Episode 58: Captivate The Room: Change The Lives Of Your Audience With The Power Of Voice With Tracy Goodwin
Tracy Goodwin
Tracy Goodwin, owner of Captivate the Room and creator of Psychology of the Voice® has taught thousands of celebrities, professionals, entrepreneurs, even supreme court justices how to transform their lives and the lives of their listeners with their voice by stepping into the power of their natural voice so they amplify their authority and captivate the room.
Tracy’s unique approach, Psychology of the Voice® gets to the core of limiting voice habits and transforms voices from the inside out. Tracy holds a BFA from Baylor University and master’s degrees, she has a New and Noteworthy podcast, Captivate the Room, and is a highly sought-after speaker on stages around the globe.
Changing the lives of your listeners starts when you amplify your voice and captivate the room. But how can you make sure your audience is listening to you? In this episode, Tracy Goodwin, the owner of Captivate the Room, unravels the power and psychology of your voice to amplify it and captivate the room. She talks about voice masks and how you can remove the mask. Tracy echoed her wisdom and expertise into this conversation as she explained how active listening shows up in your voice. Learn the depths of your voice’s power and start captivating the room. Tune in!
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Captivate The Room: Change The Lives Of Your Audience With The Power Of Voice With Tracy Goodwin
Tracy Goodwin, Owner of Captivate The Room and Creator of Psychology of the Voice, has taught thousands of celebrities, professionals, entrepreneurs, and even Supreme Court justices how to transform their lives and the lives of their listeners with their voice by stepping into the power of their natural voice so they amplify their authority and captivate the room.
Tracy's unique approach, Psychology of the Voice, gets to the core of limiting voice habits and transforms voices from the inside out. Tracy holds a BFA from Baylor University and a Master's degree. She has a new and noteworthy podcast, Captivate The Room, which I am a huge fan of and we're going to get into it. She also speaks on stages all around the globe, which is where I first saw Tracy and understood her message. I saw her on stage at a conference in December ‘23 and was blown away, so I know that this episode is going to blow all of our minds. Tracy, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I'm so happy to have this conversation with you.
I have a million questions for you, especially when we get into the voice as a sales tool. Before that, I want to learn a little bit more about your origin story and how you got into this work.
I got into it kicking and screaming. I was ironically raised in a family where I wasn't allowed to speak. That sounds dramatic. Part of it was cultural generational. At that time, children were to be seen and not heard. I had an extreme version of that. I could hear sounds a certain way because I navigated the world through sound, but I thought everybody heard sound the way that I did.
I became an actor. I became a director. I directed plays all over the world. This is back in the Yellow Pages days. Businesses are finding me to coach their voices. I thought, “How can I do this?” I had all these catastrophic things happen in my life because I couldn't use my voice. I didn't get it. The whole purpose had been established from the day that I was born.
I started coaching companies, and I was already working with actors. I left the directing space early on because actors were hiring me to coach their voices. Businesses were hiring me to coach their voices. In the early days, I taught very much technique and technical approach. It was hard for me because of the way that I could hear sound. When I did that first research study because I was fascinated with dialects, I realized the whole concept of the Psychology of the Voice and I was all in. I have been all in for over 30 years. I'm obsessed with this work and the research that I've done over the years on the concept of the Psychology of the Voice.
Thank you. I want to get into the Psychology of the Voice, but does it tie into what you mean when you say you could hear sound?
It has everything to do with it in the big picture which, in the big picture, is most relative to your audience. I started as a dialect expert. I taught dialects to actors. Back then, this was many years ago, business people and very successful companies hired me to take dialects away from their executives. The first one that I ever did was down in the South. I'm from Texas.
It was a huge company. They brought me in because they all had Texas accents and were concerned that they didn't sound smart. I thought, “How in the world? You are running one of the largest companies in the world?” I thought, “Okay,” and took the dialects away. We don't do that anymore, Thank goodness, but I became intrigued with the concept of what they meant that they didn't sound smart.
At that time, I was teaching an Irish dialect to people that were doing a movie. I thought, “Why do they sound Irish and I sound Texan? I want to sound Irish. They sound cool.” The way that I taught dialects was through something I call placement. It is how we hold the structure of the face. All I have to do is shift my face and I can become Irish too. I thought, “How does the Irish baby know to do that?”
This is when I'm starting to get obsessed with this. I'm thinking, “How does an Irish baby know to do that? How do I as a Texas baby know to have that Texas draw?” It is a sense of belonging. The subconscious is calling the shots on how we hold our faces. The subconscious is taking the parent's voice in, and the subconscious is directing the jaw to hold the placement so that the Irish baby will fit into the Irish family. I figured that out and then I thought, “There's more.”
It was about that time a man named Bill walked into my office. He came to work with me because he wanted to speak with more authority. He wanted the team to do more sales and all of this. I stood up, stuck out my hand to shake his hand, and said, “I'm Tracy. It's great to have you here,” like I would. He said, “It’s great to be here,” in this tiny voice.
I don't know why I said it, but I looked at him and said, “Do you have siblings?” He said, “I have six older sisters.” There it was, the whole thing. I knew at that moment that Bill's siblings, and he loved and adored them, were going, “You're too loud. Stop being so loud.” Bill’s subconscious went, “Don't worry. I've got this.” Here he was, 37, standing in front of me, and nobody would do anything he told them to do.
It all came together at that moment that the subconscious plays a crucial role in how we use our voice and all the misrepresentations of our voice. That significantly plays into sales because Psychology of the Voice starts in the internal. The subconscious has created this entire litany of things that have sounds that follow and are costing us everything.
I have goosebumps here in the Bill story because of the fact that you could understand that he had older siblings from how he showed up. We all are familiar with body language as part of your tool belt, but I haven't given much thought to voice. I would be curious to learn a little bit more. I'm a pretty loud talker. I have a microphone built into my throat here.
When I worked in an office in the bullpen, I was always told, “You're too loud.” I felt like, and I still feel like this so maybe you can tell me if I'm right or wrong here or if it's a subconscious thing, but I had a hard time speaking softer and appearing confident on my phone calls. I eventually got my own office because I was so loud. I couldn't find a balance to speak softer but still appear confident to the client who I was speaking with. Does that have anything to do with what we're talking about?
Absolutely. Like what you heard me say about the siblings, how did I know to ask that? I heard it in his voice. Shortly after that, I went and taught a workshop where somebody did a role play. They were talking to me and I said, “I get it. You fell in love with a girl and moved down here to Texas, but she broke your heart. You broke up. You don't know what you're going to do. You think you're going to move back to Maryland but you don't know because you like it here.” I went on this whole thing. He looked at me and said, “How did you know that?”
You’re like a psychic.
I had heard every single sound that told me all of those things. I looked around the room and everybody was backing away a little bit. I said, “Did all of you hear what I identified?” They said, “Now we do.” I spent ten years tracking, which is what I'm calling out what they're processing in the subconscious. Psychology of the Voice has that second piece. It's got this internal piece and then how they are processing you. We can go back to your loud. I can really riff on this from the perspective of you, but sometimes, I find when I do that, people go, “I'm not ever rolling this episode out.”
I was going to ask, “Are people ever afraid?”
Always.
I committed 2024 as the year of courage. I'm not using the word vulnerable. I'm using courage. I feel so grateful to have this opportunity to talk to you, so you can lay it out if you want.
Nothing is bad. I said this to you right before we started. I don't work in the realm of basic technique. I am probably not going to tell you to be quieter. That is probably not something that is going to come out of my mouth. The first place I'm going to go is all the way back to before year two because our first voice mask is put on before we're two.
Remember, the subconscious is working to protect our hearts. Our voice is the orchestra of our hearts. It is the most judgment-inducing thing that we have, and the subconscious is working overtime. If we look at loud, the first question I want to go to is, “Why do you feel like they're not going to hear you? Why do you feel like you have to convince them?” In my world, typical voice coaching is loud. Loud, to me, is push. Meaning, you feel like you have to come almost at them to get them to listen or get them to buy.
The subconscious is working to protect our hearts. Our voice is the orchestra of our hearts. It is the most judgment-inducing thing, and the subconscious is working overtime.
It has nothing to do with the clients that you're talking about. It goes all the way back maybe to your second-grade teacher. Maybe your kindergarten teacher said, “I cannot hear anything you say. Can you please speak up? Nobody's going to listen.” Your subconscious went, “We’ll yell the rest of our life.” You are not yelling, but this is the way the subconscious works because the subconscious is going to put things in place to protect you.
We could look at that loud, which I'm calling push, and we could go, “Maybe there's some story in there that says you think you are not good enough to sell to me or you think you're bothering me.” There could be any kind of story. That's where we have to start. If I say to you, “I need you to be quieter,” you will waste so much time plugging in something that won't stick. We've got to find out the why, and then I might go, “Here's the thing. We have to push and pull.”
We have to have the push elements and pull elements because we’ve also got the whole situation around voice aversions. This is the research that I did that showed me that, at best, people are leaving 30% of their buyers behind because of their voice. The question that we would go to with you is, do you feel like it has to be hard? Do you feel like they're not listening?
I will tell you this, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but there are societal implications on men's voices and there are societal implications on women's voices. For many of my women over the years who have been in an extremely heavily dominated male world, that was all they knew to do. They were like, “I need to be louder.” That's also what the world tells us. It’s like, “Louder and faster.”
Those are the two weakest choices we can make in the concept of, “How do I want this person to process me?” in relation to, “Who am I?” You're outcome-driven and no-nonsense. I can already tell you that. Those automatically aren’t bad qualities. Those are great qualities, but that already means you're going to have that tendency to, “Let's get it done. Let's go.” It's not the loud that I'm hearing. It's no-nonsense that I'm hearing.
My brain is going a million miles a minute. When you're thinking about what's the subconscious, looking back at those times, I was trying to get people to like me. I'm working with a rep agency and I want them to like me so I'm telling them this story about a car accident I had. That speaks to me. I agree with your comments too. My entire career has been in commercial construction, which is pretty male-dominated. I would get feedback like, “People buy from you because you remind them of their daughters.” It's like, “What the eff?” I get so offended by that. I do what I say I'm going to do. I'm a strong salesperson.
I keep thinking about all the different feedback. I'm sure the audience is thinking about the different feedback they've received. Why I gravitate towards you is getting feedback that says, “You talk too softly,” or, “You sound like a little girl.” Whatever the feedback is, in my experience, there's no path forward from that. It’s like, “Here's the feedback.” I’m like, “I don't know how to fix that. Help me, boss. Help me, leader. Help me, company.” I've been doing it on my own. You are probably delivering this package in a scientific way, or research-driven way. You said something in that summary about a voice mask. Can we get into that? What is a voice mask?
I'll tell you how I came up with the phrase. A man came to work with me. He said, “I need to work with you. I'm repelling potential customers.” I said, “You are.” He said, “How do you know?” I could already hear it. I said, “What are you trying to prove?” His face fell. He looked down and then said, “I spent my whole life trying to prove my worth to my father.”
That's that internal piece. That's the Psychology of the Voice. The subconscious put a sound in place that said, “You got to go show him you know,” so he is in here hotshotting. He was the first one that I put it all together with. It was like a bulletproof glass came down between us. I could see him and I could hear him but I could not touch him. I don't mean that in the literal sense. The connection was broken. It was this putting on. It’s like, “If I put this on, I will get what I want.”
There are a lot of different voice masks. I've studied it extensively and labeled a lot of them. It was a protection mechanism because his subconscious was saying, “If they reject you, they're like your father and you know how bad that hurts. You're probably not good enough anyway.” His mind would then say, “If I can prove I'm good enough, then they're going to see I'm good enough.” This barrier would come down and they couldn’t connect with him. Their brain would process, “We can't hire this guy. He's not going to let us be a part of it. We want to be a part of this.” These were big-dollar deals.
A voice mask is a protection mechanism.
It's this putting-on of sounds that keep people out, and we can feel it. I'm talking to you. If you were over here at my house, I'd be talking to you the same way, but I can put on my professional mask because I want your audience to know that I am a professional. In fact, I'm a researcher. I can talk to you this way for the rest of the interview, but do you see how the bulletproof glass came down? It's not that I sound bad. It's that you are not getting in.
You sound great, but I like raw Tracy. That's such a great example. Thanks for giving us a very tangible example there. The voice mask makes a lot of sense when you explain it with the bulletproof glass. I'm sure everyone reading could think about different people in their lives or themselves and the different masks that they put on.
When I negotiate, I have a whole different routine I do before I get on a negotiation call. One of the things that I have been working on is to be a little bit more of that playful voice. I am a pretty happy, fun, playful person and I want that to shine through, but I also want them to know I know what I'm talking about and I can deliver millions of dollars for them. It's an interesting balancing act. I've never thought to use the voice as another tool to make sure I'm removing the mask.
The voice is the most underutilized and greatest asset we have, I believe. That's a pretty bold statement because there are a lot of great things that we learn from coaches, strategies, tactics, funnels, messaging, and all of these things. I decide who you are by what I hear in your voice and science. I did a research study on this many years ago where we determined over 30 things about a person within 30 seconds. I have since done research that tightens that up.
There was this fascinating study that came out of Stanford. I may not have the exact details, but the gist of it was they took 100 surgeons, 50 of whom had been sued. They recorded them all saying the same thing and garbled the sound. They brought in a test audience. The test audience could, with almost 100% accuracy, tell them who had been sued. It was that sound. There were no words.
Yet, in our world, we are taught, “Get the words right. If you can say it right. If you can say all the things.” It's not just the message. It's the message, but what is the packaging? I'm going to make a decision within seconds. You saw the live demonstration of that. The first round was,” Pretty good,” authority. The second round was, “Where do I sign up?” authority. That was sound.
A lot of my work in my business is sales but from a relationship place. If you can establish the relationship first, the sales component becomes a lot easier as opposed to rushing straight to this buyer-seller persona. You have to build the relationship. A couple of the things that you're saying resonate with me because I would always sell to luxury hotel developers. I'm talking to billionaires and multimillionaires.
Sometimes, I don't want to use the word hillbilly, but there are insecurities that come up when you're dealing with that caliber. I started to own it and say, “This person puts their pants on one leg at a time. I'm going to ask them how they met their wife.” I find different connection points. Relaxing myself a little bit and not being as intimidated helped me in my career and build relationships. I have a voice mask on and I want to work on peeling back that a little bit more as a 2024 goal.
We all have them. I love the story you told. One of the things that I want my people to do is consistency. I'll give you a little plugin on what you said. That's how I felt when I had that opportunity to work with the justices. I stood out there and went, “What am I doing out here? These people make the law.” In a split second, I walked my talk and went, “They don't do what I do.” It was that simple. That’s the way our mind plays tricks on us. It gets us into their mind and we decide what they're thinking. They weren't thinking that at all. They were thinking, “How can this woman help us be better?”
Everybody has voice masks partly because of the way the world teaches us to be. We live in a world that says, “Everything you are is not good. Let's have you do it like this. Let's have you do it like that. What you need to be is this.” We get those messages from a very young age. That first voice mask, the original data, and that was the first research study I did, took me five years. Before we're five, one phrase can determine how we'll use our voice for the rest of our lives. I redid it and it's before we're two. We all have all of these insecurities because we've got all these stories.
I want to take it back to something. It's part of the research that I did. We've always lived in this illusion. We've been trained to believe, “If I can get them to like me.” What do you hear about that? The way that I hear that says you must think they won't. You've got to be something else. That's one of those layers. That's a layer. I have to strip that back and get you working from the place of, “They're going to like me. Why wouldn't they? It doesn't matter if they do or not anyway.”
I've got what they have. I've got what they have to have. I've got what they need.” That becomes a different mission to get me into that authenticity than, “I've got to be nice. I've got to get them to like me.” The game’s over. That’s why I say the paradigm is shifting. It’s no longer about, “I've got to get them to trust me. I've got to get them to like me.” Let's back that train up. What says they don't? Do you trust them to believe you?
That is fascinating because one of the reasons why I was successful in sales is that I knew I had value whether they knew it or not. Usually, it was a construction issue. Usually, I knew if they didn't talk to me, they were going to run into issues two years from now. It gave me a lot of confidence in saying, “You need to talk to me because I see a problem coming.” That builds that trust, and then we can get into relationships.
It is interesting to think about the unpacked layers. You're almost flipping it on its head. When you say, “I want them to like me.” Why wouldn't they be upfront? Why do you think that they wouldn't? That's fascinating. What are some questions? I have so many questions for you. What are some things that people can do if they're reading this and are like, “How do I start to uncover these different protections or blocks that I have in my voice and my sound?” What are some of the first things people can do?
That is a little bit of a trick question. I will give you a couple of things, but what I want people to realize the most, and you know this, I know this, and anybody that works with coaches knows this, is we all have these blind spots. The subconscious does not want you to ever get it right. I had a class right before I jumped on here with you. The conversation was about, “That felt so big.” We were working on finding all of their sounds. I said, “It's not.” Do you see how the subconscious can go, “Tone it down, circus clown,” and then you pull it all back? We're going, “Are you saying anything? Are we even hearing anything?”
We've got this 7-layer situation where we've got to pull away 6 layers and the subconscious is going to fight kicking and screaming. One of the craziest things I can give you that you're going to go, “Of course,” is you've got to be in the conversation with me. I take reading the room away from my people and teach them how to use it in a different way. I could be reading the room and deciding, “She's thinking I'm not doing a good job.” I take that in because I see you deep in thought about a question that you want to ask me and decide, “Sara said she brought me on the show. It doesn't matter anyway because I don't care. I don't care if anybody likes me.” That's what we do.
Get your mind out of the future and be right here in the conversation.
I'm right with you. Keep going. I’m thinking of all these examples of things I've seen or been a part of.
Let me tell you. When I tested this, it was in a sales situation. My girl was not closing deals. It was about how she was reading the facial expressions of the ideal client. I was reviewing footage and went, “What did you decide she was thinking right there?” She said, “She was deciding that this was too expensive. She thought it was dumb and was never going to invest this kind of money in me.” Do you know what the client was thinking? With that disgruntled face, the client was thinking, “I don't know how I'm going to come up with the money to hire this woman but I'm going to find it.”
My gal was throwing it all away because that's exactly what the subconscious wanted her to do. It was vulnerability and judgment. All roads and voices lead back to worth, judgment, fear of rejection, all of it. We all struggle with that. We've got to stop being off in the future, deciding how this is all going to go down. That's one thing alone that has tripled my people's income. It is for me to get their mind out of the future and be right here in the conversation. If I'm right here in the conversation with you, my sound is going to be different. I warned you. I wasn't going to say, “Slow down. Articulate.”
I like it.
That won't work. It's not going to work.
I've had a couple of episodes where we talk about not making assumptions and assuming what your prospective buyer is thinking, doing, or whatnot. I get your emails. You had one all about listening and the importance of voice. This speaks to listening too because one of the things I teach is that confidence comes from being present in the conversation and not fast-forwarding ahead to what you are going to respond. Since I know you and I know your work, I'm thinking about listening to how it's showing up in our voice. Can we talk a little bit about active listening and the voice?
Yes. I want you to think about this from a depth perspective. We can look at what we're doing on the surface level, and we can accomplish something with that surface level. I believe that when it comes to voice, we have to get things at the root. There's this depth. I'm listening to you. I'm right here in the conversation with you and I sound a certain way. If I was formulating my idea and I'm ready to defend my position or I'm ready to tell you, “You're not getting it,” or, “I need to interject this,” or, “I need to make myself look good,” or, “I need to make sure everybody follows me,” that's an intense, dramatic version.
When we don't listen, it is as if we are handing our listener a metal box to hold. It's very angular. It's cold. Same voice, same person. If I'm listening to you and I'm engaged in the conversation with you, and you finish talking and I think about my answer, then I'm going to hand you a ball. What is easier to hold, embrace, and hold close? It's a ball. I want to hand people a ball, not a metal box. I tracked it for a long time. When people aren't listening, something's happening to their sound. It's abrasive and angular is how I hear it. That's what it was. They weren't listening.
Even for someone who has components in their voice that are more angular, if they listen, they will soften the edges. Oftentimes, I will say that to people. I’m like, “We have to soften the edges. You are handing me a metal box and I don't want to hold it. I can't hold it. It's hard for me to hold.” If you are handing me a metal box and I don't like it, every four seconds, my brain is telling me to check out. When I started doing this work many plus years ago, it was three minutes. The human attention span is four seconds.
If you are shoving something at me that is hard for me to hold and then I feel you are not even listening to me, at the four-second kick-in, I'm checking Facebook. I'm no longer in this conversation. It all is about how you're making me feel. This is where we're missing the boat. It is like, “Get the offer. Get the number. Get the price, get the funnel.” All of that is important, but nobody's talking about what's the experience that they're going to have with you. That's why people buy from me. They can hear the experience. That's why they buy from you. They can hear the experience.
I appreciate that you brought up those metrics because especially in corporate, that's what's valued. I would almost call that hard skills versus soft skills. I would argue that soft skills are more important because they are harder to grasp, teach, and retain.
You're right. You're spot on. There's data to support what you're saying.
It's interesting because I feel like there are leaders that fall into two buckets. One bucket is valuing the hard skills and probably the abrasive, assertive voice that's ending up with metal boxes for their customers as opposed to rewarding some of the people that have tapped into the softer skillset and know how to do it. It's harder to quantify. Unless you're in a sales role, then you can measure the numbers, but that's not always rewarded. It's so fascinating. I'm so grateful for you out here doing this work. You've made a lot of nice examples of how our voice and our voice masks can block sales. Can you share any other areas that you've seen happen and ways that people can pivot if they find it happening to them?
Foreshadowing is probably one of the other big ones. Foreshadowing is I'm telling you what I don't want from microscopic sounds in my voice so you give it to me. I tested this initially on a family-owned company. There were a couple of hundred people in the organization. I wasn't testing it on sales. The owner was very reactionary. Everything was a big deal. Everything was a freakout.
I noticed that everybody who worked there had it in their voice. I could hear it in their voice that they were braced for the freakout. I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I took one guy and completely taught him to remove all of that from his voice? I wonder what will happen because I have a suspicion that they are telling this owner to freak out.” The owner stopped freaking out on my guy and continued to freak out on everybody else. That's when I took it to sales, and I started it with cold calls.
I'll give you a little nuanced, perfect example and case study. There was a young man I worked with. He was a cold caller. He was very worried that he was not going to know the answers to the questions because he was fresh out of college. He started compensating for that because he had made this internal decision he wasn't going to know all the answers to all the questions. This is a little bit of a different example of foreshadowing. He was so afraid that they were going to ask him something that he wouldn't know and he was going to look bad. He was foreshadowing a sound of arrogance to keep them out.
I could see that.
He wasn't booking. He wasn't getting sales. I moved that out and plugged in a vocal superpower. Within days, he closed a six-figure contract. You think sound doesn't play into this. I sat with him for an hour and said, “I always love it when I can say it was the sound. I know I can’t do that, but I want to hear from you and say, “What do you think the role of this work is with me? It is hard to quantify.” He said no doubt that the whole foreshadowing concept when he started working from something different shifted it. He also said it tightened the learning curve on everything, which I'm all for that.
I have entrepreneurs. They'll deliver their sales pitch and I'll go, “You don't think I can afford you.” They'll go, “That's right.” What they mean by that is, “You don't think I'm going to spend that much money.” It is in their sound. Remember. The subconscious is processing the sound of our buyer. They hear the word and that plays into it, but the first thing that's happening within three seconds is they are processing sounds. They’re like, “Can they connect with me? Do they know who I am?” It is all these things. If I come out of the gate already thinking, “You probably aren't going to buy,” you're not going to buy.
I'm thinking back to when I first started my consulting agency or my consulting firm that I'm in and some of my first deals. It was a brand new thing I was selling. I've never sold myself before. I've never sold a service versus a product. I didn't know the objections I was going to get. I have a new mindset towards objections because they're gifts for next time. I'm thinking back that I had voice masks on some of those first deals. I did not close them. I was getting so frustrated. I appreciate that you're giving some tools on how to practice this, finesse it, and workshop it. I was foreshadowing, for sure.
You and I talked about this very quickly before we jumped on. This is all the next-level stuff. Nothing is bad. How far can we take this is where I go with it. There are plenty of people. They sounded great. It was my job to make, “Where are you leaving 30% behind? Where are you leaving 60% behind?” There's a sound in there somewhere. We can unravel some of these layers of voice masks. The intimidating CFO walks in and it's back to game on.
My goal is that no matter who, no matter where, and no matter what, you're always showing up with the best version of yourself. That includes what I call internal freedom. Far too many conversations I have are around hand-wringing. They’re like, “I don't know.” There's no internal freedom in that. It goes back to what we were talking about. We trust what the world says about us. We don't trust ourselves. That's a big piece of it. I have to trust that I'm going to have the answer to the question that you will ask that I don't know. I have to trust in what I'm telling you. We don't live in that world anymore.
I agree with you.
It's a very different world we live in and it's working against us.
I've focused on this idea of authenticity because it's a word that gets thrown out a lot. I have a couple of in-person speaking events where I'm talking about authenticity so I've been researching this. I agree with you. If we can embrace our authentic selves and all of those different facets that encompass our authentic selves, that's our own core competency. That's our differentiator. That's our strength. Society has been pushing down that authenticity isn't okay. It’s like, “You can't let your freak flag fly because you're the face of our company,” or whatever that looks like.
I like the idea of working on your voice and finding those subconscious blocks in there. I am so grateful for meeting you. I want to talk about your assessment or your unique voice personality quiz that you have. Kudos to you. It was one of the most fun self-assessments I've ever done. The questions were interesting. It was quick, but then I was blown away by what my voice mask was. I told you what it was, but could you have guessed what it was if I didn't tell you my results?
Let me think about that. Maybe. What's interesting is the one that you got, there are shades of that, but I also think there are shades of another one in you. With you, the things that that mask called out were those vocal tactics that are in your muscle memory. They do have internal pieces connected with them because you were consistently getting proof in the environment that you were in that you had to change. Meaning, “This isn't working. Let me do this. Let me say a lot of words. Let me say all the words. I got to say all the more words because if I say more words, then surely, they will listen to me. I'm going to say more words.”
What came first? The chicken or the egg? I would've commented that is somewhat appropriate. Also, I'm doing a lot of the talking too, so I may have recognized the other sound more. There’s some of a different mask in you as well. I find that we all have a lot of masks, and certain masks have a lot of buckets in them. A people-pleaser mask is going to have justification, convincing, asking for permission, not saying anything, intensiveness, bothering, and all of these things. There might be a little needing to prove in there, but not in the traditional needing-to-prove perspective.
This is in the space you were in. I hear this in this space. It is, “I'm already up against the eight ball. I have to prove that I know what I'm talking about by default rather than necessarily a wound.” It’s like the guy that I told you about needing to prove. A voice mask is a voice mask. I want to find out where it comes from because I have to unravel that or whatever I give you isn't going to stick.
I feel like with you in that space that you were in, because I've worked with a lot of women in that space, it becomes this mind thing. You’re like, “I already know what they're going to do. I'm going to take on this tactic. That's the only way.” That's where I want to challenge and go, “There's another way. We can take that mask down and get closer to an authenticity that they will listen to.”
The mind doesn't want us to process any of that. The mind wants to keep us safe so the mind says, “We're doing this mask. This is going to get you what you want. Keep doing it. I promise.” For years, it did work to a degree. What we're seeing in the data, and this is based on my own research, is the number one thing people are seeking is connection. That means there is a problem with a bulletproof glass with a mask between us.
The number one thing people are seeking is connection. That means there's a problem with a bulletproof glass with a mask.
100%. It's the connection to your boss, your clients, your family, and even connections to the employer you work for or the values. You were so spot on in so many ways. I am looking at my past history. I'm looking at some of the hurdles I'm coming up against in my business. I feel grateful that I met you and that we were able to have this conversation because it gives a different lens on where you can start to do the work. We need more people like you out there helping people find their authentic selves and giving that opportunity for connection.
You would agree with me. If we have the mask up, we remove any opportunity to connect. At least we can start to try and do the work and work on it. Your self-assessment was super helpful. I bought your mini-course too. I can't wait to dive in. Tracy's website is CaptivateTheRoom.com. How else can people work with you outside of the mini-course? How do clients come to you? Can you share a little bit about the type of clients you work with?
Sure. That's such a hard question. My coaches get so mad at me because I'm like, “Well.” They're like, “No. There's no well.” What I will say is I work with people who are ready to take their business to the next level and who are ready to transform their lives. I do have some companies. I have a lot of 6, 7, and 8-figure entrepreneurs. They're to a point and they know. My people know that there's more inside of them that isn't coming out. Their numbers don't reflect it. Their videos don't reflect it. They understand that voice is going to take them to the next level.
I run a very small container. I don't do one of these big groups with hundreds of people. I do containers with eight people. Everybody has a touchpoint with me every week because it's so individual. Your stories are different from my stories. Your sounds are going to be different from my sounds. I want to do a transformation. I have one group that I work with people on with eight people at a time. I still do some solo coaching, but really for the people who want to be set free.
What's been interesting is it does feel like there is an awakening or a ripple effect happening of people wanting to open up more and dive deeper into themselves. That's personally the path to your own fulfillment. That was a big motivator for me to start my business. I wanted to use it as a vehicle for personal growth. Nothing makes you grow faster than trying to support yourself.
What I keep thinking of is I feel so lucky I get to meet people like you and meet other people doing such interesting work in the world. I personally had so many takeaways from this episode. I know our audience is going to love it. If they want to follow along and listen to your podcast, let's wrap it up and let people know where they can find you if they want to partner.
Everything is Captivate The Room except LinkedIn. I'm Tracy Goodwin. It’s Captivate The Room Podcast, @CaptivateTheRoom on social media, and CaptivateTheRoom.com. Everything is Captivate The Room.
I love your podcast. It's very bingeable or binge-worthy. Congratulations. I've been listening to it since we first confirmed this interview. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with us.
Thank you so much. It was a great conversation.
Thank you.
Important Links
Captivate The Room - Podcast
Tracy Goodwin - LinkedIn
