one other person do that once before, and it was Ben Zander, who would kind of like flies through the audience and then runs back on stage and plays a little piano and then flies to the audience. And it was like one of the most captivating. He did this for

two straight hours and held an audience of like 5,000 people captivated. You know, it must be so interesting for you to sort of bring speaking and your music into one thing to create this experience that takes people somewhere. It's heaven. You know, I can have my moments of thinking, well, I haven't accomplished what I set out to accomplish, but how fortunate I am to have this whole other world open up to me I didn't expect that I absolutely love. And I almost feel like my purpose is the, I suppose, the example that it is never too late to recalculate, you know, that I moved from the other side of the world to New York City on my own and built a life. You know, I'm firmly rooted here. I am married to an American.

I have an eight-year-old son. We live right here in Midtown. I mean, I'm deeply in love with New York City. I have this, you know, had that awful financial, you know, low point. That was like a real moment in my life. That was when I really had to dig the, you know, one of the deepest, dig down deep more than ever to come through that and complete that you know and my husband and i i'm just so fortunate i married the love of my life and that kind of experience can tear a couple apart and it made us stronger we made sure it did you know and to but there are just when I'm on a stage sharing about recalculating and sharing that it really, it is all about noticing when you're off or out, being willing to make a change, taking action.

I'm using examples from what I've lived. And I think that's how I am now able to stand there and do it without feeling freaked out. It's because I know it intimately and I did that. And no, it's not the most dramatic story in the world or the most this or the most that, but I'm not trying to be. I'm just sharing what's worked for me and know that that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah.

You have circled back to singing in a pretty major way. You have landed on some astonishingly large stages over the last handful of years now. I have. I have. Talk to me about that a little bit. I've sung the national anthem at a lot of major sporting events. And my biggest audience was the Jets game at Giant Stadium for 80,000 people, which was phenomenal. And I've sung at the Garden a few times for the Knicks and Liberty and Dodger Stadium and the Oakland A's and Fenway Park. I mean, these are amazing, amazing, iconic venues. And to get to

sing the Star Spangled Banner has been incredible. And then a few weeks ago, really, at the end of last year, I was invited to sing at a concert in Australia. It's called the Vision Australia Carols by Candlelight. And it's actually the biggest thing that happens at the end of the year in Australia nationally. And it is a concert that is televised to 2.8 million people across Australia and has a lot of very successful entertainers perform this Christmas Eve concert. And I was invited to perform this year and I was backed by a 60 piece orchestra and a 230 voice choir. And it was awesome. Oh my God. I'm getting like chills just thinking about that. It was an amazing experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what was it like to be back home doing that too? Pretty darn validating, I have to say. Ah. Yeah. I felt I was on the bill with people I grew up admiring.

You know, they're like some of the who's who of Australian entertainment. And to be welcomed and to be, well, first of all, to be invited and then to be welcomed and then to be made feel like I not just was welcome to be there, but that I belonged there. You know, I was really very impressed with the people that I interacted with at that event and I felt so, I felt validated. I really did. Because, you know, I moved off to the other side of the world and I didn't have a big career in Australian musical theatre

or television like so many of the artists on that stage, but I came away from that experience realising that however any of those artists got to the point where they were on that stage on that night, it was just a vehicle to getting there. And mine happened to be my speaking voice. It wasn't a Broadway show. It wasn't a television show. It was my speaking voice. So again, how unique. And I kind of owned that in a new way, which was really refreshing for me because I, on an ongoing basis, my whole life and career have dealt with the not good enough. You know, no matter what I do, I'll never be good enough.

It'll never be good enough. You know, I deal with that all the time and it's in the best place it's ever been, but it's still, it's one of those ones that I don't know if it ever fully goes away. Having said, even though I'm an extremely fulfilled person, you know? You know what I'm saying? I do. I mean, I think part of it is, you know, when you dig deep down, whose voice are you really hearing saying that? And then part of it, I wonder sometimes, is just when you're an artist, there's like a lifetime of discontent, which isn't necessarily – it's interesting. I think about this often, that it's not necessarily a bad thing if it's the type of discontent or if you can experience it as fuel to grow, to work, to connect, rather than something that paralyzes and destroys.

If you can actually transmute that, if you can make that, then it's something that moves you to do the work every day. But I think also you can, in a weird way, I think you can have that discontent and also be grateful for what you do have right now. It's weird to say that I think those two can coexist, but I do think they can. I'm curious, are your folks both still with you? They are. So you come home with your husband and then give birth there in a very, very troubled state,

and then you leave, and then you come back five years later in a profoundly different place, and your parents get to watch you. Right. What's that like? It's a beautiful thing. I think what's really – because it's been a journey for them.

Because I notice how, you know, the people around them will talk to them about what I'm doing. And I feel so happy for them that they have had an opportunity to experience that in their lifetime, you know, because you couldn't find two more supportive parents than I've had. They've just always been there, even through my childhood when I was tiny, saying when people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grow up, and I would say, I'm going to be an actress and a singer and I'm going to move to America. And they would go, really, you'll grow out of it, was really the attitude I got all through my upbringing, except from my parents. And they've weathered all of that, all of that and all of the years of that

and to now be at this place where I've received a certain amount of certainly of recognition and it's an absolute joy to see them enjoying that, you know. It's really fun because it's been a long time coming, you know. I wasn't the early 20s super quick young success. But it sure as heck is sweet now. That's awesome. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that term out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? I love, love, love the title. So I am very hard on myself when we're talking about being good enough.

And every year I create my year in quite a lot of detail and what I want to accomplish and what I want to experience. And one of the things that I'm mindful of is having that fall away and really allowing myself to enjoy so many aspects of my life and making time to read, which might sound so simple, but I don't know. It's just a lot of schedule, a lot of travel, a lot of things going on in my life and raising a beautiful boy and my husband travels as well. And I'm on a mission with my business and my brand. So living a good life to me is really honoring myself and my body and my mind so that I can be in the best shape I can be to do the work I'm here to do. And then to just be absolutely great with my husband and with my son and be really conscious of having a great time when I'm with them, which I think sometimes I have to remember

to do that and not buy into the myriad distraction that we are surrounded by and uh really to to just gosh to be great with people to be great with all people even when it doesn't feel when even when you don't feel like it yeah thank you all right so i have a request for you now. You can absolutely say no. Is there anything you would want to sing us out with? Oh, yes. It's totally cool if you're not like warmed up or ready. You can't ask a singer to sing and they say no. Okay, I'm going to sing you your own little song, okay?

It's a good life. It's a good life it's a good day it's a good life to be here this way it's a good life it's a good good good life i'll take that. All right. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone.

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