ES071 Business Savy Singer collaboration with Greta Pope youtube

Hello and welcome to Every Sing Podcast. I am your host Nancy Bos, and I'm super excited to have a special episode for you today, episode 71 of Every Sing Podcast. Here's the deal. The Business Savvy Singer podcast host, Greta Pope, interviewed me and we collaborated to share it here with you. Greta gave me a great interview that looked into my past, my motivation, and what I have to offer people now. So part of a collaboration is to help you learn about amazing people with great content that you might be interested in. And Greta is one of those amazing people. Singers, you'll want to check out all of the episodes of the Business Savvy Singer. Also check out Greta's website at gretapope.com. That's G-R-E-T-A-P-O-P-E dot com. So here we go. Episode 71 of Every Sing Podcast is a collaboration with Greta Pope interviewing me, Nancy Bos. Enjoy.

Welcome to the Business Savvy Singer Podcast. I'm excited today. I have a lady with me who is doing and has done some very interesting research on women's singing, and she also speaks on a lot of other things, and we're going to learn all about what she does today. Her name is Nancy Bos, and she is the author of Singing Through Change, and I'm going to let her talk about what exactly that is. Hi, Nancy, welcome.

Hi, Greta, it is so great to be on this show with you. Thank you so much.

Absolutely, absolutely, I'm delighted to have you. So give us a little bit of information about your beginnings. How did you begin in music?

Oh wow, all right, well, let me start by saying that I was born and raised in South Dakota, and, uh, neither of my parents were musicians. I went to church, my church choir director, it was a town of 100,000 people, so this isn't a small town. But coincidentally, my church choir director was also my high school choir director. And so, uh, that, that luckily— his name was Alan Stanga— he had a really great influence on my life. I was super fortunate to have Alan Stanga as this massive musical instrument— instrument— influence. Excuse me. But I was raised on country western, rock, pop, top 40, And I had only heard one classical song. It was Anna Moffo's Ave Maria on this Christmas when I was growing up. And that was the only thing I knew about classical music. And of course, this was now the '80s. Classical music was the only way to go if you were going to major in music. So, you know, I was singing in church, but it wasn't necessarily classical. I was singing solos in choir, but not necessarily classical. When I was 16, I started to take voice lessons because my choir director said it's time. My voice was a little too big and too rich for a 16-year-old. That classic mezzo issue, skinny little 16-year-old with this 40-year-old voice. And so I started taking voice lessons, and that teacher got me into the 24 Italian arias. And, uh, it was, it was a battle. It was a battle for me to appreciate that music, and it was a battle for that teacher to try to teach me. But nonetheless, I, I was still, you know, one of the best singers in town for my class. And so I went off to be a music major, not knowing what it meant, not knowing that it meant that I would not be able to touch that country, western, pop, and rock music in fact, there was one young man at the college that I went to who sang in a rock band on the weekends, and he was so upsetting to the faculty. Poor Tony! Tony, you know, is ruining his voice by singing in this rock band. Should we, should we kick him out of the voice major? You know, just because he sang in a rock band on the weekends. That was then.

I remember those days very well. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. So that's kind of how I got my start in music, singing at the family gatherings and playing piano. I was always, Nancy, will you sing something for us? Or Christmas, singing Christmas carols. Then I would usually, when my Aunt Treva couldn't accompany us, then I would accompany us.

That's great. So once you got the degree in music, What did you do after that? Did you do a lot of singing or did you go into teaching right away or research? What did you do?

I actually have to back you up. I never got the degree in music. Oh, yes, because I go into this a lot in this, in a TED Talk that I did this summer. I developed severe performance anxiety. I was developing that stage fright in middle school and high school. It was growing and growing, but I could still, I could still sing with shaking knees. But by the time I got to college and I was studying music 100%, that was completely unfamiliar with me, for me. And I was told that, well, you can either be a classroom teacher or you can have a professional opera career. And if you want the professional opera career, you're going to have to go to Europe, which at the time I had no interest in leaving home. And so, yeah, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do the junior recital and I didn't want to have the professional performance career and I knew I didn't want to stand in front of a classroom of children. It's not in my genetics. I could, I could handle one person at a time. You put 25 people in front of me, my brain explodes. Like, I tried it, choir directing. I can't even do that. Too many people.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And back at that time, there was not a lot of talk about stage fright, that everyone gets it. You know, I can remember my teachers just like, oh well, you'll get over it, just keep singing. But there, but you know, it's, it's an anxiety, something to really be dealt with.

You bet. They had no idea what to do with it. And it's, it's all professional singers who are teaching the singers, right? So the people who have probably not gone through this themselves. Yeah, there was so little understanding. It is— I hope this isn't too graphic, but say I was a carpenter and I lost my right arm. That's what it'd be like. You're a singer, but you've got stage fright, so what are you gonna do?

Right.

You know, you know, permanent disability, goodbye. So got my degree in arts administration, which meant a business degree, economics minor, and music minor.

Great.

Yeah, it worked. But, and, and I do love business, and, and you love business.

Yeah.

And so that, that melding of being a musician and a business person, I've really enjoyed that. Yeah. But to be honest, straight out of college, I could not get a job in the arts. It was during Bush Senior's administration when he was cutting administration funding to the ground, which in the long run perhaps was a good thing. You know, maybe our arts institutions were too dependent upon the government for funding. But at that time, that meant that all these organizations were cutting back and closing. There were tons of arts administrators out of work. And so I could not get a job in that field. And I managed a Lady Foot Locker for 3 years.

Oh my, that's interesting.

I'm also an athlete, so workout clothes and shoes, that made sense to me.

Great. What kind of athlete? What sports do you play?

You know, just a smattering of everything. Nothing professionally because I had to choose between music and athletics. But at the time, basketball, cross-country running. Now rock climbing. I love weightlifting and do some tai chi yoga.

That's great. So when did you begin your quest for information about the whole menopausal thing? I mean, how did that happen for you?

Yeah, well, let me— I'm going on about my past, but let me say that from the arts administration, then eventually I started taking singing lessons when I lived in Los Alamos, New Mexico. There were too many students for the teacher. And so when I suggested an interest in teaching voice, she said, absolutely, let's get you going. Her name was Dr. Candace Magner. So that was when I was about 26. I started teaching voice, and that was how I fulfilled my need for music, that and singing in church solos. When I was about 35, I decided it was time to overcome my performance anxiety. And so I tackled it head-on with hypnotherapy, exposure therapy, finding teachers who really believed in me. Candace was no longer part of my life, and I needed to find a new teacher, which was Robert Edwin.. And so the empowerment that I got through those 3 different strategies got me over the stage fright. And I performed in NATSAW, which is the National Association of Teachers of Singing classical singing competition. I did not do a great showing, but the important thing is that that was my senior recital. I showed and performed those, you know, 9 of the 18 songs, and that— okay, good, check, done. So performance anxiety, I can honestly say, is completely in my past as far as I've experienced so far. But I did start to get anxiety in my mid-40s when I had no idea what menopause would bring for me. And then my, my Aunt Anita, she reached out by an email. She was moving from Iowa to southern Texas for her retirement, and she decided that she was going to join the community choir, and she wanted to know how to get her soprano voice back. Now, she had only sung in church for about 45 years. And prior to that, though, she was the, she was the high school singer who got all the solos and sang in the choir and stuff. So, so she wanted to get that 18-year-old voice back. And I thought, I have no idea, Anita, how does this work? And so that was the stuff that started me going. Then I met this brilliant woman named Kate Fraser Neely, who was postmenopausal with a lot of trauma around her singing voice and menopause and also having multiple surgeries. She and I together shared this passion for helping to learn about— helping each other learn about this and then do the research, hopefully publish something. And then together with Joanne Boseman, who— now, Joanne Boseman is amazing because she used to be a birth expert, and she's an expert in hormones for women through the reproductive phases. And she's like, yes, I want in on this. The three of us, Kate and Joanne and I, We kind of make a complete human because I'm a business person. I've got, I've got the, the certification in project management. I know how to get publishing done. Kate is a dreamer with amazing ideas and a lot of passion to make sure that we drive into the difficult topics. And Joanne is a researcher through and through. She just loves— you give her a word and she'll spend an hour researching that word. So the three of us together, we made a great author.

Absolutely. That's a perfect combination.

Yeah, it really worked.

Oh, that's wonderful. So in addition to this topic, I attended a workshop that you presented, and boy, was it informative, because we really don't think of those hormonal changes as affecting the voice, you know. And I, I thought it was so fascinating, and I think it's such a valuable thing for voice teachers of all ilks because you never know what your student is experiencing, what your student is going through. If you teach adult students, you're likely going to have at least one student that is perimenopausal or menopausal or something, and they're not able to, uh, stay on pitch in the way that they used to, or not able to sustain the breath, some of these kinds of things. What are some of the things that you've seen?

Oh, well, the number one thing that I see is subtle little changes that a woman thinks, I'm doing something wrong, I've become a bad singer, I'm blaming myself. And the minute that those subtle little changes start to cause those thoughts, those thoughts cause more subtle little changes, right? And so it's that very basic understanding that we are all changing, but especially women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s We're going through massive hormone changes that land us on the other side completely different in our hormonal physiology. And the— so, so, so the things that I would look for in perimenopause would be, am I having a hard time singing in harmony? Am I having a hard time singing as loudly as I used to? My resonance isn't as good as it used to be. My vibrato has changed. These are all things that you think, I'm not doing anything differently.

Why? Why? Why?

Why?

Well, because your body's changing. So the solution is to go to a really great teacher who helps you listen to your body, your changed body, and how it is now. Not how it was when you were 18 or 22 when you had your last voice lesson, right? It's how is it now when you're 40, when you're 45, 50, and singing this new instrument, optimizing this new instrument.

Wow, that is— it's really fascinating. We certainly are going to put your information in our show notes so that people can access your book. It's called Singing Through Change. It's on Amazon, uh, it's everywhere, um, and I, I think it's a valuable thing for teachers to read and for women, female singers, to read so that they have some sense of what is going to happen and that they can continue to sing and be good singers.

Yeah, that's right. You know, we're singers in our, in our core, in our heart and soul and in our minds. And if you think, or if it happens to you, that your voice changes so much that you think you can't sing anymore, oh, that's devastating. So one of my favorite things about the book is we had to do the research ourselves, and we researched 56 different women's stories. We interviewed these women, in-depth research, and those 56 women walk through the book with you. You get to hear their stories and hear how they dealt with their issues to get to the other side. Now, not every woman has debilitating voice changes. There are plenty of women who just skate through without any problems. And so I want to acknowledge them, let them know to be grateful. And we can't judge any two women against each other. Every woman's journey is different.

Yeah. Wow, that is so fascinating. So now I know that you have other topics that you speak on as well, and I'd like you to share that information with us. Uh, you never know, I mean, you know, there might be some opportunities for you out there.

Thank you very much. So a little story, um, about, uh, oh, in 2005 I wrote— I was, I was a NATS intern and I didn't understand what warm-ups are for. Why do we do vocalizing? What are warm-ups for? I was, I was young, and so I decided I'm going to learn about this, and while I'm learning, I might as well write it in a book. So I wrote a book called Singing 101, and Singing 101, that is, is now print, Kindle, audiobook. It started out as a CD set, and a few years ago I decided to make a video course on this book. And I have not had the confidence to market my video course. Maybe, maybe 50 people in the world have seen this video course. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, getting used to yourself on video, that's a whole new level of stage fright, I guess. So, but not only that, I was the editor and the producer, and it's a little bit corny. And so I had an actor from Florida reach out to me last week and say, I need a voice teacher, will you teach me? And I said, no, I don't teach anymore, I'm sorry, but do you want to start with a Singing 101 video course? I'll give it to you for free and you can critique it. And I'm so happy to say that he's, he's a professional actor. He comes back and said, it's great.

Oh, wonderful.

So hopefully you will see me actually telling the world about the Singing 101 video course. If you don't, please call me out and say, Nancy, I thought you were going to talk about that. But other than that, the idea that teenage girls, probably the biggest, the most passionate demographic about singing, right? There's a lot of confusion about identity and singing. So I wrote a book called Singing— Teen Girl Singing Guide, excuse me, that helps them sort out their role in singing. It asked them a lot of questions based on the Myers-Briggs personality scale. You know, so your best friend is singing in the musical. Should you be auditioning to the musical too? There's a hip-hop band that wants you to rap with them. Is that okay? Actually, I don't talk about hip-hop because the book's a little older than that. But that's the kind of questions. But I majored in music. And then I went on to write the Singing Through Change book. All of these to empower the general public to sing more. Because it drives me nuts that we think that if I can't sing like Beyoncé, if I can't sing like Elvis, I shouldn't even bother. How many people have you talked to and you tell them who you are and they say, oh, I can't sing? No, you can. You're human. And singing is older than human. Dogs sing, cats sing, elephants sing, whales sing. Mammals sing. And since we're part of the mammalian line, singing is part of how we communicate as babies before we have words. We're making singing-like sounds. And that's how we receive information from our moms before we understand words and from our dads is through that singing-like tone. So when anybody says to me they can't sing, it breaks my heart just a little bit.

Mine too. I have exactly that same reaction. Because I feel that everyone can sing. It's just knowing how to make the sounds that you want to make.

Yes.

And, and, and so the flip, the other part of that is having the psychological and emotional freedom to make those sounds. And so that's, that's my new passion, my new passion, which I think, I think this is actually my calling. I mean, Singing Through Change, fabulous. I'm so glad we were able to crack that nut open for the first time Yes. But what I really care about is helping people get out of their own ways, get the stories that they are telling themselves that they can't sing.

Mm-hmm.

You know, back in college, I went to an entertainment hypnotherapist show, and this entertainment hypnotherapist— there were 1,500 of us in the audience, 12 people on stage, and he had those 12 people doing amazing things with their voices and their bodies when they were hypnotized. Stuff that they would never do because it's not part of their story of who they are.

Right. Yeah.

But you have somebody up there entertaining the audience like Frank Sinatra, and he's actually a chemistry major who likes to type behind the computer. Right. That was a big eye-opener for me. It's like, wow, we can all be anything that we tell ourselves we can be. I mean, it isn't baloney. It's true. So let's get those stories lined up. That's my—

yep.

That's great. That's absolutely fantastic. And that, that is true for singing. It's true for anything.

It is true for anything.

Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. So now, your TEDx talk, what was the topic of that? Was that the singing through change, or—

No, the TEDx talk was this, um, this personal narratives, the stories that we tell ourselves. So the TEDx talk, uh, for the first half of it, which is about 7 or 8 minutes, I'm talking about my journey to becoming a person with stage fright. What were those little stories that got planted in my head from my family, from my community, from the culture at large, from my understanding of my heritage? There's all these little stories that got planted in my mind about how— well, here's one of them. You go up and sing the solo in church, especially. And for that moment all eyes are on you. You are the vessel of the Spirit coming out to this congregation. But in my upbringing, the minute that you step away, you're not special. Don't think that you're better than any of us. It's a very confusing message for a 14-year-old, right? It's like, wait, I thought I was— okay, I'm not. And so it really helps to have somebody help you sort that out. Like, how, how do you balance being in the spotlight and then human, right? So that was one of the little stories that, that I don't actually talk about that one in the TED Talk. There are a handful of them. At any rate, and then reaching a point where it's like, nope, I'm going to break through and change this and then help the audience in the TED Talk understand how they can start to reframe their stories, reframe their narratives. And now I'm actually teaching small group classes how to do this in weekly meetings.

How wonderful.

Thank you. And I'm not working with singers as much as I'm working with entrepreneurs and business people, people who are scared to get up and give the talk at the conference or even to talk at the board table, and people who are afraid to publish that article even though they know it's probably great. They're not sure. Kind of like me with my video course. It's probably great, but I'm not sure.

So, ah, yeah, having that confidence is everything. It's everything. And believing in your research, believing in your experience, that voice is as important as anyone else's.

Absolutely.

That is something that's hard for people to understand.

Yes, but your voice is— there is no one's voice that is more important than yours, and vice versa. We are all worthy of being heard. So follow your passion, listen to your heart, and move forward with what you were called here to do. And get your stories— get that crap out of the way, because you got things to do.

That's right. Be courageous. Take that chance.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's so wonderful what you're doing. I mean, you're really, you know, you're really like an inspirational speaker. You use— you're coming toward it from a musical perspective, but you're talking about a lot of things that everyone deals with.

Yeah. You know, there's one thing with our industry, Greta, and you and I both being, you know, working somewhat outside of academia, we've learned our business skills along the way. We've worked in the world of business. We know the language. And what we find, I'm sure you found this, is if you're in a room, say a networking meeting of business people, and you start talking about voice, you can drop the tiniest little nugget and they'll be like, wow, I never knew that. We have information in our field about how the voice works and how confidence works and how stage works. We have all this knowledge that we kind of keep to ourselves and only the individuals come to us. So I'm— this has been my passion all along, has been to get that information out there so that it can be received by everybody, which is why I publish books and why I'm doing keynote speaking now to empower people to use their voice.

I think that is— I think it's wonderful. You know, when you say that we have all this information and we keep it to ourselves, I think we in general just don't realize the value of the things that we have learned as performers. We don't always recognize the value of those things to others.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a better way of saying it. Absolutely. We've just lived in our world and they're in a parallel world. We don't realize how to help them.

Yeah, right. That's right. That's right. Well, that is just fantastic. So are there any other things that you'd like to share with us?

Oh my gosh. For those of you out there that listen to this as a business podcast and you're on your entrepreneurial journey, I used to joke that as an independent voice teacher, I was climbing an invisible ladder. You know, everyone else in my family who had employers, they knew the ladder that they were climbing, right? But I kept climbing this invisible ladder, not knowing where it would go. And that is my advice to any younger teachers out there or younger performers who are like, I don't know, I'm just gonna coast, I don't know why I'm doing this or what I'm doing, my mom or dad thinks this is aimless or pointless, just keep climbing that ladder and following your passion, even though the ladder hasn't been created yet. When you look back, you're going to have done awesome things.

You're right. I think that is so important. You know, I, I think we all have special skill sets outside of our singing, you know, things that have come from our childhood or from our families or from our culture or from our town or whatever. And I have found, and, and advice people that I consult with, try to get your arms around those things and consider including them in your offering as a singer.

Yes, because you have to be different. You have to be unique.

Right.

And so it's those little gifts that you've been given. That's what makes you different and special.

That's right. Special on the singer landscape. Absolutely.

Yes.

Well, Nancy, it has been such a pleasure interacting with you prior to this interview. You did the National Association of Teachers of Singing Chicago chapter workshop that I was organizing, which is how I met you. And I, you know, I just— it's been such a pleasure to get to know you, to hear your approach to, to performing and to writing and just all the things that you're bringing to society. I think it's fantastic.

Thank you, Greta.

I'm so honored to be part of your life and your world for this brief amount of time. This has been a great friendship that we're starting.

Absolutely. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. And we will definitely keep in touch. We will post all of your information in our show notes. And I want to thank you for being with me today and wishing you much, much, much continued success.

Thank you, Greta. Same to you.

Thank you, Nancy.

Thank you so much, Greta, and thank you everyone who joined us for this. Please check out Greta's excellent website, gretapope.com, and the Business Savvy Singer podcast for singers and speakers. You will love what you see. I'm excited to say that I have another special episode coming up very soon. It is a deep dive into hypnosis for stage fright. You are not going to want to miss it, so make sure to hit subscribe so that you get that episode and any other upcoming special episodes of Every Singer. Until then, happy singing!

Bye, everybody! We'll stop and stay a while.

Oh baby, if you got the time.