Episode 35
How Being a Disney Princess Prepared Me to Be a Communications/Presentation Coach with Brooke Young
Welcome Brooke Young, Professional Speaker, Vocalist, Entrepreneur, and Personal Presentation Coach, to Saturday Soundbites! In this episode, Brooke shares her expertise on how to use your communications skills to make connections and reach your audience.
She is a multi-talented, heart-centered entrepreneur and speaker who creates connections through her own life experiences. Young’s performance journey began at age five when she began performing in local theatre productions. From that moment onward, her life has been on-stage or camera in some capacity.
Utilizing her broadcast journalism degree, Young was hired by Fox Sports Ohio to provide live side-line coverage for college basketball along with interview hosting, additionally working for Ohio TV news. After a decade-long tenure in regional and professional theatre, she shifted her talents to character performance where she portrayed many of the world’s most beloved characters: from parades to performances, to a Make-A-Wish opportunity.
Her expertise in communication allows her to not only utilize her dynamic skill set to speak on many topics but also has the innate power to break through an invisible barrier to speak to those who have an inability to comprehend.
Veronica and Brooke will talk shop and offer strategies and tips to help you grow in this area.
[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello. Hello and welcome to Saturday soundbites. I'm your host, Veronica Sofer. And I'm so excited to be here this morning. With another episode of Saturday soundbites, where we talk all things, marketing, public relations, advertising, branding, networking, essentially your visibility strategy. We bring you guests that have amazing content.
[00:00:21] Tips strategies and stories that will inspire you so that you can grow your visibility strategy and really show up for your business for your clients and for yourself. So if you are looking for some phenomenal tips on presentation, style and speaking presentation style, cause maybe that's something you're working on, just presenting yourself.
[00:00:39] Then you are in for a treat because I have got a phenomenal guest. Brooke young is going to be joining us in just a moment. She's an author, entrepreneur professional speaker, and she. Folks on how to communicate. So we're going to learn some great tips from her. I promise you, this is going to be an episode where you're going to want to take notes.
[00:00:56] So if you are watching right now live, then please comment so that we can say hello and engage with you. If you're watching the replay hashtag replay. So we know that you caught the show, and if you are listening on our podcast, we want to make sure you hit subscribe so that, you know, Any episodes of Saturday soundbites.
[00:01:14] So with that, I'm going to invite Brooke up and we are going to start our amazing conversation. Welcome.
[00:01:21] Brooke: Thank you so much for having me on. I'm thrilled to be here. Oh,
[00:01:24] Veronica: I'm so excited. I love the fact that you are a professional communications coach and I can't wait to learn more about what that is so that people can start looking into what it is you do.
[00:01:36] So
[00:01:36] Brooke: welcome. Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. There is nothing. I love more than what. Oh, that's
[00:01:41] Veronica: fantastic.
[00:01:42] Brooke: Good morning, Sandy points that make me
[00:01:47] Veronica: happy. Yay. Me too. Me too. So for sure. So Brooke, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you fell into or pursued or were lucky enough to be blessed with these titles.
[00:02:00] Brooke: Yes, well, that is quite an eclectic story. I started in theater when I was quite young. I was five years old, so I was an actress, a singer, a dancer, and that's really what. I developed a lot of my communication style with a lot of my ability to put myself out there. I did not realize just how important that would be until later in life.
[00:02:18] From there, I obtained a broadcast journalism degree. I did work work, Ohio TV news, and I worked for Fox sports Ohio as well. In the meantime I was at Disney princess. People love that. So I got to throw it out there. I also wrote a book about my children's and my, excuse me, my therapy dog experiences when I was a child.
[00:02:36] Wow. That was a wonderful mistake from a communication coach. I know there's just too much to list and I also competed for miss Ohio. So I have done it all. I have been quite eclectic and all of that brought me to this idea of communication of speaking of visibility. I love visibility. So I love this show and a personal presentation because it takes a lot of confidence.
[00:03:00] It takes a lot of empowerment to put yourself.
[00:03:03] Veronica: And what I love about the things that you talk about, especially with your background is it's almost like it matriculated up from a really young age and it's like, you built upon every component of that. So tell us about, I mean, you're, so you're a professional actor.
[00:03:20] You are on the stage, you're utilizing your skills and then you decided to pursue it in college. And then. On television. Oh, by the way, in a Disney princess. So what, what were the transitions into that?
[00:03:33] Brooke: That I know that's so difficult. So just starting, I was homeschooled and that gave me so many opportunities and I'm a big advocate for homes.
[00:03:41] So when I was a child, I was sitting in my room and I was singing. I was dancing. I was reading lines to myself in a mirror and my clients will say, I don't want to see myself in a mirror. I'm like, well, honey, I used to watch myself in a mirror for an hour a day. So I did that. And then also in my meantime, I trained in therapy.
[00:03:59] Now that's a unique hobby for an eight year old nine year old kid. Right. I had to go and retriever, I saw an ad in the newspaper and it was just talking about therapy dogs and how important it was. Or elderly people and people in children's hospitals to be exposed to them. And I said, I want to train my dog as a therapy dog.
[00:04:17] I had no background. I knew no one that had a therapy dog and I had no experience training dogs, but despite all of these insurmountable hurdles, I actually trained my first therapy dog when I was nine or 10 years old. And then we started taking her to nursing homes every single week for about five years.
[00:04:34] And that just changed my perception of communicating. I was able to communicate with people that were 90 years old and I was nine. And when we exchange those ideas, my whole worldview, my perception just changed. And over time, I really believe that's where my foundational communication skills came from, was the changing of ideas in this compassionate understanding that we all have similarities despite what could be perceived as our outward differences.
[00:05:01] I didn't care that they had gray hair and wrinkles. I just wanted to. So that was a really, really big asset for me. I loved being on camera. I loved being on stage, so I said, I'm going to be a broadcaster. And then I went into sports. I did not anticipate to go into sports, but that really was driven out of a fear of, I don't like talking about homicide.
[00:05:24] I like people to be hurt. And so for me, sports was a way to connect, to engage, to, to be fun, to have. And there are so much grit and perseverance in sports. So I was actually interviewed host and I was able to sit down with people and the stories that you learn, the way that people overcome, the passion they have for their sport, it's really phenomenal.
[00:05:46] And as I just engage with those people, I grew my passion for sports more and more and TV news. Although I loved it, it wasn't necessarily my cup of tea. So I spent more time on the scorecard. But everybody wants to hear about the princesses. Let's get real. I'm like,
[00:06:03] Veronica: that's great. So tell me about being a Disney princess.
[00:06:06] Brooke: I played multiple princesses and that experience is life changing for anyone that's done it or anyone that has been there. You just realize how magical that is. The children come up to you and they have this look in your, in their eye that you can't get anywhere else to be quite honest. And to be able to provide that experience for hundreds of families, it gives you this idea of.
[00:06:28] Delivery. And that sounds really strange, right. But I talk about it all of the time. There's 500 kids, a whole line and not every kid is the same, has the same background, has the same experience. So they all need a different style, but your job is to make it magical and wonderful and memorable for them.
[00:06:45] Right? Some kids want to ask you 50 questions and some kids would prefer to, you know, we do to answer three questions. Some kids want to be hugged. Some kids would rather not. Some kids would hold hands or some kids want singing all of those differences and being able to adapt on the fly. That really was a big asset for me because every child needed something different.
[00:07:09] And when you go on an interview, when you go on TP, you really need to be adaptable. You need to be able to do something different every time and know your topic inside. And so when you were watching the movies and you're like, man, I have to know this movie inside and out. That's really how entrepreneurs need to be about the.
[00:07:26] I need to study it just like I studied those movies.
[00:07:29] Veronica: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And even, and I would say too, even for C-suite executives or you know, traditional brick and mortar business owners, you, you have to show up authentically and connect with people. And so I love that that the illustration of thinking about all of the components that make that experience for that child.
[00:07:48] Cause I was one of those kids. I was, I was a seven or eight year old when I went to Disneyland in California. And I still have the little autograph book that I was able to get autographs from. And so I guess I, it didn't occur to me, which is a good thing, that there was any thought or strategy or training that went into that experience because it was just so authentic and meaningful to me.
[00:08:10] Brooke: Right. And then so many kids. And I always laugh about it when I take a picture just as myself, I'm like, man, thousands of people have pictures of me on their phones. So that that's always funny to think about really is it's not necessarily strategy because you feel it in the moment. But if you want to create a memorable experience for everybody, you have to be able to adapt a and then you have to change your delivery style dependent upon what that person needs.
[00:08:37] And for me, One of my specialties was working with special needs and that's something that I have been very gifted at by night by nature. And I'm very fortunate for it, but you have to be able to adapt quite a lot to work with special needs. And so for me, I always wanted to work with Make-A-Wish kids because that was a way to adapt as a way to challenge myself and to create an even more memorable
[00:08:58] Veronica: experience.
[00:08:59] Yeah, definitely. I, and so I think that that's a really good segue into. How do you then use those skills in a professional setting? So, right. I think the connection, the intention of being authentic and connecting with people you that got honed in really clearly in that role. And then how do you bring it into the professional nine to five corporate America role or the online digital entrepreneur space?
[00:09:27] Brooke: Yeah. So I love that you asked that question. I love that. You just said the word intention, because I harp on my clients about that. They get very tired of the word intention. So when we're talking, I don't care if you're on a live video, I don't care if you're selling something. I don't care. If you're talking to your friend about your business, you need to have an intention behind what you're saying.
[00:09:47] And we have really lost that. I don't know. If you're an executive, if you don't know what your intention is before you go into a presentation, before you go into a video, you're going to be very bad at around by what happens. So on video that can look like reading, reading the comments, instead of sticking with your points and a presentation that can be focusing on Jim's body language is Jim judging me rather than keeping with your presentation.
[00:10:11] And so the intention part is very, very important. Secondly, people have. Terrified fear of the unknown and for many, an audience's unknown. If I were to go walk out on stage, I do not know everyone in the audience, correct. Although you may know people in your boardroom, if you're an executive, you may know people on your live video, there will always be people you don't know, watching.
[00:10:35] And for many people that creates extreme anxiety, extreme anguish, just a discomfort on a visceral level. And so I like to talk to people about this idea. We are all like these little kids inside. Right. And so when I'm speaking, because I've had so much experience speaking and saying to children, I think about this, how excited they were and just their pure excitement.
[00:10:58] Right. And they want to learn from you. And we forget that when we're speaking to a room of 500 executives, they are powerful figures. They're wonderful. But there are still children inside of them and audiences accumulate because they a want to learn from you to connect from you and see, want to communicate with you and audience doesn't accumulate because they want to laugh.
[00:11:21] They accumulate because they want to learn from you. And so learning to speak to the inner inner child and all of those can be so advantages in helping people overcome stage, right. And helping them connect on a deeper way. Because of what we're really looking for is validation. When we communicate, we're looking to be validated and other people are looking to be validated too.
[00:11:44] And so when we're speaking, if we don't want to speak to this part of ourselves that has our guard up, because we all do it, I do it too. So we want to speak to the part of that person that wants to learn that wants to connect, that wants to communicate. And that's how you touch people's heart.
[00:12:01] Veronica: Yeah, I love that.
[00:12:03] And I hadn't thought about that, but that is a huge part of being on stage. And, and maybe you're a trainer in your professional world, or maybe I know the first thing I thought about when you were speaking was we've got a couple of folks in our audience that are high level multilevel marketing.
[00:12:21] Team, team organizers, and they just do a lot of training. And that's probably the thing that we don't talk enough about is they want validation when they're training their folks and the, their team members want validation as they're doing the training. And so I love that. This, the first thing that popped in my mind.
[00:12:38] I know when I've gone to see professional speakers, especially like Renee brown just being able to see your live presenting that I just was so validated in my thoughts. And, and you could feel that authenticity just flowing between the audience and the speaker. And I thought it was
[00:12:53] Brooke: phenomenal. Oh, absolutely.
[00:12:55] And I learned. And it really, this came from my multi-generational back to the nursing home, taking the dogs in what the people really wanted was to be seen and where I'm from. I'm from rural Ohio. That was not the case in some of the facilities that I went to. Some of them had been there for seven years with no visitors.
[00:13:13] If you can imagine the way that they felt, the disregard that they felt. And so to have someone intentionally come and make them be seen and make them be. We don't realize the impact that has, but in the professional space, in the executive space, the entrepreneur space, if you can master the ability to make people seen, to make people heard, not from a place of I'm slimy, I'm salesy.
[00:13:40] I want all, you know, I want all the recognition, but from a place that I actually want to learn and connect, because that improves my life experience, that opens me up to new ideas. That makes me a better person. That's when you find real estate. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:56] Veronica: I so agree. That makes complete sense. And since you've been working with folks and I know you've got clients in all different kinds of spaces, what are the two or three things that you see most often that people struggle with that maybe someone hasn't even realized it's a problem for them yet?
[00:14:12] Brooke: Yeah. So a big one is audio aversion and aversion to seeing yourself and believe me, I was there. So in full transparency, I had gone from this stage. Onstage, you are not watching yourself. You are in the moment and you are present, right? And so you're singing, you're dancing. You're doing whatever it is that it is, but no one is, I am not watching myself and I can not see myself what I went to camera and I could see myself.
[00:14:37] That was a really difficult transition for me. And it led to a lot of picking myself apart. At the very beginning, it led to a lot of, I hate the way my voice sounds. Why did I just shift my ankle right there? My whole body. And so I would get focused on these arbitrary things, but nobody else noticed my clients.
[00:14:55] Most of them struggle with that, whether they realize it or not. So many people hate webinars, they hate speaking virtually at summits or they hate life. That's typically because you have audio version or you have a version to see yourself, and it's completely normal. 77% of people do, who knew that? And so I always tell my clients, if you have audio version, put a phone down, turn on your video recorder and speak to yourself for two minutes a day.
[00:15:21] And that is actually going to scientifically trigger something in your brain. You know, psychologically, and you're going to get more comfortable hearing yourself. The other component to this is because I was a vocalist. I have a lot of insight and to the voice mechanics, right? We don't sound the way that we hear ourselves.
[00:15:39] Other people here as so much differently than we hear ourselves. And so it's very important to remember that your brain is always going to differentiate those, those sound waves from how someone else's is, and then practicing. Watching yourself in a mirror is going to get you more comfortable, both hearing and seeing.
[00:15:58] Veronica: Yeah. Oh, those are really great tips. And I hadn't thought about that, but it is true. You know, if I catch myself I'm on camera, my voice sounds completely different. I always think, wow, is my voice really that high? I didn't think it was that high because in my mind it just, it's not high, but, you know, so it's interesting
[00:16:18] Brooke: for me.
[00:16:18] So my voice has a lot of different textures and you might've been able to tell that and that's. Very young vocal training at a young age, but when you are a princess and you've used different vernaculars, you use different vocabularies, but you use different voice tones to dependent upon who she is.
[00:16:33] Right. Actually be consciously aware of that. So I have to be consciously aware of lowering my voice when I speak places like this, because my natural voice is actually even higher than this one.
[00:16:45] Veronica: Fascinating. Okay. Well, give me an example of that. Cause now I can't help myself. What would snow white sound like?
[00:16:51] Brooke: I was not, I was not a snow white. My biological sister was actually, I mean, different princesses are different. So like in a roar would say something like, oh my goodness. So shoes are absolutely magical. And it just, it has a little bit of a different, little, little bit of a different sound and that's just a create the full book.
[00:17:10] Character the illusion. When I competed for miss Ohio, this is a really funny story. So a lot of things are going wrong in my life. When I completed from us Ohio, I had a planter tumor on my foot, which is a tumor of the foot. My hair had been dyed, a bad, bad color on accident. Somebody had grabbed the wrong die.
[00:17:29] Oh my gosh. When I listened to myself back, I was accidentally using my princess voice instead of my real person voice. I got a lot of obstacles there and that is something I always, I give that as an example to my clients, to women, 20 totally different women with any totally different backgrounds and you throw them up on stage and you tell them to talk about the platforms and as you rehearse, and as you listen, so many of the girls start talking.
[00:17:58] And they start to sound like each other and they may have had a totally different, they call them platform pitches going end of the week. Almost all of the women had the same exact format. And that's because we so often try to copy somebody else because we see the greatness in them. We think that what they're doing to communicate is amazing.
[00:18:19] But we can't see the greatness in ourselves. Does that make sense?
[00:18:23] Veronica: Completely? That makes complete
[00:18:25] Brooke: sense. I had a lot of trouble with that very first day. I wanted my platform pitch to sound like everybody else's mine was totally left field. As you can tell, I'm not a left field type of girl. And so my platform was very different.
[00:18:39] It was a lot more bam here. It is a lot shorter. And I, that was just intentionally how I had. And I'd love my platform pitch, but I started to have these reoccurring anxieties. Well, my, does it smell like everybody else's is my platform pitch. Okay. I went out and I did my platform pitch and my feedback was that mine was the most engaging and the most interesting because it was different.
[00:19:02] And I tell my clients it's literally okay. To be different. It is okay to be different when you're communicating, because we all have a different.
[00:19:09] Veronica: Yeah, that's so true. That is so true. And I love when we can find a unique speaker or a unique trainer and whatever environment we're in and bring them in because you just need somebody to shake it up a little bit and you get tired of hearing the same old, same old.
[00:19:23] So that makes complete sense. I love that. And what else when your clients come to you, what other obstacles do you see that they're trying to overcome or get better at? I mean, is it really just as simple as I'm. C suite executive and I want to present better and be heard better having, how do they come to you
[00:19:39] Brooke: like that?
[00:19:41] Sure. So I think a lot of different people I'm working with two startup founders right now, and that makes me so happy because I'm helping them actually build their story and build their way to communicate about their brand from the ground up. So that has been a magical experience. Here's my personal philosophy on.
[00:19:58] Speaking is like baking a cake. So your intonation, your articulation, your pacing, your pausing, that's the foundation of the cake. It's what we think of when we hear public speaker, right. We think of a polished professional presenter and then our soft skills or our frosting that's things like energetics dynamic.
[00:20:17] It's things like descriptive words and personification. It's what makes somebody lean forward in their seat and they're engaged in you, but no one can really put their finger on why. So that's our soft skills and our sprinkles, our storytelling. You want to have a unique storytelling angle. You want to be able to shape and share not just about your.
[00:20:37] But about you because that brings people to you, that interests people and it finds commonality. And so we, you know, our sprinkles or our storytelling. And I always say, you want to have all three components of your cake, if not your cakes, not going to win the baking competition. And so you need to have all three of those components.
[00:20:54] So I work with people, entrepreneurs. Startups. I work with people that want to learn how to public speak people that have been chronically ill. I have been chronically over before and then want to share their story authors that want to get their book out there. Executives that want to do better in the boardroom people that want to present to venture capitalists, people that want to be broadcasters or singers.
[00:21:14] I'm open to anybody because I don't believe that communication is this fixed skill. It's a growth skill, and I want to help anybody. That's willing to learn how stupid.
[00:21:24] Veronica: Yeah. I mean, I love that and I love that that's a skill. Some people are natural communicators. We've all met them. They, their, their bodies moved just the right way.
[00:21:35] Their faces move just the right way. We're drawn to their stories, but other people struggle a little bit, but there are some skills that you can tap into that will help you grow. And I love that. You're talking about.
[00:21:47] Brooke: Oh, yes. I want to, here's what I told my client the other day. I said, so right now you're a regular horse.
[00:21:53] I want to help turn you into a unicorn, but I don't just want other people to see you as a unicorn. I want you to feel like a unicorn. I want you to feel like the golden unicorn so that when you walk into a room, you know, that what you're saying is significant and important and you have the hard skills.
[00:22:08] So that's, you're pausing and you're pacing and your body language to fall back on so that when you're telling your story and you're in the softwares, You still feel comfortable despite how vulnerable or, or, you know, difficult that can be. So I work on helping people get those hard skills down because nobody is teaching them and it makes people feel so badly about themselves.
[00:22:30] But then when you move into more of the empowering soft skills, Personal presentation, confidence, energetic side of it that nobody's talking about either. And so I like to do the mixing of,
[00:22:40] Veronica: yeah, no, I think that's brilliant. I think it's a brilliant approach and I don't see people engaging in that space.
[00:22:47] And now that we are more globally connected and we're doing business with people all over the country, I have clients literally from coast to coast in Manhattan and in California. And I'm working with a couple of people in the UK, in Australia. So. We're globally connected and without a huge resource to go to for these kinds of supports people.
[00:23:10] Like you are a little bit of an, an anomaly. I'm just not seeing your services out there for people to easily have access to.
[00:23:18] Brooke: Right. And I want people to have access to me. I think it's really important. And so many people don't know exist yet. So my goal is to be a thought leader or the next generation of people kind of like a Marie Forleo and a little younger than her.
[00:23:31] So I have some way to go, but I want, I want people to understand that communication doesn't have to be something you silently struggle with for the rest of your life. You can, it is a growth skill and the way that you communicate. Just because it's your style. But if you need a little bit of honing, if you need shaping, if you need helping, there's no harm in asking for it.
[00:23:53] I had vocal coaches. I had people teach me how to dance. I had people teach me how to act. I had people teach me how to broadcast. I had people work with me on sports. I had pageant coaches. I've had, I didn't just wake up one day and decided I was going to go do all of this because that wouldn't make any.
[00:24:10] Right. And so for you to decide that you want to share your story, I thought anyone that's, that's thinking about public speaking or speaking more often on video, whatever it is, but if you run out there and you don't feel good about what you're doing, you're going to beat yourself up over it. And maybe you should consider getting some help so that you don't fall into the self-loathing cycle.
[00:24:31] Cause that's really, really hard to dig yourself out of, right.
[00:24:36] Veronica: Yeah. And I think too, it leads to a lack of growth. I mean, you, you kinda stumble a little bit and then you're like, oh, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't. And then, then all of that imposter syndrome starts to creep in and then it's validated.
[00:24:48] And at the end of the day, you are. Creating a block for yourself that could be alleviated with just a little bit of coaching. And I'm a huge proponent of coaches. I have several different coaches for several different things. I believe we are lifelong learners. And I just love that there's someone with your skills out there to help people.
[00:25:05] So tell us Brooke, a little bit how we can connect with you. How can people reach out to you and get to see your work and where can they find.
[00:25:12] Brooke: Absolutely. So I have a private Facebook group. I encourage anybody to jump in there cause there's free videos, free training you see me with and without makeup.
[00:25:19] So whenever I feel inspired, I come on there and I, you know, I'd love to see you guys in that group. Obviously, I also have an Instagram account I'm new to Instagram, so don't judge me and then I have a Facebook account. You can also reach out to me via email. One month, three month and six months.
[00:25:36] One-on-one coaching. That's my favorite way to coach. I love to meet people. I love to connect with people and I love to actually work day to day on building that bond and building, you know, your communication and competence skills from the very ground. So, if you're interested in that, let me know. I am taking spots for fall and winter, and I would love to see you guys there.
[00:25:56] I will you put the like emails and stuff in the chat handle below? Yeah, I don't think I can probably do it good enough that people will be able to get it
[00:26:05] Veronica: without seeing no worries. No worries. We will definitely put that in the show notes. And if you're listening on the podcast, just make sure you go to the bottom of the show notes.
[00:26:12] We'll have them there. And if you're watching on Facebook, we will definitely put them on the comments. So brick. So much, this has been such a great conversation. I love it. And just so you know, my main takeaways were, these are skills that can be taught. These are skills that can be taught. They can be refined, and there are resources out there for people who maybe don't have the confidence, or aren't really sure where they need to make some improvement.
[00:26:35] So I just love that you have shared your expertise with us today on Saturday. Sound bites. Thank you
[00:26:41] Brooke: for having me. Thank you guys for listening. I'm so excited.
[00:26:45] Veronica: Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much. We will be wrapping up this episode of Saturday soundbites. Again, if you are watching on Facebook and you're catching the replay hashtag replay.
[00:26:55] So Brooke and I can go back and answer any questions you might have. I'm going to drop all of her details in the. There. And if you're listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe because we want to make sure that you don't miss any episode of Saturday soundbites, where we talk all things, visibility, strategy, marketing, advertising, public relations, branding, communication, Scott styles, and networking.
[00:27:15] So if any of those topics are. They say you want to learn and grow about, make sure that you let us know. And so we can connect with you at any time. So with that, we're going to wrap up this episode. I am sending you lots of positive energy in light, and we'll catch you next time.