The Accent Coach

08/26/2026

I joined Thiago on the English with Thiago podcast recently to talk about what accent coaching actually is, because most people have the wrong idea about it.

They think the goal is to erase the accent. It is not. The goal is to be clear first. Once someone is genuinely clear, and once they understand the frameworks English gives them to work with, they can decide for themselves what to do with their sound. That decision belongs to them, not to me.

Communication is about connection, and if you are not connecting, you are not communicating effectively.

📖Join the waitlist for my next Cambridge B2 and C1 exams prep group...

08/20/2026

Here is a thought experiment I put to clients.

You wake up tomorrow, and your accent is gone. You walk into your next meeting sounding exactly like the people around the table. Are you a better communicator?

Most people assume the answer is yes. It usually is not.

An accent is not what stops a room from following you. What stops them is breath that gives out before the sentence finishes, a voice that sits too thin to hold attention, and word endings that vanish before the idea lands. Take the accent out of the equation and every one of those problems is still sitting there.

That is the authority gap. The distance between the authority you have already earned and the authority a room actually grants you.

The fix is not sounding like someone else. It is understanding how your own voice works.

Jay Alexander Poulton

08/17/2026

Most people who book a call with me have never worked with an accent coach and have no real idea what one does. Some arrive expecting a language lesson. Some arrive certain it will not work on them.
So I wrote down exactly what happens in my free 30-minute assessment.
What I ask you to do in the first five minutes. The sounds I catch first. The six things nobody expects me to be listening for while they talk about their job: pace, breath, jaw tension, posture, eye contact, and where they are placing their voice.
And the fifteen-second demonstration that usually ends the skepticism on the spot.
Give it a read. If you have been wondering whether this kind of work is for you, the assessment is free, and you will leave it knowing a lot more about your own voice.

https://theaccentcoach.com/what-happens-in-an-accent-assessment/

I am Jay Poulton, an accent and executive voice coach and the founder of The Accent Coach. I have 20+ years of experience in communication and coaching. I am a trained ICF Executive Leadership Coach, and I have coached clients in more than 25 countries, including professionals at Apple, Amazon, FedEx, Bank of America, Beats, and Wikipedia. All of my coaching is one-to-one and online.

A coach walks through his free 30-minute accent assessment: what he listens for, what surprises clients, and what you leave with.

08/13/2026

https://youtube.com/shorts/yXICsbn10ZI?si=XEqJRCbMSDJT5XJ_

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

08/13/2026

https://youtube.com/shorts/MgALK31tAIk?si=OW-yFs5e5_TzOLWC

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

08/12/2026

Peter Novak said something on Think Fast, Talk Smart that I have been trying to explain to clients for the better part of nine years.

When people struggle to understand you, the problem is rarely your vowels. It comes down to whether your message lands.

Most of the executives I work with arrive wanting to erase their accent, because someone along the way told them it was the thing holding them back. What they actually need is clarity. And clarity does something interesting. Once your pacing steadies and your stressed syllables land where listeners expect them, your accent stops getting in the way. It is still there. People just stop hearing it as an obstacle and start hearing what you came to say.

That matters, because your accent carries your history. The languages you grew up hearing, the people who raised you, the places you have moved through. Erasing all of that would cost you something you cannot get back, and it would not make you one bit easier to understand.

Work on clarity and people will hear you. Keep your accent and they will know something true about where you came from.

08/10/2026

I had the pleasure of recently being on the podcast Leveraging Leadership with the amazing Emily Sander to talk about how your voice can change and do so much more for you than you can imagine. With a little practice, of course.

08/07/2026

Brilliant on paper. Are you brilliant in the room?

Most people who feel unheard at work don't have an ideas problem. They have a delivery problem; sentences that trail off, silences they rush to fill, a pace that leaves the room behind. That's not a personality flaw. It's a set of skills nobody ever taught you.

The Executive Voice Blueprint™ trains five of them: breath, articulation, resonance, cadence, and pause. Start free.

👉 theaccentcoach.com

07/30/2026

A client and I got sidetracked this morning, in the best way.

We were working on the letter T and landed on something that catches almost everyone off guard. When a T is followed by an R, native English speakers do not produce a clean T at all. Say "train" at normal speed and pay attention to what your tongue is doing. You end up very close to the CH in much.

It happens with D and R too. "Dream" comes out closer to "jream."

What I find interesting is that nobody is taught this. It is not in the spelling, it is not in the dictionary, and most native speakers have no idea they are doing it. They just do it. Which is exactly why it trips people up who learned English from the page.

Details like this are rarely what stop someone from being understood. They are what stop someone from sounding relaxed.

Sorry about the sound quality. Need a new mic.

07/27/2026

Have you ever wondered if accent training is right for you?

It is the question I get asked most, and my answer is not always yes.

If you are being misunderstood in the rooms that matter, accent training looks like the obvious fix. But it only holds when the foundation underneath it is already solid. Clear speech rests on breath, articulation, and resonance. When those are missing, new sounds have nothing to sit on, and the training never takes root.

That is why I build the foundation first with every client, before we touch a single vowel.

I'm Jay Alexander Poulton, The Accent Coach. I work with foreign-born professionals who are tired of repeating themselves and want to be heard the first time.

Full answer in the video.