🦋 How to Show Up As Your Full Self in Business & Life — with Samara Bay

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I'm the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio and your gentle guide, fellow explorer, journeyer here on this podcast. We are currently in season three of Off the Grid, and one of our most popular episodes so far this season was all about boosting your visibility. So in that episode, I gave you, lovely listener, a list of 24 ideas, experiments, and strategies for boosting your visibility without social media. Basically, I was trying to help you get way more eyes on your work and your wonderful self this year. But after I released that episode, I heard from some of you that you actually needed more personal, emotional, energetic, embodied support to even be open to more visibility in the first place.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:22]:
You know, I gave you all these different ways you could show up, but a response I got was like, "How do I even show up at all?" I heard you, I took that feedback, and I immediately reached out to today's guest. So she is one of my favorite people that I met in one of my past lives working at a feminist business school, and her work is all about showing up and speaking up. Before I introduce you to her, I wanna take ten seconds to invite you to download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. It includes the three tools that I use to leave social media and launch a business without it, including the very popular list of 100 ways to share your work without social media. The toolkit's been downloaded by over 2,000 people and I'm hoping that you will add yourself to that list. So you can get it for free at offthegrid.fun/toolkit or at the link in the show notes. All right, my ten seconds is up, so let me tell you all about today's amazing guest. Samara Bay is an LA based speech coach whose clients range from candidates for US Congress to C-suite executives, change making entrepreneurs, Hollywood celebs, and high school girls.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:32]:
She is the author of 2023 Penguin Random House bestseller Permission to Speak: A Love Letter to Anyone About to Open Their Mouth, which if you're watching on YouTube you can see me hold up on screen right now. It is currently out anywhere you get your books in over 15 countries. She also just launched her new Substack community called How To Show Up, which we are definitely gonna talk about today. So hi, Samara. Thank you so much for joining me.

Samara Bay [00:03:00]:
My absolute pleasure. I love that setup. Hi, everybody. Who's ever been like, "Cool. Cool. How do I show up?"

Amelia Hruby [00:03:07]:
It's real. I mean, I really did hear this from listeners. Some people were like, "Great, love it doing all these things immediately," and others were like, "Amelia, but I can't even get to the starting point of this list."

Samara Bay [00:03:18]:
Well, and quite honestly, even the people in that first group, I can say with confidence because of how many folks I've coached and how many different sort of levels of visibility, we all, eventually, if not from the get go, have that feeling of, "Oh my god, being seen and heard is bringing up all my shit."

Amelia Hruby [00:04:04]:
Absolutely.

Samara Bay [00:03:37]:
So I just wanna honor that this is not like those of you starting out or, like, in development on your brand, although it is, of course, for you too, but it's not gonna go away. The challenges just get more interesting and more sophisticated, perhaps, but, like, I just spent a year as a quote unquote expert in showing up, doing various versions of scarier and scarier showing up, and I'm here to tell it.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:04]:
I even feel that in my own life. Right? It was like, at first, it felt like a lot to show up for me in a grad school class of eight people. And now it's a whole new level of, like, "Oh, I need to show up on this podcast and thousands of people are gonna listen." And, like, every time you evolve in your work, you kind of hit these new degrees of visibility and all the feelings that arise with that. So thank you for calling that out. This episode is definitely for our baby beginners just starting out and our friends who have been showing up, showing out for years years years, we all need this type of support.

Samara Bay [00:04:37]:
Yeah. I mean, you know, as I said or as you said in my bio, I've worked with enough folks who are, like, movie store level that it's been somewhat demystified to me. Like, fame, fortune, and even seeming confidence doesn't mean that when there's a microphone and the possibility of speaking about things that are close to our heart, we're immune. We're just not.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:01]:
Yeah, and I think having read your book and explored your work, it's because it's so much of a relationship with ourself and so much of this it's like where our inner relationship meets the outer world. And no matter what we're facing or what type of stage we're on, we still have to do that inner work to feel comfortable speaking, and we have to face all the challenges that arise when we raise our voice. I love this. We've gone straight into the deepest parts of this conversation, which of course is is where you shine. But I wanna actually pull us back maybe a little bit and start in a slightly meta place here because I'm curious how you prepare your voice for a conversation or a podcast interview. How do you think about getting ready to step on to this type of virtual stage?

Samara Bay [00:05:48]:
I have four ideas that come to mind. I also have a lingering cough, so, hi. Voices are reflections of the moment we're in, as well as the life we've lived. With that said, actually, and as, like, an accidental segue in. There's four things. The first is really, really big to match your meta comment. You know, why is it scary to be seen and heard? Some of it is evolutionary, right? Eyes on us make us feel like prey. That's never gonna go away. It's just a thing.

Samara Bay [00:06:18]:
But connected to that is more specificity for, I'll just say, women, people of color, queer folks, immigrants or anyone who feels like their accent codes as not from around here or not what power sounds like in this room. And this is linguistics, and it's psychology, and it's sociology, and it's, you know, history and cultural studies, and it's also just, like, lived experience, hi. We feel this in our bones. Some of us are like, "I don't talk like powerful people have historically talked." The first part of any warm up is honestly just to acknowledge that if we're gonna show up, like, uppercase s, uppercase u. If we're gonna show up when we show up, by which I mean, bring ourselves into a room that may not have literally been built for us and show it what it's been missing.

Samara Bay [00:07:05]:
It's scary, and that's okay. That's part of it. And being brave, as, you know, all of us who are parents have found ourselves saying to our children, like, being brave doesn't mean you're not afraid. It just means you do it anyway. Okay. Well this is the "doing it anyway." Yes. This is for doing it anyway. And just I say all of that because most of us have some element of shame around why can't I hack it.

Samara Bay [00:07:28]:
And I think that, you know, my book is Permission to Speak. It says permission like five times, six times on the title. On the cover of the book, I mean. It's because this feeling of permission, I think, is the opposite of the feeling of shame. So allowing ourselves as we're preparing to go onto the mic or press go on that camera or that ring light or walk onto an actual stage, right, to just acknowledge if fear is coming up, can we just notice if a little shame is part of that? And just put that shame aside and go, that is an old story. That's not for me. That's thing number one.

Samara Bay [00:08:02]:
Thing number two and three maybe is an actual physical warm up, and this can take, like, one minute. So I have a theater background, but I don't want anyone to feel like if they don't, you know, they can't do, like, funny things with your lips, you know. Spoiler, we all have lips. So the reason I see two and three is, like, two is body and three is connecting it to breath and sound. So body, each of us have a body. Each of our bodies are different. Do something that feels good in your actual body. Right? A hundred years ago, the public speaking advice used to be do jumping jacks. Honestly, if you're a high impact person, do jumping jacks. Why, you know, why fix what isn't broken? But also run around the block, do yoga, Turn on some music you love and dance and get into your hips. And like get down a little like, I mean that idiomatically, but also, like, literally get a little lower and feel what it feels like when your body remembers it knows how to breathe on its own. Right. Aerobic activity reminds our body that breath happens lower. Mhmm. And that when our body is literally looser and more expansive and stretched, it remembers how big it can be.

Samara Bay [00:09:18]:
God knows we have enough messaging in our culture about being small. This is our warm up is about saying fuck that and being as big as possible, right? How big, how much space, literally, metaphorically, existentially, can I take up? How much space can I take up? Again, permission. Right? But also quite literal. Literally, like, you don't have to think about any of that if you do a few rounds of, vinyasa and your body's like, "Oh, hello. I've arrived." And connected to that then with the breathing that connects us into number three, which is, do something sound wise. So now the breath is going, but make some funny sounds, right? This is where if you do have children in your life, like, remember that you were once a child and that silliness is essential. And if you feel a little silly, it means you're on the right track, not the wrong.

Samara Bay [00:10:09]:
So make some sounds. I like to get out a, for those of you who are watching, a tissue and the little space between your cheekbones and your nose is like a little open cavity in there if you go mmmm, make an m sound. You'll feel it vibrate a little bit. This area, you can actually kind of shake out a little bit with on some sound. And especially if you have a lingering cold, you do that a little bit and you start to feel stuff actually loosen up and then you blow your nose like I'm about to do in public here. And you actually sound pingier And pingy, p i n g y, pingy, it's just a word that voicey people use to mean that your your sound is present. This is my interpretation. But, you know, when we aren't pingy, when we don't have a kind of a forward vibrating sound going, We tend to sound I'm gonna try to do it now.

Samara Bay [00:11:05]:
We tend to send a little underwater or a little sick, and it's a little bit like we are somehow there, but not quite there. So pingy means we're bringing the sound forward. We're, like, sending it to the person we're talking to and really, like, doing that little warm up helps with that. Final thing, if we're kind of talking mind, body, spirit, this is where the spirit part comes in, think about a time when someone really saw you. Maybe someone you admire admired you back. Maybe somebody that you did something for really like thanked you in a way where you just felt really touched. If memory doesn't come to mind, you know, this is okay. This is like a project. Right? We can collect these. But maybe it was a hug. Maybe it was an email. Maybe it was a text. If you heard through the grapevine that somebody said your work was awesome and you're like, "Oh my god. I've always liked their shit too." Whatever. Right? But to collect a few of those.

Samara Bay [00:11:59]:
And in this final moment before you're gonna go on the mic or open the door or whatever whatever, bring that memory to mind and breathe it in as low as you can and allow your body to be transformed into that version of you that felt power. And I don't mean power over. Right? Power to agency. A real sense of, "Oh, yeah, I am badass." And, you know, listen, I wanna be honest. Stuff might come up. A memory that you think is great suddenly shifts and it turns into something that feels more like grief. That's okay. It might mean that that's not the new juicy one to, you know, use, but have a collection of these and know that, yes, what we're doing in order to show up is creating the conditions for us to invite ourselves in.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:46]:
That's so beautiful. So I just wanna, you know, recap for the folks listening in. You gave us these four beautiful things. The first is acknowledge your feelings, acknowledge the reality of the world we live in and set aside the shame if it arises. The second was get into your body. Remind yourself that your body knows how to breathe, maybe with a little aerobic activity of any variety that you like. The third was make some silly sounds. Maybe you do that little sinus massage, you blow your nose, you get your voice all nice and pingy. And the fourth was that you surface this memory of a time when you felt really seen, heard, even admired, and you allow that to remind you of your power within, the power that you inherently hold by nature of being yourself. And all of that is not only how we prepare ourselves to be on a podcast, but to show up in any way that we might want to be stepping into a space or onto a stage or raising our voice, speaking up.

Samara Bay [00:13:53]:
That was really beautiful. In a way, I'm like, I say my own things a lot. I was slightly sick of my own way of saying it. I'm like, wow. That was such a gift. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:06]:
Now that you've given us so much wisdom of things we can apply in our own lives, I actually would love to take us back into your story a little bit. So you just launched the Substack newsletter called How to Show Up, and I'm curious about your journey of showing up. So can you tell us kind of how your path has traveled in terms of showing up or the ways that you've shown up or struggled to show up over time and some of the lessons you've gleaned in that process?

Samara Bay [00:14:33]:
Yeah. I mean, I will say that I really started out as a coach for other people to do the showing up, and I was a real behind the scenes kind of permission whisperer. And then the me showing up part, right, is me taking my own advice, and that happened next. So when I've reverse engineered what works, it's less what works for me and more what works for my clients, but then, you know, it does actually then then there's the, like, the second half of the tested against my own experience, which I have to admit is when I think I started to talk even more deeply about this. Like, I knew from the get go when I was doing a podcast on this four years ago in pitching the book and everything that, like, this is political and this is about justice work. It took me a little while and more of doing it myself to realize that this is also not separately, also self work, right. As you said, and that there is a spiritual or existential component to these conversations we have with ourselves about what kind of leadership we wanna see more of in the world and how we be it every time we get the chance to speak, even if it's not in an official leadership capacity. It's a fierce dreaming about the kind of world we wanna live in, but it's also a fierce conversation with ourselves about how we don't wait on that and all the stuff that comes up, which is inevitably heavy, and then how we kind of find the lightness inside of that.

Samara Bay [00:16:05]:
So the answer to your question about the actual story is, I have all these years coaching actors in Hollywood on their dialect. I mean, I like to joke that I have a long history telling movie stars what to do with their tongues. That one has been done. And I work with people like Gal Gadot, and Rachel McAdams and Penelope Cruz and Pierce Brosnan and Keegan-Michael Key and, you know, the Oscars come up and I'm like, "Oh, that, oh my gosh. That old client." You know? I had a real name for myself in Hollywood. I mean, have, I guess, I should say. But this thing happened the summer of 2018 when I was coaching Gal on Wonder Woman 2.

Samara Bay [00:16:46]:
I was in DC for the summer. And it's weird to talk about it now, but at the time, it felt like the lowest. We were two years into that dude's presidency. We were heading towards our first midterm, the 2018 midterm, which now we know was a, quote, unquote, blue wave, but at the time, we didn't. And it was I think we all felt, my activist friends and I all felt like our chance to change the narrative in our country. And we were also getting inundated with the pictures of the kids in cages at the border that summer. And I was in DC, so I was going to rallies and I was, you know, whatever, putting my body out there, but, like, all of us, I know, have a sense of, "Okay, but what more? What more can you do?" And in the midst of that, I got this call from moveon.org, one of those great organizations that finds good candidates and offers them resources. And a friend had suggested me, and they were, like, totally pro bono.

Samara Bay [00:17:42]:
Right? No. I'm kinda no, like, stakes, but but also the greatest of stakes. Would you, Samara, be open to coaching on public speaking these first time all female, their roster candidates? And I had never done anything like that. Although, I guess that's not totally true. Right? Like, I was always giving advice to friends who are about to go in and pitch something, and I did have a little bit of experience working with scientists on that sort of thing on pitching and talking about their work. But I really didn't know what I was doing, but on the other hand, I was like, listen. Spend an hour with me. You're not gonna be worse.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:21]:
Absolutely not. That's not possible.

Samara Bay [00:18:23]:
Thank you. So I jumped at it, and I got thrown into all these Zoom sessions with these women who are running for office. And the pattern was so obvious from the beginning. They were all, like, so totally magnificent, like, completely who we all want to have leading us. The type of people whose lived experience as community members or as, you know, parents or as... We would trust them because they actually know the thing instead of having been told the thing in a paper. We're having trouble translating their absolute magnificence when they had to do a some stump speech or speak in front of a microphone and all the shoulds were coming up. Right? "I know that I should talk slower. I know that I should talk faster. I know that I should stop doing this. I know that I should. If I wanna get taken seriously, I should. I should. I should. I should." And, of course, part of me wants to validate, like, yeah. We live in a society that likes to judge us based on all the things. And I think it would be irresponsible for any coach to say, just ignore that. It's the world that we're in.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:30]:
Those shoulds aren't always internal too. Right? Like, Sometimes you are literally told you should...

Samara Bay [00:19:52]:
One hundred percent!

Amelia Hruby [00:19:35]:
...Lower your voice, raise your voice, talk slower, talk faster, all of that. So I just wanted to name it. It's not just our I think we get told it's our inner story all the time, but it can also be direct, critical feedback that we receive from other people outside of us.

Samara Bay [00:19:52]:
This is also, like, the big problem inside of quote, unquote self help work is, like, you can just solve it inside yourself as though we don't live in a completely fucked up society that we are just trying to actually function inside of. Completely. And and some of those shoulds, we have outgrown. Some of those stories need emissaries coming in and saying "The story is changing. I am an example of that story changing." And that's what's possible. So I I knew that from working with those women, and then I was like, no what? And I spoke for the first time myself in front of hundreds of people that that same fall, so now it's, like, October. And I went to Princeton undergrad, and they called and asked if I would speak at their big women's conference. And I was like, "Yes. It's but, like, for not actors. Right?" And they're like, "You're right. We're not actors.This is like speaking on speaking for, you know, people." And I jumped at it, of course, and was like, you know, "Let me put together something."

Samara Bay [00:20:58]:
It was an hour and fifteen. It was meant originally to be for 50 people, and it was, like, on the schedule between Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor and Amy Cuddy, the Power Pose woman, I was like, "I'm here. I'll just be over here in this little side room." And then a few days before I flew out from California to New Jersey to do this, I got this automated message that said 465 people had signed up for my 50 person workshop, which I had called How to Use Your Voice to Get What You Want.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:30]:
Great title. I remember seeing it in your book. I was like...

Samara Bay [00:21:34]:
I've never felt more badass. Like, yes, that feels right. Anyway, so market research, I didn't know. I was, you know, gathering. But to name it that, to have that that type of a response and then to actually show up and present it. And half of what I did was sort of really the beginning of my book, right, like sort of trying to pull out what what my best advice is. And then the second half was actually, this was sort of accidental, a group discussion, and that part wasn't accidental, but that turned into a deconstruction of what I had done in the first half. So this is what I thought of when you first said my own showing up.

Samara Bay [00:22:11]:
Right? I mean, basic questions like why did you come out from behind the podium? I was like, "Oh, oh, oh, I wanna talk about this." Right? What it is to put our to make ourselves deliberately vulnerable and not just vulnerable by saying, you know, sad things, which is sometimes the misunderstanding of what vulnerable means. But being seen, letting yourself, saying in word, in emotion, in tone, and in body, "I am, willing to be seen in my weirdness for you." I think that last part is an important part of the equation too. So I went from there. I mean, that was really my first speaking opportunity. And then I was like, now what? And I had a podcast by a few months after that because I was like, I think that's the next step. I don't know.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:02]:
Hey, friend. Amelia here. I am interrupting this wonderful conversation with Samara because I want to get a little honest and show up with a part of myself that I never talk about here on the show. When I'm not busy running my business or recording this podcast, it is quite likely that I am curled up in bed reading a book or watching a movie. Last year, I think I read over 80 books, and I watched over 200 movies, and probably half of those were thrillers, horror, or true crime of some kind. That's why I'm excited to introduce you to Feminist Thriller Club, a free newsletter that sends you monthly recommendations for what to read and watch next so you never spend another Friday night searching for something to watch instead of actually enjoying yourself. Feminist Thriller Club was founded by Kasia Manolas who is a devoted listener and former guest of the Off the Grid podcast. She was on our blog episode last season. Go back and listen.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:07]:
Kasia is a writer who loves the feminist thriller genre. We're talking about books, shows, and movies like Gone Girl, Big Little Lies, and Mare of Easttown. If you love a character driven feminist story as much as Kasia and I do head to feministthrillerclub.com to find a new book or show that you'll be excited to dive into this Friday night or any other night because if you're like me, you love nothing more than a Tuesday evening movie. Okay. Now that I've shown up with a little weirder wilder part of myself, let's get back into this conversation with Samara Bey.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:45]:
Where you started that story was kind of saying you had worked with all these other people about how to speak and show up, and now you reverse engineered it. So how are you carrying that into your work this year? Like how are you stepping out from behind the scenes at this point and like really challenging yourself a little bit, inviting yourself, supporting yourself in showing up as Samara, not just as the coach of all these other famous names you can insert here that you've worked with.

Samara Bay [00:25:13]:
It's a great question, by which, of course, I mean, because everyone means when they say it's a great question. Who knows? You know, I really am. I mean, that vulnerability thing is real. I'm gonna give as honest an answer as I can here. I think last year, 2023, the year the book came out in early in the year, and so the entire year felt like in sort of a various shaped book tour. My goal was to talk about what matters to me like it matters to me. So the "like it matters" to me is the hard part. Right? And I talk about this in the book. I call it caring out loud.

Samara Bay [00:25:44]:
But showing up in all these spaces, talking to people like you, talking to corporate folks, talking to Deepak Chopra. Like me. And "like me" does not mean that there's one authentic version of ourself and the rest is fake. I think that's a that's a real cultural misunderstanding. I'm using "like me" to mean centering my own sense of mischief, making sure that I'm having a good time. Not because I'm self absorbed, but because I know that when I invite myself in at that level, the work is just more accessible and makes more of an impact. I reveal myself more, which means it gives other people freedom to reveal themselves more, which is permission at scale.

Samara Bay [00:26:28]:
And I also knew for 2023 that I had a fuckload of privilege. Right? Not just being whatever you how you describe me physically and visually. Right? But also having, quite honestly, two Ivy League degrees and this Penguin Random House book deal meant that I got to model to the extent it was fun. And fun does not mean there's no danger and mystery and fear inside of it. Right? There was also that. But I got to model every chance I had to talk how to spend my privilege. By showing up like me in spaces that we're used to hearing authors talk in different ways. More reserved, more serious, more adult, more whatever. I got to show up in those spaces and be like, "This is me. And, you know, people are gonna judge."

Samara Bay [00:27:23]:
But for the most part, my gamble is my people will find me and the judges are gonna judge, we know this. And they either come around, they need they need to see this modeling as well, or they don't. And fortunately, every movement in the history of the world has not needed everyone. So moving into 2024, if I am really thinking about my visibility goals myself, right, besides helping lots of people, I think that I have, "earned" is the word that comes to mind, but I'm not sure if that feels right. But, earned the space for myself now to also publicly not be an expert, which feels messy and mischievous, but my favorite public folks are also modeling this for me, that we cannot know, publicly not know.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:21]:
Yeah. We can build all of our expertise only to unravel it in real time in front of people in really helpful ways. To me, that's how we illustrate the illusion of the concept of professional expertise, and we actually uncover lived experience because I deeply believe and support experience. And I think that there's a difference between "I have had all these experiences. I've done things, I've learned from them, I've evolved from them, and that brings me to this place in my life where I deeply know and feel and have become this person." That's so different than the professional veneer of expertise that's like, we're so often wrapped up in privilege and nepotism, in our class, in our race, in our gender, in so many of these just kind of surface level markers that suggest success to other people but don't necessarily have to carry any of that lived experience with them. And I agree with you. The people I really admire and look up to and try to model my work after or follow in their footsteps to some extent are the ones who are like deeply invested in being fully human and in bringing themselves along to all their work.

Samara Bay [00:29:41]:
What's complicated inside of that, there's probably lots of things, but what what's coming to mind as you say this is that we don't want to abandon our wisdom as well. Because there is this sort of other trap, right, of sort of, dare I say, performative, but "What do I really know?" Which also undermines all of the knowing that we do have. So how do we show up in public as a whole human who's like this? "Today, I woke up less knowing, but I also know a lot." Yes. And stretching both of those or flexing both of those and like, I don't know, doing it together.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:22]:
Yeah. This is something I think about a lot in the context of my work media and leaving social media, and, you know, the performance of knowing something versus knowing something, the performance of success versus actually, like, holding that wisdom through experience. And again, to your point, like, we abandon ourselves if we act like we don't know anything, there's also the performance of not knowing that you're pointing to.

Samara Bay [00:30:47]:
Right. And when we do that, we tend to go to a few extremes, I'm thinking really specifically for a second of self promotion and, you know, that term makes all the things come up. First of all, if I were to offer some help on that, I think it's really important to remember that every single piece of self promotion you or I or any of you listening ever ever do is not. It is for someone else. If it's not, you're doing it wrong. But 97.9% of the time, self promotion is "I made a thing. I hope it helps." And then inside of that, we sometimes have the bro marketing voice because we all grew up in a culture saying, "Show up as show up so confident that that your confidence is what makes them buy."

Samara Bay [00:31:37]:
And some of that is wise. Right? We have to do the work so that we know that our thing is of value. But if we've sort of half done the work or if we're sort of stuck hearing the shoulds or if we're stuck feeling like I'm an expert today, but I'm a nonexpert tomorrow. Right? The danger is that that confidence starts to feel like a big old fakey fake rather than that's connected. And, again, I'm not saying, like, there's a perfect equation here, but I am saying that all of that is present. And it's so interesting to notice, you know, confidence is a byproduct. It's not a thing. I feel like our whole society is like, be more confident. And you're like, does that mean puff up my chest like a, you know, stereotypical alpha male that comes to mind? And like but confidence is the byproduct of, I think, having nothing to hide, which is really terrifying. Having nothing to prove might be an easier way to think about it. But so if that's the work, working on for example, with the Substack, like, I'm where I am. Welcome.

Samara Bay [00:32:46]:
I know that the Substack has an element of confidence to it. I get told this with my writing all the time. There is sort of a manifesto forward momentum vibe. It's not because I'm like "Sound confident!" Right? It's because I'm like, "I am doing the work, the work, the work, the work to show up with nothing to prove and getting it wrong sometimes, doing it again." And I can look back at my old writing and be like, "Oh, that was a line that was, like, gave an air of confidence, but actually that's because I was hiding," but I felt really, really insecure. And that's okay. And it's an iterative process and we practice. We hopefully practice together, which is the point of my Substack and of this conversation and of a lot of our spaces, I think. Right? Because that "you can't hack it" voice also means you're alone. Everyone else has it figured out. And just being able to connect with each other bursts that shame bubble like nobody's business.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:41]:
And that's what our voices do so well. That's what showing up does is connect. That's such a big piece of I think so much of what you've said, when you mentioned that self promotion is for others, to share your work with others, what you have to offer to others. I was also thinking when you were talking about doing the book tour, year of a book tour, having these conversations and really trying to speak about these things like yourself and as yourself. This is reminding me of moments in my own career where I've gotten to interview people that I admired so much or that felt like they were, you know, quote unquote, way out of my league and all of the work I've had to do to even be able to show up to that conversation without dissociating, without just, quote unquote, blacking out the whole time, something that happens to so many people, including tons of my podcast clients who are like, "I don't know what I recorded. I blacked it out. Like, I have no idea," which I'm not judging, but I think is a very different experience than perhaps really being able to be present and with ourselves every step of the way as ourselves. And also, I just wanted to name what you said, like showing up as yourself, meaning getting loud, being mischievous, being weird, letting it be funny, being silly, and how that's certainly not the way that perhaps you are supposed to talk to Deepak Chopra.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:09]:
I was just in a session with Interweb members earlier this week and we were did a nervous system exercise by Natalie Ross and something she said that was like so on point here is she's like, "This time is not about calm supremacy. You're not here to get calm," and I think you're not, it's similarly here, you're not here to get professional. We're not working on your voice so you can get calm, get professional so that you can slip into podcaster voice and sound exactly like all the other podcasters out there. Right? Like, that's not what we're doing.

Samara Bay [00:35:37]:
And there's a voice norm in every industry too. Right? Like, that podcast voice is so real, but so is, obviously, pilot voice. Right? Like journalism voice, professional voice. But also, especially in professional businessy land and connected to what you were just saying, it helps to think about for each of us what we like listening to, who you most recently reposted if you are on social media or sent to a friend, what you happened upon, and you were like, "That person's talking and doing things to my body." Right? Because if you Google, "How do I sound authoritative," which I've done, it says exactly what you'd expect. Right?

Samara Bay [00:36:29]:
Speak in a low pitched voice. Start and end all of your sentences going down. So for anyone who's ever been told they have up speed. Right? But also for any of us who wanna just end our thought out, like, "I think this, what do you think?" "No. No. No. You lose your authority that way according to the Internet." Right? So the Internet, that little quick, how do I sound more authoritative, is such a lovely, by which I mean terrible, example, reflection maybe of our knee jerk reaction to what a powerful voice is supposed to sound like. And then we have all the examples of the people that actually make us lean in that make us feel a physical urge to share. And the people who dissociate and sound disconnected, especially deliberately so, who have all the power, but they're like, "I'm gonna show up like this," who, as I like to say, try to out boring each other. It doesn't go viral. It doesn't make an impact. It doesn't do anything surprising, which mean it doesn't make the world move forward.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:33]:
What's coming up for me is like there's also a layer of this too. It's like pay attention to the people that really pull you in like you're saying and I think if you're really immersed in social media, also start to attend to where does it just become mimetic, like, where do we hear the same voice happening out of 20 different faces? So here I'm really thinking of YouTube culture where it's like, "Hi guys, welcome to my channel." Like, You could see hear that exact tone and and cadence come out of a thousand YouTube videos.

Samara Bay [00:38:04]:
I'm dude version. I know this from my child. Because he repeats it, "Smash that like button!"

Amelia Hruby [00:38:14]:
Just what it's really reminding me of is we see those models of success and we think we need to sound like them. Those aren't the voices, perhaps, of our authoritarian political power figures when we think of presidents or politicians, but they are voices of power in these online spaces that so many of us inhabit. And we take them up as this sort of like, "Well, they've figured out success, I can follow that path," when in fact I think what you're speaking to and I wholeheartedly agree with is that we will only find the success that we are intended to find by showing up as ourselves. And I just see this over and over again with listeners, with clients, with friends, with myself, you know, when I try to get on somebody else's path or when I anytime I pick up a list of 10 ways to get what I want, it's never gonna work for me because I'm just kind of memeing, copying even, what other people are doing. And that is certainly not showing up and speaking up as me.

Samara Bay [00:39:15]:
So and there's this chronology part that's involved in what you're saying because for almost all of us and and honoring the systems of power that exist, starting out that way helps us get into certain doors. So I'm not saying do it or don't do it. Right? It's super personal. But I am saying that if you're like, "Yeah, but when I talk like that, I get more engagement." Notice that and that's okay. Right? I mean, I'm not here to shame anybody. And what I think is really, really, really useful is also notice if you're in the noticing game, also notice when you have just enough power or privilege or permission or position to be like, "Now what?" Because I think that's when anyone has picked up my book or has engaged in this type of a conversation is that our old tricks aren't working anymore. They don't feel good inside of our body.

Samara Bay [00:40:08]:
We have higher standards for our body suddenly. And we go, "I'm pissed. This isn't working. Fuck this." And then the question is what's next? So those little inflection points, they can happen anywhere at any point in our life, right? This is why I say that I work with high school girls. Right? I love working with kids because they are they already feel like, here's what feels fake about the grown up world. And or those of us who are in the grown up world and whose tricks to be liked worked and now we're like, "I wonder if there's something else possible. I wonder if I can break out from the norm of my sub sub subculture and do something that makes me feel better on the inside."

Amelia Hruby [00:40:50]:
Yeah. And I think I can pretty confidently say that's exactly where Off the Grid listeners are, at the very least with social media. The reason you tuned into this podcast is because, to use your language, Samara, but in a different context, the things you used to do to get likes aren't working anymore and you're pissed about it. And you wanna know now what? It feels bad. It's not working. What's next? What's possible from here? And I love all of the things you've shared with us today about ways to then step up, speak up, show up in our full selves with our power intact in the world. I have one more question. This might be a slight nuance, but it's something I'm really curious about for you, because I encounter it a lot as a podcast editor and producer and a person who talks about social media, which is I see the sort of divide take that people between showing up and speaking up, like showing up is visual, speaking up is auditory or oral or heard, and we think of them as different things, but maybe perhaps the same stuff is at stake. But I'm just curious, do you see any difference between showing up and speaking up? Do you think like the voice and the visible are different in these ways or do you wrap it together in how you think about all of this?

Samara Bay [00:42:08]:
So for me, showing up is not visual. It doesn't have to be. I can show up on the page as a writer, right, in its words. Showing up is a decision to not just literally show up, like arrive, like physically appear, but really show up with your spark, with your weird, with your spirit, with your mischief, with an element of surprise, with your humanity intact. Sometimes, there's an overlap with speaking up. Right? But I actually think speaking up feels different than showing up. For me and and I wanna honor that this really started with those women running for office and then expanded into my friends in LA who were either in the creative writing world, pitching ideas to Hollywood or in the entrepreneur world and, you know, pitching a product to Sephora. That what matters to me is that we show up in the moments that matter to us.

Samara Bay [00:43:15]:
And those moments that matter are almost always when we're talking about our own ideas that are close to our heart, that haven't been tested by the world at large, that feel weird and new and fresh and thus possibly wrong, and showing up anyway. So speaking up culturally has this idea that's more like activism, right, that's talking, that's advocating. So there's an overlap there. But I think speaking up is actually its own conversation. And I'm a little less interested in it, I have to admit. Because what I really want is to know what world exists when the people with the weird, small, maybe massive, ideas that are close to their heart talk about those ideas in a way that makes them spread. It's not actually the same as movement work, although there's an overlap.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:08]:
Yeah, thank you for that. I think it's a really helpful differentiation and part of what I'm hearing is like culturally, when we talk about speaking up, it's on behalf of something. But showing up...

Samara Bay [00:44:19]:
It's on behalf of themselves. Exactly. And that's why all the stuff comes up. Right? In a certain way, you might say it's easier, but I think it's harder. I think it's harder. And it isn't, like, group tested. It there's just something very original about each of us showing up, and the originality is terrifying. And that's what we get to say "yes and" to.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:43]:
We've talked a lot here about showing up as ourselves with our humanity intact, and I'm curious as we wrap up, what are the ways you show up or the advice you would offer for someone who's like, "Okay, I wanna start showing up with my weird. What do I do first? What comes next for me?"

Samara Bay [00:45:04]:
I mean, I do think we've actually answered that in a way in this conversation. So my my real answer is listen back to this conversation, and or pay self promotion that isn't for me, buy my book. It's literally for that. The reason it's book length and not podcast length is because there is just space for us to breathe inside of all of these questions of "Who was the public made for, and how do I step into it anyway?" And "What do I do with the feeling of stigma that shows up in my body like shame?" And "What do I do about the breathing side of it when I am holding my breath for impact?" And "I'm also holding my breath because we live in a suck in culture that tells us that we have to suck in our middles or we don't, you know, deserve to be women in the public." Right? Like, this is why it's a book length thing.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:52]:
That's perfect. Go buy your book, Permission to Speak.

Samara Bay [00:45:55]:
And then when you feel like, "God, I just want people to talk to about this." That's what the Substack is for. I didn't even know about Substack. And then when I was first told about it, my first thought was this makes sense as a place for community. And, you know, I think that word gets thrown around quite a lot, but I actually do mean it because hearing each other is the whole point. Right?

Amelia Hruby [00:46:18]:
We're speaking up. We're showing up to be heard, to be seen, to be witnessed, and to offer, to give and to receive.

Samara Bay [00:46:17]:
And to hold space for what world we might shape by doing so.

Amelia Hruby [00:46:33]:
Beautiful. Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. I'm truly just grateful that you are helping us create this world, that you're guiding us, that you're showing up as yourself. It really inspires me to show up even weirder, even more vulnerable. As adrienne maree brown says, yeah, weirder, wilder, and more interdependent. I think that those three things always guide me forward.

Samara Bay [00:47:00]:
Also, my kid's name is Wilder. So.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:03]:
Maybe if I have a child, I'll name them Weirder, or my next dog.

Samara Bay [00:47:08]:
So who out there has been named your child More Interdependent? Let us know in the comments below.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:15]:
We can't wait. Alright. Well, thank you, Samara. Thank you, friends, for being here and joining us for this episode. Please listen back. Buy Samara's book. Show up in the ways that you can and desire to. And until next time, we will see you off the grid, my friends. Bye for now.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:37]:
You're listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.