Say “Yes, And!” to Living UNMUTED with Rachel Druckenmiller

I sat down with keynote speaker, leadership trainer, and singer-songwriter Rachel Druckenmiller to explore what it really means to live and work UNMUTED. Rachel shares how she invented roles inside a corporate job, navigated a near-career-ending pivot right before the pandemic, and eventually brought her voice - literally - onto the keynote stage. We talk about borrowing others’ belief when your own is shaky, her V.O.I.C.E. framework, building self-concept clarity, and practical ways to start expressing more of who you are at work. She also tells the powerful backstory behind her original song “Somebody,” and we riff on how saying "yes, and" before you feel ready can change your career trajectory.

Key Takeaways

• Say yes before you’re ready—then give yourself time and structure to figure it out.

• Unmuting is an internal process first: Shine a light on your strengths, borrow others’ belief when yours wobbles, and build self-concept clarity.

• Rachel’s VOICE Method starts with identifying the void (what hurts/isn’t working) and imagining what becomes possible if you change.

• Ask mirrors in your life: “When have you seen me at my best?”—and let that feedback land.

• Creativity compounds: Tiny bets (singing snippets, one lesson a week) can evolve into signature elements of your work.

• Alignment matters: let what you wear and how you show up reflect your message (on and off stage).

• A simple daily question: “How can I be a contribution today?”

• You don’t have to abandon relevance—Rachel reframed engagement and leadership topics through the lens of Unmuted.

Related Links

• Rachel’s website & speaking: racheldruckenmiller.com/speaking. RACHEL DRUCKENMILLER

• TEDx: How Self-Silencing Is Sabotaging You. YouTube

• Sizzle/Speaker Reels (YouTube). YouTube+1

• Rachel on Spotify (originals & cover). Spotify+1

• LinkedIn: @rachelbdruckenmiller. LinkedIn

Unedited Transcript

Hello, Rachel, and welcome to the podcast. How are you?

I'm great. So good to reconnect with you after all this time.

It's been a long time. You had just looked it up. It had been seven years ago. We both spoke at a conference.

Yeah, seven years ago. And I was very, I mean, I was still working my corporate job and that happened. So I was very, very, very green.

I know, I remember, I remember you were kind of relatively new in the business and we connected on LinkedIn and I've just been following your journey through social media and it's been great seeing you kind of speaking more and more. And then you left. How long ago did you leave your corporate job?

Six years.

Six years Bouts. So right around the pandemic when you launch your.

Like seven months before I decided I would start a fully in person speaking business. Seven months before the pandemic, which, yeah, of course.

And it's. And. But you weathered the storm and now you're doing great. And I want to talk about your journey because I think, you know, kind of your, your shift in speaking topic I think is very interesting and I love what you're talking about. Now, before we get into that, for people who aren't familiar with you, I would just love to get, if you could share with us the, the one minute, you know, Rachel Druckenmiller bio kind of who you are, what you're doing.

Yeah. So I'm raised by two entrepreneurs. So I grew up in an environment that's very unconventional, where I saw people make up what they do and get paid for it. And so I thought that that's what work was. So I worked in a benefits consulting firm for 13 years in the insurance industry. I was an intrapreneur.

I made up my job. I said, I'm the wellness coordinator. I don't know what that person does, but I'm going to make it up and you're going to pay me. And then, you know, after 13 years, I was a. I become a national thought leader in the industry and I started speaking a few years, you know, before then. So around 2015 or so, I started speaking more regularly and I was like, this is the thing that I love more than anything. I mean, I came alive when I went on stage and I love telling stories and connecting with people and sharing things that created aha.

Moments for them. And so in the fall of 2019, I made the decision. Well, spring of 2019, I made the decision to leave a very steady, stable corporate job to do this speaking thing full time. And Now I speak full time around the country and I am a singer songwriter, and I'm working on my first book. And I absolutely love what I'm doing and I love to create. I love to be a catalyst who unleashes what's possible in people. At the core of what I do, that's.

That's what, that's what makes me come alive.

Yeah. And we are gonna get into that because I think that's a topic. It kind of fits right into your. Your topic. But before we get to that, something you mentioned about your. Your kind of journey I want to talk about. So you said you're an entrepreneur, you made up your job.

And I'm curious, did you, did you have. Did you work for a company and when you were in the company, you made up a new job for yourself or did you not have the job and you went to a company and said, this is the thing I want to do for you? And they're like, oh, that sounds good.

Yeah, I was already working there. So I interned. I'm proof of what happens if you take good care of your interns. They might sit around. So I started it. My dad was friends with the CEO of this company and he said, I'm sure he'll hire you to do something because the only job I had prior to this was working at a produce market, like helping people pick out cantaloupes and peaches and, you know, the summer. And so once I got out of college, my dad said, I know this guy Richard.

I'm sure he'd hire you to do something. And so I was an admin assistant, and I answered phones and took boxes to storage and did filing and picked up lunches, and I did whatever I was asked to do. People were nice to me. I enjoyed it. I had no intention of staying in the insurance industry. I was a psychology major. That was not what I wanted to do.

But when I got out of college, I had a part time job working at Hopkins, at Johns Hopkins with a research study. And it took me longer to get the job than I was in it. I was absolutely miserable. It challenged my brain in zero ways. And I went back to the job that I'd been at where I had also I was working both jobs part time as an admin and then one as a research assistant. And I went back to the other job, the insurance place, and I said, do you have enough work for me to do something full time? And then I met a woman named Jessica Sheffield, who is a wellness manager at a local gym.

And she was working, this was in 2007, working on corporate wellness programs within organizations. And I'd always been fascinated by health and human behavior and the intersection of those things. And I decided, in addition to being an admin assistant, I said, I'm going to be our wellness coordinator and I'm going to have a wellness committee and we're going to do a newsletter and challenges. And I just started making it up and then I started doing it for our clients.

That's so phenomenal. Were you a fan of the TV show the Office?

Oh, my gosh. Get okay, like, literally at my desk right now. I'm not superstitious, but love it.

So you basically pulled Pam when she just said, I'm the office manager now. And everyone's like, okay.

And so you. I'm the health and wellness coordinator now. And just everyone's like, all right, I guess that's who you are.

Yeah.

It's such a great lesson there, though, about, like, just taking initiative. And, you know, I think you and I talk about some similar things with some kind of different verbiage. Like, to me, it's like saying, yes, and instead of, yeah, but I got to get permission, or, yeah, but just like, yep, this is what I want to do, and then kind of see what happens. And for you, it. I mean, it led to kind of the first part of your career, right? You were. That. You did that role for.

For like seven years, right?

Yeah, well, I almost lost my job. 2008, 2009. I. My CFO. This was a little. This is a hint for anyone listening. Why don't you track your time, just kind of see where you're spending your time.

And I naively thought, oh, they just want to see how I'm spending my time. And how. No, we had a conversation where he put me into his office and said, it doesn't look like there's enough work for you to do full time wellness work here. So you can either be an account coordinator or take on the executive assistant role or, you know, be an admin assistant, or you have three months, three months to figure that out. Otherwise you're going to have to have another job somewhere else. And I panicked because I didn't know any other type of work. That's the only corporate job I'd ever had.

And so what I did is I doubled down on things. I thought about what other ways could I contribute that. That use my skill set, that meet a need the company has that might have nothing to do with wellness, which is what I actually want to Do. So I had been a writing tutor in college. And so I said, we had RFPs, requests for proposals that were very long that would go out to, you know, clients and prospects and whatnot. And they had to be edited. And I said, I will edit all of the RFPs.

Let me redline them, give you the RFPs. I reinvented our process for presenting ourselves to prospect meetings. I re. I reinvented the entire PowerPoint deck for how we did that. I started doing internal Microsoft Office training for things like Excel and PowerPoint and Outlook and how to optimize those systems. I didn't necessarily know how to optimize the system myself, but I. I knew a little more than everybody else.

And so what I started to do is I found other ways to be valuable so that they would have a reason to keep me. And so that three months later, conversation never happened. And they just kept me on in this sort of role that I again, very much made up to meet needs the company actually had. And then once all this healthcare reform legislation passed and companies were like, we need wellness. I was already very well positioned. And then I went back to school, got my master's degree in health science in 2012. And then I started to help us get recognized and our clients get recognized as top workplace, as healthy employer.

And I got recognition myself at a national level for my thought leadership. And so things really shifted, but I had to, I had to grind it out and I had to do a lot of stuff I didn't really want to do in order for that to all to happen.

Yeah. And I love the, the creativity. Right. You were basically given like two choices, like, all right, either be an admin assistant or leave. And instead you're like, how about I figure out third option, which is what? And. But like, I think so many people just were almost conditioned to be compliant and be like, well, all right, I guess I'll just do this because that's what they want me to do.

But you took a step back and we're like, well, wait a minute, I don't have to. Just because this is the two choices doesn't mean I can't come up with my own options.

Yes.

And that's really powerful. And I did. I went through some of your LinkedIn posts, and I wrote this, a line that kind of jumped out, which is, you said say yes before. Before you're ready is kind of. And I think that theme has come up multiple times in your life, from what I know about your. Your journey. So let's talk about that. Transition then. Right. So you decided to.

To launch your speaking career. But what I saw you speak about and what you started speaking about is kind of not what you're speaking about now. Is that correct?

There's some overlap. I mean, the things I mainly spoke about were, you know, well, being how to create thriving cultures at work. And that was the gist of what I did in the corporate job when I was out speaking at places that really the core of it was around employee engagement. And so when I first left my job and I started, you know, went out on my own, I felt like I have to speak on the things that people expect me to speak on. Yeah, well, being workplace culture and employee engagement. And frankly, I learned the value of relevance at the start of the pandemic because the three things that every company needed help with in the spring and the whole year of 2020 were, well, being, workplace culture, employee engagement. So I had a very busy few years during the pandemic, and a lot of people, I learned the value of relevance and of being known for someone who meets a specific need, because everyone knew they had that need.

And people started reaching out to me, hey, would you come speak on this? Our people need help right now. We know that you do this. And so I had an advantage that I didn't even necessarily realize. But the thing that when I launched my company and I decided, you know, I was. What I was going to name it, which was unmuted, what I really wanted to talk about was helping people activate a sense of agency, capability, and possibility inside of themselves so that they could show up more fully and have greater fulfillment and influence and impact at work. And I would position it for, like, for women's conferences or what, you know, I would just sort of like, this is the talk I really want to give.

And, you know, I started to realize is that everybody mutes themselves in some way. That's not just a woman issue. That everybody has fears of failure and rejection and not being good enough or looking stupid or being wrong or rocking the boat. Everybody has those fears. And everybody has the capacity to bring more of who they are, more of the fullness of who they are into their work. And everybody wants to be in a place of imagining what could be possible beyond what is. So I started to lean into that a bit more and recognize, oh, this is what I really want to talk about.

And I think everybody needs it, you know, and so that was kind of a shift that happened.

So I'm always curious about change, obviously, is one of my big topics. Almost curious about the shift, did you kind of keep delivering your sort of culture engagement talks and then start weaving this unmuted message in, or did you make like a huge pivot and be like, boom, here's this new keynote that I'm doing.

I mean, I, I still, I mean, I still get asked to speak about engagement and leadership and stuff. And at the core of the message, if you think about it, at the core of the message of unmuting yourself, if people do the things that I'm recommending that they do, they will become more engaged at work.

Right?

They will, they will become higher performing, they will have elevated well being because they're showing up from a place of purpose and strength, which, as we know from a positive psychology perspective, are two of the things that are most important for us to be engaged and for us to feel alive at work. And so it's sort of like coming at it from a different angle, but I'm still speaking to the same issues, but I'm doing it by talking about it in a different way. And now my story has certainly become a full expression of my message. I really feel like I've lived into the message in a way that I wasn't living into it six years ago with some of the things that I've started to do to pursue, you know, some of these childhood dreams.

Yeah, isn't it interesting when you start speaking on a topic and then you have to look at yourself and be like, oh, wait, I really do that myself. So well, here it's like, all right, fine, I'll. For me, it's like, all right, I got to say yes. And to this, because I'm telling everyone else to do it.

Yes. How do we, how do we live it out? That's so.

And saying yes. I mean, you said, you mentioned that. Just the importance of saying yes, that has been a hallmark of my entire career. I mean, when I was first asked to speak, you may know, you know Julie Devlin.

I don't. Or maybe I met her years ago, I don't remember, but she's pretty active.

In the HR space. And she, she was an adjunct professor at my alma mater, a small liberal arts school in Maryland. And she taught an HR master's course. And one of the lessons that one of the classes she had to teach was on workplace well being to these HR leaders. And I was helping her company and my early days of being a wellness coordinator, having no idea what I was doing, completely making it up as I went. I had been helping her company and she was very progressive in Terms of being open to what I was, you know, offering. And she said, hey, I have a unit on workplace wellness.

Would you come speak and deliver that unit? This was 2008, 2009.

I can pay you $75. Dude. I was making, like, 40 grand a year. I was like, $75. This is. This is real money. I mean, let's go.

Part of me hesitated because I was going to be the least educated person and possibly the youngest person in the room, talking to graduate students about something I had been doing for all of two years. But what that prompted for me is something I talk about a lot when I'm on.

You know, in my. On stage now. It's a whole chapter of my book. It's about borrowing other people's belief in you. So when you're doubting yourself, you can make the choice. I'm gonna. I'm gonna borrow their belief in me.

I even wrote a. Well, we won't get to that later, but spoiler. But I decided that if she thinks I can do it, why don't I just believe her? And why don't I say yes and trust that I'll be able to figure it out? So for so much of my career, in my life, what has happened is someone has said they've offered an invitation, and I've made the choice to accept the invitation, even if I didn't necessarily, on paper, look the most qualified or my. Or in my head, think I was the most qualified. I said yes, and I trusted that I could figure it out.

Yeah, I. I love this approach, obviously. I mean, it's very much in my wheelhouse is say yes and then figure it out.

And I think that's kind of the. The second piece, I think, is important because I think sometimes people just say yes, but then don't take the time to be like, all right, now I got to figure it out. And they kind of shut down and just. And that's when you sort of fail. Right? But if you say yes and then take that time, like you said, you know, you had to figure out your new position at work. You had to figure out how to deliver this talk.

You forget the book. It's so that so many good things can happen. And even if you sort of quote, unquote, fail at it, I think you end up learning a lot. You know, most failure is not catastrophic. And so if you say yes to something and it doesn't work out, usually it's not the end of the world. And you can then learn. All right.

Oh, let me now pivot. In this new direction because I learned these things from that and I can incorporate that. Well, let's. You mentioned the book. I want to get to that in a bit. But first off, you said, you know, when people kind of do the things I suggest about becoming, you know, unmuted, you know, then you get engagement and leadership and performance. Would you mind sharing what, you know, some of those things are that you recommend people do?

Yeah. So a lot of it is an internal. So when I think of unmuting, people hear the word unmuted, they often think, oh, this about communication, speaking your truth. That's how someone might interpret it. That is not how I interpret it. For me, it is very much an internal process of shining a light on our strengths and capabilities, inviting other people that know us well to be mirrors, to reflect back the goodness that they see in us so that we can elevate our own sense of what psychologists call self concept clarity. When you have an elevated sense of self concept clarity, you're clear on what your strengths are.

You have an understanding of the value that you bring, what you bring to the table. And because of that, you have this self assurance that isn't arrogant, but that is grounded and rooted in the, in the reality of what you are capable of. And most people do not, I believe, have a strong sense of self concept clarity for any number of reasons. They grew up in a home where someone, you know, took them down a peg constantly. They didn't have somebody encouraging or affirming them. They learned, like most of us do from a young age, that you should not toot your own horn and, you know, don't talk about yourself. It's bragging, it's don't, it's very unattractive.

Don't do that. And so most of us are much more familiar with our weaknesses and shortcomings than we are with our strengths and capabilities.

Yeah.

You know, and I've seen that happen a lot. And so one of the things that I invite people to do is first and foremost, from an internal perspective, to ask themselves, what is the cost of me, of me muting myself? What is the cost of me silencing myself in this area of my life or my work? What is the cost to my health and well being? I mean, I burned out and got mono several years ago because I was so muted. What's the cost to my relationships, to my capacity to contribute at work? We're all paying a price that we may not be aware of.

And then the secondary question is, what becomes possible if I allow Myself to overcome, even just imagining it. What becomes possible if I overcome those doubts and fears that are holding me back and keeping me stuck and silent, and I step into this fuller version of myself, like what in the best case scenario, could become possible? So the first thing, instead of telling anybody what to do, I'm very big on asking questions. I think that the kind of questions that we ask really influence the kind of experiences that we have. And so I first and foremost want people to connect to their own sense of why this is relevant for them, what it's costing them, and what could become possible in their life if they allow themselves to step into a fuller expression of who they are.

Got it. So you take people through, because I think you do this in your inner. In your TED Talk and you have an article as well. So it just starts by kind of self talk, Right. Getting people to ask these questions. Probably questions that a lot of people in the audiences have never really taken the time to think about or ask themselves.

Yeah. And then because you have to. The thing I have an acronym that I created called the Voice Method.

What's the framework? Has an acronym in it. And the first part of it is identifying the void. So essentially, what is that place of something that is feeling, that feels off or not quite right? We experience it as. As pain, as a little bit of a discomfort or pain. Like, I'm noticing this thing that I do, and I don't like that I do it. Okay, great.

You have to feel the pain before you're going to be willing to make a change. I really believe that.

And you have to. No one can tell you. Someone can tell you all day long you're not going to make a change until you feel enough pain inside that tells you, okay, I cannot stay as I am. So then when we move past those things, we've identified the pain, and then we've imagined what could be possible. Then I invite people to really illuminate their strengths and capabilities. So what is something about yourself that you're proud of or value or appreciate? About who you are?

About how you show up in the world? About something you've accomplished personally or professionally? Like set a timer for two minutes and make a list. And for a lot of people, that's really hard to do.

Mm.

If I said, I need you to make a list of 20 ways, you are just not quite cutting it. Most people are like, I need. I need 10. I need 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 minutes to do that.

Yeah. What? Only 20 things? How do I pick just 20?

Come on. I'm inadequate in so many ways. And I think that's part of the problem, you know, and so sometimes we need other people to be mirrors for us and. And to reflect back what they see. So even asking somebody, hey, can you tell me about a time when you've seen me at my best, which showed up, even asking that question makes most people wildly uncomfortable. I don't care. I am.

I think that we need to be willing to get uncomfortable, to allow ourselves to be seen, not just for the inadequacies that we have, the negative narrative we carry in our head about how we think everyone sees us, but for us to be able to shift and allow ourselves to realize there is so much goodness inside of us. And when we allow that goodness to come forward, we show up in the world in a different way because we believe that we are somebody who is worthy of being seen, that we have something to offer. And people that believe that about themselves carry themselves in a different way. They walk in the room in a different way. They speak in a different tone. And I. My goal is that when people walk out of an experience with me, and I hear this a lot, feedback after keynotes, I walked in there feeling really down on myself, and now I'm.

I'm feeling really hopeful and optimistic. Good. That's the point, you know.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. And sorry to tie a few of these things in. You know, we talk about the walking, your own talk. And, you know, you mentioned this idea of being uncomfortable. I realized that, you know, my. And I was just on a mastermind call earlier where I point out, like, my goal for the next 30 to 90 days is to be feel bored, to feel awkward, and to get rejected. I'm like, these are the three things I want to do, because they're all things that I avoid and say yes, but to.

And I'm like. And I'm like, you know what? If I'm willing to do those three things, I bet things will be completely different in 90 days.

Because that discomfort. And it's funny, you know, it might be a little bit. Not exactly what you mean by unmuted, but when I kind of read about yourself and heard about your message, I thought about myself. And then I looked at my T shirt drawer, and I have so many shirts. It's all black and gray. And. And this is after transformation I had a few years ago.

Everything was a plain, solid tee. And about five or 10 years ago, I started saying, you know what?

I'm a nerd. So I started wearing printed tees. And that's why, like, right now I'm wearing this. You can see my Stormtrooper Swarm Trooper shirt.

But I still, like. I feel like on stage I can be crazy, I can be big. But offstage, I feel like I sort of mute myself.

And I'm like, you know what? I like gray. You know, even if it's got, like, a print on it. Like, I don't need, like, a bright colored shirt or I don't need to draw attention to myself. And I'm like, damn. Like, on stage, I got no problem. But in the rest of my life, I'm much more like, let me.

Because I've always been sort of introverted when I'm not performing. And so I'm much more like, well, if someone wants my opinion, they'll ask me. And if I want to do something, you know, I'll get permission. And so your message very much. You know, you said earlier, it's. It's not just a women's issue. It's everyone.

I can be living proof that. Yeah, your. Your message very much resonated with me as well.

Well, even recognizing that. So it's interesting you say that and. Because I remember years ago, my husband and I had just moved into our first house since 2013, and we had all this heavy, dark furniture, mahogany, whatever, we. We got from secondhand stores, because we thought, when you're an adult, your house is just supposed to have heavy, dark furniture and whatever. And she walked. I brought a friend over who has some experience doing interior design stuff, and I wanted her help with designing some things in our. In our home.

So she's walking around, she goes, can I see your closet? And she comes into our room. I open my closet, and it's like the rainbow. I mean, the stuff that I wear, I mean, it was like every hot pink blazers and blue dresses or whatever aren't. And she goes, how come I don't see any of this in your home?

Yep.

And I had this moment like, oh, gosh. Yeah, there's a lack of alignment there. So sometimes we have a realization like, what you're sharing is we realize in one realm of my life, I feel very unmuted, and I. And I feel very bold, and I allow myself to be seen. But in this other area of my life, I still feel small. And what is that? And even.

And it's a notice of curiosity. My dad said this in the past, is noticing without judgment. So how do I notice without judgment that I do that? And even for me, clothing has not been historically anything I Cared about at all. I mean, I had 50 shades of pastel shirts in grade school. I mean, I. No patterns, no nothing.

Yep.

And now I go to a boutique near me and I go and I'm like, give me that gold sequin skirt. You know, give me the skirt, the shirt, the puffy sleeves and the embroidery that look like curtains, whatever. And I have gotten more comfortable as I've allowed myself to just play with these things and not take myself so seriously. I have a lot more fun, and it really affects the way that I show up in a room. So it does make a difference.

Well, let's. Let's talk about that in a way that I think might be helpful to listeners in a little segment that, you know, we call Free Coaching for Avish. So, you know, you know, we're talking about my T shirts. But what's funny is so on stage, I do improv, I do humor, you know, blah, blah, blah. I wear a solid dress shirt and like a dark suit because I want to look professional. And that's what I've been wearing. And, you know, I've always had this thought in my head, like a.

I'm not really a dress up guy. I'm a jeans and T shirt guy. And I know there's a way of wearing jeans and a T shirt with like a blazer that looks sort of formal, casual. And one time I spoke at a conference, another guy was speaking and he was wearing. He talked about fun and stuff, and he was wearing this, like. I don't even know if you'll understand this reference. He was wearing a WrestleMania 6, like, graphic cartoon.

It was like a comic book version of WrestleMania SIG, the Undertaker or the Ultimate Warrior versus Hulk Hogan. And I saw him like, is that a WrestleMania 6 shirt?

He's like, yeah. I'm like, oh. Like, I'm like, I would love to wear something like that. But again, this feeling of like, I don't. Until I start speaking, like, I almost want to fit in as opposed to stand out. Because it's funny. You talk about, you know, we talk about feeling rejected or criticized.

For me, it's just the preemptive assumption. Like, it's not even that someone's gonna be like, oh, you shouldn't wear that. It's even just someone commenting like, oh, that's a different look.

Or, oh, why? Why are you wearing that? Like, not even judgmentally, but my head immediately will start spiraling. Oh, my God. Like, they noticed. Did I do something wrong? So I'm just curious, like, is that, like, what are Your thoughts on that or how do you do you encounter people with a kind of.

That kind of thinking?

Yeah. Well, first of all, the thing we have to remind ourselves of is somebody else's discomfort with something could be a reflection of their own stuff that has literally nothing to do with you. Like, if somebody else feels like they're playing small in their own life and they see you playing big, that alone could make them uncomfortable. I also would be curious to say for you, if you feel really good in some, like, I've worn highlighter hot pink suits on stage. Okay. This is coming from the girl who wore a black and white plaid uniform for eight years in grade school and a blue like, Peter Pan collar jumper for all of high school.

I went to Catholic school for 12 years. I didn't get to choose what I wore ever. And for me, it's a lot of message alignment. So for you, if you're a yes and guy, what I would see, frankly, is what an opportunity to tell a story about what it looks like to. Yes. And yourself. When you think about.

I really like that WrestleMania. What's my own version of that? That really would make me feel alive and have more fun on stage. Because I'll tell you, when I'm in my gold skirt on stage and I gotta sing Tina Turner, it's a different vibe because it's a gold sequin skirt. And the amount of comments I get from people before and after the keynote, oh, my gosh, I love that skirt. Isn't it so great? You know, and I just had this moment of feeling alignment.

So for you, what I would say, for what it's worth, we're doing, you know, coaching for Avish in this moment would be to say, okay, what could become possible? What could become possible if I allow the audience to see it doesn't have to be like, you're wearing a full, you know, suit that's custom design that has all these crazy patterns on. And if that's not you, it's not forcing you to do something like that, but it's for you to say the next time you get up to speak, how do you want to allow a little more of your personality to show up and how you present yourself physically? And is that a story? Is that something that you could weave in to your talk about how you're. Yes. And ing yourself?

You know, even I struggle to yes and myself. I get up here and I come out with all this energy and there's this other part of me that's kind of a nerd, you know, Many people can relate to being a nerd in an audience. A lot of people. I mean, bringing that kind of thing in. And it humanizes you, too, to them. And it makes them realize, oh, this guy speaks about this. And he still struggles with it.

He still struggles to. Yes. And himself. He wants to. Yes, but himself. So for what it's worth, from my perspective, I think there could be a lot of power in you embracing that part of yourself more fully in front of other people.

Well, thank you. And I'm definitely going to. You know, I'm working on a new book, as we mentioned. I don't know if we mentioned on the recording or not, but I'm working on a new book as well. And that's kind of like the. You know, there's like these reinvention points, right? Like when you're doing a new thing.

So that is definitely something I'm going to keep in mind. Because it's funny, you talk about the self, reflection, understanding. I created a framework as well, where. Yes and is an acronym. And why is yielding to what is. Which is essentially identify what are your strengths and weaknesses instead of ignoring them. And the N is nurture your core, which is like, identify what.

What do you want to say? Yes. And to is inside of you.

So I'm gonna. I'm gonna work on that.

And this idea you said about, like, how people relate to it, or I think that this whole idea of unmuting, it's ironic. I feel like, because we unmute or we mute ourselves, and I'm not putting words in your mouth. I feel we mute ourselves to. To protect. Right? And like, oh, if I express too much, I'm gonna push people away. But what I find is those times I do step out, like one time, I don't know if I mentioned this on the podcast with other guests, but, you know, I don't know.

For some reason, I had my nerdy interest. I always felt growing up, like, I gotta kind of, you know, you gotta wait to suss people out, whether you can reveal it. But I was at a conference once, and I was talking to someone. I hate networking. And I was talking. This one guy and I just mentioned something about, like, oh, you know, like, I'd rather be, like, in my room reading, like, my nerdy fantasy novel. And he says to me, like, he's like, oh, I don't know.

He's like, I love fantasy novels. And we just talked for, like 20 minutes. And he. He didn't book me, but he almost. He almost booked me to come speak to his organization. And it's just, you know, when we unmute, it not only does the opposite of the thing we're afraid of, like, it really becomes this point where other people will connect and relate to us.

Yes. And that's even what happened during the pandemic. I started sharing snippets of me singing little bits of things on. On LinkedIn. And I posted one lean on me one time. And there's a woman who was a, you know, an HR leader, learning and development leader at a large global company who happened to see. I didn't even know her, I'd never met her before.

And she cold reached out to me and said, would love to have you come speak at our leadership virtual leadership event. Can you end your talk by singing Lean on Me? I was like, people are requesting for me to do that. That's a part of me that even people that knew me well didn't even know was a thing that I did for so much of my life. And so for me, it was this lesson. And now if I go on stage somewhere and I speak, we can talk about however much of that you want to. But if I speak and I don't, If I don't sing or I don't sing as much as they want me to, it's like, why didn't you sing?

And now it's become the very thing that I hid from people for so long, has become the thing I'm known for.

Yeah, well, let's talk about that, because I think that's kind of a key element of your. Your whole topic and your keynote. Right. So is that when you started adding the singing to your. Your live presenting is after this moment where the person asked you to end with Lean on Me?

No, I. So I went through a program called Heroic Public Speaking. Hps, sure.

Yeah, I'm familiar.

So did, like the rest of the free world in the speaking space. 2018, that was the catalyst that got me to leave my job was I paid for the program out of pocket.

I cleared out our bank account. I called my husband from Philly at one of their live events, and I just said, do you trust me? I think I need to do this. And so I paid for it. And I would go to New Jersey and I would rehearse, you know, once a month. And I created this script. I'd never talked about unmuting before.

I'd written about it in journals since 2015. I have journals. I can go back and look at them. This was fall of 2018, and I, for the first Time start to tell the story of how I found my voice in gospel choir in college and how there was this part of me that I muted, and I'd never talked about this on stage in my corporate job. And then I. I said at one point to my writing coach, A.J. harper, I said, should I sing?

When I get to the part of this story, while I talk about how I did the audition and I sang, she's like, you're gonna be on a stage. You're talking about singing. Let me go on a limb here. You might want to sing. And so, for the first time in my adult life, I got on the stage to speak and sing for a group of my peers and coaches. I was terrified.

I mean, so nervous. And that became the thing that I was known for in that community was the speaker who sang. Now, none of this was hitting my corporate job yet at all. I left, you know, September 2019. And then, you know, the pandemic hits. I'm not doing anything with singing. Pandemic hits.

And then six weeks later, I'm out running with my husband. I got hit by a pickup truck.

Oh.

And fractured my back.

Holy guy. I did not know that.

Yeah. So I was in a back brace for two months. I was in physical therapy for a year. I mean, I was in and out of, you know, dozens and dozens of doctor's appointments that year. And trying to run a business that had just been decimated by the pandemic and do everything virtually and show up and help people be resilient while I'm in a flipping back brace, feeling literally anything but that. I had to draw on the reserves of my soul to be able to get through that season of my life. Honestly, it was so hard.

It was so hard. I can't. I can't even communicate how hard it was. Like, looking back at the time, I just did what. What I needed to do. When I look back at what I had to endure, to be able to show up day after day and bring energy to thousands of other people when I was so traumatized myself. I mean, like, never want to relive that, but I am so proud of that version of myself who was somehow able to do all of that.

So I needed an outlet is what happened. Seven, eight months after the accident, I was still feeling really stuck. And I thought back to the thing that always brought me joy when I was a little girl, which was singing. And so I signed up for virtual voice lessons once a month. I mean, once a week, every month. Monday at 3 o', clock, me and Mary Ellen would log on, and I had no intent to perform any of this. I just started singing snippets of things and talks at the start, I would say, you know, I would have.

I'd poll people at the beginning of a talk and say, which of these songs best describes how you're feeling right now? Would you say, it's kind of like, don't you know, I'm still standing better than I ever did? Or do you kind of feel like, hakuna matata, what a wonderful phrase. Or I just would sing snippets of songs, have people vote, you know, and I was having fun with it. And then I would share longer snippets of things on LinkedIn, lean on me and Hero by Mariah Carey, and just different songs that help people to be encouraged during the pandemic. And then this woman reached out to me and was like, can you come speak and sing at our event? And I thought, this is bizarre.

And then someone paid me to sing Christmas songs at their company event and sent me 500 in Lululemon gift cards, which I thought was one of the coolest things. Just like, what do you charge to sing?

I was like, I don't. Yeah, what do you want to pay me? So, so basically, that went on for the better part of two and a half years. And then a LinkedIn coach that I worked with said, rachel, you should share music videos on LinkedIn in why would I do that? And what would I sing? And she said, oh, covers of other people's songs. I don't know the first thing about making a music video.

And I found a guy locally who I go to church with, who had just graduated with a degree in music composition, and he started a music production company. And I said, hey, let's record some covers.

No covers in mind. I go to his basement studio, and our first session together, if he looks at me, and he goes, so, what do you want to write your first song about? I was like, I think I am here for a different reason than you.

Think.

Because I don't write music, I can't read music, and I do not play a single instrument, so this is a big ask. And then I thought of, again the importance of accepting the invitation. This was an invitation. He's invited me into this. He thinks I can do it. And so we started working together. And I said, well, if I were to write a song, I'd want to write a song about being somebody.

Because the night before, I'd watched a documentary called Bully about these kids who are just Very sad. It's on Netflix. Bullied these six kids and half, half of them didn't make it. Young, elementary, middle school aged kids, devastating stories. And one of their dads, this kid named Ty Smalley, his dad started a nonprofit called Stand for the Silent. And they would give out bracelets at their events, these anti bullying events to celebrate the lives, you know, memorialize the lives of kids that have been lost. And the bracelets they gave, everybody said, I am somebody on the bracelet.

And I watched this documentary the night before the songwriting session, coincidentally.

Yeah.

So I said to Leroy, I said, I want to write a song about being somebody because everyone wants to feel like they're somebody and a lot of people don't feel like they are. And then five months later, I lost my ever loving mind when I looked up Rachel Druckenmiller on Spotify and I saw my very first song release.

Wow.

And, yeah, I've released, you know, five songs total. A cover of over the Rainbow. It's like, hey, why not pick the most popular song, beloved song of the entire 20th century to sing? And. And now when I go on stage, I open by singing Tina Turner. You know, you're simply the best. It's an opening that start with that.

I weave in clips of Adele to HR conferences. I'll end by singing a bit of my song. I was just at an event and I sang over the Rainbow at a reception they had. So I'm stepping into this version of myself that has for so long wanted to be expressed in this kind of a joyful way. And it. I mean, it took me almost 40 years to start doing it. And I gotta tell you, the joyful aliveness that I feel is so worth the risk of putting myself out there and doing this thing and worrying about being judged.

I still worry people think I'm good enough. I still wonder that, Come on, I'm a human being. And yet what I'm learning is that I'm here to be a light in the world. When I show up and do those things, I bring light into the room and I lift people up. And if, you know you could do that, you're robbing the world of your contribution. If you hold yourself back.

Well, that's fantastic and kind of a great way to sort of start wrapping this up. I had other questions, like, I gotta ask about this, but that just, I think, is a perfect kind of thing. And then what I love about it is that the way you express it is that like I am stepping into, you know, you're, you know, the speaker on this topic. You're writing a book on this topic, but you're not expressing it as I'm done or I've arrived. It's like this process and even you as the expert are still like, I'm still continuously stepping into this. And it's, you know, I think some people just wait around. Oh, I want to be unmuted.

And let me first figure out what is a huge thing I need to do. It's like, no, just, you know, sing a snippet of a song and take a class about something you've always enjoyed as a kid and lost touch with. And then slowly watch the progression goes. And I think that's, that's a huge lesson. I think anyone can, can take away from your journey. So thank you for, for sharing that. So I'm going to finish up in just a moment or two.

Before I do, I got one more question for you. If people want to learn more about you, if they want to potentially book you to speak to the organization or listen to some of your original songs or see some of your videos and coverage, you got a TEDX talk. What are some of the best ways that you like people to connect with you?

Yeah, racheldruckenmiller.com I know. We'll put the link in. It's a CK I tell people like, I'm not wasted. D R U C K Druckenmiller six ways. Yeah. RachelDruckenmiller.com and then also LinkedIn is my jam Instagram @ unmuted life.

I'm on YouTube, Spotify. Those are the main places I hang out. But if they just search Rachel Druckenmiller, it's a weird enough name that the only I'll pop up. They'll find me through that.

Yeah, and we will. We'll put the links directly in the show.

Notes and stuff. But if someone's just listening and they want to check it out.

Yeah, Rachel Drucken. Not drunken Druckenmiller. Yeah. I'm the same way when I and my keynotes, I'm like, if you forget my stuff, just type in Avish. There's not many of us in the world. I'll show up in Google. Well, fantastic.

Hey, I got one last question I end all my episodes with, which is I talk about this idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but. And I do it because I honestly believe the world would be a better place if everyone started with the default mindset of yes and instead of yes, but you don't have to agree with everything, but just start with that. Open minded. Yes. And so I want to know is what is one small thing that you believe if everyone did, it would make the world a better place?

Well, okay. It's very fresh in my mind because I just wrote about this in the final chapter of my book. So it's a question again, because I'd rather ask a question than tell people what to do. If everyone woke up each day and asked themselves the question, how can I be a contribution today? Which is a version of something I learned from the book the Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander. If every single person woke up and asked, how can I be a contribution today? And the way that I show up and the way that I engage with another person and the way that I speak to someone and the way that I look at someone and the way that I acknowledge another person and the way that I show support or help.

How can my being, how can my presence be a contribution in the world? In an interaction at work? If we start from that place, take whatever answer to that question comes up and act on it, I believe it would transform the world.

Well, I love that and I cannot disagree. That is a great answer. So thank you for sharing that and thank you for taking the time to share with us about your journey. Your background unmuted everything. And you've got a book coming out in the, in the spring, so make sure.

Or in December, right.

Fall 26.

Oh, fall of 26. Okay, so, okay, so, yeah, make sure you follow Rachel along so you can get that when it comes out. But even before then, check out her stuff. Check out our website, LinkedIn, TedX, talk. It's all great stuff. Rachel, thank you so much. This was awesome.

And hey, when the book comes out, I'm happy to have you back on to talk about that.

Amazing. Thank you. Avish.

And click. They did not stop.