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[00:00:40] Sloane: Welcome back. So glad that you found me. So glad that you're here. I am Sloane, your host if you are listening to the podcast. So great. This is my new baby. This is only my third episode. Very excited to be here. If you are watching this on YouTube, glad you're there as well. And there are a ton of other resources that I will mention as we get to the end here.

[00:01:06] But today, Today's topic, the secret to building a confident voice that commands respect. And I have to tell you, when I came up with that title, I was, I really struggled with the title of Commanding, commanding Respect, and. What comes up for me and, and it's not true. You know, you talk about our perception, right?

[00:01:36] Your perception. It's either, it's whether real or perceived. And I think what the word command does for me, it's, it's a little triggering it. It takes me back to how I used to. Very commanding, demanding. You know my way, you need to do it my way. I shared a little bit in the last episode about what can happen when we shift from it needing to be our way and when we come from more of a place of collaboration and that there is more than one way to get any task, any job, anything.

[00:02:16] And I think the other thing that the word command brings up is it was, it's a childhood. I, I grew up in a, and I've shared a little bit in past episodes that I did not have a voice. It is not a coincidence that I am a vocal coach, but I, I didn't, I didn't have a voice. I was never asked my opinion.

[00:02:37] I was never asked my thoughts, my ideas, what I wanted. Is this okay with you? What would you like, Sloan? Never, it was just, it was one. One particular person's way growing up. So, you know, fast forward now we're here and I'm doing a podcast on building a confident voice that commands respect. And so the shift here is that I've got three tips for you today.

[00:03:06] We're gonna, we're gonna dive into those a little deeper, but if you are like me and the word command. Is triggering for you if we can flip that upside down and instead see that word command as more of a coming from a place of taking care of ourselves more from a place of self-care. And I shared a little bit last episode.

[00:03:36] I've been practicing the power of no. I've been saying no to invitations that aren't maybe the best invitation at this time. I've been saying no to opportunity. Clients, which, you know, I, I, it is really, really hard because I am, I'm a woman of service and when it comes to your voice, man, I'm here and I wanna help the whole planet from little bitty babies to, you know, you know, retired and, and heading to the grave who still haven't found their voice.

[00:04:10] I want to help everybody with their voice. Which is why the podcast was born. That's why this channel has been born, because it is impossible. That's I'm one person, and that's, that's not ever going to happen. So this is my way of dealing with that need. Saying no to opportunity clients that the client, maybe that is not my ideal soul aligned woman.

[00:04:37] My fractile more on that in a later episode. But these are, you know, if, if, and you'll know. You'll know if you've been hanging out with me or you're watching or listening to these shows, you're gonna know if you are soul aligned and if I'm your girl to help you really. Step into that voice, learn how to engage and express yourself fully.

[00:05:03] And without apology, you will know if you are that client. So anyway, the power of no, that, that is new for me. That might be new for some of you. Coming back to the word command. I'm seeing it instead as that stepping in, I'm seeing that word more as a, a word of empowerment, a word of an opportunity, a way to show up for yourself.

[00:05:30] Showing up for yourself first. And foremost, you know, it's that oxygen mask thing. No matter how good you are at what you do, no matter how much you love what you do, no matter how much you love the clients that you are serving, if you are not in a healthy space, mentally, physically, emotionally, you're not going to be of service to anybody, right?

[00:05:56] We cannot serve from a place of. What's the word from a place of impoverishment, we cannot serve from a place of that low frequency, that low hum. You know, if, if you are constant, if you're finding yourself constantly sick, or, this was very interesting when I started getting out there on stages. And it didn't happen a lot, but early on when I started my practice, I started noticing that and they were like big events.

[00:06:30] I would start to feel a little tickle on my throat. I would start to be coming down with something. I don't know if it was, you know, partly psychosomatic, I think. I think what it really was is I was burning the candle at many, many ends and it was humanly impossible. I was trying to do everything all at once and it it, I tell you.

[00:06:50] There's a lot of worse things, but it really is a bummer. It actually, it, it totally sucks to have to show up on a stage and perform or present when you're not feeling well. And probably the worst, worst scenario of all was. When I stepped off of a curb, I'm not going to give you all the details, those of you watching who know me and know what happened.

[00:07:15] You know what happened? I stepped off of a curb early morning and my, I rolled and broke my right foot. The foot you drive with. And it was two days, if even before I had an an event Halloween, me and my band. So we just made it part of the costume and all of that. But man, you know, because you, you go on, you've been paid, you've been booked, you, you don't cancel, you show up and you do the gig.

[00:07:43] So coming back to that little word command what I do now, Is I command respect for myself first, and I make sure that I'm in, in a good head space, that I am taking care of myself physically, mentally, spiritually. And that is, that's what I, I, I feed on that. And when you're in that space, when you've got that kind of balance going on, you're not really commanding anything.

[00:08:19] You just show up and people listen. And so for today, my friends, by the way, I'm having so much fun doing these podcasts. This is really fun. I hope that you're enjoying yourself as much as I am for today. The secret of building a confident voice that commands respect in a good way. I'm gonna give you three tips.

[00:08:41] We're gonna talk about three tips, but before I jump in there, I wanna share another. I have so many stories, real stories, real people, their names have been changed to protect them just because I wanna respect everybody's privacy and, and personal. And I actually, I've had a lot of clients say, oh sure, sure, go ahead and tell my story.

[00:09:00] But I didn't get this, this person's permission cause I haven't seen her in a little while. She took off with the information and, and I don't know what she's up to. Lorraine, we're gonna call her Lorraine for today, an aerospace engineer and manager. So she came to me, this is a couple years back. She's a very thick Spanish accent.

[00:09:25] Spanish is her first language. Okay? Now, if you've ever been around Spanish speakers, they are passionate. We gotta they And, and I am. I am a Spanish Mexican. But when we get excited, and I'm not a a totally fluent Spanish speaker, but when we get excited about something, that passion is, it's out there. We get excited.

[00:09:50] We start talking really fast. We start using our hands a lot, and Lorraine was one of these people. And when she came to me, the, she was very confused. She was very frustrated. She was, I think she was angst, very anxious, and she couldn't understand why she was having trouble with the people she's managing.

[00:10:12] I don't understand. You know, they, they all think, you know, her words. They all think, I'm a bitch. I'm just doing my job. I, I don't, I don't know what the problem. So we started to just dissect and break down things that she, that were happening with her voice. The first thing, and I've, I've referenced this in the previous episodes, the first thing that we did was work with her tempo, the speed at which she was speaking.

[00:10:43] So the first thing we did was slow her down. Very uncomfortable. If you're not used to slowing down. This can feel very strange. It can feel very foreign. So a lot of the work that I do with voice is it's very much like downloading, right? Where're. We you're, you're up, you're downloading things on your phone, you're downloading apps into your computer and your iPads.

[00:11:07] The information that we are, are downloading into your brain and your body is very specific for your. It's new programming. Often I have to override old programming with a client's voice in order to download the new information to override that. This was one of those things that I did with Lorraine. We had to slow her down.

[00:11:32] We incorporated the power of the pause where she would interject and then stop and let her colleagues. And her peers then share their contribution. That was very uncomfortable for her at first. The other thing we did, so, so Spanish speakers, generally speaking a lot of fire, a lot of passion Latin, it's the L'S language, so a lot of the hands and all that emotion and all that energy.

[00:12:10] We cut that. What that did, and there's nothing wrong with passion. What we did is we incorporated the opposite of all of that fire and we added more water, which is more of a soothing tone, tonal quality, and we added a lot more Earth right there. I just demonstrated for you, earth grounded centered authority.

[00:12:42] A leader. So we played with these, these elements in her voice a little bit. Just a, just, just a number of tweaks, just a handful of little tiny things that we did with her voice. And then finally, I believe the last time that we met, she was preparing for a big presentation. It was, it was enough that she brought it in, it was causing her enough.

[00:13:04] Just a little bit of anxiety. You know, she wasn't, she wasn't really feeling super confident about what she was gonna have to be presenting and getting others to en to engage with her. That was hard because she was not approachable. The, you know, speaking really fast, all that passion and fire, and she was very mis.

[00:13:25] That was the bottom line. We, when we nailed it all down and we, we teased out all of the stuff that was going on, gave her some new tools to practice, practice them together in real time. We recorded her. Now I've spoke about using a mirror as a tool when you're using your voice to practice in front of, just as good, if not better than Amir is recording yourself.

[00:13:47] Right? True story. Sloan in the Smooth Tone band we had for years, corporate events and parties and, and fundraising things. No one had ever, I love percussion. If I'm singing and I'm, I'm off to the side or I'm doing backup, I'll get my tambourine or my shakers out. Okay. I had never, and I don't know how many years this went on, and nobody, nobody ever said, you know, That looks kind of weird.

[00:14:13] So I would play my tambourine and my arm. If you're, if you're listening, you can't see this. If you're on the video, you can see my arm would flap like a chicken wing with my, my mother's, my, my under my arm, that flap wiggling all over the place. Okay. I never knew this had, Until I saw myself in a video and I was horrified, absolutely horrified, and I guess nobody really cared.

[00:14:43] But when I saw it on video, oh my gosh, I've never played the tambourine like that since I keep my arm in close, it's more and my wrist, tiny, graceful. Movements. So coming back to, we prepared Lorraine with video. She practiced in front of a mirror in front of myself. She got feedback. She would meet with me and then she'd go back and incorporate Each week she would take one thing back to work that she would practice at this aerospace.

[00:15:18] And every week she would come back excited about how it had worked. But the ultimate was when she actually went in and brought it all together and it was, as far as I can tell, it was pretty transformative for her. She, I, if I recall, I think that she got very emotional and, and a lot of it was just a release.

[00:15:40] It was. It was just finally having a couple of tools, like her relationships at work changed dramatically. She went from her peers and her colleagues thinking, you know, who is this crazy woman? She's awful to work with, to someone that they respect, someone that they feel more comfortable sharing their ideas.

[00:16:03] Everybody having a voice at the table and them actually looking up to her as their manager. It was life changing. It was absolutely life changing. And I've got so many stories like that. This is, this is just one that was made an impact. And because of the line of work that she's in, which is predominantly male dominated industry her results were beautiful.

[00:16:26] And so today, some tools that you can practice right out of the gate. Three things I'm gonna give. The first one, and I haven't spoke a lot to this yet, but I'm gonna do an entire episode, maybe a couple on number one is practicing mindfulness. Now mindfulness comes in many different ways and I, I did share previously that when we come to anything where we have to be on, where we have to use our voice, where we have to make a presentation, where there is an audience, whether in person or over zoom, the greatest gift that you can give yourself before.

[00:17:08] Push play before you step out on that stage is to get quiet, get yourself centered, whether it's breath work or getting into state. I shared a little bit about the full range vocal swoop. This is my go-to. It's loud and we get proud and it's very silly and it's super weird. And we laugh, but it moves all that nervous energy out of the way.

[00:17:34] The other thing that you can do, Is focusing on your body language, and we spoke to power poses getting in front of a. Getting in front of other colleagues. Again, I, I mentioned videotaping yourself. So really taking a look at, you know, are you, are you making yourself small because you're nervous and afraid?

[00:17:58] Or are you taking up space? Are you opening up that shoulders and that heart space? Are you instead of, oh, so some, so some things definitely never to do. You wanna be aware. Of any fiddling and you know, fiddling with your clothing, with your hair, with jewelry. I have a young woman when she gets nervous, she's actually stopped doing it because she saw herself on video.

[00:18:26] This cl she's actually a singer, but she would play with the n both her. Would play with the end of her, whatever she was wearing. You know, her shirt, her dress, her her coat. She would get this, this movement back and forth with the material in her fingers and it, it was just a nervous thing that she wasn't even aware.

[00:18:48] In fact, I think I made her aware of it first. And then she became mindful and intentional, and then she saw herself on video and, and I don't believe she does that anymore. So, other things, you know, hands in the pockets. Jiggling change. Oh, fig leaves. No fig leaves. Ladies, if you're standing in front here's, here's a great one.

[00:19:12] Crossing our arms. Now, again, if you're listening on podcast, you can't, you can't see this. But if you're watching on video crossing your arms, what does, what does that say about us? You're in a meeting, you're doing a presentation, you know, are people likely to interject? Are they likely to ask a question?

[00:19:32] Are they likely to try to have a conversation with you, with your arms crossed in front of you? And so much of this is unconscious. We do these things and we aren't even. Right. No. Unfold those arms. Make yourself approachable, right? What's the worst thing that can happen? Nothing really. Right? Nothing.

[00:19:54] Nothing's gonna happen. You're gonna live. You're gonna be okay. Right. I've not, I have yet to work with a client who has practiced anything that I have taught them, anything I've shared with them, any skills that I've given them who have been affected in a horrible negative way. They've, they've all left with new tools to practice and are all the better for it.

[00:20:22] So, you know, pay attention to how you're carrying your body. And, and this goes for, you know, and, and at home in our relationships, with our families, with our friends, right? It, it's not just, this isn't just for professional. And number three, develop a powerful speaking style that is yours, not somebody else's, right?

[00:20:49] And this includes all of the other things I've spoke to earlier. You know, clearly, you know, slowly articulating, making sure you're not monotone, gauging with the other people in the room in a thoughtful way. Mirroring not checking out in order to think about the next thing that you're going to say, because we know what happens there.

[00:21:16] You've checked out, you've completely missed what the other party was sharing because you were so concerned about what you are going to say next. Right? Whether you need to defend something or you need to clarify something, it's just, it's, it's not being mindful when we do that. We're not being mindful.

[00:21:36] We're not being fully present. We're already thinking about the next thing that we're going to share or interject or whatever. So mindfulness is a huge piece, believe it or not. Mindfulness is a huge piece of using your voice in an empowered, engaging, expressive. And I'm gonna be teaching a lot on that in some future episodes.

[00:22:04] And in the meantime, if you haven't been there the website, vocal Coaching by Sloan, the YouTube channel, vocal Coaching by Sloan. Tons of great information out there already. Tons more coming. And if you are a woman, Watching or listening that has found me here. Please head over to the Facebook group, the Find Your Voice, rock Your Confidence Facebook Group for Women.

[00:22:28] Go join that group. Get into that community. The same with the podcasts and the YouTube. It really, this is just a community of like minded peop people. Wanting to improve themselves, wanting to improve their, their voice, whether, whatever you're using your voice for which contributes and, and helps everything else across the board.

[00:22:52] You know, your health, your mental health, your physical wellness, your relationships. I can't, I can't say enough. It's, it's been transforming for myself and I have never asked a client to do anything that I haven't already done. So, I'm so glad that you are here. You know what to do. Push that.

[00:23:13] Subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. Share this with a friend or a loved one who you think could use just a little nudge or a little support with their own voice and confidence. And I will see you next time.

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