Practicing Voice Improvement: Record Your Voice Again

00:01 So you've listened to your voice.

00:03 Ideally, you've heard something that struck you as more interesting this time.

00:08 Greater range in your voice.

00:09 This is how you want to sound all the time when you're talking to people, when you're leaving voicemail messages, when you're giving a speech, a presentation, when you're having to talk to someone and it's a slightly formal situation and you're a little bit nervous. You've got to act a little.

00:27 You've got to imitate somebody.

00:29 But it's not me.

00:31 It's not Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or the movie guy announcer.

00:37 It's yourself when you are relaxed.

00:40 The role model for most people of how they should speak is how they already talk when they're completely comfortable, relaxed, talking to a friend about something they're passionate about.

00:50 Now, I don't mean the cursing if that's something you do, but the full range of your voice, the highs, the lows, the louds, the soft.

00:59 That's what makes someone interesting.

01:01 That's what makes someone conversational.

01:05 So if you're worried about your voice, in my professional experience, this solves almost all the problems people have.

01:15 Now. You might not still love your voice, but you do need to realize objectively that your voice is perfectly fine for what you're trying to do, unless you are trying to become a voiceover artist again.

01:29 We've addressed that.

01:31 And unless you're trying to be a news anchor for the CBS Morning News, chances are your voice is going to be fine if you just try to talk the way you do when you're in normal conversation.

01:44 Now, here's the key.

01:45 If you have an upcoming speech, a presentation, a one on one talk, I need you to take that script or the outline or the bullet points.

01:56 Talk it out. And I need you to record it and try to sound as conversational and as interesting.

02:05 Is that talk with your friend when you had perhaps forgotten about being recorded.

02:10 Because here's the danger.

02:11 A lot of times people start fixating on the words and the next thing you know, the volume is sort of the same and the speed is the same and the pitch is the same.

02:21 And wa, wa, wa, wa, wa.

02:22 You sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, so you're going to have to figure out a way of having that same conversational tone.

02:32 And often that means practice, practice on audio.

02:36 And if you're giving a speech, I would of course recommend that you practice on video. So that's the next assignment right now.

02:44 And a moment I'm going to talk about things people do that they think are helping themselves get better but actually make them worse.

02:51 But for right now, I want you to focus on giving some kind of prepared statement, whether it's a voicemail message you want to leave to someone, a speech, a presentation, a PowerPoint.

03:02 I want you to record it and try to make it sound as good as the previous one when you were just talking to a friend.