Episode 1: Whats In A Name?
Whats in a Name?
Introducing The She Sounds Like Me Podcast! Hosted by Rachael Laya Hoffman and Cyla Grace Hoffman. Two voice actors who share their love for each other, their work & their community through thoughtful, candid conversations. This unscripted, mother daughter chat-cast discusses conscious kids, opportunities for growth, how to contribute positively, and the challenges in the world - through the lens of a precocious 7-year-old child, and her modern day Mama.
In episode 1, we talk about the origin of our own names and how the title of the show came to be. A quick but thoughtful introduction, and we are so grateful you are here to listen along!
Stay tuned for more good every week on the show. She Sounds Like Me is produced by Creative Catalyst Media, LLC, thank you for your support!
In Gratitude,
Rachael & Cyla Hoffman
Transcript:
Rachael Laya: Hey friends, welcome to the She sounds like me podcast where your hosts Rachael Laya Hoffman,
Cyla: and I'm Cyla Grace Hoffman.
Rachael Laya: We're a mom and daughter duo that works together, plays together and tries to figure out this crazy world together.
Cyla: Yeah, mom, and we're super grateful you could join us today. This is the She Sounds Like Me podcast.
Cyla: Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, mom! Before we get this party started, we got to let them know the goods first! Friends, if you like what you hear, subscribe to this podcast on your chosen platform, give us a 5-star review or join our conversation online at She Sounds Like Me on the socials. And at shesoundslikeme.co, that's .co, not com, 'cause somebody already snatched that one. Okay, mom. Now let's get to it.
Rachael Laya: So Cy, I think that it would be really cool, if we were able to talk about a couple of things. One,..
Cyla 02:00: Can you please not call me Cy in the middle of this podcast?
Rachael Laya 02:03: Why, that's your nickname?! Speaking of nicknames, I think that we should talk about What's in a name? Right. And like,
Cyla 02:10: I don't get what you're going for.
Rachael Laya: 02:12 Okay, well, I'm gonna tell you. So what's in a name, right?! What is in a name? We named our podcast
Cyla :02:18 She sounds like me.
Rachael Laya 02:23 She, she does. It's you, right? You sound like me. I kind of sound like you. And just, I think there's a lot of girls and moms and women out there that might think that we sound like them, right? And we know that the reason we do what we do, what do we do for a living? We're
Cyla 02:42 Vyo - voiceover.
Rachael Laya 02:44 What's vyo? vyo, yo?
Cyla 02:47 Voice over work.
Rachael Laya 02:49 Yeah, so we talk for a living, right?
Rachael Laya 02:52 And I think what's cool about that is that the reason I got you into doing this to begin with, or I thought it would be if 1) fun to share what I do, but to make sure that you knew that your voice mattered.
Rachael Laya 03:05 And as a little girl in this world,
Cyla 03:08: It's important that everybody knows their voice matters, even if they're not a big fan of speaking, and they don't even think their voice matters at all, we want you to know your voice, do- your voices do matter. Yeah, no matter what they are,
Rachael Laya 03:25 no matter what they are or where they are.
Rachael Laya 03:28: Or how old they are.
Cyla 03:30 Or if you have missing teeth and, and how many missing teeth do you have?
Rachael Laya 03:35 Your voice still matters?
Rachael Laya 03:38 So that's why we got into voiceover. Because when I was a little girl, I don't know if you know this, but at one point, I didn't know that my voice mattered, right?!
Cyla 03:50 And I didn't know my voice mattered until I was like five, when you got me into this?
Rachael Laya 03:57 Well, and I think it matters for a lot of reasons doesn't just matter, because that's the kind of work that we do, right? And we went in voice overs, we do something that's kind of unique - we are able to tell stories. Yeah, we tell stories of other people that may not be able to tell stories,
Rachael Laya 04:14 Or we get a message across. When a company or brand or somebody needs to get their message across, that means that their message matters.
Rachael Laya 04:24 Even if they're selling something or whatever.
Cyla 04:26 Yeah. And you don't want to be like, well, maybe you're texting something, but the other person on the other line thinks you're saying it in a rude way, because you can never hear somebody in the tone they're giving, and the tone that they're giving matters on what the other person or, is going to think you're trying to tell them. Like, for example, you might be trying to send, "Hey, can I have my stuff back?" because you've like given, given that person your stuff, because they needed it for something and you want it back. And then, the other person on the other line might think you're saying, "Hey, give me my stuff back!"
Rachael Laya 05:06 Right? But it's on how you say it, right?!
Cyla 05:08 Right. And if you're, if you're texting it, you have to make sure you, you end it and you're like, and you say, and you have some more words, like, describe how you're saying it. If it has two different ways of saying it, like, rude, "give it back" or, "Hey, can you give me back my stuff?"
Rachael Laya 05:31 So what you're saying is, the tone of your voice also matters.
Rachael Laya 05:35 Right, so your voice matters.
Cyla 05:37 But your tone matters even more.
Rachael Laya 05:42 So she sounds like me, she might be sounding rude. sassy, mean, like some of the characters you were just doing in the studio today.
Rachael Laya 05:51 So She Sounds Like Me is the name of this podcast, because we want to share what goes on for us in hopes that we can inspire or find similarities with people that might feel like us, right?!
Cyla 06:06 ey, Mom, we forgot to introduce ourselves.
Rachael Laya 06:17 Okay. My name is Rachel. My name is Rachael Laya Hoffman And speaking of names, right. In work, I go by Laya Hoffman, and you know why that is?
Cyla 06:28 Right, because there's another Rachael Laya Hoffman in the work system.
Cyla 06:34 Yeah. There's like, maybe you're sending it to one Rachael Laya Hoffman, but it comes across to the other Rachael Laya Hoffman. And you're like,
Rachael Laya 06:45 Right. Well, also, in when you get a little bit older, you'll understand too there's something in marketing, where it's called search engine optimization, ave you heard of this SEO? Search eng-? You have heard of this? Okay. Well, search engine optimization in, when it comes to a website, tells Google, right, if your name is Rachael Hoffman and there's another Rachael Hoffman in voiceover, like we just explained, Google might not recognize that there's two of us. And it happened to be the when I started in my voiceover career full time, this other Rachael Hoffman kind of owned the SEO. So she won the Google Search Engine Optimization, as she was coming up first. I mean, I might be passing her by by my own stuff now, but in other agencies that were represented by, right, and we're definitely have the great honor of being represented by some of the best in the country, they also may have Rachael Hoffman on their roster. And so it would be confusing for them. So just like a stage name,
Cyla 07:54 Or where, where where is this Rachel? And where is this Rachel?
Rachael Laya 07:58 Right, right. And so we had to use my middle name right.
Rachael Laya 08:24 Yeah, okay. But anyway, I think we'll just go by mom, for you always. Hosted by Rachael Laya Hoffman.
Rachael Laya 08:32 And Cyla Grace Huffman. So Cyla, everybody always asked me about your name. Do they ask you?
Cyla 08:38 Yeah, they really do. (whispering)
Rachael Laya 08:41 What do they ask you?
Cyla 08:44 Not like, it's not really them asking me, they say my name, and they'll, 'cause they're like, trying to talk to me. But there's, um, yeah. And I'm like doing something because they're trying to talk to me, but they don't know how to pronounce my name right and I'm still busy because like, because they're not, it doesn't sound like they're talking to me, because they're not saying my name correctly and so I can't really figure out if they're talking to someone else, or me.
Rachael Laya 09:48 So you know, do you remember how you got your name?
Rachael Laya 10:09 So you were named by… It was close to my first father, but my, my, my, my uncle Chet, who basically raised me as a father figure, right 'cause of me, I had a lot of dads, a lot, a lot of dads, that'll be a whole another episode, I think. Okay, so
Rachael Laya 10:36 So it was a man, a wonderful, incredible man.
Rachael Laya 10:57 Okay, so, back to how you're named your name by Chet, who was my uncle and basically, a father, father figure. Yeah, one of the greatest men of my life, right?!
Cyla 11:10 Aaaa except for daddy.
Rachael Laya 11:11 Exactly. And, and my mom's, so Booby's mom, was her name was Laila and Laila died, that she was also called Lil, Lillian. But her original name was Lila. And she died very early on from leukemia, before mom was 13 years old. And so we took Chet, and Lyla, and we played together and made Cyla. And then your middle name is
Cyla 11:38 Grace, because I'm trying, I'm because my mom and my mom and dad decided they wanted me to have the same initials as my grandpa, my dad, and
Cyla 11:51 Chet.
Rachael Laya 11:56 Okay, it was just those two people and I named you, so it's your dad and your grandpa. And their initials are
Cyla 12:02 CGH.
Rachael Laya 12:04 And so what, do you know, and you know what your dad's middle name is?
Cyla 12:08 Clifford Gaylord Hoffman.
Rachael Laya 12:10 Right. And so if we had a boy, we would feel like we might have had to name our boy, Clifford Gaylord Hoffman, Jr. Or the third.
Cyla 12:21 Clifford Gaylord Hoffman, the third.
Rachael Laya 12:23 And I was not gonna have that.
Rachael Laya 12:26 So we gave you the initials instead. So you still carrying on family tradition. So I think what's cool about that is that carrying on name, based on family tradition, is really also important, it's also kind of
Cyla 12:38 I'm carrying, I'm gonna keep carrying on my CGH.
Rachael Laya 12:41 You are?! You're gonna have some kids named CGH? Okay, cool. I was also gonna name you, Charlie, but ..No,
Rachael Laya 12:51 I would've named you Charlie as a boy, too, but I liked Cyla better, came to me, in a vision. Aaah. So that's what's in a name, right?! Cyla. Rachael Laya. You can call me Rachel, you can call me Laya, you can call me Princess Leia. Or you can call me queen. But you just call me mom. And so what are some of your nicknames while we're at it? Cy.
Rachael Laya 14:31 Alright, so that's, that's our names. And what, we're we want to give us a little bit more information about us. Where do we live? We don't we definitely want to give our address or anything like that to these good people, but we live in Atlanta. We'll just say that. Okay. Which is out here, in the north suburbs of Atlanta. And we do voiceover for a living, yes, but there's so much more than that, right?!
Cyla 14:59 I mean, Artist - I'm in introduce myself. I'm an artist. I ..my favorite colors are dark blue and black. I have a Bearded Dragon, which in case you don't know is a lizard. Then, I have two dogs, we have two dogs. The Dragon's just mine. Yeah
Rachael Laya 15:25 What kind of dogs we have?
Cyla 15:26 We have two English Staffordshire Bull Terriers.
Rachael Laya 15:29 And what are your favorite subjects in school?
Cyla 15:32 Art, math, reading and creative writing.
Cyla 15:39 And STEM. And then, um, we like to make magic in the world.
Rachael Laya 15:46 Oh, I love that. Of course we do. You I think I made you, which is enough magic for me to handle, but together we rock it out.
Cyla 15:56 Magic.
Rachael Laya 15:57 What else do you like to do? You love to dance.
Cyla 15:59 I love to dance. I love to play ukulele. I love to sing. I love to create my own worlds, my own lives, my own creativity.
Rachael Laya 16:14 Oh, I love it.
Rachael Laya 16:30 You're grateful - it's a big part of what we are.
Cyla 16:33 Yeah, I'm grateful. I'm brave and bold and strong. So is my mom. Rhyming words , rhyming words.
Rachael Laya 16:45 Well, I think what's cool about that is that you probably have a lot of similarities with the people that might be listening to this. I mean, I'm pretty sure there's a whole big world of big, brave, bold, awesome superstar girls out there.
Cyla 16:59 Yes, there is. And I know 108 of them.
Rachael Laya 17:03 You do, you do have a lot of girlfriends. Strong friends, strong girlfriends unite. So we're over here and um, what do I do? I do voice work for a living, right?! But most of my favorite things is to build community. And besides spending time with you and dad, and being outside big time in nature.
Rachael Laya 17:25 Yeah. And we we love to do all kinds of activities. I think we're not too big into sports, but we are going to play tennis again this season, it'll be fun. We like to give back to the community and do fundraising and things like that, which we'll talk about on another episode.
Rachael Laya 17:44 And and we love it and it's pretty good for us. So She Sounds Like Me is going to be a -- between you and I talking about what it means to be mom and daughter and, and be a dynamic duo, right?!
Cyla 17:59 Relationship.
Rachael Laya 18:01 With relationship and how that pertains to how we work. Because I think it's interesting to maybe some folks is that at seven years old, right? You're a working voice actor and have been for almost two years. At 40 years old, I am also a full time working voice actor and have been for almost 20 years, full time now for the last two, because I could be with you. And that was the that was the goal is to be home and be together so that we could build on a relationship and be close, because corporate america didn't serve mommy well.
Cyla 18:40 Yeah. Before she was in a hair company. And now she's moved down to be home with me, since my dad has to work out of the house. And I am most of the time at home except when I'm doing school or dancing, stuff like that.
Rachael Laya 19:02 But it's important to be together we have the opportunity to do that. And so we did this year, well we did it two years ago and it's been awesome ever since. So this will follow our journey in voiceover, which is an interesting thing, because a lot of parents out there had something that they were into, and they got to share it with their children, too. It's not often that you get to share your work with your child, which is, makes for an interesting dynamic between the two of us. But also there's a lot of parents out there who do things like coach their kids' soccer team or baseball team
Rachael Laya 19:36 Or their cheerleading coach or what have you. And I think what comes with that, as a mom and daughter, or a dad and daughter team or dad and son team, is that there's a, there's a new dynamic that happens between the parent and child when you move from just, not just the parent child space but moving into a working space or creative space or a coaching space when your parent becomes a coach? Yeah, it's weird.
Rachael Laya 20:06 Can it get weird?
Cyla 20:07 It can get weird, creepy.
Rachael Laya 20:09 Oh, creepy?!
Cyla 20:11 Not creepy. Not creepy. Sorry, silly,
Rachael Laya 20:14 It can be silly. It can be really tough, too, though, right?! It can be hard on both of us, I think to keep a balance and keep respect.
Cyla 20:21 Yeah, when I found out about voiceover and that my mom was doing this, and I found out, I could do it, too, I was like, whoa, I'm gonna get into this!
Rachael Laya 20:36 Yeah, and we really had some fun. But then it also is, it's challenging at times when it's not so fun, right? Can we still, we have, we still have a commitment to our clients or to our agents and deadlines that are due and even if we don't feel like it. So we have more about that. Yeah, because it because it is it's something that that not every parent kid relationship has to deal with. And on top of that, we have some other cool things that are happening this year: this year, with COVID-19, we made the choice to move out of public school, which is something that was very important to us, to be where we are, we actually moved in this house to join that particular
Cyla 21:18 School.
Rachael Laya 21:19 Yeah, that public school, which we won't name, but we do love very much and hope one day to go back to.
Rachael Laya 21:45 We can edit it, I can always pull that out. But we'll get we'll get used to it. So with that, we've transitioned into a homeschool program, a homeschool hybrid program, here, which will mean you are going to school in person, just three days a week with a very, very small situation, which is different for everyone. Several hundred kids in one grade to nine. But it's gonna be awesome.
Cyla 22:12 I know. But the weird thing is, it's the tiniest school in the world. And it's in a shopping center.
Rachael Laya 22:24 So you went one day last week, to just check it out. Yeah. And, um, how was it?
Cyla 22:32 It was the best day of my life.
Rachael Laya 22:36 Oh my gosh. So well. I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration, Cy. I also think that I'm super grateful that that is the reaction and the response that you had, because we didn't know what to expect. And it was gonna be kind of cool, kind of scary.
Rachael Laya 22:58 Totally different. Well, one, especially with what's going on with COVID we didn't have a chance to meet any of these teachers, or administrators in person.
Rachael Laya 23:08 Right. We've only seen them on the screen. There's something kind of, as a parent, there's something kind of strange about pulling up to a place you've never been inside, handing your kid off to people you've never met.
Rachael Laya 23:19 Who are wearing full personal protection equipment, which a mask face shield gloves. Basically taking your child and putting you into a facility you've never been around people you've never been with and leaving them there all day. That was that was bizarre, for both of us I think.
Cyla 23:36 Yeah. I'm leaving you. And I'm like, "Who are these people? Am I going to die?"
Rachael Laya 23:41 Yeah. And I was like, you know what, we both did an awesome job of keeping a really solid perspective on it.
Rachael Laya 23:49 And, and thinking about it as an opportunity and not as a "Oh, no", right?! Because..
Rachael Laya 23:56 Yeah. Because if you have a positive outlook, you never know what's on the other side. Right?
Rachael Laya 24:02 You could meet your new best friend.
Rachael Laya 24:10 Or your new favorite class like the new class you're taking..What class is that? What's your favorite..
Cyla 24:17 No. American Girl Class Learning through history, in there?
Cyla 24:21 History through American Girl off. How cool is that?
Rachael Laya 24:25 I know. So there's a lot of opportunity. And if we can keep a positive mental attitude, which is a growth mindset, right? We talk about growth mindset, a lot of times and we'll, we'll get into that on the show, I'm sure. So in addition to this growth mindset, I think what this year is definitely going to bring is some resilience a lot, a lot of big changes,
Rachael Laya 24:50 What do you think scares you the most about, what's going on right now, speaking of COVID-19. I mean, you're seven, how does this feel for a seven year old?
Cyla 24:59 For me, personally, I feel like my life is totally going to flip and in a like fade off and not gonna, not going to keep going and like, disappear and my life is going to crumble up like it's never even happened.
Rachael Laya 25:26 But what do you think, is there anything about what's going on now that is positive, that's been a positive change for you? So like, some of the things that are different that you really like right now?
Cyla 25:37 One of the positive things about COVID-19, and staying home, is that I get to be with my family numbers and people I love. But, and, sorry, and, not but, and I get to, I get to spend more time doing what I love, like art, and being myself, then I would when I have to go everywhere every moment of the day and we're traveling and we're doing this, we're doing that, and it's all complicated. And now it's more like we have to do this later today, but we're chilling until that.
Cyla 26:23 Like not really chilling, but like relaxing, and not like, bam, bam, bam, bam, do this! Yeah, yeah!
Rachael Laya 26:30 Cyla, I'm so glad you think that way, because I don't think we have, we have zero chill most days, I feel like we're kind of a busy family. But to your point..
Rachael Laya 26:42 We're normally really reppin and run, right? And I
Cyla 26:44 We're like, we have no seconds, we're, we're, we're gonna be like,
Rachael Laya 26:48 What a crazy perspective, which is awesome, Cy, thanks for sharing that. Because I think as parents, we are always going going going, we think we're filling the time with stuff that's fun and exciting birthday parties, errand running, shopping, this, that whatever, you got to get to your extracurricular practice, dance class. And these days, back when we were kids, we didn't, we didn't get to run around outside until the wee hours, until it got dark out. Like dad and I always talk to you about how it used to be we come home from school and just get on our bikes and ride and be around the neighborhood until the dinner bell rang or until dark out. And now that's not really the thing with kids, you don't, there's a lot of safety issues with that, so that doesn't happen. And instead, we fill your time with a bunch of extracurricular activities, which is awesome, stuff you love for the most part, right?! But a lot of busy, busy, busy action. And I think since COVID, because most of all, almost everything we do has gone virtual,
Rachael Laya 27:46 We've decided what we really love to focus on
Cyla 27:48 Is the things I love to do and that
Cyla 27:52 Yeah, that I want to invest in. So I have more free time to play and be myself.
Cyla 28:00 Then I'm like, then, unlike I'm in this class, and I know I'm gonna have to go to my next class in, like 30 minutes, and I'm like,
Rachael Laya 28:08 Yeah, you're slamming to the next place.
Rachael Laya 28:11 So hopefully this has given us like a little bit of a, just decompression a little bit.
Cyla 28:16 I just really slapped my hand on my hand.
Rachael Laya 28:20 You've gotta slow down. And I think this is a good reflection moment, because it has, it has broadened our awareness kind of back to the source.
Cyla 28:30 It has broadened, brought in the, the tough side of us, and let's get this "done" side of us.
Rachael Laya 28:39 The resilience.
Cyla 28:40 Yeah, the resilient side of us, and the disciplined side of us, that'll let us do what we want, even though we know we're gonna have to do this,
Rachael Laya 28:49 Like more meaningful stuff.
Rachael Laya 28:52 Meaningful. Well, that's good. I'm glad we're doing more of that, including with this episode, and this new project that we're taking on which this podcast is going to be just an audio documentary of our journey through the next couple of months as COVID continues to unveil as new homeschooling hybrid program takes shape, and we explore how that works for you through the eyes of a seven year old. And then the work that we do on top of it, plus our funny, kooky stuff that we have all the time.
Cyla 29:31 This adventure has really brought us far and we really want to share it with you.
Rachael Laya 29:36 Yeah, we do. I think we want to share it with each other. If, for any other reason, this is it'd be a great audio time capsule for us one day. And I hope that Cy, you look back on this and think man, my mom was cool.
Cyla 29:51 She's the coolest mom in the world.
Cyla 29:55 Everybody would want this mom!
Rachael Laya 29:56 Oh my god, you're a darling and everybody would want you. So make friends with us, stay in the loop, She Sounds Like Me, shesoundslikeme.com and on social. And check us out, you can subscribe to our podcast or you can listen along on all the platforms, which I've yet to figure out yet. For now, posting content, like we do on Instagram, you can find Cyla at CylaGrace and me at RachelLayaHoffman on IG and connect with us. Let us know what you want to hear, right?! Let us know what questions you have and um
Cyla 30:30 We'll try to answer them.
Rachael Laya 30:31 Yeah, we'll talk about it, right?! So thanks for listening!
Rachael Laya 30:38 All right, before we head out a quick shout out to the awesome friends that lent their voices to our vision at the top of each episode. She Sounds Like Me is produced by Creative Catalyst Media LLC. And as always, if you like what you hear, subscribe to our tribe online and shesoundslikeme.co and find us on social at SheSoundsLikeMe, so we can connect directly to you.