Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - How to Love Your Podcast Voice

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

“I hate hate my voice.”    So many aspiring podcasters say this. But do they really hate their voice? Or is something else going on here?   On this episode, I dig into how to become more comfortable with your podcast voice.   Don't miss next week's episode, which will be a deep-dive vocal training on how to enhance your natural voice (which sounds great, by the way).   *** Hello. I’m Sarah, your host and founder of Podcast Launch Academy. Are you ready to launch a podcast that builds your brand and business, connects you to your global community, and grows your influence? Visit sarahmikutel.com to see how we can work together. Here’s a special treat for you: Use my Buzzsprout affiliate link to sign up for their podcast media hosting and get a $20 Amazon gift certificate. I’ve gotten to know the Buzzsprout team over this last year and love their customer service so much, I moved my shows over there. sarahmikutel.com/buzzsproutDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

I hate my voice. I hear so many aspiring podcasters say this, but do they really hate their voice or is something else going on here? And how do you feel about your voice? If you want to feel more comfortable with your voice and your speaking style, then stay tuned. Have you been wanting to start a podcast for a while now, but something's holding you back? Maybe it's fear of putting yourself out there or confusion about the technology. I'm Sarah Mikital and on podcasting step by step, I'll break down how to podcast with a little loving motivation to give you the skills and the confidence you need to finally launch that show of your dreams. Let's get started. A few years ago, I was working with a client and we were doing a mission, vision, and values strategy session. So we're in a conference room. We've got our whiteboard up.

and I decided that I wanted to record everything because I was going to be like writing on the board and I just wanted to be able to capture the whole conversation and our ideas so I could go back and listen to it later. And when it came time to go back to it, and this is before I started podcasting for myself, I really felt so much dread about listening back to that recording. And I realized that it wasn't that I was afraid to hear my own voice. I was afraid that I was going to sound stupid, like in this meeting, like, oh, God, what did I say? And when I listened back, I was actually pleasantly surprised, like, oh, I sounded smarter than I thought I did. And I think we don't give ourselves enough credit.

And often when we say, I hate my voice, we're really saying, you know, I'm afraid of what I sound like. I'm afraid of what people are going to think when they hear me. I'm afraid that I'm going to sound stupid. One way that we can get over these insecure feelings is by planning our episodes before hitting record. This means outlining or scripting solo shows, preparing for our interviews. We want to sound calm and not frazzled and scrambling for our notes when we're going into interview guests. So we need to know the questions that we want to ask. And I've done episodes on this in the past that you can go back and listen to.

But we really want to be prepared for the conversations that we're going to have with our guests. And of course, we don't want to sound like rigid robots. You know, we can have some flexibility. But if we know where we want the conversation to get to, what do we want our audience to get out of this particular episode? and have a list of questions in advance that we want to get through, and it doesn't mean we need to have to get through all of them, and it doesn't mean that we can't go on interesting tangents if they guess is something unexpected, and you want to explore that. But having some structure in place beforehand is going to make us feel a lot more at ease and a lot more confident.

And the more you podcast, the more confident you're going to start feeling. So a lot of times it's just a matter of getting started. I ask my friend and fellow podcaster and a vocal expert, Andrea Klinder, why she thought so many people say they hate the sound of their voice. And here's what she had to say. I think it's a few different things. Physically, biologically, I don't know what area of science this is, because remember, I'm a performer, not a science major. But the way that your voice sounds to you in your head when you're speaking is acoustically different than the way your voice sounds. after it has come out of your mouth to someone else. So the way that someone hears your voice is not the same way that you hear it because the sound waves are bouncing around differently inside your head than out in space, number one.

So you're so used to hearing your own voice from inside your head that when you hear it recorded, there's like this slight dissonance. Like it doesn't sound like you. You don't think that's what your voice sounds like because it's not what it sounds like to you. So there's like this little like, oh, is that what my voice sounds like? Just because you're not used to it. The other thing is that whenever something is recorded, I mean, you know this as an editor and as a podcaster, whenever something is recorded, there are a lot of factors that go into what that sound is like. So if you, you know, going back again, dating myself, if you go back to like

the days of an old answering machine that had the little audio cassette in it and you would record your greeting for your phone on the cassette inside of the answering machine, I mean, that never sounded good. That's not a high quality microphone versus if you have a fancy, you know, upgraded broadcast quality microphone and you have it set up properly, your voice is going to sound very different on the answering machine versus on the broadcast microphone. And so the recorded medium also alters it. I think also just people feel really self-conscious psychologically about their voice because your voice is so personal to you and it's such an intimate thing and there's a lot of psychology around how your voice is an extension of who you are and anytime we put who we are at our

core out into the world for someone to hear we feel vulnerable and so I think it's kind of a combination of those three things. I have to say these days I feel like when I hear myself on a podcast, it's the same as I hear myself speaking. And I don't, did, do you feel that way? Yes. And I, I suspect that two things happen. The more that you speak while listening to yourself on headphones, it actually alters the way that you speak. So one thing, when people say that they're not a confident public speaker or that they're not confident with their voice, if you start podcasting and you wear headphones while you record and you listen to yourself while you're speaking, and then doubly, if you're editing yourself and you're listening to yourself recorded and editing

yourself, it will change the way that you speak. And I know one thing, and maybe this is jumping ahead a little bit, one thing people get frustrated about is filler words. So sometimes people will, when they're listening back to themselves recorded, say, I cannot believe I say, um, as much as I do. Or do I really say like that often? And I think the more that you listen to yourself and the more that you edit yourself, the less you will naturally do those things because I always say it's like, I'm tired of irritating myself. I'm speaking that way. And so it does actually shift and change the way that you speak, both in terms of the way that you phrase things in the language that you use and then also in the way that you phonate your voice and pronounce certain things. if I don't want to hear lip smacks or poppy peas, I actually have trained myself to not pop my

peas. And when I'm listening on headphones, if I hear that, I'll immediately restate what I just said so that I don't pop them and I can easily cut the bad part out. That's so interesting that we actually change how we speak based on just like listening. 100%. So that's a tip for like, I think a lot of people want to outsource their editing right away. think one, it's a skill that you should learn just in case you have any emergencies or anything like that. Two, it's good to know all of the things that your editor is doing for you because it's like a lot of work. And three, it makes you a better speaker when you're listening back to yourself,

listening to the unedited version. As painful as it may be. Okay. So it weirds us out the first time we hear ourselves speak in a recording. But eventually we start to get over that part, especially when we're editing our own shows as Andrea says, we become better speakers. the more we hear ourselves speak. So I think that's a really important practice to listen back to ourselves, hear our speaking style, and then we get better over time. The more challenging part of podcasting, I think, is the psychological part of putting a part of ourselves out there. As Andrea said, we're putting a bit of our soul out there. And that feels very vulnerable. So we're worrying about what other people are going to think about our voices. Are we too loud? Are we too quiet? What about that vocal fry?

Yes, vocal fry. I'm doing my best to do it because I don't naturally have a lot of vocal fries. I actually do and I didn't know that until I started podcasting. So vocal fry is interesting. It's kind of this phenomenon that I feel like a few years ago, it got a lot of attention and then it sort of pops up every once. in a while. And I think it got a lot of attention because more and more women started podcasting and it is something that happens in your voice. It can happen to men and it can happen to women. It is not just for women. It's just that it gets noticed more in women and it gets criticized more in women. In general, women's voices get criticized way more than men's voices just across the board. But specifically with this, and all it really is is generally in your lower, range or your lower register. So whenever you speak, you have a lower register, which is like

as deep as your voice can go. And then you have an upper register, which is if you're speaking, you know, another critique thing is upspeak, right? When you're like ending your sentences on an upswing. But when you're in your lower register, vocal fry can happen when you don't have enough breath support to support the sound. It can happen because you're tired. It can happen just because your posture is bad and you don't know how to breathe properly. It can happen for, there can be actual pathologies that can be affecting the sound of your voice. So there's a difference between just natural vocal fry, which just comes from a lack of breath support in the lower register, which from what I can tell and what I've read generally is probably not a problem. Like it's not damaging your vocal cords at all.

and then actual pathologies of things that could be physically wrong with your larynx or with your vocal folds. And then that would be something totally separate that I'm not qualified to speak on. But with the vocal fry, the issue is really that some people find it very annoying. And also some people feel that it discredits you, that it makes you sound anxious or unreliable or like you don't care about what you're talking about. And I think part of that has to do with culturally, at some point, and I think this was like a few years ago, it became an affectation, especially around younger millennial women where I think there were certain celebrities or are certain celebrities who have a tendency to speak like that. And it's sort of their signature speech pattern. And because of that, a lot of people started sort of emulating that speech pattern. I don't know if this ever happens to you where when you're having a conversation with someone or you're, interviewing them, you start to pick up their speech pattern. If you're interviewing somebody who says like a lot, you find yourself saying like more than you normally would. I think we all do that. And I mean, even normal conversation, if you don't normally swear, but you're with

somebody who like hurts as like a sailor, all of a sudden you're dropping F-bombs. Yeah. So I think the same happened culturally when there were some celebrities who had a lot of vocal fry. It became the the in vogue way of young people, young women particularly trying to emulate those certain voice patterns. And there was a study that I found online actually that said that people over a certain age, and it's somewhere in your 30s, but it's basically Gen X and older dislike when they hear vocal fry, whereas millennial and younger, tend to find it appealing. I read that as well. You mentioned Upspeak, and I heard something really interesting the other day that when it comes to asking questions, our voice only goes up if the answer is a yes or no

question. So if I said to you, do you want to have tacos or pizza for dinner? Like my voice doesn't go up. But I said, if I asked you like, are you happy today? Then it's a yes or no question. So, my voice goes up. Interesting. I never thought of that. But questions aren't upspeak. Upspeak is when you're saying like a statement, but it sounds like a question because your voice is going up at end. So then I went to the store. Yeah. And I got a slurpee. I don't know why I'm thinking of 7-Eleven. What is the solution to this? This is just training. This is just listening to yourself over and over again, hearing yourself do it and just noticing that, you're doing it and just training yourself not to do it. And I think part of it is knowing that you can take your time when you're recording podcasts. And you and I have talked about this too. This is actually

a big plug for editing your podcasts because I know that I used to get nervous when I would do interviews, when I would record interviews with people. And because of that, I would a lot of times rush through my questions because I felt like I couldn't have too long of a pause or I couldn't have too much silence. Even though I knew I wasn't on live radio, for some reason I still had that mentality. And maybe that's because the degree I actually did end up getting in was mass communication and broadcast. And in live broadcast, you really don't want dead air. You are trying to like fill the sound. So maybe that was bred into me. But in podcasting, you can pause. It's not going to be that another world. You can think about what you're going to say. You can take a breath.

You can, you know, roll your shoulders for a second. And the more that you can be thoughtful about and take your time with what it is that you want to say, the less those vocal patterns will come in. Because I think those vocal patterns also have a tendency to come in when you are rushing or when you're not sure about what you're saying. And that's that's the person. perception, right? That's the problem with upspeak, if you can really call it a problem, is that when you have that vocal pattern, people tend to not trust that you're confident with what you're saying. Yeah. And actually, I think maybe it's just part of it is a style of speaking, because now that I'm thinking about it, I don't hear upspeak as much as I used to. I hear more vocal fry. Whereas when I was in school, we all talked like belly girls. Because you saw that in pop culture, right? It was prevalent. in pop culture, and so you want to emulate what you see as being the popular thing. I think we just, and I have a colleague who is a voice teacher who actually does like singing voice teaching, and she's been on my show, The Creative Imposter before Wendy Parman, and she has

talked about how over the years as a voice teacher, there are vocal trends that kind of come in and out of vogue, and most people don't even know that they're doing them. But it's just patterns that suddenly all of the new voice students are coming in with this specific trend or this specific pattern. And then that one will go away and a new one will come. Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, you listen to clips of the radio from 50, 60 years ago and they all sound different. And not just the reporter, but when they're doing interviews on the street, it's fascinating to hear how people spoke. They all sounded like they were from a Jimmy Stewart movie.

Bottom line, if you're creating content that your ideal listener wants, they're going to stick around, even if you don't sound like Morgan Freeman. Now, might you get the rare crank who says, I don't like this person. I don't like their voice? Yeah, but your podcast is not for them. So kick them out of your mind space. They haven't earned the right to be in your thoughts. And get back to the people who are showing up for you and who love you. Think of yourself as the host of a podcasting party. You are there. to like hang out and have fun with your guests. You don't need to worry about any haters. They are not invited to the party. They are standing outside, jealous, wanting to come in, but they're just awkward and mean. And so you'll let them in when they can behave themselves. We're here to have fun, not to try to win over the person who hates everything. And when you show up for your audience, they're happy to hear from you and they don't care if you have some super sexy voice. And I was trying to think of an example of somebody with a super sexy voice and I couldn't come up with anything because most of our feelings are neutral about most voices. That's why we always use Morgan Freeman as an example of somebody

having a great voice because he's the only one who comes to mind. For the most part, we don't think about people's voices very often. Really what we need to be doing is focusing on the content that we create. However, there are techniques where we can add a bit more sparkle to our voices and in next week's episode, Andrea will be our vocal coach and I will be interviewing her on how we can enhance our natural voice to sound more dynamic and engaging to our audience. You are not going to want to miss this episode. Talk to you next week. Thank you for listening to podcasting step by step. You are now one step closer to launching that podcast you've been dreaming about, but I want to get you even closer. I created a free guidebook for you with actionable worksheets

called 8 mistakes new podcasters make and how to fix them. To find that, head on over to sarah micotel.com slash fix. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.