Welcome to SpeakUP! International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown!
Today is a joyful day for me. It's double joyful! First of all, it's my 50th year today in Canada, and next I'm introducing and I will be speaking to a person who who has brought a lot of joy into my life. As a matter of fact, that person is the president of Clarity Speaking. She started her company in the year 2000 after a workplace incident and this incident required that she was assertive, and guess what? She was not.
And so as a result of this situation, Gloria discovered that communication is the one skill that everyone uses. She then became inspired to develop and implement effective interactive programs that help to empower clients to develop robust self-image. In essence, then Gloria's business helps people to express themselves clearly, concisely, and with confidence. I introduce my audience today to Miss Gloria Pierre from Clearly Speaking!
Thank you, Rita. It's an honor to be here and Elton, it's so good to be here, especially for SpeakUP! International podcast!
You've been a keynote speaker at events in Canada, the US West Indies, South America. You've been featured on various television shows such as the Breakfast television, Global tv, Omni tv, New Canadians TV. what is the common approach that you adopt in these types of environments?
I have to say that being a Toastmaster has helped me to prepare to adapt to these circumstances. So there are a couple of things that I do before every interview, and that is get as much information as I can about the interview. About the host or the interviewer, and what questions will I be asked? What is the show about? And so I prepare thoroughly, just like when I have to do, I used to have to do speeches and Toastmaster, you prepare thoroughly for that.
I also make sure that my voice is ready for the interview, which means that I do some vocal exercises. I make sure that my vocal cords are hydrated, and being so thoroughly prepared gives me the confidence when I am in front of an interviewer.
You make sure that your vocal chords are hydrated. That phrase resonates with me, and I'm gonna get you to talk about it at a later point in this interview. I'm not sure that I went through that exercise this morning, Gloria, but I'll remember it. So in your introduction, I spoke about a workplace incident that helped you to come to the decision that you would start Clearly Speaking but I want to delve a little deeper into the impetus.
What inspired you to really start this company called Clearly Speaking? That incident was definitely the genesis of Clearly Speaking. Sometimes we go through situations in life and we think, why me? Why did this have to happen to me? But I'm a foreign believer that everything happens for a reason. And this particular incident happened to turn me from the path I was going on into a different path. In this situation, I was bullied.
I didn't know what to do about it because of the way I was brought up. I wasn't brought up to be assertive, or in fact, assertive wasn't even a word then because if you speak up, you were rude. So I was brought up to be quiet regardless of what was happening to me and I didn't think that, I thought that was normal, but my emotions progressed from that incident from feeling like a victim and feeling sorry for myself.
Then it changed the feeling, anger, and I thought, how dare she treat me like this! And then it progressed even further to being introspective. What am I doing that causes her to treat me like this phase? And it is that progression of emotions from feeling like a victim to being feeling angry. How dare she treat me like this to being introspective? What am I doing that is making her treat me like this?
And because of this last question I started to do a lot of journaling, and you used the word earlier that I'm going to use robust journaling. Intense journaling. And what this did was it caused me to look back at my life and incidents in my life where I was reacting the same way and where I was reacting the same way. And I asked myself, did it serve me? No, it didn't.
And because of that, over the years I was not confident and people were taking advantage of me, and at first I thought it was okay because that's how it was when I was growing up. And then, I thought, no, this is not okay. So I started to feel a sense of self and I started looking at my self image, how I view myself and how I talk about myself. And in the process I started to look at other people and people that I know how they handle situations and so forth.
And that's when I discovered that communication is a one skill that is crucial to our existence to our wellbeing, to our sense of self and so that was the genesis of Clearly Speaking.
What program that you have created, how has that significantly impact individuals in terms of empowering them?
There are two programs I developed. One of them is an accent reduction program called Be Heard, be Understood. And in this program it helps people, immigrants to Canada who speak English as a second language because as those of us who come from another place, we may speak English, but we still have an accent. And because of that accent, not all of our words are intelligible.
So I developed the program to help my prospective clients to improve their pronunciation, and that included making sure they know about the anatomy of this, of speech breathing. All the basics of pronunciation, vows, syllables, consonants, the placement of the tongue and so forth.
It very intense and in the be Heard, be Understood program, it involves communication training also because I can't teach them how to speak properly, how to pronounce words properly or how to reduce their accent without teaching them how to speak in a way that they're easily heard and understood. And the second program is Public Speaking Simplified, which is the very basic of all my programs.
So anybody coming in for other workshops or coaching will go through this Public Speaking, Simplified first. And it is very powerful because it's a five week program, and at the end of the five weeks, I have my clients do a short presentation.
and I'm expecting to see results because I've been watching them throughout the five weeks, but they don't realize how much they have improved until they've done the two or three minute presentation, and they have applied everything that I've taught them in the five weeks. It's it's a lot of powerful aha moments and smiles of accomplishment on their faces for both programs.
Gloria, you sound very passionate about your opportunity or ability to help people improve their communication skills. You said a few things that resonate with me one of them was the fact that at work you felt bullied. You talked about one's vocal chord. but I want to go past a little bit those a little bit right now and say that in the year 2000, it took a lot of co courage and confidence for a woman to start her own business.
Did you ever feel along the way that perhaps you couldn't accomplish what you set out to do?
Oh, definitely, definitely! When I started this business of becoming an entrepreneur, I was told they're highs and lows. They're smooth roads and they're rocky roads. In the first couple of years, there were lots of rocky roads, and if I wasn't passionate about what I was doing, if I didn't, if I wasn't doing what I think I was born to do, I wouldn't have been able to do anything else.
So there was no turning back for me. I had to keep moving on. At the time I was focused on myself. In terms of the business. So I looked at my competitors and they were all more accomplished than I was. They were more experienced than I was. They were on board of directors for different companies and different organizations. They were not of my ethnicity. And so I thought, what am I doing here? I can't compete with these people. And I felt it was, I honestly felt it was them against me.
These competitors didn't even know me. So that was not even the case. But what I realized at that point was the same train of thought I had when I was bullied in the workplace. I started out with How Dare or she, and then it turned to what am I doing? So I, it caused me to do some more introspection and journaling. How I view situations and why am I thinking that these people are my competitors and that if I, and I have to compete with them when I didn't even ask them anything.
So it really caused me to stop and think about my thoughts, my feelings, my awareness, and how the past conditioning is really affecting me today or at the time. And it just did a magnificent shift in my thinking and my awareness. So since then, it was like, okay. These people are not against me. They're, none of them are doing accent reduction. So I have an edge here, so let's capitalize on that. And along the way, from 2000 to now, I've learned a lot about business.
I've learned a lot about relationships and relationship building, and one of the truths I think in business is not to sell first, but to develop the relationship first. Let people know what you do, and if they know what you do, whenever they're ready, they're gonna come to you for that service, or they're gonna share it with people. And the other thing actually is that if I want to be successful, I have to do good work. I have to give more than I'm promising and I do.
And so people, my clients remember that. And the sweet part of all this is because I started so long ago, those clients who came to me in the beginning are now in influential positions and companies. And because remember their experiences with me, they are now sending their staff or promoting me to their their companies. So it was really good. So do good work and be and give more than you promise.
That's wonderful. Tell us about a client that was not a great communicator when they came to you and at the end of your program they blossom.
Oh my gosh, there are so many. But one stands out there, it was a young girl at the time she was probably about 14 or 15, and her parents thought she had a learning disability, so they put her in a special school where she was she joined the curriculum there and she was being taught in that special school, but she knew that she was more than what she, what was happening to her. So she asked her sister, who was a friend of the family, if she, you can talk to me.
And we met for the first time and there was this shy little girl. She wouldn't even look at me when we met. She would be talking to me and looking at her sister. She was so shy not very confident. And so I started working with, and asked her what it is she wants to do, get her comfortable in speaking out, and it ended up after probably about six or seven months of coaching her deciding to go to a regular school. She, I said, okay, if you want to do this, you have to gather the information.
Your parents will not be doing it. I will not be doing it. She says, where do I start? And I directed her. She went to the school. She got all the forms. She registered, she was going to the school, to the classes every day. We discussed our homework and then she decided after that she wanted to be an early childhood educator. She registered for those courses. She became an she got job in a daycare and she was enjoying it and she just blossomed.
Now she is married, she's got a child and she's working. She moved out of Toronto and she's working.
So obviously you help her to blossom into the person that she is today. So that's one of the things that you do with the clients you work with.
That's right.
As you were speaking, you used the word ethnicity, and I'm gonna ask you a bombastic question.
Permit you.
And that question is, what does ethnicity have to do with it?
Ethnicity means that, I think ethnicity means we are not of the same race the same culture. I came to Canada just like you, Rita, 50 years ago, last month. And so it was, as it was very difficult then It was really them against us. It's not like now, right? But over the years we've changed. Both sides have changed and we are more accepting of each other up to a certain point.
They, the older we are, when we started this journey of accepting each other, the harder it is to really accept each other. So at the time when I started, Clearly Speaking, my competitors were white women who were very accomplished, highly experienced, highly educated, and I felt inferior to them because I didn have all of those things. So that was, but that was my thoughts. I discovered that was my own self-sabotaging ways. So ethnicity, it all starts in our own minds.
And it also, it can be encouraged by reactions from others. But for I think first of all, based on my experience, I have to examine my own thoughts about it.
So outside of work, what are your hobbies? What do you like to do?
Outside of work, there is no outside of work! Work is my hobby. Hobby is my work! I like to do, I like to walk. I like to walk a lot and I would like to, I like dancing and I thought, okay, I'm gonna go to dance classes. I like to do more exercising. I'm gonna go to more exercise classes, but no time. Walking is the thing that I could do without being in a class and I can just get up and go walking anytime I have an hour or so in between appointments and classes.
So I walk a lot and in April, I'm doing the Camino walk, starting in Portugal, ending up in Spain, walking for 10 days and walking 15 to 25 kilometers a day. So that's my hobby right now.
Gloria, you have written books. You told us at the beginning of this podcast that you are proud of yourself because your book is currently on Amazon. So I know you've written books that help people with your communication skills. but tell us then, if you were to write a book about your story, your life, what would you call it and why would you call it that?
I would call it, I'll show you! And the reason I would call it that is because all of us, like all everyone else in the world, we've, we go through our own crises, our own downtime, our bad experiences, all of us experience that. It's almost a given in life, just like good experiences are a good a given in life, but with the bad experiences, what do you do with them?
Do you let them take you over? Or do you believe the negative things people say to you? Do you accept that's your faith, that's your karma and just move along with it? Or do you say, no, heck no. This is not my life and just like the young lady who I coached, she knew deep down inside that she wanted, she was different. She needed to be she wanted to be different than what, than the path her parents were putting her in. And that's the same with me. And I think it's the same with everybody.
So I would call in my book, I'll show you because nobody is gonna put me down. Yes. So I would call my book. I'll show you.
I like the name of that book. It has a lot of power and determination.
Thank you.
So how can people that need your services reach you?
They could reach me on LinkedIn or they can reach me through my website at www.clearlyspeaking ca or by email info@clearlyspeaking.ca.
So let me reminder audience that we're talking with Gloria Pierre, who is the CEO of Clearly Speaking. Gloria lives in Toronto, which she works with people internationally and for this particular program SpeakUP! International ,we seek to inform, to educate, and to inspire and I know that today Gloria is helping us to reach those goals. So Gloria, I must say that it was certainly. A joy.
It certainly is with pleasure that we're speaking with you today and you have helped us to reach our goals for the day so thank you, thank you!
You are very welcome. I should also say thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to your international audience and to share what I do and to let everyone know that don't let anybody put you in a corner. Deep down inside who you are or you know who you want to be, so let that person out.
Thank you so much for your time and your insight, and I must admit it was extremely uplifting for me, and I'm sure it's going to be uplifting. For the individuals that tune into our channel. And with that, I'm going say good morning and you have a wonderful weekend!
Thank you very much Elton and thank you Rita!
Thank you for listening to speak. International. For more information. Our guests, Gloria. And her professional services. Please visit her website at www.clearlyspeaking.ca. If you would like to have a conversation with us, SpeakUP! International, please drop us a message containing your name. company name and email address to info@speakuppodcast.ca. To connect to our podcast using Spotify or your favorite podcast platform, search for SpeakUP! International.
You can also find our podcast using our web address www.speakuppodcast.ca. Our logo has the woman with her finger pointing up mouth open speaking up! At SpeakUP! International, we aim to inspire to inform and to educate!