340. How To Use Your Voice To Get What You Want | Interview With Author Samara Bay 🔥

Welcome to the Influency podcast. I'm Hadar and this is episode number 340. Today we are going to speak with Hollywood dialect coach, published author, and my friend, Samara Bay. You know, I am so thrilled for this, this interview because I've been wanting to have it for so long. Well, more particularly since February 2023, because that's when the book Permission to Speak was published. I met our guest today, Samara bay, back in 2020 when she just started writing the book. Actually, it was right after she got the book deal, after 14 different publishers were fighting for her to sign with them, which is something that rarely happens, by the way. And she was ready to write this mind blowing, life changing book about speaking and using her voice and becoming the new sound of power, which is a term that she coined. Samara and I connected immediately after I started listening to her podcast, Permission to Speak that was launched in 2020. And we felt like we were so similar on so many levels and how we approach teaching and coaching. Because she was a dialect coach, she was doing speech work with students and similar things to what I was doing. And we both were able to move from just teaching the sounds and the mechanics of speaking to understanding the deeper essence of this concept of speaking and showing up like yourself, using your own voice and you know, for me, using your own voice in a language that is not your first language as well. And we actually had two previous interviews. This is the third time that she's going to be on the podcast. And every time we had such an incredible conversation, whether it was about pronunciation or about permission to speak. And I'm going to link to those episodes in the description. So if you want to listen to them, go ahead and check them out if you enjoy this conversation as well. So today we are going to talk about her book Permission to Speak and some of the things that she discusses inside her book. And we're also going to talk about the voice and pitch and what does it mean to sound expressive, what does it mean to sound like yourself? And what are some of the obstacles that hold you back, what when communicating in English. So I really hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed having this conversation. And if you want to share with me your thoughts or even with Samara, you can find us on Instagram. I'm Hadar Accentsway and Samar is Samarabay on Instagram. And if you enjoy this podcast, I have one last request. Take a moment after this episode and rate and review the podcast. It really does help people learn about it and it helps us make sure that the podcast gets to the ears of the people who really need to hear it. Year and hear that was not a coincidence. All right, let's just go ahead and dive into the conversation with Samara. Hi, Samara.

Hello, my love.

All right, so this book is life changing and mind changing. I think it's a must read for probably anyone watching and following this channel. And I believe it really tells an entire story, not only about the voice, but gives you practical tools on how to understand not only how your voice works, but really how you think about the voice and how you can feel like yourself and feel accomplished using your voice. And I think that one of the things about the voice and I, you know, in a second I have a bunch of questions to ask you, but is that it's something that we totally take for granted. We don't think about it. It's. We think about our words. People watching this video are probably thinking about how they sound, but we don't think about the voice as a concept or also the quality of our voice. And you are opening up this conversation from all different aspects. So my question is, what compelled you to write this book specifically using the word permission and permission to speak? So why? What, how, how did you come to write this book?

There were a lot of, there were, there's a lot of answers to that question. I mean, one of them that I tell in the beginning of the introduction is that I had my own experience with losing my voice for many months. And it was very painful and it was very ego jostling and very, you know, like I would have these late nights in the dead of winter in Providence, Rhode island, in the middle of acting grad school, where obviously I, you know, know, had to drop out of the play and everything. Drinking tea, trying to, like, calm the pain and having these, this inner monologue around. What is my voice trying to tell me? What is wrong with me? Did I do this to myself? Why did I do this to myself? The self sabotage aspect of it. And, you know, without realizing it until I'd written the book, I wrote the book that I wished I'd had when I was 24 and when I was, you know, the existentialism of anything going weird with your voice is so real and especially when you lose your voice entirely and people stop treating you like a person because they don't expect you to respond, you know, so in a way, that's why I wrote the book. But there was a windy, windy path and, and I think that the real spark was in the summer of 2018 when two different things happened. Oh, my God, so many different things happened that summer. It was wild looking back. But that summer I was dialect coaching Gal Gadot for Wonder Woman 2. I was in Washington D.C. for a month. And you know, I like to joke that she. She flies a lot in that movie and there's a lot of outdoor flying sequences. And when you're the dialect coach, you do not need to do anything when your actress is flying with no sounds coming out of her mouth. So I had all this downtime and I. So I was so emotionally connected to what was happening in the US at that point. It was. We were two years into that dude's presidency. We were hurdling towards our first midterm. And I got this call from moveon.org this amazing organization that literally just finds great, like first time candidates and offers them support of the various sorts. And one of the kinds of support that they were looking for was people who could help them with public speaking coaching. Mm. And a friend had suggested me. And so I got this cold call and I was like, a, this sounds like I could possibly be useful, so please, like tell me where to sign up. But B, am I going to be useful? I mean, my inner thought, of course was like, it isn't the exact same thing as dialect coaching actors in Hollywood. It isn't. And yet, of course, I said yes. And I discovered in the doing the real answer to your question of why I wrote this book, why I care about the voice, why the word permission is written six times on the COVID which is that I was confronted with these absolutely magnificent first time candidates. They were all women, everyone who they sent me, none of them had run for office before, but also almost none of them had ever been public before in any way. So they had these incredible skill sets and obviously this incredible drive to do well for their community. But didn't have this third piece. Piece, which is okay, but how do I talk about it when all eyes are on me and watching these magnificent women fail to show up magnificently because of all of their histories of hiding, because of all of the ways that they were taking for granted, as you say, the sounds that come out of their mouth are just the sounds and the crap that comes up when they talk is just the crap that comes up when they talk. And I was like, wait, no, no, no, no, no. We can actually, we can actually get conscious. We can actually get intentional about our relationship to our voice, about how we show up in public, about what version of us we Give permission to show up in public.

What do you mean when you say show up? How do you show up with your voice? How do you show up with what you have to say? What does that mean?

So, practically speaking, since you and I are voice people and everyone here cares about the voice, there's all kinds of really subtle but totally noticeable vocal things that all of us have the capacity to do when we're not giving ourselves permission and that we hear other people do all the time. So examples. One is obviously going into our throat. So our throat in an anatomical way. We. When we have no drama at all, when we just have a thing we want to say, we have a thought, it connects to our breath, and it comes out of our mouth and our throat. It's just passive. It's just like, hi, I'm a hallway that your sounds are walking through. In reality, starting from when we are like two or three and getting socialized onward, we discover ways that we can use our throat to clamp down so that we don't get in trouble, so that we don't get emotional, so that we don't show people how much we actually are invested in what we're talking about. Because showing people that we care is scary as fuck. I mean, it's. It's literally vulnerability. You know, every. Every. Every movie where you have to, like, you know, I'm just thinking about this this weekend because I've seen like, eight trailers every movie where you need to, like, squeeze the good guy in order to get something to happen. You go after who he loves. We know that when we say what we love, it makes us vulnerable. And of course, we also know in our heads, although it's hard to believe, that vulnerability is a strength, and it is the only way that we actually connect. But so our throat does all this incredible work to. I mean, the fancy way to put it is mitigate risk, right? Make. Make risky scenarios seem less risky. And how it comes out is either monotone, where we just talk like this and we don't have any vocal pitch range up and down, and it just stays right here. That also can sometimes be called vocal fry. But it's not even about that. It's just about, like, I'm going to make sure that I'm clamping down hard, that you don't really know whether I care about something or not. Most of us are guilty of doing this at some point, and I'm. I'm here to say no shame. It's totally fair that some rooms don't feel safe and that is a great example of a habit we may have picked up that doesn't work when we want to actually say, here's what I care about and I'm here to make an impact.

How do you, how do you make the difference between a habit that you picked up from the people around you versus a behavior that happens when you feel insecure or like you mentioned in the book, when you feel evaluated or judged and then you hide? So how, how do you. Can you talk about the difference between the two? How do we know what we, what it is that is happening to us?

Yeah, I mean, there's an element of self diagnosis, but in a way a, a little bit of a sort of a mischievous answer is it almost doesn't matter. The question is, do you feel good? I have my dog on my lap and she's being, she feels good. She's like, that's right, mom. You know, like someone once asked me, how do you know if you're speaking in your authentic voice? And she was a journalist and it had a little tiny bit of a gotcha vibe. And I was like, I see you. And the answer is joy. Like, is there anything pleasant present? If not, it's probably somewhat inauthentic. And you know, also that's okay. I mean, I'm just here with like a huge anti shame campaign because so much, so much of what's going on that makes us hide is not just the habits we've picked up to hide, but then also this next level of shame of I can't hack it, of self sabotage, of, you know, I don't sound like what powerful people sound like. I better try, try to sound like someone else. All kinds of different shoulds going on in our head. So, you know, I'm not introducing all, any of these things in order to be like, so now you're wrong. You know, you should feel bad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. None of this, none of this. But I am here to say exactly what you're, what you're asking. Like, get curious for each of us about what your habits are. And if you notice that when you are in an evaluative space, as you say, this is just a fancy phrase from linguistics. But when you're in a room where you're literally being evaluated, like a job interview, or where you're emotionally being evaluated, where you feel that people haven't decided yet whether or not to take you seriously, in what ways do you become a little bit more generic? Hide your personality, hide your style of speech and like a celebrate how Versatile. You are right. We have these versions of us that we can tap into. And B, think about what's the other part of me? What's the version of me that shows up in non evaluative spaces? What am I like around my favorite people? And then you. And then you're like slightly more aware of your. Your own, our own, each of our own. Like toolboxes, like the range of versions of us. And seriously, no right and wrong. But my, my big gamble for all of us is that when we are talking about the things that matter to us, like they matter to us when we have the chance to pitch an idea or to, you know, run for office, but really so many different scenarios to if we're an entrepreneur. Right. To stand up as our brand and say, here's how you can work with me. Right. All of the ways that we have the opportunities, we have to actually say, here's what matters to me. Those are the moments when we get to go, okay, of my toolbox, of my range of ways I show up. What's the meest? What gives me a little joy? What makes me feel like I recognize myself? What makes me feel like I am representing my culture in a way that feels good.

Yeah. You know, a lot of people who are watching this, they speak English as a second language. And not only that, they have to show up with their voice authentically in their first language. Then there is the barrier of the language. You've worked with a lot of speakers of English as a second language. What would you tell people who struggle with that as well? So in addition to showing up vulnerably, there is also the aspect of making mistakes and, you know, not sounding right, not sounding like the standard. And I love how you talk about the standard in your book.

So.

So we can talk about that as well. But what would you say to them?

A few things. First of all, I want to honor that. That's real. Right. I mean, as an English, as a first language speaker, it's not something that I have to deal with on a daily basis. And I don't take that for granted. However, I've also traveled and attempted to speak foreign languages. And I. And I know how much it had. It had a related impact on me as when I lost my voice. You know, that ego jostle. I described, that sense of people aren't really taking me seriously or aren't really waiting for me to respond because they know I'll be slow. And I just, I just want to honor that. That's like so real. And I'm not here to like, you know, buck up, like, right. It's, it's real and it's so good that you have this community for people so that we all can, you know, look at each other and go, oh, right. This is, this is actually a human thing. Any of us, any of us who are putting ourselves bravely into new spaces, certainly ones where, you know, our native language is, is not the norm and we have to accommodate. Any of us are doing the brave thing. And the brave thing, the bravery, it's not brave if it isn't hard. You know, of course there's an element of hard.

Yeah, really good.

So that's the first thing. And then the other thing is really, I mean, Hadar and I met over a conversation around this. But what you say about you are English right where you are, this is it. And I have worked with so many movie stars and also, you know, lesser known people. And the big shift really is just in actually deciding, like aggressively deciding to believe that you deserve to take up space no matter how you sound. Because the apology for existing part of English as a second language, that's the part that sucks. And it's completely understandable. And accent bias is real. So again, you know, I'm here to validate that. And I think about Esther Perel, such a favorite example of mine of what I call the new sound of power. Right. Which is really just a way of naming that. There is the old sound of power does a number on all of us. The old sound of power is a little bit of a standard of how old white men have sounded for 100 years, thousands of years, but we didn't have recording equipment before that. And that that old standard messes with us. But that if we actually notice who makes us come alive when we listen to them, there are, there's a whole list of ways that people are speaking these days that can help us feel like there's something new and exciting and opportunity afoot that each of us has in us the possibility to be the new sou of power. Esther Perel obviously is doing most of her work in a second language. She's doing work on a subject that has been historically, I'd say, relegated to a frivolous topic. Right? Eroticism. And the way that she shows up like an expert, like a loving expert, like a person who holds time and space, like a person who trusts her own ideas and will take the time to say them all the way to the end of the thought and who is nonetheless playful and mischievous and still talks about and brings in her own culture.

Profound. Like the voice. Like, how much you get from the quality of her voice and her tone. And like, there are all. All these pieces of information that come in regardless of how she uses her sounds. There is so much story that you hear when you listen to her voice. And I agree with you. And we forget that when we speak, it's not just the sounds that we. Or the grammatical structure that we use. There is so much more that we forget to show, because that feeling, being evaluated, happens immediately when you speak a second language.

Totally. Which is why the concept of permission is so wildly central. Like, what is Esther Perel doing besides talking about interesting things in an interesting way? Right. She's inviting herself in. That's it. Yeah, that's it. And that is the part where, you know, whether we're talking about a first language or a second language, we can all accidentally not. And it usually has to do with histories of our own life experience as well as all of the cultural stories that we have. I mean, I'm pretty fearless about naming that. A lot of this is white supremacist culture. A lot of this is colonialism. A lot of this is patriarchy. And we just, like. I don't say that to be like, ah, she's getting political, or, you know, whatever. Whatever might come up with those words. I'm saying that to say there are myths in our culture. They're just there. And they've affected us our entire lives, and they've affected our voice our entire lives, and they've helped us come up with stories about what we're supposed to sound like or what we accidentally sound like. And, you know, maybe we're too soft. That's one that comes up a lot. Or you take too much time or you're too loud or you're too. You're too. You're too. Right? And the idea of too bad. I'm inviting myself in. There's a reason that, you know, I was like, I had a moment with. With the book when we were working on the COVID and they gave me a bunch of COVID designs that just were wrong. I mean, bless. It was just artists. First time. First time attempt. And I was like, I'm so sorry, I cannot let these stand. And then we ultimately were like, okay, look, images are hard. I didn't want a standalone mouth because the whole idea of what we're talking about is that we are not a disembodied body part, Right? That all of us show up when we show up. And I didn't want sound Waves, because again, it's just not about that. Right. So then I was like, I realized that I've perhaps made this difficult for you all. If you're going to just do words, that's totally fine, right? Typography. But I realized I needed to say the word that matters the most is permission, not speak. And this is what they came back to, right? Because of course what we're talking about is actually speaking, which is, I like speaking even more than the word voice because voice can sometimes make us think of singing, it can make us think of sound waves. But speaking is this very specific thing of how do I get my thoughts out.

Yeah.

So speaking of course is interesting. And you and I have this, you know, ability that, that not everyone has to break down to the absolute, you know, minutiae of the, of the vowels and consonants. But then when we put it all together, the permission is actually whether or not we are showing up and communicating and recognizing ourselves well enough that we are going to actually feel good at the end of the day. Like, I did what I came for, I left it all on the table.

Yeah. Part of the work that we do when, when we work with sounds and sounds is the chapter that I was, I had the privilege of reading and I was like, I can't wait to read the entire. So first of all, thank you for that. But in that chapter you talk about the standard, right? And in the English language industry and you know, like speech work in general, there's always the standard. So what is the standard and how has it come to be what it is today?

So, you know, the good thing about standard standards is that for anything, whether we're talking about obviously sounds or I don't know, the standard size a ship should be, so it doesn't sink. Right. The good thing about standards is that they're like a culturally agreed upon thing that is named so that we can notice and speak intelligently about deviations from the thing. Standards are totally human made and they are totally like money agreed upon thing that doesn't exist unless people agree that it exists. So that's the, I guess that's the setup. So when it comes to, and it.

Matters who decide who has the power.

At that time, I mean, inevitably, right. Agreed upon is not like everybody signs off and everybody has equal say. Standards are not democratic. Actually, it's a great point, right. Standards are decided by the people who have the most power and then everyone else either does their absolute best to match the standards, to chase the standards, as I like to say, because it suggests the amount of sweat involved or to deviate from the standard and know that you're. That you are branding yourself as a weirdo or as something, something more dangerous than a standard bearer. So, yes, when it comes to general American English, I was taught the standard in graduate acting school in my MFA acting program. And I realized in the doing that I'd heard a few people who spoke that way, but they were all theater people who had clearly just decided, I'll switch into it now. Who had just decided to speak in standard American English as the way that they showed up in life. So the sounds are actually quite similar to how I was sounding already. But now I have, I have taken out all of my regional California sounds and I have put in instead the most open, energized version of every sound. Right. So good. It's fun, but it's learning an accent like any accent. And the reality is almost nobody actually speaks the standard. So it is a made up accent. It's a made up accent and it's agreed upon, you know, and what you're referencing is that in the book I talk about the very dark, very, very fucked up. I'm sorry, am I allowed to swear here?

Yes, you are.

Past. Which is to say it's exactly what we said that, you know, the most powerful people decided on the standard and everyone else feels like they have to hew to it. And not just that it's so arbitrary. It's so arbitrary. So there. It's. What I guess what I'm saying is it's complicated. People are like, it's not as simple as some random guy just made up an accent and called it the standard and everybody else had to learn it. But it's weirdly close to that. Yeah, basically this guy in the turn of the century who was from Australia, which I think is a fun, you know, quirk to this, moved to Germany and started teaching there his methods. And it was probably like some version of what you and I teach in terms of sounds, but then with this huge heavy hand of Learn the standard or I will slap you. And the standard was something he had made up and he had cherry picked from various already kind of prestigious sounding accents in the US in the like what's called East Coast Prep accent Prep school in London. And he brought it to Germany and all these international diplomats went crazy over it and was like, finally a standard so that we know who's in and who's out. I can do this. It's hard, but I can do it. And so if you had access, you could do it. And if you didn't have access, you couldn't. And then he came to the US and he brought his, you know, fame with him. And all these school mistresses signed up all these women who were teaching the next generation. Like right after World War I in New York City, an elocution was born, I'm sure existed before that. But the idea, this widespreadness of learn the right way if you want to be taken seriously. And you know, as I say this, it's clear. This is. We're all taught this still. Yeah, it just has gentler language around it. You know, if you want to get taken seriously, if you want to sound Native.

Right.

Underneath it all is there is a right way to talk and there's a wrong way to talk. If you don't do the work, you're going to talk wrong. And it's just arbitrary. It's just sounds that got strung together and then labeled as right.

You see a lot, especially in my industry, the speak like a native type.

Of.

Field where you see either corrections or this is right, this is wrong, where both versions exist, or when you have a non native accent, you have slight deviations from the standard sound, but it's still clear. So the question is, how much should one strive for the precise sound versus just sounding clear? I think that that idea of excluding anyone who doesn't sound like us is a very dangerous concept, especially when learning a second language. Because what does it take? What maybe you can share from having worked with, with so many people, what does it take to completely acquire a new dialect? And is it even needed if you're just communicating, you know, at work on stage?

Yeah. I mean, the answer is that it's so personal. Everybody who's listening right now has a thought going through your head. Right. And the. And I don't know your thoughts, but my guess is it's something. There's probably two warring thoughts. One is I need to sound as clear as possible. I need to pass as well as possible. This is directly related to my livelihood. I need to sound as American as possible. And the second thought is probably this quieter one that says, but what if I don't? What is the alternative? What is it to sound clear and also like where I'm from and to own that actually every single one of us, whether English is our native language or not, sounds a little different from everyone else because our life experience is reflected in our her voice. And that quieter voice is harder to believe. Right. And yet I think it's where freedom lies. I think it's where coming into our own thinking about people like Aar Perel or Deepak Chopra, who I got to get interviewed by. Right. People who are working in their second language, maybe even third language for the majority of their life, that their livelihood is. Was probably affected when they were starting out, but they just decided, I'm teaching the world what power sounds like, and I won't take no for an answer. And I won't. I won't, you know, shrink. And they became models for a whole, you know, modeling for a whole next generation. That shit's hard, right? And you know, me at this point, you know, I'm not saying, you know, no, it's not. And that the opportunity for all of us is to show up as weird and as honest about our background as we actually. As we can be. Yeah. And then say, that's still power. I'm the new sound of power.

What I really love about the book and how you talk about different subjects, especially pitch, and, you know, we. We've talked about how you handled up speak and vocal fry is that you just the complexity, and you say, this is what it is. You know, this is what would help you feel better or more like yourself. But also, here's why this is happening or how it may be perceived. And you're not, like, trying to paint a picture where that's the only way to do it.

Because, I mean, you know, I had this moment with my editor when I was writing the book when she was like, but wait, but. So should we stop doing Vocal Fry or shouldn't we? And I was like, oh, oh, I have to be even clearer. And I literally wrote a paragraph because of her comment that said, if you're here because you want to know, like, if you want a guide of what to do and what not to do, you're in the wrong place. But I'm really, really interested in all of us feeling so empowered in our own voices that we know what our habits are doing to the people around us. We know why we pick them up, and then we can just play. But, like, that sense of power, that sense of trusting our own instincts, wisdom, inner wisdom, it does not come from some new outsider saying, do this, don't do this.

Yeah.

It comes from each of us going, you know what? I actually kind of like that thing I picked up because I lived in that one place for that one time or because I dated that one person or because I went to that one school that taught me how to sound fancy. Like, you know, our voice story, this idea of our voice Story that it's a bit of a plot. Right. It started where we grew up and now we're here. But that our voice story is also like a money story. It's like the combination of facts and not facts, myths that we picked up. And some aspects of our voice story are helping us stay small when it's really time to expand. And some of our voice story is, as it should be, is something that, you know, like where I grew up and how mischievous I felt free to be in my communication style when I was little. And so I've just kept doing it, you know, like. Yeah, it's for each of us to decide.

When you talk about expansion or showing up, a lot of times you do talk about pitch. You talked about it at the beginning, and I want to expand on that a little bit. What is the difference between baseline pitch and ranging. Ranging pitch when you speak? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Totally. I love that. Great. What a great setup. Oh, you mean my entire chapter on pitch. Yeah. So when we use pitch, we. You know that word has like seven different meanings in English. Right. Because we're also pitching our ideas. But in the. In the land of actual sounds. Right. Pitch is both. What is your baseline, as you say, your sort of average pitch? For men, it tends to be lower than for women, just because the actual length of our vocal cords. And if we're thinking of a string instrument. Right. The longer, the shorter. Right. And most of us have crap around what our baseline pitch is. Many, many, many women that I've talked to habitually, meaning somehow we picked this up, usually unconsciously, but then we kept it up, up speak a tiny bit lower than our body's optimum pitch. So.

Which is the reason for why you had lost your voice.

It's why I got vocal nodules. You're exactly right. And then there's also all kinds of cultural. You know, when Elizabeth Holmes, Bless the Con woman, came out with this low voice like this, everybody was like, that's obviously fake. Why is she faking her voice? And yet, if you Google, what do I need to do to sound more authoritative to get taken seriously, the number one bullet point is speak in a lower pitched voice. So obviously, our culture is telling us a lot of stories.

So by the way, and for speakers of English, second language, I hear a lot, like, if you want to sound more native, drop your pitch. Which is also like, it's along the same lines.

Well, I. It's interesting. I mean, there's a few things going on there. Right. One is that Culturally different. I mean, there's different cultures that literally do just talk higher. I mean, you know, I know as soon as I go into French, I, like, start to go up a little, right? It's like languages with a lot of.

Nasal sounds, so you'll end up sounding more nasal.

So some of it is that, and then some of it is maybe that when we're uncomfortable, we go up in pitch, adrenaline hits our vocal cords, and all of us start to talk a little bit more like this, right? So we. We talk about pace a lot and having to slow down when we get nervous. But also, you can tell pitch is up high now instead of down. So maybe that thought, maybe that advice is about kind of trying to counter that, but at the same time, like.

It also said, like it. I think there is something dangerous about it because native English speakers may have higher pitch. Pitch is also a result of how your mouth is built, how big your vocal box is. So.

I know, I know there are simple exercises to try to find what your optimum pitch is. The best one is to literally just catch yourself saying a yes on closed mouth. So when you do the right. So it's like, are you okay with this sandwich being toasted actually, instead of cold? Okay. And then can you. So then what happens when the words come out? Do they match that or do they. Right. This is partly I diagnosed with a ear, nose, and throat doctor that I had been speaking habitually lower because my was up here and my words were down here. Ah, society on bodies. And then obviously there's also stuff happening for men when they are told their whole life that lower equals more massive masculine. And their own. Their own anatomy may be saying, but I'm. My pitch is higher. Right? So obviously, there's so much gendered stuff going on here. There's so many cultural stories about how we're supposed to come across that can really mess with us just speaking in our body's optimal pitch, right? The actual anatomy of our body that is calling out to us to honor it. And then the other part of it that you were asking is pitch range. So we were talking about baseline. And then there is this completely separate aspect of pitch, which is how much range do we reveal when we're speaking? I talked about monotone, right? The idea of monotone is literally monotone, single note. So then we're making sure that we don't go up or down at all.

Push down everything, right?

Pushing down everything. It doesn't mean that we necessarily go as low as possible, but we go to some sort of, like, really narrow. And when I talk about having a larger range, it's not because I want you to all sound clownishly, you know, extreme, Right. It's not like we're going like this, right? But inside of these, say, single octave that most of us comfortably can speak in, are we? And if we're not, it's usually because we have let an evaluative space get to us. And my addition to this conversation that I've not heard anyone say before, but I think is completely. We can see the examples of how true this is. Everywhere is that pitch variation, having the ability to go up and down based on meaning is directly connected to your willingness to be vulnerable. It codes, actually, to the listener. It codes for vulnerability. So when I say, but this I really care about, and you can hear me, my pitch went up, my whole tone shifted. If you're looking at me, you saw my face, right? But even if you're not, that's because I have decided and I actively practice caring about what I care about and then also letting you see it, because caring about what I care about, but hiding how much I care. That's how most of us go through life, for totally understandable reasons, but it is not how we make an impact. Yeah.

How can people work on this if they want to? Except for, okay, so they have this idea of permission. I'm going to give myself permission. But sometimes our habits are stronger than us, and we don't even know how to use our pitch.

I mean, my first thought is, buy this book called Permission to Speak. It's really helpful.

A lot of practical tools, really. There are some exercises I've heard, and I was like, I've never heard about this. This is so good.

Oh, I love that. Oh, my gosh.

I recommend to read it and listen to the audiobook at the same time. Because you are schooling people on how to use their voice, because. So interesting.

I tried to do my. I tried to do my thing, my entire nine hours of audio. I know I was like, this is tiring. But also, like, I. I gotta show up when I show up. Like, if you get. If you're not gonna show up for.

Your book, permission to speak, when will you.

The people. Right, exactly. The people who are like, so did you do the audiobook for your book? I'm like, what? What if I had not, would you. Would you trust me? Anyway, thank you for that. So that's one option, obviously. I think that the more time you spend with this, the more you start to, you know, notice your own habits as you put it. And then the other is exactly what you could imagine, I think recording yourself, you know, listening back, noticing yourself. I think it is the hardest and the most fun to catch yourself in moments of true permission. And usually this happens around your favorite people. And usually this happens when you have what they call in the theater world, an urge to communicate. So a great example of this is when you're telling your spouse or your best friend or whatever, oh, my God, you never guess who I just ran into. I haven't seen them since before the pandemic. They look so different. And you. And this is what they said to me. So who's that version of you? And the reason I say it's the hardest to catch yourself there is that is when you are the least self aware. Right. Which is the magic of it. And also why it's hard to catch the magic. Right. And when you catch those moments and they don't have to be as animated as I just performed. Right. But your version. Oh, my God.

Right.

Your oh, my God version, that is so instructive because most of what we need, some of what we need is actual tools. If I did this here, could I do this here?

Yeah.

And some of what we need, truly, is just permission. Oh, I do actually get that animated. I do actually use that much pitch variation. Yeah. And then just allow that. Oh, I do. To play on you. You don't have to actually drag that over to this scenario. You just have to go. Don't forget to bring me in.

It's so funny. Like, I feel I have a lot of experience recording videos, speaking in public, teaching. And I feel very comfortable with my voice. And yet, you know, every now and then, I. I find myself, especially in a meeting with someone new, that I have to prove myself. I. I notice how I immediately drop my pitch. Immediately. And I feel it. I feel the pain in my throat and I'm aware of it. And I was like, okay, hadar lift. Like, go. Come back. You know, what is happening? Where are you hiding? And sometimes it's really hard, even for me, like, with all the experience, I have all these different thoughts or just like, okay, I need to say something. And I want to stay focused. And I forget this. I forget how I communicate. And I just want to say that it's. That it's ongoing work and it happens to everyone. And the most important thing is really, like, this idea of permission and awareness that it's happening. And then me, like, I deserve to change this. I deserve to. To be me and to express myself fully. No matter what they think, I love it so much.

And also, I. I feel the same way about growth edges. You know, this is the entrepreneurial term for this. But really, we challenge ourselves, we practice, we get better, and then new challenges await. I will tell you, my interview with Deepak Chopra brought stuff up. It was a hard interview, and he is an absolutely gracious man. It's not his fault, but it was hard. And I had mind trash that I was, you know, not expecting and that I, of course, in my mo. In my more confident moments, thought I had put to bed forever. But as hadar is very, very vulnerably and beautifully bringing up. And then I think we all need to acknowledge if we are continuing to do brave things, it will continue to reveal to us new ways that we can invite ourselves in even more. Even more. And it's not necessarily that, you know, in your story, it's not necessarily that you're, like, reverting back to the Hadar of 10 years ago. Who's never thought about this stuff? Right. You're just reverting back to something that doesn't feel as whole as you have now become accustomed to.

Yeah.

And, you know, you note it. And, you know, I have a friend named Lauren who introduced this idea that I just find so useful that when we're thinking back on our own stuff, we have to have two different things present when we think back. One is discernment. What was really happening there? What could I have done differently? And two is compassion. Let me look back on it with so much love. And if we actually do either one of those without the other, we are not being useful. We are not getting anywhere new. But if we look back at our own experiences with discernment and compassion, we have the potential to change for the next one. Beautiful.

What are you proud of?

I think I happened upon through really this, you know, what was started out simply working with these women who are running for office. I happened upon the concept of voice justice, which I think I made up because I haven't heard anyone else say it. And, you know, in the linguistics world that I'm. I like to pop into the idea of accent bias, which everybody here is familiar with experiencing, if not the concept. Right. Is really well studied accent bias. And then I'm expanding it even further. And I do think that somewhere in linguistics, people talk about this. This larger version of voice bias. Right. The ways in which, in fact, each of us are judging people, deciding whether or not to take them seriously based on how they sound. And it's not Just accents. It's, do they seem young? Do they seem too tough? Do they seem too sweet? Do they seem too this, too that? Right. Too soft. And the ways in which all of us can work on checking that bias, right, by having the second wiser thought, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I just caught myself thinking, I hope there's someone else I can talk to here because this person has an accent, and then going, excuse me, why don't I actually honor that this person has a living experience and probably is on the phone with me because they can help, right? But so many ways that we each do this and sometimes are even dismissing ourselves, right? That we are giving ourselves some voice bias. And that the alternative, which seems both pie in the sky and also something that we can literally all do every single day and do it collectively, together, all of us is decide that we are going to unlink how people sound from how much value they have. And if we lived in a world that did that, that would be a world with voice justice. And I am proud of the fact that this is where I'm at. And that, like, the way that we can bring voice justice to all of our both daily lives and also our industries has massive repercussions. I'm doing a lot of work in the corporate world right now and also with entrepreneurs and founders. So what started out as this, as the arts and politics has now turned into, well, what is leadership? What kind of leadership do we want to hear in the world? And how do we be that leadership today, period.

So it all starts and ends with us, really, how we think about others, how we think about ourselves. And then, you know, how. How willing we are to show up regardless of what we think, how people think about us.

Because we tied in hadar to this bigger thing that I think you're getting at, which is that how we show up is not just for us. Right. If we are actually trying to embody the kind of leadership we want to see in the world, then every time we show up in public, we have an obligation and an opportunity for the people coming up behind us.

Yeah.

For the young girls who are listening to us, for the young boys who are listening to us, for our mentees, for anyone who needs to see and hear a different kind of power in order to be like, well, that's a. That's possible now. And it gives them permission. So when we permission ourselves, we spread the permission.

Yeah, exactly. This is. This is. You know, a lot of. A lot of my work has to do with me showing up with all the imperfections and mistakes that I make and not to apologize for it. And I do get criticized for it. But I want to show that you can still show up fully with that. And if I am able to show them that it's safe to do that, that you can survive criticism, public criticism about your English, your voice, how you know the content that you create and keep going and change lives. Because. Because that's what matters. Not the critics. What matters is the person listening and saying, I got something from this or I'm thinking differently or I know better now. That's what matters. And I think we need to remember that. And in the growth, like when I look at my students and their success path, ultimately it starts from avoiding English and then using English, feeling very, very anxiously and then building up courage and becoming more brave and then challenging themselves. But then it always gets to influencing others. It always get comes to how can I help others understand that this is possible? And I see it consistently over and over again. And it's exactly that. Like you start with yourself, but then you do that because you want to leave a legacy, you want to make a change, you want to make an impact. And you do that by sharing, by just being yourself, but also showing others that it's possible.

So yes, there's this woman that I love to listen to, Serena Hicks. She's a money coach, money mindset. And she says that when we think to ourselves, who am I to. Who am I to, you know, honor that my ideas matter? Who am I to say I'm a thought leader? Who am I to, you know, that, that the, the perfect second thought to have is who am I not to.

Oh, love that.

And which does just tie into how many people are we willing to help? Yeah, if we are willing to help people and if we have a feeling that we could, then those trolls, right, those mean spirited critics kind of don't matter.

They don't matter. Apart from buying your book, I'm going to link to it in the description and also listening to the audiobook on Audible. How can people work with you? Find out more about you.

I have one way which I'm very excited about. If you're watching this early summer of 2023, which is that this fall in September and October, I am popping up in four cities in the US and doing a one day workshop with a like amazing dinner party the night before. And these workshops are for 10 people. Right. Thank you. The workshops are for 10 people or fewer. So I'm deliberately keeping this really intimate simply because I know what works the best.

Right.

And I want everybody to feel like they have real connection with me and with each other. And it's a one day, like change your whole outlook. There's a lot of skills based stuff. I'm going to bring in some exercises that I have. Not that I did not put in the book, but it's also, I think an identity shift day.

Yeah.

It's a show up one way and leave another.

There is nothing like the experience being in the room together, feeling the power, feeling the energy. You know, we had that experience when we worked together in New York and it was like we had you for an hour and it was mind blowing. So, yes, if you have the opportunity, definitely go check it out and sign up. And are you excited about it?

What's, what's so excited? I'm so excited. Well, you know, I know a friend this weekend and she's like, you're doing exactly what you want to do. Sometimes we need, we need people on the outside. Right. Of ourselves to sort of reflect that to us. And I was like, it's true. And I get to completely make this up. I'm not beholden to anyone and I'm using all of my own best instincts on what literally works.

Yeah. All right, so we're gonna put all the links in the description for anyone watching or listening to the podcast. Yes. And where can they follow me? Follow you on Instagram?

Follow me. I'm used to saying follow me.

Follow me on Instagram. Where can they follow you?

Samara Bay. I am, I am at Samara Bay.

Surprising.

M A R A B A Y And yes, I post daily. I'm. I very much enjoy the Instagram.

Love that. All right. Thank you so, so much, Samara.

It's. Wait, I have one more thing. I'm so sorry, I just, I should offer to this group. My freebie on my website is like actually pretty great. If you go to samarape.com goodies G-O-O-D I E S you get a 5 minute warm up for what to do in the 5 minutes before you go on camera or on the microphone or on the screen. And it is not just a vocal warm up. Right, Right. I mean, obviously, given the conversation we've just had, it's what I literally do before I go on any. Anything I need that I'm gonna get it for myself. I mean samarbay.com goodies and then you're on my newsletter and you'll, you know, be kept in the loop for all this stuff.

Fantastic. So we're gonna link to that as well. Any last things that you feel like you wanted to say and you didn't.

Say none of those. But I will say hadar. I just for anyone who's been here for a while, I think, you know, we have had. Had a what, three year now love story.

Yeah. I think this is our third interview on YouTube and the podcast as well.

But also we were. We were put together or we were. We.

You.

We found each other in 2020 and spring of 2020, like really nearly into the pandemic. So, I mean, I have. I. No, I have nothing further to say except you.

You.

I'm so grateful for you.

Well, I'm grateful for you and thank you so much for taking the time to share that, all of that with my audience. Thank you so much. Samara. You are just an incredible human and I love you very much. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for this conversation, Samara. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing with us your knowledge. I'm going to link to Samara's Instagram website and information about her workshops in the description below. In the meantime, if you want to share your thoughts or opinions, let us know in the comments below. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.