Nausheen Chen
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
For sure. It was exactly during the time when I was growing up. I was the youngest in the entire family. So no one paid any attention to me. My opinions didn't really matter. I was the background noise in a lot of conversations. And I didn't like that. Even as a young 8, 9, 10-year-old, I remember feeling like, why don't I have a voice at the table?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Why is no one listening to my opinions, even though they're silly and uninformed? But I want to be heard. But the very first time I stepped on a stage, everyone quietened down and they started listening to me. And that was the one thing I had been craving. I just wanted to be heard and I wanted to be seen.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
That's when I realized the power of my voice and the power of being on a stage and how much joy and reassurance it can bring to your own self.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Not at all. So I was very much one of those people who was very comfortable on a stage, very comfortable speaking to a lot of people, but that did not mean I was good. So one of the very first times that I was on a Stage quote unquote stage formally was at my first job when I was at Procter and Gamble. And on my second or third day at the job, my boss thought that she'll give me a fun challenge.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
She wanted me to present in front of our agency. This is my third day on the job as a fresh graduate. I have no idea what the presentation is about. It's just been given to me the day before and I had to go in front of a whole bunch of people and present it. So, of course, with my confidence and the experience of having been on stage, I went ahead and I did the whole presentation.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And afterwards, my boss comes up to me and says, not bad. But what the heck was going on with your hands? So that's, if you can see me, whoever's listening, that's what my hands were doing. They were completely out of control and I had no idea.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So that was one of the first times that I had a little bit of a reality check and realized that I need to not just be confident, but also acquire skills to be able to speak with confidence and authority, elegance, fluidity. So that's when I first started becoming an intentional speaker.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So this is something I teach in all my classes and to all my clients. The one thing that I want you to learn is if I'm working with you, is how to go from being a speaker on autopilot to a speaker who is intentional.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So for me, being an intentional speaker means taking a little bit of time to structure your thoughts, getting rid of filler words, being very mindful of who you're speaking with so that you don't use too much jargon. making sure that you're building in audience participation and engagement. All those things are intentional. They don't just happen.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So for me, folks that work on their slides till the last possible minute and then just go and present by reading off of their slides, that's speaking on autopilot. Or when you speak up in a meeting and you haven't taken time to structure your thoughts and you litter them with filler words and run on sentences and you ramble, your message gets lost. No one really even remembers what you said.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
That is unintentional speaking on autopilot, which most of us unfortunately do. So it's that transition from speaking the way that you've just learned to speak over the years to being very mindful and intentional about both your message and your delivery.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Belief, self-belief. There's a lot of negative self-talk that goes on in our heads and that happens to all of us. Very often, our brain tells us things that aren't necessarily true. So before you start a presentation, before you go on a podcast, your brain's telling you all these things about how you don't even belong there. You might mess up. The audience is going to judge you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Remember that other experience you had that was awful? That's going to happen again. So you're getting all these thoughts because you have believed in them and you've never challenged them. So challenging those thoughts, that's the first thing that you can do to break that cycle. of always feeling nervous or always feeling less than.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And then, of course, there's the fight, flight, or freeze instinct that also kicks in the moment you start speaking.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
When you're in the spotlight, very often our lizard brain kicks in and tells us that being in the spotlight with people looking at you, so eyes of strangers looking at you, being out in the open without a weapon, without anyone behind you, supporting you, looking out for you, it's all very bad. So we have these red flags, these dangerous signals that go off in our brain.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So first working through the self-belief that leads up to that moment and then figuring out how do you deal with that, with those nerves settling in. That is what creates confidence in the moment. It takes a while to learn, but it's absolutely something that you can learn.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
First, it's about adding in the human element. So I would say first, we actually take a step back and look at how can you be more human, more yourself when you speak? Because that is the number one thing that I see people struggling with. They either become robotic and stiff because they're nervous, so they forget to be themselves.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Or they feel that I'm in this professional world where stories and emotions don't necessarily have a place. I need to be professional, quote unquote professional, whatever their perception of professional is or whatever they feel like other people's perception of professional is. So for those reasons, I've seen people shy away from professionalism. being able to be themselves.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So that's the very first step. And then, yes, finding those defining moments, finding those stories. I found that using a two-step process works in this case, where first you take a Sunday and brainstorm all the different moments of your life, all the different stories you can think of that have shaped you, that have shaped your journey so far.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And once you have that brainstorm, and I'm sure you'll come up with at least five to seven to 10 stories from your life. Once you have that as raw material, then look at what are the lessons that you can draw from those stories? Where would you tell those stories? And then having a story bank of,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
five to seven or 10 stories that you can tell at different meetings and podcasts on webinars, making sure that you're organizing these stories and making sure that you understand why you're telling them. What is the quote unquote moral of the story? What is the business lesson? That is the work that I do with clients on the storytelling piece of it so that they have a story bank ready to go.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
sure there was the first professional failure as an entrepreneur that was a huge and a harsh lesson for me this was when i was a filmmaker because that was the first time i was an entrepreneur and we had gotten our first big project with a big global brand it was a huge deal for a very small filming team So my goal was to do everything right. And I involved the client from the first step.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I involved them on the scripting, the storyboarding, the choice of the actors, the music. And throughout the process, the client seemed to be very smooth. They kept saying yes to everything. So I thought I was doing a great job at communicating with them. When we filmed everything and we showed the client the first cut, they were disappointed. They were deeply disappointed.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And that was the first time that I was experiencing it as a service provider. They said that this is not up to par, not what we were thinking of. We had higher expectations than this. And at one point, we abandoned that project because they lost faith in our capabilities. That was a huge hit. So that made me reflect on what went wrong.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I was leading the project, so there's got to be something that I did that went wrong. And I realized that I was engaging in superficial communication throughout. Every time I would ask for their approval, they would say yes without asking any questions, without me figuring out whether they understood what that phase of the project was.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And I realized that the onus was on me to make sure that I ask the right questions, even if I'm not getting the questions aimed at me. So since that project, every single time I've worked with a client, I always make sure that I'm the one asking the questions so that I'm very clear on whether things have been understood or not.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And this works really well in any kind of a public speaking context where if you're speaking, if you're doing a presentation, for example, it's on you to make sure the audience is with you. And very few presenters remember that. They think that all they have to do is deliver the message. That's only half the job. That was the hardest lesson that I've learned.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
For sure, the first pushback I hear when I talk about speaking intentionally is, Nausheen, this is just the way I am. I want to be authentic. I don't want to lose my authenticity. people have a misconception. They have an incorrect idea of what authenticity is. Because if you look at it, you perform different roles in life. At one point, I'm a wife. At one point, I'm a daughter-in-law.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
At another point, I'm a coach for a client. And I converse differently based on the role that I'm in. And that's not me being fake with any of those people. That's me showing a specific part of myself. And very often if I'm on stage or if I'm performing, I'm amplifying parts of myself. I'm smiling more. I'm being more energetic.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
But if I go to my family and I'm this energetic and bubbly and I start giving them a speech, they're going to be lost. You're going to be like, what did you eat today? So it's really about that. It's about figuring out which parts of your personality to amplify on camera or on stage and then playing that role, stepping into those shoes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Some people call this having your Sasha Fierce personality, right? Having a personality that turns on when you need to be on, when you need to be public facing. If that's how it works for you, also totally fine. But at no point are you being, quote unquote, fake.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
That's the best way of being authentic when you're being very intentional about which parts of yourself to amplify and to show for a very specific purpose, which is always to connect with the audience.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Absolutely. It's always in the service of the audience. So why would you bring more energy? It's not for the sake of bringing more energy. It's for the sake of showing the audience that you are passionate about something so that they also feel that passion. Because people don't know what you're thinking, what you're feeling.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Very often I work with clients who have a poker face and they've just never learned to express things with their face. And that's a problem when you go into a presentation or a podcast or a webinar and you want to show how incredibly passionate you are about this project or about your area of expertise. But all that comes across is low energy and no expressions.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
That's not going to show people that you have confidence in yourself and that you really believe in what you're talking about. So that's just one example. Energy is one example. There are many other ways of refining the way that you speak so that you make a better impact. So it's always in service to the audience, to the message, and to your own expertise.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Very often, experts speak in a way that does not do them justice. They are experts in their field, but when they speak, they fail to impress, they fail to engage, they fail to be memorable. So it's making those changes in the delivery of your message so that it's received well and remembered.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I absolutely agree. Your role is one way of defining what you do, but it may not always be very clear. So for me, it always comes down to who's asking you the question and what context and who's going to be at the receiving end. but making sure that you're actually talking about what you actually accomplish, what are the outcomes of the work that you do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
That's such a great question. There have been studies that have been done on this, and the same studies have also been discredited. However, the initial study that was done on this by Albert Meribin, he did a study which said that your body language accounts for more than 60%, I believe, of communication.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And very often people quote that study and say that, oh, your body language speaks more than your actual words based on this study. But since then, the study has actually been discredited. We don't have real research or data on which parts of your communication land with the audience. Is it the message? Is it the delivery? In my opinion, based on my experience and research and work with clients,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I would say it's very much 50-50, mostly, if I really average it out. So for sure, your message is important. Making sure that your message is concise and structured well. That's on the content side of things. And then if you're not delivering it well,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
You're preparing a gourmet meal and slapping it onto a napkin and throwing it into the lap of your customer if you're not delivering the message well. If you're reading from your slides, if you're not making your words come alive, if you're not making an effort to connect with the audience, then you're not doing justice to that message. So that's why delivery is easily 50% of the impact.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And this is why I very often advise clients, if you have a presentation coming up, a keynote, a podcast, something that you're preparing for, take the prep time and divide it into two. And that's how much time you should spend 50% of it on your message. And then 50% of it on the actual delivery, the actual practice of it, which most people don't do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And the top 1% always make sure they dedicate at least 50% of their prep time to the delivery aspect.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I tell my clients to think of the different roles that they can play. So if you imagine a film set, there's the script writer, there's the actor, and then there's the director. And those roles are happening in your head all the time when you speak. So you're preparing for your presentation. You're scripting what you want to say. Then, of course, you're going and performing it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
But then there's a voice in your head that critiques you. the best way to make sure that you're not attaching yourself too much to the performance is to focus on one thing at a time. So when you're performing, especially when you're practicing, just practice. And I always discourage people from practicing in front of a mirror because it's not very natural and it's very hard to focus on
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
the message and on the performance if all you're doing is staring at your face so recording yourself and watching yourself back is essential just like an athlete would go and review tapes of their performance and look at what they did well and what they didn't so being a performer in the moment when you're practicing and then when you're reviewing your footage
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
aim to only have your director hat on. So the person on the screen is the performer, but you're the director of the piece. And now all you need to do is improve the performance of that person on the screen. Okay, they happen to be you. That's a coincidence, but they could also be anyone else. So if you can separate those roles,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
If you can let the script writer do their thing, but then shut up so that you can perform instead of rethinking and rewriting all the time. And then if you can let the director critique later and not in the moment, that's how you'll perform really well in the moment. And then when you're reviewing, if you can get the actor to step away,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
and just focus on how can I improve next time, detaching yourself from the person on the screen, that's the best way that I've found of desensitizing yourself to your faults and focusing instead on how do you improve.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So for example, I help people become the best speakers they can be. That probably means more to someone versus me saying I'm a public speaking coach.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Improv itself is such an amazing practice because you get to face your worst fear. People are staring at you and you don't know what to say. You don't have a script. You don't have anything to fall back on. But the beautiful thing about improv is that you're not winging it. There are structures in place. There are rules that you learn. You learn yes and. You learn how to work with your team.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
You learn how to create a scene. You don't just go there unprepared, even though you don't have a script. So for me, that's the most beautiful part of improv that I bring into the coaching that I do as well. Because a lot of people feel that there are only those two extremes. You can either have a script and do a presentation and be fully prepared, or you're just going to wing it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
But there's actually a way to be prepared to have mental structures, to have thought structures that will help you structure your thoughts on the fly so that you don't feel like you're just blurting out things completely unprepared. So for me, that's the biggest thing that I learned from improv and that I keep very close to my heart and then to the coaching work that I do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Yeah, for sure. So the idea is that confidence isn't just about inner confidence. It's also about performative confidence. And very often people just look at one aspect of that and miss the other. So for the longest time, for example, I focused primarily on performative confidence. I was able to go on a stage and speak and perform.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
be this confident woman that people would then applaud and come up to and say, wow, that was amazing. But all the while on the inside, I felt awful because I hadn't worked on my inner confidence. Very often I see this switched as well. There are a number of people that have a lot of confidence in their message and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
in themselves and themselves as an expert, but then they don't know how to show that confidence. So that's why it's, you start on the outside. So first you look at how are you being perceived both by yourself and by others. So
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
In my coaching, before we start, we do a self-evaluation of your own communication skills and an anonymous peer feedback process, which is very eye-opening for everyone, where we ask 15 to 20 people that you work with how they feel you come across as a communicator. So that's looking at how you're being perceived, going on the outside. Then we work on the inner confidence piece.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
What is it that you're thinking before you step on that stage? What are the beliefs that you've held that aren't helping you become the best speaker you can be? How do we tackle that? How do we make sure that the confidence that you want to portray on the outside has a very direct link to the confidence you have on the inside?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And then we take it outside where we look at what are the performative aspects of confidence that we as human beings have learned to associate with confident behavior.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So standing with good posture, projecting your voice, not using a lot of ums and uhs, having clear, concise messaging, making eye contact, all those things that we've learned as an audience to connect with, oh, this speaker is confident. You need to know as a speaker what to do so that you create that perception intentionally.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So that's looking outwards, then going inwards, and then coming out again. And that's what I teach in terms of what I call a speaker's toolkit. So you should always know how to play with your voice, how to show up with different types of energy, how to use your body language. Those are all outward confidence tools that help you come across as an amazing speaker.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
What you actually do is a very specific outcome of your role. So I absolutely agree. Your role is one way of defining what you do, but it may not always be very clear. So for me, it always comes down to who's asking you the question and what context and who's going to be at the receiving end.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
But making sure that you're actually talking about what you actually accomplish, what are the outcomes of the work that you do. So, for example, I help people become the best speakers they can be. That probably means more to someone versus me saying I'm a public speaking coach.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So if you can explain in very simple terms, what is the outcome that you achieve or that you help others achieve through your role, that's going to have a much more meaningful impact on whoever's listening versus your title.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
It really depends on the platform and on the audience. The reason why I said I help people become the best speakers they can be is we've already had quite a bit of a conversation and we've talked about many different things that I do in a lot of detail. So in this context, I felt that I don't need to over explain that piece of confidence and the difference that it makes in people's lives.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
But yes, for sure, taking it to another level, not just talking about the how piece of it, but really talking about the deeper impact that you can have on people's lives. I help you uncover the confidence that you didn't have when you spoke. That would be a more meaningful way of describing the work that you do. There's a fine balance though. I would say that
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
It really depends on what kind of an audience is listening in, because for some, that answer might be a bit too high level because you also don't want to be too vague and you don't want people to not be very clear on what you do, especially if you want them to be future clients, for example, especially if you want them to know what it is that you can actually help them with in a concrete way.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Yes, that is a process that you would start after learning to be a strong speaker. So I always think of it in these two steps, because the very first thing that you need to do when you're learning to excel in any discipline is looking at what has come before you. What are the masters saying? How are they working with the discipline?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So if you want to be an artist, the first thing you do is you study the greats and you look at their techniques. That's what I call learning. understanding and using the speaker's toolkit. So that's the first step, which is just looking at yourself and looking at what are the different ways that you're already speaking and what are your strengths and what are the opportunity areas?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Thank you so much for having me here, John. I was looking forward to this conversation for the last two weeks, so really excited that we're getting started.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
How can you be a strong speaker overall? And then step two, once you understand how to work with your voice, how to use your body language, how to show up with the right energy, then you look at how can I add parts of my personality in this so that I don't sound like every other good speaker. That's where you lean into aspects of your personality. You figure out
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Am I going to be, for example, a standoffish, colder, more perhaps sophisticated personality who doesn't always smile but contributes their opinion and expertise? Or am I going to be a more friendly, approachable personality that smiles more and emotes more and is more outgoing and shows that personality part of me, which is not that you want to come to me, but I want to go to you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So those are the decisions that you would make at that stage where you purposefully look at what is the aspect of your personality that you want to showcase. I always think of one of my favorite clients, Lara Acosta here, because when I first started working with her, I asked her these questions. What part of you do you want to show?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
She was going to go on all these podcasts and big international stages for the first time. And she said, a chameleon. I don't know. I'm another person on Instagram. I'm someone else on LinkedIn. And I'm someone else in real life. And that was great because then we could pick and choose. We could look at, okay, so are you more glamorous? Are you more funny? Are you more down to earth?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Are you more sophisticated and more into... fancy stuff versus more simple stuff. That's the decision that we can make at this point and be very intentional about which aspect of your personality to show on these podcasts and webinars. So it's leaning into one part of it. For me, for example, I lean into
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
taking things in a very lighthearted way, making sure that I'm never very serious, making sure that you see this aspect of my personality that's outgoing and energetic. So those are very intentional decisions that I make. And I can change the way I speak. I can be more serious and less effervescent if I need to be like now. But that's not the person I want to show on camera.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I just stumbled upon it. I was looking at all the podcasts that people I knew had been on. And I was looking at folks that I was connected with, like Jason Pfeiffer and Terry Rice and others that were going on all these podcasts. And your podcast was one of the ones that kept coming up with all these fantastic folks that you've talked to. So I had a little bit of FOMO.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
It's given me immense confidence in myself, the kind of confidence I never had before. So like we spoke at the beginning of the conversation, I always felt like an imposter before in my roles. I always felt like this wasn't me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And now that I'm doing something that I have lived and that I have been so passionate about and feel so strongly connected with, it feels like I can really shape my life however I like. That kind of feeling gives me confidence and gives me power, gives me so much agency and And I never felt like that before.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
When I was working as a filmmaker, when I was in the corporate world, I always felt like I was living within systems that were defined by other people or institutions had a direct impact on the trajectory of my life and my career. And now it's very much me. I get to shape my business and my life the way I want. I never dreamt that was possible before. So this just being able to
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
take what I know, what I've learned the hard way and shaping it into something that I can teach people and knowing that this is something that enriches the lives of people is just incredible. I never thought that I would be doing this or I'd be able to share something that I know so well and help others get to the same level.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Sure. Speaking.coach. That's my website. That's where you can find lots of free resources and a free course on speaking fearlessly. So it's a very foundational course, but you'll get all the basics of learning to be a strong speaker. You'll get a glimpse of that speaker's toolkit that I've been talking about. So speaking.coach, that's the best way to find me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Thank you so much, John, for having me. This was such a great conversation. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I was like, I need to reach out to John and I would love to talk to him.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
That's awesome.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I actually really believe in the kindness of strangers and I have actually been on the receiving end of a lot of kindness. The most recent one I can think of is a silly little thing, but it really touched me. I was at a salon getting my hair done. It's something that happens very frequently because I have purple hair for those of you who can't see me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So I was at the salon, my phone was dead and I had to take a very important call. So I I, of course, didn't have my charger and I'm just looking around like a headless chicken trying to find my charger and there's nothing there. It wasn't there. So this other client at the same place lent me his power bank and he was basically done. And I said, oh, I had put it in and it wasn't charging.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So he said, I'm just going to go for a coffee. You can keep this power bank and I'm going to come back in a little bit and then I can take it back from you. And he had no reason to do that. He didn't know me. But just that little act of kindness, someone willing to give me something of theirs and go out of their way to help a stranger was very touching. I didn't know what to say.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I just kept saying thank you over and he saved my day.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Always. I was always the person who looked at... things as experiments. I've always been an experimenter all my life. So I always would ask myself, how deep does this rabbit hole go? So that's why you see all these different trajectories. And I think of it as meandering. I wandered around a lot. I explored a lot before I
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I sat down when I was approaching my 40s and asked myself, well, what is it that you really want to do? And believe it or not, I actually went through an Ikigai exercise at the time because I was very lost. I was 38 and had a career pivot already, and still didn't feel like that was my calling in life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And that's when I decided to combine all these various experiences that I'd had from the improv world, from the film world, but also from the public speaking world, because I had been speaking on stages and on camera for 15 years for fun, not really as a source of living. So
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I combined all of those things and then realized that public speaking was the one thing that was tying all these diverse experiences together.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
No, I had no idea. I was a filmmaker at the time. I was directing commercials for these big brands in China. And on the outside, I was fairly successful. I was getting big projects. People were getting to know me. I had been doing it for about seven years. And it was a part of my identity. I would say, hi, I'm Nausheen. I'm a filmmaker. It just came out like that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
but I never felt connected to it. I never felt like I was a filmmaker. I felt like an imposter. Even though I was formally trained in filmmaking and I had the skillset supposedly, but I always felt like I was playing a role and not really doing something that connected with me on a deeper level. So I had no idea.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
It was actually a question that my husband asked me that got me started on this path of coaching people to be better speakers. Because he said, Nausheen, you have been speaking on stages for as long as I've known you. And you do it and you love it and you're good at it. So why aren't you looking at it as... something that you can build a living off of? Why have you just ruled it out?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And why are you doing it as just a hobby for life? So that really made me think. And I had no idea that I could actually just take something that I absolutely love doing and make a career out of it and teach it to others and become an entrepreneur in that way. It was all very new to me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
For me, it was learning to listen to myself over the noise of other people's opinions of what I should be doing with my life. And that was very difficult for me because I have always been a people pleaser and I have always struggled with giving weight to my own opinions versus the opinions of others. I hold people that are dear to me in very high regard. So I often seek their advice.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
And so I would ask people, well, I don't really feel like I'm a filmmaker. And they would say, what are you talking about? It's great. You're doing well. You're getting all these projects. You've been doing this for so long. You have expertise in this. You have a network. Why would you want to give it up? And that stopped me for the longest time from listening to my own voice.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So I would say the biggest favor you can do yourself is to listen to your own voice. Listen to whatever is telling you that this is not where you belong. You can do something else, something better. You can do so much more. You can achieve so much more.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
First of all, love the deep research. I was a radio show host. That was actually my first job and I was still in college at the time. I actually didn't have any of those anxieties. Maybe I was very naive. It was the joy and the naivety of youth, perhaps at the age of 19 or 20. But for me, it was amazing. It was incredible. That was exactly what I wanted.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
Because from a very young age, I was made to or encouraged to perform. I was always that annoying kid who would get up in front of the entire family and recite poems and entertain. So I've been an entertainer for a long time. I just... didn't have enough confidence in myself that I could actually do it on a bigger scale. So when I got the gig to do my own radio show, it was incredible.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
I loved the idea of connecting with so many people throughout what I'm saying. And I would get these calls from folks who would be following along the show and the kind of conversations that I would have with strangers was just, that was incredible.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Nausheen Chen on How to Embrace Your Unique Voice | EP 530
So for me, it was the first time that I realized that by being in the spotlight, by allowing yourself to be visible, you can connect with so many people. It's incredible on such a deep level. by just making that first step, taking that first step to say, all right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to speak to a whole bunch of people. I'm going to speak in public.