Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - Vocal Training: How to Enhance Your Podcast Voice to Keep Your Audience Listening

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

“Some people naturally seem to be storytellers who are more expressive vocally than others, but that doesn't mean that there aren't skills and tools that you can learn to have more control over your voice and to have more fun with it, and to really use it as a tool for self-expression in a way that still feels natural and authentic,” says Andrea Klunder, my guest on Podcasting Step by Step.    “It just comes with knowing what to play with and giving yourself permission to go there and experiment and see what feels good for you.”   In addition to being a pod expert, Andrea is classically trained in voice. In our episode together, she teaches us how to * warm up our voice * improve our posture * speak with more energy and clarity * take care of our bodies * and more   *** 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.

Today is all about how to enhance your podcast voice so you sound more engaging to your audience. Now, we're not changing your voice. You've got a great one. But what you're going to learn today is how to give your voice that little extra sparkle. My guest is Andrea Klender, host of podcast envy and the creative imposter, which is also the name of her production studio. Andrea is not only a podcast expert, but she is classically trained in voice. And today she is going to teach us how to warm up your voice, improve your posture, speak with more energy and clarity, take care of your body, and more. There is so much goodness here today, and I don't want you to spend the next 40 minutes just scribbling everything down. So head on over to sarah micotel.com for show notes and enjoy the show. 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 Micahedaleketal. 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. Welcome, Andrea. Thank you so much for joining me. Yay, thank you for having me, Sarah. This is so fun. So you're a podcaster, but I believe you have a background in musical theater, so I would love to hear more about your vocal training.

Yeah, I feel like I've had many lives already in this lifetime, and they are all defined by certain, I guess, professional. If you can consider aspirations of being a musical theater performer at age four, a professional aspiration. But somehow all of these different backgrounds have converged into podcasting. And so I do remember singing my first solo in church at age four. And that was the song Tomorrow from the music. musical Annie. And it was for the mother-daughter banquet. And ever since then, I was a stage person. I was a singer. I was a performer. It started in church and then carried on into school. I would always be in choir. Whenever there was a play or a musical, I was always like head of the line to sign up for

auditions. And I thought that actually opera was going to be my career. And so I grew up always thinking that I would be a professional singer and had voice lessons and did vocal competitions and auditioned for the school of music at Western Michigan University, got accepted, and promptly by the end of my freshman year quickly changed my major because I hated it so much, which was weird, right? Because from age four, I had always wanted to be a professional singer and performer. Why did you hate it? It was not fun. It was very, very, very. very hard. And I think what I have realized retrospectively is that music was always something that I loved. Singing was something I loved. It came naturally to me, not to say that I did not put in hard work.

I definitely put in hard work and study. My parents put in a lot of financial investment in my voice lessons and training. Yet when we got to the academic setting, it sucked all of the fun because you had to sing, right? It was now a requirement. And you had to sing certain repertoire. You didn't get to always choose what you were singing, what you were performing. Oh, you're at this age, you have this type of voice. Therefore, you should be singing Mozart. Therefore, you know, this and this. And there was an expectation that you lock yourself in a tiny practice room with no windows, you and a piano for hours a day to practice. It was competitive. And it didn't leave time for me to pursue other interests. Like talking with other music,

students, if you were like, I learned this really amazing thing in my English lit class, they would look at you like English lit has nothing to do with vocal performance. Why are you talking to me about that? And so as somebody who has a lot of interests, it just felt very confining. And I had to switch it up. In the last episode, I talked about how to love your podcast voice. And I woven some clips of you talking about some common voice issues, I say issues and quotes. And you mentioned that vocal fry is something that can happen when we record when we're tired. And I realized when I started my podcast, I was always doing it when I was exhausted. Yeah, you were always recording when you were tired. Yeah, yeah. And so I definitely sounded like a

Kardashian. My mom listened to an episode with me and she was like, hello, Sarah. How are you? And so right now the table that I have that I've, you know, I'm sitting at right now was probably too low. Okay. I don't know why I'm not using my boomworm. I should. But I realize that when I'm podcasting like this, I'm sort of like hunched over a little bit. Yeah. And my diaphragm is like a little bit like squished.

Yep. I guess. So can we talk about, yeah, how can we improve our breathing and our posture when we're podcasting? Absolutely. So some people think, you know, well, we all breathe. Naturally, we don't really need to think about our breathing because we just, it's just something that we do. But there's so much that can go into using your breath as a tool.

And it's not that you don't know how to breathe. And it's not that you're breathing wrong. Or it's not even that you have to put a ton of thought into it. But there's just a few little mindful things that you can have that give you more access to your full range of voice. And so by having access to your breath, you have more access to range. And that gives you more flexibility with your voice in terms of making it sound the way that you really love for it to sound, making it kind of shine and sparkle in a way that it can while still sounding like your natural, authentic voice. Because I think that that's a myth that I like to bust is that there is one ideal sought-after NPR podcast radio voice that we're all.

trying to emulate, and that is not the case. I want everyone's voice to sound like them and sound as unique and special as it can because I, like, I'm attracted to voices that sound different or sound unique, or as soon as I hear that person's voice, I know exactly who that is. And so we're just giving you the tools and the resources for your voice to sound as lovely and sparkly as it naturally can. And so one of the things you mentioned is posture. And a lot of the times we're recording podcasts sitting down, like right now you and I are both sitting. And I don't know, I don't know why chair ergonomic design seems to be like the only way to get an ergonomically well-designed chair is to spend like hundreds of dollars on a chair. I don't know

why chairs are still so poorly designed. Also, microphone stands are so poorly designed. So you had also mentioned why am I not using my boom arm. Almost every consumer podcast microphone that you can buy comes with this crappy little tripod stand that is inappropriate. I am just going to say it. Those stands are inappropriate because you do. In order to get your microphone to the proper height, you have to prop it up on something. Whereas if you have like a boom arm or a scissor arm, you can adjust your microphone to the proper height for your mouth. Otherwise, you have this mic. It's low.

You know you should be close to it. And so you're hunching down to get close to this mic that's low on your desk. You're in a chair that maybe has a nice comfy back on it. And so you're leaning back in your chair. And what people can't see on the podcast is that as I'm saying this, I'm also physically doing it. And I'm rounding my back. I'm getting shorter, et cetera. And it squishes this thing that you,

mentioned called your diaphragm, which is a muscle that if you, this is a little inappropriate, but if you put your hands right underneath your boob line, right, at that notch in your rib cage, that's kind of where your diaphragm lives. And it's this muscle that kind of makes a balloon around your lungs. And it goes down when you inhale to give space for your lungs to expand. and then it rises back up again when you exhale in order for the air to kind of like push the air out of the lungs. So it kind of assists the lungs with breathing. It's your primary breathing muscle. And a lot of us don't know how to find it. We don't know how to use it. And we sit in such a way between our posture, our comfy chair, and our microphone stand that is inappropriate, that

squishes that diaphragm. So it doesn't really have the full range of motion to descend to allow a full breath in and to rise back up again to squeeze that old stale air out. So how do we fix this? One, find a microphone stand that allows your microphone to be at a higher height where if you can sit up nice and tall and have a long spine, the microphone is still right by your mouth. You don't have to lean over for it. Two, think about what you're sitting on. I am actually currently sitting on a stool. I do not have a podcasting chair. I have a podcasting stool, which sounds weird. But if I'm sitting on a stool that has no back on it, I have to have good posture.

If I slouch on a stool, it's really not comfortable at all. It doesn't feel good. So the stool actually causes me to, you know, lengthen my spine. And then I can drop my shoulders down away from my ears and have my chest a little bit lifted. So posturally, that's a good hint. And then also sometimes recording standing up works better. I know that I do all my solo episodes and all my intros and outros for my show. I always record standing up.

Yeah. I mean, I used to think that boom stands were not essential. Because to be honest with you, I moved so much that I just couldn't have all of this year. So the little tripod has served me well. But now that I've got my own apartment and have my little duvet fort with my little desk inside, I actually do have a boom arm, but I always forget to use it. But I like everything that you just said, and I'm going to start using it more because it's hard for me to breathe sometimes when I'm recording, like, especially a solo episode where I'm like just leaning down. It's uncomfortable.

And then it affects your breathing. And so that's more editing work. Yeah, absolutely. And also another tip is that the more tension you have in your body, the time. your voice can sound and the more energy that takes and that also makes you tired. One thing that I think is important to remember, I mean, sometimes we get nervous when we're podcasting or we get excited and we have that tension in our bodies or we're trying to stay close to the microphone and not like wave our arms around too much and hit the table and things like that. Or we're podcasting from a

closet and that can feel cramped. And so another thing that I think that is really important to remember is before you start recording, move your body around a little bit. Like roll your shoulder wave your arms, do a little stretch, stretch out your shoulders, stretch out your neck, and make sure that your body is nice and loose and relaxed and that you're not coming into your recording with tension in your body. I have a lot of tension. I need a massage. I have the massage pilots open back up soon.

So you mentioned that you do some recording standing up. Now, my apartment is pretty bare bones. I've got this little desk. And my bedroom is really the only appropriate place to reopen. record because the living room, it's just got too much street noise. So where do you do your standing up recording? What does that look like? Yeah, so I'm in the same room. I do all my recording. It's a spare bedroom. And what I did is I did purchase a scissor boom arm that can clamp to a desk or a shelf. And I put a shelving system in with shelves that are high enough where I can adjust my microphone to a

a height for sitting, which is where I am right now, or I can adjust it upward and swivel it around to the shelf for standing. So it kind of just depends on your space. You have to figure out, do I have a shelf, a bookcase, something like that that I can put either the boom arm or even if you do have that tripod stand. It's not to say that you can't use it. You just have to get creative about is there something that you can prop it up on? Like, for example, I have, I do yoga. So I have yoga blocks in my house. And right now my laptop is even propped up on my yoga blocks so that my camera is at a more flattering height rather than sitting down at the desk like looking up at my double chin. Yeah, maybe I will sit on a yoga ball instead of this

chair. Yeah, it'll engage your core muscles. So there's a benefit right there. And it will shift your posture to make it so that you have more natural space to take deeper breaths while you're recording, which will bring more energy to your voice. So sometimes people will say like, oh, I feel like I don't have enough energy? How do I get more energy in my voice? And the main thing is posture and breathing. Are there any sort of warmups that we should do before we start a podcast episode? Yeah, this is one of those areas where it's always good to warm up your voice in some way, shape, or form before you use your voice. Because I think that another one of those myths that I like to bust about podcasting voice is that some people think it doesn't matter, that it doesn't

matter what your voice sounds like, that you just turn on the microphone and press record and you don't necessarily need to think about your voice. And I think that is, I mean, sure, tons of podcasters do it that way. Just off the cuff. I feel like recording something. Here's what it's going to be. But I think it's a missed opportunity because in general, the more that we can think about podcasts as a show and as entertainment. If your podcast is a show and your show needs to be entertaining, then that makes you the entertainer, right? That makes you the performer, whether you think of yourself as that or not. And so your voice is actually in a podcast, the primary tool that you have for entertaining.

And take it out of the performance entertaining spectrum. Also, we're talking about connection because people are going to listen to your show. Yes, because you have good information to share. Yes, because you have amazing guests. that are on your show. Yes, because you're an expert about whatever topic it is that you're talking about, but they're going to stick with your show and become a fan of your show for the long term when they feel a connection with you as the host. And the way that you have to do that is through your voice and through the sound of your voice. And so it only makes sense that you would spend a

little bit of time and effort and thought into how it is that you're actually using that voice. So, answer to get back to vocal warmups. The main thing is to do something so that your voice isn't cold right then when you go ahead and push record. So, for example, if you're recording in the morning and you haven't spoken yet to anyone, if you happen to live alone or whatever it is, and you haven't spoken to anyone, those first few minutes of speaking, you're not going to have as much access to your voice because there's mucus that built up overnight because it's just like you got to clear the cobwebs a little bit out of your voice. It's like when you first roll out of bed, you have a natural tendency that you want to stretch in some way, shape, or form. Even if you're not

going to fully pop into a downward dog or something like that and do a yoga routine, when you wake up, you have a natural inkling to move your body and stretch. And it's the same thing with your voice. there's a desire to want that physicality of your voice to move and stretch a little bit. Does this mean that you need to do a full 30-minute, like musical, singing, vocal warm-up every time you go to record? Maybe not. But if you're somebody who is challenged with your voice, if you're someone who feels like you don't have as much confidence with your speaking voice, if you feel that when you listen back to yourself, you feel a little too monetize. tone or a little too lacking in energy, doing some vocal warmups that are specific for what your

scenario is and what you want to bring more of into your voice can be really helpful. So one, I always make sure that I speak before I record. I always make sure that I am well hydrated. And we hear this and we think that that just means before we record we should get a glass of water and have it with us and take little sips throughout. But I say by then it's already too late. Yes, you should have your water. but you actually need to start hydrating a few hours before you record because you need time for that

to be like in your body and processing. And then also if you wanted to go into some actual warmups, there are a few that are really easy to do. And it's funny because I don't think to myself, oh, I'm going to do my vocal warm up now before I record my podcast. But I do just naturally start doing it before I record because it's just been trained into me that before you use your voice publicly, you do a little vocal warm up. You do a little vocalizing. So one thing that I like to teach, and I'm like I'm not used to doing this on a microphone, so I hope I'm not going to blow out any audio levels or anything like that, is just called sirens. And so a siren is really simple. And you just start in your normal speaking register. And then you think of your normal speaking register.

So register is just how high or how low your voices, which we talked about a little bit ago. Your normal speaking register is the ground floor. And then you're going to get in an elevator. You're going to be socially distant in the elevator. So no worries, no anxiety there. And you can take the elevator down into the basement and even the sub-basement. And then you can take the elevator all the way up to the penthouse. And that's all you're doing is going on a little elevator ride with your voice.

So how it would sound. and I generally recommend you always, when you're warming up your voice, want to go down before you go up. It's just a little bit easier for your voice to expand downward before it goes upward. So you would just pick like ooh as a sound and you would start ooh. So you're just starting at the ground level and going down in the elevator to the sub-basement. As low as feels comfortable, you're not trying to like, push down into that vocal fry region and like see how low can i go it's not necessary you're just going down to where feels comfortable and is lower than you would normally speak and then going back

up to the ground level once you do that a few times then you can start at the ground level and go up and go ooh and then you put them together and of course you're you're not going to record your podcast in a high voice like this like that would be ridiculous. But the point of doing that is it's sort of just stretching the vocal cords and giving them some more pliability to work with so that in your normal speaking range, it naturally has some more flexibility. It naturally has some more ease. You just do a few of those sirens. Another fun one is meowing like a cat. And I always say, I know this sounds ridiculous, But I always say, like, think of the most annoying cat that you could possibly think of that's, like, outside, like, catarwalling or whatever they call it.

Or you're trying to make this very nasal cat sound. So it would be like, and the reason why you do that one is it actually shapes the way that you're making the sound more forward in your face and more towards your nose. Not that you want to sound nasal. We're not trying to record our podcast like this. But when you project that sound forward into the front of your face, it again gives you more the ability to articulate a little bit better and have more control over how you're pronouncing your words. So going back to popping peas and having something sound to lacking in energy when you can place things a little more forward than it has more energy. And of course, I don't want you recording your podcast thinking, I'm going to place the sound a little more forward to the front of my face now. But just when you do those warmups, it'll happen naturally.

Well, those were excellent demonstrations. And I think that you should get a job as a voiceover cat. So, yeah, bringing the energy. Some of us just have a naturally more chill vibe. And when you're in person, that works fun. But when you don't have any visuals, sometimes you just have to pump up the energy levels. And so I do this by smiling, by waving my hands around sometimes. What do you do, Andrea?

Yeah, this is important. And it depends on what time of day you're recording and how you're feeling. So sometimes it will be late in the evening and I realize I need to record an intro and I'm already tired. And I'm like, oh, this, I do not. I know it only takes me like three minutes to record my intro, but I don't feel like doing it. And I have to find it within myself to be excited about recording this intro. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be hammy. If you have a more naturally chill kind of vibe and voice, that's totally fine. Again, I don't want you to, I don't want you to use a voice that isn't yours. I don't want you to be fake. I want you to be authentic. I just want it to sell me. like the best version of that authentic voice. And so a few things, yes, moving your body a little bit, taking some stretches, shoulder rolls, some neck stretches, and making sure you're breathing. If I'm tired, I absolutely need to stand up when I'm recording, if at all possible.

And also, I just try to really connect with what it is that I'm saying and imagine that I'm in front of that person that I'm speaking to. So if I'm just thinking about myself and the microphone, then that's not going to bring me as much energy as if I'm really thinking about the person that I'm communicating to that I want to share this amazing guest with for my intro. Or if I'm recording a solo episode, the thing that's really important for me to share and connect with them. And as long as I'm thinking about connecting with that other person, that's going to bring energy. The other thing that's going to bring energy is something that I call vocal variety. And vocal variety is just the different ways that we can use our voice to naturally, in journalism, they would call it punch up

the copy. So if you have something in front of you, like, okay, I have my notes in front of me of some things that I thought I might talk about on this episode. I could just say three myths, one ideal NPR voice. And that's fine. You can understand what I said. It was clear, but it kind of was all the same, right? That makes it a little bit boring and it has less energy. But I could say three myths. One, ideal NPR voice. All I did was I picked a word to emphasize. It may have sounded too corny. It may be too much, but I was just trying to emphasize a little bit. So I decided to emphasize three, three myths. And I did that by putting more volume on three by making it a little bit longer instead of saying three myths, three myths, right? Three myths. Three myths. Three myths. One,

ideal NPR voice. So one, I emphasized it. I created a pause after I set it. So I changed up my rhythm instead of saying one ideal NPR voice. I changed my rhythm. And then also what you can see that hopefully people can hear is that my facial expression changed. When I said one, my eyebrows went up, my eyes got a little bit bigger. So when I'm talking about vocal variety, here are the elements that you could play with. And this is practice. Record yourself. Record yourself reading the same paragraph five different ways. See if you can record it five different ways. Here's what you can change. You can change the pitch or the register so I could say something higher and then I could say something lower. And it could still sound natural. It doesn't have to sound cartoonish, but I just changed

the pitch, what was higher, what was lower, and then what was my normal speaking voice. I can change the volume. Of course, all editors will like cringe when I say that, right? Because we don't want our podcasters playing too much with volume. It makes our lives a little bit more difficult. But within a range, you could make something a little bit louder. And then if you really want to drive a point home, you could make it a little quieter as long as you're not too quiet. You can change the speed with which you're speaking. So if you're getting really excited about something and you want to bring a lot of energy and you want to talk a little faster versus if you want to bring some gravity to the statement that you're making,

you can slow it down. So you've got volume, you've got pitch, you've got speed, and then you've also got rhythm. And the rhythm is maybe I'm going to pause before I move on with the rest of my sentence. Or maybe I'm going to say this part a little faster and then I'm just going to slow down a little bit. And those are things that may feel weird if you're not used to speaking in that way, but if you give it some practice and just record yourself for something that you're like, I don't know if I'm going to publish this or not publish this, but I'm just going to experiment with how I can switch up the way that I'm delivering this message, whether you are working from a script bullet points or improvving, because I think all three of those methods can work, just depending on you,

then you can get some experience and some comfortability with switching up how you're delivering the information. That makes it more interesting for everyone to listen to. It gives you more options for how you're going to make that connection with your audience. And it makes you a better public speaker. Yeah. Well, those were all excellent tips. And I think, storytellers do an excellent job at this and we can take some tips from them. So a storytelling podcast that I like is called Speak Up Storytelling or like the Moth where we can listen to examples of people who do this all the time speaking on stage and using everything you just said, changing speed and tone and all of that. And it really does make everything more engaging.

A really fun tip if anyone wants to try it in a non-part like if you need to take it out of the podcasting setting in order to not feel ridiculous. Pick up a Dr. Seuss book and read a Dr. Seuss book out loud like you're reading it to a child. I swear you cannot, you cannot read a Dr. Seuss book monotone. If you can read a Dr. Seuss book monotone, especially if you have a child in front of you, then I think you win an award. Have you seen the video making the round of the man who is reading Dr. Seuss, but like underneath is Dr. Dre? No. I'll send it to you and I will put it in the show notes. It's the most magical thing I've seen all year. So, Andrea, you mentioned something

a while back that I want to touch base on about drinking water and you have to drink it like two hours or so or more in advance to do the job. Tell us what happens if we're dehydrated and we're talking. I think you may be referring to mouth noises. I am. Oh, mouth noises. So here's the thing. Mouth noises are tricky. And when I say mouth noises, it's hard to describe exactly what that means. If you know what it is already, then you know what it is. But if not, it's like these little crackly sounds that can sometimes come into our voice as we're speaking. And sometimes it sounds like saliva. Sometimes it just sounds crackly. And for those of us, and I'm going to put myself in this category, who are very sensitive to sounds, I cannot. I cannot listen to a whole podcast where that is going on a lot. It's the same thing with lip smacking and that sound. I can't. I just can't do it. I don't know if I would have noticed it before I became an editor. But now, yes, it all drives me crazy. But it also has made me

drink more water because I normally don't. And I was like, oh my gosh, I need to start hydrating more. So it's made me a healthier person becoming a person. But here's the interesting thing, Sarah. I didn't realize because there are sometimes when I go to record that I promise you, I have been drinking water all day long. I feel super hydrated. And when I play back the recording or even as I'm recording, I hear those mouth sounds. And there are sometimes when they are quite bad. And fortunately, there is a piece of software that we sometimes use, which is called RX. And it does have a few filters that sometimes. can help with those mouth sounds in post-production. It doesn't always work. It just kind of depends. And I will be like, why do I still have these mouth sounds happening? And what I learned recently is that actually there are hormonal shifts that happen in our cycle. And it's especially for women. Men are not exempt from this, but it affects especially women where at different times in our hormonal cycle, it just becomes worse. And there's probably nothing we can really

do about that? I swish around with whiskey. Just because it burns my mouth and I assume it's working. So that's my unofficial tip. Yeah. Well, and so I had heard the advice to eat a green apple, like a sour apple. And I was like, no, come on. That's not a thing. And I have tried it. And actually, yes, it is a thing. It actually can help. So if you find that your mouth feels dry or that you start to record and you hear those little crackly mouth sounds coming in. Sometimes just taking a pause and eating a few bites of, it particularly has to be a sour apple. And I think it has something to do with the acid. So similarly to what you're saying about whiskey, there's something about the acid that creates a different pH in your mouth. Because when it's hormonal fluctuations,

that's what's happening. It's a pH thing of how acidic or alkaline things are in your system. So eating that apple will change the pH and that can actually help. Another thing that can help is depending on what kind of throat lozenges you have, sometimes having a lozenges, not while you're recording for the love of God. Do not have a lozenges clicking around in your mouth while you are recording. And I am saying this because I have heard it happen. But before you record, just sucking on a lozange for a little bit, especially if it's a lozange that does not have a high sugar content. Because sugar, here's the things to avoid. Sugar, dairy, and caffeine before you record. All three of those things will make your vocal cords unhappy. I drink coffee so much. I know. The caffeine one is hard.

A lot of times I'll have tea while I'm recording, especially in the winter. time. It's not ideal. Although something that I hear on podcasts all the time is promotions for that, is it called Lions Main? It's like that mushroom coffee alternative. Yeah, so that is not caffeinated. When I'm back in the States, I'm going to give it a go. I don't think they ship internationally. Yeah, absolutely. Another thing, another good remedy, like if your throat is feeling kind of dry or scratchy and you need to record traditional medicinals makes a great tea called throat coat. And, and this tea, I have sworn by this tea and survived by it through many performances, many recordings, many live speaking events where my voice just wasn't feeling 100%. And throat coat is a totally herbal

blend. I think the primary thing in it is licorish, which I'm not a huge fan of the way it tastes, but it can really help soothe the voice so that you can, in the short term, make it through whatever speaking engagement that you have or recording session that you have. Well, I'm already excited about trying all of these tips. Is there any other voice training messages you wanted to get out to the world? Hmm. Any other voice training messages? I mean, I think it's really just about making it play and thinking of your voice as this really fun tool or really fun medium that you get to play with. So I was talking about myths that I like to bust in podcasting around voice. And the third myth that I really like to bust is that you're stuck with what you've got.

Your voice is your voice and there's nothing you can do about it. And it just is how it is. And I always think of, I don't even know if they still use this tagline, but the cosmetics company, Mabelene, the whole like, maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Mabelene. like that commercial. Yes, some people naturally have a certain quality to their voice. Some people naturally seem to be storytellers who are more expressive vocally than others. But that doesn't mean that there aren't skills and tools that you can learn to have more control over your voice and to have more fun with it and to really use it as a tool for

self-expression in a way that still feels natural and authentic. It just comes with knowing what to play with and giving yourself permission to go there and experiment and play and see what feels good for you. I like how you add play to things. A while back I saw you post on social media something about like considering either planks or burpees or some exercise. Like what if it's like musical theater jazz hands? And I was like, that's an excellent way of thinking about it because I hate doing plankton burpees. I am so serious. I can be very in my head. I can be very serious about so many things. I am very competitive with myself. I have a tendency to be very type A. And so I have to give myself these little tricks about how to connect something I am feeling

very serious about in order to make it fun and enjoyable. And yes, Yes, it was core strength and endurance training that I was doing. And yes, I do have to add jazz hands and make it seem like musical theater choreography in order to get through all those lunges and squats. And I don't even know what else. Well, you're an inspiration. And you also have a few podcasts. Was Creative Imposter your first one?

It is. The Creative Imposter is the first podcast that I, ever created. And again, similarly to you, I started it just because I wanted to start a podcast. I didn't really know how it all worked. I didn't know how to create a business around podcasting. It was just something that I wanted to try being a podcast listener and super fan myself. And I wanted to talk about creativity and I wanted to talk about self-confidence and I wanted to talk about imposter syndrome and the things that hold us back from taking risks and putting ourselves out there and being visible. And then also similarly to you, eventually I decided that I

could make money by doing podcast editing and consulting and coaching and that this would be a great way forward for me to be self-employed and to have my own business. And so then I launched podcast envy. Very cool. And you've got the two shows. You don't have any secret ones. I have a pod faded show that still exists out there in the world. and I think there's only two episodes called Tea and Yoga. That was very aspirational and I wanted to have a meditation podcast because there's so many meditation podcasts out there that I don't like. Uh-huh. But I just didn't have time for it.

And then Power Your Story is actually a podcast that I am the advisor and mentor for a group of high school students who have diverse learning challenges at a Chicago public school. and they produce Power Your Story and I am their editor-advisor and that is also available in all of the places. I love that you are doing that kind of work. I've seen some of the photos of like the kids who are working on those shows and it like brings a tear to my eye because I'm like, oh, these kids are like pouring their heart and soul and like I just love that they have this creative outlet and that you're helping them with that. They love it so much. It's so funny because it's like high school students in Chicago, most of them did not know what a podcast was at all. And their teachers and admin assigned them to my program. And so they had no idea what they were going to be doing or what they had to do. And then they become podcast fans. They become advocates for sharing podcasting with their friends and family. And I learned so much for. from them about podcasting because they don't care about Apple Podcasts. They don't care about Google Podcasts. They don't care about podcast apps.

They care about Spotify. They care about YouTube. It was like before Spotify was a place that you could listen to podcasts, I was like, you guys, our show is approved in Apple Podcasts. They're like, okay. I'm like, we're approved on here. We're approved on Stitcher. They're like, yeah, I don't know what that is.

And then suddenly one was like, wait, are we on you? And I'm like, oh yeah, of course we're on YouTube. And they're like, oh, sweet, we're on YouTube. Andrea, it's been so great talking to you. Where can people find out more about you? Thecreativeimposter.com is where you can find all of the podcasts and links. And currently right now on social media, my favorite place to be is Instagram. And that is also at The Creative Imposter. Thank you very much. Thank you. 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 eight mistakes new podcasters make and how to fix them.

To find that, head on over to sarah micahatel.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.