A Personal Note from Orion

As a public speaker, I’m always curious about how to use my voice to influence my audience and who better to discuss this with than Roger Love, Tony Robbins’ vocal coach! My guest today is a celebrity vocal coach who has worked with top icons in the music world and the self-development arena.

Whether it’s getting that raise you deserve, or attracting the love of your life, the impression your voice leaves greatly influences everyone’s perception of you. It takes just seconds for people to decide if and how much they like you, and developing your voice can help you influence your first impression.

From Gwen Stefani to Selena Gomez to Tony Robbins, Roger Love worked with the best singers and speakers on how to develop their unique voice to its full potential. And developing that skill doesn’t only empower you, it also increases your life expectancy, eliminates snoring and creates chemicals that boost your auto-immune system. Pretty cool, right? Make sure to tune in and stick it out to the end, because Roger shares some awesome breathing exercises that will help you improve your voice.

 

 

In this Episode

• [04:10] – We hear about Roger’s background, including his early passion for singing and how this led him into teaching stars as a teenager. He also explains how this led him into becoming a speaking coach.
• [08:13] – Does Roger think everyone can sing, or are there some people who just can’t? Some people are born with better voices than others, he says, but everyone has an original and unique voice. Even people born without great instruments have the potential to do well if they work hard at it.
• [10:42] – Roger gives the example of Pavarotti, who decided to be a singer at around 35.
• [11:44] – Roger discusses his love for taking people like Orion — who loved singing as a child — and helping them incorporate musicality into their speaking voices. He also explains that you only have about a second to make your first impression through speaking.
• [14:45] – What are the five components of voice and how can we best use them? They’re pitch, pace, tone, melody, and volume. He gives some tips on volume, melody, pace.
• [21:03] – Most people believe there are only two voices: chest voice and head voice. This can lead to speakers or singers getting trapped in one voice or the other because of the difficulty of transitioning between the two. Middle voice gives people the ability to sing between these two ranges without the voice breaking. Roger also explains why the middle and head voice are important even to speakers.
• [26:05] – Sound waves from your voice vibrate the bodies of listeners. Roger explains why this is important. He also says that the people who sing or speak in the way he teaches for an hour a day increases life expectancy up to eight years (among several other benefits that he lists).
• [29:25] – Roger tells us how he helped Tony Robbins keep from losing his voice and work through the tremendous amount of wear and tear on his voice.
• [31:10] – John Gray’s voice wouldn’t work for Tony Robbins, and vice versa, and Roger demonstrates why. He then goes on to talk about how important it is to have different sounds and voices for each character you need to play.
• [35:52] – “People all need to think about voice first,” Roger tells us. He emphasizes the importance of voice in interactions, and mentions his forthcoming book Set Your Voice Free. It’s a new, expanded edition of his first book, containing everything he’s learned in the 16 years since the original edition came out.
• [37:02] – Roger talks about what he calls “overlapping frequencies,” which he believes is why children of different genders feel connected before puberty. Once puberty happens and men and women sound different, a divide is created. Overlapping frequencies are the ranges in which men’s and women’s voices tend to overlap.
• [40:00] – We hear more about Roger’s new book. He also mentions that there’s a partnering website that comes with the book.
• [42:30] – What makes the best female speakers great? Roger emphasizes the combination of the five voice components he mentioned before, and mentions having a physiology that matches those sounds. He also talks about the problems with parallel gestures — doing the same thing with both hands at the same time.
• [46:15] – Roger shares an exercise that can help speakers. Close your mouth, breathe in through your nose, and pretend there’s a balloon in your abdomen. When you breathe in, fill your abdomen; when you exhale, let your abdomen come back in. This is diaphragmatic breathing.
• [52:21] – Voice is one of the most important ways of establishing self-confidence, Roger tells us.
• [53:54] – What products of his do Roger recommend? First, he recommends his new book Set Your Voice Free again. He then recommends The Perfect Voice, for which Stellar Life listeners will receive a $50 discount!
• [55:38] – What are Roger’s three tips to living a stellar life? 1. Record yourself speaking and listen attentively, paying attention to your volume. 2. Record yourself again, this time focusing on having more melody and “walking up the stairs.” 3. Record yourself once more, this time speaking only while your stomach is coming in.

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. I’m your host Orion and our guest today worked with the best in the world, people like Demi Lovato, Gwen Stefani, Reese Witherspoon, Tony Robbins, Louis Haye; I can keep dropping names because Roger Love is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on voice. No other vocal coach in history has been more commercially successful in both the speaking and singing fields. Roger’s breakthrough techniques and 30 years of experience win his clients Grammys, Oscars, and millions of dollars in speaking revenue. Before I keep going, I just wanted to remind you about our Facebook group. You are welcome to join us atfacebook.com/groups/stellarlife. I also want to invite you to check out the show notes onwww.stellarlifepodcast.com. Here’s a shoutout to Chloe who emailed me and said, “Hey Orion, I just want to give you props on your podcast. I remember when we met and you were saying what a challenge it was to build up your subscriber base. I think what you have is really high quality. Since I help Michelle put together his podcast, I know how much work goes into it. Great job, keep it up, I left you a review on iTunes, happy Thanksgiving, xo.” It was so nice to get this review, thank you so much Chloe, back at you, you’re amazing. You guys, if you get value out of this, share the love, connect, let me know, I want to connect with you. I want to reach out, I want to build a community. Connect, let me know how you think, it’s really helpful. Also, you know what? Getting you guys the best vocal coach in the world is not that easy, or getting to talk to the best biohacker in the world is not that easy, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, I’m very persistent. Also, like producing this thing, it’s not as easy. It takes many, many hours of hard work and a team of people to get you these interviews. If you get something good out of that, what you can do to give back is share the love. Send it to somebody that can benefit from it, connect with them, and connect with me. I would really, really appreciate it. Your voice is a powerful tool. If you want to speak better, sing better, sell more, or flirt better, keep listening because not everyday do you get to learn from a vocal coach to the stars. Now, onto the show. Hello Mr. Roger Love and welcome to Stellar Life. How are you doing today?

‏‏It’s a beautiful day and I’m happy to be with you.

‏‏Why don’t we start by you telling me a little bit about the background on your wall? And what’s on your wall? Because this is so amazing.

‏‏My background is that when I was 13 years old, I was loving singing and all I wanted to do 24 hours a day was sing. I kept begging my parents, please let me take singing lessons because I want to get better. And then finally, they took me to a very, very famous teacher in Hollywood who was the most famous teacher probably in the world by virtue of the fact that he already was teaching all of the famous singers. Everyone from Sinatra, to Streisand, to Stevie Wonder. I started studying with this teacher and then I loved it. My voice was getting better and I was having so much fun and I actually started teaching a little bit on the side, just some of my friends to earn a little a bit of extra money. When I was 16 years old, he decided that he wanted to go to Banff, Canada and teach a master class. He called me up and he said, “Do you want to come over after school and teach a few lessons?” I said, “Well, I’m not really a teacher.” And he says, “I’ll pay you $100 an hour to come over.” I said, “You know what, I just became a teacher, I’m absolutely professional and I will show up.” I’m not even sure I was driving, I think my mother drove me to my first real job at 16 and I show up with having really no professional background of being a teacher. My first student was Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and then students like Stevie Wonder and The Jacksons and Earth, Wind and Fire and all of these huge stars.

‏‏At 16.

‏‏At 16 years old. As you can imagine, I was like, oh, I don’t how this is going to go. But I gave it my absolute all. Six months later, when he came back, every single one of his students wanted to stay with me because we found, together, that I actually have the ability to change people’s voices for the better. He brought me as a junior partner, and for 17 years, we taught together and had some of the most incredible years of my life and worked with unbelievable superstars in every type of music. And then people like Anthony Robbins, and John Gray, and Suze Orman started reaching out to me and they said we want you to work on our speaking voices. And then I said, that’s not what I do, I’m a singing coach. I would turn them away and then a month or so later, they would call back. Tony Robbins would get on the phone and he’d say I really want you to work with my voice. These people that were calling were so interesting that I decided I would give it a shot. I started accepting people who weren’t interested in singing at all but were only interested in speaking. That started the journey that has really excited me for the last 20 years. And a week later they would call back. And I started realizing that these people that were calling were so interesting that I didn’t want to say goodbye to them, I wanted to say come on in and let’s see what would happen. That started the next chunk of my life focusing on how I could help people who just speak, how I could help influencers and teachers and doctors and lawyers and to create voices and a way of using their voices that would help them create bedside manners if they were doctors or if they were entrepreneurs, help them close better deals, help the create influence, move people emotionally. I realized early on that there was no difference between singing and speaking. The same skill set that I learned, controlling the volumes of singers and the melodies of singers, and the pitch and the pacing and the tonal qualities, the resonances, I started doing the same thing with these speakers. I realized that it worked, that there really is no sizeable difference between singing and speaking. Now, my practice over the last 20 years has been 50% singers and 50% speakers, and it’s been such a joy.

‏‏Yes. Lucky speakers and singers. You worked with the best of the best. Do you think everybody can sing, or some people are like, never in a million years?

‏‏Everyone is born with this amazing original voice. For example, if I call you tomorrow on the phone and I say, hi, how are you today? And you be like, Roger? Did I give you my cellphone number? Because you’d recognized my voice. If your best friend calls you later on today, they don’t have to say, hi, it’s me Roger, your best friend. You recognize their voice.

‏‏Right.

‏‏What we know is that every single person’s voice is different. That’s a great place to start. That means we all have something original about our voices. Some people are born with better voices that others. We call that nature. Some people were born with bigger vocal chords, smaller vocal cords, smaller tongues, smaller nasal cavity, bigger nasal cavity, smaller mouth, smaller lips, all of these things that influence the way that sound is shaped as it’s trying to get out of your body. But what I’ve learned is if you take someone that’s born with a great natural instrument, if they don’t work on their voice, if they don’t decide they want to be great singers or great speakers, they don’t become great singers or speakers. It’s a combination of some nature and nurture. I’m the nurture part, I take whatever someone has and then nurture starts with great technique. Here’s what’s possible, here’s what the voice can do, here’s how to breathe, here’s how to create volume, here’s how to get rid of nasality, all the things that I do. I add the nurture to the nature, and if you take someone that has almost no nature, that they were born with almost nothing, but they work hard to realize, they don’t want to sound really nasal or they don’t want to sound super airy or they don’t want to sound like they always have a cold and then they get a little bit of technique and boom! They all of a sudden become more successful than the people that were born with great instruments.

If you take someone that’s born with a great natural instrument, if they don’t work on their voice, if they don’t decide they want to be great singers or great speakers, they don’t become great singers or speakers. Click To Tweet

‏‏That’s amazing, wow. That’s true for everything in life. Many people who become successful don’t have very profound talents, they just work really hard on their craft and they kept going and going and going and they become more successful. Because a lot of time, people that have the talent don’t appreciate or value that gift that they got from God and they don’t really work on it.

‏‏Think about Pavarotti, one of the greatest singers in history. He was like 35 years old when he decided he was going to be singer. Can you imagine walking around for 25 years being Pavarotti and not thinking that you’re a singer? Or that you should be a professional? And then one day saying, oh maybe I’ll give opera singing a shot. What was he doing before? Secretary, assistant, carpenter, who the heck knows? All I know is we all have these great talents all of ourselves and we still have to decide to work on them and make them better.

‏‏When I was five, I really wanted to be a singer. And then when I was 8, I really wanted to be a zoologist.

‏‏You should’ve just started singing to the animals.

‏‏Yeah right. No. But I sang in school plays and I sing in the shower. I’m a very good karaoke singer, I get people going.

‏‏I can’t wait to hear it. My whole belief now is taking people like you who might have loved singing early on in life or thought that they couldn’t sing and then helping them find the speaking voice that has music in it so that when you’re speaking to people, you move them emotionally, you control the perception of them because here’s a very interesting, scary fact that I want your listeners to know. When people open up their mouths and speak, the people that are listening to them make value judgments about those people in about a second or so. New Science says that you have about a second when someone hears you. You don’t have coffee, you don’t have lunch, you don’t have let’s sleep over, you have about a second before people decide whether they like you enough to listen to more of what you have to say. You have about a second before they decide whether they trust you enough or care about you enough to believe you. If you only have a second or so, you need to create a way of communicating that showcases the best of who you are, not the worst of you are. People are generally trapped behind voices that don’t even begin to convey the very best of who they are. The last time you bought a phone, a new iPhone and then you figured, oh I have to leave a new message now, I have to leave a new voicemail message. And you start to record your voicemail message, hi this is Roger, I’m a nice person, please leave me a message. I want to hang. And then you listen back and then he goes, wang wang boring bla bla. Why would anybody talk to me?

‏‏I’m so familiar with that.

‏‏And then what do you do? Record it again. Hi this is Roger and then you listen back and then ugh still bad, and then you record it again, still bad then you go ugh. I really thought that the microphone on this new iPhone was going to be better but it’s still not great, and then you settle and say I’m an adult, I have things to do today, people that count on me, I can’t spend 40 minutes trying to leave a voicemail message and you say that’s good enough and you walk away. And that voice that’s on your voicemail message that’s not good enough, that you don’t like, that’s the voice that you’re trying to get dates with, that’s the voice you’re trying to do business deals with, that’s the voice that you’re portraying yourself to the world as and you don’t like it. Why should they like it? And what makes you think you’re stuck with that voice when you could have any voice you want?

‏‏That is so powerful. I’ve never thought of that. That’s amazing, the voicemail message. Wow. You talk a lot about the five components to voice. What are they and how can we use them to leave a better voice message?

‏‏Great, or to have better communication I general. To make sure that when you say will you marry me? that the person says I would love to marry you.

‏‏Will you marry me?

‏‏I’m telling you, that matters. And when you say can I have a raise? Because I deserve a raise. At that point the boss doesn’t. If you want the boss to fire you, it really helps if you know these five elements. Okay? I call them the building blocks of voice. And they are pitch, pace, tone, melody and volume. We don’t have time to teach you everything that I know since birth, but let me teach you a little bit about some of these building blocks. One, volume. Most people are afraid to speak loud enough, so they end up making themselves softer. When you make yourself softer, you end up sounding and being perceived as weaker and with less power and with less substance. With less volume, you do not come across as the dynamic, incredible, powerful, wonderful, intelligent person that you are. You need to create a certain volume, not a volume that allows you to hear you but a volume that allows them to hear you. That volume is generally louder that people think. Here’s the problem, when people get louder, they’re afraid that suddenly they sound angry. Because when people are angry they get louder and the shout. People are afraid to get louder, what do I do? I take volume and I say you have to be louder but I add to it melody. I make sure that the voice has a melody, just like a piano. That sometimes it’s going up, sometimes it’s going down, and sometimes it’s on the same note. I call this Stair Step Melody. I’m either walking up the stairs, this walking up the stairs is called an ascending melody, or I’m walking down the stairs from a higher note to a lower note, that’s called the descending melody. Or I’m staying on the same note, that’s called the monotone. Most people are very, very good at speaking monotone. As if they are at one note on a piano that should have 88 keys and they just stay on the same note and they’re boring the heck out of everybody. That’s not good melody. Other people sometimes go up, walking up the stairs makes people happy. I love my dog. I absolutely love my wife. I love chocolates. Up melodies make people happy. Most people use down melodies. I really like my dog. I really love chocolate. I really love my wife. And then they’re wondering why people are being depressed every time that they will speak. Because they sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. You’re using down melodies. When I combine volume and melody that goes more up, it doesn’t sound mad. Let me show you. I’m talking to you right now with no melody and it sounds like I’m absolutely mad. What did you do wrong? Certainly you have a nice smile. Why is Roger mad at me? And then all of a sudden I keep the same volume but I add melody. And then there’s no anger in it. All of a sudden my melody is happy and the volume now works perfectly when you combine it with melody.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏Also, pace. People don’t know how fast or how slow they should speak. They often times speak too fast, talking about something that they know but the people listening, they don’t know what they know. And they’re too embarrassed to say could you slow down a little bit because I don’t understand a thing that you’re saying because then they feel like they’re not as intelligent. Some people speaking too fast and then the perception of the other people, you’re making the other people feel stupid that they can’t follow as fast as you follow or that making the other people think that you’re hiding something. Because when salesmen go into this whole mode where they’re talking really, really fast and then yes I want you to buy the wheels on the car and his wheels are a little extra but you’re going to love it and the girls are going to love it and then you’re going to be driving fast.

‏‏How can you speak so fast? That’s amazing.

‏‏Because I have control over my lips and my tongue and my vocal chords. And anyone can do it. When you’re speaking too fast, that doesn’t work. And then when you’re speaking really, really slow, thinking I really want people to understand the things that I have to say. Then, people are perceiving you as absolute dum dum. Because they’re thinking your brain doesn’t even work fast enough to spit the words out that you don’t know what you’re going to say next and then they have no confidence in you intelligence or your ability to communicate. Too slow not good, too fast not good, but just like great music. Sometimes you want to be fast because it raises your pulse. And sometimes you want it to be slow.

‏‏It’s so beautiful.

‏‏Because then it slows your pulse down and puts you in a romantic mood. And people just don’t understand how important melody and volume is, check this out. If I’d say, do you want to go to the movies? You’re like oh my God, I don’t think I want to go to the movies, you’re a total freak. And if I say, do you want to go to the movies? You’d say, awesome can I bring my little brother? Because obviously we’re going to a Disney film. Melodies create emotions and that’s what I teach people. We have volume and melody and pace, those are just a few of the building blocks that I teach.

‏‏This is so interesting. You talk about middle voice. Can you explain a little bit about middle voice? Because usually voice teachers teach high voice, actually I won’t talk about it, let the experts talk about it. A little bit about middle voice. Yes.

‏‏Most people only believe that there are two voices. That there’s a voice we call chest voice which is down low, and if you put your hand on the base part of your neck and any of the people watching this do the same thing, put it a little bit higher to the base of your neck, bring your hand a little higher, right there and you say, I can. Do that.

‏‏I can.

‏‏Do you feel your thumb and your index finger vibrate a little?

‏‏Yes, I do.

‏‏That’s called chest voice. Because the vibration in the body of where that sound feels like it’s bouncing around is the top part of the chest. Now put your hand back, and say weeeeee.

‏‏Weeeee.

‏‏That doesn’t feel like it’s all down here, right?

‏‏No.

‏‏It feels like it’s sort of up here. We call that head voice. Most people only think that there are two voices, chest voice down low, head voice on the top. And then when they go to, for example, speak higher or sing higher and they try to go back and forth, they find that there’s an area in between where the voice doesn’t know what to do. They’ll be trying to sing the National anthem and they’ll be like, the land of the free, and their voice will break like they just went through puberty. Land of, and they’re like oh my gosh, I hope yodeling comes back into fashion. If it does, I’ll be right on target with yodeling. But they have a break in their voice. That’s why people don’t sing from low to high. That’s why some singers start belting and they just stay in chest voice and some speakers only stay in chest voice, or some singers, especially women, go to head voice and they just stay in head voice all the time. Oooh, I’m so petite, I’m so petite, because they think it’s pretty. But then what happens is if you’re a singer or a speaker and then you get trapped in one of those voices, you’re kind of boring because you only get the sounds that are attached to those voices and there are still other sounds that are amazing and that are more magical, and musical, and have more emotion attached to them. I say that there’s supposed to be another voice that lives in between chest and head, it’s called middle voice because it sits in the middle. That voice, almost nobody knows about, even though I was talking about it since I was 13 years old and telling people everybody needs a middle, everybody needs a middle, still only the greatest singers in the world and only the greatest speakers in the world actually have chest, middle and head. Middle voice, let me demonstrate. Chest, ahhhh. Head voice, aaah. Now I’m going to go from chest to head to middle ahhhh, aaaah, ahhh, aah, aaaaaaaaah. A combination, some chest and some head mixed together.

‏‏It’s very pretty.

‏‏Chest, ahhhh. Head voice, aaah. Middle, aaaaah. Middle voice acts as a bridge. So now, my singers can sing from any note they want, from the lowest note all the way up the middle, all the way up into head without any breaks, without any pressure, without any straining and that’s why they sound incredible. And the people that don’t have a middle will never sound that great. When I teach the middle voice to singers, they start to cry, even someone as famous as Gwen Stefani. When I taught her about middle voice, she was like I’ve never heard about middle voice and I’ve been singing for so many years and been successful at it. I didn’t even know it existed, and I explained well that’s why she was straining at the top part of the chest. I taught her how to do it and then she went on tour for a year, a year later I saw her, she came back to me she said, you changed my life and I said how? She said because I practiced your exercises so that I could get up on stage and jump around and do one hour pushups while I was singing and I never lost my voice and I found the middle voice. So when I show it to singers, that changes everything. When I show it to speakers, they’re like, Roger, why do I need so much range? Why do I need all those voices for? I say because basically every time you speak, if you only have chest voice which is what most people only have, it’s like you’re 6ft tall and the ceiling is 6ft and you keep hitting your head and you’re limited to a certain number of sounds that carry with them a certain number of emotions and feelings and you’re limiting your sounds that you make so you’re only singing one song over and over and over and the people listening to you thinks you’re singing the same song. But when you have middle voice, and head voice, you can sing any song and that your voice becomes a musical instrument and you have all of the emotional sounds of middle and head voice that make people feel things. Here’s really interesting statistic that people don’t understand. Again, this is all scientifically proven. When I open my mouth to speak, sound waves come out of my mouth, invisible sound waves, and they vibrate the bodies of the people that are in proximity to those sound waves. When you hear them, those sound waves vibrate your body. If I want connect with people, I need to get the sound literally out of my body and make that physical sound vibrate the bodies of the listeners. Why? Because when those vibrations hit those bodies, the brain interprets those vibrations into thoughts and emotions and feelings. If I want to make people feel something, I physically have to get my sound to vibrate their bodies so that their brains interpret them. The whole range from low to high is full of different vibrations and they make the body feel different things. That’s why you have to have chest, middle and head. That’s why you have to know how to use the voice as an instrument so that your voice can move people emotionally, so that the sounds that come out are interesting, so that people want to follow you, so that people want to hire you, so that people want to kiss you on the mouth, these things that are within your capabilities and you’re not thinking that your voice is what’s messing you up, that because of your voice you are in a bad job or in a bad relationship. And again, check this out. People who speak the way that I teach them or sing the way that I teach them, scientifically proven that that increases their life expectancy up to 8 years. That singing or speaking the way that I do increases your life expectancy up to 8 years if you do it for an hour a day. That’s what they say. An hour a day and they’re going to find that it’s less than that. But an hour a day they say right now of singing, speaking the way that I say, increases your life expectancy up to 8 years plus it eliminates snoring, takes care of stuttering it calms the body, it releases chemicals into the brain that makes your brain work faster. It creates chemicals that actually fight disease, that it boosts your auto-immune system so there’s nothing negative about learning to use your voice to make you healthier, happier, and to make other people that are actually forced to listen to you happier and healthier.

When you have middle voice, and head voice, you can sing any song and that your voice becomes a musical instrument and you have all of the emotional sounds of middle and head voice that make people feel things. Click To Tweet

‏‏Wow. I think I’ve learned more about voice now than I‘ve ever learned in my life.

‏‏That’s my job.

‏‏In the last 30 minutes. This is amazing.

‏‏That’s my job.

‏‏Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I’m a big fan of Tony Robbins. Tony always speaks about how he went to doctors and they told him that he won’t be able to speak because he strained his vocal chords so many times. I think he did some magic and now he’s able to speak, but how did you find a way to help him when other people say no you worked too hard. You talked on stage for hours and hours for many, many years and you probably won’t be able to speak again.

‏‏I have specific exercises that shrink the swelling of the vocal chords when you talk a lot and you speak in a way that creates pressure on the voice. When the vocal chords get dry and they start to get red and puffy and swollen, I have specific exercises that shrink the swelling of the chords and get them back to their normal size so they can operate. Tony is a very unique individual who basically stays up and talks 21 or 22 hours a day and only sleeps for a few hours max. He has tremendous amount of wear and tear on his voice. And also, the same thing that made him shoot up to be so tall and so big was the same thing that made his vocal chords almost too big for his throat.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏He is a very unique case. Tony Robbins still has plenty of vocal problems but with the exercises he does in the morning, at least he’s able to get through the next 22 or 23 hours with my exercises. At least he’s able to get through the next 22 or 23 hours of speaking a day. Even though he doesn’t sound like Michael Buble when he speaks, he doesn’t sound like James Earl Jones when he speaks, it’s not like the most soothing and beautiful of voices but it’s a voice that works for his purpose to motivate people to change their lives.

‏‏And he definitely uses his tonality. I just understood what you said when you were talking about moving your voice vibration into the other person has a lot to do with intention and with training, and that’s exactly what Tony does. Because when I attended his seminars, when he speaks, I felt it in my body. It’s really powerful.

‏‏Whether you like his voice or not, it works for him. For example, if I would give Tony Robbins a voice more like John Gray who wrote Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and he talks a little bit more like this. Higher, he’s got a little bit more feminine in his voice, there isn’t all that big macho, masculine thing. If Tony had that kind of voice like that, and he was like, look, I said change your state. And they’re like what? Move out of California? No. Change your state. John Gray’s voice wouldn’t work for what would work for Tony Robbins and vice versa. I wouldn’t teach John Gray, who was also a student of mine during the heyday of  Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus which is the biggest selling book in publishing history next to the Bible. I wouldn’t teach John Gray how to sound like this, okay, ladies, listen get out of the man cave and give your guy… because the message would’ve fallen on deaf ears as they say. Each person needs to create the sounds and music that works for who they are, what they are, what their topic is. A lawyer needs to have certain sound, a doctor needs to have certain sounds and insurance sales needs to have certain sounds, entrepreneurs needs to have certain sounds and they need to have access to all of those different sounds and all those different characters. During the day I’m a voice teacher, I have this big voice, I move my arms a lot, I move my body a lot, I know the answers to everything. During the day I feel omnipotent, as omnipotent as I could possibly be. Then I come home, I’m feeling very, very omnipotent, super powers all day, I have solved the mysteries of the universe all day, I open the door and I see my wife. If I talk to her immediately with that voice, she’s like, shut up and take out the trash. Because that voice doesn’t work for her, she doesn’t really want me to come home and teach her anything. She wants to come home and be a husband. Then I go into husband voice, that voice is softer, that voice has longer pauses and commas, that voice has a lot more silence, and that voice is a good listener because to be a good speaker you also have to be good listener. Then I change it, and then the kids come. If I’m lucky enough after the dog comes running towards me which is a sure thing and licks my face, I’m so glad if the kids start coming towards or I start coming towards them. The voice I use for my wife, that doesn’t work for my kids because if I use that voice for my kids, then my 13 year old would think it was perfectly fine for him to have a chocolate chip cookie one minute before dinner. Whereas it’s fine for me to communicate in a way that my wife knows, I think she can have whatever cookie she wants before dinner. But if I don’t want my son to ruin his appetite right before dinner, I need to have a voice that conveys authority, a voice that conveys this is what I really mean and I’m not backing down from the chocolate chip thing. We actually have all these different characters. And then when I talk to my friends, I have other voices, when I talk to colleagues, I have other voices. We have all these different characters inside of us, and most people are trapped in one voice that they use the whole time. They use one voice when they’re trying to sound like they’re smart, and they use one voice when they’re trying to talk to their girlfriends or boyfriends, and they use one voice when they’re trying to talk to kids, and they use one voice when they’re trying to talk to the dog, and they use one voice in all situations but it doesn’t work everywhere. When I show people that there are all of these other sounds that they can make and all of these other characters just like I show my actors like Reese Witherspoon or Rooney Mara or Keira Knightley or Jennifer Lawrencehow to change their voices to play the different roles that they play, I show people how to do that.

‏‏That’s amazing.

‏‏And then they walk through their lives playing the right roles with the right characterizations and the right voices and they achieve success and connection in all of those different parts of their lives.

‏‏I teach about masculine, feminine energies. Part of my teaching is telling women that they don’t have to be in their masculine all day long. When they’re with a masculine man, it will be nicer to have a different communication with him that is softer and kinder. There is different communication to when you talk to your child, there is different communication to when you’re in the boardroom and definitely a completely different communication in an intimate relationship. Adding the voice component to that is pretty profound, never thought about that.

‏‏I love that people all need to think about voice first. They’ve already thought about hair, makeup, clothes, gym, books that they needed to read and the lectures that they needed to attend and education, degrees, and they forgot that the main component is when you open your mouth, people are not listening to the words you say, they’re listening to how you make them feel and that has to do with tonality. Which is why I’m really excited because I want to mention that I have a new book that is out in pre sale right now and also hitting all the stores December 27th. It’s called Set Your Voice Free and it’s on Little Brown Publishing Company that I wrote my first book with in 1999 which was also called Set Your Voice Free and 16 years later I put out this new edition, an expanded edition, that has everything that I’ve learned in the last 16 years since the first book came out. One of the things in this new revised edition of Set Your Voice Free I want to touch on is exactly what you said. I uncovered and I show people how to do this. I uncovered a thing called overlapping frequencies. When little boys and little girls are communicating before puberty, they speak in the same range, they make the same sounds and that’s why I believe that the communication between little boys and little girls are uninterrupted. Little boys and little girls don’t feel that different. They feel like they’re still connected, that the whole gender thing is not a big issue. Then when puberty happens, the male voice drops an entire octave. Now, men sound different than a women. Thus, creating a huge divide sound wise, because we live in a mirror culture. I’m walking down the street someone says howdy, before I even think I’m like howdy because I want to connect with people and we mirror sounds, that’s how we learn language, we’re a mirror culture to connect. All of a sudden, we can’t make the same sounds and I believe that that creates a divide now in the way that man and woman start to communicate because woman and man think wow, we sound different, we obviously are different and now we’re starting to look different. I don’t know how to communicate. I realized that when that happens and for the rest of our adult life, there’s a certain part of the range where men and women still share the same notes, the same notes on the piano, the same frequencies. It’s called the area which I call overlapping frequencies. That’s why I teach women to have the bottom part of their low range chest voice middle and a little bit up into middle. And that’s why I teach men how to not be only in their chest voice but they have to be in the middle range of their voice because of those overlapping frequencies. That changes everything because most women are thinking I’m walking into a male situation, it’s a job, it’s a boardroom, there’s all this male energy there. I should lower my voice down low. No, she shouldn’t lower her voice down low. If she spends all of her time down low, she actually is not in that part of overlapping frequencies and she’s making herself come across as masculine to men instead of feminine. She needs to move from chest to middle and head to have all of her power so that she has all of the strength of chest voice but that she still has the feminine energy so that the man don’t want to look at a woman and think is she a man or woman? The man are fine with her being a woman, they just want to sense her authenticity, her power, her uniqueness. Men love to have conversations with women. Women that are powerful, especially if they want to move the man to action. It’s a whole understanding now of what parts of the range men should be speaking in and what part of the range women should be speaking in to communicate effectively to maintain your masculinity or your femininity and still get into that range of overlapping frequencies. That’s just one of the parts of my new book Set Your Voice Free. People should go to rogerlove.com and scroll down and there’s a link to order the new book or they can go to amazon.com, click on Set Your Voice Free, make sure to get the one with the bright red cover like love that says “Revised Edition.” It’s not only a book, it’s a book that has a partnering website where you’re reading through the book and it says boom, go to audio 22 on the website, boom! You’re on the website and you have me talking to you. Some audio, some video of me showing you the sounds of me so the combination of you hearing me and reading what I’m teaching you. The learning is quadrupled. You have me audio and video and book and then that changes lives, that changes voices. I really want people to go buy the New Revised Edition of Set Your Voice Free at rogerlove.com or on amazon.com.

‏‏Amen. I know there are some book that changed my life. There is The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I believe that’s that Set Your Voice Free is going to be a new edition of books that changed my life forever. It’s such a unique knowledge, and it’s something that people don’t talk about, people don’t put enough attention to, and I think it’s going to change my life, for sure. I already feel like you improved me just by talking to you, I bet the book is going to just be like one of my favorite books ever.

‏‏Thank you so much, I really feel I have a tiny little purpose to my life and that is I’m trying to make the world a better place. And I’m doing it one voice at a time. If I can bring you into my family and now you are, then that’s one more part of my plan that if I really want to make the world a better place, I have to do it one voice at a time. Thank you for joining the family.

‏‏Yes. Consider me a huge fan and a part of your family, for sure.

‏‏You’re in. I’ll see you on Thanksgiving.

‏‏Thanks. You’re welcome to mine too.

‏‏I love it.

‏‏For women who speak on stage. What makes powerful women who speak like Michelle Obama and Oprah such great speakers?

‏‏Great. The greatest female speakers in the world speak with the combination of the right sounds, the right volume, the right pitch, pace, tone, melodies. They have all of those building blocks of voice in place that the sounds that come out of their mouths make people believe the things that they say, and they have a physiology that matches those sounds. Some people get up and they have a very uncomfortable physiology and so they’re like, I really mean what I say to you, you please follow me. Follow me into battle, some of you will die but please stand behind me. Wait a minute, stand in front of me. Stop the bullets. They have a physiology that doesn’t match. What you’ll notice about people who are great speakers is it seems like their body moves in a way that is true to the sounds that come out. When they’re making beautiful sounds with their voice, their body is mirroring that. When they’re making strong sounds with their voice, short powerful things, their body is mirroring it. Here’s another tip, most people mess up whether or not anyone wants to watch them and listen to them by doing a thing called parallel gestures. Let me set this up. When the left side of the brain tells the right side of the body what to do and the right side of the brain tells the left side of the body what to do, that’s how it works. When we’re at dinner, when you and I are at Thanksgiving dinner and we’re more like oh, would you like more of the cranberry and my one hand points to the cranberry and then I say would you like some of the sweet potatoes? I never do this with both hands. Do you want that cranberry or do you want some of this amazingly fertile and hearty mashed potatoes? The way they see politicians do parallel gestures is completely unnatural to the way the brain thinks because the brain is not telling both hands to do the same thing. In order for that to happen, the brain has to say hey, on three we’re going to point, and then the brain says, one, two, three, go! Or point on three until the right side if the brain tells the left side of the brain, we’re going to point in three, one, two, three, go! That’s confusing to the brain and is confusing when people watch because in normal dinner, lunch, one hand moves, the other hand moves differently, we never do the same parallel gestures with both hands. If people would just stop doing parallel gestures, instead of this, if they would do this instead of this, if they would do this. Just make sure that when they move, that one hand is not doing exactly what the other hand is doing at the same second. Actually when you’re watching someone, their body looks like it’s more connected the way they just do whether you’re at Starbucks. Great female speakers have embraced the chest voice, the middle and the head voice so that they have all the power of the low notes, all of the male energy of the low notes, all of the middle and all of the head voice, all of the feminine in their voice. They’ve embraced chest, middle and head. They’ve learned about pitch, pace, tone, melody and volume and then they’ve learned how to connect the physiology to the sounds that come out that make them look physically believable and then, boom! Add some good content to it, superstar!

‏‏Can you share a little exercise, voice exercise, or breathing exercise that can help speakers specifically?

‏‏Absolutely. Most people are losing their voices and speaking too softly without any melody and without the right resonance because of the way they’re breathing. When most people breathe, they breathe like this. They breathe into their mouth, and they raise their chest and shoulders, and then they exhale and they lower their chest and shoulders. They breathe into their mouths and then they exhale, that’s called accessory breathing. That’s the way to get the least amount of air into your body and that’s the way to have the least control of how air comes back out of your body. Also if you would do this with me and if everyone listening as well would do this, open up your mouth and take a slow breath in like this. Do you feel how drying that is?

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Do it again.

‏‏Very drying.

‏‏Very drying. Now close your mouth and breathe into your nose. No drying. There are filters in our nose called turbinates. When the air goes through the nostrils, the air becomes moist so that when it goes through the vocal chords and when it goes through the throat, it doesn’t dry out your vocal chords or throat so you’ll be able to speak or sing infinitely longer, 500 times longer if you start breathing in through your nose. We do a thing called diaphragmatic breathing, we close our mouths when we breathe, when you breathe into the nose, and we pretend that we have a balloon in our abdomen and the balloon is supposed to get bigger. You will not look fat if you do this, okay? Ladies and men. You breathe into your nose and pretend you have a balloon, you breathe in and your abdomen comes forward and then you exhale through your mouth and your abdomen comes in. Do it again. Take a breath, fill up your tummy with air, and then it comes out. What happens now?

‏‏I feel high.

‏‏You know that’s called? That’s called hyperventilation. Which means that the way you normally breathe doesn’t get enough air to your lungs.

‏‏Oh, wow.

‏‏If anybody just got lightheaded from doing it, that meant that they’re not used to getting enough air, and that’s bad. They should have plenty of air in their lungs, we were all born doing diaphragmatic breathing, all babies breathe this way. Babies are not breathing into their mouths and raising chest and shoulders, this is like watching a bad aerobics teacher. Okay? We’re supposed to breathe in through the nose, let the stomach come forward, and then this is the magic element. We’re only supposed to speak while our stomach is coming back in. I’m only supposed to speak or sing while my stomach is coming back in. What happens is that acts like an accordion that helps or whatever that’s called, not a funnel, but like a pump that helps push the air back out of the lungs and out of the mouth creating volume, melody, resonance, but most people speak and they don’t move their stomachs. Actually, you’re trying to drive a car but you don’t have your foot on the accelerator pedal. And then you don’t have very much control over the car but now with this kind of breathing, this becomes your accelerator pedal. If I want the air to come out fast, I bring my stomach in fast. If I want the air to come out slow, I’ll bring my stomach in slow. Just learning to speak or sing only while your stomach is coming back in changes the whole ball game and you’ll never lose your voice and you sound amazing, so much better. Here’s a breathing exercise. You take a breath, breathe in through your nose, you do not move your chest and shoulders. If you wonder whether you’re moving your chest and shoulders, put your back up against the wall so that you could feel where your chest and shoulders is. And then when you’re back up against the wall, put your hand on your tummy and take a breath, let your stomach come forward and then go like this, ssssssssssssssssssss, and see if you can monitor your stomach coming in slowly, slowly, slowly.  And then do it, take a breath without moving your chest and shoulders, breathe into your nose and do it again, ssssssssssssssssssssssssss. That we call the slow leak, that exercise is called the slow leak and that’s a way to start to get a hand on how you should breathe to create the voice that will not only last all day and night because believe it or not science has proven that the voice is setup to speak or sing 24 hours a day.

‏‏Really? Wow.

‏‏24. Do you know that when you’re dreaming and you’re singing or speaking or you speaking oh baby, baby, that your vocal chords are actually moving the exact same way they would if you were awake?

‏‏I believe so. I think last night I was dancing ballroom in my dream.

‏‏Then there were probably electrical nerves.

‏‏I think all my muscles were engaged including my vocal chords.

‏‏I love it. The voice is set up to speak 24 hours a day without getting hoarse. If you can’t, it’s because you’re breathing incorrectly. You learn how to breathe into your nose and then let your stomach come back in slowly as you speak, that would change everything. These are a tiny little handful of what I’ve learned and what I’ve taught in the last 35 years of my life getting to this point, and I want to share everything that I’ve learned because how in the world am I going to make a world a better place if I don’t have more family members? Those of you that want to join my family, go to rogerlove.comand scroll down and you’ll see a link to buy my latest book Set Your Voice Free Revised Edition and it comes along with the website that has all of the audio samples and video from me and you’ll be able to read and listen and learn and change and your personal life will change and your business life will change and the way you feel about yourself will change. Did you know that voice is one of the most important ways of establishing self-confidence? Not only trying to make other people think that you’re confident, but how you establish self-confidence. You speak a certain way, let’s say you speak softly with no melody, you come across as shy, people react to you shyly, they support your limited belief that you’re shy and powerless and so you continue thinking of yourself as shy and powerless because they react to those sounds and the person that they think you are. Change your voice, have them feel the power, the strength, the humanity, the gratitude, the generosity, the funny, and they react differently to you which makes you think, wow, I was the funniest person at dinner tonight. Wow, I was the smartest person in the room. Wow, everybody said that they really enjoyed me today, I must be special. And then eventually you’ll start telling yourself, I am the funniest person in the room. I am special. I do know things. You start building your confidence based on the way people react to you and tell you things, it’s a huge self-confidence builder.

You start building your confidence based on the way people react to you and tell you things, it’s a huge self-confidence builder. Click To Tweet

‏‏Yeah. I love it. You have your book Set Your Voice Free which is amazing and you can buy it now at the pre sale and it’s going to be released on December 27th. Right?

‏‏Yes.

‏‏And you also have few products. Is there any product that you would recommend people to get to start with?

‏‏Yes. I recommend that they should join the family by getting the book first because for $21, they can get the book and the website that can change. Once they do that, if they want to go the next step as most people do. By the way, we have a zero return rate. Zero. No one buys any of my books or programs online, no one buys them and returns them. Not because they don’t know where the post office is, not because we don’t offer a money back guarantee in all of our stuff, but because they work. Buy any of my products knowing full well that no one else returns them, they actually become staple, it becomes that thing that changes lives but we’re also offering the Perfect Voice and you can offer them a link to theperfectvoice.com and we’re offering your people a $50 discount off the package and you get the perfect voice starter kit plus another program called Your Perfect Voice for Love and Relationships so you know what kind of voice you’re supposed to have when you’re dealing with love and relationships.

‏‏This is amazing.

‏‏And also another product that is the Perfect Voice for Money and the Workplace because you can’t talk to your banker the same way you talk to your lover and you need to understand that if you want to get the loan and if you want to get you Kickstarter campaign funded or if you want to get your new entrepreneurial thing funded. You can’t have the same voice as a lover, you have to understand the voice of money, the voice of the workplace. All of that at a very low price with the $50 discount, that’s our special gift to you to the link and you’ll be able to post all that because I gave you all that information.

‏‏Yes. And the link is going to be in the show notes. Three very quick tips to living a stellar life.

‏‏Record yourself speaking and listen back and say oh, wow. What did Roger say again? Hmmm. Said I was probably wasn’t loud enough, yeah I hear that. And then record yourself again louder. Then record yourself again and listen say hmm, what did Roger say? More melody. Oh I should be walking up the stairs, should be walking up the stairs instead of always walking down the stairs and I change my melody, so that I have ascending melodies. Roger said that’s really important. Number three, I listen to myself, I don’t sound strong, I still sound nasal. Roger said I’m only supposed to speak while my stomach is coming in. Boom. I change the way I breathe, I change my melody, and I’ve changed the way that I sound by listening to myself like Roger would listen to me because he is my new best friend and that’s what you need to take away.

‏‏Thank you so much, Mr. Roger Love. And let me try it. Thank you so much listeners for listening to Stellar Life Podcast. I hope you really enjoyed this episode, I hope you will work on your voices and use it for good, to do good in the world and to enjoy sounding better. Just have a really, really good life. Really learned from this episode. Go get the book, get the product. The link is going to be on the show notes on www.stellarlifepodcast.com. I love you very much. I thank you so much Roger and thank you so much everybody.

‏‏Talk to you soon.

‏‏Thank you.

Your Checklist Actions to Take

✓ Unless you already tend to speak loudly, work on raising your volume. Don’t be afraid to speak loudly enough to be heard (by others, not just yourself).

✓ Practice incorporating more melody into your speech. Many of us tend to speak monotonously, but incorporating melody will make your voice more compelling.

✓ Practice shifting from downward melodies to upward stair-step melodies, as if the sound is walking up the stairs as you speak.

✓ Focus on your pace. Slow down and remember that people don’t always know the same things as you do, so speaking slowly gives them time to listen and process.

✓ If you tend to speak too slowly, work on speeding up. Speaking too slowly makes it sound like your brain works equally slowly and makes people lose confidence in you.

✓ Commit to spending an hour a day speaking or singing the way Roger teaches. An increased life expectancy is just one of the benefits this may provide.

✓ Focus on becoming more aware of using different voices for each character you need to play. For example, use a different voice in your professional role than you do at home with your spouse.

✓ Practice making your physiology match your words and sounds. Your body movements should be true to the sounds that come out of your mouth rather than being at odds with them.

✓ Avoid parallel gestures, in which both of your hands do the same thing at the same time. This feels unnatural and comes across that way to your audience.

✓ Spend ten minutes a day practicing diaphragmatic breathing until it becomes natural. Breathe in through your nose, expand your abdomen, and don’t move your chest and shoulders.

Links and Resources:

About Roger Love

Roger Love is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on voice and speech training. No other vocal coach in history has been more commercially successful in both the speaking and singing fields.