2. Why I Quit Acting and Became an Accent Coach | My story

Welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar, and this is episode number two. How are you doing? I hope all is well. I hope you're happy and you are excited about this episode. I'm very excited. And I also feel kind of strange because this episode is all about me now. I'm not used to creating content around me. I'm used to talking about you. I'm used to telling you what you can do to be a better speaker, to improve your pronunciation, to become more confident. That's easy for me. But to be here and tell you my story and everything that I'm about to tell you is strange. So I tried to imagine myself hosting a party and inviting all of you to come to my house for a party. And basically it's just me talking to you over a glass of wine or iced tea. But since I have to be the one talking, I prefer a glass of wine. So, yes, let's pretend that that's the situation. It's evening time. We're at my house drinking whatever you want to drink, eating nachos. And let's pretend that you're asking me, hey, Hadar, so what's your story? Tell me a little bit about yourself. They'd be like, how much time do you have? Because I have a lot of things to tell you. Then you're like, well, we have all night. I was like, I don't have all night. I have to go back home. Oh, wait, no, I'm actually in my home. I have to go pick up my daughters from the babysitter, so I can't talk all night. Okay, so how much time do you have, you may ask. And I'd be like, how about 20 minutes, 30 minutes tops? And you're like, okay, cool, so let me hear your story. And I'm like, okay, where do you want me to start? Why don't you just start at the beginning? What, you mean when I was born? No, Hadar, when this whole English thing started. Oh, okay, so you mean when I was 21 and I just moved to New York? Yes. Okay, so let me tell you all about it. The year was 2000. My God. It makes me feel old saying that some of you may not even been born in 2000. Anyway, I have been recently discharged from the army. I don't know if you know this, but in Israel it's mandatory to do your military service. And throughout those two years when I was in the army, and by the way, guess what I did there? I was a teacher, of course. And throughout those Two years. All I could think of is, I want to move to New York to find a job there and to become an actress. And that's what I did. I moved there. And when I just got there, I was looking for a job. And I remember walking around the streets of New York looking for a place to work. Every. Everywhere I walked into, they're like, no, we don't need anyone. No. And then I said, well, if I can't find a job, then I can't really stay here because I won't be able to afford it. I'll have to leave in, like, a few weeks. And I was really frustrated. And I think it was like the second or third day of me looking for a job. And I remember standing in the middle of the street. I was right on McDougall and third, for those of you who know New York, you know where it's at. And I was wondering whether I should make a right or make a left. And I remember this time precisely, like, vividly, because I remember that it was really important for me to take the time to decide if I should make a right or make a left. And then I made a left. And I said, I'm going to go into one more place. And if they say no, I'm gonna go home. And I don't know if I have the energy to try again. I felt really defeated because I've been to, like, dozens and dozens of places. And then I walk down the street and I see a sign that says Live Jazz. Now, back then, I was a huge fan of jazz music. I would know all the artists and current artists, contemporary artists as well. And I was like, ah, I have to go downstairs. And I walk downstairs, there are, like, two people there, one sitting on the chair in the middle of the room. It's like, all straw hats, no lighting. The place is really run down. A little smelly, too. And there was no jazz. And I kind of like, walk around. They're like, yeah, what do you want? And I say, are you looking for employees? They're like, come, come here, come here. What do you do? I'm like, I'm a bartender. Of course. I've never bartended in my life before. I'm a bartender because I figured that's what they need. It's a bar. And then the guy I was talking to goes, hey, Carl, when is Paula leaving? And someone's yelling from the kitchen, well, in two weeks, Andre. I'm, like, waiting silently. What's your name? And I said, julia. Now, let me pause this story for A sec. And tell you that I decided that I'm not going to tell them my real name because then they'll think I'm not American. I thought, I'm going to be so smart. So that way they won't ask me questions because I don't know if it's legal for me to work or not legal. So I'm just going to tell them my name is Julia, and they'll think I'm American. And Andre goes, julia. So where are you from? Um, I'm from uptown. Okay. I was renting an apartment uptown. And he's like, no, but where are you really from? Silly me. I thought that by changing my name, people will not ask me where I'm from. I forgot that I had an accent and a pretty thick one. It was pretty obvious that I wasn't American. And I told them that I just moved to New York and I'm from Israel. Apparently, they didn't really care about the fact that I wasn't American. And they started talking to me and asking questions and started testing me about my knowledge, my bar knowledge that I had thanks to a book called Bartending for Dummies. And I kind of memorized it in case someone asks me questions. And I answered all these weird answers. They didn't even understand what I was saying because I was talking, like, book language instead of the language that they used. And I probably mispronounced it, too. Anyway, so they liked me. They liked me. What can I tell you? And I'm good with speaking to people. And they said, okay, you know, our bartender is leaving for Christmas, so why don't you come for two weeks and we'll see what happens. I said, okay, when can I come? How about tomorrow? So I go in there tomorrow, and it's magic. I mean, the place is just amazing. All these crazy characters would come in, talk to me, tell me stories. The music was amazing. I would just, like, listen to all the jazz bands coming in there. They would have two jazz bands a night. And I started to make friends, and obviously I started working there. So that's it. I live in New York. That's. I'm living the dream. It's incredible. But of course, back then, my English was not as good as my English is now. So it was hard for me still to communicate and to express myself. And I felt. I remember feeling very frustrated a lot of times with one people not understanding me, especially when it's really loud and I had to tell them how much it costs or ask them something, and they'd Be like, what, what, what? Asking me to repeat themselves, myself. And also just constantly making the conversation about me and where I'm from and what I'm doing here and all of that. And I didn't want to make. To have that conversation. I just wanted to have a normal conversation as if I was American. Fast forward to a year later. I was working six nights a week, sometimes seven, starting at 6pm, ending at 4am, sometimes 5am I remember falling asleep on the subway back home. And it was a beautiful. A beautiful time. And I remember how this work has really helped me establish, establish and improve my conversational English, because all I did was talk to people there, listen to their stories, share my stories, listen to the stories, to their stories, and listen to their stories a bit more. And I picked up all those expressions and idioms and slang and things that I carry with me till this day. So a year goes by, and throughout that year, many things have happened. One of them is 9 11. That has changed America forever. And for us, it was devastating because the bar was downtown and it was really close to the World Trade center. And we had to close the bar for a few days. And I remember the smell. Like, I think back then I really didn't understand the magnitude of what had just happened. But I was there. I used to live in Harlem. And I remember going up to the roof and I saw the smoke coming up from, you know, the horizon. And it was. It was just so sad. And it also changed the. All the immigration laws. And I. But back then I was still a tourist. And I said, okay, I need to make a decision because I won't be able to stay here for much longer. I was still legal. I had a tourist visa, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to get another one. And I knew that I wanted to stay in New York. So I said, well, my dream is to study acting, so why not go for it here? And that's what I did. I started auditioning to different acting schools. Now I remember my auditions. They were horrible, horrendous. Like, I was so incredibly bad. I was just like the epitome of overacting. But I got accepted to Circle in the Square Theater School. I guess they saw something in me, thankfully, because that decision to join the school has changed my life now. I got accepted, and then I had to go back home to apply for a student visa. So I told my friends that I'm going away for two months. You know, remember that? Back then I knew this is the place for me to be. This is where I want to live my life. And it has been a year and a half since I've been home. And I flew back home. It was really emotional and challenging and amazing to go back home after 18 months. And I was so naive because I went to the US Embassy to apply for a student visa. I haven't even prepared anything, and I didn't get it. I just didn't get the visa. They said that I had lost my ties to Israel and they're afraid that I'm not going to go back. I mean, for a good reason. I didn't plan on going back, but they said because of that, they don't. They only give the student visa to people who are planning to come back. And they didn't believe that I'm going to do that. So that was the end of the world for me. Like, really. I remember myself sitting outside of the US Embassy on a bench and crying my eyes out, like a baby bawling in the middle of the street. People looking at me like, what is wrong with her? And I just didn't know how I can get get myself home because I felt like I had no energy, no nothing left in me. I was so depressed. I wrote everyone, including the US Ambassador in Israel, like, I did everything in my power to ask them to consider this decision. Of course, no one has responded. And after a couple of months, I said, okay, I have to figure out what to do and how to make the best of it. And luckily, the school has agreed to defer my spot and to accept me the next year. And I said, I'm going to take this year and make the best of it and try to find the connections again. So when I apply for the visa again, I'll show them that I have a good enough reason to come back. So that year was actually incredible. I didn't want to spend that year in Israel, but it was a gift. Like, you know, the universe gives you gifts and you just don't know it at the beginning. But it was a gift because that was the year where I met for the first time two of the people who are the closest in the world to me. Two, till this day, two of my good, good friends that I met them in a place that I worked during that year. Had I gotten the visa, I would have never met them. And this is something like, I can't even imagine my life without them around me. And of course, it was important for me to spend time with my family and to understand that living in Israel is not that horrible as I imagined it to be because back then, like that was the, the most horrible thing for me to do, to go back, because that means that I didn't succeed and I did it and I applied again and I got the visa. So in 2003, I moved back to New York City for two years of acting school. Now, I'm not going to go deep into my experience there. That's for another episode. But I'm just going to tell you that there was one class that has really changed the course of my life, and that's speech and pronunciation class where we learned everything about the pronunciation of English. I simply fell in love with the ability to change the sounds simply by changing the position of the mouth or simply by understanding how everything works in the mouth or the tongue and the lips and how everything affects and affects your voice and your sound. And also I felt that I started implementing it into my day to day speech and that had an incredible impact on my confidence in English, my clarity, how I understand people, everything that I always talk about when I talk about accent training. And I loved it. My teacher, her name was, is still Lee Dillon. She's one of the top accent coaches in the US Was incredible. She has influenced me so much and I still to this day hear her voice in my head and the way she would yell at students who didn't get it right or didn't do their homework. But she loved me because I was a very diligent student. I did the work first because I was afraid of her, second because I felt the change immediately by doing it. So I was drawn into this. It was exciting for me. It wasn't a task, it wasn't a burden. I loved it. And the second year we had different accent classes. We started working on dialect and that was incredible too, because that's when I started understanding how I can replace sounds. And the result is different accents. So I had to map out all the sounds in my head to be able to do that. And that has helped me with understanding American accent even more and how to control my voice even more. I was really, really in control of whatever is going out of my mouth. So I loved it. And of course, all the other classes also helped me become more confident in English, more flexible, more spontaneous, everything that a person needs to kind of like overcome all the obstacles when speaking a second language. A year after I had graduated, I had to make a decision. My visa was about to expire and it was either finding a way to stay in the US an expensive way, or going back home. And I decided that I need to resolve something back home and see, maybe I should spend my life there or at least a portion of my life. And if not, I'll find a way to come back to New York. Back then I was already 24 or 25 and I felt like by now I should have been somewhere else. But. But what can I do? I need to start over. And I moved back to Israel. Now, the first year after moving back was pretty devastating because that year between having graduated school and moving back to Israel, I was actually working as an actress. I mean, working is an exaggeration because I worked at it and never got paid, but I worked at it. I was in a theater company and we did some shows and I did some friends shows and I designed lightings for some shows. Like, I was active and I also, I was also waiting tables, a lot of tables. I was working as a server and I worked a lot. I had to pay off my, my student loans and. But that year I was actually doing stuff in this field that I loved so much, acting, theater. And then I moved back and it was a desert crickets. Like no one was interested in what I did in the us no one cared about circle in the square or whatnot, like what school I went to in New York. No one really cared. And I am not one of those people who would push themselves forward or make phone calls and be like, I have to tell you about myself. I'm so awesome. You have to represent me to agents and stuff. So I was basically doing nothing. I was in a small theater group and I did some small things, but I didn't find my path here as an actress. So I started to explore different things. Now this is where you might be thinking, oh, so she started teaching accent lessons. So actually no four more years are going to go by without me doing anything related to accent training or acting. So in those four years, I've experimented with many different things. I've studied naturopathy, Chinese medicine. I worked as a server and then as a manager and then as a general manager in a very fancy restaurant in Tel Aviv. I did lighting design for a fringe show in the theater. I babysat a lot and I was mostly miserable. I mean, when I worked at the restaurant, I felt like I have found my space because I was really good at it and I managed people and I love the up pace feel of like a service, but it wasn't for me. And I remember one afternoon like sitting at home feeling really depressed. I wasn't making enough money. I was really looking for something better. To do. And I felt like I wasn't fulfilling my purpose. I mean, is that all there is? Like me just making people feel great about their evening? You know, like this one night that they come in, spend a ton of money on food and that's it, they go, they don't remember me, they don't care about anything. Is that my purpose is in life. And then I said, what else can I do? And then I said to myself, what if I give private accent lessons? Like one on one, Maybe someone would be interested in that. And then I said, what a silly idea. Like no one is interested in improving their accent. It's just for actors. And no one's acting in English here anyway, so why even bother? But I kept thinking about it and then I said, I'm just gonna give it a try. So I remember writing a small note saying, accent classes, learn how to improve your accent, call me. And I wrote my number. And then I went to this business district, not even in Tel Aviv where I lived. I had to kinda drive for an hour and I went there and I posted it on a bulletin board. Yeah, I know it sounds old school, but remember it was 2007 or 2008. I keep confusing the years and lo and behold, within a couple of days I get a phone call. Hi, Hadar, I'm calling about the accent lessons. I'm like, yeah, sure. So I wanted to ask you a few questions. Of course, I was not prepared. I started to just like giving random answers. And then he's like, so how much is a session? I had no idea. I haven't even thought about it. So I invented a number. Of course it was way below the market price, but fine. And he said, great, when can I come? And I'm like, oh my God. Okay, sure. We scheduled a meeting and I quickly prepared the first lesson. And I was really nervous, mainly because my English was so incredibly rusty. I was barely speaking English during those four years. And here, now I have to teach someone how to speak with a proper accent. So I decided that I'm going to do the lessons in Hebrew and only teach him the words with the right pronunciation. I was staying in my comfort zone. Anyway, the lesson went great. The student was extremely happy and already wanted to schedule the next session. And that's how it all started. I wondered, how in the world would I find more students? I mean, when I told people about it, they made fun of me. But then I knew that there are some people there looking for exactly what I do. So I started doing funny things, like going to different forums and then log in as one user. Let's call that user Mint. So I would log in as Mint and post a question. Hi everyone, do you happen to know how I can improve my accent? I'm really interested in doing that. And then I would log out and log in as a different user. Let's call her Jennifer123. And Jennifer123 would answer, Mint, you have to check out Hadar Shemesh. She's an incredible coach. She has helped me so much. And then log in as Mint again. Oh, really? Do you have her number? And then log in as Jennifer123. Sure, here it is. And I would post my number and I started getting phone calls from people, people searching for accent coach because no one had done it in Israel before. So that was probably the only content about improving your accent in Hebrew. And people started calling me just because I made these interactions in different forums. That was a lot of fun. And that's how I got work. And then one day, one of my students said to me, hadar, you gotta set up your website. You gotta create content and people will find you a shout out to you. Shaula, who has started my first interaction with the online sphere just creating a website. And I just used, I think, Google sites. I created some content. It took me a long time. I set up my website, I quit my job, went to Brazil for a month and got back and said, this is what I'm doing from now on. And it's been a year. I think, like, I put up my website, started writing content to improve my SEO. And I think within a year of quitting my job, I started only doing this, only teaching people privately how to speak with a better accent. And I was doing that for about seven years. I've been coaching one on ones and in groups and in companies. And then I once posted a video on YouTube. I was actually working on creating an online course and the video didn't turn out that well. And I decided to just upload it to YouTube and I forgot about it. And then a few months later, I'm looking at the video and I saw that there are like 60,000 views. And to me, that was like mind blowing. What? How is that even possible? And I got all these comments saying, this is incredible. It was my schwa video. You can go back and actually see it. I think the secret of American pronunciation or something like that, that's the name of the video. I'm gonna put a link to it in the show notes. But it was so funny. Like the response was amazing and I was just like, what is this thing? Even I didn't know anything about YouTube. I had a full on business in Israel, like coaching people in groups. And I already hired my first coach that worked with me. And in 2015, I remember it because I was pregnant with my second child. I was nine months pregnant and I decided to shoot a lot of videos and commit to releasing one video a week, which is a very ballsy commitment, especially when you're just about to have your second child. But I guess I like challenges, so I decided to do that. And from then on I do release a video every single week and the rest is history. I created my online course Accent Makeover that is super successful. Every time we launch, we get hundreds of students from around the world. Right now I have a YouTube channel with 220,000 people subscribers followers. That's incredible to me and a huge privilege to have such a large audience to share my ideas with. I have a beautiful community on Facebook of non native speakers who communicate and practice English together. And I have my students. I have a school in Tel Aviv with many students who actually come in, physically come in and coach with one of my coaches or take one of our group classes or people who join my online programs. And I mean, I can't be more grateful than that. And now here I am starting my new podcast, speaking to you, telling you my story. I'm really closing a circle here. I feel like it's a decade of doing this and it's actually the end of the decade. I'm recording this at the end of 2019. And I think looking back, I think that when I was 20, I had plans for myself. I saw myself in a totally different place in 2020. I thought that I'm going to be a famous actress living in New York, raising my kids there. And I think that from the age of 20 to the age of 30, I was laying out the foundations of my life, right? I was creating the infrastructure. And then from the age of 30 to the age of 40, which is where I'm at 2020, I'm going to be 40. Oh my goodness. This is where I started to really fulfill my purpose and to do what I love, which is teach and coach and create content and, and simplify English for people, the way I have simplified it to myself in my head. And to make it possible for you, to make it possible, to make you feel like it is possible, that you can do it and that you are enough and you don't need to be a native speaker to be a good speaker. So I think that everything that I've gone through and I shared with you in the last 32 minutes all led me to do what I'm doing right now. So I'm very grateful for my journey and I'm grateful for you for being here and tuning in and listening to my story. Thank you so, so much. Sending you my deep love. And I'll catch you next time on the next episode. It.