Are you struggling with how to stop overthinking every time you need to speak up? In this episode of the Just & Joyful podcast, host Kristin Carver Smith (KCS) sits down with Samara Bay, the global expert on leadership out loud and author of the bestselling book, Permission to Speak, to help us understand some of the complicated dynamics that keep so many of us quiet. If you’ve ever wondered how not to overthink your presence in the room, this conversation serves as a roadmap.

Drawing on her decades of experience in helping celebrities, politicians, executives and more find their authentic voice, Samara discusses the transition from a "hard brain" to a "soft brain" and why learning to silence your inner critic is such a crucial step toward finding permission to speak. Whether you are preparing for a major presentation or just want to know how you can stop overthinking in daily life interactions, these insights will help you show up human and whole the next time you speak.

✨ In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Identifying the Inner Critic: How to change the conversation happening inside your head
• How Not to Overthink: Using the "Soft Brain" technique to access your intuition
• Permission to Speak: Why even Hollywood's biggest stars need help finding their authentic voice
• Public Speaking Tips: The three critical questions Samara always asks herself (and her clients) when preparing for a speaking engagement
• Embracing the Spirit of Mischief: Why mischief is such a crucial ingredient in speaking out loud and sharing our stories 

00:00 – Finding Permission to Speak with Samara Bay

02:38 – How Your Inner Voice Impacts Your Wellbeing

06:12 – Tips for Public Speaking from a Hollywood Dialect Coach

08:51 – How to Stop Overthinking When You're in the Spotlight

11:42 – Finding Your Authentic Voice in Any Room

14:41 – Overcoming Your Inner Critic: Creating a Sense of Safety

18:45 – The Truth About Perfectionism and How to Not Overthink Everything

25:00 – Soft Brain vs. Hard Brain: The Secret to Finding Your Authentic Voice

28:35 – Moving from Scarcity to Abundance in Your Leadership

🔗 Connect with Samara Bay:
➤ Website: https://www.permissioninc.co/ 

➤ Get Samara’s Book: https://www.permissioninc.co/book
➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samarabay

➤ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samarabay/ 

Subscribe to Just & Joyful for more honest discussions about mental health that’ll help you feel less alone and get curious about your experience.

How do you return to work after a mental health emergency without falling back into burnout? In this powerful episode of the Just & Joyful Podcast, host Kristin Carver Smith (KCS) and Bianca B. King (founder of Pretty Damn Ambitious™) provide a tactical roadmap for shifting from extractive, traditional ambition to a regenerative Joyful Ambition™ framework, and the ways survival ambition can show up through it all. 

Bianca shares her incredible journey, from leaving home at 13 to building a marketing agency that has generated over $280M in revenue, and the pivotal moment her husband’s health crisis forced her to redefine success.

By breaking down the "Ambition vs. Burnout" conflict, Bianca explains how to leverage your drive as a sustainable resource—ensuring your professional success (like her own $1.6B in transactions) never comes at the cost of your personal well-being.

If you’ve ever felt like your business was flourishing while your personal life was in a "winter" season, or if you’re trying to navigate the return to work after burnout or a mental health emergency, this conversation is your roadmap.

✨ In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Survival vs. Joyful Ambition: Why traditional ambition is often extractive and how to pivot.
• The Seasons of Business & Life: Navigating a "Personal Winter" while your "Business Summer" is in full bloom.
• The Ambition Axis: Tactical tools to help you claim and harness your drive sustainably.
• The Recovery Process: How Kristin and Bianca recalibrated their lives after burnout.
• Ambition vs. Motivation: Why understanding the difference is critical for long-term success.

⏱️ Timestamps & Chapters:

00:00 - Redefining Ambition after a Mental Health Emergency
01:43 - Bianca B. King: From $700 to $1.6 Billion in Transactions
03:57 - When Your Business is in Summer but Your Life is in Winter
06:47 - How Ambition Ebbs and Flows During Personal Crises
09:33 - The Birth of Joyful Ambition™
12:40 - Identifying "Survival Ambition" (Ambition at all costs)
15:49 - Coming Back from the Pit: The Reality of Burnout Recovery
19:37 - Becoming the "Ambition Architect"
24:45 - The 5 A’s of Joyful Ambition Framework
27:35 - The Power of Stillness and Internal Sounding Boards

🔗 Connect with Bianca B. King:
➤ Website: https://prettydamnambitious.com/
➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iambiancabking/
➤ The Ambition Axis: https://ambitionaxis.com/
➤ Bianca’s Newsletter: https://newsletter.prettydamnambitious.com/
➤ Bianca’s Private Podcast: https://biancabking.substack.com/ 

Subscribe to Just & Joyful for more honest discussions about mental health that’ll help you feel less alone and get curious about your experience.

Welcome back to another guest episode of Just and Joyful! On this week’s guest appearance, Kristin is joined by Brandeis (Brandi) Johnson, a Style Alignment Strategist and the founder of Brandeis Nicole, a bespoke style and image consulting firm for high-impact women navigating growth, visibility, and reinvention, to talk about getting dressed again after experiencing a mental health emergency. 

When we get dressed in the morning, most of us aren’t thinking about how our choices highlight the state of our mental health. However, Brandi says the two are much more intertwined than we imagine. In this episode, she breaks down just how much of an impact clothes (and all of our conditioning around what we wear) has on how we show up to ourselves and the world through the various seasons of our lives. Tune in for more on: 

• How style differs from fashion, plus ways to untangle our personal style from industry fashion (and why this shift is critical) 
• Ways our relationship to style changes throughout different seasons of our lives
• Why it’s not frivolous or foolish to care about how we look and how to break down this belief 
• How to start seeing style as a tool we can leverage to our benefit instead of viewing it as a moral judgment  
• Why Brandi thinks there’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who feels herself 

To learn more about Brandi, explore her links below. 

Brandi’s Website: https://www.brandeisnicole.com

Brandi’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/brandeisnicole

Brandi’s Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/styleforsmartcookies

Brandi’s Podcast:

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/undeniable-style/id1889658203
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5NXoCbY3fJWMOoXineHDyK?si=06uiDtXUQWOucQv2_XKCYw 

Signup for Brandi’s email:
https://brandeisnicole.kit.com/email

Brandi’s Free 3-Day Style Challenge (kicking off May 20):
https://brandeisnicole.kit.com/538293ed3f

This week’s bonus episode brings another behind-the-scenes look at Kristin’s musical journey to celebrate the release of her first album! Available to stream on April 17, LIGHT THROUGH Part 1 tells the story of the last several years of Kristin’s life as she has reached for music to help process through her mental health emergency and begin healing from that trauma. Tune in to hear more about: 

• Kristin’s musical journey through the years, from singing karaoke as a kid to writing and recording her first record as an adult  
• How time and distance have reframed the way Kristin views a critical moment of heartbreaking rejection from early on in her musical journey 
• Why Kristin chose a non-traditional path for her music + a real look at what it takes to create an album without a label 
• The story behind the divine download moment that inspired the album name LIGHT THROUGH 
• What kind of musical journey to expect from part 1 of the album + Kristin’s hope for what listeners take away from the songs

You can stream LIGHT THROUGH Part 1 on April 1, anywhere you listen to your favorite artists. You can also learn more about the music by visiting Kristin’s website at https://kristincarversmith.com/music/. 

If you haven’t had a chance to tune in to the Just and Joyful podcast yet, this is one episode you can’t miss.

Today, Kristin is joined by the venerable Cece Jones-Davis, an award-winning faith leader, public speaker, human rights advocate AND singer/songwriter. She’s perhaps most known for her work in founding and leading the Justice for Julius campaign, which aimed and succeeded at saving a man from death row. She’s been named one of Change.org’s Changemakers of the Year, and today she’s reflecting on all that work with Kristin, sharing some stories and insights never before told in public. Listen in for more on:

• How Cece and others built a movement to save Julius Jones from death row
• How anyone can start a movement to help on an issue they care about 
• Evidence for why people are stronger than systems 
• What Cece’s mental health looked like during and after the Justice for Julius campaign
• How overwhelm can become inaction–and what you can do instead
• Cece’s advice to other activists and advocates on staying well and not losing themselves in the work 
• Whether joy is really possible in advocacy work

You can learn more about Cece Jones-Davis on her website at https://cecejonesdavis.com/ or follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/cecejonesdavis/. 

Welcome to another guest episode! In this conversation, Kristin is joined by Ali Rutowski, an experiential therapist, maker and at-home herbalist with a passion for movement, art and the natural world, to return to the basics of mental health. Tune in for a conversation on:

• How to identify a mental health crisis
• Warning signs that can lead to a crisis
• How to talk to a loved one about warning signs 
• What crisis care is and how to advocate for yourself 
• Ways to tend to our mental health with simple daily practices 
• What a personal care routine is and how to design one

Explore Ali's shop here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MaisiuwithHeart

We’re back with another short, bonus episode for you! In today’s episode, Kristin and Angelina are diving back into the world of words to dissect how the practice of journaling has benefited them both in their mental health journey. Tune in for thoughts on: 

• How journaling aids processing and healing for Kristin and Angelina
• Ways that a perspective shift can release the pressure to perform on the page 
• Questions to ask before you take something from the private page and share it publicly 
• Why everyone is a writer and has permission to approach the page

Welcome to our very first guest episode! Today, Kristin is exploring who gets to need help with Sara Stanizai, a licensed marriage and family therapist and business coach who founded Prospect Therapy to create a queer- and trans-affirming practice that focuses specifically on serving first-generation American and immigrant communities.

Tune in to the episode for more on: 

• Sara’s personal experience with mental health and the signs that finally alerted her to needing help
• Why you can’t deep breathe your way out of oppression, plus how to build a resistance plan that actually works
• How compassion fatigue has been misused (and even weaponized), what it really is, and how to accurately name the exhaustion we feel navigating the world 

For more on Sara’s clinical and professional work, you can find her at www.prospecttherapy.com or on Instagram @prospecttherapy. You can also explore the compassion fatigue workshop she offers to help professionals navigate burnout and sift through Prospect Therapy’s team of licensed therapists who are currently accepting clients for both therapy and coaching.

The Just and Joyful podcast will release episodes featuring conversations with a variety of experts every other week. In the weeks in between our guest episodes, like this one, we’ll occasionally share shorter conversations to give you behind-the-scenes access to other exciting work going on or to invite you to participate in a gut check after heavy episodes. 

This week’s bonus episode features an exclusive look at Kristin’s brand new single, BLOOM, set to release on 3/13/26. Tune in to hear the story behind the song, get a peak at Kristin’s songwriting process, and hear a little sample from the actual song!

Welcome to the first episode of Just and Joyful w/ Kristin Carver Smith, a podcast created to provide an honest, nuanced look at mental health and all the ways it impacts our lives, work and play. 

In this episode, Kristin will be reading, for the very first time, the essay she wrote last year while processing a mental health emergency she survived in 2024. You’ll also get to hear Kristin’s heart for the podcast, what conversations we have planned for the season, and why it’s all happening now.

Follow Kristin and Just & Joyful on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/justandjoyfulofficial/

https://www.instagram.com/kristincarversmith