We all have goals with our podcasts. Some of us aspire to become an authority in a particular niche or simply become an influencer that provides inspiration to other people. However, not many can effectively reach these goals because of one important thing, the voice. Our podcast voice matters in building influence and authority. Helping us with that is Dr. Miluna Fausch of the voice training company, Pitch Perfect Presentations. She talks about how to speak with a purpose and getting what you want to accomplish. She lays down some struggles that people often encounter – from interview dynamics to that of self-confidence, and gives insights on how you can start your show and get into a better voice.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Podcast Voice Matters with Dr. Miluna Fausch

We have an interesting interview on a different subject matter that we’ve talked about much on this podcast, but it’s something that every podcaster might be interested in or at least should be interested in. We have Dr. Miluna Fausch here. She has Pitch Perfect Presentations as her company, not just voice training. This is about speaking with a purpose, getting what you want to accomplish, influencing and that’s what she’s training you to do with your voice and how to accomplish those goals. We all have goals here with our podcasts. We have goals of being an authority, being an influencer. If our voice, if our presence, if our pacing if all of these things about the way that our voice matters, our podcast voice matters in building that influence and authority. We are not doing the best then maybe it’s time to hear from an expert like her.

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I’m so glad we get to have this conversation and everybody gets to hear how amazing you are.

Thank you.

I was excited when we met because we don’t often get someone who has the speech training background that isn’t like the speak to sell model or, “We use all of these programming techniques.” You’re talking about voice quality and how you use those tools and use this stuff you’ve already got but enhance them. I want to talk a lot more about that. Let’s talk a bit about your background because you have a background in doing a lot of selling and acting, the whole thing. Tell us how you got started in and moving into the Pitch Perfect Presentations model of your business.

It all started a couple years ago when I was a little girl and I could always sing. I would swing and sing in the backyard, all the commercials, top 40 radio, all of that and felt my voice was important despite what I was told at home, “Be a good little girl, be quiet, sit like a lady.” No one wants to hear your opinion, so that’s probably another reason why I’m in this business because some of us were told not to be heard. We don’t want to hear you turned down. When I got to college, I had a conductor say, “You don’t have a big enough voice to be in my choir.” Some of these things hit me hard. I realized I was going to have to find my own voice again because when I was a little girl, I was pretty bold. I was pretty bossy. I knew what needed to happen. Then as I got told no over and over and over and things happened, I turned down and I became very quiet. I became afraid to be heard and afraid to be criticized, but I never gave up on the singing and the acting. I went into corporate, 9:00 to 5:00. I did some executive work. I managed a dance book club, believe it or not. I sold advertising for magazines. I sold Steinway grand pianos not very well.

You need a lot of pitching to get those sold.

They wanted an aggressive salesperson. I was not that at the time. I always kept with my voice training. I never gave up on the singing and then I had acting. Coming from this stage where you learn to manage your stage fright, you learn to project to the back of the room, the back of the auditorium. You learn how to connect to your audience, be they live, be they video, be it TV. That’s how Pitch Perfect Perfection was born. I heard business people and they were not effective. They had fear of public speaking. It’s still the number one fear. Their sales presentations and things were not good. I wanted to help people get so much better at mastering their presentation, mastering their pitch.

My voice is a little rough. I came back on one of those nice long fifteen-hour plane ride back from Hong Kong. I was over there watching some great and bad presentations. What I do have to say and what I was so pleased was that the four women who were speaking, including myself. I’m saying this about myself, but we kicked butt. We all had the best presentations, the best voices, the ones that carried. There were tech issues in the middle of my presentation where my mic cut out and I was like, “Don’t worry, I’m loud enough to reach the back of the room. I got this.” That was impressive to me. Some of the guys were little monotone and not as good as they could have been even though they’re taught content was interesting.

We know that we’re not heard as well as men and we’re more interrupted. It is even more important that women up their game or voice quality the way we deliver that body language when we’re in person. All of those things matter.

That natural ability to story-tell and have humor make a great speaker and a great leader. Click To Tweet

There are a lot of podcasters who initially, especially in the beginning, are self-conscious wondering if they’re any good, “Is my voice annoying? Do they sound any good? Are people going to listen to them?” A lot of times that is an irrational fear, but there probably are some people who would like to podcast and get their message out to a larger audience, who are not natural speakers, who don’t project well. What are some of these qualities that you think are important in someone that’s speaking an authority position like a podcast host?

I’ll start with what you said because when we hold back or we’re not confident, then we’re not naturally flowing. The breath is not flowing, which starts the voice and what I call a more pleasing tone. It is a way of holding back. We’re not as effective. The message is not going to be so clear because we’re holding back, we’re self-conscious, we’re judging, we’re in the left brain, we’re in the ego. These are some of the things that are happening.

The energy itself is affecting the voice quality on top of it all?

When we do something like whisper, it’s very fatiguing on the vocal folds or the vocal cords. It’s not something we want to do for a long period of time. Imagine if you’re holding back, like if I could back down in my throat or I turned down, what happens to my voice? It’s not a voice that you could stand or that you would want to listen to for an extended period of time.

I’ve had heard some people who talk about being able to train yourself. It’s possible if you maybe don’t have the best voice. We have this little girl in the neighborhood, one of my daughter’s friends. All I keep thinking is to set this baby voice that comes out of her body has got to stop. Somebody has to stop her. She can’t grow into an adult with his voice. I want to stop her, but she’s not my kid. If you end up at adulthood with this voice, it’s reversible. It’s something you can fix. It’s something you can train to improve.

It is. I run into women that are over 50, like myself, who has the voice of a young girl. It is completely inappropriate. It is not credible. We don’t have authority. Sometimes it’s the result of emotional trauma. I can usually pick up in a person’s voice if something happened that arrested their emotional development because that can shut us down and shut down our voice. When a woman talks like a cutie or little girl or people pleasing or let’s say someone have it nasal, do you want to listen to that for twenty, 30 or more minutes?

Think about it in a podcast situation we’re talking about sometimes you binge listen. They’ll listen to episode after episode after episode. This is where if it truly is that you have a voice quality issue or a voice tone issue, this is something that you should address. It is going to make your podcast more bingeable.

It’s so true because we want to get the message out there. If it’s a voice that is that, I’ll call it unpleasant. Let’s say a voice that’s not easy to listen to. Our message is going to be lost. It is affecting us because we’re so affected by sound. I don’t think people realize how affected we are by our environment, by noise. Some of us are super sensitive. Voices can be built, developed and become more captivating with voice training.

Podcast Voice: When we hold back or we’re not confident, then we’re not naturally flowing.

 

I also wonder if the opposite is true sometimes. Do you find that as often as you meet people who maybe are aware of their voice or they’re timid or afraid to come out of their shell, apprehensive about speaking with authority or clarity? Are there also people who are blissfully unaware? They think that they sound great. In fact, there are qualities in their voice that are getting in the way of their message.

Why frequently? It is so tricky to hear ourselves. We want to record. We want to video. We want to get feedback from those folks who will tell us the truth. I was at a meeting. This is a professional gentleman introduce the guest and he was so loud. It was too commanding. It was too aggressive. It was way too loud for the size of the room, which was rather small. Someone said, “What a great voice.” I’m thinking, “No, it was not appropriate.” It had a nice tone, way too aggressive, way too loud, way too pushy for the room and for the situation.

I’ve heard that too. This has happened to me. I went for some speaker training at some point. It was more about learning sales techniques, speaking sales techniques. There was this one guy who thought that he was such a great speaker. It’s not he wasn’t good, but he was so forceful. It was a male-female thing. The women in the room literally cringed because it felt like he was attacking you. It was that forceful. There is a place, there’s a time, there’s a modulation that needs to happen over time in your talk as well where you maybe do need to get aggressive at a point to get a point across, but doing it the whole time is unsettling.

There is verbal assault. Our ears literally fatigue. Interesting that we would notice the women react in that way because some of us have been physically assaulted, but some of us have also been verbally assaulted. That’s exactly what it feels like. It’s too much.

Of all the podcasters we encounter, there are two extremes. There are people who are self-conscious, maybe too much so. They need to get over themselves and start doing it. There’s this wonderful natural speaker who will come out, especially if they’re passionate about what they’re talking about. There are others who have maybe very large egos, who think that they are all that, maybe the best thing since sliced bread. They have these blinders on. They are not looking in the mirror at how they’re speaking. Do you find that the people who speak the best are open to considering others’ opinions, some constructive criticism about how they speak or are the best speakers very comfortable and being naturally themselves? What do you have to say about that?

Natural, more ease, an ability to story-tell and an ability to have humor makes a great speaker and a great leader. On the other side of the coin, what you mentioned, if we’re not aware how we’re coming across, how our body language is or our voice in your world, podcasting and we’re not conscious of that, then it means we’re not taking responsibility. It is our responsibility and our joy to speak well and to verbally orally, communicate beautifully. This is when we can inspire, educate and move folks to action and get elected for public office and stand on the pulpit and be heard in the boardroom. It’s a wonderful combination of knowing yourself, being coachable, not having your ego rule you or assuming because you’ve got a deep voice or some other thing that you’re a great speaker. It’s simply not true.

You may have some natural ability or a voice that lends itself well to speaking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good speaker in terms of your delivery.

As I’m mulling it over in my mind, I keep thinking of one of the things that we present all the time when we do our presentation. Malcolm Gladwell was on Stephen Colbert show at one point early on and Stephen Colbert asked him, “How come you started a podcast? You’re a bestselling author. You could have just written another book.” He said, “Because you think with your eyes, but you feel with your ears.” You’ve mentioned multiple times here about the vibrations, the feelings and how much more of a direct center to another person that a connection is that the voice is right through the ears. It does also circumvent our eyes and the things that we might be biased against or filtering out when you don’t see it. It’s that blind audition thing that’s going on in The Voice. We don’t have as many judgments going on when we’re listening.

If we're not aware how we're coming across, it means we're not taking responsibility. Click To Tweet

In many cases, we are more open. We are open to a new viewpoint to expand. When we are in our mother’s womb, the first sense to develop is hearing and when we’re crossing over and passing away in this lifetime, the hearing is the last sense to go. It’s the first in we could say and the first out. It’s something that is so precious. Imagine if we could not hear or listen to podcast or birds or singing or the sound of a hot engine. All the things that we can identify, grow, develop and be more intelligent by truly listening.

We come across some people in this business who are very coachable. They’re very open-minded. They want to know, “How do I sound? What do you think about that? What would you recommend I do to sound better, to be more pleasing to audiences, things like that?” Then we get some people that I want to coach them. I have to burst their bubble a little bit in order to help them. That becomes politically tricky, which is my cross to bear. I enjoy working with people who are open to improving. I’m not an expert on these issues of voice quality and speech the way you are. I do encounter some of these things and that’s always my struggle. How do you find more people not receptive to being coached or do you find more people to be pretty open to it?

A lot of people are not receptive to being coached. Based on my own experience, there are more that are not receptive. It’s very puzzling to me. We spend so much money on gyms and other personal development sales coaching. Some of us have coaches all the time, spiritual money, business marketing, you name it. Yet, it seems to me that we are here to learn, grow and professionally develop. If we’re not open to growing a voice that is going to be more pleasing to the ears, more influential, have a better message, our purpose in the world, I don’t think we could call them all that successful because then we’re ruled by our ego. We’re not understanding the impact that we’re having or not having on other people. It’s a huge missed opportunity.

You’re not doing a full professional development of yourself and what you need to do to grow. You have a particular niche in doing a lot of international professionals. You deal with people with accents and other issues. You’re running into cultural differences and other things as well. That’s challenging what you set out for yourself.

I don’t do accent reduction work. I’d prefer that to a colleague. As long as the person is easy to understand and they have a pretty good command of the English language, they are my ideal clients. In other languages, sentences are constructed differently as you know. I help them find their own words, their own voice in a much better ease, flow and beauty in the English language. There are a lot of them who do know they need help. Some of them resisted and will not get the help and then their careers can be held back if they’re not being understood in English or they’re not confident. The pace can be way too fast in many cultures. They’re simply not going to be as effective. They’re not going to be seen as leadership material when that’s what a lot of folks want to be with leaders.

I wonder if there’s a particular issue of podcasting that presents a unique dynamic. When you’re interviewing someone like we are with you, we’re speaking, having a conversation. We’re having a dialogue here and that’s easier for a lot of people. There is also a lot of podcasters, who are speaking alone into a microphone, recording it, not live to an audience that’s out there and it’s theoretical at least in the beginning. You’re not having a conversation. You’re having a one-way conversation. I find that a lot harder for some people. I wonder if you might have some advice for people who are struggling with that dynamic.

It is so much easier when we’re being interviewed or we have someone to react also. We’re not doing a monologue. We’ve got an actual dialogue going with someone else. When folks do podcasts that are solo, we call it a solo act. The thing to do is to think of someone in your mind, someone you care about, someone you want to coach or influence and have that person in mind so that your conversation becomes directed energetically to that person. I also invite my clients to set an intention. What is the intention of the podcast? It may change. “Now, I’m going to inspire. Now, I want to get new clients. Tomorrow, I want to get elected. The next day, I want to get people to attend a live event.” There’s always an intention that it might be a couple of things. I might want to educate and inspire. Those two things help us come alive over the airwaves. We will reach out there and touch folks, touch people.

We do encounter people we work with. When you’re naturally a good speaker from the stage and it’s a monologue situation there, you’re not having a dialogue with people. I find that that type of person is more accustomed to hearing themselves speak or speaking in a way that is both informative and entertaining and they have an easier time with it. I had a customer, who has only done interview podcast episodes so far. Maybe he’s at twenty or 25 episodes into his show. He reached out to me because he didn’t have someone to interview lined up for the next couple of weeks. He wanted to continue to publish. He asked me, “Should I rerun an episode?” I cautioned him against running an episode a second time because I know audiences don’t respond very well to that in the podcast world.

Podcast Voice: When we speak well and communicate beautifully, this is when we can inspire, educate, and move folks to action.

 

We have a whole podcast on that. It’s not a good idea. Don’t repeat your podcast.

I made a few suggestions to him for a solo cast and one of them was, “Have you read any books recently that are in your field that is something you feel you know well enough that you could talk about it and maybe do a bit of a commentary on the book or a book review of sorts, which would definitely be a solo cast?” He loved that idea, latched onto it and said, “I’m going to go and do that.” What I didn’t talk with him about is the issues regarding the different realities and dynamics of recording a solo act. I sometimes called it a solo cast rather than a normal dialogue. I’m feeling like I didn’t equip him well-enough to be prepared for that.

We have to get people to get more confident as they start their shows. There is a confidence level. You mentioned that when we were talking that there is this like, “Am I going to be good at this? I’m nervous. The whole thing is new. The tech is new. It gets complicated.” We recommend them starting their first three episodes with what we call backward model. Assuming that episode number three is going to be an interview because we usually like people to start with two episodes a week in the beginning. It helps build the show faster and there are a couple of reasons for it. The third one being an interview. You’re going to basically have a Zoom call. It’s in your place where you’re likely the most comfortable already. We get them to have that dialogue.

We work back to the second episode, which would be the most important topic, the number one thing, the number one question, whatever it is that is most important that people ask you, the thing you could talk about in your sleep. We get them to do that as their second episode and then their very first one is like it’s an introduction. It’s like ten, fifteen minutes, this is what I’m about. This is my story. This is what the show is going to be about and what you can expect because now you’ve done two episodes and you know what to expect. It’s a little easier. If you sit there and wait to do the introduction, they’ll never do it and the show doesn’t get started if that was the first thing they had to do. We work backward, but we do the interview because most people are comfortable there.

I love the way you ease your clients in. That’s perfect. The idea of commenting on a book is a wonderful thing. We can use that as story time. This would be advanced but voices, you could use different voices to read from the book. Imagine that you have your audience. For some of my clients, if they’re with me in person, I use a stuffed animal. I have a huge bear that I named Andreas. That serves as a bit of an audience or something to focus on that they can bring life to. I say, “Here is Andreas. He’s your biggest fan. He’s listening to every word you say. Go for it.”

Can I interject with the only one that you do not ask any of your children to sit and listen to you like your audience? They are so harsh because they’re bored after five seconds that it will make you even more self-conscious. I made a huge mistake of doing that one, “How was it?” “That was bad.”

Follow her advice. Don’t ever do that. A bear is much safer. You won’t get hurt. If you’re going to bring in a live audience, make sure that these people love you. They’re your fans. No peanut gallery. No critics plate.

We hear this idea that this voice matter. That’s definitely what I’ve come across from our conversation so far, but what does voice training look like? What does it sound like?

It's more important to be effective than to be proud. Click To Tweet

It depends. Usually there are fundamentals, foundation, breathing. Most people don’t breathe very deeply, thoroughly, expansively. A lot of body language. There are a lot of habits we do live when we’re also being recorded. We still want to have incredible posture. You want to know how to work that mic, headphones, all the things you might be using, your choreography, your tools. Some of it is pacing. If folks are speaking too fast and we can’t understand that we want to work on a different pacing. If it’s a sales pitch, we want to have more dynamics, more ups and downs and more authority at certain points during that pitch. It might be that sometimes I hear up speak, which means when somebody and every sentence like this like we’re asking a question like we don’t know what we’re talking about, which sounds crazy. Why is this person doing this? They sound like they don’t know what they’re talking about. Looking at habits that are costing them money, sales, influence. Those are some of the places I start.

I’m assuming like some exercises, rehearsals, practices that you put people through it and then check back in again?

I have physical exercises that I teach them. I might audio record them and have them do things with my video, so they can see what they’re doing if it’s a live presentation. I have emotional things that I helped them clear. I do have a Psychology degree and that comes in handy with belief systems, with confidence building. I have a client who has what I call a bully boss. We are working on taking the sting out. I’m teaching my client how to hold his own in the boardroom, body language, voice and his reactions, to not trigger and to not be so hurt and shut down by the behaviors of this other man.

That would be some very valuable training for that individual for sure. Definitely, a different dynamic than we’ve probably experienced podcasting, but I did appreciate when you were talking about the qualities of your voice and the way you speak if it’s fast or slow and some of these things. That’s one thing that I noticed about myself with podcasting, especially compared to Tracy because we do this together. I tend to speak at a slower pace than she does, which may not necessarily be a bad thing. I’ve often felt like my pace is too slow and I need to be conscious of that. I don’t put the audience to sleep. I need to pick it up sometimes.

The two of you have a lovely combat because you’ve got that rich deep voice, slower pace and then she comes in a little higher with the great voice. It produces a building dynamic since the two of you are doing it, it’s more interesting.

That’s what we get. With the exception of some of the live streams that I tend to do solo because they’re so timely and the topics. Most often, we do together our episodes. In general, that’s the case.

They do too, but I also don’t hold off from recording when we need them because we want to keep publishing at a certain regularity. That if Tracy’s in Hong Kong and not available, I’ve got to get on there and record a solo cast or have an interview myself. It’s important. It offers a little variety sometimes.

We’ve had a couple of clients who know us all and listen to us and occasionally, Alexandra, our daughter has come in and done an episode with you. We’ve got some emails back and messages from them saying, “When Tracy said this on the podcast,” but they met Alexandra. She’s got it almost a much younger tone to her voice, definitely. She’s got a very similar voice that people confuse us. Let’s not purposefully disguise that. It’s not me. We could almost get away from it.

Podcast Voice: We have to get people to get more confident as they start their shows.

 

She’s got some dynamic, so you don’t have to worry about someone doing a monotone flat line podcast.

She’s actor-trained. She does have that background as well. You reminded me of something there is that I once had a podcast guest that as we were going through the interview, he had prepared almost like it was a speech. He gave me some questions that he suggested I ask him on, and I learned this was not a suggestion. He wanted me to ask him exactly those questions in exactly that order, which is not my style. It’s not at all what I do. When I didn’t do that, I threw him off his game. He wanted to read off his script and it was the most mechanical sounding interview ever. Quite honestly, I didn’t air it. It was not of a quality of an interview or an audio that I felt comfortable putting out there. We’ve probably done over 600 episodes total in all our podcasts, probably close to our 700 right now. I’d say I can count on one hand the ones we didn’t air because they were that bad, but it happens.

It’s for very much the reason you were pointing out that monotone mechanical, somebody who I don’t know. For some reason was nervous about being themselves, wanted to be prepared but then when you read off a script, that’s one thing we tell people never ever to do in podcasting. Don’t read from a script. This isn’t a commercial, this isn’t a stage performance people listen to a podcast because they want to hear from you, your authentic story or you’re a conduit to an authentic story. They want you to be real. I don’t believe you can be real reading from a script. There are those kinds of podcasts. We’re not that. Do you agree that reading from a script for the podcast, is that a recipe for disaster with your voice quality?

It is because it doesn’t allow room for any spontaneity, the unexpected question. Folks do shut down a lot. We have imposter syndrome. We’re afraid, “What if they ask a question? I sound like an idiot. I don’t know how to answer that.” If we would rest in our own knowledge, the fact that we are an expert on this particular topic and allow room for ups and downs, stories and fun in that spontaneity. That’s when the magic occurs. That’s when folks want to listen.

I have one other thing that I was hoping maybe you might help us with and that is, we’ve got a lot of podcasters who would like to up their game. We have one of my favorite podcasters, Athena Rosette, Alter Ego Podcast. When she’s going to do an interview with you, you sit down, you mentally focus and you have a moment of intent setting right before she starts her interview. I love it. It’s a ritual. Is there anything that you could recommend from a ritual standpoint in which we could help ourselves get into a better voice and mindset before we start our podcast?

I love intentions as we have spoken up and a little bit of a ritual. It’s to connect with the interviewer or the interviewee and then imagine that your audience is out there. The best thing is to sit tall in your chair or if you’re standing, take deep belly breaths, close your eyes. Understand it’s not about us, but we now have an opportunity to touch and inspire and share our voice branding message. I would spend at least a minute or two before going on the air and you can do that together with your clients. You can have a two-minute ritual and invite them to breathe, center, focus and set that intention. Each of you could also set your own intention or the same.

I can’t thank you enough for coming on with us and sharing your thoughts and wisdom for our readers.

It’s been my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Podcast Voice Matters – Final Thoughts

I was thinking about many things. Your brain multitasks that’s hearing from her asking questions. There are some things in my mind that obviously everybody has different beliefs and different preconceived notions, purposes in life or purposes on what they’re doing in their podcast. Personally, I’m one of those people that I always know I can improve and I would like to continue improving to be a better speaker, not only on a podcast but whether it’s speaking from the stage or when I’m speaking to somebody in a sales call for business. There are different contexts and different purposes, different things that you’re trying to accomplish. There are different environments and different audiences and those all would benefit from some different intentions and approaches in how we speak. There is also a fundamental issue that we all have as podcasters is that once we get past the light technical side of like is our show sounding good? Is it being edited well? Have we got this thing going? We don’t listen to our own episodes anymore because it happens all the time. You get comfortable. I don’t remember the last time I listened to one of my own episodes in the post.

No matter how bad a speaker you are at the start, you can absolutely improve. Click To Tweet

You heard it when we recorded it, but it’s not the same as listening to it afterward. That’s a good practice. If you sat back and every so often audited your own self and say, “How did we do in that? It felt like it was a good episode to me, but how did we sound together?” That might be a good practice for us to say, “Is it time for us to up our game? Is it time for us to change the dynamic of this? Did this come off as well as it sounded in my head?” That’s the way it is most of the time. That’s definitely worth doing especially if you want to make sure you’re continuing to put out a show that you can be proud of and that you think is going to be effective. To me, it’s more important to be effective than for me to be proud of it. Nobody likes hearing their own voice. That was the one thing when she was talking early on about having a lack of confidence at all. Most of you out there when you have a lack of confidence, you’re thinking about this podcasting thing, but you never pull the trigger if you have a complete lack of confidence in your voice. You’re stuck in permanent potential.

I have to say that early on, and I’ve mentioned this in the episode we did with John Livesay when he was talking about how nervous he was about starting a podcast. A lot of his nerves were surrounded around confidence type things as well. When I thought about it, it’s like I always thought I had a terrible voice because everybody told me I couldn’t sing. What I realized was that everybody around me and my family can’t sing. I assumed I was the same way. I didn’t have an objective view of it, so I always thought I didn’t have a great voice. It wasn’t something that I was like super confident and I wasn’t afraid to speak up though because I’m a confident person. I was brought up to speak my mind and have an opinion. There wasn’t that part of it, but it was like, “Do people want to listen to my voice? I don’t have a radio voice.” That was the things that went through my head early on. I have to say the first few episodes were a little rough, but there was a lot of other things like technical, nerves and other things that went on. As we got going more and more, I listened to the early shows and I go, “We’re pretty good together.” That’s what came across to me as like there is this amount of personal growth that happens for you after you get through those initial stages and you’re recording and recording. You start to sit in this place of I’m pretty good.

One day you’ll get this email or a Facebook message that says, “I found your show. I subscribed. I’ve been listening to all your episodes this weekend and I got to number 50.” You know you have 100 or whatever you have and you’re like, “Somebody binge-listened to me for 50 episodes.” That moment, that thing goes off, you go “I don’t have a bad voice. I am good at this.” When you hit that level, I can tell you what a big confidence boost in and what ability it gave me to amp up my speaking game and amp up all of the ways that I was working because it no longer was the one little nagging little voice in my head that said, “Maybe you’re not as good as good as you think you are.”

I truly believe when it comes to speaking, podcasting, everybody can improve and get to the point where people will want to listen to what you have to say. If you’re an expert in your field, you are passionate about your genre or subject matter. You have stories to tell or information to share. There’s no other way to say it. No matter how bad a speaker you are at the start, you can absolutely improve and make sure that you don’t have any of these little qualities that are going to be annoying to the point where people will say, “Next podcast, I’ve had enough of that one.” I know it’s not worth listening to the story, the information. The content is not more important to them to listen to than the quality of the audio. Most people are not that bad, to begin with.

If you’re authentically you, you speak intelligently, you have a good command of the English language and I’m going to stick with English because that’s the only language I know is that you absolutely can improve and learn. I want to mention about recording. You’re listening to your recording like you were saying. While I have not listened to a lot of our recordings, I usually listen to the very beginning of everyone because I’m thinking about the title or some of these things. I want to refresh my memory and so I am listening to usually our introductions or something, not necessarily the interview unless I’m checking the quality.

What I have done in the last couple of years because I needed to for our business. I’ve been the primary salesperson in our business and I did get some professional training that wasn’t about voice per se, but it was about the language. I choose what I say, how I talk to a customer and making sure that that process is intentional. I improved tremendously as a salesperson. I also think it helped my podcasting natural dynamic as well because I’m thinking more about all of the details. Effective word choices.

Podcast Voice: There’s a fine line between being authentic by being yourself and by getting your voice across.

 

You remember I said that I do think it’s more important to be effective because that is going to help your message come across, your audience will appreciate it. They will come back for more if you’re effective, regardless of any of the real little details of your voice. There is a point where people sing. There are people who have a natural ability to be professional singers. Most of us are halfway decent amateur singers and there are people who are completely tone deaf. It’s harder to train to become one of those top-level professional singers. At some certain point, you have the natural ability or you don’t. In podcasting, I don’t think it’s the same way.

There’s a fine line between authenticity being yourself and getting your voice across. Having things in the way that you deliver your message that infringes on that, that impedes that, that stops you from being able to effectively deliver that and that’s exactly what Miluna is talking about. That is what she’s an expert in helping you make sure that you move across. You move through those things that are holding your message back and holding your real voice back. It’s about being more you than you are now. That’s the difference there. Effectiveness is a good word for that. You can see us on social media, @FeedYourBrand. Thanks, everyone. This has been Tracy and Tom.

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About Dr. Miluna Fausch

Dr. Miluna Fausch is the CEO and Founder of Pitch Perfect Presentations. She helps executives, professionals, and startups consistently nail their pitch by delivering dynamic, effective presentations. This propels them forward so that they are recognized and promoted, attract fans and funding, and accelerate sales.

She is her own best case study coming from the corporate arena, selling everything from advertising to Steinway grand pianos, and being on stage as an actor. Along the way, she observed that sales professionals and executives were afraid of speaking in public and not effective at their presentations.

After curing her own stage fright, people starting coming to her to master their business presentations and Pitch Perfect Presentations was born. Now in her highly acclaimed, bespoke coaching business, she works with international executives from all over the world.

In her free time, she can be found traveling, wine tasting, eating Swiss chocolate, watching Formula 1 auto races, and always studying something new.

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