378-SYB-Solo.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Carol Cox:
We’re kicking off Women’s History Month, talking about the power of women’s voices and stories to change the world on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast.
Carol Cox:
More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses, running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur, and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies, and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is speaking your brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience.
Carol Cox:
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox. What’s an early memory of using your voice? That’s the question. We kicked off our recent three day in-person client retreat with. And the women’s answers were not only incredibly powerful, but also varied for some of the women who were there. They found and used their voice at a young age, maybe in their families or at school. For some of the women, they didn’t find a user voice until college, or even into their early careers. March is Women’s History Month in March 8th is International Women’s Day, so I thought I would dedicate this episode to the power of women’s voices and stories to change the world. And by world I mean everything from truly the entire world to our communities and our industries, from young women activists like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg to pro-choice women who are running for office, to women like you who are out there sharing your messages, ideas and stories, women are making a positive difference in their industries and communities.
Carol Cox:
So in this episode, I’m going to talk about the history changing importance of women getting together to share their stories and experiences, the self-doubt that too often holds us back from using our voices and what we can do about that. Why we need feminism more than ever. Specific things you can do. And I’m going to close with a recent realization of the story I have been telling myself versus the bigger story of what happened when I delivered my TEDx talk about Women in Power back in October of 2016. If you’re new to speaking your brand, welcome. We work with women entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders to develop their thought leadership message and to create their signature talk. Our mission is to empower more women to find and use their voices to enact positive change. If you would like to work with us, our Thought Leader Academy is open for enrollment for our next start date on April 2nd in our Thought Leader Academy. We work with you both one on one and in a small group to develop your thought leadership and create your signature talk, as well as learn the business of speaking. You can get all of the details, including pricing as speaking your brand.com/academy. Again, that’s speaking your brand.com/academy. And once you’re there you can submit the application form. You can also schedule a zoom call with me.
Carol Cox:
Now let’s get on with the show. I’ve always looked for the women in the stories. I think this is why I was drawn to studying history. My bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree are both in history, specifically studying women’s history and gender during the modern era. So the 19th and the 20th centuries. And I remember in high school, of course, I took all the history classes, and we probably had a women’s history month at the time, just like we have today to focus on women. But of course, the rest of history was about the great political leaders, presidents, military leaders, kings, military battles, all the machinations at court and in Congress. And of course, there weren’t a lot of women who showed up in any of those histories. And so I remember that I was always curious, well, what were women like in these time periods? What did they do? What what did they think about what was going on? And of course, then historians eventually in the 1960s and 70s and 80s started finding archival documents and diaries and letters and journals written by and to women. So a whole new round of history emerged, focusing not just on the players, the big players in history, but on regular people. And so I really enjoyed that aspect of history, because I really wanted to find the women. And of course, we know that 100 plus years ago, women came together to fight for the right to vote here in the United States.
Carol Cox:
That was granted in the 19th amendment in the year 1920. So just over 100 years ago. And then in the second wave feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, that really came about as a result of women literally getting together in each other’s living rooms to share their stories and their experiences. It was during those intimate gatherings that they realized that they weren’t alone. They realized that they had a lot in common. Whether it was feeling stymied by not being able to have a career and go to college or medical school and law school, maybe it was that they were facing domestic violence at home. They didn’t have access to credit cards and bank accounts and mortgages, things that we take for granted now in our generations. But it was by them coming together to talk about their experiences. That’s what launched that second wave feminist movement that gained power in the 1970s. Women getting together to share their stories and experiences is also what propelled the Black Lives Matter movement in the 20 tens, the MeToo movement. And if we think about young women activists like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg, they have made tremendous impacts on the world. Malala fighting for education for young girls. Greta fighting to have political leaders recognize the importance of climate change and their willingness to speak up, their willingness to challenge the status quo, their willingness to speak truth to power, the bravery and the courage that they have inspires me to use my voice as well.
Carol Cox:
The importance of women getting together to share their stories and experiences is something that I have seen in our online Thought Leader Academy groups, and also at our in-person retreats. At the most recent one that we held last week, we had 11 women plus the four team members of Speaking Your Brand. So we had 15 women in the venue for three days. They spent the first two days practicing and getting coaching and feedback from us. And then on the third day, we brought in a professional videography team to film them on our stage, delivering their speaking segments that they had been practicing. So of course it was very hands on, it was very practical, and it was very helpful to them to develop their speaking skills and their confidence as speakers. But what I saw during those three days, and what I heard from the women who attended not only this year but the prior two years as well, was that it was about so much more than the speaking practice and the filming. It was about being together in a safe and trusted space that we created for them, about hearing each other’s stories and about cheering each other on. This is definitely not a Toastmasters group or even a regular speaking workshop. What we put on is something really unique and really special, and it’s palpable when I see the women there, the transformation that they have from day one to day three.
Carol Cox:
And I’m so grateful and honored that they all took the time to be there for each other and for themselves and hearing their stories, hearing their vulnerability inspired me to film a segment on day three about that TEDx talk experience I had in 2016. This was not planned. I had planned other segments that I was going to film. But that morning on day three, as I was getting ready to go to the venue for. For that last day. I was thinking about my segments, and all of a sudden this popped into my mind about that TEDx experience because their vulnerability was contagious. So I decided to lean into that, and I shared that which I’m going to share here at the end of this episode. Now, when we think about using our voices, there are definitely self-doubts and insecurities that come up. They come up for me, they come up for the women that we work with. Some of the things that I hear from women is, well, everyone else has talked about my topic, which is true in a sense. Most people have talked about all topics that are underneath the sun. But of course, we know that you have a specific perspective and angle on it based on your experience and your expertise and your insights. Self-doubts also come up around, well, my story isn’t that important, or my story isn’t that big, or my story maybe is too unique, so no one’s going to be able to relate to that.
Carol Cox:
And the other thing that I hear, and I actually heard this relatively recently, was a woman said, well, I’m too old. I’m too old to be a speaker. No one wants to hear from me. You are definitely not too old, not too young, not to this or not to that. You are the messenger your audience is waiting for. Let me say that again. You are the messenger. Your audience is waiting for. The people in your audience. They’re waiting for you to hear your story, your insights, your lessons, your perspectives, to invite them on that journey of discovery that you have been on so that they can go on it too. And this is why having that intimate container, having that support system with other women is so important, because that’s what helps to ease those self-doubts and to build the confidence to put yourself out there in a bigger way. For those of you listening who’ve been listening for a while, you know that I have a background in local politics. I’ve been a Democratic political analyst on the TV news since 2005. So yes, a very long time. I come on during election years to talk about everything from the national presidential races to state and local races as well. And of course, I know and you know, how important it is for us to have women, specifically pro-choice women in elective office. We’ve seen recently what has been going on with women’s reproductive rights and access to health care, first, with the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade and the Dobbs decision in 2022, and now, more recently, the Alabama state Supreme Court ruling that embryos that are created through IVF are unborn children and therefore can never be destroyed.
Carol Cox:
Access to reproductive rights is a fundamental freedom that women need to have, and this is why I say why we need feminism more than ever. Feminism, in my definition, is about equal rights for men and women. It’s not about women being better than men or about women taking power away from men. It’s about making sure that we have equal rights. I’m going to read a section from a New York Times opinion column about this Alabama decision. Quote, the main effect of fetal personhood is to rob women of their right to control their own reproductive capacity and make a choice about when and whether to give birth. It subordinates the actual personhood of a woman or a teenager, as captured in her ability to think and reason and act of her own volition, and for her own purposes, to the potential for personhood found in an embryo. It is, in effect, a profound attack on the dignity and equality of women. Proponents of fetal personhood may speak in the language of rights, but this particular right is freedom retracting, not freedom enhancing. You cannot disentangle abortion from reproductive rights. You cannot disentangle reproductive rights from bodily autonomy, and you cannot disentangle bodily autonomy from basic questions of equal rights and democratic freedom.
Carol Cox:
There’s a scholar, Carol Gilligan, who’s written a number of books about feminism and the patriarchy. I’ll link to some of them in the show notes. And here’s what she has written. She said, quote, feminism is not an issue of women only or a battle of women versus men. Feminism is one of the great liberation movements of human history. It is the movement to free democracy from patriarchy. And if you think back to that opinion piece and what did it end with? You cannot disentangle bodily autonomy from basic questions of equal rights and democratic freedom. This is why these recent decisions from the US Supreme Court, the Alabama Supreme Court, legislatures in different states around the country who are passing very restrictive laws, is taking away a fundamental right from women. And now Republicans are talking about taking away the right to contraception from women. Now, I’m Gen X, I cannot imagine growing up as a teenager in my 20s and in my 30s, not having access to birth control, not having the right to decide when and if I wanted to have children. Not just because of the consequence of having a child becoming a mother, but also it’s an economic decision of what makes sense for the woman and her partner and her family and whoever else she decides to involve in that decision. So what can we do about this? Well, specifically on this issue, definitely vote for and donate to pro-choice candidates who are running for office.
Carol Cox:
There’s a national group in the United States called Emily’s list, which backs pro-choice candidates here in the state of Florida, where I live, we have an organization called Ruth’s List, which is like Emily’s list, except it’s focused on candidates who are running for office in Florida. Recently, a couple of weeks ago, I had I attended a fundraiser that they were holding here in Orlando, and there were a number of women candidates who were there to give us their elevator speeches to let us know what office they’re running for and why they’re running for office. They were probably at least 15 or 20 women candidates, running for everything from school board to county commission to state House, state Senate and the US Congress. It was incredibly rewarding to see so many women running for office. And. And one thing that I made sure that I do every election cycle is to donate to women who are running for office, because I know how hard it is not only to run for office, but also to get the funding to do so. Speaking of the patriarchy, let me share with you now that segment that I recorded about the experience I had with my Ted talk. Now, I don’t have the professional video back yet, but I did set up my iPhone for the duration of the retreat. So I have the iPhone video. The audio is not good enough for me to put here on the podcast, so I’m going to. But I did get a transcript from what I had said.
Carol Cox:
So I’m going to kind of recreate that speech that I gave. All right. Here we go. As a speaking coach, I, of course, naturally get asked a lot if I’ve ever done a Ted talk. And usually I him and I ha. And I’m like, well, no, sort of not really, but I did. I did a Ted talk at a small Ted women’s group in Orlando back in October of 2016, a month before the most shocking presidential election that we’ve had, at least in our lifetime. I’m a Democratic political analyst on TV news, so 2016 was a very busy year. I get called to the TV studio several times a week to comment on whatever was going on in the presidential race, and of course, there was always something going on pretty much every day of the week. So by the time a friend of mine asked me to do this Ted talk, I said yes. And she really wanted me to talk about politics. Now, Ted doesn’t really like their speakers to talk about politics, so I knew that this wasn’t going to end up on the TED.com homepage or YouTube channel, but I really wanted to talk about it because, like most women in this country, we saw what was going on that year the sexism, the misogyny, the backlash from the patriarchy of women wanting to assume political power, especially the highest office in the land. So as I was working on this talk, I was really excited.
Carol Cox:
I remember it was a Friday night, a few weeks before the Ted event. I was sitting at my computer because, of course, what else would I be doing on a Friday night as a speaking coach? But working on a Ted talk. But I was kind of struggling. I was doing a lot of research about women and power and statistics about how many women are elected to Congress. And by the way, it’s only about 25%. So very, very far short of our 51% of the population. But it wasn’t really gelling. So I just kind of sat back from my computer desk and I closed my eyes and I looked up, like waiting for a download from the universe, which has never happened to me. But it happened that night. All of a sudden the light bulbs went off and I started furiously typing and this incredible script just poured out of me. Now, it’s been since 2016 that I delivered that talk, but I remember the beginning of it went like this. Her voice is so grating. I wish she wouldn’t a yell so much. She needs to smile more. She’s too ambitious. She’s a man eater. I want a woman president. But why did it have to be her? Uh, Hillary, these remarks are annoying, but pretty readily called out by both men and women in politics, in the media. But the man eater comment caught my attention. Let me share with you the full statement from the man who was being interviewed by a reporter about Hillary Clinton.
Carol Cox:
Quote, she’s a man eater. For those who are going to get in her way, she’s going to cut their liver out, serve their heart with no regard. I’m dead serious. End quote. Yeah. Pretty shocking. There’s a lot going on in that statement. So I wrote this whole script about everything from Medusa and the sirens, the myths and the history about how much we fear powerful women because we fear that they’re going to cause destruction. Like, where did that come from? We are the creators of life. We keep everything together. Yet the patriarchy has decided that women in power are destructive. So I wrote this entire script as eight minute script and it was great. I practiced it in my car almost every day and it was fluid. I knew every single line of that talk. So the day of the event arrives, I get there. There’s about 50 women at the venue, most of them I knew. And I was so happy to see my friends and my colleagues in Orlando. So the speakers, the other speakers I was speaking with, we go off to a different room and they’re getting us miked up. And I’ll get nervous before a speaking engagement, you know, like butterflies. And your adrenaline is pumping. But that’s okay, because it kind of shows that you care and you just kind of work with it. But this. This was different. I was really clammy, like my skin was just really clammy and my body felt really weird.
Carol Cox:
I never had felt like this before, so I’m kind of talking to myself like, Carol, you’re going to be fine. You, you know your script. These are your friends out here. It’s all women that you know and that you like. You’ll be fine. Just drink some water. So I did that. Kind of just talked to myself, drank some water, and then we get ready to go up. I’m the third or fourth speaker to go. So when my turn comes, I get up and I start my talk. And again, I know every line. And this was about maybe 45 seconds a minute into it and my mouth gets really dry. So I keep talking. But there’s no saliva coming. They’re so dry I have no saliva left. And this has never happened to me. Not ever in a speaking engagement, not ever on live TV. And then a couple minutes into my talk, I all of a sudden I get to the point where literally I cannot speak anymore. And I was petrified. I’m the speaking coach and I’m sitting here and I literally can’t say another word. So all these things were running through my mind like, okay, I need water, but I don’t really want to stop and go get it because that’s over there by my by my, the side of the room. But I’m like, okay, well, I have no choice. I have to go get some water.
Carol Cox:
So I go to where my water bottle is and I drink some water, and I come back and I pick up where I left off. But of course I was embarrassed. I was humiliated, like, how did this happen? Why did this happen? And for so long, the story I told myself and the story I’ve told on this podcast, was that I had put such high expectations of myself as a speaking coach to be perfect, to show up perfectly to the people in the audience because that’s what they would expect of me. Of course, they didn’t expect that of me. That was my own imagination. But very recently I had another story come to mind. Yes, I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. I wanted to do a great job. It was an important story I wanted to tell about why, as a society, we’re afraid of women in power. But then I realize that of all the ironies, I had lost my voice at the very moment I was challenging the patriarchy and their desire to keep women down. I actually fell victim to it, and that very moment where I literally can no longer speak. So now I’ve realized that since then. Since 2016, I further developed my confidence in my voice and my ability to say the things that need to be said. The challenge, the status quo, and to speak truth to power. And never again will I let the weight of the patriarchy take my voice.
Carol Cox:
And I hope you never let it too. Thank you. All of what I just delivered to you came to me that morning. Kind of like the the outline of what I wanted to talk about. And that just flowed for me on that stage. That is the power of being in community with other women, hearing their stories and having that support group and cheering each other on. If that’s something you would like, I invite you to join us in our online Thought Leader Academy. We work closely with you both one on one and in a small group of only up to eight women, so you get plenty of hands on time from us as well as feedback from each other. You can get all the details about our thought Leader Academy and speaking your brand.com/academy. Again, that’s speaking your brand.com/academy. For the rest of this month of March, you’re going to be hearing from many of the women clients that we work with, graduates from our Thought Leader Academy, as well as women who have attended our in-person client retreat. I want you to hear about what they do in their work, to hear their stories, to have them talk about how they have found and how they are using their voices. So be sure to follow the podcast if you don’t already share the podcast with a friend or a colleague who you think would enjoy it and would be inspired by it. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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