Confidence & Communication: Laura Davidson

[0:19] I've been singing for my entire life and I knew I wanted to do it professionally when I was 11 because I wrote my first song and played it at the talent show and people responded really well to it

[0:31] I think that part of my personality really helps me Be a lot more fearless and just push record or push go live but yeah there are times when i'm like please don't talk to me I can't people anymore

[0:40] Ian: Welcome back to another episode of the Confident Live marketing podcast. I'm Ian Anderson Gray. And in this season, we're going down the path and the journeys of my guests, confidence and communication journeys, because we all have a message. We all have a message to communicate to our audience, but sometimes there are things that can get in the way of us communicating our message effectively.

[1:01] But while staying ourselves being authentic, and that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm excited to bring back a returning guest to the show, who is Laura Davidson, who is a singer, songwriter, mom and podcaster. And these are just a few of the hats that Laura wears on a daily basis. She also leads a market development team at Shure Incorporated, where she helps people learn about microphones.

[1:24] and solve tech mysteries. And that time I was about to say tech ministries. It was last time I was going to say tech miseries, but I don't know what's happening to my head. No, I cannot

[1:34] Laura: solve that for you. No, Ian. That I can't do.

[1:37] Ian: The ministry of tech. Anyway let's not go there. We talked last time you were on about your studio set up.

[1:44] We went down a rabbit hole of microphones and audio, which was really interesting. I love that kind of thing. But you also, as well as working for Shure who is known worldwide for producing these amazing microphones, you also are a singer and you've been a singer for a long time.

[2:02] So I'm going to ask you to give a brief introduction about you highlighting your background, but maybe if you could go a little bit further back and tell us about your History in the music world and how that's helped you, produce videos and get great content and podcasting and all that kind of stuff.

[2:17] Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I've I've been singing for my entire life, and I knew I wanted to do it professionally when I was 11, because I wrote my first song and played it at the talent show, and people responded really well to it. And I got a couple solos, and at the choir concerts and whatever, and really just fell in love.

[2:36] So I have very supportive parents. My dad has since passed, but we, they always pushed me to do what I wanted to do and told me, here's your college money. You can either go to college or you can try your luck. They called it and, moved to the city, which I was too chicken to do. So I went to Chicago and went to DePaul University for my first year where I was studying opera.

[2:58] Because I had this grand idea that I was going to get a classical background, which is how I started on piano at seven, classical background. And then parlay that into, this great successful pop music career where I was gigging at night and getting the technical chops during the day. Turns out opera was not my thing.

[3:16] So I transferred to Berkeley College of Music in Boston my sophomore year and graduated from there and just learned a ton. We call it. I call it rock and roll college because it really was. People were legit, like that show Fame, like singing in the hallways and being ridiculous and it was amazing.

[3:35] And then I graduated from there, moved to Nashville knowing exactly one person because I didn't want to move to New York or LA. I was too afraid I'd starve to death because I had, 50, 000 of student loans and just started singing. And That's how I got to the professional level. Did a bunch of demo singing gigs, which if you're not familiar with what that is, there's a lot of writers who write songs, but who.

[3:59] don't sing or can't sing. And so they hire professional singers to sing their songs, and then they pitch those songs to artists to put onto their albums. So I did that, for a long time. And then I got asked to demonstrate Music Gear for a company called TC Helicon at a trade show. Fell in love with that.

[4:18] They hired me full time. And because of that, I met another wonderful musician and producer Robbie Broneman who works with an artist named Howard Jones and they were going out on tour and Howard is always at the forefront of technology and he saw me demonstrate this harmonizer pedal that turned my voice into four voices of harmony and said, I want Laura to come out on tour.

[4:41] And so I started background singing with him and got to tour Japan and Australia and England and the U. S. and it was super fun. And all the time, working full time for a music company, so I still do that now. I still sing. I don't background tour around the world, or background singer tour, but I still tour or sing a lot with a band and by myself.

[5:01] So that was a long winded answer.

[5:03] Ian: No that's the kind of answer that we want. And it's great that you're still singing because that is a challenge. And we, we were talking about this before, like I, I still, I do still sing. I don't sing professionally so much anymore, but I think it's always a challenge as well when you have a family and kids and stuff.

[5:19] So I actually teach both my kids singing and they're doing really well. In fact, my daughter is singing in a choir at the proms, which will be broadcast on the BBC TV, which is amazing. So she, so it's great to see them have that opportunity. And it's interesting, like you mentioned opera, because I, so I went, I studied music at university and I went to the Royal Northern College of Music to do a singing, singing degree, and it was very opera based. And I felt that I should be doing it, but I realized probably too late that actually I didn't really want to go down the opera route. And um, having said that, so I felt that a bit, a little bit of guilt almost because that's what everyone else wanted to do.

[5:59] But I do think, and I don't know about you, this is probably, we're diverting away from the topic, but I'm interested in your view. that despite the opera wasn't really what I want to do, I think I still learned a lot from it because it got me on stage and a little bit out of my comfort zone. And I was, I did little operatic excerpts.

[6:18] My problem was my memory wasn't great. So I was having to remember all these lyrics in Italian. Foreign language lyrics. Yes. But Yeah, I'm just interested, that wasn't what you wanted to do and wasn't what you were going to do, but do you think it was still a useful experience, that kind of classical background?

[6:35] Laura: Absolutely. I think that having that formal level of training with the instructors that I did, was extremely helpful because it taught me to approach my breath in an entirely new way and taught me how to place my voice in an entirely new way. And it was also very scary in that time for me because I had been in a car accident when I was 17 and it messed up my neck not realizing how much it actually had because once I got to college and started singing all the time.

[7:06] I lost my voice and it was terrifying. And I went to this fantastic chiropractor in Chicago. He did one adjustment and I had my range back. So it was very interesting to learn that at 18 years old that your body, when your instrument is living inside of it, there are a lot of different variables that are going to control it that will be out of your control.

[7:27] So I had to learn how to. navigate around that and having that classical instructor who was just amazing in my corner saying, you're going to be fine. Let's work through it and around it. It was it was very beneficial.

[7:40] Ian: Yeah. I think that's how I see it as well. All these, even if we go down a path that we don't currently get, we're not currently going down, we can still learn from that.

[7:50] So you were doing all this. Singing, performing when did you first get in front of the microphone or in front of the camera and create content? And for me, I almost found it easier getting on stage and singing than getting in front of the camera. Oh. Wow. And. But that's not necessarily everyone's thing.

[8:09] I think for me, because in front of a camera I didn't have an audience and I was used to bouncing off an audience. And this kind of camera is like this anonymous object. Particularly if you're recording video, we're having a conversation, so we're talking to talking with each other, you're just recording a video with just you or podcast with just you.

[8:29] There's no audience there. But we're all different. What was your first experience in front of the camera? Was it, did you struggle with confidence or did you, were you able to transition quite easily from presumably being very confident as a singer to in front of the camera?

[8:44] Laura: I transitioned, it was trial by fire really because when I started doing trade shows, they would be filming me for the press.

[8:53] So I was I didn't know that. I was kind of Okay. And so, it changed the approach completely because I, if I was doing a demo for a group of people, I was getting that onstage experience and then they started adding a camera into it. And this was in 2006. So it wasn't just like people had phone cameras they were holding up that came a little bit later.

[9:13] I just, it just happened naturally. So you can go down a rabbit hole on YouTube with me and you'll find some videos from 2007 that are like wow, that's awkward. But, that's how I did it. I would go, I would travel around the country and the world showing people how to use the gear and we would always film a video because the dealer, the music account, would want to have that video to put on their website.

[9:35] So that's how I got started there. And then when live streaming happened, I loved it because I was like, this is what I was built for, and once I got through. Okay. I guess once I started doing webinars all the time during lockdown, which I hate webinars. I love live streaming and I'll tell you why.

[9:53] Then I felt like I could do anything because webinars talk about being alienating. Like you are talking to people, but you can't see them. You can't interact with them. And. There's no real time feedback aside from a Q& A and there's always a moderator, at least the way we do them at Shure. So then when I started live streaming and I was having, seeing the hearts and seeing the comments and see, I was like, this is for me.

[10:17] I didn't have to bring any gear anywhere. I could be wearing pajamas on the bottom and I was still able to make this great content. So it was a nice It was a nice progression.

[10:25] Ian: That's really interesting. And I agree with you about webinars. I think live streams can be webinars. We can, or we, is that the right way around?

[10:32] I think you can make webinars more like live streams. Maybe that's what I'm trying to say. I think so.

[10:37] Laura: Yeah.

[10:38] Ian: Yeah. And maybe for you, you It was part of your job. You were demonstrating gear and then people turned up with cameras. And so you can have almost, it's not like you didn't notice they were there, but you okay I'm just carrying on what I'm doing.

[10:52] Maybe that was part of it. And you were able to transition, from the performance in front of maybe an audience into that. And maybe also I don't know, you tell me, but You didn't really get much time to think about it. I wonder whether if we think about it too much, if we start to think about, Oh, there's a camera there, I'm going to make an idiot of myself.

[11:11] We start to overthink things, then yeah, we're going to create problems for ourselves. And that was my problem. I was overthinking it. But I think if I'd done what you had done and gradually transitioned it and just focused on actually what I was doing, not on being in front of the camera, that would have made a big difference.

[11:31] Would you agree?

[11:32] Laura: Yes. And I rarely script. When I am scripted, I'm worse at what I do. I don't have a teleprompter. That was in your show notes, like what teleprompter? I don't have one of those. That's just a stupid human trick I have is that I'm better when I'm unscripted. So I think I, I tend to overthink, When necessary for doing things like strategy, because that's where I feel like I do need to do a little bit of overthinking, but never for content.

[11:59] I feel it's better when it's more authentic.

[12:01] Ian: Yeah, definitely agree. And I do use a teleprompter, but I only use it for. Just very basic notes. So for example, I've got questions on the screen in front of me, which I might not use all of them, but they're just to remind me to, and also since this, we're trying to keep these fairly short, it keeps me on the point, which is sometimes helpful, but but definitely I agree with you, like not to.

[12:23] not to write everything out because you will basically sound like a robot, which isn't good. So

[12:28] Laura: nobody likes that.

[12:29] Ian: We all love to hear disaster stories. And it's more a case of we all, I think we all want to learn from disaster stories. We've all got them. I've had some disasters when it comes to creating either video content or podcast content.

[12:43] Have you gotten a disaster story, like a mistake that you made on camera? What did you learn from that experience?

[12:48] Laura: So I was doing an interview and I was talking about microphones. It was for sure. And I did this, where I held up a product. But I literally held up this microphone. This is the MV7 Plus.

[13:02] And I held it up before it was announced. And I was like, ah, and it was a live stream. So but thankfully I literally just did this and put it down. So it wasn't like, and then there's this thing. That was I had a lot of anxiety over that one because I was like, I'm going to lose my job this is going to be bad, but we re watched it and made sure that it wasn't an issue because they thankfully the hosts were like, we can pull it off, the replay off of YouTube or whatever, so that was almost disastrous.

[13:30] I guess that one of my favorite ones that's not even, it was a happy disaster, was when I did my first Ecamm Live, bootcamp or whatever they were doing. It was like their, one of their first ones, leap into live streaming or something. And I did my session. And then I thought I was done, but Katie was like, okay, it's time for the Q and a session.

[13:50] And I was in my kitchen cooking dinner. So I joined and I did, I answered Q and a's while I was cooking dinner from like a meal kit. That was a happy disaster,

[14:02] Ian: but I bet that was a lot of fun. So presumably the first part was pre recorded and then you were going to join for the live bit. Was that how it went?

[14:09] I

[14:09] Laura: can't remember. I think, I don't know if it was like, I had done my session earlier in the day and then I came back on and didn't get the memo, but I don't remember Ian, but I was like, what? I am abysmal at scheduling. I, Yeah, I'm really bad. Thank God for Calendly. And I

[14:26] Ian: know, I know it's good. It's good.

[14:28] It's a good I think it's more, more difficult for those of us who maybe get overwhelmed with all this stuff. It's a much more kind of complicated world that we live in than maybe a hundred, 200 years ago. But the cool thing is we have loads of cool, great tools to help us get on track.

[14:45] Calendly and calendars. And I don't know about you, but I'm loving AI like chat GPT, the voice app, I'm using it to get all my thoughts together all jumbled in my head and I can talk to it. And at the end of it actually makes sense of all that stuff in my head, which is great. Yeah, it's great.

[15:01] So I actually came back. I dropped my daughter off music at a choir rehearsal in Manchester and had a half hour uh, drive journey back. So I just spoke to chat GPT on my car and I got all my things sorted for my business. It was amazing. Like all the stuff that was going on.

[15:19] Laura: You spoke to chat GPT and then said organize my thoughts and now we had the

[15:24] Ian: conversation back and forwards.

[15:26] So like this, the chat GPT app, there's a voice app. I used to have a conversation so I'm, I'm just on I'm just driving back on my journey and I've got all these thoughts for my business. I'm trying to get, get some clarity on them. Here are my thoughts. Could you respond? And then it will respond.

[15:41] And then you say, Yeah, that's what I mean. But also I meant to, I meant, can you add that and who, who would I be best to speak to? It's amazing. Wow. Wow. Check it out.

[15:50] Laura: So I, yeah. Shore has its own chat, GPT that we're allowed to use. Ah. So that's the only one I use on my work computer. So

[15:58] Ian: yeah,

[15:59] Laura: I'll have to explore that on my other computer and see what I can find out.

[16:01] Yeah, check it. It

[16:02] Ian: is on your phone. It's on your it's the iOS or Android app it's called. Okay. We went down a rabbit hole there, but , we did,

[16:07] Laura: we did.

[16:07] Ian: Where did we get to? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yes. So the question I wanted to ask you is so you talked about your disaster, but I think one thing I'm really interested in is how personality comes into all of this in terms of producing content, getting in front of the camera, because we're all on some kind of spectrum, whether you were very shy or quite bold people, or whether we're introverted or extrovert or in the middle.

[16:31] How does your personality affect the way you turn up on camera?

[16:36] Laura: It's interesting. It's something I'm trying to figure out at, 45 years old. Am I an introvert? Am I an extrovert? Most people would say, oh, you're an extrovert a hundred percent, but I'm the kind of person who I desperately need to recharge my battery or else.

[16:50] I just shut down. I get very ornery. I think it affects my content in a positive way because I'm not afraid to mess up. So the extrovert side of me who's fallen on my face or, miss sung lyrics or whatever, dropped F bombs on camera on public radio too. That was great. Like I know.

[17:10] That it's going to be okay. It's not that deep. I think that part of my personality really helps me Be a lot more fearless and just push record or push go live but yeah, there are times when i'm like, please don't talk to me. I can't people anymore I don't know. Yeah, that's an interest. That's an

[17:25] Ian: interesting one I think that depends on how you define introvert extrovert like for me.

[17:29] I define it as Where do you get your energy from? And I was at a conference last week. This was atomic on a Newcastle and I'm definitely an introvert. I've worked that out about myself, but I became an extrovert for those two days. So I was talking to everyone and But whenever I do that, there are consequences.

[17:46] And I almost had to be in a darkened room for the next three days because my, my energy levels went down. And so I think it's like, where do we get our energy from? I'm an introvert who needs people. I definitely, I love the flexibility and the freedom that I have for working for myself, but I do love the conversations that I have with people, bouncing ideas off people.

[18:08] Does that kind of make sense? So I think, Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.

[18:11] Laura: Yeah. I think we're the same person. We are made up of similar things. Let's put it that

[18:17] Ian: way. Yeah. Although like one thing that's interesting that you don't let, you don't get stressed by when things go wrong. Whereas I think I have quite a high level of anxiety when things, I've got a lot better over the years, but and I've tried to actually turn that round and actually.

[18:33] enjoy when things go wrong because it's a learning experience. That doesn't always work, but it's something to work towards, I think. Yeah.

[18:41] Laura: Yeah, I think earlier in my life, I would fret about things if I made a mistake or if I fumbled something here or there. But, like last two weekends or two weeks ago, I was singing in a band for Shore in Las Vegas on Old Red's stage, so like a major venue in Las Vegas, opening for a band with my Shore colleagues.

[19:03] And some of them were highly anxious about it. And I suffer from anxiety. And I was just you know what? I'm at a trade show, we're the opening act for this band, how cool is that. I have in ears, which is, I'm feeling spoiled, I have a great microphone, and this venue is awesome, and these guys are great.

[19:20] Even if I fall in my freaking four inch heels I'm gonna be fine. It just, it's good. It was a nice sense of empowerment. And I think that's also come with age where I've just stopped caring what people think. I'm just like, you don't like it. Sorry, I'm just not for you.

[19:34] Ian: Yeah.

[19:35] Oh, I agree with that. You're that one. I think I'm probably the happiest I've ever been in my forties. And yeah, the fifties are approaching fast approaching. Let's not talk about that. So no, we're almost out of time. I just wanted to ask you what your top tips. For effective and confident communication are particularly for people who are a little bit nervous and want to get better at communicating in front of the camera.

[19:59] What would you say?

[20:00] Laura: One of my top tips is for my team of guys, I have three amazing humans who work for me and all three of them have different fear levels of getting on camera, so I hired an acting coach for them, a guy that I went to high school with and MN acting studio is his name. His company and it was great highly recommend that if you are somebody who is who just can't get out of your head or you're worrying about how to film and how to record and how to be on camera and all those things.

[20:27] It's daunting. Start with that so that you learn where your gaps exist. and then just, take a deep breath and go from there. That's my first tip.

[20:37] Ian: That's awesome. I think sometimes you just need to get the help, get sometimes we're too close to our ourselves, our business, everything, and getting some help.

[20:46] That's awesome. Thank you, Laura. We are out of time. I really appreciate you coming back on the show. It's been really interesting, really insightful, what all the stuff that you've been sharing. Thank you so much. How can people find out a little bit more about you and connect with you on the socials and on the interwebs?

[21:02] Laura: On the interwebs, you can find me at lauraclap music. That's C L A P P. Yes, that is my real maiden name. And my artist name, lauraclap. com and song43. com. That's my podcast. And

[21:16] Ian: find me there. Reach out. Let's talk. Awesome. And of course you can check out Shure microphones as well. They have a website, I believe.

[21:22] So you can also do that.

[21:23] Laura: Sure. com. S H U R E. Yes.

[21:26] Ian: Awesome. Thank you, Laura. It's been great to have you on, but we are out of time. My goodness. It's gone so quickly. Thank you so much for plugging us in to your ears or watching on the YouTubes and you can check out the website at iag.me/podcast.

[21:39] Do spread the word, but until next time, I encourage you to level up your impact authority And profits through the power of confident I've lived. Blah, blah, blah. Confident live video. If I can say the words. Toodaloo. Bye.

[21:50] Thanks for watching the Confident Live Marketing Show with Ian Anderson Gray. Make sure you subscribe at iag.me/podcast, so you can continue to level up your impact, authority and profits through the power of live video. And until next time. Toodaloo!

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