Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Samara Bay on How You Can Change What Power Sounds Like EP 320

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

On this episode of Passion Struck, discover the power of embracing your authentic voice as speech coach Samara Bay challenges traditional notions of power and guides listeners through the journey of reclaiming what power sounds like. Samara is the author of Permission to Speak: How to Change What Power Sounds Like, Starting with You.  Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, releasing on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/samara-bay-change-what-power-sounds/ Embrace Your Authentic Voice and Redefine What Power Sounds Like with Samara Bay Do you want to unleash your true power and create meaningful connections through your voice? Are you seeking a way to challenge conventional ideas of power and embrace your authenticity? Join us as our guest, Samara Bay shares the solution to achieving genuine empowerment and connection through authentic communication. Discover how to change what power sounds like and reclaim your voice, allowing it to resonate with truth and impact. Don't miss out on this opportunity to embrace your authentic self and create lasting change. Tune in to the Passion Struck podcast and unlock the transformation that awaits you. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by OneSkin. Get 15% off OneSkin with our code [PassionStruck] at  https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/d6TZ7xSf4BE --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network

Coming up next on Passion Struck. Does a thought experiment? What if, maybe just for an hour, just for a day, or a week? We just decided to feel neutral or even positive about our own voice. What changes might we see in our life in that week? In how we speak up, in how much we trust our ideas, and how much we go from thought to breath to speaking, rather than letting our throat get in the way to sort of censor us.

Why did you felt absolutely neutral about your voice? Welcome to PassionStruck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.

We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 320 of PassionStruck, ranked by Apple as one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts, and thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.

PassionStruck is now in syndicated radio on the AMFM247 National Broadcast. Catch us Monday and Friday from 5-6pm Eastern Time. Links are in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member. We now have episode stutter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes. But we're organizing to convene you topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do during the show.

Either go to Spotify or PassionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case she missed it last week, I interviewed Scott Miller, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author who has spent 25 years at Franklin Covey, ten of them as a chief marketing officer. He is the author of the new book, The Ultimate Guide to Great Mentorship, 13 Rolls to making a true impact. I also interviewed Dr. Bapu Jena, about his new book, The Ultimate Guide, Great Mentorship, 13 Roles to making a true impact. I also interviewed Dr. Bapu Jena about his new book, Random Acts of Medicine, where he shows us how medicine really works and its effect on all of us, combining popular topics like behavioral science, health, and medicine through the lens of economic principles and big data insights

to reveal the unexpected but predictable events that profoundly affect our health. I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews. And if you love either of those episodes or today's, we would so appreciate you giving us a five-star review and rating and sharing it with your friends and family. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Now let's talk about today's episode. The art of being heard can be complicated as it involves, not only what you say, but also how you present yourself, which is often filtered through the assumptions and biases of your audience.

And even your own, the discrepancy between how you speak and how society perceives powerful individuals should speak is common. However, my guest today, renowned speech coach, Samarro Bay suggests that giving yourself permission to speak is the key to affecting change. Samarro's groundbreaking approach to public speaking offers a new definition what it means to sound powerful, which is essentially sound in, like yourself, for a combination of storytelling and research and field, such as leadership and wisdom and social science, we discuss how to balance strength and warmth in your delivery.

Prepare yourself mentally and emotionally before high-stakes situations, who turn habits such as vocal crying up speak into tools. Additionally, the interview explores the concept of voice story, understanding why you speak the way you do, recognizing its unique qualities and unidentifying areas for growth. Samarro Bay is a speech coach who has worked with a wide range of high-profile clients, including Hollywood stars, politicians, business leaders, and creatives. Her focus is on empowering women and marginalized speakers, use their voices effectively in critical moments, and she has gained recognition for her innovative approach to refining the sound of power. Her focus is on empowering women and marginalized speakers. Use their voices effectively in critical moments

and she has gained recognition for her innovative approach to refining the sound of power. Her work has been featured in various publications and media outlets, such as New York Times, I'm's magazine, Forbes, Slate, CBS Sunday Morning, Great and Cultivate, Amor and Hall, Jezebel, and MSNBCs know your value. Moreover, she's highly sought after as a dialogue coach for television and film

projects. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me, be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. I am absolutely ecstatic today to have Samarro Bay on PassionStruck to welcome Samarro. Thank you. I'm very pleased to be here. Today, we are going to discuss your brand new book, permission to speak, how to change what power sounds like starting with you. And I absolutely love this book. And I think after the audience here is us talk today,

they're going to understand why and why they should buy it. Congratulations, though. Thank you. Thank you. A surprising fact about you is that your father is a world famous astrophysicist. And I have to start out by asking you, what was it like growing up going to physics conferences all over the world, branching with people like Stephen Hawking. What a lovely first question. I will say it has had an impact on my actual work, although it took me a long time to realize the connection,

but I'm an only child and my parents were very generous with this precocious child that they had on their hands and brought me with them to all these conferences all over Europe mostly. And I sat in on a lot of the talks. their hands and brought me with them to all these conferences all over Europe mostly. And I sat in on a lot of the talks. And of course it was physics, so on some level perhaps we expect it to just be a bit dry. But the reality is I was learning really early on what to expect.

How low the bar is, quite honestly, on how to give a talk and semi engage people and for everybody to say good talk because the content was good. And even then I was thinking that can't be right, that bar is really low. And now as I worked in my professional career with actors, but then with non actors working with women who are running for the 2018 midterms, which really got me into this whole other side of quote unquote public speaking coaching. Then I started coaching entrepreneurs who are pitching to big VCs and people inside of corporate America and realizing that the way the public speaking is taught in general sort of supports that style that I was seeing those poor scientists doing back in the 80s and 90s, which is not being against any individual, but there is a history

of boring public speaking. And I don't mean boring to be mean spirited, but I mean that if we are told constantly, keep a motion out of your voice, because a emotion will make you seem unhinged for a single example. We're going to end up sounding foreign and a little untrustworthy actually and a little detached. The book presence comes to mind Amy Cutie's book, right? The whole idea of trying to bring more presence into people's public speaking is not new, but I'm bringing a certain fresh lens to it based on the fact that I did not at all come up through the public speaking world. And when I coach people, I have to say for the most part that are coming at me with all these shoulds that are rattling around in their mind that it come from the culture at large and from their home of origin. And the shoulds take the form of, if you want to get taken seriously, you have to X, Y, Z. And I think the time is a ripe to get really skeptical about basically all of those shoulds.

Yes, well, it is interesting. And I'm not trying to generalize here, but when I think of scientists, lawyers, judges, doctors, journalists, many of them practice what I've always thought of is evidence-based voices. And do you find that's something that people do because in their professions, they're so used to having to present evidence

to support what they're speaking about? That's so interesting. I don't know. I would push back on that a bit because I think you can offer evidence in a way that feels human and you can offer evidence in a way that doesn't. And by that I mean you can still energize facts by caring about them by having a point of view. I think maybe what you're actually getting at is that a lot of those professions you just described put a real emphasis on not having a point of view, on detachment actually being a virtue.

And it's not my job to go into somebody's own industry's context and say, do it differently than everyone else. Because there's an element of the norms are here. And if you want to be part of this tribe, you have to uphold the norms. And I'm a realist about that. And it would be irresponsible of me as a coach to say, Bach, the system, right here where you are.

But for almost all of us, when we have the chance to speak about something that is close to our heart, they release outside the realm of just our day-to-day work. Speaking on a podcast, for example, right? Or getting up to speak at a conference that's multi-industry, or running for office, or even just going in and asking your boss for a promotion. These conversations that are higher stakes, and in a way we are advocating for either ourselves or for some group that we're going to help by getting a yes.

Then the rules are different. The rules are not how do I fit into the norms of my tribe. The rules are how do I human out loud like someone you could trust. How do I activate what I'm saying in a way that makes it feel real? And I'll say as evidence, you got that up, that a way to get less abstract and more specific about this is for each of you listening to think about what speeches or even just moments that someone grabbed a microphone or a YouTube video, any chance somebody had to speak to a large public. Which ones do you like? Which ones make you lean in? Which ones make you feel like you see the person?

They're not hidden. So there's been a number of recent moments, Lizzo winning the Grammy is Michelle Yeau winning everything. They're these moments that aren't even political, that aren't even activists, although those are great places to look. Where you just feel like you see into someone's soul. And the reality is that when we want to make an impact, that's the kind of speaking we need to do. Foring speeches do not go viral period. They certainly don't go viral on YouTube. I just have to bring up on this show, I've had a lot of researcher scientists, behavioral

economic professors, and a number of them, we've talked about one before the show, Katie Melkman, and other one is Arthur Brooks, and other one is Scott Galloway doing exceptional job when they speak, and they're able to take these concepts that might be mundane on the surface and they're really able to bring them to life. And the whole, those are the ones who make the impact, right? It's not an accident. Also since you mentioned Katie, I have to say, she and I were lab partners together junior of college.

So I really, the place, you brought her up. But yeah, I did a little work years ago with this very cool organization out of Stony Brook in New York called the Allen Alda Center for Communicating Science. So Allen Alda himself founded this based on, honestly, a decade of interviewing scientists on I think PBS and his little squirrely thought that it takes a while for those scientists to warm up and it takes a little bit of Alan Aldous charm and he thought to himself what if it didn't what could we do to train scientists to communicate better so that they don't need an Alan Alda who slowly warm up. And because I grew up with a scientist honestly, since you brought that up, I was intrigued by

this because I'm not intimidated by scientists. Obviously, I grew up around them. And I know that communication, sometimes this is pigeonholed as an issue for women. And my book in a way, centers women, centers people of color centers, anybody who has an accent that has marked them as other because those groups I just described knowing their bones that there is some work to be done on how to reclaim our voices. But the reality is everyone has a complicated relationship to our voice and scientists are a great example of people who have this sort of cultural norm around detachment that makes it hard for them to actually connect. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point and it's something that we're going to dive into.

But I wanted to go somewhere else before we go there. And at the beginning of the book, you start describing how at the age of 24 while you were in a graduate program and acting, you lost your voice. It turns out that you had vocal nodules. That experience led you to a profound realization. What did you discover? That was such a hard time.

And it was hard on the surface because I couldn't talk. You didn't imagine. Especially if you've been listening to me. I like to talk. So it was a odd ego, docile for sure, to go through this program for months on end as a ghost. No one paid any attention to me.

I dropped out of the play. I stopped singing. Obviously, these sort of factual things happen. But the deeper part of it is that I was left with such a profound sense of what is happening. What is my voice trying to tell me? I was in a lot of pain. I had these vocal cords that were raw and swollen,

and I wasn't sick. And I finally got myself to an ear nose and throat doctor, and they stuck this little, I don't know if anyone has experienced this. It's a feeling you don't forget, a little scope, a little tiny camera up my nose and down the back of my throat and got a photo of my vocal chords, which made it very clear that I had these little growing blisters on both sides at the same point in the V of the vocal chords, which is a signifier for vocal nodules. I don't know about to class that day.

I had missed the morning session and the guy who ran the program stopped the class. Everybody was staring at me as I walked in and he said, so was the diagnosis. And I said, as audibly as I possibly could through the pain of vocal nodules, I have to go on vocal rest. And he said,

ha, just as I thought, bad usage. Which is such a weird phrase, right? It's not like it has some huge cultural significance, but I felt it. I felt that what he was saying was, you're the victim of this injury, but you're also the perpetrator. You did this to yourself.

And there was definitely an element of shame. And I went to a speech pathologist and figured out how to talk again during the Christmas break that followed. And in a way, it was all over and done within a month. I was re-entered the land of the living. But in another way, that shame, that why, that what is my voice trying to tell me stayed with me for years and I actually

didn't realize until I had pitched this book and sold it that I was writing the book I wished it had at 24. Well that is a great story. I have to tell you I have been to the ENT and I have had the doctor go to me and say this may feel a little bit uncomfortable. And then they put this camera, which seems like it's going into your brain and out your ears before it comes down. I have no idea how you know the feeling. Is one of the most uncomfortable procedures

you could possibly have. And I don't care whether you're numb or not, it is just something that you don't want to do like getting an MRI every day of the week I'm sorry you had to go through that as well. Yeah, I have a deviated septum And so they were trying to look at all the options on what they were gonna do with it I've decided not to get surgery at this point and we'll see where it goes in the future to get surgery at this point and we'll see where it goes in the future. Well, something else you brought up as I was growing up, I had to see a speech pathologist for many years. And I remember hating it. Anyone who's gone when you're young,

I had this collection of stickers because that's how they would reward you as with stickers and other trinkets. But I have always loved words. I'd love to write. I'd love to use words in different ways. But to this day, I have a hard time publicly using them because I still stutter at times. I lose words. I miss pronounced words. And I have to tell you, I recently had on a guest who is probably in my top five I ever wanted to get on the podcast and I was so psyched that I got him on. He happens to be a doctor. And then I get into this and I get so nervous that all these medical terms that I had been practicing to make sure I would get right, I start mispronouncing. And then it's probably in my own head, but I'm seeing him lose respect for me

on the other side of the podcast, because I was trying to say things like Res Veritrol and Metformin and Exposome and things like that. But when I was speaking to him, they came out in completely different terminology. So if you're someone in the audience who has trouble using your voice, I just wanted to tell you you're not alone. And I wanted to ask since I admitted that, how prevalent is it for others to experience this hard to place out of sync feeling between our voices and our bodies.

Thank you so much for sharing that. First of all, I feel like everybody listening will agree that it's really vulnerable to talk about the ways in which our relationship with our voices for art. Partly because of what you just asked, which is that it for most of us, and the reason I shared that story about the teacher in grad school who lobbed that shame ball at me is that for most of us, and the reason I shared that story about the teacher in grad school who lobbed that shamball at me, is that for most of us, when we either are feeling for ourselves that there's something going on vocally, like in your case, or we are given the feedback by even an extremely well-meaning mentor. Examples are, if you keep saying so much much no one's going to take you seriously or your voice is a little high or that accent is really going to mark you as XYZ right when we get that kind of feedback I know now from how many people have coached at how many workshops I've done it can feel really lonely

it can feel really why can't I hack it. And it leaves each of us with an element of shame. No one else has this challenge, what's wrong with me, which is what I was thinking to myself when I was like huddled with tea and cold providence for an island when I was 24 right in the dead of winter and the reality is if all of us feel this way, it's clearly societal, it's not personal. And part of why I felt compelled to write this book is that through doing workshops, it was clear to me that introducing just some language around voices because they're invisible. So introducing some language so that we can talk about this, right, our voice stories, for example, which is some version of what you just shared with us, right, or lifelong micro adjustments we've made based on feedback

we've gotten, our voice stories. So introducing some language, some space, just a safe space to actually talk about this stuff, and then a massive sense of solidarity that we're all in this together actually makes a huge difference in the book is called permission to speak in people's sense of permission. Oh, I can take up space with this voice I have a complicated relationship with and discover what it feels like to breathe a little deeper, to speak a little more freely, to bring a little bit more of my sense of humor,

or my sense of weirdness into this space that has never actually seen me come out before. And let's see what happens now. Can I bring a version of myself that is a little bit more emotionally available into that space? Can I convince myself that it's safe enough to do so? Knowing that is when I will make a real impact. And that we're all doing this together at the same time.

Well, speaking of impact, I know that there are many people who get impacted by certain icons. Maybe it was John F. Kennedy or perhaps it was Princess Diana or Muhammad Ali or Gandhi. But for you, you had a innate fascination with Marilyn Monroe that led you to question the relationship between how we sound and how we're treated. Why was that the case? I love this question. Yeah, it was Marilyn and it was also around that the case? I love this question.

Yeah, it was Maryland and it was also around that same era when I was a kid and I have a kid is around seven, eight now. So I think I was that same age and I might have more of a connection to that time now because I'm looking at him discovering the world, right? Learning how things are. And I remember thinking in terms of Maryland who I totally had posters up on my wall, that

she was deeply misunderstood. But also, my Fair Lady, this musical, bless. I was obviously a musical theater nerd back in the day. I got my MFA in acting. But at the heart of it, this story, my Fair Lady based on this play, Pigmalion, is about a quote unquote lower class, flower girl who has a quote unquote lower class accent, right? A Cockney accent in England, in front of the century, England. And this guy who was actually a dialect coach, which is a career that I then had in Hollywood,

taking her on as a social experiment to see if he could improve her accent what her world opened up. And the answer is yes. So I could tell even then that there was some connection between, as you say, how we talk and how we get treated. And in a way, that is the absolute heart of my work now, because we all know on some level, if I talk a certain way, I get treated a certain way, and maybe that treated in this case means in work context, I seem tougher, I seem un-mess-with-able. So I'll keep doing that thing.

Or maybe it means I'll do what linguists call feminine markers, going up a little bit at the end of the thought or going into vocal fry, which are both ways that we can basically say, I care about this, but laugh that much so, whatever. Which actually is a useful functional tool to say I'm flexible or I'm low maintenance or I might come across as strong and opinionated,

but I'm not really married to these ideas. I'm a team player. We can do all that with these tiny, little linguistic flourishes that we don't even know we're doing and all of this stuff happens below the level of conscious thought. But it was those early observations that I think started me on this path

of thinking about, seeing in a way voices that are invisible. Well, when I think of Marilyn Monroe, she was definitely impacted by the power of her voice in many different ways. Her look and her voice were clearly constructs, somewhat similar to Elizabeth Holmes more recently. And then the idea of a constructed voice is such an interesting one for all of us because

actually in certain ways we've all constructed our own voice, not necessarily for ill and not necessarily as it was for Marilyn a trap, but subtly speaking, perhaps, the people who are picking up my book are picking it up because they're like, ooh, I picked up a lot of habits that helped me back then. They're not helping me anymore. I think I've outgrown them. Shoot. What do I do?

How do I change? What's the real me? Everyone asks me this question on authentic voice. I turn my don't even use in the book. Our authentic voice is what feels good. And we sound different when we talk to kids, then we do to talk to talking to lawyers. And that says it should be. Humans are actually, our authenticity is nuanced and multifaceted.

Well, it's funny you bring that up because you mentioned my episode that was released today with Dr. J. Van Bavill, who's a psychologist at NYU, but J deals with identity and shared identities. And there is a lot of corollaries between that interview, and as I was reading your book, some of the things that I was picking up from it, and people assume that they have a core identity. However, you say that our voice story is different from our personal story, and I found that so interesting, and I think the listeners will too. Why is that such the case?

I like to say that our voice story is our habits that we have picked up, the micro-adjustments that we've made our whole life as quite honestly, functioning numbers of a dysfunctional society. So as toddlers, we are already observing what makes the people who care for us turn toward us versus turn away from us. And we're making adjustments based on that, of course,

for the sake of literal survival. But then when we go up to school, for those of you listening, if you are the youngest child versus the middle child versus the oldest, right, there's archetypes that tend to happen. I'm an only child, but there's archetypes that tend to show up in our house.

And then maybe when we go to school We're trying to break free of that and get more attention or less attention. Are you the loud one? were you the quiet one were you the funny one and Then when we get to school We're often Anundated by all kinds of opinions other people have about our boys a Teacher who says sit in the back, you're always talking too much.

And that sticks with us. Or I've collected these because people have been sending them to me ever since I had a podcast a few years ago. Things like a girl told me, when I was in second grade, a boy said, I talk too high and I must be doing it to impress the boys. And she'd forgotten this because it's a weird little off-handed comment. But then it came back to her when she listened to my podcast and she had this like huge emotional

reaction she was sobbing. And she thought it didn't actually ever go away. It stuck around and rattled around in there. And how dare it. And someone else told me that in high school a teacher said, do you try to sound stupid on purpose? So our voice stories also, these op-handed comments and how we've accidentally, in many cases, integrated them into our sense of self and not even realized it. And then all of the adjustments we've made when we went off to college, when we dated people and we had our first job, what we've done to try to get taken seriously in those

spaces. Why did I lose my voice at 24? It turns out I had habitually, just as a habit, started talking a little tiny bit lower than my body's quote-unquote optimum pitch. The preferred vibration of my vocal cords, the sort of average preferred. And why did I do that? Well, in a way I'll never know. But my best theory is that I came across in high school as smiley and warm and friendly and whatever. Silly, playful, bubb bubbly and I must have calculated

subliminally. If I pitch my voice down a bit I can cut through the perceived naivete and get taken seriously and you know what it worked until it didn't until I lost it entirely. And each of us have some version of that, I think, whether we end up in the E&T with the scope of our nose or not. We have some version of constantly navigating the world by making these adjustments and then our boy story, like our money story, ends up being a collection of truths and not truths. Myths, cultural stuff, when women run for office, and the entire media calls them shrill, we

are learning something about what we're supposed to sound like when we run for office. And we can roll our eyes and dismiss it, but some part of that gets in. Well, one of the things I find is that we often live in echo chambers where the only opinions we want to hear are those similar to our own. And I think that comes to how we use our voice as well. And one of the things you point out in the book is that we really need to broaden our perspectives when it comes to creating our voice of authority and how we construct it. Why is perspective so important?

There are certain biases that are talked about a lot, and that those of us who are trying to be responsible kind people in the world are working to check. And one that's never on that list is voice bias. So I like to just pull it from the world of linguistics into the mainstream and offer for each of us that the certain standards that have existed for millennia about what a person in authority should sound like, which by the way if you Google, how do I sound authoritative, it will tell you all the answers. That standard doesn't serve many of us.

So we're at a moment, I think, in history where we get to say certain elements of leadership aren't working in business and politics. And the people who are continuing to get elevated into those roles are in a certain way sounding the part. We know that when we hear a low-pitched voice with a certain amount of vibration, gravitas, that seems stoic and ends every sentence down, that we are hearing a leader. And yet, that's not necessarily a leader who has yours or my best interest at heart. So as more people are entering the public sphere as leaders, or even just as powerful figures outside and feed some hierarchical leadership structure,

your favorite recording artist, your favorite activist, your favorite anybody who speaks in public. It's a chance for us to actually get critical about what they're doing vocally. Are they sounding more like themselves than like some generic version of a leader? Do they have an accent? Do they bring in a sense of humor

or a sense of emotional availability that's quite fresh and special. And I love to encourage people to actually write down names of people as Stair Parelle comes to mind for me. Like she doesn't represent the traditional sound of leadership of power. And yet she's an extremely powerful and well respected figure. And any individual example like that that you can come up with for yourself, starts to unwind this sense that there's only one way to sound powerful.

And this thing I said I was bringing over from linguistics, it's well-studied that accent bias is real and that it's everywhere. And that means that we're judging people who have an English of a second language accent, but also subtle regional accents, subtle things that a linguist would call accents that are marked by race or class, which under non-conformity. And I think it's a valuable effort we can all make

to notice the ways in which we are accidentally perpetuating voice bias by dismissing somebody based on how they talk and sometimes even ourselves. Yes, and I think that this specifically impacts women and those who come from marginalized communities. And that's a big thing that you cover in the book. So I'm glad that you brought that up. My background also is coaching English as a second language actors in Hollywood. So I'm really aware of sitting with somebody and talking about vowels and consonants, right, talking about the technique side of things, permission to speak.

There's a bunch of speaking exercises in this book. But what we're really sitting with is the technique side of things, permission to speak, there's a bunch of speaking exercises in this book. But what we're really sitting with is the permission side. What does it take to just decide you are English, the language you represented, right where you are? When you open your mouth to speak, no matter what sounds come out, you are English, you get to claim it. And for those of us from whom English is our first language,

there's applications of that for us as well, right? Anybody listening to you would probably be thinking you have a traditionally powerful voice. And yet on the inside, you've had a complicated lifelong relationship with that voice of yours. So this is a beautiful example of how all of us can get more curious about each other's voices.

Biasis are about accidentally putting stuff into categories. Instead of putting people into the category of that person sounds like a powerful person, I'll take them seriously. That person doesn't, I won't. Let's get really curious about the lived experience that all those people have in all those different categories that led them to the voice that they have today. And also, of course, ourselves. Yeah, it's surprising. I can't tell you how many people since I've started the podcast have told me,

you've got a great voice for podcasting. You've got a great voice for radio. Yet when I hear it, I cringe. And I'm sure there are a ton of people who do that, but as you point it out. It's so, I think it's really interesting for all of us, just as a thought experiment, is what if, maybe just for an hour, just for a day, or a week, we just decided to feel neutral or even positive about our own voice? What changes might we see in our life in that week? In how we speak up, in how much we trust our ideas,

in how much we go from thought to breath to speaking, rather than letting our throat get in the way to censor us. What if you felt absolutely neutral about your voice? It's something I've actually had to do in order to promote this book, because of course I enjoy rising to the occasion of trying to model everything I'm talking about. I'm trying to be an example of the quote-unquote new sound of power, all of us can, right? I'm not saying that this is for me specifically, but I've written a book basically saying we don't have to sound one way in order to get taken seriously. And in fact, we should get a bit suspicious of the ways in which we've been cutting off our weirdness in order to sound generic in order to sound formal.

In some rooms, that's necessary, right? When you are a lawyer and your client is on the stand fine. But in most of our lives, the myth of generic and formal is stopping us all from making a real impact, from coming into our power, from talking about what matters to us like it matters to us, from seeing our missions through. I think that's such an important point. I, for me personally, I grew up in a very strict Catholic household, went to a working school, my entire upbringing, where your condition to not speak out. And then transitioned right from that to the military, where I got more of the same. And so for me, it has been really a journey of 20 years

to slowly unwind that and to allow myself to go out of the guardrails that I thought were imposed on society because that's how I grew up seeing it, to allow myself to vocalize my ideas in different ways that fall outside of those guardrails. And I'm sure I'm not alone. You're so not alone. You're like really getting me.

I so appreciate that story. This is the way in which, yeah, in certain ways, our voice story and our literal story overlap, right? But the fact of where your body wasn't space in those different environments is not really the point, right? But the facts of where your body wasn't space in those different environments is not really the point, right? It's what you were learning in those environments about what was considered normal and acceptable and then how you integrated that and then how you were now in a position to get critical. Do I need all those rules? Were they actually for me, right? Do I need to continue to uphold the norms

of some environment I'm not even in anymore? And how, for all of us, just on a totally practical level, how can we walk into a space where we're going to talk and bring in a tiny bit of a sense of mischief? How can we just surprise ourselves a little? How can we have a tickle, have something that brings us a little tiny sense of joy, even if what we're talking about is really serious topics. I don't mean that we're going to be disrespectful when talking about serious topics, but I do mean that centering our own sense of well-being inside of communication, inside of being seen at scale is, I I think a revolution. Well, when I think of using our voice and having it have power, I also think the same thing when I

am writing written words, because oftentimes the same lane that we stay in with our voice, we end up staying in with our writing and other aspects. I know for me, I look at people like Mark Manson, who many of the listeners may know, and contrary, ways that he uses his voice that really go against the norm, that society has come to realize yet how by doing it, so many people are more responsive and come into his world because he's giving that contrarian opinion. And I think.

It's such a great example. Yeah. Yeah, I felt that way with writing my book a bit as well. He was an inspiration for me. I certainly swear a bit in this book. But I also was really armed when I handed the book in after going back and forth on edits with my amazing editor for a year and a half. I handed the book in, the manuscript was done,

and then there was the copy editor phase. One of the things that the copy editor did besides finding hyphens that they wanted to switch to semicolon or something is they made a list of words that I use that are casual words that they were going to be hands-off on and not try to change into something more formal, like using the word Aka inside of a sentence, with a sort of a sense of humor. And looking at these lists and lists of words that they were basically demon non-standard. But that they were saying, let's be hands-off because this is her way of communicating. I was pleased by that. It was quite charming. I was like, yeah, but all parts of that were going to let me write the way I write. So that's great. I've been told that I write as I speak, which is was a goal, and I did the audiobook. So if the old sound of power, not to say that people for thousands of years all sounded exactly the same,

but there are certain elements of that. If you Google, as I said, how to sound authoritative, it will tell you things like, speak at 75% your regular rate. Keep a measured slower pace. Keep your voice low, not a lot of pitch variation up and down. A lot of these sort of things that we just feel are supposed to be the right way to talk. If that's the old sound of power, the new sound of power is inevitably varied, because part of the gamble that we're all taking is how do I recognize my own voice when I speak in public?

Which means how do I actually reflect the life I've lived in my voice? How do I bring my own sense of humor? How do I bring my own emotional honesty? Inevitably, we're going to have diversity when we talk about the new sound of power. So I guess my book also selected that. These are the words I like to use. How about you? I'm going to take this in a little bit different direction because my fiance would kill me if I didn't. But I know where you're going with this. You talked earlier that you work a lot with actors

whose first language is different than English. And one of those happens to be Gal Gadette. And my fiance is like a mega fan. So when I told her, she was like, no way, no way to ask her this. Let's face it, probably 90% of the people listening today are Gal Fahans. And I understand you were her speech in dialect coach. You've worked with many other stars from someone who really doesn't understand that at all. What does that work entail? And it could be from getting someone like Gail, who's Israeli to speak English, or it could be getting Brad Pitt, try to learn how to speak French. How do you

go about doing that? Because it's got to be so much more difficult than you think on the surface. Yeah, okay, so first of all, it's not language, so it's accent. So it wouldn't be her speaking English and him speaking French, but speaking English, which she already does, with a more open access to the vowels and consonants sounds of American English. And for Brad, perhaps a French accent,

like he's speaking English with a French accent, like you speak English with a French accent because he isn't in this movie French. So accents and dialects, basically the same thing, those two words are used interchangeably, but an accent is actually the vowels and consonant sounds that make up how someone sounds. And the dialect is the container word for these larger questions of word choice, cultural influence, the ways in which we expect an Italian person to communicate differently than we do a French person, then we do a British person, right? The sort of non-verbals as well as the verbals. And the job of a dialect coach is to work with their actors, either on set, like on an actual sitting behind the director

and in video village where there's these monitors and I'm listening in to every take with my earbuds and then going in between each take as the hair make up people add a little more powder to their faces and I whisper in their ear a little wayward vowel sound or working offset in the trailer or back at their dining room table while they prepare for a role. And sometimes it is English as a second language actors who have a dialect coach because

why not? Quite honestly, when English is your second language or for any of us if we're speaking another language as our second language. Obviously it's one thing to know the vocabulary and to know the grammar. It's a whole other thing to have access to the sounds if we didn't grow up with them. So for example, most people who did not grow up speaking English don't know how to make a TH sound. Because if you think about it, you have to put your tongue outside of your mouth. It's the only way to make that sound. And it doesn't exist in almost any other language.

This is why French person will say, this is the thing, instead of this is the thing. The idea of putting your tongue outside of your mouth is really weird until you have a gentle loving coach right next to you saying, okay, so the secret is actually to get your tongue out as little as possible, not as much as possible, but it does have to be outside.

It does have to have this teeth touching on the top and the bottom. So odd. But sometimes I'm the first person who's ever explained that to them because they could speak English absolutely perfectly with teacher after teacher through all of their years of education. But if knowing explained the mechanics of the articulators, the teeth, the tongue, the lips, the parts of our mouth that can move, they don't know. So I'm that sort of soft place to land

for people for whom English is their second language, and they really need that clarity of speech if they want to play this role. And then the other part of it is English is a first language folks, Americans, Canadians, Brits, etc. Who need a specific accent for a role, And then what we're really doing is research. And there's an element of honoring a culture that's happening here. If I'm working with a black British actor to play a black American in 1950s, North Carolina, who's educated and just getting recruited to move out to LA to be part of the aerospace engineering boom. That's a specific accent. We have to deal with time period and race and aspiration as it shows up in our voices. And so I did a lot of research. I found a good sample on the internet that felt right. I ran it by all of the creative team, got a proofful, and then my

actor and I worked together a lot on that. Well, it is amazing whether it's Cape Lancet or E. Jackman or Ray Fines. Some of these great actors just how they're able to just sound like they're an American or whatever they want to project. Daniel De Lewis is another one. It's such an art. It really is in the dialogue coach. There's no Oscar category for us. There's not even an IMDB category for us if you know what that is,

the behind-the-scenes on movie making. There's not that many of us and we are next to each of those actors that you just described helping them with those sounds and keeping them honest. And keeping their nervous systems feeling good too, because the connection between that work and this work, there's a lot of connections now that I've been thinking about it, but one of them is that whether it's that we're learning a new accent and trying to integrate it

and trying to somehow seem like an authentic human on camera, even though we don't sound like ourselves, or if we're trying to just speak to a larger group than we ever have before, what's actually happening is that our nervous system is freaking out. And just like when you have surgery and have a new organ putting you, there is this potential rejection, right, that your body is rejecting this newness. So part of being a coach is standing next to somebody as they're going through that and offering ways to relax their nervous system to make them feel safe, to make them feel loved,

to give them little tips that are all through my book on how to meet that moment and recognize yourself inside of it, to be an authentic person inside of it. Well, I'm gonna quote something from your book here in this question, but I'll ask it this way, how has coaching movie stars been an incredible lesson in how to work the power we have, generate the power we don't, and find our people so we set fire, rise, and celebrate together?

I'll answer in a really practical way. Having worked with movie stars and rock stars, I can say with absolute certainty that the people who we admire as successful and confident also have deep insecurity about their voices, that this is an all of us thing. I have had Dr. Benjamin Hardy on the podcast. He's one of my favorite authors. He's a studies, a future self entrepreneurship and other things. But he has this great book out called The Gap and the Gain. And he describes how so often we live in the Gap where we're comparing ourselves to others versus the G gap where we're comparing ourselves to others versus the gain,

where we're comparing ourselves to our past selves and the progress that we've made. You think the same thing applies to how we use our voice? I've heard that distinction before and it's so valuable. I don't know. I think probably we should just apply it. I think that what tends to happen when I coach people, but also what I've been hearing from readers, which is heartening, is that introducing some of this basic language around voice bias,

around standards, around our opportunity, slash responsibility to shift those standards for our own sake, as well as our kids. And how are pretty instantaneous affect on our own relationship to our voice? So maybe you don't automatically think, I'm going to love my voice now if you've had a life of hating it. But you might release the feelings of embarrassment or shame around it and realize that's a story that doesn't belong to you at all. And once that stuff is gone, well, then we really can just play. One of the things that I do bring over from my background in the arts is that actors think

about every possible way that they can say a line in terms of choices. We can do that too. We don't have to be an actor and we don't have to be thinking about manipulating how we sound or something that feels like a non-starter. But we can think to ourselves, what are my options? If I continue to use vocal fry after reading chapter two of my book and knowing what it does to my listener, if I continue to use vocal fry after reading chapter two of my book and knowing what it does to my listener, if I continue to use vocal fry, okay, cool. I've made a choice. It's a choice. I'm owning it. It's a way of taking agency in how we speak, because I am a huge fan of not demonizing any of our vocal habits. One of the things I absolutely adore about linguistics is that linguists will say, every vocal habit any of us have ever picked up, we've picked up for a reason. It has served us in some way. So we should probably

honor that. Oh, if that kept me safe in that room, that kept me feeling comfortable, that kept me not getting kicked out, that kept me seeming like a bull. And then, what are our choices from there? Well, what version of me comes out around my favorite people when I have absolutely nothing to prove? You told that story about the person you interviewed who suddenly made you feel like you were in a really evaluative space, as linguists would say, right, a space where you were feeling like you were being evaluated. An evaluative space for any of us puts us into a completely different vocal mode, we're much more likely to stop being our weird selves and be generic when we feel like we have something to prove. In fact, I like to joke that we all have only two modes. Of course,

it's a joke because we have a billion. But we have sort of two categories of modes of communication. One is what we are like in an evaluative space, whether it's a literal evaluation, like a job interview, or an abstract feeling of one. I feel like I'm being judged. I feel like I'm being sized up. How we come across in those spaces,

how we kind of play small or push into some bigger version of ourselves that doesn't actually feel honest either. And then the other way of communicating is a little doubt. So what is that? What version of us shows up when we're with our favorite people who totally get us? How do we tell a story? How do you tell a story of the, oh my God, you'll never guess who I just ran into at Target, the story? What version of you is that? That's actually

often more telling of the version of us that can show up when we're talking about what matters to us most on a stage. More than we think. That's a great way to asking what is the key to bringing your best self into your most public moments? Read this book called Permission to Speak. That's the reality is there is not one single answer because each of us has a different voice story what's driving one of you listening crazy is not necessarily the exact same thing that's driving someone else crazy. And the different chapters are arrayed in such a way that there's like it categories. The first one is breath, for example. So if you have a history holding your breath when you walk into rooms that feel intimidating,

well, there's a reason for that. And there's tools that you can use to undo that. If pitch is a thing for you, if you've been habitually lowering your pitch like I did when I hurt myself, there's some undoing to be done there around archetypes of what a powerful person sounds like. The tone chapter, strength and warmth is this balance

that Harvard Business Review talks about every week. There's a new study yet. Sometimes strength is called competence. But the competence warmth balance is presented as this sort of impossible but necessary balance, especially for women to strike in a leadership capacity. How do you see both warm and also powerful at the same time? And it's often called the double bind because there is this suggestion that it's impossible. And I like to think I undo the double bind in chapter five on tone that I have found a way to introduce the strength-formed balance that's actually

doable. And it does have to do with redefining for ourselves certain aspects of leadership tropes that we've probably all breathed in like everyone else. So the answer to your question is really, there isn't only one way. And yet, for many of us, a little tiny because a long way, I've heard from a lot of people who say that even just hearing this conversation starts to impact how they show up. Okay, and as a speech coach,

you get questions all the time like, what do I do about rambling? How do I handle nerves? How do I not get called? You know what? You say that all these questions, boil down to one epic question. What is that? So much of our public speaking drama boils down to where we put our attention.

And it's totally understandable. But if we are putting our attention on ourselves, we will inevitably feel more nervous. We will inevitably start asking ourselves inconvenient questions around our worthiness of being up there. And I'll quote this incredible Ted Talk. I love this woman named Caroline McHugh

whose Ted Talk is called the art of being yourself. And she says that when she was a kid and she's Scottish and she had this big family and her mom was making her perform for big extended family and she didn't want to. She was feeling shy and her mom said, too bad, go down there, no one cares about you. And she said, he left her with this spectacular disregard for being the center of attention. And in fact, she says, from the TED stage, I'm not the center of your attention. You're the center of mind. And it's such an important shift, because the reality is when we have the chance to speak in public.

Sometimes it's on behalf of our company or on behalf of something we don't believe in and those are tough and different than what I'm talking about now. But often, it's because we do get to talk about something that matters to us. And in those moments, the solution to nerves and just so many other things that come up is to deeply intentionally focus on who you are there to help. If it's the audience, great. If it's somebody who's not there who you're representing. If it's the people that your mission will serve. That is who you should be thinking about, especially in those moments before you go on stage. And it helps to think of this metaphor. If we know CPR and there's somebody choking in front of us, and everyone else around is panicking, would we think in that moment, oh, I don't want to make it about myself? Oh, of course we would jump in and we would save the choking person.

And the challenge when we're speaking in public is that we look out at these faces and they don't look like they're choking. And we get to use our imaginations to take that leap and say, but what if they are? Well, I love in the book how you say to the point you just brought up that public speaking is really about making what matters to you, matter to others. And one of the things I talk a lot about on this podcast, you brought up as well, and that is our life is made up of intentional choices that we make every second that we breathe air. And that intention goes from the supermarket that we decide to go to,

or the gas station we go to, but it also, as you pointed out, goes to how we use our voice. But ultimately, I am a huge believer that using our voice needs to be in the service of others, not ourselves, same with our intentionality. And so I love what you just brought up because it's about what do we have in common with them? How do we bond with them? How do we help them get through something that they're going through that maybe you've gone through yourself and you don't want them to have that same experience? You just articulated also is such an important part

of this work for me because I think that all those shoulds that most of us have rattling around in our head about how we should be showing up in public is all based on really a fear-based model of public speaking. Don't do this and don't do this and don't do this so that there's a chance they won't laugh at you, so that there's a chance they won't dismiss you. It's not that we anyone chose this, but we all know that there's this huge cultural joke about public speaking that we'd rather be in the casket than

giving the eulogy. This fear-based version of public speaking is bad for all of us and bad for emissions. And the opposite is quite frankly, love-based. And I don't mean love in some sort of soft way, love is a strategy. I mean caring out loud in a way that will make that care spread. And it's a strategy that works. Well, how do you know then when you were speaking in your authentic voice? Because I think to reach people the way that you just describe,

you need to be speaking authentically. I like to take the word authentic and give it something actionable, right? Because I'm a coach, so it needs to be doable, rather than this very abstract concept of authenticity. Authenticity is meant to suggest something truthy, right? Leave yourself. And then we all go, oh, which part of me is my self? So here's my definition of authentic.

Talking about what matters to us, like it matters to us. And this is weirdly hard because most of us have spent a lifetime practicing how to talk about what matters to us, but underplaying it or the sake of safety, for the sake of not seeming vulnerable. So it ends up coming across as, this is a really big deal to me, but what do you guys think? Or something along those lines, right? There's a certain monotone that happens where we go into our throat and we don't use any

pitch variation. And then it can sound like this. Yeah, so the thing that I really care a lot about is public speaking and how people can do it better. It's clearly a defense mechanism. Again, not demonizing anyone's habits, right? It's a habit. But it is a habit to hide.

So if we want to bring our authentic selves in, authentic doesn't mean capturing some unis that is more you than other use. I think that's just crazy making, unfortunately. But rather, getting clear about when and how you personally tend to hide when you care about something. For some people, it's what I just described, right? Undercarring. For others, it's overcarring. There's a lot of us who have a history of people pleasing or of literally working in the customer service world, where we accidentally push and seemingly over-care about something. So we'll say something like, yeah, so this matters to me so much.

I'm so excited to talk to all of you. And in a way, it's hiding as well, right? It's just instead of playing small, you're faking big. So if that's a spectrum, what's in the middle? What do you sound like when you breathe deep and you allow yourself to be emotionally available? And you say, I'm talking about something that matters to me. And you know that you're going to be vulnerable and bivonorable. We all mean is when we talk about what matters to us, now you know where you can hurt me. And that's also the only way we can build trust.

And we've just got to go for it. Well, I absolutely love that. And the last question I wanted to ask you is for a listener today or a person that picks up your book, what is a key or several key takeaways that you hope they get from giving yourself permission to speak? The subtitle of the book is how to change what power sounds like starting with you. I think the two main takeaways are that any of us who have not thought of ourselves as one authority voice has traditionally sounded like, can be the new sound of power. We can actually embody the kind of leadership we would like to see more of in the world right now, simply by showing up as somebody who doesn't hide.

And the other part of it is listening better. Actually acknowledging our voice biases, noticing the ways that we're accidentally categorizing people and dismissing them. And saying, you know ways that we're accidentally categorizing people and dismissing them, and saying, you know, that stops here. I don't want to keep up holding these performances of power that aren't helping. If someone would like to find out more about you, is there a central place that you would like them to go to? Sure, I have two.

One is my website, so smartbay.com. If you want to work with me, if you want to bring me into speak with your people, smartbay.com. And the other, if you want free tips and to drop me a DM is Instagram. I do a little one minute or one and a half minute real every single Tuesday.

I think of it as my own little TV show. And it's a great place to communicate with me and be part of my community, which is a real gift. Well, Samaro, it was such an incredible honor to have you on the show today. And I just wanted to give your book a huge shout out because I know it's gonna be such a reference library for me as I launch my own book only next year

and need to tune up by my speaking abilities as well. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. Thank you John, I appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Samarro Bay. And I wanted to thank Samarro, Alissa Fortnado and Crown Books for the privilege of having her appear on the show. Links to all things Samarro will be in the show notes at passionstark.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both PassionStruck Clips and John Armiles.

We are now on syndicated radio as I mentioned at the beginning on the AM-FM-247 national broadcast. Every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern time, links will be in the show notes. Advertisers or deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. I'm on LinkedIn where you can send up from my newsletter or you can also find me at John Armiles on all the social channels. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview I did with Dr. Scott Schur.

And we discuss finding limitless, a deep dive into new tropics, smurfs, and blue canotine. And the reason why we named it blue tropics is because the main new tropic that we use in our compounds is something called methylene blue. And methylene blue is a compound that's been around a long time that has both capacities. It has the combination to both increase the health of the brain. And at the same time, increase the brain's potential

to perform a task better because of the various mechanisms that are at play here. So it's increasing energy production, but it's also supporting the production of energy and balancing out energy production by increasing something called antioxidant reserve. The fee for this show is that you share it with your family and friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know someone who's interested in learning about giving themselves permission to speak, then definitely share today's episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime,

do your best to apply what you hear on the show, and let you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become Ash and Stark. you